4- patch with alternating squares

I received yet another bottle of wine from the quilter of quilt 86 and although I do love my wine and would never complain, I am beginning to feel somewhat nervous, thinking that a new quilter might ask one of my customers where they have their quilts done and then them replying “oh at that drunk longarm quilter”.  What a reputation that would be!  I am however going to celebrate this last day of the year with just this bottle of wine.

There I thought customer quilt 87 was the last for this year when I received yet another one.  This time perfectly pieced 4-patch blocks alternated with squares.  This quilt was made for a young lady and her mom told me she had to help but this youngster was ever so eager to tell me “Mom made a mistake”, fortunately in the planning or diagram as I saw nothing wrong in the quilt.  Once this young lady becomes an experienced quilter, she’ll learn that you never tell anyone about your mistakes.  If they notice it, good for them, if not, good for you.

This, being the last day of 2021 and apart from all the Covid regulations, which was less strict in our country, I cannot complain, we did just fine. We went on pension, which is still a blessing, irrespective of not earning a monthly salary, a bonus or increase ever but I am sure we will cope just fine.

House-hunting is the one strenuous thing at this stage and I’ve entrusted hubby to do home visits and if/when he finds something (perfect without any structural problems….. he is hell-bent on those) he can inform me and only then will I go to look.  I don’t notice these structural problems and will already plan where which furniture piece should go, just to get outside, where hubby and I can be private, to have my bubble burst by what he noticed.

Back to my last quilt for 2021.  We decided to just do a soft double curve on all the alternating blocks and do a little closed curl detail in the border.  I think it came out jolly good.

Inside the blocks

Border

Back

Completed

With this wishing all of you a wonderful 2022 as I have to pack more boxes now.

Pinwheel with prairie points

This is customer quilt 87 for the 2021 year and I believe my last for this year.  I couldn’t get a better quilt as the last and I loved working on this to such an extent that I didn’t want it to finish and when I saw the bottom of the quilt, I felt sad, knowing it would be done soon.

I don’t mind edge-to-edge free-motion quilting but by golly, I do miss the occasional custom quilt where I can use my rulers, change the modes on my machine and/or change the stitch lengths to what would look best.  This quilt was a combination of free-motion and custom work on the border which allowed me to have the best of both worlds.

Back

Border

Detail

Completed

Build your own portfolio – part 3

 Yet another Christmas is done and dusted but we are grateful we had no fatalities due to Covid and could spend another year together as a family.

As mentioned, I’ve now finished 3 courses by Adria Good on edge-to-edge designs.  The last course started mid-November and I’ve finished all my practise sessions on paper and on scrap fabric and now the time came to actually stitch these out on neat fabric to bind together as part of my portfolio.

With a break in customer quilts, I loaded my decent fabric to start stitching out the different designs but then our house was sold.  Even though planned, this was a shocker as I’ve honestly believed we’d have to wait a year or more or at least a couple of months before it would sell but this all happened in 3 weeks.  Nervous tension, I need boxes, I need to start a spreadsheet keeping track of what I packed from which room and number these so nothing will get lost in the move.  I am totally confused, not quite knowing where to start and what can be packed already and what needs to be kept out for use until the actual move and the worst part…… we don’t have the foggiest idea of where we would be moving to.  Yes, we look at houses constantly but from what we’ve seen up to now, I’ll have to lower my standards massively and I am not sure I’ll manage.

The first design was GEARS, somewhat of a spin to the ordinary meander and it stitches out fast which will make it one of the cheaper all-over designs.

I found one large box and decided to take an easy route by washing all the extra bathroom towels to start packing these.  I only kept out one towel per bath, basin or shower and these will have to be washed and re-used as I am not unpacking again.  The short of the story is I have at least one (small) cupboard empty.

The next design up was the SNOWFLAKE.  Now, this can be combined with loops or swirls but I preferred the meander as this showed up the snowflake better.  The other motifs tend to take away from the main design.

The next design reminds me so much of one of my favourites called 3’s and E’s but this is called C’s.  What happens here is you start with a C shape and then veer off to make an S, even though it may be upside down or the wrong way around as long as you stick to the rhythm C and S.

Another fun design was HEARTS and again this design can be combined with loops or meandering but I liked the look of the curl where one added an extra curl inside the heart.  Now in the past, I couldn’t really see a difference between my hearts or leaves but with Adria’s instructions, I now know the secret.

I moved on to the pointed flower and with all the flower practise we did in part 2 of the course, this one was easy and again the flower is surrounded by loops and leaves.

This geometric design is ideal for quilts for men or boys or if you have plenty of one shape in your quilt, to draw the eye in different directions.  The problem I had with this during my practice sessions was that I was taught to look ahead of my needle when free-motion quilting and if I did it with this design, my lines went skew as the line followed where my eyes looked.

Okay, I removed the curtains in one guest bathroom (the others have blinds, which will stay behind) and washed these to pack in the box with the towels.  A little more progress was made.  I however had to scrub and clean the strips in the old bird room as these were a major mess covered with bird droppings but nothing trusted old laminate floor cleaner, could not soften to make the cleaning process easier.

By the look at my attempt at HOLLY leaves with berries and ribbon, one can clearly see that holly leaves aren’t much of a thing in South Africa.  Again, this can be combined with many other designs but I chose the ribbon as ribbons are also associated with Christmas and gifts.  I don’t think the mottled fabric I used helped to make this design look any better.

The last motif was the PANSY and again this one came easy.

I received a customer quilt midst stitching these designs but the young lady was not in a hurry and I decided to finish up my portfolio first.  If I had all the bindings stitched to the front, I had something to keep my hands busy by stitching the backs by hand while the kids and grandkids spend time in the pool.

With these done, I marked the customer quilt early morning and can now load it somewhere during the day to start the quilting.

Kaffe Fasset tablecloth

This is the quilt top I received yesterday afternoon.  It is intended to be a tablecloth and the quilter used the top, backing and instead of batting a flannel sheet and it worked well.

I am not a huge fan of Kaffe fabrics, I find these, way too busy and to quilt these are no fun.  The thread simply disappears on the mishmash of colours and I never knew where I came from, where I headed and more than once had to suddenly press the stop button as I noticed I was heading to stitch over a previously stitched line.

Luckily, I don’t get too many of these quilts.

As for now, I don’t have a definite booking for a quilt, so I guess I can start fully focussing on Christmas lunch preparations.

We will today receive our first offer on the house but they want us to lower the price with R100 000.00 and I don’t think hubby will fall for that.  We are under no pressure to sell, so will not be taken for a ride.

Wilted flower

So much happened in a short time.  With us intending to sell the house, we had to make a choice regarding our birds living indoors (a room of their own) with the freedom to fly out into a secured area.  We had 13 cockatiels, some were breeding pairs, although we did not encourage this, we were never sure which of them were partners.  They weren’t totally wild but neither tame and could not be touched.  I did not want to sell them off to people with the intention to keep them separate in small cages and were somewhat at my wit's end.  Then I contacted a breeder who decided to take them over as a group and not separate them.  They will still be kept in a large cage (however, no indoor space) and he will later introduce mates for those who have not partnered up yet.  My heart was still sore but we would most probably never find another house, especially with the intention of going smaller with a room fit for plenty of birds.

Then we only had the hand-reared pigeon which was gifted to me in 2013.

Now a big bird, we gradually had to introduce him to the open air.  At first, hubby removed the shade netting on top of the outside cage to allow him to see the wide-open sky.  Then the corrugated roof which covered half the outside cage was taken off to make him get used to natural weather and rain. With every change, he got somewhat spooked and would fly indoors and sit on the ceiling fan (almost totally destroyed by the cockatiels).

Finally, the day came to take off the fence on the top to allow him to fly free.  He had a girlfriend on the outside for a couple of years and somehow, I prayed that they’d find each other and fly away together but when he disappeared, I wasn’t too sure he wasn’t spooked by the other wild birds, who by then could also easily fly into his cage.

So now we have to turn the once bird room back to a study.

Sitting outside one afternoon I heard someone in his car blowing his horn profusely and the next moment a bang and one person shouting something.  This was just too strange not to be inquisitive so I went looking.  Cars need to turn right by our gate into our street and then catch a steep uphill to the next stop sign.  Apparently, a massive truck went first with a smaller sports model car following and then the trucks’ breaks failed and ran backwards.  The guy in the small car tried to reverse but also had to keep in mind there may be cars behind him and he needed to go around a bend again.  The truck was too fast and hit the little car.  Luckily the truck driver too swerved otherwise he would have gone right over that little car.

On Friday my only male customer brought me a quilt to do but before he got here hubby called me outside to see the one-day flower on a cactus.  This flower only appears one day a year and to test the knowledge of botanists, I took a photo to see if they are right.

When the quilter had to decide on a motif, he selected one of the motifs I was taught in Adria Goods’ second online course called ‘wilted flower’.  Saturday morning, I went out to check on the flower and what would I find…… a wilted flower. 

I could not start with the quilt right away as we had the older grandkids over for the evening. 

Then on Friday, there was renewed interest in the house by two potential buyers and we had another appointment on Saturday morning from people all the way from Upington.

My only male customer quilter and his wife however gifted me with these most welcome presents.  They do pay for all their quilts, more than enough times brings me wine when they fetch their quilts, so it was not expected to receive another gift but I felt rather special.

When the house hunters left on Saturday, I had to phone son-in-law as he wanted to bring the youngest grandbaby over and while waiting for them, I quickly ironed the laundry and stitched my zipper leaders onto the quilt backing, loaded the quilt and know it is safe from little hands and off the floor.  The little one is getting cuter by the day and we had to play hide and seek while she perfectly counted to 10 and then “ready or not here I come” followed.

With hubby off to play golf on Sunday at 6 am, I decided to change the bedding in all the rooms as well as wash the quilt on the dog bed outside.  Having done the laundry and towels yesterday, I now know everything fabric in this house is clean.  Then I quickly roasted us some peanuts, re-watched the video on wilted flowers from my course before hitting the shower.

My Daughter-in-law invited us for lunch but I still had time to get going on the quilt, which I did. As usual, ate way too much at lunch with that ‘I’m not capable of anything else feeling’ afterwards and then the baby grandchild decided she had enough of her dad who took care of her the whole weekend while mom worked 7 to 7 shifts and came home with us.  Mom only fetched her after work yesterday evening.

After cleaning house this morning I got going with the last bit of this quilt and now I have a couple of hours to start preparations for our Christmas meal and have my nails done before the next quilt arrives late afternoon.

Playful rectangles

This was another different week.  It seems the initial interest in the house has died down somewhat but we needed the break from people invading our private space.  Furthermore, hubby has been for a full medical check-up after about 15 years.  Several tests were done and he was referred to undergo a colonoscopy and here they found a polyp which could luckily be removed while he was still under anaesthetic.  Then this doctor needs him to go for a scan towards the end of the month.  The other tests done by the GP was all fine.

As for the house, we are under no pressure to sell fast and I am actually glad to have more time to thoroughly sort through things I’d like to get rid of.  Hopefully, I won’t now start resting on my laurels but keep the good work up.

We finished up Christmas shopping for the little ones as we, as adults, decided a couple of years ago to only buy gifts for the kids, so this was fast and easy.

I received this bright and beautiful quilt earlier this week and we decided to do cloud motifs on it.  I have never done clouds as an edge-to-edge on a full-sized quilt but rather on panels where it had a blue-sky background or print but I am rather satisfied with how this turned out.

The backing was a deep grey fleece and shows the motif off even better.

I’ve invited friends over for supper this evening, so I got up early to start cooking as I prefer to prepare dishes a while ahead for all the flavours to mix together, the other reason is I’d like to have my cooking done before the flies wake up and gather in my kitchen.  With the abundance of rain, we had and the cooler weather, I can however not complain too much about these little pests.

Colourful hexagons

Phew! My life has suddenly changed from a peaceful pensioner to total madness.  It has been a couple of years since hubby has pondered about the fact that we someday will have to move to a smaller house, I suspect maintaining the garden is getting somewhat hard on the older body, not that he will ever admit it.

He decided to phone an estate agent just to get a rough evaluation of our house and what it would be worth if wanted to sell.  He must have been satisfied with the amount mentioned and before I knew it, we had a photographer coming over to take photos and less than a week later the first advertisement was placed.  We do know people whose properties have been on the market for several years without much success, so I was not at all stressed at first. 

The first advertisement appeared last Friday and by golly, then it started pouring, not even just raining (literally and figuratively) and we have people over daily to look at the house and with an abundance of rainy weather, keeping it tidy at all times, with all our pets, is no joke.

Then the second family decided to come and look once more, just the day after they’ve seen it for the first time and that made me extremely nervous…… we don’t have the foggiest idea where we will move to should the sale happen. 

Now I am in the process of getting rid of ‘stuff’ and I have way more than I ever imagined.  I do believe that I am still lucky to be able to make deliberate decisions and not wait until move day and then get rid of stuff I never had time to think about.

On the quilt front, it has been rather quiet but then again it couldn’t happen at a better time.  Now I at least have time to do what is needed most.

I did however receive this lovely hexagon quilt.

On this I did a new motif from Adria Goods’ third course I am currently partaking in.  I am however not moving forward as fast as I did with the other two courses.

Now off to clean out some more cupboards and just yesterday one prospective buyer asked the estate agent if he could put in an offer depending on the sale of his own house….. things are moving fast!

Roses and peonies

What a way to start a Monday or a new week for that matter.  I got up early, cleaned the section of the house designated for today and even though the early morning, it was steaming hot.

Then I finished a stunning applique quilt I started this weekend and just had to add the final touches this morning.  So early morning, with everything that needed to be done, done I had the rest of the day to myself.

I am reading a good book given to me by my daughter and she came over for a quick lunch break from work and it is apparently going hectic by her work with them being short of staff but sadly the ANC controlled Free State health department does not have sufficient funds to employ more people, so they are basically milking the current workers dry.  They were even told not to ask for time off if their kids have a fever and this amidst the terror of swine flu running havoc in our province.

This morning I went shopping for fabric for the third course, by Adria Good, which I intend to do later this month. Now I just need to find some scrap fabric to practice on.

A while ago I had a lady phoning me to quilt for her as she needed quilts for her hand-designed wood furniture and by the sound of it, it sounded great and I agreed to meet her.  What an utter disappointment when she came over with heavily embossed curtaining, way too thick upholstery batting and backing only half the size of the top.  I then gave her a list of my needs but were so floored that I recommended another quilter hoping she’d fall for it.  Turns out, she did go to the other quilter, they too said they’re not prepared to work with her batting and told her to purchase larger backings.  Finally, today, she sent her daughter to fetch the curtaining from me and I am not even distressed by the fact that I lost a client.  I really did not want to do these.

For the rest of the day, I plan to pour myself a glass of cold wine, hit a bed with a ceiling fan and continue my book but first, this is the quilt finished this morning.

Hexagon quilt

This one got to me earlier this week from a first time, self-taught quilter and it is absolutely perfect.  She complained about having to unpick several times and I thought back of how much I unpicked my first quilt but mine did not turn out nearly as neat as this one.

The quilter also had a very good idea of how she wanted it quilted which left me with very little guessing.

Snowball quilt

Another fun little quilt with fleece backing came my way.  The quilter described herself as a minimalist and wished to have large scale quilting.  After pondering designs, she decided on the basic meander just much larger as I would normally stitch it out.  Her wish, my command.

I had a dental check-up today and all is good, now unless something really bad happens, I am fine for 6 more months.

Chevron quilt with paisley print

Off-topic…. I don’t get upset by too many things.  One that immediately comes to mind is cruelty against animals otherwise I’ve been hurt and disappointed so many times by family and friends that I expect anything from most everyone but yesterday was a day that truly upset me.

My youngest granddaughter had her second birthday on 16 October and at the party was a little friend that I got to meet.  One clever little angel who at the age of 2 years 1 month could say the whole ABC.  When one of the adults asked her parents if they were extremely intelligent at school, the dad replied that they weren’t but 2 minuses made a plus.

Then 2 weeks later we learnt that this little soul died.  Developed a terrible fewer, first diagnosed as an ear infection, treated and sent home where the fewer got worse to such an extent she had convulsions.  Her parents rushed her back to the hospital but when they got there, she already turned blue and her heart stopped.  I don’t know the actual reason for her death as this is not something to ask when everyone is so sensitive.  Yesterday was Lexi’s funeral and even if I only met her once, I was upset for the rest of the day.  Came home to our granddaughter who saw the funeral letter with the photo and immediately looked at it, pointing to the face and said “friend”.

Luckily, I had a stunning quilt to finish and at least there felt more accomplished and not so helpless.  This is another chevron quilt with a beautiful paisley print in between.

We decided to stick with the basic meandering and this quilt will go to the quilters’ “secret Santa” at the office.

For those interested, I just stumbled across a page with plenty of free quilt patterns over HERE.

Chevron quilt with skull prints

I received this quilt on Tuesday and got it loaded but then cricket happened and hubby and I went for our weekly pensioner's meal and I didn’t get to do much.

Finished it on Wednesday and this quilter, not only pays for her quilts but occasionally brings me a bottle of wine.  As if not more than enough she had her birthday today and guess what?  After working a full day, then exercising, she still took the time to drop off some birthday goodies for us.  As said previously, not who you are but who you know and I know amazingly kind people with even greater hearts.

Her quilt had a skull print fabric in between the pastels and we decided to do the rose design on this.  Thinking of the Guns ‘n Roses band and hoping the recipient would see it this way.

Receipt roll, turned scrappy quilt finished

Our only grandson has very dramatically changed his own name to “Sonic” and don’t you dare call him Logan as he will flatly ignore you.  His mom even told us she lost him in a play area and had to walk around calling “Sonic, Sonic” between all the people in order to find him.  For Halloween this year he will obviously dress as Sonic and I had to fix the reddish shoes his parents could find to look like those of Sonic.  Luckily, I did a shoe covering course many moons ago and knew Bostic Clear would be the answer.  These shoes however are made of stretchy fabric, so I had to improvise to keep the tops fairly straight and for that light-bulbs had to come to my rescue.  I am not sure if or for how long these would last but hope for the best.

Speaking of grandson, he asked his parents for evil cookies.  Dumfounded, they had no idea what he wanted and took him to the pantry where he showed them Ginger biscuits.  Apparently, these are evil because of the burning sensation.

When we purchased our house in 1994, we had these broken tiles in the showers and not being too observant, these never bothered me.  It served its’ purpose and I was happy.

This week however hubby decided to give the shower in the main bedroom a facelift, initially only starting with wanting to redo the grout but one thing led to another and pretty soon, we had new mosaic tiles not only in the shower but finishing off other areas too.

Just seeing this man in action enervates, me, he just never stops but seeing the flowers bloom in the garden, is such a pleasure.

I’ve had no customer quilts this week which allowed me to finish the last 16 blocks of my receipt roll scrappy quilt, finish the top and get it on the frame for the actual free motion quilting and this is a big old bugger.  A full 96” wide and long.

Sunday we are having all the kids and their little ones over for lunch and although grateful for the rain, I hope we have a lovely day for the youngsters to swim.