Quilt School!

I arrived safely in Jubail on Thursday night. We had a good trip, no sandstorm thank goodness, and had a good night sleep before we started our quilting marathon! There was no mucking around, Nora got me to choose one of my tops and we started off the great long arm adventure!!

Did I tell you that Nora has a Gammill quilting machine? Well, she does... and I am getting lessons this week :) I tell you what, it is very addictive!!!! I have finished 4 tops nows... all trying something different. I feel pretty confident with free motion, but when I had a go with the laser, oh boy, that was a different story!!!

If you zoom in on the pic below, you should be able to see a little red dot. So the idea is to guide the machine from behind and "trace" the pattern with the red dot. Meanwhile, the machine is stitching the quilt....

It takes a bit to get your head around because you are used to watching the needle and stitches... so to start off with I was very wobbly... and by the end I was a little less, lol! But if you only look at it from afar... well, it is ok:


Actually, it looks better on the back because the thread blends in nicely :) I think I'd need a lot more practice before I would be really happy with the result!

We've been sewing some other bits and pieces in between, and just enjoying each other's company. And at the end of a long day of sewing.... dinner..... Can you guess what this is:

It is Camel Stew :)

It was my first time I'd had camel, and you know what? It was yummy and tasted just like beef. So now maybe I will be brave and buy some from the shop and cook it myself! And if you like, you can come on over and try some too..... :)

Bedtime... for tomorrow we have more lessons at Quilt School!

Workshops and Other Sewing.....

Last month I had the privilege of teaching a lovely group of ladies how to do raw edge applique and some free motion quilting. I really enjoy teaching and watching people improve their sewing skills. We had lots of fun, even though we had a few problems with the fusible web we were using.


The ladies did a great job, and two of them even trialed a new pattern I have been working on - the cute camel in the pic above :)

I have a few patterns that I need to finish, but I keep getting distracted....

One of my quilting buddies sent me a link to this youtube video: Tube Tutorial

It looked so cool, I couldn't help but sneak a little try of it... :) I made two or three tubes, cut them up and laid them out on the table like this:


I decided I liked it enough to make a few more tubes and make it bigger... now I have another project to finish! Oh well.... I did at least quilt the honey bun top and bound it, so even though I started a new one, I also finished one last week:



I've been plodding along with the SAL as well. I have almost three more stitched - just need to put sashing on and I can then take a photo and post on the blog.

This weekend I will be heading off for a little vacation to visit my friend Nora from Craft Kingdom. We have great plans to do lots of sewing, so it should be a wonderful week! I am going to take my computer and see if I can log on while I am there and keep everyone updated. Oh, must remember to take my camera... and my pin cushion... and some tops to quilt... and... ok, I'm off to write a list... catch you all later!

Heat, Dust and Water

Yes I am still here! Yes we are fine! Just very hot and the internet has been playing up. I am blaming it on the heat, although I am not sure that it has anything to do with it.... We've had the net down completely for a while. Other times it might as well have been down since it was taking forever just to download an email... forget surfing the net.

Now it seems to be working fine again, so I will try for a quick update.

Summer has well and truly hit us. We've also still had some sandstorms which just make a huge mess everywhere:


If we don't sweep it up, it comes right in the house:


Well, even if we do sweep, it still manages to come in.... sigh.... As for our poor garden, it is suffering as well:


We had to stop watering most of the grass because we ran out of water in our tank. We don't have mains water here, just a big tank under the house that the city is supposed to fill up regularly. Sometimes, however, they seem to turn the tap off for no reason and then you run out of water and have to go buy some.

The first time this happened Cam got some guy down the road to help organize a water truck like this to come and fill up the tank:


Naturally all the people involved needed some money and we ended up paying way more than we should have. So the second time Cam found the place that supplies the water and organized it himself - it was much cheaper :) We live very close by one of the spots where the trucks fill up with water. There is often a very long line of these trucks waiting to get refilled:

Eventually they get in behind the high walls and you can see the pipes where they fill up from:


This water is just for washing, etc, not for drinking. Our drinking water gets delivered to the shops in a truck like this one:


We have a water cooler in our kitchen:


And always keep some spare bottles on hand:


It is amazing how much we go through, since I also use it for cooking.

I have also been doing lots of sewing since it is too hot to do much outside, but I think this is enough for one post, so I'll attempt a sewing update tomorrow :) And I'll be dropping by some blogs and catching up on your news too I hope! For now, it is bedtime.... catch you all later!

Butterflies!!

Last week we had some friends over for dinner who were leaving the Kingdom to go back to the US for good. "Hello" and "Goodbye" are so much a part of life here and it is always sad to have to say goodbye to people you are just getting to know.....

I was glad we were able to have one last dinner together though. As I was thinking about what to cook, I thought of a yummy lasagne type casserole that I used to make a lot. Since I had just finished a row of butterflies for the new Round Robin over at Patchwork Posse, I decided that it was meant to be....

So I got out the butterfly pasta (that's what we call it anyway!), made up white sauce and mince.. then started layering:


White sauce and butterflies... then steamy hot mince mixture:


More butterflies:


More white sauce and cheese:


Ready to go in the oven... forgot to take a photo of it done, and it didn't last long enough to take a photo once I remembered.... :) Yum! Must make it more often!

And what about the Butterfly Row for the Round Robin? Here it is, blue butterflies all in a row:


Ready for the next row.... Just in case you are wondering, I am using my stash for this quilt and also decided to try to do each row with one main color... let's see how it works out, and let's see if I can keep up this time!!!

Color my world...

..... with just over a hundred colors.....


Faith's quilt (from my beginner's class) pinned and ready to quilt:


A Jelly Roll all sewn up like they did in the Jelly Roll race:


And a Honey Bun done in the same way:

Oh, you can colour my world with sunshine yellow each day!
And you can colour my world with happiness all the way!
Just take the green from the grass and the blue from the sky up above!
And if you colour my world just paint it with your love!
Just colour my world.

I didn't have a notion!

A few weeks ago one of my new friends asked me if I had been to the notion store... and I said, what notion store???? She's like, oh it has lots and lots of threads and buttons and ribbons and... and... and.... Of course I had to find it and go see for myself.

So, another friend and I went in search for it on Wednesday morning. She has a driver, however he doesn't really know where he is going and hardly speaks English, so it was quite an interesting morning!

I think we must have done a tour of Riyadh, becuase we passed most of the important sights. At one stage I called Cameron to see if he could help us because the GPS was taking us into the center of town instead of the edge... and he wanted to know where we were... which of course we didn't know... and just saying that we could see the Faisaliah Tower didn't help either because you can see that from most spots in the city...

I think the driver was getting a little stressed too, because at one stage he pulled up on the side of the road and said, "One minute madame..." and proceded to sit there for a few minutes while my friend and I looked at each other in confusion. A few minutes later he pulled out into the traffic again and kept going.....

Anyway, we made it in the end with a little help from our friends... many phone calls and u-turns later :) It was worth it in the end, because it is the coooooolest little shop I have seen in a while (litereally as well as figuratively- they had a/c thank goodness). (It is now in the mid 40sC during the day.)

We went into the shop and found ourselves surrounded by color and glitz...


You know how I hate zips, but these were almost tempting:



Buttons anyone?


Yes! DMC for my stitching!!!

And some yarn!!

But the main thing I went for was this:


Threads... many colors for applique! The top boxes with threads are all 100% Italian cotton which I love to work with. So I asked the man if I could have two of each color.

He said, "No problem."

It took him a while.

And when he had reached 100 different colors he'd had enough. I asked him if that was all the colors, and he muttered something about it being enough... poor guy... I got him to pick 5 more and then took pity on him and decided 105 colors was a pretty good range :)

I need to set them up somewhere in the shop so that while we are doing a class if someone runs out they can grab one. There is nothing worse than needing a color and having to just drive out for one... However, at least we do know where the shop is in case we need more :)

I also bought some pins and needles and tape measures to have in the shop in case we need them too.... so all in all it was a great day!

(Thanks Janelle and Marisol!!!!!)

And some more....

I thought I'd let you see a few more lovelies from our Quilt Guild Mini Show... Lots of the members were busy making wall hangings this year to donate to one of the children's hospitals in town. They were all so pretty, and lots of work went into them:



Here's a close up of the flower one, click on it to see how the centers were made with Texture Magic - a technique I really want to try soon:

Some more embroidered and appliqued ones:


Hmmm... do you see the one in the middle? I wonder who made that one.. anybody recognize the pussycat?! More on that one another day :)

I am sure the kiddies will enjoy looking at these wall hangings don't you?