My day off

Mid-afternoon but dark outside due to the lovely rain we’re having and I have the day off.  Yip, no quilt classes, with my dinners done ahead until tonight, my laundry kept up to date so that I have about 3 items to iron later,  I have this lovely rainy day to myself.

For a moment early morning I toyed with the idea of staying in bed reading my book, ‘Dark Continent My Black Arse’ (author Sihle Khumalo) but I had more important matters needed to be done.  I purchased a challenge pack to enter a quilt in our National Quilt Festival held in Stellenbosch from 1 to 7 July this year and my entry must be in the possession of the Quilt Registrar by 1 May.

Just when I started typing we suddenly had heavy thunder with lightning and I had to switch off my computer.  According to the local radio station we have several streets flooded, trees toppled and a couple of accidents on our roads – so glad I decided to stay indoors today.

So I’m taking today to work on my challenge but apart from waiting too long before starting – struggled with finding something to go with the theme “Showtime” and the piece of fabric one has to use in your quilt – I seem to add onto the already designed quilt as I go along.

However….. I think I’m done with the top now.  Any more will ruin it and now the actual quilting still lies ahead but at least I am this far.

I don’t want to show my top yet but here is a sneak preview of the back (or then a part of it.)

Two more beginner quilts done

O dear, o dear, I’ve almost abandoned my own little blog and I used to love this dearly.  Our guild has asked me to write a blog for them and as you can guess ‘too much of a good thing, is never really good’.  However should anyone be interested in what I babble on about there, go visit our blog at http://oranjequilters.blogspot.com and see what we do on this side of the world.

Back to this post.  I start beginner courses in February and August every year and last week two of the August beginners brought their completed quilts to show.  I still stay amazed how the same pattern can look so differently when using different fabric.

These ladies are Natasha van Zijl (the wild one) and Wilna Geel (the lady).  Yes obviously they read my blog but we’ve became such good friends in this short time that I feel I can say whatever I want about them.  

Well done ladies, now we await our next meeting and see if Natasha brings the promised box wine (and a bar of soap for old Stinky).

Harsh wake-up call

I just returned from a wonderful boat trip to a Portugese island and after unpacking late yesterday evening, I thought I had all under control.  This morning my cleaners came in and I thought once they leave me with a sparkling clean house I would do the laundry, cook the family a nice meal before teaching a class again this evening.

Luckily I decided to bring my diary outside where I normally sit to wait for the cleaners to finish – not quite dressed for any occasion but decent enough to be outside – and when I turned the diary page to today’s date I got a huge shock realizing that I have a class this morning at 9am!!!!  My cleaners finish at 08:30 and there was just no way that I would finish in time.  Bad, bad way to start a week after such a lovely vacation but I then literally had to hurry the cleaners to finish my bedroom so that I can hop into a shower and get myself sorted for this morning’s class.

Went with a bunch of the most amazing ladies and had so much fun and came home with plenty of fun memories.  Here we were still on our way and posed for this photo at one of the many stops we made.