Back to Quilting and other snippets

It is two weeks since I posted last, which is really awful since I spoke of being better at posting regularly.  Hmmm, this reorganising our living places is quite time consuming.  My office has been "deconstructed" as I like to call it...taken apart and is now in separate pieces!  Archived all the old Quilt Works shop documents that we are forced to hang onto for seven years, and binned all sorts of other stuff that you tend to just hang on to. There were five ring binders full of patterns that had been collected over the past years plus those that had been used in the shop for classes and kits.  Now I am down to two!!! How awesome is that?  It was hard and I had to force myself to be ruthless, but I did it. (Dont gasp, I did pass them on, not throw them out LOL)

The hardest thing was when Kerry and daughter Shala came to shift my very long Rimu Cabinet.  It is around 3m (10ft) long and has two sets of sliding doors on the front.  It is like an Aladdin's Cave storage hanger and I love it!  It stores my unquilted quilts and ufos.  As I had to remove them to lighten up the cabinet, it seemed the right time to make those lists I talked about in my last post.  (Clearing her throat nervously)  she announces that there are 43 quilts to be finished, and 38 quilts to be quilted!  Oh dear, that does add up to quite a large number...81 in fact.  However, some of those things  listed are not yet started, or a collection of fabric set aside for a particular project and many were shop samples not quite finished.  Sounds good doesnt it.  I am determined to work my way through them one at a time and hopefully some will walk out the door this year.

We also dived down to Wellington last weekend so that Kerry could get to meet his new granddauighter Marcy.  It was lovely to see how much she had grown in just a week.

What a lovely new family. Marcy is a very good baby and is back to her birth weight already.

I managed to finish two quilts last week as well.  This beautiful red quilt with Kaffe Fasset flowers in the middle and the outer border belongs to Gale.

I used Superior Magnifico all through and loved how this red thread changed happily to each background colour, especially in the centre flowers.

I thread painted in these large flowers.  Ditch quilted between all borders.  Spirals in two of the borders and vertical and horizontal lines in another. Simple piano keys in the outer border for texture so that these gorgeous blooms stood out.

Thanks Gale, I really loved quilting your quilt.
Then it was onto this lovely bright stained glass quilt made by Elaine.  The fabrics are all batik.

Once again I used a Superior's Magnifico Blue 2159.  It blended extremely well and is quite hard to see in places.

The pattern was "Dazzle" and looked great with this quilt. I thoroughly enjoyed quilting your quilt Elaine.
On Monday I decided to spend the time installing my new "Red Snappers" system for loading quilts much more quickly.  After carefully pinning the three leaders, we actually lifted two of the rails off and I stitched them on my domestic  machine while Kerry held them steady.  Worked a dream after getting back twinges when the first one with the longarm.

This is loading my friend Rae's quilt as my first tryout with them.  Definitely much quicker than pinning and a breeze if you need to adjust something.

Okay, off to bed now and will come back soon.  Our move is planned for the 31st January...not that long for packing but it will happen.  We do have less stuff now.

Take care,
Blessings

Clare