End of an Era and New Beginnings

We heard on 28 February that the buyers of our house had met the suspensive conditions of the sale.   So tonight is the last night we are in the old house.  We had the movers in 10 days ago to move certain items, like my sewing desk and fabric cupboards, washing machine and dryer and a few other things, but tomorrow they are back to move the beds and the remaining large furniture.   All the small stuff has been/is being shuttled between the two houses in my mini-van, with some assistance from family.  A few days in hand to clear out and clean up, before we hand over the keys next Monday.

 A quick view of what my new sewing space looked like a week ago.   Lots more stuff in there now, more sorting to be done!   Smaller space but with the long-arm frame in the garage.

We are getting new bedside tables,  DH assembling them!  Then he very ably installed a very necessary cat-flap in the back door (no pictures!)  One cat nudged through so far.

 

 

And, before the hard-work began, I finished the Indigo Way quilt top, and noticed a blue triangle block element flipped so quickly fixed that.  It is folded here in quarters to see if the pieced back was big enough, and yay, it was.

  

 

These are the nine blocks from the Good Hope mystery, When You Shine.  I have all the sashing pieces ready to sew, maybe as soon as next week!  There have been some amazing fabric combinations shared on social media for this mystery.

   

 

Tired, but happy!

More Blocks and Choosing Fabrics

Every time I sit to write a blog post, I wonder about the ideal layout.  Do I put the picture or the text first?  What alignment to use for the words.  Should they be above, below, next to the images?  So, I change things, but never fully happy.  If you are a regular reader, hope that this was not confusing!   

Just as I was almost done, a hit by our regular "load-shedding", ie the local euphemism for the government failure to keep the power on everywhere all the time.  We had almost three weeks over Christmas/New Year when the power stayed on, but now we are back to two-hour outages about every eight or ten hours.  Cape Town is slightly better than the rest of the country as we have a pump-storage system on one of the mountain rivers nearby which supplements the national power supply.  Glad we have invested in some solar panels and batteries to have lights and the fridge running.

Bramble Blooms:  Border number one attached, with a narrow spacer in red and beige/tan. 

Still trying to get the perspective of the top being further away than the bottom, so red strips are narrower at top, and the crosses are smaller at the top.

Not adding any applique, yet.  Happy so far.

Bonnie Hunter's Indigo Way:   All three borders prepped, just waiting for the desire to press the centre!

It has been unusually hot here, no enticement to get out the big ironing board.  It may be cooler later in the week.

Fabrics chosen to piece a back.  Might be some time before stitching together.

    

Good Hope Quilters' Guild Mystery 2024:  Third set of blocks sewn.  Tantalisingly slow, but a really enjoyable process.  I think that all the blocks might be set in a Suduko type arrangement.  Maybe as interesting stars?  There have been fabulous colour combinations being shown on various whatsapp groups and also facebook.

 

 

RSC2024 Sampler:  Red is this month's colour, and these are the 3-inch and 6-inch blocks made.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little sewing

I have been busy with things other than sewing for the past couple of weeks.  Guild bookkeeping needed attention;  understanding new-to-me web-based accounting software for my sister's school, so I can remotely help with this;  keeping house very tidy for showing to prospective buyers (that's mostly keeping my sewing space tidy, which is not so conducive to the creative processes!)   And I needed a trip to doctor today as I couldn't quite put my finger on the problem (no pain, just slight discomfort and weirdly out of sorts), which turns out to be a very easily treatable UTI.

 I've prepared the first two borders for the Bonnie Hunter mystery, that is, cut, joined and pressed two long strips.   Also, have cut out one of the https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/ for February, and ready with the patterns for two more different blocks, probably a fourth one today.

 

 

We are running a block of the month at my monthly group (Creative Quilters).  We are about 40 ladies with 6 or 7 leaders who take turns in running the meetings, with assistance by all, in turn, providing amazing tea-time spreads.  

This was drafted by leader Candi.  We discovered that there numerous different colours of these support ribbons.  My choice was Burgundy, as it is the colour that represents multiple myeloma, because my brother-in-law is undergoing treatment for this incurable affliction.

 

 

 

 

 Another small Kawandi quilt finished. I think this was started in November and finished last week.

This is one of the very few hand projects that I do, and can be done on a Thursday evening at a small weekly group.

 

Top and back.

 

Week 3 of January 2024

 Some good, even if daunting, news in hand, and some small progresses were achieved this week.

We have a purchase offer for our current house.  The buyers have a suspensive condition on the sale of their apartment, which in turn affects their offer to us.  We will know at the end of February, so meantime ours is still being marketed.  The reality of moving is now sinking in!

 

 Rainbow Scraps Challenge:  I was able to tidy up the overflowing small box I keep close the cutting mat.  All the tiny bits filed away for future crumb sewing with the more usable pieces put back where they belong.  I did pull out a bunch of dark and bright green fabrics thinking I would sew up a backing, but with above news, they might just go back into the cupboard.

Bramble Blooms:   auditioning fabrics for the next prompt for this improv quilt.  I started out with just the greens up, but couldn't quite put my finger on why it didn't spark joy.  Then saw someone else's and the penny dropped that I should include some of the colour from the applique'd centre.  More thinking needed, as I want to include more details from the prompt.

 

 

Little Quilts of Love - turned right-side out, top stitching up next.

 

 

Good Hope Quilters' Guild Mystery Quilt -  When You Shine

 The designer of this Mystery, Diana Vandeyar, really has us guessing!

 

 

Until next time, happy sewing!