Weekend Progress Report

In the run-up to my Retreat Weekend, I have been busy, busy, busy:

cleaned out dressers and closets to take outgrown clothing to charity shop and bedding to women's shelter

did lots and lots of laundry

did lots and lots of cooking

and then: I attached the binding to my Quilt-in-a-Day 4 and started assembling what I have in terms of top for my Night on the Tiles.

I did not have to go vote because weeks ago I used an absentee ballot to exercise my constitutional right and civic obligation.

But I only needed 20m ...

Instead of spending two hours on a trip into the city centre, I decided to shop online. There will be future projects where I can use up that green thread ... all remaining 780 meters of it. And while I was at it, I got some cream coloured thread for machine quilting my Night on the Tiles.

Last few stitches ....

I love attaching the other side of the binding by hand! It's very soothing and I like pondering the person or cause the quilt is going to.

This quilt is donated in aid of our women's and children's shelter. The ladies who run it pour endless hours and large parts of their strength and hope into the project. And I admire their determination that has provided a safe haven for local women and their children for more than 30 years!

Happily quilting along

6 hours in

The top is completed and sandwiched, the very scrappy binding has been assembled, quilting has begun ... and then I ran out of thread. YIKES!

It's a particular colour by Guetermann and I cannot find it anywhere online. Drat, drat, drat! I really don't want to have to go back to the department store where I purchased the first two rolls. But I think I will have to.

In the meantime, back to my Night on the Tiles. Now I don't have any excuse!

I will be binding when I grow up!

With the top pretty much complete, I need to start fretting about the binding. Here's why:



Not enough colourful material! I can see a scrappy binding in my near future ... which will probably be a LOT of fiddly work. But then it will be a proper scrappy quilt made from 100% cotton.

Time elapsed: 3 hours 45 minutes

90 minutes in: Awaiting assembly

I'm attempting another Quilt in a Day, this time for a soon-to-be-born baby. She's the daughter to my husband's friend and his second wife. He had lost his first wife to cancer and had been single ever since, also because of his very hectic work schedule as a hotelier. Earlier this year, one of his (elderly) guests was being picked up by her daughter and lightning struck.

They are now pregnant and in love and glowing, it is incredibly sweet. And I am very happy for both of them.

I am actually 2 hours and 15 minutes into this project but it's going really well and I am enjoying it immensely.

Finished Granny Square

I finised another blanket, yay! Reading all those posts full of finished pieces was bogging me down a bit ... but no longer, because now I can snuggle under this while I finish the binding on another quilt.

Granny Square Blanket - critique

I really loved crocheting this and it will not be my last granny square. Because I am lazy, I am not sure I will ever make a blanket from many smaller squares but who knows.

What I love about this is that the regimented lines and relative squareness of the blanket are counteracted by the soft and girlish colouring.

Does it have to be symetrical?

Thank God for photos ... I have been staring at this one for a while now and I am wondering whether I need to make this thing more symetrical?

Can you see how every rim is different? That is bothering me right now. Especially because the tiling is perfectly symetrical.

What an apt way to procrastinate! Doubting the design and needing to solve this problem before I invest any more time, sigh!

My day job ...

In case you were wondering about the occasional source of my boredom:



I shuffle paper ... a lot ... and it's amazing what I find at times.



Paula's dayjob consists of shuffling playmo and lego. She loves it!

Plotting the best way to quickly whip up my border

After spending quite some time thinking about how to stream-line the piecing process for the dreaded border, I grabbed pen and paper:



and scissors:



There will be an abundance of white scraps ... but I can always find a use for those and this will make the assembly process much faster and a lot less daunting. Yay, me!

Cool, IBOL Air Force ...

and warehouse ...

Napkins and Coasters

I am in the process of finishing these and only three months late. They were meant as a birthday pressie for my best friend who already has a table cloth to match.

Back on my sewing table: Night on the Tiles in Manchester

I've not done anything with this in eleven months and my next retreat is a few weeks away. My original plan and aspiration had been to have this quilt finished by the next retreat but that has gone out the window.

Now my goal is to have the top finished. And it's still a long way off as you can see here:



The border alone will provide me with no end of fun, trying to determine the size of the squares ....

Scrappy Logcabin from binding left-overs

So I've made my binding and had little bits left over ... which I turned into this block .. which I really quite enjoyed, especially because I now have a cutting table where I can cut strips to size without having to rearrange my work space. Which prompted me to contemplate immediately making blocks like those from project left overs ... which caused me to question my sanity a bit.

Ah ... that's what it's like on holiday: very little stress and lots of crazy ideas ;-)