25 June 2013

Geese, ships and stars and mountains

This evening, after catching up on some voluntary accounting (for my sister's school), I got some sewing done - last but one seam on the pieced picture, and four tall ships for this month's block lotto, and two in-betweener stars, trying out the 6" size that I (well, my mother mostly at the last two Thursday evenings at the quilt group) had picked out squares and rectangles for.   I have now received 11 out of anticipated 16 envelopes filled with flying geese blocks, once they are all here, I'll take some photos!  The doorbell rang today, and through the intercom a voice says, you've got an envelope from Canada - my sweet postman, so I opened the envelope to show him the contents.  A few years ago, when my office was just down the road, he would often bring my small packages there, although they had the home address on them, I think just to chat! I am seldom at home in the day-time, so it was a nice encounter.  We generally don't have parcels delivered, only if they are really small and light, normally we get a card saying parcel to be collected from Post Office, and if a foreign parcel, normally customs and vat to be paid!



This is supposed to be the back of Table Mountain in the distance (about 15km), with one of the highway catchment ponds in the foreground - I am in awe of this mountain every day, living in it's shadow is a privilege!

18 June 2013

First geese have landed

What excitement! The first envelope has arrived!  Rachel's geese have landed safely from Texas, together with a delightful postcard.   The postcard was a perfect way of reinforcing the regular envelope, now I know how to mail my blocks in future, thank-you!


17 June 2013

Some more small steps

This is the latest, and last but three of the 100 blocks for Just Takes Two:

There are some really prolific quilters that blog and encourage other quilters in all parts of the world.  One blogger that I read and have been following along with her Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2013 is Soscrappy from Florida USA.  I've kept up with each month, but haven't taken any photos until now.  My scraps are colour sorted by strips and bits, so that made the first step easier.  I have been grabbing a biggish pile from my strip boxes of each month, sewing them in a single large strata piece, and then cutting as many triangles as possible, and finally stitching all the left over pieces from that into 2 or 3 pieces.  At the end of the year I'll decide how to use them all.  June's colour is yellow, and these are all the strips I had, and what I created from them.  Please click here to go and see what others have linked as well.



I have been making small English Paper Pieced Hexagons for ever, and saw a mention somewhere that one can make hexagons without paper using a circle of fabric, so had to try!   A fair amount of fabric folded on the back, which I 'm sure can be recovered once stitched!  Partly stitched the smaller ones to see how they turn out.  

And finally, an applique flower with a blurry close-up of the detail.    One of our group members came by a bunch of made-up satin cushion covers, complete with zips, and challenged us to applique them.  There will be a viewer's choice prize at our next meeting.  And then they will be passed on to a charity for their fundraising.   Did this one by hand as I don't like raw-edge finishes, and my working sewing machines only do straight stitches so couldn't zig-zag them.

05 June 2013

Mid-week bits and pieces

Well, the weather forecast got it spot on, a full ten days of rain, today was the first day of sunshine, with clouds but no rain, and with more rain forecast for the weekend.  I had a great weekend away with 21 other quilters all sewing our hearts out.   !@#$, no photos, as camera battery died.  This photo was taken on Sunday in the centre of Cape Town (sorry don't have the credits for it) - it's a carpet of hail, but looks like snow - we do not get snow at 10m above sea level!  Sometimes a dusting on the 300m+ mountains close by.  I've never seen this much hail in Cape Town, normally we just get a sprinkling, maybe once or twice a year, that melts in 10 minutes.
 

Only one finished Just Take 2 block, needing a press!:

And some quilt inspiration - these are the tiles behind my sister's stove top:

With a dead phone and no other connectivity over the weekend I nearly missed out on being a Block Lotto winner!  When I got back, a number of patient emails were waiting to let me know.  I needed to have replied to the first email confirming acceptance and posting details.  I should have let the co-ordinator know beforehand that I may not be available when the draw happened.  Lesson is, don't think you won't win!!  I only started participating at the beginning of this year, but had for about a year been following the blog site and trying out some of the blocks, even making a whole small quilt from the May 2012 block.  In the next two to three weeks I should receive a whole bunch of blocks to add to my three, thank-you, thank-you to all who made blocks.
Quilt with wonky Liberated 5-point Stars from May 2012, very wonky!