Still here with lots of photos

The past six months have passed in a blur.  In April I went to visit my family in Australia and sadly not one picture of any of them, just one of a lizard joining us for breakfast at a garden centre in Brisbane, and a photo of a quilt I made and had sent before but had no photo!  Missed my return flight...gave me an extra three days with my sister.   I returned with almost all of her quilt fabric scraps and pieces, and had a sewing marathon to make fabric from the scraps (but no photos, yet.)

 

  

 

 In the past six months a few quilt tops assembled.  This is one of two made from units from a Bonnie Hunter Mystery:

 

 

And this is the 2024 Quilt Along with Angela at SoScrappy:

All now waiting for their turn to be quilted.

 

This year I've been making six blocks a month in the declared colour of the month. I have kept up to date, but only have photos of some sets of blocks:
 

 

 

Some months I've also found time to stitch up crumb blocks: 

  

 

 

And sometimes I have help from my darling Georgie Girl:

 

This post had taken ages to write, and maybe that's why I have shied away from blogging.  Whilst I do appreciate that it's a free service, Blogger keeps changing/reducing it's options, and not always for the better.

 

Till next time! 

Jaunty January

The summer here has been seemingly hotter than usual, or I think I am seriously missing the aircon from my old sewing room!  We haven't had much cooling wind, and that also means that there has been less rain in the northern part of the country.  But that hasn't stopped me sewing as much as possible.

This is the sum total of reels of thread used up in 2024.  They weren't all full to start the year  and have now been put in the recycling bin.  Already have one emptied for 2025.

 

I've been trying to move various projects along, and have started a few new ones.  Two mystery quilts started earlier this month are in progress and these are some of the fabrics for the first one, Good Hope Quilters' Guild's named The Cape Winelands.  A bunch of deep bright blues have since been added.

 

 

Pink is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for January.  (Click on the link to go see what others have been doing with their scraps.) The very few pink scraps generated since the last pink month were quickly stitched up into various sized slabs (no pictures).  Over time I've been making notes for ideas to use these slabs of made-fabric.  I wanted to balance the weight of the pieced fabric with other smaller scraps of fabric as a whole quilt with made-fabric is quite heavy.  I was pleased with this first block (12-inch finished):

So stitched some more, and will continue making just six per month in 2025 in RSC colours. 

A couple of needle-turned pieces, the one with yellow stars is the centre from a pattern our Guild was selling to raise funds and is based on a quilt in our Cultural History Museum.  You may find it here: Glenday Quilt.    The other is from my monthly quilt group in which we were asked to fold paper and make cuts like making paper snowflakes, and then use that as a template on a similarly folded piece of fabric.  I just had to stitch it up to see how it would look!

 

 

I occasionally go the Cape Embroiderers Guild and members were asked to embroider anything in the supplied evenweave fabric square (some had outlined squares and some had circles).  I am not that keen a hand-stiticher, and so it sat for about 5 months taunting me to stitch, and this is the eventual result which turned out ok.  The squares will all be stitched together for the CEG's 40th birthday this year.

 

 

 Steady progress on Bonnie Hunter's year-end Mystery, The Old Town.  Thankfully I didn't sew the sashing pieces together as I have decided to change the layout and create little stars at the intersections!  In order, one block pressed, the rest to press, playing with sashing, and playing with layouts.  I think I will make two quilt tops, 3 x 4 blocks each.

 

 

  

Have just realised I haven't taken a photo of my completed 365 quilt top.  So happy with this milestone reached.  Next time!

Wednesday update

 It has been a good week here as I have manged a fair amount of sewing time.

 365 Quilt Challenge:  I have all the 3.5-inch dark blocks complete and have started on the last of the 6.5-inch lighter blocks.  The outer dark border is to be assembled, and until that is done, I have a self-imposed  "no more 365 blocks" until this happens.   The next block will be the fourth corner, and I'm itching to start on that!  The bottom of the small dark blocks in the middle was the very last small one.  The other is the terrible first, and second better attempt, on a pinwheel with mitred corners from an October 3-inch one.

 

 

Three finishes in the past week!

The pink hand-pieced Kawandi, started when in the UK in July, it's lovely and soft. 

 

 

The first quilt on the new-to-me frame, bound and ready to go my sister's school.

 

I have an ecletic collection of yarn, no more than one or two balls of each one, and asked P if he would like a jersey, and to pick the colour.  No pattern, just winged it in a crazy-patch type of arrangement.  Learnt a new way to join shoulder seams with three needles, very neat, and easy to undo when I had to unpick the front to lower the neck-line. (Reminder to self to knit in ends when changing yarns...not wait until the end and have at least fifty to do!)

The second top quilted, this is the pieced back.  My daughter C was here to test drive the machine and frame.  She started it yesterday and I finished it today.  We both still need to work on starts and stops!  More pictures will be taken when it is trimmed and bound.

 

 

And today I was invited to join the rest of the Schools' staff at the year-end function at the Clay Cafe.   This is my glaze painted vase-shaped ceramic base.  This will get oven fired and we may collect all the works of art in a few weeks time.  Colours will change with firing.

 

A Second Back Pieced

Our local regional quilt guild ran a mystery earlier this year, The Spice Route by Dewald Compion.  Each of the Guild's mysteries have been locally themed.  Cape Town was a way station on the spice route between Europe and the East Indies during the sailing ship era.

Although I liked the final reveal, I didn't want to make a large quilt, so turned the units into two smaller quilt tops.  This is the back for the second one (sideways to fit on wall.)

And these are the two tops.

 

 

I like doing mystery quilts, and this time I used made fabric as one of the colours. Brown to me represented the spices.  By using the leftovers on the backs I'm pleased that there are no brown crumbs or slabs left!