A somewhat blue Monday

Ah, life loves playing tricks on me but hell yeah, I go with the flow.  After having finished 2 customer quilts in a weekend, I spent most of my Sunday changing seasonal clothes.  Winters’ got stuck in a guestroom and summers’ moved to the main bedroom cupboard.  

Then I woke up on Monday and during the night, hell froze over and it was extremely cold, back to the guest bedroom I went, digging for clothes. Still shivering I got into my car (with those annoying little alarms should you reverse into something behind you) pressed the remote for the garage door to open, annoying alarms went quiet, garage door motor stopped and off I went, ready for one day at work, before having a public holiday amidst an almost month-end and slash-bang life went on strike.  I heard this awful noise and realised the top of my car ran into the garage door that didn’t go up all the way. 

Now, these are really old and I don’t blame them for not always wanting to go all the way.  So there I was, phoned hubby to tell him to choose “I smashed the car or destroyed the garage door”…. For a moment there I honestly believed he’d tell me not to bother to come into the office…. Wishful thinking, he came, he sorted and told me to get to the office while he finished off.

So he took the day off from work to fit new doors.  About time, I reckon, but he just had to wait for me to be the culprit???  We bought this house in 1994 and by then I do believe the previous owner/builders stayed here for 11 years, so what the heck, we were due for new doors.

So now, even though poorer and not very glamorous, we have spanking new garage doors.

Well it’s a new day, a public holiday, son-in-law’s birthday that we will combine with celebrating ‘braai’ (barbeque) day later. I’ve received my new customer quilt, took a photo to allow my creative juices to start working, and squared the backing.  I just need to get dressed to await another quilter picking up her quilt today.

Recycled denim quilt

Now this was a first for me, working on denim, which I guess should not be a problem BUT the customer brought rather thick denim for the backing too.

Getting to the corners of a block was a nightmare as the machine foot simply could not go over all the layers.  Fortunately, I warned the quilter that I may not get this right but she said it is intended as a picnic blanket and she’d be fine with the outcome.

Now I have one day off before the next quilter brings her quilt.  So time to clean my frame room to start fresh.

Plenty of pink

I received a quilt from a customer intended for her tomboy daughter, so I read between the lines and decided not to do anything floral or feathery.  The first step was to print a picture of the quilt and start playing with my sharpie.

With the idea formed I did the first row of blocks and already then I can see if this would be good or not.

Even though ruler work takes a lot of time, this went surprisingly fast but I think the fact that I could find a fluent thread path helped in that it omitted regular starts and stops.  This is the back.

This is the front.

Table runner

This was the quilt I attempted with my machine acting up in every possible way.  I had to accept defeat and zip it off the frame to allow for the machine to be sent to Johannesburg for service.  What upset me most is that it HAS been for a service locally and that this is where my problems started.

All’s well that ends well and the technician in Johannesburg is to be praised for his ability to fix my machine super-fast.  It was wonderful to be able to stitch knowing the tension is perfect, the stitch lengths are good and I can simply focus on my designs.

I decided to quilt one motif in all the light background squares and alternate motifs in the two different coloured brown squares. I changed the thread in the brown squares to a brown on top and kept the cream in the bobbin.

The runner is not big (78½” x 23½”) and what should have taken me no longer than 2 afternoons, now took longer than a week.

                                                                                  The back

The front

Milestone blanket

As the saying goes, it never rains, it pours!  After loving my time at the South African National Quilt Festival my machine went to our local dealer to have the bobbin winder fixed and he suggested a service too, seeing that I almost have my machine for 2 years.

Machine returned, bobbin winder seemed to work okay again but that is about where my pleasures ended.

My DIL and her sis bought a milestone blanket for my pregnant daughters’ stork party.  They were rather disappointed when it got here and turned out to be nothing more than a printed polyester sheet.  So mother-in-law had to solve the problem.  Used a white percale (I hate this stuff) backing and wool batting and marked my grids, definitely not something I would ever do on a bed quilt, way too tedious.

I then decided to simply outline some of the printed pictures and keep it as simple as possible.  Surely the focus should be on the baby and the month the photo was taken in and not on the background quilting.

We also decided to stitch the baby’s name in the pale pink banner.  Easy to unpick and change should another girl happens!

This however all happened midst a myriad of problems with my machine, skipped stitches, horrible tension and leaving me beyond frustrated.  Some stitching was so bad; I redid it with my domestic sewing machine.  This needed to be done, so I pushed ahead.

Now sadly for my daughter but good timing to me, she ended up in the hospital with something causing painful swelling of the glands around the neck and facial area. Some days it seems as if doctors simply play guessing games.  One specialist said it was The Epstein-Barr virus with the second specialist differing from the first, thinking it was tick bite fever, so eventually, they got an internist to do more test and he diagnosed a spider bite. She had several bite marks on her head.  I guess spider got entangled in her hair and fought his way out. With her in hospital however, I could work and relax not fearing she might pop in any moment.

After this, I started another customer quilt but my machine problems continued and my local tech is not doing it for me, it’s his way or no way, even though other methods/ thread/ tension has worked perfectly for me in the past, he simply does not listen to any other than his own reason.  So off machine went to Johannesburg once more, seeing that all his methods didn’t work either. 

Ranting over, I think the girls were satisfied with the way I turned their flimsy into a blanket and we’ve had the Stork party yesterday, so I can now show this.