A custom quilt, a confession, and cutting...........................

Here we are and another week has flown by, so it must be time to blog the happenings here at Number 8. There does not seem to be many photos in the files to remind me of what has happened, and no quilts have been finished either.

I have spent a little time on this quilt, but progress has been slow, and it will be on for some time yet.

It's probably true confession time now, as I admit that a lot of time has been spent sitting in front of the screen, watching DVD's. I received this Series for my birthday back in May, and had only watched a small part of it until the last couple of weeks. I would watch a bit in the evenings, and gradually the nights got later, and I got "addicted", absorbed!. Then I started finishing work earlier, the weather was so cold, and the fire was enticing. This set contains 19 discs, 67 episodes and many, many hours of viewing. This series was set in the early 1950's in Australia, a time when I was born, and deals with a lot of social issues. It was like reading a good book that you don't want to put down. I love to read, but have not been game to start anything recently because of the time factor and I read until it's finished. Probably wasn't a good idea to have started this series, but I had, so the only thing to do now, was to finish it. So that is what I did, by doing very little work until it was finished!

 

It was late Wednesday afternoon when I got to the end and sent a text to a friend to say "It is finished"! She mistakenly thought I meant I had finished that quilt, and sent me back a good on you message. I did confess that it was not the quilt, but the videos!! 

But it is out of my system now, and I am back to working on that quilt. Perhaps I will count that time as my holiday for the year??!

Friday there was another trip up the highway to attend the bimonthly Appraisal Panel day, and then Saturday was a day to spent with Max, making some progress on that quilt.

Today has been a day of reflection, and reminiscing as it is 46 years ago that I married the love of my life. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since that day, and who could have forseen the way it all turned out. A testament to the fact that God can turn all things around for good and I can rest and know peace in the midst of all as I anticipate what God is planning for my life ahead. We have a new pastor for our church, and I attended a Praise night this week, that was a special time of song and prayer.

Today also has been a play day with a little used piece of equipment that I have had for years, my Accucquilt Go Cutter. There are a few ladies coming next weekend for a retreat, and are bringing their own Go Cutters, and their collection of Dies, so I thought it was time to get mine out and use it. I do a lot of cutting for the Mystery Cases, and hope to make better use of what I already have.

This is my collection of dies, some of which have never been used. Time for that to change.

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to make them a quilt. This consists of 128 x 4 patches and 128 half square triangles, and I had started on the 4 patch units earlier.

 Today I decided to try out the 4" finished half square triangle die. I need 128 hst unit for this quilt. When I finally got my head around the amount of fabric I needed to put on the die, it was amazing how quick they were cut. 

By placing the fabrics right sides together, and placing 8 layers of fabric on the die, the result was 16 hst units for each cut. It did not take long before I had a nice pile of 192 ready to sew hst units. (I know I only needed 128!)

 And it was lovely that they turned out to be exactly 4 1/2" square, and needed no trimming.

There is some waste with this cutting system, but I am more than happy with the time saved in cutting.

Some of the hst units have been sewn.........

.......................and a few blocks sewn just to see how it will look. 

There is still a long way to go yet, but I am happy for today's effort. I have ideas floating around in my head, for using more of the dies. Hopefully next week there will be more progress, and there are plans to get my scrap stash organised.

Meanwhile there will be more progress on that quilt above, and organisation to happen for next weekends retreat. There is also another UFO retreat 2 weeks after that, as well as more quilts to be quilted ready for our group's exhibition in October. No more DVD watching here for the immediate future.

Be back when I have more newsfromjude in a few days.

Blessings, From Jude