Quilt finish! Doing a happy dance

I am doing a happy dance today.

I have hung the Life in the Garden quilt up -using a set of 5 tabs which I made -in the manner of tapestries hung in medieval banqueting halls. 

Can you see my cat figurine on the top shelf? 

What cat doesn't want to be near a quilt, now? 

Here it is, quilted and bound and hung in the spot I designed it for, just inside the front door. 

I did swirly swirls and stippling in diagonal rows to add texture and interest to the quilt. 

This quilt was fun to make -the whole way through. I really like the way it turned out. 

Mid way through Plastic Free July-getting expert advice

We visited the Good Fair at the University of WA last weekend. The market was a place to find  WA’s vibrant community of ethically conscious businesses and organisations. We could browse and shop ethical fashion, gifts, food, home wares and eco products.

The Rubbish Fairy from EarthWise in Subiaco was there, talking rubbish.  Earthwise is a community organisation which has a community garden, op shop and numerous activities for aspiring eco-activists. 

The Centre for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Detainees (CARAD) was there providing us with delicious Iraqi food, made by local refugees and asylum seekers.

We heard a number of good talks about the difficulty of plastics in the environment. One was about the amount of plastic which is in our clothes -and the packaging in which it comes -which then gets into our oceans. We should be washing our clothes less, and always using cold water when we wash. The best thing, however, is to seek out natural fibres where ever possible. Second hand clothes from Op shops help to make sure that clothes are kept out of the waste stream for longer.

This is Rebeccah, founder of Plastic Free July (which started in 2011 right here in Perth), telling her story and inspiring us to keep up the good work. 

My new Keep Cup, which I am taking with me on a holiday soon. I have a little back pack and it will go in there with a stainless steel water bottle. 

Our plastic free experiments have had mixed success:

• Rinsing hair with cider vinegar instead of condition was not successful for DH or myself. 
• the bin seems none the worse for not having a liner. Most of our food waste goes in the compost or worm farm, so wrapping up chop or chicken bones in the pages of the community newspaper seems to work well.
• I picked up a free net curtain or three, which I will use to make produce bags and gift them back to the community.
• I picked up a free tiny glass and metal table for the lounge room from our local Buy Nothing group. This enables us to extend the coffee table so the room is not so crowded. It is a big room but the chairs were all crowded around my too-small glass and metal coffee table. I only recently found this group, and I am impressed with the amount of community creating giving-it-away that goes on. Buy Nothing? Great idea to keep waste down. 

We have a new bulk eco-shop opening up soon in my suburb. Maybe the best thing we can do re the conditioner thing, will be to be able to take it to the bulk shop and refill the bottle there. 

I am also putting in our first order for Who Gives a Crap totally recycled toilet paper that builds toilets in the third world. It comes wrapped in paper in a cardboard box. I usually buy bulk toilet paper anyway -my family goes into melt down if we run out, so this has been my way of reducing unnecessary stress. 

How are you doing? Are you reducing any part of your plastic consumption? I would love to hear from you. 

Life in the garden -a quilt top

I finished the quilt top which I am calling "Life in the garden" last night.

I am heart-skippy with delight over it! 

It was a LOT of fun to make. 

This post is about how I made it, and what I like about it.

It started with two things: a discounted pile of 15 precuts called "charm squares" which had  a bee theme: honeycomb, bees, and also butterflies. 

I had be re-reading Gwen Marsden's book "Liberated Quiltmaking II" on improvisational piecing. She spoke about using a toile piece in an improvised quilt -and used a Welsh vintage quilt as inspiration. I decided to make her instructions for square in a square blocks, and to use some old Debbie Munn fabric as the centres: time to use this up! This gave me quite a few squares. I also added some cats -as what is a garden without cats?

I used up all the charm squares by adding borders to them. As some of them were quite dark in background, I added some dark borders. 

I added a number of fabrics to the mix -toiles and soft patterns on white fabrics -everything with a garden theme. 

I played with the design quite a bit. I didn't want to have too regular a pattern of lights and darks, but instead let the movement of the tones encourage the eye to move around the piece. 

Then, as I pondered about the way to finish the quilt following the white stop border, I saw a small quilt on Instagram which Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville had completed this week -with a scrappy strip border. I had saved all the strips from cutting this quilt -so I started to make the outer border in a fairly random fashion. So long as no two fabrics were together that was it! Add some yellow corner stones and it was done.

I have a pretty black and white fabric which I found disguised as a couple of pillow cases and a doona cover, in a op shop, which will be the back. Add a thin piece of batting -you know the leftover bits you always have from a big quilt-and it will be done. 

I loved the playfulness of the quilt making - I didn't have a design in mind when I started. I liked the way I was able to incorporate things from my stash, including fabric which had been there far too long. I liked the scrappy strip border -again it used up tiny bits which might otherwise get tossed out.

There is a narrow space near my door, with a quilt hanger. When it is finished, this will go there. 

Progess in Plastic Free July

“I pledge to avoid single-use plastic, to reuse or recycle the plastic that I do use, to educate others about plastic waste, and to take action to help the world #breakfreefromplastic.
Find out more 

Here we are again in Plastic Free July, and Chez Earthmotherwithin is doing it's bit. I can't remember how many years we have taken part, but each time we learn a new habit and go a bit deeper into the plastic free lifestyle.

Disclaimer: it is very very hard to be plastic free. We are surrounded by it. My keyboard is plastic, as is the handle of my shopping trolley, and I think the fabric of the same trolley is plastic too. Nevertheless my trolley saves me both the petrol which I might use if I went by car to the local shops, and it also means I don't need single use plastic bags. 

What we are trying to do is to reduce single use plastic at the very least. That means in particular, plastic bags given out by shops for a one-time trip home, water bottles and other soft drink bottles, plastic wraps used once in the kitchen, plastic which covers vegetables and fruits in the shops, so-called disposables like plastic straws and coffee cups with those plastic lids. 

These things are hard to avoid. I can't buy milk in anything other than a plastic bottle. My meat comes in plastic. Some fruit and vegetables can be found loose -and then I use my produce bags (below) but soft fruits like strawberries are not often found that way because they bruise so easily in transport. Some people have local butchers who will let you bring your own containers for the meat, but this is a pretty much localised phenomenon. I tried it once, but I was embarrassed by the response and haven't done it again since. 

I made these bags using left over curtains and some netting I had in my stash.

Last year we swapped body wash bottles for a simple bar of soap on a wooden rack. This works for both body washing and shampoo! This year I am experimenting with replacing the bottles of conditioner with a spray bottle of cider vinegar and water. So far it is great: it is easy to use in the shower and my hair is soft but not tangled. 

I have also replaced my plastic container of dental floss with a refillable glass one which uses an organic thread rather than a plastic filament.

My rechargeable razor keeps my legs fuzz free -I used to use 'disposable' razors but this will last longer. I use rechargeable batteries in it. 

In the kitchen we regularly use bulk shopping to assist in cutting down the plastic coming in to the house. One 5 litre container of dishwasher rinse aid is the equivalent of about 20 little bottles of rinse aid, as well as being impressively cheaper for example.

My DD covets the glass condiment bottles we buy, because they become the vessels for his jams and chutneys. We always need more, because these same things are given away to friends when they visit. It is therefore easy to pick the glass jar over the plastic container when shopping.

There are lots more ways in which we can improve our plastic free life -this month helps us concentrate on these, and move a bit closer to the ideal. 

"If personal preference for free, convenient plastic bags were to trump the prospect of curbing environmental damage, we can look to a really rubbish future."  Find more here

The earth is turning toward the sun again!

We have passed the Solstice, which means, for us in the southern hemisphere, our earth is turning this part of her face back towards the sun. The days will start getting longer. 

This is a pretty short period of daylight for us in our latitude:

We have developed a tradition to celebrate Mid Winter with a feast. This is a great way of celebrating the moment, and we all need celebrations, don't we? 

In order to get some extra room around the table, we swap our dining room with the lounge room and bring in more chairs and the table from my sewing room. A party for eleven sit-down diners won't fit in the dining room, and it is too cold to be outside. 

We invite friends.

We decorate.

This year I served beef cheeks slowly cooked in the oven, with a potato bake, Brussels  sprouts and a salad, followed by lemon tart, chocolate, strawberries and three kinds of cheeses.

We usually send our guests home with some produce from our garden, and some preserves.

We now only have one cumquat tree which has not quite ripened (see picture above)  so they didn't get DH's famous cumquat marmalade, but he has developed quite a skill in making tangelo marmalade. We usually give them Kaffir lime (Citrus hystrix) leaves and bay leaves from the garden, and citrus like grapefruit grown in our own backyard. 

As I write this post, the rain has been pouring down all day. This is normal for us who have a short, sharp, wet winter and an extended dry summer: a typical Mediterranean pattern. It is a time for staying indoors and watching the weather radar website, to see if the bands of rain will allow a quick walk later on. It is a time for making soups and stews. It is a time to read, to do the accounts before the end of the tax year, to sew in my sewing room. 

Dh has been preserving pears in red and white wine, as they are cheap at the moment. 

I am close to completing a new quilt -a small wall hanging in celebration of everything that lives in the garden. I hope to post pictures of it over at my instagram account later this week. (@earthmotherwithin). 

Grounding myself in the community

There are plenty of terrible things which happen in our world, and they are enough to make me despair. How about you? If we had a conversation and talked about them, it would be good to know we shared the concerns, though we might disagree about which ones were most worrying -the lack of safety for women and girls or the incarceration of refugees or the separation of children from the parents or the melting polar ice caps.... there is plenty to worry about.

One of the ways I keep myself grounded is by being involved in caring communities which band together to do small and large acts of kindness and generosity. They give me lived experience of that other dimension of reality -the one which also exists often beyond the scope of the media and politics, but which just quietly goes on caring and sharing. 

I have mentioned this before, but I am always overwhelmed by the West Australian Quilters' Association and its gifts of quilts to women's refuges and rehab centres and the like. This was just part of the pile going off from our meeting this month. I spotted one of mine in here. You can't always know where our donated quilts will end up, but this time I know it is off to a woman and her littlies in a refuge. I hope it encourages them as they try to make a new start. 

I have been experimenting with putting spare produce outside my place for people to take if they need it. As our street is pretty quiet, I decided I needed to use social media to let people know it was here. I have found a neighbourhood "Buy Nothing" group, which is a lovely way of sharing our excess -not just crops but anything excess. Free, with courtesy and kindness. 

I have also been playing with these blocks which feature bees and butterflies and dragons and such. They remind me of the gentle companionship and support of the plants and insects in my garden, who all support it. It is my aim to make my garden free of any kind of nasty poisons -I haven't got there yet as I object strongly to snails eating my veggies -but anyway we have to have goals, don't we? 

I hope this will become a wall hanging near my front door. 

The walk to the shops gives me a lot of lovely things to look at -here my neighbour is growing a spectacular flowering shrub over the fence to where I can enjoy it too. I love having a shop I can walk to -if we want local shops, we need to shop locally. Both the shops and the gardens remind me of the community which supports me. I like to live 'sustainably" but do not imagine I can do it alone. We all need other people. 

This final picture is of donated groceries for the people who are going to be cut off income support whilst they are having their refugee claims processed. It was a lovely thing to receive these donations today, on World Refugee Day, and know that there is a lot of goodwill which does not get expressed clearly but which is the 'groundswell' of our communities. I support The Centre for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Detainees in Perth. 

I hope you have a few instances of community to keep you grounded, too. 

Hard rain gonna fall

The hard rain did fall in Perth this past week -and it was very welcome! It has soaked into the dry soil, washed the dust off the leaves and the roof, filled up the water tank and generally refreshed everything. After such a dry and long autumn, the rain is such a blessing.

It has been very dark and gloomy on most days, and we are wrapping up in warm jumpers and scarves and hats. I have a new-to-me coat which I found in an op shop -it is wool and cashmere and so, so warm. I also found a new red knitted beanie. Both of these items are getting some use as we have been out and about, especially in the evening. One of these events was a very special one -we were invited to celebrate an Iftar meal (for the breaking of the fast during Ramadan) with some Muslim people and a church group.

My quilts are back in service as snuggle rugs in the evening, and I have one in my sewing room on the chair, ready to pull over my legs when it is a bit cold. DH is often called upon to share, though.

Our menu has changed with the seasons -we are once again enjoying warming soups and casseroles. This is one of the lovely things about the weather -it brings back into our lives those practices and foods we left behind when the summer came along. Let's face it, we have summer for such a long time here in Perth, and our winters are quite short and sharp, so it is quite a novelty, really- something to be indulged, to be celebrated.

I found this book in a second hand shop: a classic from a classic cook. Such great ideas to keep us bringing in the changes -we like to try new combinations and flavours.

On Friday there was a small clear window, so DH and I took advantage of the break to go down to our favourite beach for a walk. You can see Rottnest Island on the horizon, and the showers were still over there. Unlike the strong blues of summer, the winter beach is full of grey and steel and deep purple.

We also had strong winds, and thunder and lightning...which sent poor Dora in search of any cubby hole which felt safe to her. She has since emerged!

I took advantage of the weather to get back into the sewing room. I actually tidied it up a bit, and in celebration have got back to sewing again. My "leader and ender" project ( inspired by Bonnie Hunter, but as usual doing my own thing) is a bunch of yellow and blue 9 patches, which I thought would create a good quilt for the community quilters group to donate to someone who loved one of our local footy teams, which has the same colours. 

I am using up scraps to make something new. Not sure where this is going -thinking I might try to make some string blocks to go in between the 9 patches, to soak up even more scraps.

You will notice that the first block of the yellow below is wrong...I didn't notice until I took this picture! I will get out my quick unpick and fix it in a minute though.

I was glad to be able to get out of the house this morning to do some weeding in the garden. The daisies and nasturtiums are springing up after the rain, and the couch grass only needs to be left alone for a minute and it thinks it can take over the whole place.  We actually don't have any lawn any more but the couch is a 'forever friend'.  It is time to refresh some of the wicking beds, and even to move the smaller ones out of shade and into  the sun. We picked our first eggplant -they didn't start to fruit until very late in the autumn this year and now I don't know if I should leave the plant a bit longer or pull it out for winter veggies. 

DH's orchids are doing so well this year -now a second racime has 15 blooms!