All night quilting session

After having an all night quilting session earlier this year at Hettie Pringle, our teacher's house (read the post here), we became hooked on the idea and arranged our own last night.  Me, Annelie, Linda and Sonja arrived at Natasha's home at 18h00 and manage to get quite a lot of stitching done. 

Here Annelie is busy knitting a beanie for her brand new and first grandchild, Jonathan.  She also started knitting one for herself as well as a cover for a hot water bottle.  In between she also managed to embroider her latest runner.  A real busy body, this one!

Annelie brought her sister, Linda, with and Chillie kept Linda company most of the evening.  Linda embroidered a cross stitch runner. 

Here is the lady of the house, Natasha and me busy with our foundation piecing projects.  Natasha and her sister, Bianca, was our chefs for the evening and prepared delicious spring rolls filled with a sweet corn and cheese mix and a feta and bacon mix.  At 23h00 our supper was potato soup and buns.  Delicious!  

It was a really pleasant night.  Thanks girls!

Now I'm off to putting in a few hours overtime.  My day job is seriously interfering with my hobbies.....

Home is where the heart is

Another design for sale.  It is embellished with Swarovsky crystals.

Baby Quilt

I just listed this Baby Quilt with Pillowcase at Etsy.  I made it a few years back when I still thought it was a good idea to exhibit at flea markets. 

If one of my SA readers wants to buy it, you can just contact me.  This set was sadly lost in our house fire in 2014.

Up and running again

I had an extremely frustrating week with not much embroidery or quilting done.  After the fhising attack on my computer last week, most of this week was spend buying and installing anti-virus programs, firewalls and spyware as the free versions doesn't offer complete protection.  Scanning and fixing as well as changing passwords was also very time consuming.  Luckily the Trojan was removed without the need to format the computer and starting from scratch.

The little bit of embroidery eventually done, was also very trying as everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.  It was really a week that I wish I could undo.

Enough moaning.  Let's rather talk embroidery.  Here is some pictures of the duvet cover I made for my son, Trevor aged 12, in 2009.  He is a big supporter of our local rugby team, the Free State Cheetahs. 

I embroidered a border of Cheetah footprints around the duvet using applique stuffed with batting to get a 3D effect. 

The head was split in 14 pieces as I could only embroider 130 x 180mm at the time.  The complete head measures a whopping 740 x 480mm. 

I am extremely proud of the end result.

Here the duvet is spread over a double bed.

Christmas Crazy Quilt - Close-up's 2

Some more pic's.

Christmas Crazy Quilt - Close-up's 1

Whilst writing this post  the quilt was on exhibition at the Bloem Show.  Herewith are some close-up pictures.

Chenille Quilt 2-2

At last I'm able to access my blog after my security has been compromised by one poor and obviously very bored and lonely person. Had to buy and install additional firewalls and spyware etc. Is also in the process of changing all my passwords. Can one person cause one so much grieve?

Luckily I was able to finish the Chenille Quilt in time to give to my Mother tomorrow for Mother's Day.

I hope all of you mothers out there enjoy a happy Mother's Day!

Koisan Designs

I designed these portrait studies of the Koisan people of the Kalahari a few years ago using photo stitching software. 

I find their culture very interesting.  It is unfortunately under threat of extinction as the Westerners think they are doing them a favour by putting clothes on their bodies and roofs over their heads. 

These portraits capture the very essence of the Koi San.

Pensive

Picking Berries

Smoking

Dreaming

Joyful

Chenille Quilt 2-1

I started working on another Chenille Quilt Friday night to use as a demonstration last night at the Rotary Cutter's monthly group meeting of which I'm the group leader.  We are a Quilt Group affiliated with the Oranje Quilters Guild.

I sandwiched 2 layers of flannel with 1 polar fleece layer inbetween at the back of a piece of cotton.  4 Hours of stitching later, I'm halfway there.

Chenille Quilt

After reading this post I so wanted to make a Chenille Quilt, that when my sister's birthday arrived in March, I finally had an excuse to make one.  As I have so many unfinished projects (or UFO's as we quilters refer to them) , I need a good reason to start a new project to pacify my husband.

This is a real fun and quick way to make a quilt and took me just one Saturday.  Hopefully my sister will actually use it.  She has the habit of putting everything I make, into a chest (packed with moth balls) - saving it for who knows when...

Christmas Crazy Quilt

After finally finishing up with all the bibs and baby shoes for Eunice Market ( find the post here) , I had 3 weeks to complete a quilt for our Guild's 4th Quarterly Challenge - My Prettiest Christmas Quilt.  I bought the designs for this Crazy Quilt some time ago from Molly Mine and was looking for an excuse to embroider it.  It was very time consuming as you have to change the thread up to 34 times for each block.  To complete one block took up to 3 hours.  So, to embroider the 20 blocks and finish the quilt in as many days, was no mean task.

But I did it and it was picked as the Viewers Choice for which I was rewarded with a pretty fat quarter which you can see here.

The start of my quilting journey

During July 2010, I overheard our local Pfaff dealer, Marie Coetzee and another friend of mine, Annelie Opperman talking about the beginner quilt classes starting August 2010 and thought it was a great idea as I already struggled through the Latte Quilt without any knowledge of quilting.  Hettie Pringle (http://stitchingmatters.blogspot.com/) teaches it on behalf of Pfaff.

At the time I thought I will only learn the different techniques, but in the end join the Oranje Quilters Guild in January 2011 only to find out that Quilting is not only a hobby, but a way of life.  And now I'm completely hooked.

My beginners quilt, won 2nd prize at the Bloem Show in 2011 and looked like this: