15 Minute Challenge, Beautiful weather but we probably could do with some more rain

I've been doing my best get as much winter sun as I can lately.  The weather has been warmish and there has been lots of sunshine, but we woke up to drizzle this morning which has all but disappeared this afternoon and the skies are blue again, but we need more rain.  

Mo survived pottery class last week and we will heading off again in a couple of hours.  The place is in a bit of dodgy part of town especially at night, so DH is going to meet us in the city and stay with her until she goes in just in case I can't get a park close by.  

One of Mo's teachers told her today that she should consider Graphic Design and the teacher  would be quite happy to help her get together a portfolio, however Mo has her heart set on a particular uni course on Illustration and Animation she really hasn't looked at anything else.  As much as she has excelled at Graphics Design at high school it doesn't hold enough art component for her so she isn't really interested in it as a career.  

Maestro starts Uni this week but he only has a couple of contact hours, it truly starts next week and most of it is online.  He seems to be taking things seriously has got all his notebooks together ready to start.  Keeps knocking back offers to play video games, as he doesn't want to get addicted to playing so he can concentrate on Uni.  Not that he slacked off last time he did lots of work and got good grades in all his subjects he just hated the Teaching course.  Fingers crossed this is a good path for him.

On the sewing front, I did some more quilting on my Liberty quilt.  I toyed with the idea of doing some filler stitches in the plain squares but Mo poo poo'd it, she said it didn't need any more stitching in the blank squares.  I wasn't happy with my play piece so at least it will keep the quilt soft and light so that's fine.  

I purchased some Wonderfil Konfetti thread for another quilt.  I was going to go with aurifil, but there was a long wait on a cone of the colour I wanted to come from Italy and the thread is pretty expensive anyway and need 2 or 3 of the large spools ($20 each) and a cone is 3 times that,  so I have decided to give the Wonderfil a go and see if I like it enough to switch. I'm already using it for Wonderfil Efina  for appliqué and hand piecing and I love it.   So I got myself a colour card in anticipation that its a done deal when I ordered the thread.  

I've done some more cross stitch, I think I am going to end up running out of a couple of colours, but I have cosmo replacements that I can use further down the piece.  I had to use them for one or 2 colours in the previous drum pincushion and they are a good substitute they are just not variegated.  Some of the colours I have double the amount I need from the previous projects. I'm sure if I swap some of the colours nobody is going to know.  

It was a 7 out of 7 week for me, how did you go.  

Find out how everyone is going by visiting Kate.  

  

15 Minute Challenge - Back to School

Don't think Mo was too keen to be back at school today, she was a tad grumpy this morning and wasn't much better when I picked her up.  She is starting a pottery class tonight, going to adult learning venue that may be the cause of the anxiousness but who knows it may just be back to schoolitis.  

Maestro has told work to pump up the shifts this week as he starts Uni the following week so we probably won't see him much before Monday he has decided to not work the first week of Uni we will see if that actually eventuates.  He ended up having 3 days off this last week which hasn't happened in a month or so he has been easier to live with and less tired.  His work is making them all work for the Job Keeper payment but most weeks he is working well over which is good for the bank account not so much for him physically.  

Stitching wise on the weekend I bit the bullet and decided to start quilting a quilt on the Juki.  Didn't get an awful lot done but I'm happy with the big working space and manoeuvrability of the quilt top.  Was going to work with rulers but I just got too stressed about it and decided to change feet and just do freemotion.  I'll get to the ruler work on bigger projects soon but not just yet.  

Was looking at a youtube video of Angela Walters and she had 3 fingered quilting gloves on.  I want them, looks like they are only available on her site and with the whole Covid thing happening I'm thinking it will be Xmas before I get them and a gazillion dollars to ship 😔 so going to wait until they available here and put up with my old gloves.  

I have finished Project 2 for Blackbird Designs Club.  Here is the piece before it was made into the drum pin cushion and the finished product below.  I think my vintage Hat pins look lovely on display.  

 

This is the start of project 3.  I'm waiting for arrival of Project 4 in the post, which I think may be delayed with all the border closures happening again.  

It was a 7 out of 7 week for me.  How did you go.  

you know the drill head to Kates to see how everyone is going.  

15 Minute Challenge - More School Holidays

Its the final week of school holidays.  Maestro starts back at Uni in a couple of weeks fingers crossed he will enjoy it this time around.  He is working lots at the restaurant so I don't know how he is going to fit it all in, only 1 day off last week.  He said he asked for the first week of Uni off so that he could get his head round it, fingers crossed they do the right thing by him.

Mo has been doing lots of homework as well as just hanging out.  She has a quite a few social interactions planned for this week.  She has to really push herself to attend these. She has been to an 18th birthday, is going to a sleepover (though she never sleeps over) with her primary school friends, and has another 18th birthday in 2 weeks time.  

We had a successful day, formal dress shopping and we only ended up going to 2 shops.  The 2nd shop was formal wear nirvana and Mo ended up trying on lots of dresses just for the fun of it.  She figured she wouldn't get to do it again.  It was a toss up between a butter yellow strapless dress and a navy one with a high neck no sleeves.  She looked more comfortable in the navy and it was very elegant with silver glitter giving it a shimmer.  We are on the lookout for a silver belt to finish it off and some shoes but she has some that she thinks will be ok with it.   We have to go back and have the hem done but we can wait a bit and look around for shoes.  

Mo gets quite anxious in shops especially when shop attendants make a fuss but in both shops we were left alone and the attendant's only helped when we asked for it so we had a good day and we were able to have lunch in an actual cafe which we haven't been able to do for months.  

I also picked up my new Juki on Thursday.   I have had a bit of a play with it over the weekend, but I managed to hurt my arm on Thursday, loading the washing machine of all things so I was a bit limited in what I could do.  

I purchased the quilting table as well which allows the machine to be used side on and I have been playing with that over the weekend.  The table takes up a fair bit of space but it will be amazing to quilt on.  I have only been using small practice pieces but it is so easy to use.  I tried out some ruler work on the weekend, something that I struggled with with the confines of the throat space of the Bernina.  

My only complaint about the Juki is the lighting.  My Bernina has a really good light around 3 sides that the Juki doesn't have.  The Juki has a real shadow under the arm that is really noticeable at night with overhead lighting (you can see it in the picture).    I did purchase a strip of LED sewing machine lights on ebay which were pretty cheap (under $20) just to see how they go,  There are other lighting units that are up to and over $100 on other dedicated sewing websites promising the best light but I want to see how the cheap LED's work first, I don't think I have to worry about true colour etc that these are promising I think that would be more for embroidery machines ... but I could be wrong.  

I had a 7 out of 7 this week.  Last night my arm was good enough to enable me to do some more cross stitch, I'm way behind on these projects, lots of the ladies on the facebook group have finished project 3 and I'm still stitch 2 but I think it is going to be very pretty when its finished.  This one I have run out of a couple of the threads so I had to find some dmc replacements and will switch some of the greens that I have left over from project 1.  

So how did your week go, head to Kate's to find out how the rest of the gang went.  

15 Minute Challenge - School Holidays and Formal Planning

This week hasn't been so good on stitching front it was only a 4 out of 7 week.  I think I've just been a bit tired.  

Maestro went out to a party on Saturday night (we have lifted restrictions that far). The plan was that he would spend the night at a mates place as the party was way over the other side of town.  We got a phone call at 12.30 can you pick me up.... he had over done it.  So hubby went up to pick up the mess and then I didn't go back to sleep until they got back a couple of hours later.  I kept looking at the stitching last night then ended up going to sleep siting up in the chair trying to watch a movie.  

I did tidy my sewing room yesterday which I probably could have counted.  I've ordered a new sewing machine and I'm hoping to pick it up on Thursday fingers crossed that it arrives on time for my day off.  Mo and I are also going to start formal dress hunting after we pick up my machine.  

I might need a stiff drink after that as Mo doesn't cope well with shop assistants when shopping and those kind of shops I know they are going to be all over us.  I have warned her that it is going to be like that, in fact it woke me up the other day from a dead sleep when I realised that it probably was going to be an issue.  She expects to find a dress this school holidays I expect meltdowns and me having to make the dress.  I can't tell you how many times we have left a shop because a shop assistant has tried to assist.  

I haven't got very far with my cross stitch this week there is lots of details that needs to be filled and I have run out of one of the threads, I would have thought with all the threads I have I would have had the one that would match but I couldn't find one.  I'm going to unpick the top row fo the pot as the one I thought would match just stands out too much.  

So how did your week go. Hopefully it was better than mine on the stitching front.  

Head to Kate's to see how everyone else went this week.