Great visit at Ubizane Wildlife Reserve!!!

Here is what we went to visit, our daughter, her hubby and Matthew
and of course all the pets, Ziquenya the dog and Chloe the goat. 

Here is the way the animals greeted us when we left early morning to come home
They are not very bothered with the car. 

This is a tiny cabinet made by my wonderful Stepfather
when he was in high school. Now sadly not with us anymore
but now I have a small piece of his world.

Am still working on finishing my crazy quilt but took a rest to visit with our family for a delayed Christmas holiday. The kids are too busy with the Lodge for us to visit over Christmas as it is when the Lodge is fully booked. So we decided to visit them later. It was also great fun because my daughter has started crocheting and I had to help. Lots of laughter and excitement for her learning all new crochet terms. 

Well its now back to complete my crazy quilt journey as I have now ended lots of ends of this journey and just now at the last of this crazy journey to get done.

Visiting

Visiting daughter and family at Ubizane wildlife reserve. Will post m
ore when we are back home.

Update on Crazy quilt!!!

Here I have done a joining seam with
white daisy trail and also some blue
french knot flowers.

Uhm just got carried way with this one and
added lots more cream embroidery to these roses.
Now its looks so nice and full.

Its amazing that I still come up with these embroidery stitch combinations
after the many years I have been working on this.
I am trying to get this crazy quilt done now and working on it as much as possible.

Now a wonderful blessed creative 2014 to all of you!

Just more of daily life!!!!!

Interesting! here I used loose french knots in different collections and
each time the flowers came out so different. Its the row of yellow pink blue and red flowers that is covering the joining seam.

Enjoying the sunset over Clanwilliam Dam with a nice braai with
my son and his family

Here is my new leaves that I thought out and its so easy and quick

Wow still embroidering!!!

Wow still embroidering slowly but surely. It is very hot here and temps are over the 40*C daily here and its is a bit warm under all this fabric on my lap.
 I am trying to work something in the mornings. Hubby and I were chatting this morning how just more and more ideas of embroidery possibilities are still coming in my head for the finishing of the crazy quilt. I have decided that I did not want the separate blocks to show but will embroider over them to have a nice overall crazy quilt. Here is what I am doing. Using some of the embroidery that I did on the blocks and taking it further over the other blocks to form a nice overall flow. 

Here is where I have added more of the same embroidery
over the seams to have a continues flow of
embroidery and not block by block

Here I joined the blocks with a lovely bright green leave and
shades of pink french knots. The leaves came out great.
I did a long stitch and then went over that with a chain stitch
and then using the weaving technique I wove these lovely leaves
through all three legs.
uhm thinking I will have to make some more of these in the rest of the
quilt as it was so nice and easy and also fun to see that the leaves
did not all turn out to be exactly the same. 

Here the 4 seams come together just to show that
I am now embroidering on the seams after joining
my blocks together

Joining at the new seams

Last but not least, at last I have now wrapped all

the Christmas gifts and just hoping the grandsons will

enjoy them. 

Busy Busy and a surprise!!!!!

Christmas decorations are now up and this is what it looks like
before the lights are switched on.

Here I have started with the embroidery after joining the blocks together into rows and now joined 2 rows
I will be doing two by two and then join with the centre row.

Well I am a very sentimental person and this proves it.
We received a lovely set of different crystal glasses from my Mom
and slowly over the years they have broken out and this is the last one
left. Well I could not throw this one away and strange enough they all
seemed to break just under the round of the glass.
There is a lovely crystal ball just above the foot of the glass.
So looking at it I turned the foot upside down and there we
are I have my very own crystal ball in a nice snow bubble.
Now I have preserved this piece of history for many years to come.

Here you can see my crystal ball when the sprinklers have settled down.

Okay here is what everyone has been waiting to see. Here I have
laid out all 25 blocks of the crazy quilt and as you can see
they are not arranged the way I wanted. But be assured I will
be posting this when completed.

All done, 10kg apricots into jam. I get apricots yearly and have to make
into jam because the bought ones are not so tasty and also lot less
sugar and no preservatives in. This will last us about a year.

A Little of this and that!!!!!

A bit more done

Just love using the House of Embroidery threads

I found some fresh water pearls in my bead box and
just had to add them here

Well this is some fabrics that I bought at a quilt shop that I visited
this past week. It was a huge gift because I have not been to a real
quilt shop in a few years. heheheheh no not joking we hardly
ever go to Cape Town just for shopping, its only for visits to the Specialists
And on Tuesday was the day for Qubby to be at the drs. Well while
waiting for the next appointment I decided to go to Thimbles, a very
nice quilt shop in Durbanville near Cape Town. Well it was really like a
Christmas gifts for me. I was totally lost between all those lovely fabrics and ideas. As always I could not decided what I wanted and what to buy. So while there daughter phoned and asked where I was, must have sounded overwhelmed, so of course
she is also a quilter and had to get her some fabrics too.
So this is what I bought and a bit more other goodies.

Now you are wondering what this is. I just love to add something colorful to new linen when I buy them. We have bought some lovely white percale sheets and this is a crocheted strip that I added with some nice red satin ribbon. Also did the pillowcases to match. Well I put this on
the flat sheet so that I know where is the top of it. And of course this makes the sheets look so inviting to me

Well thats it for now and I have 3 blocks to check and hopefully have it laid out open to see what block goes where. I also have to put the Christmas decor up this week. To get into the Christmas feeling. So all have a great creative week. Take care and hugs to all.

Embroidery, life and a cat!!!!!

A bit more filling done today

Added grapes and also some stars and beads.
Added the grandsons names and birth dates.

I just think this is really wow.
Love the way the use of the House
of Embroidery threads just give
this the extra wow that I needed.

This is pure orange blossom honey that
hubby and neighbor collected yesterday
nothing added..

And last but not least, here is Tonic
trying to wake me up early morning.
I was peeping at her to see what she does
and of course she knew that I was awake.
She just has the most magnificient whiskers

Just daily things!!!

Just a smalll update!!!!

I have been busy going through all my blocks of the crazy quilt and found lots of places that needs to be filled.

 Am taking my time and just enjoying the finishing part of the crazy journey. Will post pictures only when I have completed all the blocks.

Well at last I had a haircut, my hair was getting to long and heavy.
Was not planning on cutting it but long hair at my age, humph
makes me look very old and also having grey hair when its long
just does not look very nice.

Matthew and his parents went to Sudwana Bay and had great
fun, esp Matthew with this huge crab.

All in a weekend!!!!!!

 A seam done

a filler done

one whole corner completed, this was my
very first block and now I am going back
and filling in.

the House of Embroidery thread is the orange one and this
is just to show how nice the shaded area of the orange
flowers are.

The last block done!!!

 Well now I have done all 25 blocks and have them pinned to a huge sheet. Now I am going to go through all the blocks and fill in all the empty spaces. I need to use much more of my threads and goodies.
Then the huge task begins of putting all these together into a likable quilt and more embroidery to combine all the blocks together. Am just loving this and now need to get it all done. I am so proud of the huge crazy quilt and the completion of it. It did take long but I worked on it day by day and also got to enjoy all the memories behind all the work.

Just had to add some lovely pearly beads

This is a daisy 

Just had to have something nice and loved doing the pink flowers
in my special threads from "House of Embroidery" I was lucky to
have bought the whole range of nr 8 perle and am
having such fun with threads.