More rain...

It is 7 January today and we had more rain! DH mentioned somethign about wettest summer on record, and even he agreed that there was little else to do but quilting - right before he disappeared into his green house. (His answer to my question what I would do when the boys drove me nuts was to join him there - well, thanks, but no thanks!)

Not that I got that much quilting done in the end, but the day was busy nevertheless. My quilting was confined to finishing face of oldest DS and after much ironing and padding with batting I placed it into the frame without the glass pane:

The heavy quilting of the hair (multiple layers of fabric) had distorted the piece to the point where the face - only one layer - would wrinkle and crinkle. While his highness does pull faces, I didn't want to look at a grumpy mood every day, and without the glass it came out smoother. I intend to do something about the colour fo the frame, but it was cheap at the place 'where everyone gets a bargain'...

This is his youngest brother, a smaller size and easier to handle (the quilt, not the boy!), the piece was a lot less distorted as the quilting was a lot lighter. Again a frame from the warewhare, this time with the glass - obviously not anti-reflection coated as I had to take multiple shots to get a decent one. This DS has already requested to have the picture in his room (while the big brother would prefer to take to the other one with scissors...):

I managed to miss most of the fluff on the floor - but not all :-)

As I have three sons, this should not really qualify as a finish but while I have heaps of nice pics of middle DS, none of them was suitable last time I looked, will have to have another look. If anyone is interested, this was a project from an issue of Quilting Arts a few years ago. Take a photo, via the computer turn into into about 4 different tones of grayscale, print of (mirro image) and layer fabrics lightest at the bottom to darkest on top, always cutting away the lighter parts (sounds confusing the way I say it, but I can look up the author and Issue if anyone wants to know). Quite a bit of waste though, because you use about 4 layers of fabric, all backed with fusible, plus stabiliser. Fun still.

Apart from that, I made a birthday card and wrapped a present, took youngest boy to 4h long birthday party (I left...) - bless the poor mother who had a dozen or so primary age kids running around her house while outside the rain kept on pouring. Went grocery and red shed shopping (on my own!) and didn't see anything for myself I liked. With middle DH had a serious go at cleaning his room. Made ricotta cheese for cheese cake (see Homemade Recipes page). Tried to rescue my remaining plums - of the dozens there yesterday, I had 5 left today - thank you birds and damn rain! Well, we had had plenty from two trees for the last couple of weeks. Now I just might try to get some FMQ practice in - do you think DH will realise I haven't made the cheese cake yet?....