Large scale crosses

Friday turned out to be a rather dusty one in this house.  Hubby got men to fell a couple of trees or at least just cut them shorter and comb and maintain the Lapa.  With one of the trees down, he found this little chap on the grass and brought him to safety.

At first, I thought this was a 9-patch quilt until I popped it on the frame and saw that the rectangle in the middle was a solid piece.

This was another fun project to work on.  Somehow, I find edge-to-edge quilting rather boring, I love planning different motifs in different blocks or in this case just how to get from one block to another without breaking thread.  It is not always possible but when it works, it feels good.

This quilt is another successful project by my only male customer.

Scrappy wonky stars

This weeks’ Monday morning started off with grocery shopping and a new normal to me, hubby will be coming along.  He is somewhat more of a spender than I am and sadly I am responsible (financially) for grocery shopping in our house.  It didn’t go too well, he is one of those lucky ones who can eat whatever and as much of anything without gaining weight and a whole slab of chocolate per day is not at all strange to him BUT I don’t think the reality of being on pension, with no increases of annual bonus ever, has sunk in yet.  I think it would be wise to do my weekly shopping alone when he plays golf on Sundays.

To start off with my progress to move heavy furniture to clean underneath and behind it:

Done:

Washing machine

Tumble drier

Dishwasher

Additional small fridge

These were all in the scullery, so while there I thought I might as well wash off the shelves and the inside of the cupboards.  At least one area done from top to bottom and I actually managed to get rid of a couple of things simply kept for that mysterious ‘someday’.

When I got a photo of this quilt from the quilter, I was pleasantly surprised.  I’ve looked at wonky star quilts before but these all seem to be set within a block.  This one was totally different with one star touching the other without being contained in a block.  I immediately liked this.

Her husband brought the quilt to me and the quilting to be done on it, was his idea and I not only loved working on it, although it had heaps of start/stops I am crazy about the overall look.  I think the plan he had to have the stars pop and the background flattened, worked perfectly.

A finish on Fathers’ Day

My son, daughter and son-in-law invited hubby for a game of golf for Fathers’ Day.  This gave me some alone time to iron the laundry and get quilting a customer panel.

Afterwards daughter-in-law invited us to their house for waffles and everything good to go with it.

Here dads & daughters posed.  A pity my son and his daughter didn’t join in for the photo.

One week to go before Wimbledon starts and I think I should use this week to move heavy furniture and clean underneath and behind it.

Disappearing 9-patch in green and pink

I received this quilt with fleece backing yesterday afternoon and decided to try out a new motif that I will call Curly cues by lack of a better name.

I really like this, it is fast, easy flowing from one spot to the next and gives nice overall texture.

We are having the youngest grandbaby over as her mom is not feeling well and after arriving here, got into her old bed immediately and fell asleep.  The little one will take her nap soon too, so then we will have sleeping visitors but at least they are here.

Receipt roll quilt – The start

A quilter came to fetch her finished quilt one morning while I was searching the internet for ideas to use my scraps when she mentioned receipt roll quilts.  Now I’ve seen how it was done but didn’t quite go further to see what a completed quilt would look like.  When she mentioned it again, I started looking for completed quilts using these rolls and immediately fell in love with the first image I saw.

I got out a receipt roll and got going.

I found working on a complete roll rather cumbersome so opted to cut roughly 10” strips to do one at a time which looked something like this.

This is such a strip trimmed neatly.

I marked the centre of the strip.

From the background fabric, I cut 6” squares cut in half from corner to corner and marked the centre of both cut edges.

Matching the centres on the strip and triangles I stitched these together.

Finally, the block was trimmed down to 6½”.

Joining 4 of these blocks gave me a large block of 12½”.

I am in no hurry to finish this and will become my interim project when not quilting for a customer.  I am still loving all the free time with being on pension but I soon realised I will have to find more to keep myself busy.

Pink and grey baby quilt

Today is Youth Day, a public holiday in South Africa and hubby and I decided that we’re not ‘youth’ anymore, we don’t have any responsibilities and would simply be lazy, stay in bed longer and we did just that.  Had breakfast and got back into bed but I find it rather hard to fall asleep again once awake, so fun was only fun for a while before I got up.

Luckily, I had a small baby quilt to keep me busy but this went faster than I thought and then I was done for the day.  Received another quilt but the backing is too small so I am waiting for a replacement.

The rest of my day was spent watching YouTube videos and doodling some designs out on paper.

Quilt with diagonal lines

Feeling much better I loaded this on the frame.  This quilter loves custom quilting and doesn’t care about it being too dense.  Sadly, in assembling this, the fabric on the diagonals (bias) stretched and when I had it on the frame, I saw major ruffling.  These would lead to folds and pleats when quilted.

I then suggested an all-over pattern.  This way I could shuffle the fabric under the needle to equally disperse the ruffles. This is one reason I am glad I don’t do computerised quilting; I can always try something different if what I had in mind wouldn’t work.

Sewing Sayings

Yet another awful week behind me!  I developed an utterly annoying cough… non-stop with phlegm build-up, I found it hard to breathe.  Anyway, after trying every possible over the counter medication and home-brewed recipes I decided to ask my doctor for antibiotics but along with it came his strict warning to stay in bed.  That was the bad part as apart from the cough, partially losing my voice, I didn’t feel sick enough to stay in bed.  Luckily (maybe sadly) I developed somewhat of a fewer and that (along with some medication) made me want to sleep most of the time.

Fortunately, before I phoned the doctor, I managed to finish a small "sewing saying" panel.  Today I got up, feeling much better but somehow, I feel this virus or whatever brewed inside me is still not ready to subside.  I’ll be finishing my medication tomorrow but I think I should keep taking immune boosters of some sort.

What a week

The beginning of this week was not at all what I envisioned.  With Roland Garos having started (I am a tennis-watching addict) I dug up an age-old handwork UFO, hubby playing golf at Sun City and me not having to cook, I promised myself a week of doing as little as possible for as long as possible.

However, on Saturday I got the first of heaps of e-mails from our auditors, them, I suspect, wanting to finish off most of the sold business so we could each go on with our lives BUT I felt it was Saturday and chose to ignore them.  Big mistake as when I truly started reading the mails on Monday, I realised they wanted LOTS of information and with having moved from the office to the house, everything needed to be dug out of boxes stored in the garage.

Then I received no less than 4 quilts on Monday and I was so frustrated because if I didn’t have all this stuff to do for the auditors, I could have easily quilted mornings and watched tennis while doing handwork in the afternoons.

Anyway, as with all good fortunately all bad comes to an end as well and I got all the info the auditors needed and life could return to fairly normal.

First up was a quilt from my only male quilter and he calls it easy blocks with old fabrics and he only requited soft curves from side to side.

Then a quilt by his sister and the name of this pattern is Renew me.  She wanted edge to edge all-over quilting and I decided on the Oakish leave motif.

A quick basting-only quilt.  The quilter will do the quilting on her domestic machine.

And finally, a stunning autumn coloured quilt.

All these quilts have been returned to their owners and I can start the new week on a clean slate.