Day One...

While I am waiting for the others in the house to rise and shine, I thought I would share the results of Day one of my four days.
At first there were just 2 of us, and the other resident spent the morning complaining about how complicated the "easy" project that she was doing had turned out to be!! I might be making a bag with one block, and not a quilt she said!! I will add that this lady usually sews a full speed, so it was a shock to her for something to take longer. But she also doesn't like to let anything beat her, so she persevered! I forgot to take a photo of the first block, which was a platypus, but here you can see the frog in progress. (I will take more photos soon, as I think after her first day, we might actually see a quilt at the end of 4 days, and not just a bag).

And by 10am I had the first a my jobs done. I had made this quilt, back in about 2002, and had intended to custom quilt it. The blocks are panels, and I thought that if I ditched them, it would look like "real" applique! But many years later, I just wanted it done, and it went onto Max for a quick edge to edge. Here you can see it by the machine ready for the binding.

And then I joined the backs of 2 small items, which had also languished in the pile for many years, and loaded them as one on the machine.

At 11.30 I received a text message to let me know that the next guest was almost here, and we went to the rail station to meet the train, the Overland.

Val and I wore our "ears" to the station, not expecting there to be lots of people there. But we were brave and wore them on to the platform. This lady who we picked up tried to walk quickly past us and pretend she did not know us!! We did get a few smiles and waves from people on the train, so it was a bit of fun for Easter.

Raelene was traveling light on the train, and did not bring her machine. She has a hand project to work on, and got out her bees to stitch, but when I finished the binding, she soon took that project over, and is hand stitching my binding for me. I will soon have a finish!!!

This is the next of my jobs to do. This was made in a machine applique class, probably back in the late 1990's, and has also sat and sat in my pile, waiting, waiting. It hardly took me any time to quilt it, and then I noticed my awful job of the applique. You can see those little black bits that are coming through the yellow??

We did a bit of "brain storming" to work out how I could fix it, including ideas of covering it with braid, or ribbon, and I had picked out one, and then Helen came to visit, and she had a better idea for me, and you can see what I did next in the following photo. And I have to say, thankyou to Helen, as it turned out great, and gave it a whole different look.

It has been made into a cushion, and is just waiting for a "bit" of hand sewing to be another finish. I have to wonder why it took so long??

And here is my other finish, although the binding still needs to be hand sewn. Wonder if the Easter fairy will do this one too. I am a bit spoiled I think. This will be a wall hanging, and was started in a Michele Hill workshop, back in 2005.

I have picked out some more things to work on today, and will spend my time at the sewing machine. Will be back with another report after Day Two.

Blessings, From Jude