Another fabric purchase on my behalf

A friend of mine, living near Johannesburg, went shopping right in the (dangerous) city centre and came across a fabric shop.  She immediately phoned me telling me about the bargains and offered to buy some fabric.  The only drawback with this shop is that you could only get it at a real bargain, if you bought at least 3 metres at a time.  She went ahead and bought me a couple of pieces which she believed I could use.

Well I am not complaining and her daughter who brought the fabric to me, said she hoped I didn’t think it was ugly.  I nearly laughed telling her that quilters hardly ever find any fabric ugly.  Somewhere, sometime that unused piece of fabric will work perfectly in whatever you may plan next.

She even invited me and a couple of local quilting friends to come through one Friday morning (the shop is not open on weekends) and do fabric shopping and spend the rest of the weekend just visiting the centre of the city.  She, a well-travelled girl, says the sights, sounds and people you encounter there, makes it seem like travelling to a foreign city.  I am so tempted but I wonder which of my quilting friends would be brave enough to do this with me.

On Ringo Lake, a Bonny Hunter mystery -1

Not so long ago I vowed not to do any mystery quilts as I have, in the past, not been too chuffed with these, however when I saw completed En Provence mystery quilts, also by Bonny Hunter. I regretted my decision.

Then for months on end now I’ve been complaining about my blue remnant drawer being filled to the brim.  I don’t even recall ever buying this much blue fabric but the scraps in the drawer shows the contradiction.

So when I read about On Ringo Lake, Bonny’s latest mystery, and it had teal/aqua in, I thought what the heck shades of blue will have to do.  So I got started with major sorting and cutting of my blue fabric.  If it so turned out that it had a little teal/aqua in it, good as well but I aimed for medium blues.

It took me a whole afternoon just to sort and cut a couple of blueish strips and I do believe that what I have won’t be remotely enough but at least my blue drawer was thinned out and neat again.

I only finished clue 1 on the day that clue 2 came out and just before the grand-kids came over to visit.  So I guess I’ll always be somewhat behind.

This mystery can be found HERE.

Almost an early Christmas

My younger (only) sister was so kind to go fabric shopping for me the city where she lives at half the price I can get fabric locally and I am actually so chuffed with her for she was given instructions to shop for a Bargello and not being a quilter herself, I think she did very well.  This was what I found when I opened the parcel.

I then added one fabric from my stash, eliminated a couple of other colours and I think the Bargello I’d like to start in the New Year is kind of sorted with this selection.

We have both grandchildren for a sleepover tonight, so no quilting will be done, our young gent still cannot walk, so one of us will constantly have this little man in the arms.

I decided to make a bacon pasta for this evening and had the whole do going, pasta cooked, bacon friend with onion, chopped ham for a little extra texture, melted the butter, stirred in the flour to make rich white cheese sauce when I opened the fridge and the a hit song from 1966 immediately came to me…… the song by Herman’s Hermits “no milk today”.  I didn’t have a single drop of milk in the house!

Mercy comes in different forms and having a vegan daughter, I remembered I had a box of soy milk in the pantry.  So tonight we are eating a very vegan meaty dish. How’s that for a contradiction?

Exploring the possibilities on my Q’nique 14+ on the Cadence frame – 2

I had all my eggs in one basket with all my children and the 2 grand-babies over of Friday and then princess slept over as usual.  She is such a special one, happy being all by herself as long as she can be with the old folks getting the occasional treat.

Today I have an aching earlobe that drives me up the walls and I couldn’t help smiling remembering my last doctors’ (she, in the meantime left the practise) words.  Whenever it happens again, just pop in so that I can take a look…. Well hell yeah, Sunday afternoon at 3 pm and she would be where now?  Furthermore I can’t even touch my ear, let alone allow a doctor check it out.

I am still going through major learning curves with my attempts to do long arm quilting, lowered the machine to its lowest level and hubby nearly got impaled underneath it during this process.  Then we raised the idler bar so it would glide smoothly over the machine bed.  I cut and prepared another practise piece.  Step by step and extremely slowly I am trying to get myself to feel comfortable behind and while using the machine.  I am unfortunately a very impatient person.  By no means perfect but I guess just as I had to practise to get FM quilting done on a domestic machine, I will have to do it here.

Eye of the Storm – 5

We had no water (at all) in our city for days and often times my being so terribly organised gets to me.  I often feel if I organise less I will have more time to simply socialise and take a day as it comes BUT when crap like a water shortage hits your city, you so appreciate not only being organised yourself but also being married to another organisational freak.

I felt terribly sorry to listen to everyone’s complaints about not being able to shower, cook, do laundry and get the little ones sorted while I was able to pitch up at the office perfectly pampered, cleaned and dressed to the T.

I had a stack of bottled water hidden in every nook and cranny of this house (just for in case, seeing that we do have a water filtration system) and dearest hubby made sure our outside water tanks are kept at a level to get us through a couple of days.  So we survived this ordeal just fine.

As for my quilt I am halfway, hallelujah!  I love this process of adding a block at a time and seeing the progress.

At this stage I spotted even more mistakes.  I think sharing my quilt table with 2 cats, a parrot and a dove caused this.  Once done I’ll compare every block with the pattern and make the necessary corrections.