Color It Red Day #3

Welcome to the Color It Red blog hoppers!
I am excited to participate in the blog hop today!
It's hard for me to spell "color" like this since Canadians add in a 'u' and spell it "colour" (and neighbour, and flavour, and honour, etc.)

growing block pile

When Carol announced the Red blog hop, I immediately decided to use this as motivation to get working on my 150 Canadian Women project. I started this project at the end of 2016 to celebrate the 150th birthday of Canada in 2017. It's now 2020 and this quilt needs to get going so it will be finished before the 175th birthday of Canada!

Each block is named after a famous Canadian woman and each pattern includes a short biography. It's a wonderful project and I have enjoyed working it, but it's a lot of sewing! Some of the 6" blocks are fairly easy, and some are quite complicated. This block has 51 pieces.

I collected red fabrics all year long during Canada's 150th year so this quilt has a great variety of reds 
This photo shows my sewing table in the process of sashing the blocks on 2 sides to prepare for the layout stage.

sewing sashing strips to 2 sides of each block

And this is how far I got last night... 7 blocks across and 9 blocks down for a total of 63 blocks... only 87 blocks to go! This will be an enormous quilt!

I tried to take some great Canadian photos for the blog hop and although I had fun, I did not have much success. It was really cold and windy, so here are the photo shoot fails... rows of blocks blowing in the wind. Oh never mind.



How about rows of blocks on the snow? They kept blowing away and I was so cold by then that I just gave up, came inside and sewed the rows together. By the time that was done it was too dark to take an outside photo.
I'll post another outside shot on Thursday or Friday. 

Thanks for the motivation to keep working on this project Carol!

Here are all the blog stops on the Color It Red blog tour today... enjoy!

February 19^th

MooseStash Quilting

Quilted Delights

Everyone Deserves a Quilt

Storied Quilts

Just Sew Quilter

Kathy’s Quilts (that's me!)

Just Because Quilts

Words & Stitches

Scrapdash

150 Canadian Women on the Design Wall

Since it's Valentine's Day this month, and there is a red blog hop coming mid February, I have decided to focus on my red and white 150 Canadian Women quilt.

I really wanted this to become a finished quilt, and I greatly enjoyed the stories of famous Canadian Women that inspired the blocks. 
And then I lost interest. There was not one particular reason why this happened, except perhaps project overwhelm and the brain power to continue. The process is lengthy because I want to read the historical information for each block, and then selecting fabrics for each block, cutting the pieces and sewing the block takes at least an hour. 
Eventually it ended up in the UFO closet.

I have seen some amazing finished quilts that prompted me to get to work on it, and then last week I saw Celeste's quilt top where she used the tiny cutoff corners, sewed them into HST blocks and created amazing borders.
Totally gorgeous! 

Some of my 150 blocks on the design wall

And I decided I must finish this quilt, and I must do ALL the blocks. I had been considering making a smaller version using the blocks already made, but NO... it needs to be the full version. And I need the white sashing like Celeste used to calm down the whole sampler feel.

hand full of 150 blocks

Here is the pile of my blocks sewn so far. 
60 out of 150... not even half way there!
My February goal is to get all 150 blocks made (gasp) and get them sewn into a quilt top (double gasp)!
Linking up to One Monthly Goal.

When Projects Fall Off the Table

Last December I started the 150 Canadian Women quilt to celebrate the year of Canada's 150th birthday.
Then it "fell off the table"! It just became overwhelming to keep up with the blocks and all the projects I have been juggling over such a long period of time. I was tempted to bail on this project several times, but I kept going, collecting the patterns and sewing along when I remembered to.
These are the 60 blocks I have sewn so far, in numerical order of blocks posted. 

Putting the blocks on the design wall helped me decide that I need to sash the blocks for me to be happy with this project. It's just too busy otherwise. It also helped to clarify that I DO want to have a 150 Canada quilt, and I DO want it to include ALL of the blocks. 
Seeing the blocks in their correct order also helped me decide that I prefer a random (not numerical) placement:

-some blocks are very simple and some are complex, and they need to be more balanced in the final layout. 

-some blocks (ie. block #4 and #5 in the top row) cannot be side by side in the quilt as they would be in a numerical placement.

-part way through block making I decided I needed more dark reds in the quilt, so you can see exactly when I bought and started using the dark red fabric. Those dark fabric blocks need to be spread around the quilt top more evenly.

Since Christmas is coming and I would like to get started on making some gifts, I'm going to again let this project fall off the table. I'm going to put all the blocks and fabrics into a box and make it one of my projects to take to winter quilt camp.
Bye for now 150 Canadian Women... see you in February!
To see more design wall posts, hop over to Small Quilts.

150 Canadian Women Update

Since my fall, the most pain-free position is standing. Which means that the most comfortable quilting activity for me at the moment is cutting fabric at my cutting table. So I have been organizing and cutting for my 150 Canadian Women project.
I have more than a third of the blocks made, and many more cut out.

One of the challenges of a complex project like this one is keeping everything organized. And in spite of the system I set up, which I thought was working well, I have occasional mishaps... like making the same block twice! I will deconstruct one of them and use the parts for another block.

150 Canadian Women

I'm still working away on my 150 Canadian Women blocks. Blocks #91-93 were posted this week, and I'm way behind, but still enjoying every one. My favourite blocks are ones with lots of pieces like this one - 48 pieces in a 6" block. 

This is block #65 ... with a pin that one of my "friends" gave me this week.

150 Canadian Women Update

This is a quilt project to celebrate the 150th birthday of Canada by remembering the lives and contributions of 150 Canadian Women. The project is hosted by Next Step Quilt Designs. Three blocks are posted every 2 weeks and you'd think that wouldn't be hard to keep up with. But it has been a challenge for me. I made several blocks this past week, but have a lot more to make in order to be current.
First I print out the instructions and put them in a binder (a RED binder of course). Next I select some red and white fabrics for each block. I have purchased a few of the commemorative fabrics to include in some of the blocks.
Then I read about the woman's life that is being honoured in each block. The history has been fascinating to read and with each block I feel inspired by the women who faced very difficult challenges, most of whom were way ahead of their time. Like Helen Harrison who was a pilot from British Columbia who was the only female pilot in Canada who was paid as an aviator in 1940. Even though she had been a flying instructor in South Africa and was the first woman to fly and teach on military planes in the British Empire, she was rejected by the Royal Canadian Air Force in the second world war because she was a woman! 



While I reflect on the story of each woman's life, I get to work sewing the block components. Some of the blocks are straightforward and some are very complex, just like the lives they commemorate. 




Here is another interesting 150 celebration project by Canadian artist Libs Elliott. She teamed up with Absolut Vodka to make a new bottle design and a quilt using code to generate the design. You can see the quilt on her instagram here, her Facebook here, here's the video...Enjoy!

Happy International Women's Day

March 8th is International Women's Day! 


I started celebrating early by attending a women's march last Saturday with one of my sisters. It was a sunny but very cold day, and we were happy to be part of efforts to raise awareness of the need for a more inclusive, gender equal world. Forecasts for gender parity are now at about a 170 year wait for Canadian women. 

Tonight I'll be celebrating the achievements of women by making a few more blocks for my 150 Canadian Women project. I love reading the histories of these inspiring women and what they have accomplished.
Here are my first 30 blocks.
51 block patterns have already been posted for this project, so I'm a little bit behind.




This was the most challenging block so far - a 6" card trick pattern. This history lesson was about Henrietta Tuzo the first Canadian woman mountaineer. If she can climb mountains, surely I can sew a little quilt block without complaining!

Happy International Women's Day! 

Canadian Women Update

In December I started making blocks for the 150 Canadian Women quilt. In order to keep up with this project I should be making 3 blocks a week, but I got way behind over the holidays. It has taken me a bit to figure out how to organize this project, with downloading and printing the block pattern releases, gathering fabrics, then cutting and sewing all the pieces. 

As I'm sewing these blocks I enjoying reflecting on the life stories of these inspiring women. Some of the women are well known (to me) characters such as Nellie McClung, but others are women I have never heard of before such as Thérèse Casgrian, who ran for political office unsuccessfully at least 7 times! 7 times she tried, but never gave up, eventually becoming the first woman to lead a Canadian political party in 1951. Thérèse's story reminds us to never give up on our dreams!
Here are the first 15 blocks on the design wall in order of the pattern release. On the web page it looks like they have used a random layout but I have lots of time to consider that decision. There are 135 more blocks to sew!

New Project - 150 Canadian Women

Next year it is Canada's 150th birthday, so there are lots of special celebrations planned. Of course quilters are celebrating by starting new quilting projects because that's just what we do! Sandra brought to my attention a new online quilt project called 150 Canadian Women. 
Since my Votes For Women quilt is really making good progress and will hopefully be finished soon, I decided that another quilt celebrating the historical accomplishments of women is a MUST DO!
Each pattern has 3 pages: one describing the accomplishments of a specific Canadian Woman, the second page is the block pattern, and the third page is to record your thoughts about some suggested themes relating to that woman's accomplishments. This might be a fun project for a mother-daughter, or a grandma-grandchild to work on over the year. So far I am enjoying the historical information but won't be printing out the 3rd page of each block.

Here is block #4 and #5. I missed the first three women posted, so my quilt will only have 147 blocks/women. One drawback is that you have to print out the patterns right away as they are only available for a short period of time.