Holidays are Almost Over

With the holidays drawing to an end, I am looking around me and seeing so many plans still unfulfilled. I'm not complaining though because I have had the most quiet, relaxing, easy holiday in a long time. Being a teacher, I get lots of holidays, unlike when I was in the retail world. I appreciate them totally. These holidays saw knitting projects finished,  and quilts started, finished and in the middle of, and a few other bits and pieces. I had my first yoga class (and found it really hard - BUT I AM NOT GIVING UP!), walked on the beach and around the local parks, met friends, drank coffee, spent time with my family, did the crossword every day, worked a little, cleaned a lot, got accepted into university to study my Masters part time (am I crazy?), bought some great bargains, cleaned out the back veranda (and found a red back spider), read books, tried new recipes and generally did whatever I wanted whenever I felt like it and it was so relaxing and regenerating. 

I guess I am now ready to enter the world of reality and go back to work. 19 new students to get to know, 19 new sets of parents to meet and remember their names. Organised chaos, here we come!

One of my last two projects stitched on the machine has been these oven gloves.

My son wants to take them back to Sydney as a present for his girl friend's family.

I like them now that they are finished but they were a pain to make!

The other one has been quilting the Keiko Goke improv quilt I started with Gwen Marston.

I have just made up the stitching as I have gone along and it has been lots of fun.

I think I know what the binding will be, but I am not 100% so I will leave it for a while and have another look with fresh eyes in my next term break.

Play time for me is over.

Holiday Quilting

My friend Rivka, who has commissioned me to make quite a few quilts now, delivered her Liberty Quilt back to me, after having had it professionally quilted. The final binding was added and after many months, was ready to live on her bed. We made this quilt together, cutting, ironing and stitching. This one took ages to put together and in the end I had to scrap together every last square inch of fabric to complete the last few blocks.

It's queen size, but looks like a single from the photo. I didn't get a chance to photograph the binding which was mainly charcoal and really defined the border.

Next, Rivka pulled out of her bag a whole stack of blocks that she had made in a fit of creativity and then stopped. As per her usual style, nothing was measured, pinned or uniform. As free spirited as she is herself!

A few hours later, we had everything cut to a slightly more regular fit, many more blocks made and the horizontal sashings attached. 

The aim of this quilt was that it was going to be used for her TV watching evenings. It is so long, it can totally wrap around you for snuggling up on cold winter evenings.

 It is so bright and happy.

Getting all inspired to do my own stitching I added another border to the Denyse Schmidt medallion.

Can't decide whether I should do any more.