Trip to Smithfield

One of the smaller towns some 1½ hours’ drive from us hosts a quilt day once a year and this year quilting friend, Karin and I, decided to attend but the sad part is that we never even took a single photo, not of us in the car, the venue, the quilts or our fellow quilters.  We are really getting old!

For such a small group they did everything right.  We had no less than 4 demonstrations and way-way too much to eat with the most interesting lunch I’ve had in a LONG time.

My Snowflake Splendour One Block Wonder won the second prize in the viewers’ choice after I didn’t want to enter it initially, Karin took over and gave it for display.  I will have to share my prize money with her.

This week our men are taking a golfing break and our plans for this ‘time-out’ is to do very little but quilting, so hopefully I will have some progress to post about after this week.

Magnolia Mystery - 1

Up early one morning, working through the blogs I follow on The Old Reader, I came across a new mystery quilt over HERE.

Now the one thing that bugs me about most mysteries are that the completed size is seldom given with the fabric requirements and I would dread going through the process of making a mystery to end up with a small wall hanging or table topper (I simply just don’t like these or then prefer quilts to be on my beds).  This one however gave you a choice for the completed size and when I saw QUEEN I was as in as could be.

I am still trying to work away some of my stash and had to search through this for my fabric choices.  This is what I came up with.

As usual, everything I was busy doing came to a halt when I got the cutting instructions.  Here most of the cutting is done.

The first stitching instruction appeared on the first Thursday of September (and the next will be posted every first Thursday of the next months) I stayed on track and did my homework. A total of 72 half square triangle blocks done.

We had an ill granddaughter over for the weekend so very little quilting happened.

Birthday fabric One Block Wonder – 2

Friend Karin came over for an all-night quilt session of Friday and after the men treated us with barbequed pork belly served with salad and Bovril potatoes, we set off to my sewing room.  Karin started cutting her fabric, also purchased in Port Elizabeth, while at the festival for her One Block Wonder and I continued sewing my triangles into half hexagon units.

However we are getting old now and by 02:10 we called it a night and each went to a room and slept the rest of the time.  In our defence though, Karin had electricians working inside her house and I baby sat our little man, so we couldn’t take a quick afternoon nap.

We did however make good progress and after leaving here the next morning, Karin and her hubby drove to their cabin at the dam where she continued sewing outside.

It however took me quite a while to feel motivated being too tired and I could only continue late the next afternoon but before the end of the weekend I had my 70 hexagons sewn in halves and ironed flat.  Now the tedious work of arranging these must start.

Snowflake splendour One Block Wonder quilt based on a panel – The End

Hubby was on a business trip out of town today and even though I do exactly what I would every other day somehow I just feel as if I have more time on hand.

I didn’t have to cook dinner for us but I cooked up a mean pot of beef stew with carrots and spinach (camouflaged in beef stock) for the dogs.  Took my quilt outside and did the back binding by hand, fed the birds, caught up on a recorded documentary and finally I can show my very first One Block Wonder.

Birthday fabric One Block Wonder – 1

I actually set out this weekend to do the free motion quilting on my Snowflake Splendour panel One Block Wonder but I can only free motion this much before I need a distraction.

While at the Port Elizabeth festival I fell in love with a piece of fabric, thinking Stack a Whack or Kaleidoscope and while seriously looking at the fabric, quilting friend Karin, entered the room and when I asked for 6 repeats of the fabric, she paid for it as my birthday present.  What a gift!

In between doing the free motion quilting I tackled this, one step at a time and pretty soon I had my triangles cut and can now start sewing my hexagons.

These go so fast and are so easy that I often wonder why we don’t start off with this as a beginner quilt.