Last Friday night in the Harbour

Just a whack of happy snaps taken on a exciting boat ride in the Cape Town harbour at sunset.  We were part of a parade of light-decorated boats for the Round the World Yachts leaving the next day.  A howling south-easter reduced the numbers to about half of the 60 expected boats.  Lost our way in the dark coming back, nearly ended up in the container terminal instead of the yacht marina.

Yes, this is a pirate ship!

The masts of the yachts in the Round the World event

Pirate ship again - they were really partying hard

A very nice luxury yacht!

Block Lotto for November

After getting home from the retreat, found the sneak peak instructions for the November Block Lotto "XPlus" in my inbox.  Quick to construct, actually took more time to choose the fabrics for these four blocks.  Go and find the free pattern on the "At a Glance" page - to use the pattern you don't need to sign up or join in, unless you want to! 

And opened the envelope from Pink Castle containing this month's solid fabric bundle:

Sewing week-end

Two weekends ago my daughter C and I joined 20 other ladies at a wonderful retreat venue just outside Cape Town, between Malmesbury and Riebeek Kasteel.  Goedgedacht Farm is an inspiration, with great accommodation and food.  Lots of sewing, talking and laughter!  The weather was pretty warm on Friday, slightly cooler on Saturday and Sunday, but bearable in the barn with its thick walls and solid wooden ceiling.

C worked on the borders of about 40 of these blocks and on making +- 55 wonky pinwheels from leftover half-square-triangles (bonus HST from Celtic Solstice), and added a round of purple to all of them, and then green to few.  Not sure that she will sew again, but she did a marvellous job of these!

And whilst she was sewing up a storm, I managed to add sashing and cornerstones to complete one quilt top:

a second to "needs a border" stage (but note to self to add another row, to the top in this picture) - blocks won from Block Lotto:

and add some progress to two other UFOs - Little Houses: finished with a facing, and just needs to have more of the irregular edge bits poked out

 And Simmy's Curvy Squares -  see the pins....the power went off about 30 minutes before we were intending to stop, so this is how it will stay for a while.

Scraps and blocks

I've had great fun in the past few weeks - we have a quilt retreat planned for this coming weekend, so after putting aside all I want to take, I was itching to sew "something". After a very long break from the Rainbow Scrap Challenge I made some fabric with this month's colour- brown.  Brown is probably my least favourite colour, so had only a few scraps and strips.  Made some strata (which will be cut into triangles later) and some crazy pieced chunks of fabric.  Both boxes of brown are empty!!!  Yay!

These were done about 10 days ago:

And then on the weekend added more strips and they ended up like this:

 

These are Twinkle blocks for this month's Block Lotto:

 And these are cute little blocks made from the trimmed triangle scraps - wasn't thinking when I did the red ones, the other three have some form:

 

At our Group meeting weekend before last, we were shown a fun technique of constructing an on-point quilt - by sewing 5 x 8 blocks and making two diagonal cuts, and rearranging the three pieces.  This one was made using 1-1/2" squares.  The person showing us had made about 10 with different size blocks and alternate pieced blocks - and they were stunning!

...and one more finish!

I delayed publishing a post about this quilt until (I hope by now) my sister C has been to visit Mum, and Mum has remembered to give it to her!

My Mum made the blocks, and she finished the top for C for her birthday last September.  C absolutely loves anything BLUE.  But my Mum survived a stroke before she could finish it.  I had bundled this one up, together with all the bits of fabric and it also patiently sat waiting for me to. do. something.  This HAD to be the one I finished next for her, and it WAS done ahead of C's birthday this year!

There were some extra blocks that went on the back with as much of the extra fabric that were used on the top.

...and another finish!

In the middle of packing up my mother's house earlier this year, my sister C asked if I could finish a quilt for a friend of hers.  The friend's mother had started it but had sadly died.  I said yes, took the shoe-box containing the sewn quarter and all the fabrics home, put it in my sewing room and with all the busy-ness forgot all about it.   One day a few months later I saw the shoe-box and had no recollection of it's origins!  Had to ask both of my nearby sisters to remind me!

Took all the bits away to a quilt retreat in May, and cut and stitched, and then finished the top at home.  And then took all the scraps to make fabric for the centre of the back.

Finally quilted and bound it on Sunday this week - delivered it to my sister C to give to her friend.  I do hope that she likes it, and it gives her happy memories.

More finishes!

It feels good to have some finishes to share.  All these quilts were tops just waiting patiently to be finished.

Whilst these Tulip Blocks are not quite finishes, they are the four I've made for the September Block Lotto.  The theme was Tulips for Spring for the Southern Hemisphere participants!

This quilt top was pieced by my Mother at a quilt retreat last year.  I used it to get my hand/eye in with the quilting before doing the two big ones last month.  Made with 2.5" strips from saved scraps.

 

This one was started when I stumbled upon Victoria Findlay Wolfe's creative blog, 15-Minutes Play, so long ago I can't remember when!  It is destined for a new baby girl for a teacher that was at my sister's school

 

I have two more to show...but I think I am going to keep these for later in the week!

Love from Cape Town!