Quilting Like There's No Tomorrow Part 3

Where has the quilting time gone these two weeks? Since I last posted about the progress of the baby quilt I am making for my new grandson, I haven’t done any quilting. Why is that? On weekdays I am at work. On weekends and in the evening I am home most of the time and I have been kept busy baby-sitting and nursing my grandchildren, Nigel and Nicole who were both down with flu, fever and sore throat. Nigel didn’t go to school since last week because he will get nauseated after taking any kind of food or drinks. He lost his appetite for food and he doesn’t want to drink his favorite malt drinks like "Horlick" or "Milo". Nicole’s appetite is just okay except that she took smaller portions of her meal. Both of them lost weight a little and I could see how unhappy they both were from the mirror of their eyes! Thank God, Nigel’s’ asthma bout was at bay, otherwise what a miserable week my dear Nigel would have.

Then, came the Holy Easter Week starting with Palm Sunday and the whole week before Easter was the Daily Evening Mass for Station of the Cross. In that week, Trevor (the Little Sheriff), my new grandson caught the same illness as his cousins. There I go again busy with attending to the health of my dear ones.

The weather has been fair, rather hot and humid in the day and occasional rain in the evening. It would be just nice to stay out in the garden and pull the weeds from the flower gardens and pots. Alas! So much to do with so little time! :(

By night time, as I retired, I somehow didn’t sleep well. I would be thinking of my unfinished baby quilt and the quilts tops piled up in the cabinet and the many other things I want to do all these while. There's the stamp and coins collections and pictures of family and friends that are yet to be sorted out and arranged in their respective albums. My thoughts would be endless throughout the night, until I am too tired to even realised when sleep actually put me to bed!

I do feel self-pity sometimes because I am not able to enjoy the freedom of not being disturb whenever I want to do anything that interest me. Much has changed and I got to divide my time between my interests and my family. Naturally, the family will come first.

However, I am hoping that by the next two weeks, Trevor’s baby quilt would see some improvement and ready for him to have to keep warm. At least by accomplishing this one single task, I will be very happy. I still believe in not giving up hope.

~The plans I have for you are good, to give you a future and a hope.~ Jeremiah 29:11

Quilting Like There's No Tomorrow Part 2

The Quilt Story continues….

I've been living in a perpetual state of guilt that I haven't been able to finish most of the stacks of quilt tops stored in my cabinet. I’ve tried and I really have but from the look of it all, the speed is ever so slow.

However, I promised myself to make a baby quilt for my new grandson, Trevor Kent, and I which I did and am so happy to have at least the quilt top assembled and machine-pieced. For the quilt’s center, I used a block with patchwork of a baby crawling, which I made way back in October 2003. Voila! The quilt looks vibrant and wonderful! I have a big smile both on my face and in my heart!

My DIL was delighted to see the quilt top completed and looking forward to see the finish result! You see I am so touch to see how happy my DIL is with this very special quilt made for her first born. This quilt is made with lots and lots of love and only grandparents who dotingly love their grandchildren wold know what that words mean.

Now, the next task is the process to put on the batting and backing and sewing in the motifs. Well, I am going to sew a very simple motif so as to ease myself from spending too much time working on just one quilt. Remember, I said earlier on that I have stacks of quilt tops squeezed inside my cabinet! LOL!

There goes Part 2 of the quilt story and watch out for Part 3 that will be shared with all here soon. Smile.

Quilting Like There's No Tomorrow

Howdy! I have been amazed at how busy I had been lately. In December 2006, there was Christmas preparations done and Christmas Day was celebrated with a low key then. My third grandchild’s early arrival was not in our 2006 plan, so we were all caught unprepared. My daughter in law’s due date was supposed to be in February this year but seemed that was some arithmetic error somewhere.

Well, December last year was celebrated with both happiness and sadness. The happy and sad events were that two little angels was born in the festive season of Christmas but one of them passed on to have Christmas with angels and saints in God’s beautiful heaven.

Then came the Chinese Lunar Year of the Pig (my Chinese Zodiac Year) and the activities that kept me busy (besides the usual routines, of course) was taking our family for visiting dear friends who invited us to their “open-house”. Usually like any festive seasons celebrated throughout Malaysia, sumptuous Malaysian cuisines and cookies and beverages are served. On Chinese New Year, my young nieces and grandchildren looked forward to receiving “ang pow” from the host of each celebrant. Besides visiting, my grandchildren and I were chasing after the Lion Dance performances around town! See, the New Year started with lots of interesting events and basically I could hardly find the time to ever continue with my interests and hobbies like gardening, quilting and sorting out boxes of stamp and coins collections.

It saddened me to see all those piles of unfinished quilt blocks, tops, scraps and stitchery blocks lying on the quilting table. Everyday I will be looking at the same sight again and again. J Guess I didn’t think about getting them finished once the top is finished. Heck!

Well, I have to admit that having several quilt tops (and by that I mean between 10 queen sizes and 25 small) quilt projects going at once I can pick and choose what I am in the mood for on any particular day!

I promised myself last year that beginning year 2007, I must spend time on my quilt works and get at as many small quilts completed before Christmas this year. Now that job did not start immediately any less! Duh! What is wrong with me? Am I having a terrible time management or is time managing me instead? I am itching to get my hands on those quilts since then but seems that these fingers are getting shorter and the person is getting lazier.

I must not let whatever the reasons maybe let me down. So, today I started with cutting and piecing blocks (yet again, more UFOs) for my new grandson. The story about this baby quilt continues and I will share with you the end story soon (hopefully). This quilt got to be finished so I can give it away as a gift at my grandson’s baptism day.

Till then, happy quilting to all quilters and to all the hobbyists out there enjoy whatever you are doing. God bless and wishing you and yours a Happy Lent Season.

A Quilt A Day

Ready or not, it’s summertime out there, right? Well, here in the country where I live, it’s a rainy day on a summer day! Pssst! You are right, we do not have the four seasons here!

Anyway, if you have been here before, you would have read about my “house cleaning”! Now with the house basically clean and much better arranged furnitures in place, I have the painting job to think about next. Having not decided on what color to choose from, and what more, to even start painting, I was thinking more along the lines of getting some UFO quilts completed. I am a novice but avid quilter. When I got myself started with quilting, I just couldn’t stop. The last few days, I have been working on the basketful of scrapes fabrics and piecing them to make baby quilts for my grandkids. Well, there I go again with yet another few UFOs. At present more than 10 UFOs quilts and a couple of small wall hangings quilts all stacked up in the closets, just need to have the backings pieced, which I am not very keen in doing. :( Hmm. I am a lazy bone at that though, and if the backings are not done, when will those quilts ever be completed! There are also a few stitchery blocks that need to be assembled and I haven’t got the best creative ideas about how these blocks would turn out once finished. Gee! Have I got so much to do with so little time!?

Oh yes, there are more UFOs, trust me, but some are nearing completion. Most of them just need a couple of more blocks made, or some stash busting for borders and backings. These few I am talking about here are the small wall hangings, table mats and canisters. But this will be another stack of quilts to be done for another time and that's for sure! :(

I just figured if I got these pulled together and placed in a spot in the house where I'd have to look at them every day, and then I'd feel bad because they weren't finished. That guilty feeling again! It's scary how many almost finished UFOs I have languishing around. Time to get organized here lazy-butt!

Nevertheless, at least for now I am in the mood to get these UFOs quilts completed. To reward myself for that, I took out a quilt I purchased quite sometime ago, and have in on my bed last night. It was raining lightly at the wee hour of the morning and it felt so nice and warm snuggled under it.

Just to share with anyone who is interested, here are some pictures of my UFOs quilting tops and finished wall hanging quilts for your viewing.

Well, to friends out there who experience the four seasons, wishing you a happy and blessed summertime!

~Many flowers open to the sun, but only one follows him constantly. Heart, be thou the sunflower, not only open to receive God's blessing, but constant in looking to him.~ Jean Paul Richter

~ I will praise thee with my whole heart.~ Psalm 138:1

Quilt Story

Welcome to all! Lets have a cuppa and I'll talk about my quilting with you... :)

I have always enjoyed sewing. It all started when I was in junior high and back then we had homemaking classes and sewing is one of the supporting subjects. I tried all sorts of things and that was sewing my own clothes, crocheting, cross-stitching and the list goes on and on.

My mother is an avid seamstress and in her yonder years, she sewed for us pretty simple dresses. Besides making dresses, she also enjoyed crocheting, knitting and patch working. She still enjoys the latter hobby even now. Those old clothing’s that were not worn anymore would be cut into pieces and she would pieced them together into patchwork. So basically she introduced me to embroidery, crocheting and quilting which I fell in love with!

I am an avid and novice quilter with a minimal amount of experience but I started quilting very slowly and got braver with every attempt. I strive to better myself with new skills and how-to with the help of the enormous amount of information found via the books and magazines and in today’s high technology world, the INTERNET.

Actually my passion for quilting started way back in 1997 when I bought a copy of the Simple Patchwork and Quilting for Beginners by ONDORI Publication Japan. I have not find time to really get started then.

Early 1999, a friend brought her mom’s quilts to the office and how impressed I was at the fine job her mom had done and that’s when I gave quilting a try and made a baby quilt; just for the fun of it. It turned out that the baby quilt was pretty beautiful and I just loved it! Then after a while I stopped. Guess then I was busy attending to other businesses of mine! However, the fad came back in around Year 2001 where one of our office's tea-girls showed me a queen size quilt she pieced and quilted by hand! What a beautiful quilt she got there! Just as any other experienced quilters, she inspired me and so to a lady neighbour of mine (PuteriDoris) who is an avid and long-arm quilter currently living in the US. Though one does hers by hands and the other by long-arm machine, their finished quilts are truly beautiful. Well, that's when I started quilting once again but this time at a much slower pace. Well, quilting is no simple thing to do for me, however, I forged ahead and started to feel confident enough in my work to give quilts as gifts to those people I have in my lives. Thus, the first successful and finished baby quilt I made was given as a birthday gift to my grandchild, Nigel, for his first birthday present. It's a pity I didn't take a picture of this quilt and now it is kept at his other grandparent's home for him to snuggle in whenever he stays over.

The second finished quilt I made was a table runner that I made from scraps, machine pieced and quilted by hand. In February 2005, a special and good friend, Michele came back to Malaysia from New Zealand for a holiday and as a souvenir I gave her this precious quilt. Again no picture taken. :(

I made several pieces of quilt tops in Year 2002 alone and a few small ones for wall hangings and table clothes. Now there are piles of quilts’ tops stashed up in the cabinet to be quilted. Though I couldn’t possibly know everything about quilting I am sure my quilts wouldn’t compare to a seasoned quilter’s quilts, nevertheless I am proud of the few I had done.

To all the experienced quilters out there, thank you for sharing your skills and knowledge. You are a great inspiration.