Yesterday evening, after more than a year in the new house, we got to meet most of our neighbours during their annual year-end street barbeque. Needless to say, I can hardly remember any names but I am sure I will get there somehow.
Obviously,
this quilt will be gifted to a little girl who loves pink. I think this quilter ticked all the right
boxes.
If I understood right, this would be the second of three 9-patch quilts. The quilter doesn’t like working with yellow much but seeing this is a gift for someone, who does like yellow, she obliged.
Having done this quilt one morning, hubby told me he booked a golf game for the next day. Knowing I was up to date with my quilting and would have the next day all to myself, I made myself a list of chores. All those things needed to be done but simply didn’t during my normal cleaning routine. I sprayed the oven the previous evening and let it sit overnight. The next day I tackled my list. I cleaned the oven, the inside of the fridge, gave the shower glass a decent rub down, tried to wash feather pillows in my washing machine (not successful) and then treated myself to a lovely home pedicure, soaking my feet and giving them a break after all the cleaning.
Cleverly I
decided to wash the leaders on my quilting frame, another bad idea. I took the zippers off, and washed the leaders
and when I wanted to sew the zippers back on, the leader cloth shrunk so badly, that the zippers were too long. I now have to
start all over by making new leaders.
This time, however, I will wash the leader fabric before I do anything
else.
Fortunately,
I finished this quilt before getting any of my brainwaves otherwise the poor
quilter would have had to wait for days.
When this quilter brought her quilt, she could barely walk to my front door due to intense pain in her knee. Apart from this quilt, I had no other quilts on my waiting list. She, however, was on her way to see an orthopaedic surgeon after dropping her quilt. The pain was not her imagination as she phoned later that day to say she’d be undergoing a knee replacement the following week.
I must
admit I’ve been terribly busy quilting lately and although she said, she was in
no hurry for me to finish the quilt, the fact that she’ll be out of action for
some time, turned on my procrastination brain cell. I started off well by marking the quilt first
but then I got relaxed, knowing I didn’t have to rush. Well, it took me more
than 2 weeks to finish, not all of that time was charged to the quilter, it was
the time I took to simply “just be” between sections.
When the
next quilter made an appointment, I continued with this one and it didn’t take
that long after all.
This quilter’s friend turns 60 in December and likes rabbits. The quilter then incorporated a rabbit picture (copied onto fabric) surrounded with 60 small blocks. Clever thinking.
This quilter must be extremely organized. She brings me a quilt and then asks if I could have it done before Christmas. How kind of her to consider my time too?
This one is
for her own table over the festive season.
Another quilt only required an edge-to-edge motif and this quilt, being for a boy, I chose the Gears design.
Another fun quilt with lots of different techniques and blocks making it fun for me to select different designs to do in different areas. This pattern is from one of our local teachers and I think the quilter did the pattern justice. I translated the pattern from our home language (Afrikaans) and I am not too sure whether all the chickens are hens but it rhymed nicely.
I, anyway, had fun quilting this.
Another quilt from an out-of-town quilter, they seem to become more as I continue in my quilting journey. This one only required edge-to-edge quilting which went fast.
I got up before 5 a.m. this morning as today my routine would be somewhat different. Our youngest grandchild of 4 has her playschool’s very first athletics day. At first, I didn’t want to go as I truly have plenty of quilting to do but when her parents said they couldn’t attend due to work, I gave in.
I therefore
had to do some of the things I could not do with her around. Writing this blog post,
because if Grandma is on the computer, she will need it too. I also have to get a little quilting done as
this is something she wants to do when I do it.
This is the
second Kashmir quilt I got to do and it is truly a beautiful pattern, both
quilters used fantastic colour combinations.
This Jinny Beyer Studio pattern is available as a free download.
This one too, is one of those quilts that make me want to play with motifs. Luckily the quilter allows me to and for that I am thankful.
This was my
50th quilt for this year.
I asked several people the name of a single block; nobody knew. I decided to temporarily name it myself but when the quilter fetched it, I decided to ask him what this block was called. It turned out to be keyhole. The quilter only wanted ditch stitching and as the saying goes “less is more”. It turned out stunning.
I do love working on a panel or sampler quilt. With most blocks being different I don’t feel the need to repeat a motif several times. This quilt was no different and here are some of the motifs used in the blocks and border/sashing.
And this is
the back.
I received a quilt with the specific request not to put a photo on my blog as the quilter may just decide to enter it into our National Quilt Festival in 2024.
Her wish,
my command and I am only sharing the back which will not give away too much. I
can add that it took me more than 12 hours to quilt this.
This quilter/seamstress (a person good at whatever she does) wanted to gift a quilt for a baby but being as busy or in demand as she is, didn’t have time to piece a quilt. She opted for a solid sheet in the mom’s preferred colour (neutral) and asked me to do an all-over motif but needed me to pop in a circle occasionally.
On 20 September a quilter brought me a quilt to do and along with it a massive bag full of thread. This is such a huge gift as it contained 11 spools of Isacord, 7 spools of Glide, 1 Colorful and several colours of Marathon.
I, fortunately, do not have to buy thread frequently as I have a decent stock but
occasionally a quilt requires a unique colour and the upsetting part, when I
have to buy, is to see how prices increase each and every time.
Understandably, this is the reason why I regard this bag of thread as such a welcome gift. It felt like Christmas.
Before I received this quilt, I had a whole week with no quilting and as much as I enjoy this hobby, I was grateful for this break as it coincided with the final week of the US Open. How good was this? For the semi-final of the men’s game, I even got up at 2 a.m. to watch…. Needless to say, I had a long afternoon nap later in the day.
This
quilter didn’t like the outcome of her disappearing 9-patch but I liked it, it
had that old-time charm to it.
I made good use of our load-shedding schedule this week. I was able to wash all the windows over two days and on the third day, I cleaned our Lapa area just in time for the first day of Spring.
With all
the modern quilts done I also got back to my regular quilting and first up was
this half-square triangle quilt which needed only an edge-to-edge design.
I received the first of these 5 quilts on 25 July of this year and after doing the first one, trying to sense the picture the seller had in mind, I had to adapt to her desires which were mostly straight lines with the odd curve.
Initially, I
thought, great, it would be easy, very little planning needed but I never
anticipated how boring this would become.
Whenever I
have to interrupt my quilting process to do other things, I usually look forward
to getting back to the frame but after doing 60 or so straight lines, knowing I
have to return to more straight lines, was somewhat of a deal breaker. I think what I’m trying to say, is that I
could have finished these faster if I didn’t so much look up to the following straight lines.
With this
top, however, I noticed possible problems beforehand when I laid the top out
on the bed. See the little pleats
around the curve? These can become major
issues when being quilted. I decided to
plan my lines to match the pleats and instead of going across them, I took the
quilt off the frame several times to turn it and be able to work with the wrinkles and from the centre outwards.
Finally done with all 5 and now I do believe at least my quilting life can return to normal as the seller is currently in Fiji until the end of September; these first 5 were simply experiments to see if anyone would be interested.
This photo
shows some of the straight lines going in different directions.
Now this one posed a severe problem with puckering around the curve. The quilter and I discussed every possible reason why this one went so horribly wrong. It could be simply fabric cut with a curve, these sometimes cause problems even in much smaller quilt blocks; the fabric was not cut/pieced on the grain or the grainlines not running in the same direction. It could also be me, having started with the outer straight edges before quilting the curve, thus not leaving it anywhere to move. Whatever the cause, the quilter was prepared to redo the quilt but after thinking it over during the night, I decided to give it one more try. This shows the puckering.
I had to
unpick all the stitching in the curve, lay it flat on a bed and
saturate the curve with spray starch. I
then used a hair dryer to dry the fabric while manipulating the puckers more to
the centre. Once dry, I also changed the
design in the curve to enable me to start the lines on the outside and work my
way to the centre. Leaving a pocket in
the centre would compensate should there be any more puckers and IT WORKED!
The completed design can be seen on the Gallery page.
I cannot say much more about these quilts apart from sharing pictures. The straight-line quilting, roughly one inch apart, continues. This one, however, seemed to go on for ages, not as much time spent stitching but I had so many interruptions, I thought I’d never finish it.
Number 4 is
already on the frame and poses its own problems but more about that once
done.
I think with this quilt, I have a slightly better idea of what the seller wants. I did try freehand straight-line stitches on the taupe but did not like it at all. It looked wonky and unprofessional, so I still used a ruler but did not measure the distance between lines to be absolutely perfect.
The rest of the quilt was done with only lines in the orange and lilac with only having followed the shape in the centre red piece.
On my Gallery page, the completed quilt can be seen in totality and it looks so much different than the seller's vision. The scatter cushions in this photo still need inners before the shop opening tomorrow but I would have never guessed or chosen these. My tiny brain tends to make everything to match but I think the seller has a much more modern vision than I have.
My quilting has taken an interesting twist with this one. A shop owner with an online store asked a local quilter to make modern quilts which the shop owner designed. This quilter then needed someone to do the actual quilting and contacted me. The instructions for quilting were mostly straight-line stitching all over the quilt.
This being
the first, was a test to see if I had the right idea and the seller came by
yesterday to look at the finished quilt.
I tried to
follow the basic shapes of the fabric and the request was also to use a
contrasting thread.
We discussed future quilts and I’ll have to make some changes, straight lines should rather just run all over the quilt as opposed to following the shape and lines should not be too wide or too skinny. I must try to keep them roughly 1 inch apart. We both agreed that matching thread to the fabric colour would look better.
She also
wanted me to use fewer rulers for those perfectly straight lines but do some
freehand lines to make it look homemade.
I am somewhat nervous about the last request. My dad always joked that only a crazy person can
draw a straight line or perfect circle and I am not sure how my free-hand
consecutive lines would look with having to try and keep them 1 inch apart.
Four more
quilts will be delivered tomorrow and then I will be fully booked for at least
6 weeks as the first quilt, with having to mark it beforehand, was at my house
for 9 days before completion.
The
completed quilt can be seen on the Gallery page.
