Good housewife

Well, I'm not really, neither good nor housewife for that matter lol. Anyway, my lovely DH and youngest DS have been coughing for a fortnight now and finally I got it. A week before the holidays. Yeah - not - well maybe still yeah, better than being ill in the holidays! I had just handed in another 86 reports on Thursday and Friday (on top of the 170 or so I had handed in a couple of weeks ago), so the pressure was gone and bang there I get sick! What this has to do with being a good housewife? DH has the week off because the school of oldest DS has an extra week holidays (they started earlier in than other schools in January) so naturally both of them were home, too. DH then asked if I could make a little something to keep our doors safe from the cats so as a good wife I naturally couldn't decline the offer to go quilting lol. A bit long winded way of saying yeah I got some sewing done today, aye?

We have four lovely cats. We have had cats for many years, some of them are silent, some of them talk, and often the smallest ones are the one that make the most fuss. Take Crystal, she still looks like a kitten though 3y old. When we watch telly at night, there will be a mighty bang and the door to the lounge nearly smacks into the wall from the force and in comes innocently ' Crystal'. With the heat pump going and the power prices as they are we don't like having the doors open for all the heat to disappear (as usual in NZ while our walls and ceiling are insulated - concrete floor - the windows only have single glazing and just lined curtains to keep the cold out). So this is my little prototype I made from more of my leftovers from my Stratavarious Quilt a few years ago:

I will try to get some black elastic, white was all I had at home. I think I might need to make two more, one from the bathroom, where the cat flap is, to the hall way, and one from the hallway to the family room.

In position on the lounge doors. None of the cats wanted to try it first, we'll see what they'll do tonight :-)

With still heaps of leftovers from the Stratavarious Quilt, I quickly made another cushion cover, too:

Bugger, I had taken photos of the progress and deleted them by accident! OOh, I think this pic is actually upside down, Blogger, what are you doing?!

If you look closely you might see Loopy Line quilting. It was on Leah's site recently, and I found it an easy and quick way to quilt the cushion cover.

Over the weekend I had blissfully ignored the children for a while and made progress on my other stripey project, using the leftover strips from the Stratavarious quilt (no, I am still not sick of the colours!). Now there is just the binding left to hand-stitch on:

I ended up with 20 blocks overall

Not much leftover of that original pile now!

This is the polar fleece backing I am using. It is a bit bluer than I expected but it seems to work well. Above some of the blocks, not pieced together yet - you can see where I had to fill in with some dark blue to make it fit

I have quilted it with big stippling and attached the binding but will stitch it on by hand. I'll post more pictures when I have finished it :-)

But now to some goodies I received - ATCs and some charm squares from Kat Bierma

Thanks heaps, Kat!!!!

Now wish me luck for my job interview tomorrow! I better go and make some preparation so I don't mess that up...

Happy Sewing!