Tea and Sympathy

Definitely tea and sympathy has been the order

of the day at our place over the past two weeks.

I've only just felt like sitting at the machine today and

sewing strips - nice and simple and not too much thinking!

Mardi Gras update, eight blocks so far with another

twenty eight to go!

I could go with nine full blocks set three by three, example of one

setting style above and

when all 36 are ready for playtime there'll be

some time spent arranging and re-arranging.

I could also go this way

I'm sure I'll find a few different settings when the time comes.

We can't quite believe that within the course of two weeks or so

we had news that two dear friends and a cousin of

my husband had died. 

The first we heard a friend in Germany had passed

peacefully in her sleep - younger than I am!

Then we had a call from Australia telling us that John's cousin

had died, again a good 10 yrs younger than me,

then an email from England with news of another long time

friend, known by me since I was

around 6 years old and as I'm now 70 that's a lot of years!

I'm now in a better frame of mind and quilting will

help, also I've been out for a few lemons off the tree,

lemon curd making tomorrow!

Hope that in the midst of all the turmoil in the

world at the moment you're still able to

enjoy quilting.

Maureen

Forgotten Houses

Rummaging through an un-finished project drawer

I came across 13 house blocks, these were

part of the RSC 2016 challenge

I have 13 blocks and the original plan was to

make considerably more than that over the year

but I found it difficult keeping to one colour

theme each month, project stalled!
A mix of Kaffe Fassett, Philip Jacobs, Jinny Beyer
fabrics with a few very old florals thrown in.

So, back to the machine yesterday with 12 of them

and here they are.
I decided not to add sashing,

 when they were up on the wall

I had a flash back to my childhood in Lancashire UK.

 We lived in terraced houses, 'though I was lucky

enough to be a few strides away from fields and a farm.

 These are not truly representative of rows of terraced rows

 but to me they say home, friends and family and surroundings

of childhood.

My next decision is whether to border or just bind - my gut

feeling is to leave this just as is and bind, it will hang on one of walls

in my sewing room to take me back to the wonderful times of

childhood.

What do you think?

Just having gone along to the mail box I feel that yes, Spring

is truly here, even though we're having a lot of rain. My tulips

from last year are all up and just about to open

only nine up this year.

On my mind at the moment are all who are

suffering from the devastation

in various parts of the USA.

Visiting
Julie
and
Linda
for sew stitch snap SHARE #12,
lots more goodies to see!

Also linking up with 

Scraptastic Tuesday - September

Back on track with my quilting - baby steps!

Had itchy fingers after taking things slowly

for a few days so off on to another project!! Do I really need another project

I asked myself - I thought perhaps I did!

Before doing that I decided to steadily tidy through

my wire baskets which hold most of my fabric stash.

First up was green

then yellow and orange

pinks and red 

blue and purple

I had an excess of blues and some have spilled over into another

basket. I have no idea why I collected so many blues -I don't use it 

a heck of a lot. The remaining 18 baskets will be

attacked a few here and there.

I'm sure you all know about my passion for the

Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics,  sorting these into

colour groups can sometimes be a bit dodgy. It's easy to get an

overall impression of the focus colour but with so many other

colours in the mix it can sometimes be a hit and miss affair.

However, the abundance of colour is the reason I love them!

As a break from this I decided to delve into the containers of strips,

long and short, thick and thin, some not uniform in width. Strips

were picked randomly but looking at these quarter blocks

I can see I've begun with two lighter blocks and veered off to

my usual richer fabrics!

It doesn't matter because this is intended to be 72" x 72" and they'll all hopefully

play nicely !! These blocks are 12".

Don't know why the two bottom photos are not keeping in line.

Name for this quilt will be "Mardi Gras".

I'm thinking now of blogger friends who may be caught in 

Hurricane Irma, in fact anyone who is experiencing this horrific

catastrophe. We have been following on the TV news reports,

quite unbelievable.

Stay Safe.

Maureen