Do you ever wake up feeling in a particular mood in the morning? By this I am not talking about good or bad but more like "today I am going to clean cupboards - bake bread" type of mood.

Well this morning I woke up in a "quilting" mood - no big surprise there LOL. Yet I do not mean piecing or appliqué but actual quilting.So as it promised to be a nice quite Sunday - very little cooking - no visitors that I expected and the fact that it was a freezing but beautiful sunny day today I did just that.

For Christmas 2007 I made my grandson a play-quilt. Should have been a crib-quilt but my quilts have a habit of growing and growing. My DIL had asked for bright colours - no problem - Since both I and my sons are born in Africa and grandson Ben learned to recognize a lion and zebra before a cow or kitten I wanted to make him an African themed quilt. (still thinking crib quilt at this stage).

Hunting around for some fun fabric I came across the fabric line called "My African Village" and loved it. Once it arrived I found out the prints were rather larger than I thought - and so my quilt grew. A couple of weeks before this I took a lesson in "seminole technique", that looked good with the colours I had in mind. In 2005 during a visit to South Africa - visiting family and friends I met up with a lady from Westville that sold hand-dyed fabric from her home:http://www.amafu.co.zaif/. Not only was her home situated in the village next to the one we lived in for 23 years, the cotton sheets she used were spun and woven at the factory were half the family was employed in one position or another at the time. I needed no further encouragement or motivation to start his quilt.

By Christmas-eve I could present him with his quilt - but I had to take it back as it still needed a lot of hand-quilting done to it. I had done a lot of the straight lines by machine (not really a succes) and sat for 17hrs tying the ends.

Ben loved his quilt and whenever he visited us it was used. The hand-quilting was put in the back of my mind. Now however the quilt could use a wash and before doing so I must get this quilting done. So that is my main project for this month.

In the meantime I'd like to share some of the WIP and photo's of Ben using his quilt, which I named "Ben's African Village".

Enjoy