Photo quilt

On the home front, things are still going smoothly.  I am so impressed with the new glass in the doors leading to the patio but previously I could blame the cracks in the windows as the reason why the windows were dirty and now, I don’t have any excuse!

In the entertainment area we had these built-in cupboards and drawers but way outdated.

The knobs and handles were taken off.

Then painting these in the same colour as the walls started

Once these were done, it looked updated, and clean and gave the impression that the room was bigger.

We however still had 7 other cracked windows throughout the house and hubby decided to take the glass from the doors out in as large a piece as possible and asked for these to be cut to fit in other places and by golly, we now only need one new window, the rest will be done with the repurposed glass from the doors.

After having replaced what we thought were all the windows, we discovered two more with hairline cracks in the corners.  These will be replaced tomorrow.  I know no one else will even notice the improvements when visiting but I am so impressed with every small step taken to make this house a home.

While hubby went playing golf this morning I cleaned the front part of the house, one less weekday to spend cleaning!  Tomorrow I’ll tackle the bedroom side and then apart from daily maintenance I’m done for this week and Wimbledon can take off in full swing.

I received one more quilt and finished this yesterday.  The quilter specified how she wanted it quilted. Hopefully, this won’t need frequent washing as the polyester batting won’t withstand the test of time with so little quilting to hold it in place BUT time has taught me, that the customer is always right and after quilting, no longer my problem.

Mystery madness

So much has happened since my last post and after loading this quilt.  The painting to the entrance and entertainment area is done and I could finally rid the house of all the white filler dust.  Sadly, when the adjacent area will be painted, I’ll be back to square one but I do believe once the first area is completely done, hubby will move back to the garden, which is still a huge mess.

After painting, the wallpaper on two walls in the entrance went up.

Then the mirrors against the one wall had to come down.

Once the wallpaper on that wall was done, we could put the mirrors back.

The wall right by the door got wallpaper too.

Our interior decorator then suggested a flat mirror to put on top of the little table at the entrance. Now as glamourous as it may look, I’ve about had it with cleaning mirrors.  I clean, step back, see a mark, come from the other side, and see another mark.  It is a never-ending story of trying to buff these.

With this mystery madness quilt loaded I had a request to urgently quilt covers for horsebacks.  This was basically 4 pieces of fabric joined together and quilted.  Then it had to be shaped, get binding and whatever else is needed to keep this under the saddle of the horse.  I am sure there is a proper name for this but I know way too little about horses to even guess.  Luckily, I only had to do the quilting.

Another step to fixing the entertainment area was to replace 3 huge safety glass door panels.  This too was concealed behind blinds by the seller.  I hope she gets everything she dished out when misleading us to buy the house. What comes around, goes around.

In between all of this I worked a little bit on this quilt every day.  The quilter gave me permission to just play and play I did.  I can’t remember when last I had to do such dense quilting but I loved every moment of the 15 hours it took to finish.

I am up to date with my quilting and I've promised myself two weeks on the patio watching Wimbledon and sipping on some wine.

England inspired medallion quilt

The quilter saw a similar quilt from England and got inspired to make her own. This was the quilt with the bubble in the centre block I mentioned in my previous post.  Spray starch made a huge difference but tell no lies, if you eliminate a problem in the centre, you just move it either left or right or up or down.  This quilt did not get the dense quilting I am sure the quilter would have preferred but I had to use larger motifs in some areas just to be able to spread the fabric somewhat underneath my fingers in order not to have puckers all on one side.  Most of this quilt was done while steering the machine with one hand and the other hand manipulating fabric.  Be it as it may, I saved the quilter from having to unpick, which I personally would have hated. 

Hubby in the meanwhile has started painting the entrance, short passage and entertainment room.  Throughout the house, it had dado rails about one third up from the floor which we disliked.

These were removed and then the dirty preparation work started with filling up and smoothing out the filler causing a white dust cover on everything.

We tried to cover most of the furniture but it doesn’t really help.  This white powdery substance creeps in everywhere.

With some walls already painted, it looks beautiful and in this photo, one can see the new painting in the front with the wall behind still in process of being painted.

My daughter went into the hospital on Monday for a Septoplasty procedure and was released on Tuesday.  We had the little one over on Monday evening while her dad went to the hospital and then the two of them joined us for supper.  My daughter slept most of her Tuesday by us, after being released and on Wednesday I took her back to the surgeon to have the splints removed. She is still in pain but actually doing extremely well.

On to my third and last quilt from Kimberley and this one too will keep me busy as it has plenty of fun elements with which to play with, the catch is now to make it look somewhat uniform when done.

Cashmere quilt

What a week this turned out to be.  People on the roof were here the whole week, so apart from the noise all the dust fell through into the house but if this guy thought he’d come in for a quick fix, my dear hubby had a surprise for him.  Hubby got onto the roof with them and when they still thought of getting away with simply waterproofing a rusted corrugated plate, he just insisted that he wanted it replaced.  Now we’ll have to wait for the next rain to see if we don’t have more leaks.

Before the roof was repaired, we became aware of cats going mad on our roof at night, some days it sounded like war.  When hubby checked he noticed 3 baby kittens on the roof and they supposedly got in through a hole between the outer roof and ceiling.  We, therefore, had to catch these little ones before the roof was closed up.  I didn’t think I’d like the smell of a rotting cat on my ceiling. 

We were lucky to catch the first little one the first time we set the trap.  It then had to stay in the guest bedroom, so the cage could be used to trap the next one.  The second one was caught later that evening but the third one was somewhat of a clever cat and we heard the trap go off several times, food was gone but no cat was inside.  Then on the last night, we had the trap available, we were so lucky to catch mom and the last little one in the same trap.  All 4 were taken to the SPCA.  The little ones look exactly like their mom.  Sadly, the school across the street houses many stray cats and someone should do something as this may become a massive problem.  The opening in the roof is now closed, so hopefully, another cat won’t be able to get inside and have more babies.

I had my first quilt from Kimberley loaded and it was about the only fun part of the week.  It was just one of those quilts where I had to tear myself away to do some household chores.  This quilter though had specific instructions on what to stitch, so I didn’t have to think about designs too much.

I then took the second quilt from its bag and put it on the bed just to notice a huge bubble in the centre block.  Informed the quilter who was prepared to unpick and redo but I first wanted to see if I couldn’t solve the problem another way. Saturated the bubble area in spray starch and left it to dry naturally, then gave it a press with a hot iron.  Let’s hope for the best.

While popping in at the ‘dance costume maker’ neighbour they had a client who needed badges sewn to a jacket but they don’t offer that service and I jokingly said I’ll do it for 5 litres of my favourite wine and the customer accepted.  Afterwards, I calculated the price of my wine divided by the 6 badges and it turned out, that I charged just under 30 South African rands per badge.  Not too bad a deal, I’d say.

Well onto the next quilt for me, while hubby has somewhat given up on the garden with pipes and electric wires running all over the place with no rhyme or reason and has decided to start painting the walls.  I just got to feel that this was almost home and now it is one big mess again.

The Cashmere quilt in all its glory.

Disappearing 9-patch

Somewhat of a giggle about this quilt block.  When I get a quilt, I normally note, the quilter, the name/theme of the quilt and the date it was given to me.  When I got this quilt, however, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of the block.  I had broken, scattered, deconstructed and every other word except disappearing!

Got this on Saturday and only got to load it on Sunday.  The little one and her dad visited while mom worked and I put a mean pot of lentil soup on the stove with vetkoek to snack on whenever the hunger strikes in this cold.  I also made a pot of fudge for my grandson, I have not told him yet but being a sweet-toothed person, I am sure he’d enjoy it.

It seems as if this quilt took forever to finish, yes it was rather large but that was not my main obstacle.  As per routine, I clean house on Mondays and Tuesdays, my daughter asked if we could look after her little one from 10 to 11 am while she had another appointment.  While busy cleaning house the doorbell rang, the roof specialist to fix the roof, no prior notification, no appointment, nothing!  Hubby was not impressed but seeing that we wrote a rather demanding letter to the lawyers that did the sale basically giving them until 2 June to start delivering on everything agreed to in the sale contract, we didn’t want to put up too big of a scene as we wanted the hidden mistakes (by the sellers) to be fixed.

My daughter too arrived earlier than said with a rather sick little one and got a doctor’s appointment for her as well.  So, cleaning came to an abrupt halt.

With my daughter working the night shift, her husband brought the little one to us early morning on Tuesday until her mom got off work.

Quilting this beauty, therefore had to be done in between all these disruptions. Then I got 3 more quilts all the way from Kimberley and on Monday, 30 May, I had a quilter from Soutpan who phoned to ask if she could send a quilt and I officially had to start a waiting list.  With having pets and grandkids and not much storage space, I prefer not to have quilts lying around in the house.  I really need a couple of days without any interruptions.

I got the good news that my quilter friend who was hospitalised was released and back home today, wonderful to hear!

This quilt had a beautiful ombre border and although not visible in the photo, it had a sun with rays and clouds printed lightly on it, therefore I chose clouds as the free motion motif.

This is the completed top.