Saturday 24 August 2013

Blossoms on the trees

The peach tree now has an amazing amount of blossoms. I like to believe that once the blossoms arrive, then spring is definitely on it's way. The only problem is that although the blossoms are here the rest of the garden seems to have died in the last week. This is due to the fact that it is more than 4 months since we have had any rain and even the most hardy of trees have lost their leaves. 

My whole family have been fighting a flu bug and this has been miserable, luckily we all seem to be getting better. 

My sulk with my dear Jane quilt seems to be over and I fussed it today to remove all of the messy bits of thread and fabric that I could see. I still found one piece of paper hiding on the back. I am sure that when I start quilting, I will find the inevitable piece that will be hiding in the most annoying of places. 

I put in an order for a set of General's fabric pencils. I have no idea how they work but I saw someone's markings for quilting, on Facebook. I was told what they were and after phoning the various quilt shops in this country I did my standard thing and ordered on-line. This is all part of doing quilting in Africa. The pencils cost $2 and the postage was $15 so to make it feel better I also ordered 2 more king size cotton battings. This will now guarantee that I will make at least 3 more big quilts. 

I still have not settled on what I am going to do for the backing of my Dear Jane , but I will just have to wait and see. There is a quilt show on the 7th of September so I will see if I can find something there. I added 8 more pieces to the Dear Jane and that was the corner bits that will be used to make the scollops. I was going to wait until later but decided to get them on now. I went with light blue which does not fit into the whole rainbow montage', but, sometimes you just have to say, hey.

This is one of the birds that live by our pool. I am sure you can see how horrid the grass looks. 


Hope everyone has a grand weekend.  

Sunday 18 August 2013

Top together



The borders and corners have now been added to the centre of the Dear Jane. Here are various pictures.







Wednesday 14 August 2013

Borders Done

The Borders pieces have been attached to their respective triangles and now await being included in the quilt. Each border took approximately 7.8 metres or 8.5 yards of stitching to attach all the parts. This means that in the last 3 weeks I have sewn 31 metres or 34 yards. I have created a new and improve callous on my thumb.

I redid 2 of the triangles as the heart were definitely not hearty enough.

The next step I will be doing is attaching the borders to the centre and then to see if the corners fit in nicely.

As yet I still have not decided what to use for the backing. I have a few bits that are big enough, but they may be too dark. There is going to be a IQC in September, so that may be a good thing to go and look for.

Have an amazing day.

Friday 9 August 2013

Happy Women's day

Happy Women's Day to all that the lovely people that are defined by 2 X chromosomes.

I have lived on the Earth for a while now and have really enjoyed my journey as a women.

The biggest part of the journey is trying to be a loving, creative being. The trick is to be real and not fall into the popular media requirement of being a vapid person. Be true to you.

So to one and all have a lovely princess day!

Thursday 1 August 2013

August blows in...

August is here and so are the winds.

I like august as the blossoms appear in this month. The weather is currently horridly cold in the mornings and this will need to pass soon if I am going to see peach blossoms on the 10th. The poor grass that was green until now seems to have turned brown overnight and will probably stay this way until we get our summer rains in a few months time. We have had no rain since the 2nd of May and the static situation is at a ridiculous range. When walking through the house each time you pass a door frame too closely you get the multi sparkles instead of just single strikes. I feels almost like being a walking Faraday cage Where I am the mesh.

My sister and I both have birthdays in August. We were born a day apart and had daughters who were born a day apart. Synchronism is sometimes fun in the arbitrary way it shows up. Though my birth could have been explained by my mother having toddlers over to her house for my sisters birthday whilst being very pregnant; I was then born the next day. I think that is why my sister had most of her birthday celebrations on my birthday. It is amazing how many decades sibling rivalry can continue for. I am now old and wise and can see the funny side of it when my father waits until her birthday to phone me and wish me well for my birthday. I suppose she has had 3 more birthdays than me so why remember extra info. Though in reality one year I did forget about his birthday for two days.

This month my plan for my Dear Jane is to finish the borders and then attach them to the centre. I still have not decided what I am going to do about the backing. I think that it should not be too dark as there is so much white in the front that it may shine through. I think I am going to use the cotton batting. I currently have an Irish chain which has wool batting and we use it during winter as it really is a lot warmer than the cotton batting quilts. I think then we can have the dear Jane as our light and breezy quilt for summer.

I am gathering together inspiration for my next quilt. I think it will be slightly smaller as I have a wall in my dining room that needs some colour.

Have a great August. 

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