Buzy Day March/April
Hiking
I went hiking! We have a family member visiting from the States, so we went for a hike at my favorite spot in the mountains. It’s a 2 hour drive from home to a hotel called Champange Castle Hotel and a 5 mile (8km) return hike to the waterfall.
I love staying in this hotel and we stay over at least twice a year. What can I say, three cooked meals a day, tea with scones twice a day. Needless to say you need the hike! I always take some hand work and this I do laying around the pool area.
Now I’m back to reality and need to finish hand quilting my Raiko Kato quilt.
To the love of crafting.
NikkiM
Cover
Remember this Round Robin quilt that I posted about 2 years ago on April 19, 2014? In my last paragraph I made this statement – “I’m now busy hand quilting the centre piece using DMC Perle 8 thread, using a number 9 quilting needle. It’s a bit of a bugger as the needle eye is a bit small!” Well the hand quilting did happen, for a little bit then it got unhand quilted and machine quilted.
In my last post “More babies …” March 19, 2016 I mentioned that I quilted a “cover” while the baby quilt was being made. Well this is the quilt.
I quilted it on my HQ Sweet Sixteen as all the “stitch in the ditch” was done. I practice my free motion quilting using stencils in the following borders, twirl on first strip, and leaf on the checker board and heart on the green fabric. Then I got brave and pulled out the curved rule and quilted feathers on the light purple and in the last strip fabric. This was lots of fun!
Hope you all had a great Easter? I did. We went a way for a bit that’s why it’s been a bit quite here at Buzy Day.
Love to all.
NikkiM
More babies …
This is the quilt I made for the baby shower I went to last Saturday. Due to modern medicine we know it’s a boy and his booked date for arrival is the 8th of April. That’s if he doesn’t decide to change the date!
It was quite a thing because the mommy works for my husband and he works from home, so the patch working and quilting had to happen “after hours”. Every day I had to get rid of / hide the evidence.
The pattern was inspired by a pattern I purchased on line from Cotton Way by Bonnie Olaveson called “Smooth Sailing”. The original quilt size is 83” x 91”, far too big for what I wanted.
So I changed it and only made two of the boat blocks for the bottom adding 4” (4½” cut) blocks in between and for the border and creating an appliqué name block at the top, using blue/grey/red fabrics to suit the sailing theme, I used the leftover to make the backing, used a 100% cotton batting, did an overall quilting of little sail boats with the sea and sky, making the finished size 46” x 58”.
Next week I will share with you the quilt I quilted as a “cover” while the baby quilt was been made…
Happy crafting.
Love
NikkiM
Buzy Day Jan/Feb 2016
Friendship quilting…
Do you remember the following two posts “To friendship“, November 23, 2013 and “All done!” February 8, 2014? Let me give you a little bit of background to this quilt.
A friend and I normally decide on a quilt that we will be sewing together, needless to say, the “friend” always wins on the choice of design and this one, was a “Friendship braid” quilt. Then what happens, we get together on a Wednesday morning to sew on this quilt/project. As you can see mine was finished in February 2014! Now we get today’s post.
I bought myself a HQ Sweet Sixteen quilting machine, and on one of our Wednesday get together, to sew, I mentioned that I bought this machine and have no finished quilt top to quilt. Before I could take a breath she said I could finish quilting her “Friendship braid” quilt. Well what could I say!
I quilted it very similar to my quilt! I must say I’m enjoying this new machine. Very nice!
To friendship quilting …
Love
NikkiM
Knit, knit, knit …..
That all you hear in my house at the moment! I used this pattern to knit a scarf for a friend a few years back and I always wanted to use this pattern to knit a knee rug. Well I did.
Lucky for me, after scratching in my stash, I found 14 x 50g balls, colour 101, of “Joy” from African Expression from the same dye lot. The yarn is made from the perfect combination of delicate Wool, luxurious Mohair and bright Acrylic (15% mohair, 40% wool and 45% acrylic).
I found the pattern on Ravelry, “Reversible Chevron Scarf” by Debbie Seton . I cast on 184 stitches using a 5mm (US 8 / UK 6) needle casting off on row 16. I knitted an I-cord edge to finish the knee rug off. If you want to know how to knit an I cord edge have a look at this YouTub video. The finished size is 52” x 52” or 132cm x 132cm.
Now to knit or to crochet? maybe both?
Love
NikkiM
One row knit ….
Crochet along-border
At last I’m finished with my Crochet along, “Spice of Life” that I started with Sandra Paul from Cherry heart blog. If you want to, you can go back to my post of “Crochet along”, October 9, 2015 and “Crocket along II, October 16, 2015 to get all the info.
My border is not the same as hers, as her border did not suit my colour scheme, so this inspired me into crocheting a more neutral border, not as feminine as hers. Before crocheting the border on, I did block the blanket.
I crocheted the final border as follows
Base row: Double Crochet/dc (USA Single Crochet/sc) with dark blue wool.
Rows 1 – 5 rows: Grannies pattern, from part 2 of the “Spice of Life” using the dark blue and green wool.
Row 6: I changed to pink wool and crocheted a row of Treble Crochet (tr) (USA Double Crochet (dc)) then ended off with a row of crab stitch, if you don’t know what a crab stitch or reverse single crochet stitch is have a look at this YouTube video.
I seem to be in a knitting and crocheting mode of knee blankets. I’m just on the final border of a knitted knee blanket and I will share it with you next week.
Lots of love
NikkiM
It has been a while!
It has been a while! Sorry! My life towards the end of last year took on a pace that I just couldn’t keep up with. Life is not fair when you’re young, days are so long. Now that I’m getting older I’m battling to fit everything into a day. I will not bore you with the long version.
We did some renovations at home as my youngest son has moved home and we needed a space for him to stay in. I do not cope well with strange people in and around my space.
I also lost the oldest member of my four legged family at a ripe age of 20 years. We do not want any more puppies so we adopted a 13 year old Jack Russell male named Turbo, what a lovely “little boy”. So now I’m down to two four legged children, Turbo, the new addition and Molly (12 years), both are Jack Russell’s.
We went to Cape Town over Christmas and New Year. Fun was had by all. Now we are all back into the “rat race”. I just finished a week of babysitting.
The crafting side was a bit slower, I managed to start hand quilting my Reiko Kato quilt and started knitting a shawl. This is nearly done as the 14 balls of
yarn that I found in my stash is running out and I’m thinking about a final knitted border.
I have slowly come back and started reading all the blogs I follow. Good to see everyone is well in “blogland”.
Love
NikkiM
Buzy Day 