On the Wall

This is a quick shot of what is currently up on my flannel-covered foam boards.

From the left:

15 6-inch Scrappy Star Blocks for the Block Lotto, for which I volunteered to be the hostess for December.  Think of a block, choose the fabrics, write the pattern, test the pattern, write the post, track the participants, slightly stressful but good fun.

One star block made by a friend to test the pattern.

A 400% photocopy enlargement of a Kaffe Fasset fabric, as design inspiration for a challenge quilt that missed the deadline!


Two aeroplane blocks, the start of a quilt for grandson E (his Dad's family are/were all in the airline industry - pilots, cabin crew, ground crew.)

A close-to-finished Quilt As You Go.  These are Carol's Stars, done in a class.  Used thick batting so it is really puffy.

Summer holiday time!   Might mean more sewing!

October update

Not long after the last post my dear husband decided that my sewing room should be painted.  Hmm...a good idea...but it took us, with our gardener who is only here onceevery two weeks, over a month to get all done.  Moving some things out of the room, move other things from one side to the other, cover everything in drop cloths, clean up each time, but it was worth it in the end.   The upshot is that not a lot of sewing was done, but it was good to sort out all the projects in progress..found a couple I had forgotten about!

 

These are the Block Lotto blocks for October.  I found that I didn't have any Halloween fabrics, but did find one piece at a local quilt event.

 

The said local quilt event is called Fynbos, and is run every other year by our local umbrella guild.  (Actually spent 6 days there, setting-up, helping, taking down, transporting stuff, scribing in the judging room!)  There were some classes as well as vendors and an exhibition.  This is the result so far of a wonderful class I took there with Kathryn Cillliers-Louw.  First picture was during the class and the second a few days later, but still to be completed.  Daughter C says the corners look like wi-fi symbols.

At the exhibition, this is my dear friend Tracy in front of her amazing Millefiore quilt, all hand-pieced, and long-arm quilted by herself.

 

This was also quilted for me by Tracy.  It's in the wash right now, so more photos later:

I have managed a finish (after about 8 years!) of a colourwash quilt started in a class:

 On my wall, blocks from this year's quilt along called Squared Away, with Angela at Soscrappy and her friend Mari at the Academic Quilter.  Still thinking about how to assemble these blocks.

And finally, down to the last few 2-inch-square blocks of Klein, Kleiner, Kleinste, now can start to play with layouts.  (KKK = small, smaller, smallest)

Controlled scrappy blocks

After a hot trip to the UK, it was almost a pleasure to be back in sort-of wintery Cape Town.  I was very surprised to find in the UK that the mercury hovered around 30 degrees celcius almost every day, with only one day of drizzle.

Had lots of, but never enough, cuddles with grandson E - at nearly 5 months old now sporting his first tooth.   Maybe we get to see him again this year...his passport is in hand!

Red with maroon was July's colour of the month. Stitched up all my previously trimmed red pieces.   And these were the controlled scrappy blocks, starting with red centres:

Six trees for the Block Lotto:

On one of my lists in the past 10 weeks an instruction read,"En Provence - 2nd corner".  Hauled it out and put on wall, struggled a bit with the orientation as I realised that I hadn't even completed the first corner!  First corner, now almost complete, well at least all the pieces are there.  I have turned the blocks on point so have to fill in with triangular shaped sections...but now I know where I'm headed!

June sewing and meet my Grandson

From the left:  two of the Noonlight blocks (waiting for all their mates flying in from the Block Lotto makers), 26 blocks for the Scrappy Block Project (using strings and keeping block corners 90-deg, but whatever size the strings dictate),  three Squared Away (turquoise/teal,not quite blue, not quite green, RSC colour for June), 5 of the biggest KKK blocks (finish at 6-inches).  This might be the last of the sewing for a few weeks, because....

  ...counting the days until there will be lots of hugs for E!   6000 miles travel - just to get there!

21 Kleiner Blocks complete

Now all the blocks are done, play time is next, but will have to wait a bit!

Project updates

I've been managing to sew almost every day, even if only for a few minutes, and had a very productive quilters retreat this past weekend.  These photos were taken two weeks ago of various blocks made for different projects.

These are my Noon Light Block Lotto blocks for April, which I am lucky to have won, so will get another 30 blocks, very excited about this, especially as I have started to receive them.

These are my Rail Variation Block Lotto blocks for May.

A shot of various blocks decorating my flannel boards. Some pink blocks for May.  The green bordered blocks are a newish long-term project - last month I picked seven interesting yellow scraps and bordered them with green string scraps, this month I used nine pink centres, yellow first border, and green second border.  Next and following months will start the centre with a new colour and continue the pattern - aiming to get the blocks to between 6 and 8 inches.

These are the result of a workshop about a year ago - working with 3/4 and 1 inch strips, they are so cute, but very time consuming!  Some will end up like the 6-inch "bull's-eye" blocks above, but most will be 1.5"-inches.  Long way to go still!

 Preparing for the past weekend - all ready in piles to be sewn together.  I used Liberty prints for these fun mystery blocks. 

It's raining!

And blowing like mad... let's hope that this continues this coming winter!

This is the view from my upstairs office window..can't see the mountain as the cloud and rain are obscuring it.  (I have to stand up to see out!)

Yesterday I was playing with some block layouts for future sewing.  They are a bit wrinkly and wouldn't stay on the wall so laid them out on my bed, with the sun streaming through the shutters:

Lots of catch up pictures

Lots of things have happened in the past month or so.  A lovely garden tea to celebrate my mother, a brand-new first grandchild, a visit to welcome him, a ski holiday, and some sewing!

Our family and a few friends sharing memories of my mother under the trees in the tea garden on a nearby grape and rose farm.  They had put the roses on the table for us.

Three days later, a whirlwind visit to Wales to see my daughter T, and her new-born son, E.  First, one night in London with my son M - these daffodils growing in the pavement outside his flat:

 

Then a six-hour drive to Cardiff to arrive only an hour after they got home from the Maternity Unit!  M and I camped out on the couches in their tiny 1-bed flat.

 And the first quilt for E, originally he was referred to as "Pickle".  It's been a long time since I free-motion quilted anything, but this called for it, rather than being frame-quilted.  Or rather the thought (under pressure) of clearing all the stuff off and from under the frame to pull the frame out just seemed overwhelming.  Back is brushed cotton (flannel).

Just had four days with them, as a prior booked family ski holiday couldn't be missed.  This is view out of the plane window as it's coming in to land at Tarbes/Lourdes airport - those are the Pyrenees  Mountains covered in snow in the background:

And some skiing and snow hiking took place:

 The view from the apartment window in Bareges, it's snowing out there:

 The Tour de France comes this way in summer, a lovely day for skiing:

Morning coffee with chocolate macaron and pistachio tart decorated with fresh myrtille berries with my daughter, C:

And on to some sewing...  

Six Block Lotto blocks for February, where we had to take small orphan blocks and dress them up to 9-inch square:

 Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler (RSC) for February.  Same block in two sizes and a couple of wonky windmills from the left-overs.

 A sort of summary of purple February and green March blocks created from RSC inspired colours.  The top three green propeller-like blocks are the Block Lotto ones.  The three green ones underneath are the RSC March sampler blocks, in three sizes.  As purple sort of was about a quarter of my pre-cut scraps I was able to churn out loads of blocks.  Cut green scraps were decidedly less in number. For this year I am still trying to use only the scraps that have been trimmed and sorted, working well so far!

 95 (purple) and 93 (green) 3" 9-patches (for Jack's Chain); 29 and 14 short 9-patches from left-over ends of strip piecing; 35 and 4 5-piece mono slabs 10"x 4"; 23 and 3 8" blocks with 4-patch centres; 101 and 22 3" light/dark squares; 27 and 2 6" economy blocks; and a handful of other odd purple or green blocks

Losing Our Mum

Well February came and went, although plenty of sewing, not much picture taking.  (I can see how lousy my stress levels are, in that I had to correct the spelling of every one of the words in that first sentence!)

I had planned to post yesterday being the end of February, but life does not run in straight lines.

Yesterday, the body of my lovely Mum finally gave up on her.  She lived with the aftermath of a stroke three and half years ago, right-side total paralysis and barely able to speak, but with her mind in a state that she was still able to recall everything that was important to her.  For the past week she was feeling unwell and stayed in bed, choosing (I think) not to eat or drink much, and yesterday morning she left us, on sadly what would have been my Dad's 85th birthday.   I had been recently been reading out loud to her Bill Bryson's book about Britain, and we had been laughing and crying over his amazing turns of phrase about the quirkiness of Britian and the British people.  She had come reluctantly to Africa with my Dad, bringing four children and a dog, and she really missed her home country of Wales, her two brothers and her extensive family.  Oh Mam, we all love you.

Instead of my pictures, here are a few of the quilts she made.  Although she had always knitted and sewed our clothes as children, her quilt sewing took off in earnest after losing my Dad.  She loved to do art and craft things, and quilting filled a gap for her.

 

January end

It's drizzling outside, but not enough to even wet the ground.  Just enough to cool things down a bit, to 25C from yesterday's 37C.  I hope we get the winter rain really early this year and lots of it.  Our dams are pretty near to empty and water-saving is just about the only topic of conversation at the moment here in Cape Town.  We are a city of 4 million people and most are worried about what to do when the taps are dry.  I even saw a few business-men, who normally wouldn't frequent the local plastic shop, worriedly buying containers for collecting water.

I have had a good start to 2018, sewing-wise!  On Friday, less than a week after a fun class of Playing with Stripes, I finished piecing together a free-form mash-up of various sized blocks, basically from a 1.5m piece of striped fabric.   Only one wonky bit, which is fixable. Quite happy with this cot-size top.  It's the next to be quilted.

Then finished the Bonnie Hunter Mystery, On Ringo Lake, about 60" x 72".  Well, I count a top to be finished, for now!  Used 32 of the 50 blocks, so will make another small quilt with all the spare parts.  Or I might finish piecing last year's one!   Click here to go and see the final link-up with other mystery participants!

 

And besides making three Block Lotto blocks, the best part of January was sewing along under the driving force of the 2018 Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I think that this is the first month that I have managed to sew all the pre-cut sizes I store, in the colour of the month, Light Blue.  The haul includes:  45 x 3" nine-patches for Jack's Chain (I think this will be a long-term project),  four Squared Away blocks (2018 project - only use pre-cuts!) from Soscrappy.  Other bits sewn were piles of five by 2.5" x 4.5" bricks into graduated monochrome blocks, lots of pairs of light and medium 2" x 3.5" bricks into squares, and a few double 4-patches using 2" and 3.5"" squares (which missed the photo!), about a dozen 2" wonky windmills (also missed the photo) and three wonky nine-patches from the short bits. 

Summer holiday staycation sewing

Some sewing on Bonnie's Mystery.  This was taken lunch time yesterday:  some blocks made, and some layouts that I had thought might be used.

And, I am very happy to write, Sophie has resumed the Block Lotto.  These are my three blocks for January and I enjoyed making them.  They are 9.5" now, to finish at 9". Curiously I initially thought the instructions were complicated, mainly as I did not notice the small white areas in the pattern picture!  But once the pieces were cut the instructions become very clear!