Thrift and Things

We like to consider ourselves a thrifty lot at The Room (by necessity rather than choice most of the time) but the title for the Queen of Thrift this week has gone to our gorgeous Tennille!

During the week Tennille picked up a working Janome MemoryCraft8000 at the St Arnaud Recycling Centre for $20. (For those of you who don't know, this machine is an older top-of-the-range machine that not only sews but also does embroidery. It has all the cool features like 'needle up', 'needle threader' 'tie off'.... I reckon it may even be able to do the dishes and cook dinner too if we found the right button...)

 Can had great fun exploring all the decorative stitches (Tennille, if your machine is missing check Can's place first...)

The Memory Craft in action as Tennille works on a library bag for one of her children.

Tennille is making the library bag out of the gorgeous butterfly material ...

The rest of us were also productive last night (once we stopped dribbling with envy) and Dot has finished her second quilt-top in record speed and set about basting it for quilting....

She is making it for her daughter, Jodie and the beautiful greys and blues look fantastic in the funky zig-zag pattern...

Dot is quilting it to further accentuate the zig-zags and no doubt our Queen of Speed will have this completed in no time at all...

Jen has begun the less speedy process of making a rag rug for her lounge room floor. She is plaiting coloured knits together and then sewing them in a spiral. It will be beautiful once it has finished...

We had a new face at The Room last night. Dorothy was involved in the Donald CWA which is currently in recess.  Dorothy brought along her knitting and a whole lifetime of knowledge and skills.

Dorothy saved Candece hours by showing her a neat trick to unpicking seams...
The recess of the local CWA is a sad thing for this community. The women of the CWA have such tremendous skills and knowledge, to say nothing of the huge amount of community work they do. You wonder how that gap will be filled... Still The Room was more than happy to fill the 'creative' space and we hope Dorothy enjoyed herself and will come along again.
When Can wasn't playing with Tennille's new machine, or revamping skirts, she was sorting fabric for her new project, a lunch tote....

This is her collection so far... (I think she only needs eight...)

Andrew was busy working on his felt monster. He is going to add a mouth, teeth, eyebrows and hair...

Yours Truly has finished quilting Ollie's Library Bag (and then found out they don't even need it until Term 2!) so it sits awaiting a couple of seams and a drawstring and I turned my attention to quilting the Playmat...

Having outlined the roads I am now stipple quilting the grass...

and will then work out how to quilt the paddocks.
Have a great week everyone and The Room once again extends a warm welcome to anyone in Donald who is at loose end on Friday nights and may want to enjoy some tea, laughter and the occasional project!