Weekend fun

I don't know about you, but I had a great weekend, even though I had to work.

Friday was an extra day off, we were all awarded a wellness day, as a thank you for all the hard work and effort that we have put in, even me who was off work for eight weeks. So I took it on Friday.

I played all day, with my floral scraps, making up blocks and even adding the first sashing strips.

This is how I left them when I went off to prepare dinner. Debbie and her hubby joined us. We had Prawn toasts and spring rolls, followed by chicken and corn soup and Tony's amazing crispy shredded sweet chilli beef.

Debbie brought a HUGE banana cake.

That was a late night, and I thought I might be late for zoom on Saturday.

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I wasn't late for zoom, I was awake in plenty of time to grab a cuppa and get logged in.

I spent the morning working on my Lucy Blue EPP project.

Of course.

It was good to see everyone and I enjoyed myself, listening and chatting until it was time to head off to work.

I added three large blocks and four smaller spacer blocks.

I'm on to the last row!

Then I'll need to go around and add the edge pieces.

Chooky, thank you once again for a great day. 

A little while ago I wondered about making it a little bigger, but decided in the end, to stick with original size, it's a good size for hanging in my hall way.

Tony wasn't available for my photo shoot today, so I pegged it on to my quilt hanging rail to get a good picture.

And decided while I was at it, I would change the guard.

I like to change the quilt hanging at the end of the hallway. Some stay for only a few weeks, some stay longer.

This one is a regular, I'm very fond of it.

It sometimes gets used as a table cloth too.

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Also today I played in my sewing room pretty much right up to the moment I had to run out of the door for work. LOL

I was determined to get the floral scrapper together and to get the first border on.

And I did it. I had just enough fabric, though there are a few more joins than I would like in some of those longer pieces.

I think I'll add a tiny peeper border (Chooky you've started something.....) before adding another neutral border.

That is a job for tomorrow.

I did think this one might be a donor quilt, but I've fallen in love with it.....

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On the whole, I think I had a fantastic weekend.

I hope yours was just as good.

The dangers of procrastination

I was fiddling about in my room on Sunday, not really doing much. I should have been cutting my floral scraps, but instead I was procrastinating, poking about in this drawer and that. I noticed that my collection of batik scraps is getting a little out of control and making the drawer look untidy.

So I hauled them all out and dumped them on the cutting table. Then had a tidy up in the drawer and before I knew it, it was time to go to work.

Over night an idea was born and this morning I scooted in to town and purchased yet another set of plastic drawers. My collection of batik scraps in all their little containers were all tucked neatly away, and there was still plenty of room for my collection of fabric crumbs, so in they went.

I really wasn't sure what to do with this little collection though. They are rejects from this quilt top and are only partially batiks. 

Hmmmmm, I left them out and vowed to have a think about what I could do with them.

While I was in town, I called in to the sewing centre, hoping to find a blue binding for the OP Shop Top.

No perfect blues, but I did find the perfect burgundy.

And I found an end of bolt, just under a half meter of a cream grunge, with spots.

I thought it might work with my floral scraps. I'm pleased to say that I was right.

So pleased in fact that I started cutting soon after I put together my drawers and cleared all the batiks off the cutting table. . But first I made leek and potato soup for lunch, I left it simmering while I played with fabrics. I got a whole bunch of 5 inch squares cut.

Then soon after lunch, the squirrel hopped in through the open window!

Full of ideas about what to do with that wee box of rejects and before I knew what was going on, I was playing with those instead of cutting florals.

My first efforts met Jack the ripper!

But the second idea worked out much better.

I got as far as putting a column together before deciding to stop and sit down for a while. 

I'll need to find something to use as border and binding, but I'm sure that won't be too hard.

Thank you Mr Squirrel, you can be on your way to help someone else for a while.

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So you see the danger of procrastination and pottering about doing not very much really, is that it becomes an open invitation for the squirrel to visit.

 

The Squirrel Came Back.

I was a little worried the other day to read that the squirrel had hopped over to Kiwikid Sues place, to distract help her out. As I had only half a plan for finishing the HSTs. But I set off yesterday, hopefully sewing them together. As I suspected, there were issues with lost points and varying block sizes. That is the nature of 11 year old scraps. Well that's what I told myself.

That little group at the top was about half an inch narrower than the others! EEK!

What now?

I turned both pieces this way and that and discovered that my rearranging had reduced the difference to a quarter inch, then inspiration, or the squirrel struck and I popped a piece of Jelly roll in there, which helped to disguise the difference.

Perfect.

I kept on adding a few more pieces of jelly roll log cabin style.

I'll call this a completed top. It's a nice size for a bassinet or a small crib, or even a wall hanging.

I have some lovely chocolate brown slices of Jelly roll that I will use for binding, but first I must quilt it.

There were a few rejected blocks and some left over  HSTs, they went into the crumb basket.

I'll address them another day.

Next I pulled out the floral scraps again, maybe this time they will get their chance to shine.

You can see right at the top of the photo the cutting guide for what I hope to do with them.

I just need to dig out a suitable fabric to use for sashing.

I hope to start cutting today.

And finally, I completed the wash cloth I was knitting during the zoom session.

If you have never tried using these cute little hand knitted cloths you should.

They are lovely to use. I have some for cleaning the house and some that I keep especially for cleaning me and my grand children.

That's all of my news, now I'm off to do chores, before I play. 

 

That Pesky Squirrel.

Before I went off to work on Monday, I had sewn all of the bindings on to the Frankenmats, then pinned all of the bindings to their backs. Usually I enjoy closing bindings by hand, but I thought that as these mats are already such experimental pieces, why not try another new method and close the bindings on the machine?

Yesterday, (Tuesday) I set about doing just that.

The results, are not perfect, but the bindings were successfully closed.

I worked from the front, using my ditch foot as a guide.

And I'm really rather pleased with how that worked out.

One table runner.

And six placemats.

Does that mean that I have seven finishes for April?

LOL

And here are five more finishes.

To add yet more to the monstrousness nature to these mats, I used up several odd bits of bobbin thread and finished off five odd spools of thread. 

One more thing I did on Tuesday was to have another play with the floral scraps. I laid them all out on the floor, in no particular order, I just wanted to be sure that they would all play nicely together.

I went off to work and left them that way.

Hmm, it looks like a fight broke out and some of them disagreed.......

Or maybe Belle decided to have a little play?

LOL

When I went into my room this morning and found them like that, I picked them all up and put them back on to the table, then the squirrel appeared and I found myself playing with some completely different scraps!

I've had these tiny little HST off cuts for many years.

You can see their donor quilt here.

Try as I have, I cannot find the beginnings of that project. I thought there may have been another project that had also donated triangles, but I cannot find evidence of that either.

So anyway, .....

following the squirrel on some historic date I had sewn some of the squares together and then abandoned what ever I had planned. Something else I can find no record of!  They have lain tucked away in my Fig Tree Fabrics drawer, for quite some time. I have pulled them out occasionally, fiddled with them, then put them away again on more than one occasion.

Today the squirrel led me to join more of the squares together and create flying geese units.

Some are tidier then others and I know that where ever this wee project goes, I'm going to end up losing a lot of points, which is I'm sure, why they have been repeatedly returned to the drawer, but today I carried on anyway.

I stopped here when Tony came home for his lunch.

I'm really not sure where this is going.

But right now I am sure that I'm going to make a cuppa, then I'll sit n sip while I unsew some that were on one of their previous outings sewn up in a different way.

Do you have scraps that behave like this?

Frankenmats.

Do you recall, before I got ill, way back to February? 

I was playing about with crumbs.

Well today, they finally got some more attention. I had gone into my room to have another look at those florals to see if I could come up with a solid plan for them. But I was distracted by the crumbs. I have played about making up blocks here and there and had even gotten some of them sewn into good sized pieces for placemats. One was even quilted, using the templates which Tony gave to me at Christmas. Today I found myself making Frankenbats for the rest of the pile..

Some have not only frankenbats, but also Frankenbacks. LOL

Some are more scrappy than others, but that's ok, these are just utility mats for my table, and I wanted to use them to practice using my quilting templates.

In hindsight, all of those tiny little crumbs and the multitude of seams was probably the wrong project for a first try at using my templates.

I struggled at times to move my sandwich and the template in unison.

A close inspection will reveal many little mistakes.

But I can live with the errors and to be honest, the fronts are so busy, even I'm hard pressed to find the wobbles and I'm easily distracted by all of the happy memories of other quilts and projects all sewn together to create these Frankenmats.

And here they all are.

Six Frankenmats and a frankenrunner.

Not only will those very busy tops hide my first attempts, I think they might hide a few spills too.

Now, I just need to find a suitable binding fabric. I think I may have enough of the blue grey that I used for the backings. Hmm, where is my tape measure?

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While I sewed in my room, Tony fiddled in his room and visited the kitchen to bake bread.

He made a pretty good looking loaf.

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ANZAC Day tomorrow.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of he sun, and in the morning

We will remember them.

Charming

I spent a very pleasant afternoon with my daughter today, between us we cut and pieced this pretty little crib sized quilt. I really like the scrappy effect.



We used up the packs of charms I had recieved free with some other fabric. I have named this one 'Lou and Kays Merry Go Round. As Kay was so much help I figured she deserved to have her name on there.

I'll gift it to the next friend, colleague or family member to have a child.

Hope your day was as good as mine.