Lots of pictures!

17 Just Takes 2 blocks done, in fact I only have two left to paper-base piece, and about 7 or 8 to applique, so these might be the take-to Quilt Retreat weekend to finish.  There a few similar blocks, but each has different fabrics.

Was putting this finished one back in its filing sleeve, and wondered why it didn't look like the picture, so some unsewing and resewing done!

Halves put together wrong!  But interesting!

This is now right!

And the first picture here is the prep for the central applique, and then the finished block.

 And finally the rest.  Now up to 34 star blocks made, one is peeping here.

More words and one picture

Had a good couple of weeks, have completed about 13 Just-Take-2 blocks and started putting Section C together, but again have to wait for the appliqued ones.  Just counted the photos on my phone plus 3 more, as I try to take a picture of each as I finish it.  Soon I'm going to figure out how to upload photos straight from phone to blog, promise! Have 30 small stars done!

Tomorrow is our quarterly Guild meeting, have to be there real early, and I'm not good at real early!    Can't even go to bed early tonight as we will be out celebrating a wedding anniverary (Ours! 33 years!)

I was happy to see one or two of my blocks at opposite sides of the globe in Laurina's and Kate's quilts made from the February Block Lotto.

 (Ah ha!  Just added a picture from a URL!)

Saw the first episode of the first season of Da Vinci's Demons on Monday, well part of it, as I was out and the recording didn't get the first 20 minutes!  This is the production that has spirited away my daughter's boyfriend to Wales, with daughter.  I think they are enjoying being there, but it's far from her home, but closer to his family in Holland!

More pictures

My plan is to do at least one Just Takes 2 block each day!  I'm past half-way now, have selected all the fabrics for the last 7 blocks - all cutting gets done during my Thursday evening group, should get the last ones cut this week.  I will be able to hand sew some of the applique ones once all cutting done.  I have to admit, I'm starting to enjoy the hand applique, but still don't think I'll do it voluntarily again!   I try to take a photo each block as I finish it, but then have to remember which ones I've posted here!

Inspired by the blogs I read to finally have a "structured" Leader and Ender project, instead of just grabbing odd scraps.   Like Tazzie's they will finish at 4" square.  It's time to start using Bonnie's scrap user system!!

My JT2 now have star ratings!  ie, how many stars get pieced as L&E!   Not formally keeping track, but these two were 3 star blocks:

 More  blocks:

And these are the star blocks so far.  The fabrics span decades, I see some from the 70's when I started my hexagon opus (still in progress)!  The one with the tiny hats on was bought in 1994 - for a dyeing workshop, we had to have a print with a white background, there weren't a lot around at that time!  I think I have some scraps of the dyed ones too.  The brown/blue floral centre (3 down, 3 across) is from the very first quilt that I made together with my mother (1976-ish).

Some pictures and a few words

I use my phone to take photos, editing them in Picasa before uploading them.  I now have a new phone, and struggling to sync to PC with it, here are some new photos of blocks done.  T - do you see all your discarded threads stitched onto a square...

Three for Just Takes 2

Made this block yesterday, it's 6 inches square:

 

  Finished this block started yesterday, it's 15 inches almost square: (T - all the diamond seams are pressed open!)

 And did this 12 inch square one tonight:

Autumn starting

The last few days here have been thankfully cooler and almost windless, perfect for sewing.  From late March to end May is my favourite time for weather, no wind, not hot, not cold, some welcome rain.  As we purportedly live in a warm climate our houses (and especially mine built over 80 years ago) generally have no central heating/cooling.  The rooms in my house have high ceilings (10' / 3m), under a high pitched roof, coolish in summer but unpleasantly cold in winter.   Sometimes in winter it's warmer outside in the sun than inside!  I have a mobile aircon unit in my sewing room, and hoping to have a split unit installed sometime this year (that depends on when the old garage abutting the room is demolished, and that depends on when the stored contents in said garage get dealt with in some way!)

For ages I have thought about teaching quilt-making and serendipitously had recently met a friend from school who was looking for a teacher because she wanted to make a wall-hanging with flying geese.  After a number of emails between us we spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday pulling fabrics, cutting and teaching her how to paper-base flying geese blocks. 

I made nine blocks for this month's Block Lotto, but only two are the right size, the other seven are a bit short, so will keep them, and if I have a chance/feel like it, will make some more.  They were fun to do and, as as one of the other lotto participants said, takes more time choosing the fabrics than to sew!  They are 6" x 9" finished ( +15 x 23 cm).  I also forgot when sewing them up that I had cut the backgrounds from three difference blues, and so mixed them up, and don't have enough of blues to change, and not unsewing!!

Part B done...

Yay!  Part B of Just Takes 2 is together (instructions were published July 2012!!).  Thought I still had another applique block to go!   Have stitched some blocks for the next part, and have cut some more ready to sew..

This one is a cute 6" block, it was the last applique in this part:

Taken on my design floor, see the little block at the bottom:

And some gratuitous pictures of the eclectic range of tiles my sister has ready to go up on her new kitchen walls (laid out on her "design stoep" in the rain on Easter Monday).  Think they might stir some quilt inspiration:

 

 

 

More cheerful...

Have had such a busy week!  Decided it was time to move on from that last depressing post!  T went back to the UK on Easter Friday, she looked really happy to go!  It was great to have her here for so long.  We celebrated both her and my birthday with a family lunch (12 of us) at home as her flight was late at night.  Had the gammon that we'd frozen at Christmas (because we forgot to start cooking it!).  Yummy!  C helped cook, whilst I helped T pack and put away what she couldn't take.

Have since  rearranged my sewing space and moved the quilt frame against a wall - it had been standing in the middle of the room since it arrived in October.  Couldn't move it sooner, as I had a bed in the room as well.  It's so nice to be able to move around the middle of the room again rather than shuffling sideways between desk, frame, table, cupboards!

I'm on a roll to "not tidy up", but to declutter!  That means giving away useful but unwanted things and throwing anything not useful.  eg  had a pile of jigsaws and children's board games (that were in drawers under beds) - some had bits broken (remember Mousetrap!) so got binned, others in good condition will be offered to my sister for her school, or taken to the local charity store.   Actually getting rid of the beds as well!!  (No T, we still have your jigsaws unopened waiting to be done!)
   .... looooong way to go.


Pictures of quilty things next time!

Crime and Four more blocks

We had an early awakening yesterday morning.  My cell phone rang before 5am, it was our security company telling me that we had an intruder on our property.  Apparently a neighbour had phoned them.  Within 2 minutes there were at least two cars from the security company as well as two or three  police vans here.  All trouped through the house and searched our large and dark back garden, but no sign of anyone and we didn't see any signs of attempted break-in.  All left, and about an hour later I heard someone walking across the roof of our carport going towards the street, we think someone had been hiding on top of our roof out of sight, probably scaled the wall using the burglar bars on the kitchen window as a ladder!

Later in the day our neighbour spoke to P and said their dogs had been barking and they saw someone on the wall between our properties and called in.

Getting quote tomorrow to have electronic alarm beams installed in back garden.

And in spite of being tired last evening did manage to stitch up four more JT2 blocks.  I was feeling to lazy to print out the paper-base for the first one below, decided to stitch it without base...hmmm... wasn't any quicker in the end as all the pieces cut were oversized for paper-base, and had to re-trim every piece carefully.  The colours are all purples, not blue!

 

 

Disaster and recovery!

I'm writing this with some relief today, as after 12 nerve-wracking days, I finally managed to restore my regional Guild's web-site that I have been the designer/manager/programmer of since it was started in 2007.   I had originally created it in basic html, and then a year or so later set it up in Joomla! 

And I must say that I've had no formal training in this, just buy the book, read as much on-line as possible, and hope to goodness that nothing too technically complicated arises!

Joomla! is a marvellous open source content managed system for web-sites.   A couple of years ago I tried  unsuccessfully (with some "expert" help) to update the Joomla version, as the community had developed some great features.  As I am soon to hand over my baby to another keen quilter I decided two weeks ago that it was time to try again to have the latest version running it.  That's when the disaster struck!  Seemingly total wipe-out!  But all was safe, just needed to have the hosting Systems Admin (very nervously) remove ALL the files on the server, then I uploaded the files previously saved locally, fiddled a bit with the MySql tables, and was astonished to see that even the new info added just before The Disaster is all happily in place.  I'm sure How I Did a Recovery is not written in any manual or wiki anywhere


I'm hoping that there is another quilter/knowledgeable Joomla user, or someone who knows one, out there who might be prepared to share How To Do a Version Upgrade (without losing all the current data!).

But did manage to sew one Just Takes 2 block, and take a photo of the baby jerseys knitted ages ago but only recently sewn up.

I didn't crop all of it - just left some of the cutting mat, so you can see it is 12.5" square!

March Block Lotto blocks

These were fun and easy to make, named "Steps" blocks.  They are each 6.5" x 9.5" and will give me 9 drawing chances in the lotto.

Some small finishes

I'm still plodding away at Just Takes 2, managed to complete Part A today, almost a year after the instructions were published!  This is about a quarter of the whole quilt!  Have done a few blocks from the next section, but the applique takes a..g..e..s!!  And I'm determined to hand stitch them.

Other than the hand applique, this was the first hand-pieced block, all the others have been machine pieced.

Great niece!

This month's colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is Orange .  Today is not a sewing day, but itching to get started with orange.

Having got my mother hooked on making fabric from my left-over scraps, and her taking a whole lot of scraps with her to Australia two months ago (she's back tomorrow, yay!) to give herself something to do, she's now got my eight-year old niece making the most fabulous pieces of made fabric.  My sister sent some photographs of S in action and her work, and she's been waiting for me to put them here (my sister takes way better photos than I do!).  I asked S on Thursday what her favourite colours are, so now need to find lots of pink and blue scraps!  Mam - hope you've left some scraps for S!

Serious concentration here (do her feet even touch the floor!):

 Keeping her fingers away from the needle:

 Nice straight seam (and I don't know what she is actually sewing here!):

 Ta-da!

 And these are her made fabrics, and my sister is so proud of how neat the backs are:

 
And don't you just love those teeny tiny four-patch centres!

Cymru am byth! **

Happy St David's Day!   Today is the Welsh National Day.  We used to get a half-day off school, after dressing up in costume and a big group picture taken!  Well, actually... my mam had one costume (she had sewn and knitted)  that fitted a 6-year old, and my three close in age sisters and I each got about two chances to wear it to school!

I don't have pictures - but go and look and these links!

Traditional Welsh quilts   most of them were made from woollen fabrics

Web images of St David's Day

St David's Day at Wikipedia

St David's Day at schools    (those Welsh Cakes look good - think I might make some today!)


** Wales forever!