The beginning of the jumper... look at the beautiful hem

I've been slack on the spinning and knitting front lately because I needed to spin up some more yarn for the jumper and had more fun things to do, like make a quilt. So tonight I finally plied up around 500m of yarn and it is having a bath.

Riscy is competing in a triathalon this weekend so I suspect I'll get a fair bit of knitting done at the event. I have been in a bit of a knot regarding how to to quilt the big dredger quilt. I do have ideas, but they are not fully formed so I don't want to start in willy nilly. Fulvia suggested I step back from it for a few days, and not put myself under pressure about it. And I think she is right. I will, however do some work away from the quilt because I have an idea to use text related to or written by John Monash (who was a big force in the state electricity commission, which has now been privatised). I realised last night that this quilt has some passing similarities to a bag I made last year and traded with Sophie:

Interesting.

Just a bit of eye candy because the rest is just words (except for the neat workroom shot at the bottom of the post)

Now, on to QUILTING How am I going to quilt the beast? I want the quilting to form a simple, secondary pattern in the background, most probably a large circular area intersecting with another circular area. The quilting on the dark trusses will be linear. I may introduce some colour like I did on the proto-type quilt. edited to add (a few hours after posting the above): Circular areas will not work. No quilting tonight, more thought required!! I will quilt and embroider the quilt before the backing fabric goes on. I am not interested in how the stitching looks from the back and it is far neater to cover it all with backing fabric. I think some purists may have a problem with this, but as I have no current intentions to enter my work in quilt specific shows I figure it doesn't matter what I do with the back as long as it doesn't affect the appearance of the front. I also prefer to use a special thin bobbin thread rather than cotton in the bobbin. This reduces bulk at the back for heavily embroidered sections and I can fit more of this stuff onto a bobbin which means less bobbin changes (we all know how annoying it is when the bobbin runs out when you are in the middle of some intricate linework!). A Link or Two. Check out Melanie Testa's new quilt. I love just about every thing on this quilt, especially the colour and the texture created with her quilting This is a link to the Indonesian Textile exhibition I saw at the Latrobe Regional Gallery yesterday: Speaking with Cloth | Cerita Dalam Kain I was going to blog about it, but sort of lost my thoughts on the matter. I was interested in the animal symbology used and the ceremonial importance of cloth the how the cloths are used for identification of clan alliance. I bought the cataloge so I'll go back over it when I have a chance. If you haven't already, check out Dijanne's Middle East photos. She is having quite an adventure. I also want to mention the website of Omega. Real thoughtful and interesting commentary about art in general her own art practice. Omega always has some interesting links to share. I need to link to it on my blogroll because I currently get to her blog via Dijannes blog. NOW, my farewell for the evening is a photo of my 'still' clean workroom. normally it would have degenerated into a messy hell by now, but I took five minutes last night (after I fused the top to the batting) to tidy up... revolutionary!

My workroom is clean and ready for quilting!

Riscy bought these for my birthday I love picking out my own present!

YAY, the top is fused. Though my knees are sore from crawling around on the floor for the better part of the day.

I'm just glad it is fused. It will not be square, there is no doubt about it, but I am sticking to my original principle of keeping things simple. Spending days tweaking the layout would be too disheartening, best to move on. Riscy and I had lunch at the Latrobe Regional Gallery today. I wanted to see the exhibition of indonesion textiles (to be blogged about later) and pick out my present from the gift shop for my upcoming birthday :-) I nearly chose an exquisite porcelain bud vase, and almost convinced myself to ask Riscy to buy me a beautiful teapot and teacup set (a bit too much to spend though), but decided on a charming necklace and bracelet set made of colourful dried beans. Not expensive, but totally something I will love to wear.

This was a bit like untangling spagetti, it took me many hours down on my knees to sort it out.