Monday, July 12, 2010

July Block - Design challenge

I know the month of July is not quite past yet but with no less than 20 birthdays on my calendar, apart from a broken piggy bank, I could not think of a better theme for this month. With a new group of beginner quilters starting in August I also needed to get slightly ahead of my schedule. Celebrated my own birthday too this morning with a bunch of girlfriends over breakfast and good friends always ensure good events.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

June block - Design challenge

With South Africa hosting the Soccer World Cup I had no problem in deciding what to do with my June block and with it being such an historical event it even overshadowed our lovely week at the coast. Hoping to get my July block done soon as I already know what I want to appliqué on it.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Glentana handwork break

So we needed to take yet another break and another endless drive (10 hours to be exact) to the coast. Hubby has lovely friends who kindly allow me to stay in their beach house in exchange for giving it a thorough mid-year cleaning. I decided to take eager helpers along under the pretence we’d spend a week away from home and routine catching up on our handwork.

With us packing winter’s clothes as if we’d be going to the South Pole there was no space left for machines!! So off we went, Marie taking her hubby and 2 boys along. She’s our local PFAFF dealer and we were somewhat scared that her DH might start complaining about her being away from home this much and him having to attend to meals and homework, so we tried to make up for the previous times he was left to do this. Karin, Lianda and I in one car and Marie’s family in another we set off taking occasional breaks until we reached our destination.
Major fun and apart from me, who spent most of my time unpicking the rest all got plenty work done. Unfortunately we did not just work and clean but spent way too much time (not to mention money) shopping but with our GPS not being updated recently we got to see rather interesting parts of all the towns we visited (obviously the older and therefore bad parts). Not that we felt threatened in any way, we shopped as very few can!

Only at the end of a day when Marie and family told us about the glamorous parts of the same town they’ve been to, we realized that something must be wrong for us to end up in all the scaly places. All taken into consideration a trip worth taking again!

Free-motion quilts being finished

As referred to in an earlier post I guided the Golden Threads quilting group through making a free-motion sampler starting in February this year. We’ve visited Leah Day’s website for inspiration and tried most of her patterns on our samplers. Some of the ladies have finished and one by one they now bring their completed quilts to their group meeting to show. Here are 2 of these completed quilts and I think they’ve conquered their fear of this technique successfully.
                       Hannetjie with her quilt                                                    Connie with hers