Burp Cloths as relaxation

After the dense and intense quilting on the Disparity panel, I just wanted to do a ‘no-brainer’ and while having some flannel I decided to do burp cloths.  I also wanted to try fairly cheap pre-wound bobbins made for domestic machines in my long arm as I’ve heard these work.  I had white flannel as backing, cotton batting and two colours of flannel for the top which I laid next to each other.  I decided on a large scale relaxing meander just to get the layers to stay together.  Was kind of upset with myself for after spending almost 2 hours cleaning my frame room, rails, track, wheels, oiling the machine and washing the floor, the ‘new’ quilting was done in less than an hour.

Looking at the white backing, I think it is safe to say the smaller cheap bobbins did a fine job.

Pretty soon I had a bunch of burp cloths cut as well as flannel binding, cut on the bias, to accommodate the curves.  No one in our family is really a fan of Hello Kitty but in the central part of darkest Africa, this is the only flannel I could lay my hands on locally.

These went really quick but hopefully, I can remember whenever working with 2 layers of flannel and batting to cut my binding much wider.  I had a really hard time bringing the binding over to the other side.  Fortunately, burb clothes are not meant for shows and as long as they serve their purpose the binding can be less perfect.

Disparity completed

12 Bobbins later and this is the completed quilt.

The design was by Karlee Porter and the panel purchased from Honest Fabric.

Most fun I had ever since owning a long arm machine.

Now, I wonder, what I am going to do with the rest of my life!

Disparity 4

Wednesday afternoon was time for my annual gynaecologist visit and as much as I appreciate this man and the way he does things, I hate going to his rooms for the simple reason, after a year, I can’t recall how I got there the previous year.  I seriously have no sense of direction be it on the road or inside a building.  For the life of me, I cannot remember whether I turned left or right when I exited the elevator. Found him however and need to go back in 3 months, not stressing though, simply old age setting in.

Got up early on this morning, which was a public holiday in South Africa so I could linger around in my PJ’s all day if I wanted to, and got quilting.  I just love the serene time that early mornings offer. 

Furthermore, I checked our load shedding schedule and noticed that we won’t have electricity from 8 to 10:30, now this can either be morning or night.  For the non-South Africans, load shedding is caused by an incompetent government that preferred to pocket state funds instead of maintaining power stations.  Now to preserve energy we are left without electricity several hours per day.  Nowadays the way we plan our lives revolves around the load shedding schedule.

As with using different speeds or modes to get a better look when doing certain motifs I’ve also noticed that the time of the day also determines the quality of my motifs.  I have somewhat of a jerky left shoulder/arm and it takes some warming up before working at its best, so doing ruler work is out of the question early mornings.  I would have the ruler in place and as I bring the foot closer my arm would give this unplanned twitch and the ruler would be out of place again.  On the other hand, doing pebbles early morning works for me.  I seem to be more patient and prepared to take my time.  So this is what I focussed on while still fresh.

By mid-afternoon, I rolled back the top of the quilt to check that all the non-quilted areas were planned or whether I forgot certain areas.

Okay, so our scheduled load shedding from 8 to 10:30 didn’t happen after I did the laundry, showered and got a flask of boiling water filled.  Then I saw a Facebook announcement that it will happen from 10 am, rushed to the shop, pharmacy and liquor store and again, nothing happened.  Not complaining though, things got done.

Somewhat of mixed feelings whenever I take a quilt off the frame, I’m satisfied with a job done but then now the fun ends…. Darn.  I am however glad I waited for this hand dyed backing as it hides most of the coloured thread specks from constantly changing thread colours.

So I might just be able to sew the binding on tonight and then I can show the completed quilt once the other side of the binding has been done by hand.  I think I spent my public holiday rather productive.

Disparity 3

When I got to the white teeth I decided to quilt every tooth individually in order not to have white thread show up on the black lines in between the teeth.  This meant clipping thread, tying knots and burying the thread tails after each tooth but I think at the end worth the effort for a good looking finish.

Speaking of teeth I went go back to the dentist on Monday to have a filling put behind the hole where the surgeon screwed in the crown.  This was a quick session and I was home before I knew it. I do however need to return to the surgeon on 17 May for a little bone transplant in the upper jaw.

I am experimenting and playing around on my machine, not only using different modes for different motifs but also working at different speeds.  I have heard of many a quilter that got stuck to the mode they started out in and never try anything else.  This is so sad for sometimes something as stupid as using a slower speed can make all the difference in the final look of the motif.

A look at another fun little colourful area in the panel.

Tuesday was a fun day in that I had two treatments booked.  My nails got done and shortly thereafter I had all the awful grey washed out of my head.  Ready again for a couple of weeks or so. 

Poor granddaughter just found out she had to go for another procedure on 26 April and I so hope this will finally solve all the issues she endured from birth.  One really feels helpless if a little one is in agony or discomfort and after years of doctors’ visits and in-hospital treatments we still could not see any progress.  So touch wood this would solve her problem as she has already lost 30% of the function in one kidney.

I also pickled some chillies/jalapenos – I don’t mind mixing these as long as they are fiery hot and this on barbequed bread will be my staple food from today.  Hubby left at 04:30 for the airport as he is going on a fishing trip for a whole week somewhere in the desert in Namibia, so no cooking at all!

With him up and gone so early I still had plenty of play time behind the frame before having to go to the office.  I am now getting to the final stage of putting motifs in every colour.

Disparity 2

Six bobbins later and I have stitched the whole background and all the black lines in between the shapes.  Then the fun (to do the fillers in different colours) could start.  With Lea Day’s book 365 free motion designs close by, I rummaged through my Isacord thread cabinet to find just the right shade for all the different colours. Seeing that my cabinet came packed with the most divine assortment of purple thread, I decided to start with a purple shape first.  Now, this, I kid you not, I could do all day long…. It is like colouring for quilters, although with thread and not crayons.

Still busy with the purple but a little further on, one could already see the texture these different free motion designs created on the quilt top.  I am loving this.

I could only endure so much doing one colour, although different shades, for a prolonged period, so even though I have not yet finished all the purple patches; I decided to use some other colours.  I also made use of YouTube videos by Whirls ‘n Swirls for some inspiration.

When MIL aged 87 very adamantly said she is so in the mood for baking she considers contacting a shop to ask if she couldn’t bake for them….( Really at your age?)  I thought ‘what the heck’, said my kids love cookies and she can come over and bake for them.  So said, so done and while she was in the kitchen, obviously all ingredients bought and paid for by us, I decided to quilt.  You do what you do best but I have had it with changing thread colours and motifs, so I opted to go for the huge skull in the centre, one colour thread and one motif.  Loads of fun until MIL realised maybe she took on a little too much for her age and yip the cleaning was left to me.  Sure she won’t have a sudden urge to bake for the nation soon again.  This was the centre but then still only partially done.

Before 6 am this morning, after I ironed the laundry and started cooking food for the stray cat at work, I finished the last bit of the skull.

Now back to changing thread colours and doing smaller bits again.

Disparity 1

Plenty happened on my side, less good news first.  The bone transplant in my upper jaw done last April failed, so my crown/implant came loose.  Most days I feared swallowing it; unfortunately, this did not deter me from eating! Back to the oral surgeon again on Monday and it turned out it was not nearly as bad as the dentist made it out to be.  The first dentist inserted the incorrect pin and with that being loose, it worked away the bone.  Artificial bone will now again have to be implanted once the jaw stops showing signs of being irritated.  So luckily not taking bone from anywhere else in my body to fix this.

Relaxing news is that my daughter and I, treated ourselves to a lovely pedicure and foot massage on Sunday but I got the appointment time wrong and when she arrived at my house half an hour before the time, I was still wandering around in my PJ’s.  Fastest shit, shave and shampoo I had in ages!

Good news, I got a new car.  This will definitely be our last vehicle purchase and should take us into old age but getting used to which button operates what is still somewhat of a struggle.  The annoying little beeper most new cars nowadays have to warn you when you get too close to anything, is slightly working on my nerves as it seems I am always too close to everything.

Wonderful news…. My daughter (almost 28) is pregnant.  It is still the very early stages but excitement galore. Well, back to quilting.

Towards the end of last year, I discovered Honest Fabric a company selling pre-printed quilt panels which allows you to simply have fun and quilt without having to piece a single thing.  This is so becoming my thing!

Choosing a panel turned out to be harder than I thought but being a fan of Karlee Porter, also known as the Graffiti quilter, as well as following her blog; I simply couldn’t resist her Disparity panel with a black background. These panels can be purchased in different sizes and I got the 88 x 104 inch.  I also ordered a King size backing to go with the top from Langa Lapu

I started out doing flame shapes on the background and securing the rest of the quilt by quilting over all the black lines.  Karlee couched wool onto her black lines but I don’t think I will go that far as she entered her quilt into the Houston international quilt festival and I just plan to use mine as a cover for a bed.  In this picture, the backing I got to go with this can also be seen on the top of the photo.

The fabric these panels are made of is what resembles percale to me and I notice little specks from the lighter underside of the top poking through to the top black but these actually look worse on the photo than on the actual quilt, so I am going to live with it.

Good Fortune – My idea of finished

I finally got around to sewing the first border on and decided that would be it.  As much as I tried, I just can’t get myself to in any way, shape or form like this quilt; it won’t fit on any of our beds, is not something one can gift to a non-quilter as I believe scrappy quilts take time to get used to and I still don’t like the color combinations.  So why on earth would I punish myself to work even longer on a quilt that would have very little meaning or purpose to me?  So this is it after border one and to me as far as it would go. No offense meant against Bonnie as I do appreciate her sharing her talents and free patterns with us but this quilt simply did not do it for me.

Luckily I had batting and backing on hand.  I don’t think I would have even bothered to quilt this if it meant going out to buy anything.

So the quilt had one basic purpose; to serve as a free motion practice piece and that it did.  However, being this busy it is of little use to plan an eloquent design that will never show up on the front, so I opted to practice a single design I’ve learned from the book by Dorie Hruska called Making Connections.

I like this.  It will be a quick filler, give a nice texture to a quilt but I think the blocks should be slightly bigger not to have this take up hours of the quilting time.

Still not motivated by the quilt to continue, I opted for a large scale meandering for the rest, just to finish this up and get it off the frame.  (I had something new and exciting I wanted to start playing with).

It even took me forever and a day to get the binding done but by then I had my new project loaded onto the frame and although tedious work, I think it might just turn out rather good.

This is then my completed Good Fortune.