Borders, Bindings, and Physio

I’m getting there with my baby quilt, using up some of those multitude of flag blocks I made a while ago.  This week I’ve been assembling the blocks, adding borders  and making some scrappy binding.  I keep pieces of leftover binding in a basket, and found a length of pink which will go nicely.  Being Murphy’s Law, not nearly long enough of course,.  But I could work with that,  I chopped it into smaller lengths and added various pieces of pink to make it a long scrappy binding..

Dark blue floral borders

The weekly physio sessions are ongoing, and Robin’s knee is continuing to show small gains each time with flexibility.  I drive him down for his appointment, then have a plan to fill in the hour while I wait.  He certainly doesn't want me in there with him while he is put through his paces, and other patients are doing exercises as well, so their privacy must be respected.  The hospital café is open, so I order a coffee, sip away and catch up on some quilting posts.

Morning coffee time

Then I make my way back to the Physio Department, sit in the waiting room out of sight of the exercise class, and do a few rows of knitting.  This lovely batik bag was a gift from  Jean who blogs at All Points of the Compass several years ago to cheer me up while I was undergoing radiation treatment.  I look upon it as my “hospital bag” and use it to take documents, knitting, phone, camera, book, or anything else I might need during my hospital appointments.  Or in this case, being Robin’s support person and driver.  Many thanks Jean, I love my batik hospital bag!  As you can see, I’ve just started a new knitting project – my socks are almost at the toe stage so I have to read the pattern carefully and count rows, it’s better to do that at home.

A few rows of hospital knitting

When we return home from the physio class, Robin needs to sit a while with the icepack wrapped around his knee.  That knee certainly knows it has had a workout.

So what else have we been doing?  Our local strawberry farm “Shirley’s” are now picking the first of their crop.  We came back with two large punnets, one to eat now, and the other one Robin hulled, halved, and froze.  Shirley’s now has a “real fruit ice-cream” cart, so I’m sure we will buy one of these each next time we come calling.  We like to have strawberries for breakfast with our cereal, and strawberries for dessert too occasionally.

Freshly picked strawberries for breakfast

Robin was the BBQ king on Saturday night, and cooked a rolled stuffed lamb shoulder, it was a good size so I’m guessing it was actually a hogget (next size up from lamb).  All that tasty stuffing was trying to escape!  There's nothing like a roast on the BBQ,  it smelt and tasted delicious. The probe tells us when the meat is cooked, somehow or other it magically relates this information to Robin’s cell phone.  How does that work, I wonder, but I’m sure there is a logical explanation.

BBQ lamb roast for dinner

So that’s what has been happening at our place this week.  I’m still the designated driver so things are a bit busy for me, out and about with appointments and shopping.  I’m sure Robin can hardly wait to be cleared to drive again.

Rolling the Dice and Two Drowned Mice

Monday is roll the dice day (if we are home and not galivanting away in the caravan), and it brought up number one again, the same as last week.  Not that I’m complaining at all, I’m more than happy to keep working on my New Zealand Botanical blocks.  It seemed a shame to pack this project away last week, as I was not too far from completing the quilt top.

Number one again this week

So some cutting, pinning and stitching took place over the last couple of days and I now have borders on my top.  I decided on a dark green leaf fabric for the inner border.  Then the outer border used some pretty fabric printed with New Zealand flowers, which had been tucked away for quite some time.  It seemed just the thing to use on this project.

Completed top

While I was cutting and stitching, I also prepared the binding, so it’s always good to get that job out of the way. The backing is pieced too, I wonder why it seems that the fabric I have is never quite wide enough?  My next job will be to layer and pin the quilt sandwich. 

Binding is prepared

We are never quite sure what our Birman cat Gemma gets up to at night, as she doesn’t often come and sleep on the bed with us.  Although strangely enough, she always does sleep on our caravan bed when we are away.  Quite often when we get up in the morning we find her little toys in strange places.  Lately her two little mouse toys have been sopping wet, so we presume that she drops them in her water bowl, for whatever reason.  Poor little mousies!

Two very wet mouse toys

What to Do?

Help!!! I’m trying to decide whether to add a border or not to my Soul Searching top, which finished up looking like this.  Big blocks of saturated colour on a cream background.

My Soul Searching quilt top

One suggestion was to stitch a scrappy border.  What a mess I got into, pulling out the various colours I had used from my containers.  Cut strips off, and stitched them together into a couple of long lengths.

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Lots of strips sewn together

Taking the quilt top outside, I arranged the border strip down one edge, plus some cream fabric across another, stood back and took some photos.

With a piano key border, perhaps?

Mmmm – I’m not too sure.  But I’m leaning towards a “no” vote – It’s just a bit too busy for me.   I’m not really a “scrappy” person, and although there are nine colours in my quilt top, they are all nicely together in their colour families. (Perhaps I have a control problem?)  But I would appreciate some feedback, and would like to hear any other point of view.

It’s coming along

My candlewick quilt is coming along steadily, and I’m pleased that the roll of the dice has selected this project two weeks in a row.  And I’m really pleased that this week is reasonably free so I can slot in plenty of sewing time.  I really would like to get this quilt top finished this week.  Then it will be off my List of Six UFOs and I can add another one to take its place.

Borders with extra candlewick blocks

My ideas for the borders has been governed by how much of the floral fabric I had left.  The strippy borders with extra cream homespun doesn’t look too bad, I feel.  And I was very lucky when Sew Wot friend Moira has some candlewick blocks looking for a new home.  I happily took them off her hands and have incorporated four of Moira’s blocks into the corners of my quilt.

Under the shady umbrella

Adding the borders around the quilt calls for a lot of measuring, cutting, and pinning.  It’s good to get away from the sewing room and I have been pinning the borders using the table outside on the patio, under the sun umbrella.  I can hear the birds chirping away,  and enjoy being outside in the fresh air.

Another top Finished

We woke to a lovely Saturday morning and looked out the window.  The sun had risen in the east, and the full moon was up in the west. The morning sky had just the lightest touch of pink, which doesn’t really show in the photo.  So with the sun and the moon in the sky in the same time, it look’s like we are getting a two for one deal today, wouldn’t you say!

Full moon in the morning sky

In between hospital appointments this week – nearly over, thanks for your concern, I worked on the checkerboard borders of my caravan quilt.  More by a stroke of good luck rather than any particular skill on my part, the side borders fitted exactly down each side of the quilt top.  As this is a square quilt, it followed that the border would also fit on the top and the bottom. 

But…….. when I went to lay the last two borders in place across the top and bottom, the coloured squares weren’t playing nicely at the corners at all.  Instead of following on burgundy, white, burgundy, I had two whites side by side, plus two burgundies.  How an I going to fix this, I wondered, without pulling everything apart?  So I started playing  around with a couple of four patches and finally folded one in half and laid it over the other.  That should do it – pinwheels in the offending patches.  Problem solved!

Solution to the corner problem

With the problem of the corner blocks solved, I just had to pin the top and bottom borders in place, (I like to use lots of pins) stitch them on, give everything a good press, and finally, another top finished.  This project is UFO number one on my List of Six, finally completed. 

Quilt top for our caravan – finished

The stitchery designs used are “12 Days of Redwork”, by Alex Anderson, although I had to add another design as I needed 13 stitched blocks.  I have happy memories of stitching them while travelling around New Zealand in our caravan.  The flowers and leaves were then coloured in using fabric pens.  And I must say – I love how it’s all come together. 

Scrappy Checkerboard Borders

It’s border time today and I’ve been sewing my burgundy and white squares together to make a border for the quilt destined for our caravan.  They started off like this.

Lots of little twosies

And have grown to this, long lines of burgundy and white checks.

Growing ever longer

This week I’m working on UFO number One on my List of Six, and this is the final border on the quilt.  I should really lay it all out, see how long I need to make each side, and decide on how I’m going to do the corners.  Decisions, decisions.

The interim name for this quilt is my Caravan Quilt, as I did most of the stitchery blocks while on holiday in our caravan over a period of time.  We would travel in the mornings, do a little sight seeing, and then relax later in the day under a shady tree.  The blokes enjoyed a cool beer each, while I happily stitched away with a coffee to hand.  The flowers and leaves were then coloured using fabric pens, a first for me.

Stitchery block

I’m sure I’ll come up with a more appropriate name before this top is finished – just have to put my thinking cap on.