Some time without quilting

This break was so needed, I had time to clean every nook and cranny in my frame room, went shopping for oldest granddaughter’s birthday gift; bought the new base and mattress for the guest bedroom and helped hubby bring in the new and take out the old, washed all the quilts done for Stitches for Africa and got those to the courier company.

Treated myself to some pampering in doing face scrubs and masks several days, invited friends over for supper, which was delivered fully cooked in my own dishes late the afternoon of the supper.  How much more fun is entertaining when you don’t have to stand in the kitchen all afternoon and the food was divine to say the least.

Thursday I went shopping for new oven dishes but was so disappointed in one of my favourite stores.  I waited about half an hour for help and in the end stalked someone helping another customer.  Then they only had 1 of whatever I wanted, no offer to order more (well-known brand and surely easily available), so I ended up buying different shades of white from different brands.  Back home it was time to clear the cupboards from all the broken/missing/chipped dishes.  Felt great. The gardener will at least have a feel-good Saturday when he takes possession of a bed and dishes. 

Later the afternoon a quilter dropped off a quilt and I spent the rest of the afternoon doing a little marking on the white areas.

We had granddaughter’s birthday party on Friday and grandson decided to come home with us for a sleepover or as he calls it ‘going to grandpa’s school.’

This quilt posed somewhat of a problem with choosing thread colour.  The rule of thumb is that you use the same colour thread top and bottom or at least similar shades BUT with all the white areas in the quilt and having a plain purple sheet as backing I could not see my way open to quilt all the purple areas with white and then have purple thread in the bobbin, this would surely have shown plenty of thread pokies on both sides.  The quilter said I could use all purple but to me would have taken away from the pattern and the piecing as the purple would have shown all over the white.  Quilting should enhance a quilt and not really steal the show.

So I elected to use purple for all the darker spots and when I got to the white I changed both bobbin and top thread to white.  Better have the back looking less perfect than have a top screwed up by selecting the wrong colour thread.

In the end, the white thread on the purple backing didn’t look too bad but I still would have preferred a printed/multi-coloured backing.