Just When I Thought Things Were Settling Down...

In my last post I mentioned that my father-in-law George was finally being transferred to a rehab hospital closer to his country home, much to the family's relief.  Well, life is never straightforward and unfortunately after arriving at the hospital on Tuesday afternoon, he suffered a stroke in the early hours of the next morning and is now back in hospital (albeit a different one) in Adelaide.  He has weakness all on his left side and while out of danger now has a long road to recovery with physio (if we can keep him moving in that direction) before he will be anywhere near moving back to Murray Bridge.

Photo of George on his 80th birthday with my sons 

Simon and Kieran (who has a lot shorter hair now!)

My mother-in-law has decided to stay in Murray Bridge for now and travel down with whichever of the family is coming down to visit during the week.  Whether that changes down the road is anyone's guess.  So thank you all for your  well wishes earlier this week, however it seems he has more challenges ahead.

On a separate note, I did spend some time sewing on Wednesday to keep busy until we knew more and whipped up a few more broken herringbone blocks. 

This one was meant to be lime green but due to a shortage of fabrics in this colour it became more of a blend of greens that worked with lime green:

Then we have purple:

and finally this softer green colour (I don't even know what to call this colour but I found I had a collection of fabrics in this colour and went with it!)

These are the blocks I have so far:

I have some other strips cut up ready to put together when I get to them in yellow and blue, still collecting some teal and deep purple. I figure I'll just make blocks in what I have and play around with them until it looks right!

I need to think about what I'm going to do with these. I might even make a quilt for George, to brighten up his life a bit, although they're probably not really his colours.

Thanks for dropping by,

And Sew On - Last Block - Yay!

Well this month has been very hectic with all my hospital visiting but there is light at the end of the tunnel.  My father-in-law is (barring unforeseen circumstances) being transferred to Strathalbyn Rehab tomorrow and that means my mother-in-law can go home to Murray Bridge and travel to visit him herself.  I'm not sure who's happier to be moving, him or Mum!  She's really looking forward to sleeping in her own bed tomorrow night that's for sure!

I did manage to work on my last And Sew On block last week but didn't quite finish it so I was very happy to have a small window of opportunity this morning before we went to the hospital for the last time to whip up the last two pieces and put the whole thing together.

Aside from a minor blunder where I ended up with my window under my sewing machine instead of above it (thank goodness for my trusty unpicker) it went together fairly easily as most of the tricky stuff was in making the smaller segments.

I didn't really have any fabric I liked for a window scene so I made my window into a shelf unit instead.  I just need to add a needle to my sewing machine and then its done.  Now to think about how I'm going to join all my blocks together to come up with a finished wallhanging!

Thanks for visiting my blog today,

Hello, remember me?

Yoohoo! Its me, I'm back but who knows for how long.  I have had a reprieve a little this week from a whirl of crosstown hospital runs and I've managed a smidgen of sewing this week.  Yay! 

I've got to tell you I was starting to twitch without sewing for so long! (Well it was probably less than two weeks but it felt like forever!)

Anyway, what did I do when I did grab some sewing time?  Firstly I did do a little bit of quilting (with a little bit of swearing at thread breaking constantly) on Aunty Betty's quilt (remember this from my weekend away?):

Before life got in the way I did make a practice block as part of Molli Sparkle's #MSBHQAL which I don't think I shared here so here it is:

I went for orange as that was the colour I had most of that I could put my hand on quickly! Put a lot of thought into it didn't I?!

If you've not seen Molli Sparkle's blog, you really should visit, its lots of fun. Who doesn't like a bit of sparkle?

Well in the first week of the quiltalong the colour suggestion was for red, orange and pink so I figure I ended up being one up already!  One evening I cut up strips to get ready to sew when things calmed down on the hospital front and so I was ready to roll when I had a chance.

In a couple of small sessions I managed to whip up another orange block:

Two red blocks:

and two pink blocks:

So there you have it.  Not too bad considering the time I've had.

An update on my father-in-law's condition - he had major surgery for bowel cancer two weeks ago and while he made a good start he developed pneumonia (which was expected as he has emphysema, is 83 and has dementia) and was a bit touch and go for 24 hours but came good very slowly and about a week later started to really improve.  He's now at the point at which he might be able to leave hospital and head home to Murray Bridge except he spiked a temperature this afternoon so he's in for another couple of days.  I'm not doing the hospital run tomorrow but have a day off so will hopefully get to do some more sewing before it all starts again the next day (assuming he doesn't go home before then!).  In the meantime Kerrie, my sister-in-law who has had my MIL staying with her had to go into another hospital for hip replacement, hence why things got a bit mental in trying to visit two hospitals and take Mum in every day to see Dad!  She's back out again and doing pretty well.  I'm hoping that will be it for hospitals this year!

Anyway, enough of my blathering on, go and read some more lovely quilty blogs!

Thanks for visiting,
Cheers,

Star Surround Finish (Almost!)

After sewing all my blocks together last weekend at my sewing retreat I managed to get the cot sized version sewn together today.

I do want to add a white border to it to make it a shade larger and I may either add a scrappy border followed by another white or I might just do a scrappy binding and leave it at that.  I want to think about it for a bit longer before I decide for sure.  This is as finished as this quilt is going to get (lucky the baby its for won't be here until February). I had wondered to myself if there was a shade too much pink in this one to be neutral but I found out today that the baby is a girl so that won't be a problem!

As I originally planned a quilt which would have been 4 x 4 this does leave me with 10 blocks left over.

I'm going to put them together like this (although I may rearrange them slightly) and use one in a cushion.

Only problem is they won't get put together before the final link up so the cot quilt is my finish.  My 82 year old father-in-law is in hospital at the moment after a major operation and not doing so well right now having developed pneumonia so there won't be any time for sewing in the short term.

Fingers crossed tomorrow brings some improvement in his condition.

Weekend of Sewing at the Seaside

Well last weekend I had a great time ensconced in a beachfront house with 4 other lovely ladies armed with a stack of projects and my trusty sewing machine!  We were at Wallaroo in country South Australia and as luck would have it the weather decided it was time for spring and out burst the sunshine!

I drove up with my bestie Kerry in her cute new green Ford Fiesta (nicknamed Juicy) and we arrived right at sunset which was stunning - sorry no photos, we were too busy admiring it to find the camera!  As soon as we arrived we had dinner which was a lovely minestrone soup made by my sister-in-law Kerrie who had arrived earlier in the afternoon, along with her friends Sue and Pauline.  Yes that's right, out of 5 people in the house we had two Kerry/Kerries and two Sues. Pauline was feeling a little left out without another Pauline in the house!

After a quick clean up and bedmaking I set up my machine and got stuck right in.  I started by sewing together all 16 of my Star Surround blocks.  Then I laid them out on the floor to decide on a layout.  When I started this quiltalong I planned to make one quilt using all 16 blocks like this:

Once I laid them out though it seemed a bit large for a lap quilt and I have since found out my niece is having a baby so I thought maybe I'd make a baby quilt like this:

 That would leave me with these blocks for a lap quilt (plus one left over):

Well, I couldn't quite decide which way to go so I decided I wouldn't put them together until I thought about it a bit more.

So on to a new project.  I won a charm pack of Marmalade last year and hadn't quite got around to using it so I dug that out and made some pinwheels.

I'm kind of thinking I might make some placemats or a table runner but I think I might need some extra fabric before I put them together.  These didn't take all that long to put together as I used the quick method of making HSTs by taking two charm squares with right sides together, running a 1/4" seam all around the edges and slicing diagonally in four. Easy as, as long as you're careful with the edges being on the bias.

On Saturday Kerry and I started the day with a long beach walk and enjoyed the sunshine.  We headed back to get stuck into some work and the others headed off to the local quilt shop for some essential supplies.  I resisted the temptation as last year I got waylaid at the quilt shops and it took way longer than I planned!

Hmmm, something's missing in this photo - oh that's right, they're at the quilt shop!

Next project I worked on was quilting this quilt for my Aunty Betty.  I was motoring along (although as its all pebbling, I wasn't exactly ripping along) but was having some thread issues with one of my reels having several joins in it.  Not happy about that, its not what you expect from a reel of cotton is it?

  I persevered with it until the end of Saturday but decided to work on something else on Sunday morning.

This was the view from my sewing machine - not exactly tough conditions!

Sue was working on her first quilt which was a snakes and ladders quilt made up of embroidered pieces Kerrie had made for her.  We showed her how to stitch it all together, add borders, sandwich, quilt and bind and despite grumbling about the quilting and not being sure it was her thing, once she finished she loved it and so did we!

On Sunday morning she started wondering aloud about making a quilt using some fabric she had at home and we knew we had turned another person to the dark quilting side!

Here is Kerry (my friend) working on some scrapbooking and Kerrie (my sister in law) working on an embroidered item.

Pauline was getting busy with some tasty goodies in the kitchen on Saturday night:

while her machine was busy embroidering some teddy bears for a quilt! (I wish I'd remembered to take some photos of the finished blocks, they were very cute!)

Sunday morning I worked on using some of my scraps in these blocks:

We had a wonderful weekend with loads of laughs, chatting and stitching and we're all organised to do it again in March next year - can't wait!

One last photo - sunset on Saturday night!

Thanks for reading my blog today,