Dinosaur rag quilt – 1

I usually leave the office early on Tuesdays as our dogs are locked outside since 06:30 to allow my once-a-week cleaning crew to enter the house and do their magic.  The space the dogs are kept during this time is not the biggest and I always feel terribly sorry for them and then come home earlier to allow them in.

This Tuesday was no different and with no cleaning to do, a frozen dinner ready to use, only a tiny bit of laundry and very little errands I had plenty of time on my hands BUT (the usual) I just didn’t feel like doing any of my current WIP’s and needless to say, it lead to me starting yet another project!

I found this lovely Dinosaur fabric at our local Pfaff quilt shop and realised I haven’t done as much quilting for our grandson than I have for the granddaughter – she does however have a 4 year head start on him.  So even though I’ve never made a rag quilt, I decided to try my hand to this.  After watching several You Tube videos, reading tutorials on the internet and a couple of blogs describing their process, I did a layout in EQ, ready for action whenever I was and then Tuesday turned out to be the day.

I had to cut 70 x 9½” squares from my black for backing and with that depleting all the plainish black I had in my stash.  Major shopping to follow soon?!

Most posts suggest cutting through all 3 layers at the same time but because I used fabric with different widths, I chose to cut each layer separately and then line these up again.

Block 29 – Bev

MIL turned 86 yesterday and I had her, the kids and the grandchildren over but unlike the Sunday lunches I imagine in other houses, ours is hectic and extremely noisy.  Sometimes I wonder if MIL sees an invite from us as a pleasure or punishment.

Granddaughter already came to us on Saturday and slept over.  So we did not have a neat and tidy house to welcome the visitors into.  Luckily they are all family.

Before long granddaughter had everyone colouring with her, then some dancing on the bar counter, followed by a game of “duck-duck-goose” (I think??) around the dining room table.  Grandson has started to eat and enjoyed his pumpkin and is such a friendly little soul.

With everyone gone and the house turning extremely quiet I had time to finish this little block.

Block 28 – Mary Ellen

Another one finished in the month of May and enough reason to go celebrate with quilt friend Sonja.

We went to dinner yesterday evening and I had fresh oysters for the first time in my life.  It was amazing but apparently I misbehaved after one too many drinks. I can’t recall anything bad but Karin had to come rescue me, so I guess the crap Sonja tells me must be true.

Anyway….. a good thing Karin came as my car wouldn’t start and it turns out that the battery needs to be replaced.

Scrappy strips 7

After our previous through night quilting session I took no less than 2 naps to get recharged and then sat myself behind the machine with amazing ATP tennis on the TV.  I got seriously stuck into my Scrappy Strips again – think I had enough of applique for a while.

I plan to make 2 single bed quilts from these 14” blocks- 5 across and 6 down.  Having used two different kind of white fabrics I pinned these against the wall and alternated the whites, so that I would have the same amount of different whites in each of the quilts.

Now this may not seem like much but what you don’t see is that there is another block behind every block in this picture, thus ensuring that I will finish the tops simultaneously.

I have however run out of strip sets and need to start cutting again.

Block 27 – Victoria

If you can overlook the fact that I am more than 2 years behind on this “Katja Marek’s Quilt with me” project, I’ve made it halfway through this quilt along and I actually love the hand sewing, not constantly or every day but occasionally it is so good to do.

Then I had a lady selling medicinal Cannabis over at my house on Sunday afternoon, telling me all about the uses, the pro’s and the cons and hoping to speed up the healing process of both my frozen shoulder and jaw wound. Apparently it can make you feel bad for the first two weeks, driving out all the toxins in your body but then the healing should rapidly improve.  This is my Marijuana stash for the next two months.

She also gave me a recipe for bone building and prevention of osteoporosis and told me all about Oil pulling, something I am eager to start trying too.  The joys of being old…. Collecting recipes to heal you, how fun?!

Owl – A punch of purple

After treating ourselves to dining out (the men were on their own golfing mission) Karin and I had a rather messy all night quilting workout yesterday.  Messy because we both did applique and paper, thread and fabric snippets were all over the room.

We can however always, after these sessions, give back positive feedback as we both got so much done.  Not only did I finish the satin stitch around the beige fabric but added the purple teardrops and satin stitched around these too.  Karin’s constant encouragement of how nice it looked on a quilt, kept me going.

Karin worked on a quilt for a young female family member and got just as much done but kept to ironing applique shapes to the backgrounds and she didn’t do much actual stitching.  She did however get to experience why I am such a fan of Steam-a-seam Lite for use in applique

My next step now is to cover these circles with fabric and hand stitch it to the Owl bodice.  At least no more satin stitching at this stage.

I am actually dead tired but is expecting another quilting friend bringing me some chilli sauce and I better look respectable before she arrives.

A good day

Yesterday was not only our wedding anniversary but I also had an appointment with the surgeon and it seems everything was on track with my healing process.  So I was promoted from liquids to soft food (no chewing though) thus meaning hubby and I could go out to dinner!

So I had a lovely Kingklip with extra hot chili sauce and two soft veggies as my first meal in 4 weeks.  To some it might only seem like fish and veggies, to me it was a meal sent from heaven!

I’ve decided to take a break from my Scrappy Strips quilt and work on my Owl for a bit.  I am not at all looking forward to the satin stitching that has to be done.  I’ve never been a fan of satin stitching but I guess some you win, some you lose.

Mother’s Day weekend

The weather bureau didn’t lie this time, we had our very first rather cold weather this winter but I didn’t get as much sewing in as I planned.  My daughter warned me I had a date with her Sunday morning 9 am therefore I had to start making my Sunday lunch on Saturday already as I still have mother-in-law around to entertain.

Just as I got going with this my daughter arrived with our granddaughter (these two are inseparable as godmother and – daughter) who slept over by her house Friday evening and then it turned out the familiar story where the little one decided if she’s with us, she’s not going anywhere. So we had major colouring fun and very little quilting got done.

The big kids got me a very handy toiletry travelling bag and my youngest spoiled me with bathroom goodies and took me for an amazing foot massage.  What a way to start the day.

With all the kids and mother-in-law at our house later, we enjoyed lunch and I even tried my luck at having some salad and dessert, seeing that I couldn’t really anything else.  However it seems my stomach wasn’t quite up to this much solids and I had cramps most of the afternoon.  Already lost 6 kg in total and tomorrow will only be week 4.

Scrappy strips 6

I’ve deep cleaned my whole house since the beginning of this year and I still keep my house divided into 5 zones therefore I get to go back to a zone every 5 weeks.  This week I am back in the kitchen and with trusty timer set for 15 minutes, I wipe out a drawer, rack or cupboard at a time.  In other words I am maintaining my cleaning programme.  In between the 15 minutes for every task in the kitchen I take a quick break to type a post like this, take a couple of sips of wine, read my mail or just take a break on Google, then the timer would be set again but this time it will be to quilt.

When I had my sewing room cleaned for the first time, this is what it looked like in the evenings when everything was packed away and I thought I’d keep it this way.  Well yeah…. That must have been before I started my scrappy strips quilt.

When I cut strips to sew into strip sets I need to pack these out to see that I don’t use the same colour/strip/set too many times, so everything is laid out onto every flat space possible and it is all but tidy. 

 We were promised a cold weekend due to the first snowfall in Lesotho so I guess I’ll just keep cutting strips then!

Ever after kids’ panel – Part 5

The string piecing I did in the previous post on this quilt, lead to this round.  When I realised I had to make 28 identical blocks, I almost gave up but once I tackled it one strip, one diagonal stitching line and one cut at a time it got done.

I however realised that I will, in future, pay serious attention to my cutting and piecing.  None of my corners lined up and it sucked.  I think I am so eager to simply finish a quilt that I don’t pay enough attention to the finer detail, including the direction the seams are supposed to be pressed. This is not a very nice realisation after you’ve been quilting this long!!

Scrappy strips 5

Slowly but surely I am making progress with this one too.  Karin invited us for dinner last night – obviously they had the best smelling rib, while I still only had soup (week 3) and then we quilted right through the night.

I guess I am still not up to scratch yet or maybe because I am still taking pills but I had to take a nap during the night but go up and continued quilting and finished 10 more blocks of this quilt.

Ever after kids’ panel – Part 4

For this round I had to cut and make tons (224 exactly) half square triangles and even though I haven’t done these in ages, the math, cutting and sewing just worked out fine.  I think a higher force is guiding me into getting something done with these panels.

So I spent almost a day strip cutting, string piecing and re-cutting triangles.

Ever after kids’ panel – Part 3

I’ve had the border fabric used in this section forever and a day and it simply was just never good enough for any of my previous projects and not big enough to use as a backing but here it seems to work well.  Initially I thought about doing applique on this border but with this fabric it would have been too much.

I then simply stitched the 4 printed pictures which came as part of the panel to the borders, to make it go all the way around.

Ever after kids’ panel – Part 2

Not good news from the doctor today, back on antibiotics and 2 further weeks of clear fluids but enough about ailments.

I can’t even remember when last I made a nine patch block so these were particularly cute to me not that they’re any different from any other 9 patch; I guess they just brought back good memories from my days as a beginner quilter.

This is then the first round around the centre panel and I need this to be a single bed quilt.  I still have so much more to do.