Picture Perfect – Completed

After measuring certain areas I marked motifs on freezer paper to decide on placement and stiffened the paper with cardstock to allow me to trace around the shapes.

Since I got my machine I think I’ve only fully loaded my practice pieces when another long arm user introduced me to float.  I’ve done this for almost all the quilts I’ve ever quilted but with this one, I’ve decided to give full loading another go.  It takes more time to fully load all 3 layers than to simply just load the backing and then float the batting and top on top of that. 

I however recently read a blog where the long armer said she paid for all 3 bars, so she might as well use all three.  So I’m giving that a go again.

Trying to quilt while constantly having to check on “Mossie” is not an easy task but it is amazing how instinctive these little ones are.  With “Mossie” on my shoulder, the cat jumped onto my lap and the little bird started complaining immediately and when the cat jumped onto the desk, it actually flew from my shoulder to another table.  If I can now only get it to eat by itself, it is good to be set free.

So all I can do now is to take “Mossie” with me to the frame room whenever I’m not at my desk in the sewing room.

We had all the kids over for hubby’s birthday barbeque which is always nice but having all of them on the same weekend day meant that I had the next day off without expecting any visitors, so I made the most of my time to finish the quilting.

The completed quilt…. Yeah, I can see some major quilting placement errors, so no need to point these out to me!

Courthouse Steps Quilt – Completed

I added the label and popped this one in the wash to be used on a bed.  I am satisfied with the outcome.

This is the back

To see how this is made, find the YouTube video HERE

Grandson turned 3 yesterday and we all celebrated with this little guy. I understand they have to grow up but what upsets me is that I too grow older as fast as I think they grow up.

Picture Perfect – Got the perfect backing

I got up early on Wednesday and started cooking for the dogs when it hit me I did laundry on Tuesday and these, with me, cleverly deciding to pamper myself, were still in the washing machine.  So early morning tumble dry and ironing had to be done and while at the washing machine I popped the backing of this quilt in the wash and ironed that out neatly too.  Although I haven’t even finished the Courthouse Steps quilt binding, it is nice to be prepared for the next quilt.  I love this colourful backing.

The little ‘mossie’ takes over my life.  It insists on sitting on my shoulder and I can hardly move.  The poor thing fell off several times and I feel terrible every time this happens (never on a carpet always on a hard floor, shame), so now I sit and sit and sit, not getting anything done.  I pray for the day to pass until 18:30 when I give it the last feed and put it in a dark cupboard to sleep.  This, however, leaves me, who goes to bed at 8pm, very little time to do anything else, seeing that I still need to eat, do dishes, watch the news and chat to hubby.

I’ve started recycling my scrap fabric and batting.  I keep this in a plastic bag in my sewing room and all scraps go into the bag.  Once I have enough to stuff a continental pillowcase and sew this close, I will donate it to an animal rescue centre.  I got this idea from another blogger and decided to make use of and re-use my scraps.  This, and only this, will be my good deed for the year.  Okay, I will make several pillows, so not only one deed but several deeds.

Hubby is back from his business trip of 4 days so life will hopefully, return to somewhat normal with me not having to be responsible for everything.

Courthouse Steps Quilt – Finally done quilting

It turned out a good thing that I didn’t do these feathers on a customer quilt the first time.  I watched The Threadworks Factory’s YouTube video “Tips for quilting a custom free-motion feather border” many times but still overlooked one step.  After having the first two sides not  truly nice, I contacted Patricia Heinrich Hechler, who (as kind as only she can be) helped me out once more.  So then, a little more knowledgeable, I tackled the other two sides.

After our girls night on Monday my son dropped off oldest granddaughter as they had somewhat of a nanny crisis and she had to come to the office with me on Tuesday.  Gosh was I disorganized!  I am so used to just having to take care of myself in the mornings, to suddenly get another soul going, took some.  Especially when I told her to get dressed and brush her teeth and she so seriously said “but I only brush my teeth after breakfast”.  Heck yes, little ones need breakfast!  Because we start work so early, we hardly ever eat breakfast during the week.

After she left  (yip, I remembered to serve lunch) I cut and sewed the binding on the front of the quilt, to be able to do the back by hand once hubby returns and I can sit with him.

Still rather tired from the overdose of wine I had on Monday, I decided just to relax yesterday evening, treating myself to a facial scrub and mask, soaking my feet and paying attention to my toenails. Now and then one should simply take time out just for you.

Courthouse Steps Quilt – Planning the borders

Once I had all the inner quilting done, I took the quilt off the frame as I’ve always wanted to quilt feathers all around the centre on a border.  Doing this experimental on a customer quilt, scared me somewhat so what better opportunity than with this quilt.  The only problem was that I had very little backing to two sides of the quilt, which means I won’t be able to turn the quilt and the border will have to be done in sections on both sides.  This will lead to plenty of starts and stops, not quite my idea of fun. Here is the quilted centre, ready for me to mark the borders.

Hubby is out of town for business and I’m not sure for how long, all depends on the project, so I treated myself to watching a movie but what a disappointment this turned out to be.  I can never judge a movie by the preview and I honestly think they take the scariest sections, slam them all together to make one believe it will be good to watch.

Yesterday evening we had a ladies’ night and as usual, it was fun, fun, fun!  There is nothing like spending time with good, honest friends but the headache and memory loss the next morning is less fun.

Courthouse Steps Quilt – Started the quilting process

Whoever said “life is fair” or “life is about the choices you make”, had no idea of what happens in my life.  While trying my best to keep the little ‘mossie’ alive a baby dove landed on the ground outside my daughters’ house and guess who she phoned?   So there I was trying to raise two different wild birds, with a job, a houseful of other pets, no helper in the house, loving my quilting and I do also love making time for family and friends.  I wonder if one can ask for days with more hours.

I tried to get a start on the quilting of this and for the centre of each block I decided to go for a more detailed motif but with two birds to feed,  it will be the only detailed areas on this quilt.

I surrounded the centre motifs with random loops in different sizes; I wanted something fast-moving which wouldn’t take up a ton of my time, which I currently don’t have much of.

Sadly the little dove did not make it, I’ve tried to raise several of these and experience taught me not to ponder too much about this or blame myself.  Nature seems to take its’ toll, let go and let God.

Picture Perfect – Borders added

I got up way before the rest of the family yesterday (daughter with flue and the little one slept over) and didn’t want to get behind the long-arm frame as the moving idler-bar makes somewhat of a noise.  Not enough to wake humans but it sure would have upset the dogs and parrot.

I then decided to cut and join the borders of this quilt and just as I got speed, our plugs tripped.  Hubby was able to switch it on again but one of the plugs on the mainboard refused to be switched back on.  We suspect somewhere something got too wet from all the rain but now we have to find out what and where.

While searching for any possible wet connections or plugs outside, hubby found this poor thing, cold, wet and almost dead outside.  So I’m raising my first little Cape Sparrow (I think that is the right English for what I know as a “mossie”).  Quick You Tube course on feeding and with cat pellets soaked mixed with some AV Plus I think this one is doing good.

The bad part of trying to raise this little one is that it needs to be fed every 45 minutes, so there goes my plan for uninterrupted stretches of quilting.  As the saying goes “life happens while you are making other plans”.

I did get to finish the borders and now I have no less than 3 tops to quilt.  Guess that, along with feeding a baby, could keep me busy for some time.

Royal Squares – Part 3

I’ve had my Courthouse Steps quilt on the long-arm frame since Wednesday.  I, however, decided to wait for the weekend so that I can have longer uninterrupted stretches of quilting.  So to keep busy, I decided to start joining the blocks for this quilt.  

The kids all came over for burgers yesterday late afternoon and here the older grandkids are having fun swimming in the rain, while the baby enjoyed the fresh air and got much-needed rest.

When the big kids left, my daughter (with flue) asleep in a guest bedroom, grandpa watching news on TV with sleeping little one on his lap, I got to join the very last row and iron the last two seams.

Before bedtime (for me 8 pm most nights) I had my second topper for this year over a bed but here too I’ve decided to give it a border for that little extra size.  This will have to stand over until I get started and/or done with quilting the Courthouse Steps.

Royal squares - Part 2

I think I can safely say that I am back to the routine at the office but the afternoon routine at home is still taking time to get used to.  Having to start the laundry, ironing, supper, pets and quilting all in a short afternoon, when I had the whole day to spread this during our break is taking its’ toll but I think all will be better soon.

I am still amazed at how time flies.  With my current quilting all up to a point where I could not go on, I decided to catch up with this one as I had 40 of the one block (two-block quilt) done and thought I’d get started with the second one.

Opened this UFO’s drawer and was pleasantly surprised to see that I already made quite a lot of block 2’s but taking into consideration that I started this in August 2019, it should have been done by now. 

Ironed the blocks that came out of the drawer first to start counting and then I could continue.

After finishing 40 Block 2’s I tested the size on EQ and saw that I needed to make 10 of each block more.  With 100 blocks done, once I have space on my design wall, I can start laying these out although there is not much to it, I simply have to alternate the blocks.  

My back, however, is now in spasm from all the quilting done and I just need to take a break.

Courthouse Steps Quilt – Part 2

I interrupted my New Years’ Mystery to join the blocks of this quilt in rows and display them on the design wall.  I didn’t want to start joining the rows until hubby took a look at the layout as many a time before, I stitched a quilt and when he sees it against the wall, he’ll point out mistakes – mostly blocks or strips turned the wrong way.  So while it awaited final inspection I continued with the mystery.

Once he got home and gave the ‘okay’ – he couldn’t find any mistakes (whoop-whoop!!) I joined the rows.  I then took it to a double bed to check the size and was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t quite come out as small as I thought.  It must be due to the 12 extra blocks I made.

I then decided to add a border just to give it a little more body but that had to wait until I got another clue of the mystery quilt done.

With the mystery done as far as I could when I ran out of fabric, I added borders to this one and it now fits over a double bed properly with sides that hang off the edge almost to the floor.  I have the backing fabric but will have to get batting before I can start quilting this one.

Picture Perfect, almost done

Fellow quilter Sonja, invited us for supper on Saturday where I also got to catch up with an old friend whom I haven’t seen in ages.  It was a lovely evening and Sonja’s crayfish as a starter did not disappoint.

I however almost got up to date with this mystery before we went and apart from the borders, (I ran out of blue fabric) got all the other clues done.

This was less confusing but again I watched the videos for assistance.  These are the blocks from the other clues

With all my blocks joined I put this up against the design wall until I get to buy more fabric.

Picture Perfect – Clue 1 done

This is the last weekend of my 3-week December break from the office but I am not overly disappointed.  We had great times with family and friends, I got plenty of quilting, reading and relaxing done and I am one of those people who are driven by structure and routine. 

I hate not knowing what day of the week it is or what the date is and between Christmas and New Year these become a blur.  Spoke to another quilter yesterday complaining about this and her reply was “oh no, I function extremely well not knowing the day or date” – to each his own.

Quilting friend, Sonja, invited me to join the Facebook page “Mystery Quilts Anonymous” and I saw that they were starting a quilt-along on New Years’ day.  I then invited another quilting friend, Karin, to join too and asked both of them whether they feel like doing the quilt-along.  I believe the more the merrier and I was pleasantly surprised when both said they were in.

The hostess of the quilt-along, however, is from New Zealand and the quilt was meant to be done in a day but their New Year started before ours and the first clues came through by us on the last day of the year while I still wanted to catch an afternoon nap before the New Years’ eve celebrations.  So from the get-go, I knew I would fall behind.

New Year’s Day wasn’t any better (time-wise) and I only got to print out the clues that came through somewhere during our evening or night but after the many celebrations, we had, very little made sense.  Luckily Karin phoned to wish me a happy New Year and told me she made an all-nighter with her quilt, so I guess she’s the only one fairly up to date.  She then suggested I should watch the videos released with every clue before cutting as the written directions can be confusing. 

When I finally got a day where I was less tired and capable of quilting, I tackled the clues along with the videos until it made sense.

These are the blocks from Clue 1, page 1

And then the second block from Clue 1, page 2 & 3

I opted to go with fabric from my stash and not buy any new fabric, so my blue might just later turn scrappy.

Courthouse Step quilt 1

I saw a photo on Facebook of what was a beautiful (to me) quilt and luckily had the savvy to not only save the photo but also read some of the comments as to the name of the block and a video tutorial on how to make it.  However, when I went to the video link and wanted to return to Facebook, I couldn’t find the post again, so I can unfortunately not give credit but this was the photo I saw.

The next step was to find border fabric and with procrastination comes some good luck as I found fabric that would work in my stash.  Planned the quilt in EQ, got the fabric requirements but then my inability to do proper math stepped in.  I know I had to make two blocks alternating colours, so clever old me reckoned if I needed 6 yards and have to make 2 blocks then I need 3 yards of each of the two colours.  

Big mistake, which I only realised when I started making the blocks and saw that I have very few which would not even cover a double bed.  Too late however as I only had 3 yards of the border fabric which I bought ages ago, so no rushing to a shop quickly to get some more.

So this dampened my enthusiasm and the blocks stayed pinned to the design wall with no progress at all.  When quilting friend Karin, invited us to visit them on Boxing Day, warning me she’d be sewing, I got the strips, not yet done, out and took it along.  It turned out that this was just the nudge I needed to get going again.

I afterwards also managed to cut 12 more of each block to at least make the quilt for a smaller bed.  These were my blocks.

When the time came to slash through the blocks at a 45 degree angle, I changed my blade but with the sudden smooth slicing, I moved the blade away from the ruler and basically destroyed one half of a block.  No fixing this and I had to make another full block to rectify this.

This mistake turned into two but with that fixed and all my blocks sliced and stitched, I can now start playing around on the design wall.