Q7 Irish chain

Q7 is an Irish chain quilt. I got every colour in a range of fabrics and created my Irish chain. The quilt took such a long time to make as there was a 2 month pause in the middle when we painted the house and then again when I made Manie his birthday quilt. I hand stitched each pice and then hand quilted the whole quilt.I used a wool batting and it has really made the qult soft and warm.  I love the brightness of this quilt.

The dates were as follows:     Design start date     - 1st of April 2011
                               Piecing start date    - 1st July 2011
                               Top completed date    - 4th March 2012
                               Quilting completed    - 25th May 2012Stats                          colours               - 14
                               blocks                - 1500
                               approximate time      - 9 months with spending at least 3 hours a day stitching so that would be approximately 830 hours hand stitching. 
Here is the design:

Here is the actual quilt

Happy the mothers day

Thanks to my whole family for the amazing presents and the fun that we had yesterday. I was spoilt rotten with a huge amount of fabrics and notions. I will be using all of the fabrics in my Dear Jane quilt. I need to scan in all the fabrics and then see where I am going to use them. I think that there are at least 150 fabrics so zowwee wowwee the quilt is going to be fun.

I have now completed all four side of my Irish chain quilt and have the four corners as well as the centres to do. I am no longer freaking out about the completion as I can see the end. I am still designing the Dear Jane and We may be going away this coming weekend. I don't know if my poor husband will be able to be brave enough to leave DIABLO III behind after only having it for 3 days. Now we know that a good game will have between 64 and 120 hours play so this game will have to be left in suspended play whilst we are away from the house.

The biggest worry I have is that we are going to have to put the two spoilt kitties into a kennel for 2 nights. These cats truly believe that they too are human. Well we do love them and they are members of the family and they are just not human cos they really are not annoying like the rest of us. My youngest will be bringing along her kindle and other electronic game thing so at least for the first day we should have a happy teenager and there after we will have to see.

I mustn't laugh at them as by day 2 I will probably also be climbing the walls if I don't sneak some sewing or knitting along. Tonight we have to take the kitties to have their de-worming and shots done as the kennels wants a certificate showing that the kitties are not going to bring in strange things. Hopefully it all goes well. I was nagged to apply for the job that I currently do. There were 5 positions created for the various bits of my work. Well, when I did apply, I was told that I could stay as a contractor, I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing. At least my salary will not be cut now, but who knows how long I will keep my contract. I think that I was too old, too pale and spoke the wrong language. Well who cares life happens as it happens.

The temperature in our room was 10 degrees this morning and finally I broke drown and hauled out the heater and used it. I know it was 10 degrees as the heater display the temperature. I think it so that you can be impressed by the warmth it creates. The weather looks like its going to get colder and colder as the week goes by. I think that winter is trying to show itself.

Keep warm wherever you are.

Colours am be fun

In preparation for Mothers day next sunday, this Saturday we went through to Pretoria to go to a fabric shop that had just got in a major shipment of fabric in from the States. My requirement for bright fabrics was fulfilled and I got 27 fabrics for my dear jane and a full set of fabrics with bubles on them. I love getting one of each colour in a range, it is just like when I was in the grade 1 and got a new box of 100 crayons. I think that bright colours are the best and if this means that I am a shollow person, so be it. I often look at quilts and am impressed with the fact that the person making the quilt, resisted using any primary colours. Muted sounds like strangled and I would hate that, I love things that are loud of colour and shout their joy at being around.

I have now done 2 and a third of the border on the irish chain and a few of the inner circles. I redid the Dear Jane design on the software that I bought and the new one looks a whole lot better. This too will be a bright quilt.

Work is being annoying again with them wanting to become a permanent employee. I find this annoying seeing as I have been a contractor for the last 30 years and hate the concept of being owned by a company. I have seen over the years that you do not have any more security being employed by a company indeed sometimes I think that you have less, as companies often just want to get people off their books. As is I really would hate to work for one of the large banks in south africa as their policy is to get rid of people in Novemeber and then rehire in february for march and thereby saving themselves the whole last quarter of fees. What a bunch of pale blue shmucks. Oh well let us see what comes to pass. Being an old broad, I also need to toe the line otherwise I may once again face not working.

The weather is being amazingly warm if not downright over hot; but, each moring it is still fresh and remind one that we are 6 weeks away from the start of winter. Well back to the grindstone whilst I sit and think colours and do logic. I always think that people who listen to music whilst working are a bunch of slackers. They can just play the song in their heads like us old farts do.

Well then have a stunning day










Arb fact for the day:

The first crayons was a mixture of charcoal and oil. In the early 1900s,
cousins Edwin Binney and Harold Smith developed a nontoxic wax crayon. Binney’s wife, Alice, attached the French word for chalk, "craie", with "ola", from oily, to form the Crayola brand name. Their first box of Crayola crayons came in a box of eight colors of  black, blue, brown, green, orange, purple, red, and yellow, and were sold for a nickel in 1903.  By 1957, 40 new colors were added. Today, there are more than 120 crayon colours, including Atomic Tangerine, Blizzard Blue, Mango Tango, Outrageous Orange, Laser Lemon, Screamin’ Green and Shocking Pink. Over 5 billion crayons are produced each year. To date, over a 100 billion crayons have been produced so far.

May the force be with you

 Here is a little funny for star wars day!

 And now for a little comic montage

 And finally have a stunning day...

Merry month of May

So May. It always starts so well what with being a public holiday. Yay to comrades that work. I always call myself a worker, mostly because it annoys all the people around me who think they do something interesting and have careers.

Anyway back to May. The sad part of May is that all the long weekends are a thing of the past. April is one of those month where we not only have Easter, but, Human rights day, Freedom day and Workers day, that is one thing about living in the deepest part of dark Africa is that the public holidays are weird and plentiful.

So soon we may have purple hippo freedom day and I will happily stay at home and quilt. Both my husband and I are contractors so we do not get paid for public holidays so that is always a bit annoying.

The next thing is that the trees are now all wearing yellow and red coats and shedding like crazy. The temps are still pretty warm and we have not hauled out the heaters as yet. We have been sleeping under both a woollen and cotton quilt. The thing is houses in South Africa are not insulated against the cold and we leave out windows open at all times so that the kitty cats can come in and out. The cats too have now joined us on the bed for some extra heat whereas in summer they sleep all over the show and don't need to cuddle.

Progress on my Irish chain is going well with only the 2 and half borders left to do and it is taking me about 6 hours a border. I also need to go over each of the inner blocks and un-poof the centres. That will probable take me another 3 hours so 24 hours to go. Se spilt screen and clock going tick tick. Oh how our lives are governed by cinemagraphic iconography...

I got my Dear Jane software and loaded my selection of colours. I did the whole quilt using the colours I though would work , unfortunately the end resul looked like a weird fish. So I just had to go out and buy a tiny bit more fabric (only 3 metres in quarter metre bits (12 qaurters) so now I need to rescan the fabrics reload and try again. I will do this inbetween  doing the borders. Yesterday my youngest mentioned a strange fish in response to my whining about the fact that the colour choice looked like a fish, so here it is - itis called an axolotl and yes it is for real.

Well hope you have a pleasant May.

Post long weekend

What is your opiate; this is for all the people that scoff at people that have a religion.

I am weirded out when people are all in your face about their belief system.

I find on facebook especially people are all excited about how much booze they have consumed every weekend and then have a mainstream religion posted in their belief system and state that the book supporting their religious belief is their most funnest book ever to read.

 The biggest problems in this world of ours is that people have not worked out that all these religions that they follow are basically the same one created in the middle east and have caused untold hassles due to tiny differences, but that is going away from what I was thinking and that is if you don't use religion as you opiate what do you use.

I have been known to disappear into books and fantasy world where everything is neat and tidy and sorted within 360 pages. I currently do quilting which is a state of oblivion where all you need to think about is the next stitch whilst staring fixedly at colour and often having the television expound on some disaster, horrific murder, strange disease or whatever other crap I watch. I then get to brag about on this page which nobody gives a damn about, so really it is the highest form of self delusion.  This gets me through the day with the same oblivion that alcohol and a belief system can fills other people with. The rest of my family play computer games and switch off their minds by being heroes, unfortunately the characters they are playing often seep into their real personas which is can be real bitch.

So in conclusion I think I actually am impressed with people who not only say they believe but actually meet up with other people who share their belief system; it may be totally stupid but for the while they do communicate with each other and even in the Catholic service you may not stay for coffee like the Baptist do but you do shake hands of friendship with those around you.

So whatever.