Slow Sunday Stitching - old friends

Welcome to the international weekly hand stitching party!

6 year old UFO

Lately I have been visiting some of the projects in my UFO collection. Many are unfinished because I either want to add some hand applique or I want to hand quilt them. I don't know if I will have enough years in my life to accomplish this lofty goal, but it's fine with me if they sit in the closet and wait for their turn. Or eventually get finished by someone else. 

I have been slowly working on my Life Is Beautiful project for 6 years. I still love it and enjoy putting stitches in it from time to time. There are 2 blocks in the quilt layout, an embroidery block and an alternate circular applique block. 

Hand quilting an embroidery block

This is a project that involves my favourite hand stitching activities: applique, embroidery, and quilting. I am not in a hurry to finish it. I savour each stitch, and each step of the creative process. That is what making a beautiful life is all about!

I certainly have enough quilted blocks to start the quilt-as-you-go assembly process but I haven't yet. The blocks are easier to store in a pile. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it LOL!

And I'm also hand quilting my oldest UFO that I showed last week. 

In spite of everything going on in the world, and needing to stay "safe at home" during our continuing covid19 lockdown, today I'm just going to focus on creating more beauty in life by putting stitches into a couple of my oldest projects. 💖

What beautiful projects are you hand stitching today? Link up your blog post below and share with us.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Playing with Pink

Did you see the Table Scraps Challenge from Joyful Quilter? Last year I enjoyed making a few placemats and decided to continue with that in 2021, combining the RSC colour of the month with a placemat project. The link up is the last Saturday of the month, so that will be fun!

I pulled out some old leftover HST blocks and made a few pinwheels to start. These are small blocks - the pinwheels measure 2" and will be 1.5" in the finished project.

Then I added a very pale pink background fabric and put some blocks on point. Cute so far, but not big enough for a placemat yet, so I'll have to add to it.

So much scrappy pinkness going on right now. Did you see the UFO I'm also working on? Totally pink!

Linking up to the RSC party

UFO Update

This month's UFO had to be found before I could work on it! It's almost 5 years old, so it was at the back of the closet. And although I didn't actually start working on it until this week, I was working on it in my head since the beginning of the month. Thinking. Thinking. 

Why did I stop working on it? What would make me like this project more? 

Having the right mindset is the most important thing when working on a UFO and here are the four insights I had about this project:

1) Too much of a good thing (pink) might not be good (for me)! I was coming to that conclusion after the class and spacing out the pink and adding more white in the strip sets, but still not quite enough to settle it down. 

2) Adding a couple of random surprises makes me happier! In this quilt there are a few bunnies and owls.

3) There is no "right" layout, especially with an improv quilt. Anything the maker likes is "right". Sometimes when I take a quilt class I start to think there is only one way to put a quilt together, and the teacher knows the way and I don't. It ties me up in knots and then the project gets stuck. 

4) Hand stitching fixes everything (for me!). As soon as I started thinking about adding hand stitches in pink thread, I immediately wanted to finish the quilt top.

Progress is being made!

Design Wall Monday

This week I am diligently working on my Grassy Creek mystery quilt. It has been a fun quilt to piece, and I have enjoyed it immensely. This is the rough layout according to the directions. It was nice but a bit too much red for me.

I replaced all the churn dash bars with gold fabrics and it was also nice but a bit too much gold for me.

The story of Goldilocks came to mind... too hard, too soft, too hot, too cold, ahhhh... just right!

I tried a combination of alternating red and gold and that was just right! I loved how that looked and couldn't wait to get sewing it together. It is my goal to sew the entire quilt top by next week's design wall. Lofty goal, but doable if I can stay focused. 

Linking up to Design Wall Monday over at Small Quilts.

Slow Sunday Stitching - My Oldest UFO

Welcome to the mid January hand stitching link up! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will visit with some of the folks who have linked up below and leave some some encouraging comments for them.

In the coldest winter months I like to put some stitches into my oldest UFO. It is about 25 years old and I still love it! I am now quilting the border lines, which you might think is boring, and it is. But it's also very relaxing and easy, and is just what I need today. 

It is such a large, heavy quilt and it's perfect for winter snuggling. Max thinks so too! When I got up to go to the washroom, this is what I found upon my return! He had pulled it off the chair and made himself a little bed. He loves quilts so much, but he also eats them so we have to keep an eye on him! (PS - see my treadle sewing machine in the background... time to do some of that again!)

We all need to feel a sense of connection these days while we sit in our homes in the winter, trying to stay safe from covid and still maintain sanity! The province in which I live (Ontario) has declared our second covid "state of emergency" as of this past week, and we are ordered to stay at home, leaving only for buying groceries or for medical appointments. We are warned about "dark days ahead" if people don't comply with this lockdown period. It's no problem for me... I can stay in my house and quilt until the cows come home, or until the pandemic is over, whichever comes first! 

Quilting until the cows come home or the pandemic is over!

What are you hand stitching today? Are you working on winter projects? Or are you in the southern hemisphere working on summer projects?? Link up your blog post below and share your project update with us.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Scrappy Saturday

We are in a 28 day "lockdown/stay at home" order in our province. We usually experience some "cabin fever" at the best of times during the middle of every winter, so we need to be creative to find ways to make this "safe at home" experience more enjoyable.

I have been making a variety of soups and some of them have been delicious and some have been, well, "interesting". This was a "clean out the fridge" soup which was interesting! LOL 

I have also been playing in the pink scraps making my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks and this week I added a few more to the waffle collection, and the easy breezy collection.

Linking up to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge party

Mystery Blocks

I have kept up with the Quiltville mystery by sewing half the units each week since the end of November. And on Friday we got a doozy of a surprise with the pattern reveal! I could hardly wait for my work day to be over so I could get to my sewing machine.

And in my excitement I sewed the first two blocks wrong!! Yes I did!

Wrong! Both of my first failed attempts!

Okay, once I settled down, unsewed the errors and tried again, the blocks turned out correctly. 

I also finished sewing all the centre stars which was very enjoyable. I can't wait for more time to keep building more blocks.

Linking up to Small Quilts