It's all about WIPs here...
I have been a lazy blogger this week. I have some excuses, though...
We started a summer project at my favourite quilt shop last week, a summery table cloth. The lovely ladies at the shop had made kits with all the fabric we needed for the top - perhaps not the ones I would have chosen, but the most important thing for me was the social aspect - to me that's one of the most important things about this hobby: like minded people getting together, stitching a little, sharing ideas, knowhow, chocolate and laughter. We spent a whole evening cutting triangles with the TriRec ruler and our homework was to stitch them together to make blocks. "Piece of cake" I thought - "I'll do that in no time at all"... Weeeell, needless to say, things didn't quite turn out that way.
I decided to finish my Café-quilt top first as I'd have plenty of time to do those triangles... Somehow that took a lot more time than I had imagined, and I found myself stitching well into the night to be ready for the next step at the quilt shop on Monday. I did manage to finish all the blocks, although those plaids were a nightmare! Never before have I used fabric that created so much lint and left loose threads flying in and around my sewing area. I actually had to stop twice to clean my sewing machine!
On Monday amid fun and laughter with the girls I managed to stitch the blocks together. We had a great time, but there was still a lot of work to be done. By then I had decided that this was not going to be a tablecloth after all - it was much to bright and colourful, even for me - a lap quilt to use on my balcony during warm(ish) summer evenings would be a better idea, and I remembered that I had a green polar fleece blanket that I might use for backing. Great, I'd just have to add the borders, spray baste the top to the blanket and machine quilt it just enough to keep the two layers together - "I'll do that tomorrow" I mumbled to myself as I drifted off to sleep that evening.
It was not to be. On Tuesday I came home from work and realized that the maid (me) had been off duty for far too long and there were piles of dishes to clean, floors to mop and all (knowing that "dust bunnies are just a sign of people having had too much fun to clean" was no consolation, something had to be done!) And boy, was I glad I did, because the moment I'd finished, the doorbell rang, and there was a friend of mine who was passing by and had impulsively decided to pay me a visit. Several cups of tea and quilting magazines later I waved goodbye to my friend and went to bed. "I'll finish that quilt tomorrow" I thought as I drifted off to sleep.
The next day we had a minor crisis at work, so I was late getting home. I had just finished dinner when the phone rang - another friend who wanted to pay a visit. Another great evening with tea and sympathy and no quilting...
Thursday was the day for our monthly quilting bee, and here I am on Friday, piles of washing up again, and no progress on the quilt. Mind you, I'm not complaining! I feel truly blessed to have so many friends who want to spend time with me, and all those evenings chatting about our lifes and plans and inspiring each other are part of what life really is about, isn't it? But tomorrow I might get some work done on that quilt - or maybe not...

Here's a close-up of the floral fabric. As I was photographing it, it occured to me that although in my mind this has been my "Café de Paris-fabric" ever since I bought it, those words are nowhere to be found on the fabric. There are several French-sounding café-names, though, but my mind seems to have played a trick on me - oh well, I could just call it my café-quilt, I suppose...


This is one of the projects I'm working on at the moment. I fell in love with (can one fall in love with fabric?) the Café de Paris print in the foreground with flowers and café signs - very romantic! - and bougt several yards of it. I'm making a lap quilt with six blocks with big appliqué hearts set on point, alternating with blocks of the café print and with sashing in between that will give the effect of a trellis lying on top of the blocks - sort of a 3D effect - I hope... I have only one heart left to appliqué and then I'll start stitching the whole thing together.







The picture at Martha's reminded me of long summer days in the country with my grandparents when I was a child. On Saturdays we kids used to walk to the nearest farm and use our allowance to buy left over tomatoes from the weeks pickings. Our fistful of brown coins would be exchanged for a big brown paper bag filled to the limit with these lovely juicy "sweets" in all sorts of odd shapes and shades. I can still remember the taste when biting into a tomato still warm from the sun: like liquid sunshine. We'd start eating them on our way home (in spite of gran's instructions to wait until after dinner) and by the time we got back we'd have little room left for dinner. We'd have tomatoes with our lunch for the rest of the week, but nothing could rival that first bite on the way home. Forbidden fruit, mmm ;-) But I digress - I was talking about pincushions. I also recieved one from the same exchange. A lovely star-shaped one with lots of machine embroidered details:
The yellow and green fabrics are bali fabrics with a gold scroll print on top on one side, which really gives you two different fabrics to play with (I have the same one in pink and turqoise, that's why I know!) and here it is used to great effect with the gold side out on one side of the pincushion and the "plain" side (which really is the most beautiful one) on the other side. What a lucky girl I am - thank you Camilla! 








I am working on the teapot one as a present for a friend, 










only to realise that I was supposed to quilt only the top fabric and batting, and leave the lining to stitch the inner pockets on, before I sew the quilted piece and the lining together. Sigh! This is why I usually don't use patterns. No way am I taking the quilting stitches out, and a new separate lining is no option. I wont hide the great "Drama Queen" fabric from Michael Miller designs, so new solutions are called for.
I will try to stitch the outer pockets on through all the layers and the inner pocket will be stitched on by hand through lining and batting so the seam doesn't show on the outside. I will have to add binding strips along the edges, but I think I might make it work. And it will be my very own version of something that started out as a standard pattern. Who cares! I think I might prefer the bag this way actually - no loose floppy lining and a much firmer bag will be the result. I think. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it!





