Close to the New Year!

The end of year rush into summer holidays and the festive season has eased up, so some sewing has been done! Yeah!  Have tried to work on 2 or 3 different projects each day, but progress is steady but slow.  One flimsy done this week (which doesn't yet count as a finish) - the kaleidoscope started in August in Bettie's class.  This quilt top is made from one fabric.

Kaleidoscope - a cropped image of the finished top

Detail of kaleidoscope

Original fabric!

Daughter T quilting (and playing iPad game at same time) on small quilt she put together last week.  Not an original, but worked from one of the patterns in this free eBook on Log Cabins.  Oh boy, can she sew accurately!  She made the setting triangles a little bigger, so the centre floats a bit.  It's about 21" square.  We tacked it on the frame first.

And today Bonnie released part 7 for the Easy Street mystery quilt - and I have completed it - as next (and I think final) part is out tomorrow!  What a wonderful relaxed mystery this has been.  After carefully selected each piece for each triangle so not to have duplicate fabrics in each section, I managed to reverse the order of one pile in the piecing, too bad that now there are two the same near each other, as there they will remain.  I guess these are probably the edge pieces of an on-point design, but still cannot work out what the centre will look like!

Easy Street parts in separate up-cycled fruit boxes (with about five other UFOs Projects edging into the picture!).

UFO Progress

Today I managed to have the fourth UFO finish, one day ahead of the self-imposed dead-line! It is one of two quilt tops made from panel fabric I received at my quilt group's Christmas in July party (southern hemisphere winter!).

 

This was the first time of using the quilt frame as it should be, each layer on a separate roller.  The 6" throat space is a bit limiting, especially as I like the quilting to be a bigger scale so that the quilt remains softer.  It's really nice to have these simple tops to practice using the frame.  And this time gave my daughter T a chance to use it as well.  No prizes for the quilting on this one, but finished it is!

Long weekend

Our local talk radio station (567CapeTalk) plays brilliant music on Saturdays and Sundays.  Put the radio on (turning it up real loud when a real favourite is played) and just sew, or cut.   And tomorrow is a public holiday here, so lots more sewing (or maybe all the Christmas shopping) can be done.

This week I managed to complete 4 blocks for Just Takes 2, and, whilst watching a couple of movies, did hours of applique, on one block but it's not yet complete!

 

It's marginally depressing to note that all the blocks and the final lay-out of this year long mystery quilt have been published!  The applique is holding me up, but I am loving each block, and will work on it steadily. The two ladies, that have put this together did a marvellous job.

But quite pleased that I'm totally up to date with Easy Street.  This is part four done:

Look at how high a pile of 145 3.5" blocks stands... 2" !!

Now go and look what all the other quilters have blogged about their progress so far.  And if you are doing this mystery - link up, and if you don't have a blog - start one!

Keeping up!

Last Thursday  I drove from Cape Town to Hermanus, about 2 hours away, to have our final Guild Committee meeting for the year, and our Christmas lunch.  This was one of the home-made desserts!  A divine cheesecake topped with jelly and fresh fruit - it tasted even better.

I am so glad that I am keeping up with Bonnie's mystery this year.  These are all the 64 3.5" square blocks from part 3, finished sewing this evening - I do like them.  I was very pleased that I was able to find about 50 of the purples squares in the box of 2" squares, so they are very scrappy.  Turquoise is not a colour of which I have a huge range, so have 3-5 triangles of each fabric.  After pressing part one on Thursday evening and checking size, found I had to unsew about 30, but finished re-doing those as well tonight.  Please go and see what the other participants in Bonnie's mystery have blogged (157 of them at close to midnight here, but USA has hours to go for today!).

3rd Finish!

In spite of my pessimism yesterday, I did have an on-time finish!  My Button Jar Project.  Look at these fun things.

About 5 weeks ago we had a call from my husband's best friend.  He was in the process of assisting his 91-year old mother to settle in care in a retirement village, and needed to clear out her flat.  He asked if I would take any of her sewing things.  Her niece had been the recipient of her sewing and over-lock machines, but I knew that even if there was nothing I could use, I would be able to find a good home for whatever was there (I was able to take dozens of patterns, metres of polyester fabrics and partly sewn garments to a local self-help organization).  All her life she had sewed her own clothes (but was never a quilter!), and she had, amongst other things, the most amazing collection of buttons, all neatly sorted in colours.  (I recognize lots of them from the clothing manufacturing company my husband had but closed over 12 years ago!) I had just that week been looking for a pile of buttons to make a pincushion jar as gifts for a group of quilting ladies I will be lunching with on Thursday.

I made the tops from scraps, stitched down on a circle (using the jar lid as a template) of needle-punch batting, .  Trimmed the circle with a seam allowance.  Stitched a strip of plain bias to the circle.  Cut a piece of card 3/4" and glued the bias strip to give the height.   Cut about 7-8 circles of batting,pushed inside, some glue on edge of jar lid and ease in.  Don't think these have a long durability factor.  Almost want to keep them as the colours together are fun.  I scooped up a jar of buttons, then sorting and layering from dark to light for each jar (that took almost as long as putting the tops together!)

This was the best up-cycling ever!

Sewing update

Oh dear, tomorrow is my self-imposed deadline for the 3rd finish! Not happening!  I wonder why?  It could be that I have been sewing, but mostly not on Quilts in Progress.  Spent most of the weekend work working, so little time for sewing.  Three evenings out last week also didn't help. (No P, I am not going to another wine tasting, I barely like wine and it definitely doesn't like me - something in it makes me sneeze and congest up, no real fun.)     But I have found some time for Easy Street - Part 2  - I thought I had cut out all the wings, but am about 7 or 8 short, but cut way too many geese!  Have sewn what I have cut, again just need to press (plus Part 1) and trim the dog-ears.  Our SA National Quilt Festival is in Bloemfontein in July 2013, and the Guild organizing it produced some promotional fridge magnets.  I've never used a guide like this before, normally eyeballing the cut edge whilst sewing;  the guide sort of worked.

Easy Street Part 2 cuttings

Easy Street Part 2 chain piecing

Feeding second goose wing under needle

Easy Street - 2 complete  geese - lots more to go