Finished Quilt on the Design Wall

I am so happy about this Scraphappiness finish! 

The blocks were started last winter when I made strip pieced scrappy blocks measuring 3.5" x 9.5". Then I joined 3 blocks together which became a  9.5" square. The blocks were joined with yellow sashings with scrappy cornerstones.

It makes such a big difference in my ability to finish a quilt when I chose an easy quilting design. I often make finishing (everything!) harder than it really needs to be! So this time I just quilted horizontal wavy lines about 3" apart and it went really fast.

Here you can see the quilting lines on the back. The photo makes it look like it's kind of ruffled, but it's really not.

One of the things I love about this quilt is that every bit of it is made of leftovers. The scrappy binding was made from my basket of leftover binding strips. Purple was the most plentiful in the basket so that is what the binding is made of...majority rules!

This quilt has been proudly donated to my guild's community outreach committee. Every little bit helps - every scrap, every effort, every kindness!

Linking up to Small Quilts and One Monthly Goal

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! Can you believe this is the last link up for February? Even though it was a short month that went by so quickly, I did accomplish quite a bit of hand stitching this month.

I was happy last week to get more blue Sudz yarn to continue knitting my unfinished dishcloth. I was 6 rows short of the blue yarn I needed and so relieved that my store (Galt House of Yarn) could find the same colour. While I was there I bought this pretty icy orange colour too!

The dishcloth was gifted to my long time friend Diane whose favourite colour is blue. The pattern is from Knitwits Heaven.

I also have hand stitched some binding this month. I finished a placemat (using Thera-Gloves) and a comfort quilt that I will post more details about tomorrow. 

And I started hand quilting my embroidered word meditation. I'm trying a blue marker for the first time and feel quite nervous about it. It's marvellous for seeing the quilting lines, but I'm worried that the lines won't wash out. I drew the lines 3/4" apart and plan to quilt without a hoop.

What are you hand stitching today? I hope you will share your ideas and projects on the blog and instagram posts.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Tablescraps

The placemat project this month came from some  aqua leftovers from a 2011 Quiltmaker mystery called "Secret Window". Yes... 11 years of these blocks simmering in the UFO box until the right moment came to jump into a project and get a new life!

The blocks were made from the "Pure" line of Sweetwater fabrics that I bought in a New Hampshire quilt shop named Quilted Threads. Such wonderful memories of quilty adventures with friends come to mind when I see this fabric. 💕

I sewed the blocks together with scrappy sashing until it became the size of a placemat. See those tiny 9 patches!?! So cute!

Straight line quilting was done with the walking foot, just following the lines of the blocks. 

This will be donated to Meals on Wheels.

Linking up to the Table Scraps Challenge, The Constant Quilter, and Rainbow Scrap Challenge linky parties

February UFO Update

A backing was pieced from 12 fat quarters that I won 10 years ago in a shop hop draw. I don't enjoy sewing with solids so this is the perfect place to use them up.

So now this UFO has a backing, and a batting cut, and is ready for pin basting. 

I have the thread colours picked out and the quilting will be quick and easy horizontal wavy lines so this can be finished by the end of February.

Design Wall Monday

The Super Bowl mystery is on the design wall and coming along slowly. I wasn't happy with my fabrics that became the 4 patch blocks as they were too mushy/blendy when added to the design. I like it more with the 4 patches as the top and bottom borders. I'm getting ready to sew all these blocks together to become a quilt top!

Linking up to Design Wall Monday at Judy's

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to Slow Sunday Stitching!  We meet here every Sunday to celebrate the art of all varieties of hand stitching. If it involves a needle or 2, and thread, and stitches taken with your hands, we want to know about it!

Gail from the Cozy Quilter shared an article with me about the benefits of handwork, and the first line says "Give yourself a health break: Pick up some stitching and become mindful of the benefits of simply slowing down". Click here to read more about the benefits. Thanks Gail!

This week I finished my word (plus one flower!) meditation embroidery. Thank you to Joy for the pattern! And thank you for your feedback last week about mixing Valdani threads with DMC floss. As I look over the stitching here, I really like the Valdani lines more. I'll still use the floss because I have a ton of it, but I have to admit that Valdani really is a treat to stitch with so I think I'll add to my colour choices over time.

The next step for this project is to add the border fabric and get quilting. I plan to hand quilt a crosshatch grid and hope the stitches provide some texture without distraction from the words.

In other hand stitching news, my local yarn store ordered some blue yarn so I could finish a cloth I was knitting and when I went to pick it up, I saw this friendly sign. I loved the kindness of it... "we'll tow your car, but we're awfully sorry and there are no hard feelings". LOL  

I hope you will be enjoying some hand stitching time today. Link up your blog or instagram post and share your projects with us.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Scrappy Saturday

For some unknown reason I started playing in the selvage box yesterday. The creative path is like that sometimes and you just have to go where it leads!

This is a rainbow scrap challenge quilt-as-you-go project that started in 2020. 

I love interesting selvages

I started sewing aqua selvages to a 9" batting/backing sandwich. Note to self... always make the backing square a bit bigger for more accurate trimming.

It was fun to make a few more blocks to add to the collection.

Linking up to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge party

Design Wall Monday

For many years I have gathered some quilting friends together on Super Bowl Sunday to sew one of Kris Driessen's (Scrapdash) mystery quilts. We have enjoyed great parties over the years but because of covid, we haven't been together in person for 2 years. Yesterday we held a party over zoom and sewed the afternoon away. 

These were my fabrics to start...some rusty orange/brown, lots of gold and one piece of neutral yardage.

We sewed for hours making lots of HST blocks. Here are my blocks finally trimmed, counted and ready to go to the next step. I was realizing that some of my 'darks' were maybe too close in value to the 'mediums'.

We enjoyed our afternoon sewing together on zoom since we are from all over Southern Ontario and one of our group lives in Montreal Quebec.

I emailed the mystery pattern designer Kris and told her about our mystery zoom and invited her to join...and she did! We were so excited to meet her! Two of us are showing Kris our Princess Charlotte mystery tops from last year's Super Bowl. We had so much fun visiting while we sewed!

Here is my version of the 2022 Super Bowl mystery Tag Sale on my design wall today. I may not have everything oriented correctly! I think my 4 patch blocks are too light, so I might change those.

Such a fun adventure with lots of quilty friends and the perfect way to celebrate Super Bowl AND Valentine's Day! 💖

Linking up to Design Wall Monday at Judy's

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly Slow Sunday Stitching party where we celebrate the wonderful world of hand stitching! It's time to take a deep breath, pick up your needle and threads, and put some stitches into your hand stitching projects while you enjoy some relaxing moments.

I have been working on this embroidery design (pattern by Gail Pan) and enjoying the blooming of this Red Lion Amaryllis which was a Christmas gift. It is a rarity to see a flower in the dead of a very cold winter, so it has been a real treat. 

I'll also be working on this embroidery today (pattern by Joy). I just bought these variegated DMC floss tubes and I can't wait to get stitching with them. Do you think it's a problem to combine DMC floss with Valdani threads in the same stitchery?

What are you slow stitching today? I look forward to seeing what projects you have in your hands and invite you to share your blog or instagram link below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Scrappy Saturday RBD

I am sewing the Riley Blake block challenges in the RSC colour of the month. February is aqua/teal, so I dug into the scrap box to make the next blocks. 

This 10" tulip block designed by Jill Finley has 56 pieces! Blog readers are probably tired of hearing me swoon about my Alphabitties that I received in the Christmas Jolly Box and use them regularly now for sewing complex blocks.

This cutting and sewing was done on a dark winter evening. It's not a good idea to cut fabric late at night because you're tired and less careful. And do you know what happens then?

Yes... you cut yourself with the rotary cutter! We've all been there!

I put on a sewing machine bandage and continued to sew into the night... slowly!

I finally quit for the night when I got all the subunits sewn. It was like a tiny fabric jigsaw puzzle which is my favourite kind of thing to sew.

The Sundial block by Christopher Thompson is the next pattern released, and it was a very easy block to sew. No injuries occurred :)

Here is the RBD block collection on the design wall. Linking up to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Design Wall Monday

You will never believe what is on the design wall today! My version of "Unity" has emerged from the UFO closet! It's time to get to work on this one.

This project was started at the beginning of the pandemic and was a mystery pattern from Bonnie Hunter. It went into the UFO closet in the summer of 2020 when I got stuck on the layout decisions. I didn't want to make an enormous quilt and this quilt top already measures 57 1/2" x 72 1/2", without the other border on top.

When I added the words to my quilt it made the quilt too long to add the final turtle borders to the top and bottom. 

My plan of the moment is to figure out the math to add the turtle borders to the sides of the quilt. The turtles will be swimming up and down instead of side to side, but I think that will be a good solution.

Linking up to Design Wall Monday at Judy's

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! We celebrate all types of hand work and enjoy seeing what is being created by hands around the world. 

I am continuing my word meditation and this week I stitched the words "joy" in pink thread and "blessings" in teal thread. My next step is to trace the bottom part of the design and pick out some threads.

I also have some knitting projects on the go. The blue cloth came to a stand still when I ran out of yarn to continue. I was so close to finishing! So then I began knitting the green cloth while I search for more  blue yarn. Hopefully both of these will see some progress soon.

What are you hand stitching today? We hope you will link up your instagram or blog post today and share your projects with us.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Scrappy Saturday

As my readers know I have a large sewing machine collection that I call "the herd" that you can read about here. And now I have started a new sewing machine collection made of fabric!

Last year the Fat Quarter Shop posted a free pattern of a sewing machine block in 3 different sizes. I immediately fell in love with it, and I have been making a block here and there as time and interest permit.

I decided to make a 3" and a 6" block for aqua month. These are the pieces cut out and ready to sew. I love my Alphabitties for organizing small pieces! I don't know how I used to sew complex blocks without them!

I made a 6" aqua machine and a 3" aqua machine. So. Darn. Cute. 

I like digging through the scraps and finding a large enough piece to make a block.

And here is the block collection pinned across the top of my design wall. So far there are 5 large machines and 3 small ones. Is it odd that I have no interest in the 9" block size!?!?

What are you sewing with your aqua scraps this month? Linking up to the weekly RSC party

One Monthly Goal

Every month I chose a quilting goal and make a concerted effort to accomplish that goal. If I don't set a goal with a deadline, I have a 0% chance of finishing a quilt. According to last year's stats, when I do set a monthly goal I have a 66% chance of achieving that goal.

Thank you to Patty at Elm Street Quilts for continuing the One Monthly Goal program this year and encouraging us each month to move forward on our projects.

This month I would like to finish my "Scraphappiness" quilt top. This needs to be finished because I want to start another one!  This is an easy to sew (thoughtless) scrap eater project with so many possible layouts. 

These are my next steps: 1) find fabric and piece a backing, 2) piece batting scraps together for a large enough batting, 3) pin baste the sandwich,  4) choose threads, and 5) figure out a quilting design.

Linking up to One Monthly Goal