Making mud angels

You may be wondering where all the sewing show and tell is.... Me too!

The concrete holes have been pumped out, and the mud has been pumped out here into the yard... and this has kept a 3 years and 4 month old boy especially, in trouble!  

There is no point starting to sew when I can be covered in mud at any time. Here is a little example...

Ooh, miss 7 lost her gumboot.

 Master 8 is pulling it out.

Master 3 skipped the gumboots, and is just having fun getting stuck.

And now he is lying on his back and kicking like he is at a swimming lesson. Hahahahah.

Making mud angels.

Hmm... maybe I can sew next week...

Gypsy

Oh I love this cloth! This is the perfect cloth for divination - tea leaf reading, tarot cards, runes, oracle cards, iching, scrying... all in the heart of the gypsy....

I appliqued this gypsy lady in shimmery and sparkly fairy frost fabrics, then added hand rendered details with fabric paint and free motion machine embroidery.

Ooh! She is divine! I will have to make one for myself another time.

Are we sewing yet?

Well, it's relatively back to normal here, and we counted our lucky stars that our power was on the entire time, we enjoyed air conditioning and fans throughout the monsoon and our floors were not flooded to cause ongoing damage.

So much water fell that that dam was at about 13 percent capacity and was suddenly about to overflow. If it went over the edge, the dam may have broken entirely, and flooded the whole of Townsville. And so, a decision was made to release water that flooded the town's river. Many areas of town were evacuated and their homes were flooded.

Sacrificing some to protect more than that.

And so it's a time to be grateful. The children wanted to bake, so we made these profiteroles, which love a wet, steam oven.

We have linked up a series of steel planks to get around the yard so that we are not getting bogged.

 But that doesn't stop the children playing in the mud anyway! Hahahah

Hopefully some more stitching soon!

Not floating away yet

We are still here after a few tense days. I couldn't concentrate on the cloak enough to give it the attention it needed, so I stopped working on it for now.

These eskies had to go up on the trampoline so they wouldn't float away.

That is a cubby there. The water was up 10cm in the bottom of it. Can you see that the toy trucks were placed on the roof for safe keeping?

This was all underwater only days earlier.

All this tension made me grateful.... Very grateful it was a new moon.

Did you know the moon's gravity causes tides because it attracts the ocean? So the high tides are always higher at full moon, and lowest at new moon.

And thank the goddess it was a new moon, or the water would have been inside our inner sanctuary.

Perfect time to create a set of two moon phase pillowcases to celebrate.

This colour is difficult to photograph. But trust me, they are bluer than this, and the moon phases are in a shimmery golden creamy fairy frost fabric.

Totally missed my birthday as we were rained in, and so I look forward to celebrating soon to make it up.

Rain Days

The rain fell and fell and fell.

We were worried about the power going off. I was so relieved and satisfied to have so much fresh, frozen and long life food on hold in case we were blocked off for a long time. We can get blocked off from the road in wet season.

I needed some distraction. Look at this beautiful, sumptious velvet. Pure wool velvet I bought at less than half price. I needed a lot of metreage for this project, and would never have bought it at $50 per metre.

Tentatively, I took the first stitches..... I wanted to really focus on this while stitching, to give it the attention it needed to work and turn out beautifully.

Slow and steady, zigazagging edges too...

Would you look at the lint you get from a glowing wool velvet after only one bobbin of sewing!!!

And then this plush and fluffy hood lining and cuffs....

Oh! Look at these colours together!!!

But this only distracted me for a little while....

The wet came 2 months early, and we were relieved that we had half the holes for the house footings concreted., although the other half were filling with mud and water and were constantly caving in.

Salvaging the holes by sucking out water and mud then filling with more concrete increases the cost of the build, and we were worried about the rising level of the water.

For a while, we kept our eyes on the water levels by pulling on the cardboard that had been the formwork for the concrete footings.  The air and water were warm as you can see.

Fresh rain water, checking out what was floating along, and a little boy loving the splash and fun in the water.

Let's hope it eases up soon.

Balance

It's all about balance... and I enjoyed embellishing two towels with the yin yang.

A simple applique, transforms  these into something special.

And look at the difference before and after accessories with this tree spirit altar cloth.

 Using intention, I have created a crystal grid with the cloth! This harnesses the power of the tree spirit, the crystals and whatever else I have called upon.

I love creating these kinds of tools. Does this look like a rain tree to you?

Love Rainey x

Towels

When the mood strikes, Mummy must go for it... intuition was telling me to buy some towels, so we went to get them....

Lots and lots of towels! And they also make great cushions in the trolley!

First one made is a witches hat, with feather, crystal and pentagram details.

Love this colour and the soft fluffiness of the towel.

Appliqued onto the towel with freehand machine embroidery details and hand rendering.

And of course the triple goddess, I made 2 bath towels and 2 hand towels in this colour and style, as they are a favourite.

Yesterday was a very special day at our place... the first half of the house footings were concreted, which is such a relief. We are expecting the rains in February March and we needed to have these holes filled by then.

A very exciting time for us all. After this we set up the next half of the holes.

Family life is wonderful!

With a new house on the horizon, I have thoughts racing away about the home decorating. I have been happy to put new quilts for the children on hold until the house is built, so that they have new ones for their new room.