Thursday 29 August 2013

Colours of Summer

These are the Colour of Summer swap cards I've received so far.  Each very different and better in the flesh than in the photo.

From Helen

From Jan

From Miriam

From Pauline
 
 
It's been a bit hectic around here for the past couple of weeks.  We thought Keith was going to sail through his first session of chemotherapy as he was so well for a couple of days.  However the poor love has been really quite ill and we've had two emergency visits to hospital plus several GP call outs.  He has now finished the second week of chemo and has a week off before his second session starts all over again.   Naturally he is a bit apprehensive but today for the first time in two weeks he has actually had breakfast and has wandered out to his shed to look at his woodturning.  So perhaps he might have a few days of feeling well.   He has to get the second session out of the way before they will repeat his scans etc to see if the treatment is working.  After all he has been through recently I am keeping everything crossed that it has.

Sunday 18 August 2013

Progress

I've actually done a bit of sewing.  I joined the Doll Quilt challenge as I thought this was something I could do by hand while waiting for Keith to complete his chemotherapy.  It has been very therapeutic and relaxing, which is just what I need at the moment as my asthma has been a bit of a beggar.

I've also finished a set of postcards for the BQLPC Colours of Summer swap.

 The challenge was to create a doll quilt any size from 12" square to 30" square, mine is 16.5" square.  August theme was "up to the nines" and was to include any form of 9 patch.  Mine is fairly basic and I had decided to use up some of my bigger scraps.  When I finished it reminded me of the orient so I hand quilted lines, not very good ones I'm afraid as when I was quilting it the light wasn't always the best but its on its way to my partner now.
 
The Colours of Summer set me a challenge, I did have any notion of what I would do until I saw a picture of a pear made up of fruit slices.  I always think this time of the year is very fruitful so picked a few fabrics and made my own fruit slices.

A quick Keith update, not sure whether I said before but the cancer has spread from his lungs to his lymph nodes, liver and kidneys so surgery and radiotherapy aren't appropriate.  Although if the chemo doesn't work they might tackle one of two of the smaller tumours with radiotherapy.  He had his first chemo session on Thursday and so far has sailed through it with little more than a bit of tiredness, much less than that after his stroke.   He has the second week of chemo (1st session) next Thursday then has the next week off before starting the second session.   He's lucky in that he has no symptoms and is taking everything in his stride and has a positive attitude so we are all hoping for the best.

Monday 5 August 2013

I have done some work

Not much but at least its a start.  I found some templates I had bought and forgotten about and remembered that I wanted to try colouring in the templates and sewing round the images.  They are about 6" each and I've used them to keep me sane in the evenings.  Here are two of them which I think I will use as a pocket on a tote.

Landscape

Flower border

This is a piece I started some time ago and keep adding a stitch when the mood takes me.  I might make this into a book cover.

I've now got all my Indian Spice postcards to show you.
 

 
 
From the top the cards are from Lesley and Pauline who favoured the Indian Elephant and Marian and Jan who went for the colour of Indian spices.