Funky Farm Animals

This was the last of my pre-booked quilts for now, I am not aware of any other due soon or waiting on me for a response and as much as I love what I do, I also appreciate the break.

First, and not most important, is the French Open tennis starting. As a rule with these big tournaments, I am glued to the TV screen,

Second, and most disturbing, is my sewing room being renovated.  I do want this done but with all my quilting of late, I treated myself to a cleaning lady on Saturday to bring some sanity to this house: she did good.  Now, all is being undone.

I also use my sewing room to sew my leaders to the backings of quilts so for at least a week, if lucky, I won’t be able to use my domestic machine.

This was another fun quilt to work on; I could have finished it earlier however, the kids and grandkids came over most of the weekend which delayed the process.

Disappearing pinwheel

The first time I had one of these to quilt and with permission to play from the maker, I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Colourwash quilt

Another new customer by reference.  I am proud to say I never needed to advertise and I am truly blessed to be this busy.

Peaceful in pink

This quilter was first on my list after my room renovations and she couldn’t stress it enough that this quilt needs to be done urgently.  I suppose it is meant for a baby shower, therefore the urgency.  I told her I would only be able to quilt again on 20 May but when my room was done on the 18^th I could not see a reason not to start with this on the 19^th.  Trying to keep the customer happy!

Renovations to my frame room

After finishing the Farm Life quilt on Mother’s Day, I deliberately did not book or accept any more quilts for hubby to do some renovations to my frame room.

I don't know whether I shared this photo in the past but this was the wall and cupboard doors in the room.  I know taste differs but I simply couldn’t find a reason why anyone would want lime green walls with these cloth-painted blackish cupboard doors, so this all had to go. Worst of all was that ALL the doors in this house were painted this way be it cupboard or room doors.  The others were painted or replaced just after we moved in.

For anything to happen we first had to empty the room as far as possible as I wanted the inside of the cupboards also painted.  Everything was simply stacked and packed in the sewing room or the one spare bedroom.

Hubby moved the frame out of his way and I covered my machine before he could take off the painted doors.

We’ve already done so many renovations in this house and as one friend joked, by the time we sell it; it would be as perfect as our previous house.

Even though I warned quilters I would only be able to start quilting again on the 20^th of May, that did not deter them from sending, dropping off or asking me to pick up their quilts. Needless to say, by Saturday I became somewhat tense about the work pile building up.

Somehow, I pictured myself loading the first quilt the moment hubby was done but slightly needed to remember everything had to be packed back and cleaned.  With that done Saturday evening I was simply too tired to even change the needle on the machine.

I took some photos after the finish; it looks so much more tranquil.

Just compare these doors and paint to the first photo, a massive improvement.

Farm life quilt

This quilt is for a little guy turning one year soon and he loves the farm and all about farm animals and life.

Pink and lime table topper

A lovely table topper but not without posing problems.  This topper too was previously quilted by someone else but the quilter was not satisfied and unpicked most of the stitches but not all.  This quilt therefore arrived here with batting and backing still attached and I honestly did not have the time (or patience) to unpick the rest, so the whole thing was loaded as a top only with new batting and backing.

The difficulty in this is that I couldn’t keep the top from not having puckers (due to the already added batting) therefore had to do dense pebbling to contain or hide any bubbling.

All is however well that ends well.

Burgundy sampler

I do believe this was number 4 of the 5 quilts I received on one day and another sampler.  This time however with heaps of different small quilt blocks with defined burgundy triangles to bring all together as a unit.

With the quilt and fabric being as busy as it is, we decided to simply do edge-to-edge quilting on the bigger parts of the quilt with just a different motif in the burgundy triangles using only two different colours of thread.

This photo shows some of the details on the back and border.

Colourful sampler

We had two of the older windows in the house replaced with new aluminium windows with invisible burglar bars and although my house was noisy for two days, this small change improved the total look of these two rooms. I simply did not like the painted steel bars.

Next up was the colourful sampler with plenty of space and place for me to create some texture with free-motion motifs.  This turned out prettier than I anticipated.

And finally, the back although I only showed some of the areas/blocks on the front.

Chevron 1

 This is the first of the 5 quilts I mentioned in my previous post and one of a twin.  The next quilt is the same size and uses the same pattern and fabric, only the placement of these differs somewhat.