Catching up

It's been a while (a long while) since my last blog entry. My perfectionist side insists that I should catch up with the blog, which would involve writing about all that I have done in the past two months. However, doing that would be way too time consuming - for me and you as readers. And probably not very interesting, anyway. So, I have decided to catch up by posting a few pictures and short comments on the relevant events.

On July 14, I tripped and broke my ankle in two places. It was quite painful and my injury kept me from work, driving my car and operating my sewing machine for six weeks. I'm better now, so let's not dwell on the subject ;-)

It was a bit uncertain whether I would be able to go to the Festival of Threads in Birmingham (August 19-22). The doctor had warned me not to walk very much. However, some clever thinking resulted in the plan to rent a mobility scooter for getting around the venue. This worked out very well, as you can see above. Thank you Sommeke, for taking this picture!

And here's part of my festival purchases. I also bought three wonderful books. There were so many vendors, it was absolutely overwhelming! Amazingly, I managed to stick to my budget. It was hard, especially because I was sorely tempted to buy a new sewing machine (Juki TL-98P). This machine feels very solid and has a much larger harp than my regular sized Pfaff. When I'm machine quilting my bed sized quilts, I frequently wish for that extra space. However, budgetary sanity prevailed - this time!

As often happens, Merel and I both saw and loved the same quilt and wanted to do something similar. This time, it was this quilt by Rita from Red Pepper Quilts blog. I was stuck at home and, lo and behold, Merel came around with a stack of solid purple fat quarters. Before long, I had cut several hundreds of solid purple squares and just as many different colored ones in printed fabrics. After my foot was released from its cast, I started sewing and pressing.

This...

doesn't look like much to me.

But THIS:

looks like I'm getting somewhere finally. This weekend, I have been pinning (yes, I've found that pinning greatly improves my piecing precision), sewing and pressing almost non stop. It's time now to clear my design wall, so I can arrange a total of 108 blocks in preparation for assembling the top. I hope to be able to show more soon!