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

Thursday again

Well, I finished the 10 churn dash blocks today - not good!!

I have a photo and it's taken on a ridiculous angle, but that's all I

could manage today, reason why after the photo

with wavy blocks!

 I wouldn't want to size this to Xtra Large.
 I've had back/neck problems for ages

and at my review Monday of my CT scan and appt with the Spinal 

specialist they confirmed that basically my whole spine is in a

very bad way.

I won't bore you with the effect this is having on me, but it's enough to make

life very, very difficult in a number of ways and extremely painful.

Decreased sensation in my fingers is having an effect on

my patchwork piecing and that bugs me!!! Small pieces
are now a no go for me, as you can tell by looking
at the Churn Dash blocks above.

Whilst I'm mulling over some issues relating to the above I

had a wander around the garden,

the camellia below is superb, around 6" across

and look what's just opened in time

for the official start of Spring tomorrow here in

New Zealand - my special little violet "Freckles".

Time to head over to see what's happening

on

Sew Stitch Snap SHARE

with

Linda at Koka Quilts
and
Julie at JulieLou

see you there!

Maureen

A Brief Encounter .....

This will be brief due to a silly way of rushing to grab a hold

of the car door - thankfully no fingers trapped but I tore

one of my nails almost halfway down the nail bed!!

OUCH

This was on Monday and luckily we were almost right next to our

doctor's surgery so I hopped in there and the

ever so kind nurse trimmed of what she could, the saying

"hanging by a thread" now has a whole new

meaning for me!

Very difficult to sew/type, below is all I could manage

this week.

So here are four 6" Churn Dash blocks, these

will be in the next row of my Memory Quilt 1,

see the labels on the right for a past photo.

I foolishly thought I could try a little hand quilting (sore

finger left hand), the quilt - Paintbox - was already in the hoop

with three blocks quilted - but it was a no go!!

All my above efforts were closely watched over by my

faithful helper

who is obviously letting me know that she's not moving!
I'll be back in a few days, have a good weekend.

Projects - present and future - and a visit to sew stitch snap SHARE

We're still in Winter, at least officially, but this beauty

was flowering yesterday

and heaps more all ready to open, the scent is out of this world.

I've finished my Golden Strips top

I had to lay it on the floor to take the photo, not enough room

on my design wall and the morning light was brighter than

I would have liked for photographing.

Here's a close-up with one of my favourite fabrics with

the gorgeous roses in Yellow Floral Delight, a Philip Jacobs design.

I 'd decided there was no more room on my book shelves for any

more quilting books but then I succumbed to this one,

it arrived in the mail a few days ago

and it's another glorious publication!!

One of the first quilts which caught my attention was this one

and it really is brighter than it looks here.

I have lots of the KF  stripes and his shot cottons so

this is on my list, the best part is I don't need to think about spending

on fabrics.

My Little Bits blocks are coming along slowly, there's quite

a lot of cutting in this one. Placement is supposed to be random, it is a scrappy quilt

after all,

but I'll make all the blocks before putting them up on the wall

and play around with them.

Paying a visit to 

Linda and Julie

for

sew stitch snap SHARE