Design Wall Tuesday

making cornerstones

I am still working on my "Scraphappiness" quilt this week. I have figured out the math for the remaining yellow sashing yardage, cut all the sashing strips, and decided on the scrappy cornerstones. Here is a photo of the scrap sorting and cutting table. 

The two sections on the right are sewn together and I am sewing more cornerstones today.

I want to get this off the design wall asap so I can focus on the new Quiltville mystery quilt for the rest of the year.

Linking up to Design Wall Monday at Judy's

Slow Sunday Stitching

Thanks for dropping by the weekly hand stitching party where we're all about needles, threads, fabric, inspiration and self care! There is no advertising here, no black friday sales, no machines to give us grief, and no stress whatsoever! It's just pure relaxation, taking deep breaths, and taking one slow stitch at a time. 

I did a lot of hand stitching on two quilt bindings this week. I finished an 8 year old Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt, and my November placemat. Every single stitch taken was enjoyable.

I have no idea what I will work on today. I need to trace out a new embroidery project to start and maybe I will also do some hand quilting. We are hoping for a dusting of snow tomorrow, and that is perfect weather for hand stitching ❄ ❄ 

What are you working on today? Link up your blog post and share your hand stitching project with us.

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Rainbow Scrap Challenge is FINISHED!

It's always so exciting to finish a quilt... but even more so when it's a long term scrappy project that was 8 years in the making! November's UFO began in April 2014 and was inspired by Bonnie Hunter's Maverick Stars pattern. Each month I made a couple of blocks with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

The quilt top was put together at a retreat in September 2019. And then it needed to age sufficiently in the magical UFO closet.  (You have one of those don't you!?!?)

diagonal wavy line quilting

The quilting was inspired by Preeti's serpentine quilting and I quilted horizontal, vertical, and diagonal wavy lines.

I used up some leftover grey scraps for the binding, most of which were trimmings from backings. I love that fabric with the glasses that was in a scrap bag - it looks like the block is supervising the binding process!

And when the quilt was finished, we went on an adventurous outdoor photo shoot. 

Here is the "stars on the wood pile" shot.

Finished size: 48" x 66"

The fall leaves were a carpet, crunching under foot as we searched for good locations for photos.

Here is the "quilt over the rail" shot.

And my favourite photo is "stars on the oak leaf path"!

Proudly linking up to One Monthly Goal and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Happy Mystery Friday!

You know what today is don't you?!?!

It's the day that mystery quilters patiently wait for every year... today the first step is revealed for the new 2021 Quiltville mystery! You can find the fabric requirements here.

 

I am using all batik fabrics for my Rhododendron mystery and here is the lusciousness I will be cutting into today.

 Let's go!

November Table Scraps

A scrappy treat bag arrived in the mail earlier in the month and I immediately started sewing the scraps together. I didn't sort them, just started sewing the pieces that were right sides together. Why is it that other people's scraps are WAY more fun than my own?? Once I had the pairs sewn, they just seemed to sew themselves together into 3.5" broken dishes blocks.

I made 12 blocks which were the perfect size for a placemat for November's Table Scraps Challenge. Because of the bias edges on all the blocks, the placemat did not lay completely flat. Some very wonky "stitch in the ditch" (horizontal, vertical, and diagonal) soon fixed that problem, but don't look too closely!

Total # of scrap triangles rescued from the trash = 192! 

In December this placemat will join it's friends (that you can see here) in going to Meals on Wheels.

PS - I love the pumpkin fabric backing that I found, and the binding is one of my favourite Henry Glass fabrics called "Harvest Blessings" - perfect for a November placemat finish!

 

Linking up to the Table Scraps Challenge, and Wendy will link me up to the mini quilts challenge at Constant Quilters.

Scrappy Design Wall

Last week I took an online/zoom class with Adriana Fagan called "Wild about strings". It was inspiring to see how many creative variations she has come up with for using up strings.

Instead of starting a new project, I focused on making more blocks for my scrappy string quilt that began in January. I strip pieced any width of strings and then cut them into 3.5" slices. Then I join 3 slices together to make a 9" square block.

I decided to start sashing the blocks with a solid yellow that was in the stash. Here are some sashed blocks on the design wall today.

You can see some easy breezy blocks peeking out on the left side. I'm already know that I am calling this quilt "Scraphappiness"! I love it! I'm not sure how many more blocks I will make or how big this quilt will be yet. For now, it's all just about having fun with the scraps!

Linking up to Design Wall Monday

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! We invite you to settle in for some relaxation, visit our inspiring stitchers at the links below, and take some time to put a few stitches in one of your favourite projects.

I finished embroidering another tea towel this week. The pattern is from Stitcher's Revolution. The thread colours are brighter in real life, but you get the idea of the design.

And I really enjoyed hand stitching the grey binding on my November UFO this week. Isn't the backing so fun and colourful!?!

What are you hand stitching today? Are you working on some Christmas ideas? Share your projects with us and link up your blog below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Scrappy Saturday

On the design wall this week are my Easy Breezy blocks being turned into a quilt top. I have been sewing a few blocks in the colour of the month since July 2020 and it's time for me to stop block making, and make a quilt!  

I filled in some holes in the block columns, making 2 more orange blocks, and some dark reds, so those columns are done. Now I am making more purple blocks to fill in that column.  I have also started sewing the columns together so progress is being made this week!

Hop over to the weekly link up to see what the other Rainbow Scrappers are up to.

New Quiltville Mystery

Bonnie Hunter has another quilty adventure planned for us called Rhododendron Trail. It starts at the end of November and we are getting our fabrics collected in preparation. This annual tradition has been a special part of my quilting life for many years and helps to create some calm moments of sewing during the sometimes overwhelming pre-Christmas frenzy.

This is last year's mystery called Grassy Creek and I love how it turned out! I followed all the colour recommendations but I did make a few changes when creating my quilt:

1) no string pieced sashings

2) alternating gold and red churn dash blocks

3) a smaller version for my guild's comfort quilt collection, and 

4) no outside border.

For this year's mystery I am veering off the path of the recommended colours in order to use up some batik stash. It is a brave decision to do this since you never know how colours will play together in a quilt.  But with my years of practice sewing Bonnie's mystery patterns, I'm feeling confident to give it a try. It's only fabric after all!

Here are my choices:

As you can see I had enough pink and yellow, but no garnet or aqua. So aqua will be bright green, and garnet will be medium purples. 

After years of making Bonnie Hunter mysteries, I know that this new mystery will be: 

1) made of hundreds of small pieces (which I adore!),

2) a well written quilt pattern with great instructions, 

3) made of complex and interesting blocks to sew, 

4) a well-kept mystery right up until the end, and

5) a fun adventure! 

Hope to see you next Friday on opening day!

November UFO Update

While pin basting, I enjoy conversation with the quilt about the possible options for quilting designs. I usually come up with several ideas and run my fingers over the blocks to find possible paths for continuous lines of stitching. For this month's UFO I kept coming back to the same idea - wavy lines.

I have often been inspired by the serpentine wavy quilting that Preeti (So Preeti Quilts) uses and decided to give that a try. My sewing machine only does a straight stitch, so all the waves would have to be made by me. 

I always start quilting in the middle of the quilt and stitch to the edge, and that's what I did again only this time I made the stitch line wavy. I love visiting each block as I stitch on by. I'm making great wavy progress and am on target for finishing this UFO in November!

Design Wall Monday

Easy Breezy blocks are still on the design wall this week. I decided the quilt will be 12 blocks wide (4" blocks x 12 = 48") and likely 14 or 15 blocks long. The columns are sewn together and next I will make a few more blocks to fill in the holes. Several blocks were voted off the project because they just did not play well with others.

Linking up to Small Quilts

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party!

It's time to take a deep breath, pick up your needle and threads, and put some stitches in your project.

I have made a little progress with my embroidery project. The letters, and the martini glass and shaker are stitched and today I hope to have enough time to finish it.

Progress is also coming along slowly on hand quilting my old UFO. Here is the green star almost finished. That one background fabric is quite a doozy - I wish I would have used the backside of it instead! Oh well, just keep stitching! 😄

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

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Scrappy Saturday

November and December are the months for finishing our Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. I am currently working on 2 RSC quilts - machine quilting my Maverick Stars and piecing together my East Breezy blocks.

But as we know, I am easily distracted and look what arrived in the mail this week! It's a treasure trove of fresh scraps from Cozy Quilter Gail. Well, actually these are from a friend of Gail's who heard that there is a crazy quilter who makes things with little pieces, and she is sharing these scraps with lucky me!

So what did I do? I dumped out the scraps and just started sewing. I didn't even take the time to sort these pieces. If the triangles were right sides together, I just sewed them together. There are greens, blacks, pumpkin, white... all fabrics I haven't seen before.

I wonder what these scraps will become?

Happy Quilting everyone! 

Remembrance Day Poppy Project

In March of this year I picked up this paper bag at the library. It contained the supplies required to knit poppies for the Cambridge Poppy Project. I got right to work and knit several poppies to contribute to the project.

Library installation

The committee were hoping to collect 10,000 poppies for this project and actually received over 33,000! 

What a terrific community response!

Several displays were created around the city to showcase the poppies for Remembrance Day.

Jenny Wren installation

Here is the Jenny Wren installation honouring the 6,000+ women who were trained for military service in (Galt) Cambridge in the 1940s.

Many of the trees around the cenotaphs are wrapped with poppies. You can see in this photo how they attached each poppy to netting.

Here is the bridge installation which is very striking as you drive through town.

What a wonderful tribute provided by creative knitters for Remembrance Day. 

Lest we forget.

Easy Breezy

On the design wall today is the blocks from Quiltville's 2020 leader-ender challenge. 

These are "Easy Breezy" blocks that I have made in the colour of the month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. The challenge started in July 2020 and I have made over 200 blocks. It's time to get them into a quilt top. My plan of the moment is a random placement of blocks within their colour groupings.

Linking up to Design Wall Monday

Slow Sunday Stitching

 Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party!

Last night we turned the clocks back one hour because it is the end of Daylight Saving Time. Which means (in theory) that we all get an extra hour of sleep. In truth it feels like we only get an extra hour of darkness every evening!

The darkness and the cold weather here tells me it's the perfect time to do some hand quilting on my oldest UFO. Look at this lovely big blue star. Because I remove the basting pins as I quilt, I know this area is not done being quilted become there are still pins in the corners.

 

This red star beside the border looks like it's done, except for the border where the pins are. And also that top left neutral square needs a diagonal line, and then I'll get back to quilting that blue star.

Besides quilting, I have also enjoyed some outdoor time this week, raking leaves and going for walks. Here is my sweetest granddog playing in the leaf pile. Do you see the leaves stuck in his long ears? He also managed to get a big burr stuck on one ear and that was not fun.

I hope you are enjoying the fall weather where you are (or the spring weather if you are down under). 

We love to see your hand stitching projects so please link up your blog post below and show us your slow progress.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Scrappy Saturday

I am still working on light green from the RSC October challenge. I know it's already November, which is time for finishing up our projects, and I AM currently quilting an old RSC challenge (and hoping for a finish this month!) but still.... green isn't done for me yet!

I am using up strips and scraps to sew the green ladders of my Bitcoin quilt (pattern by Bonnie Hunter).

I also made a couple of fish blocks for my Fish School (leader-ender challenge). I love how the 2 fish on the right are made from the same fabric but look different! These are the things that entertain me :)

Linking up to the RSC weekly scrap party

November UFO

The decision of which UFO to focus my energy on each month is always a challenge. You just never know which projects will suddenly start calling attention to themselves! That is certainly the case with this month's choice - Scrappy Maverick Stars.

Maverick Stars on the design wall

This was a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project that started in April 2014 and was inspired by Bonnie Hunter's scrappy pattern. I finished the quilt top in September 2019 when visiting my friend Deanna. 

Since then it has been waiting patiently to become a finished quilt. It's patience recently ran out and now it urgently wants to become a finished quilt!

The first steps are preparing a backing, cutting a piece of batting to the needed size, and then pin basting the 3 layers in preparation for machine quilting.

Here is the beginning of the basting the layers together using my favourite Kwik Klip tool which helps me fasten the pins closed.

Linking up to One Monthly Goal