Oh Mickey!

Just one more before I go...


My 4th finish for 2010 and probably my last one for a long while now as Monday I'm off to the chopping block for my 3rd bout of corrective surgery on this gammy leg of mine.


I am so pleased to be able to give both boys a quilt before I go into hospital so this was a race to the finish. I machine quilted a grid and then big stitch handquilted around the stars...



Labels are on both this quilt and my Mother's butterfly lap quilt (shown finished in my previous post) and as my computer is now working (yes, you read that right! Not for long according to the copmputer shop LOL, but I'm not complaining!) I managed to find some photos of the Butterfly quilt, that I made for my brother and his wife, which produced the bonus triangles for Mom's quilt...

It lives in South Africa...

Along with all the wonderful swap gifts I got for Christmas, my lovely hubby bought me a 'posh' phone. As I usually get by with the cheapest phone the supermarket has to offer, I have been having a few issues with the technology LOL. He suggested that I make a case for it so I whipped up this one in the most awesome fabric aquired in South Africa from Shine Shine.


I think I love the case more than the phone LOL and I am working on a laptop cover in the same fabric, but I doubt I'll finish it before Monday. I have bought wool to knit beanies (the sum total of my knitting repertoire) and have lots of handwork lined up including a trial of a Carolina Lily block done in the English Paper piecing style. In fact, I have so much handwork, I doubt I'll get through it all, or at least I hope not!!

One Mickey Mouse quilt coming up

I had these Mickey Mouse placemat panels as the starting point for Ds2's quilt, but I wasn't feeling too inspired with their shape. There were 10 rectangular panels and I wanted a 3 x 4 layout so needed 12 blocks. I cut the panels into 12 inch squares and managed to squeeze 12 blocks out of the 10 panels.

Then I laid them out. They needed something....
I remembered the beautiful star quilt from the book 'Quick Quilts for Kids' by Elizabeth Keevil. I have made one of the other quilts in this book and always wanted to try her star quilt (you can see a bit of it on the cover) ...

I found some 'Wonder Under' from my good friend Birgit and set about customising my Mickey Mouse squares.

We had 'black ice' outside our house and in the yard yesterday. After DS1 slipped and hurt himself getting to the car, we decided not to risk a drive to school. So the boys were home and my sneaky sewing was interrupted a few times...



Voila! LOL. Lots of stars in red. DS2's favourite colour!



I used my selvedge method of keeping track of which squares went where...



Added sashings...



And then borders... And now we have a Mickey Mouse top ready for basting!



Mom's butterfly quilt got put on hold to do the Mickey quilt, even though it was already basted as Mom has decided that for health and warmth reasons she won't be able to come and help me when I go into hospital. I'll be on crutches for 6 months so she probably feels that there will be plenty of time to lend a hand LOL. I do hope to get it quilted soon though and can always handsew the binding while recovering.