This Little Pandemic Piggy

Happy Canada Day!
It will be a different kind of celebration this year for Canada Day. There will be no parades, no public firework displays, no midway in the park, no outdoor concerts, and no gatherings of more than 10 people. It is such a strange time due to COVID.

In addition to quietly celebrating Canada Day, I am also celebrating that "This Little Pandemic Piggy" quilt is finished! 

"This Little Pandemic Piggy"

I did a bit of machine quilting and then added some hand quilting in pink stitches for added texture and interest (and fun!) 

auditioning binding fabrics

I had so many creative suggestions for names for this project - you can see some of them in the comment section on this post. Julierose suggested "This little piggy" and I added the "pandemic" adjective. I also had help from blog readers to decide the layout since I wasn't sure about how to position the letters/words around the centre block. 

The centre pig block is from Kelli's blog "Seriously... I think it needs stitches" and the letters are inspired by Tonya Ricucci's style of letter making from Word Play Quilts.
Finished size: 16" x 17"

I really wanted to have the words read "Take ONLY what you need", but there was not enough space on a mini quilt for that many words. But still... the sentiment is there. Take what you need and leave the rest to share with your neighbours/community! This mini quilt will be my reminder of what the COVID19 experience was like in March and April. The panic buying and hoarding that went on was shocking to me. I think some people won't have to purchase toilet paper for about 20 years! Having witnessed the selfishness every day, I shudder to think what would happen if there ever was an actual food supply chain issue!

Here are my 2020 minis quilts (minus the red and white April mini that seems to be MIA!)

2020 Miniature Quilts

I'm so pleased to have my June mini quilt finished! Hop over to Wendy's blog The Constant Quilter to see more mini quilt finishes this month.  And also...I'm so tickled to have my mini nesting doll block included in Wendy's "Community Supper" potholder style quilt!

Design Wall Monday

This little project started in March when I sewed a pig block for National Pig Day. It inspired me to make a Pandemic theme quilt and I wanted the words "take what you need" to go around the pig. 

I enjoy making letters using the Tonya Ricucci style of letters from Word Play Quilts. I started with 1" strips and sewed and trimmed until I got letters of similar sizes. In this project the letters are about 2.5" finished.

So here is my question... which layout is better... should the words read in a clockwise circle around the centre pig block as in layout #1 or in a counterclockwise direction as in layout #2?

Layout #1 (clockwise)

Layout #2 (counterclockwise)

Please vote in the comments below and tell me which layout you prefer. The letter 'W' is a little unique looking, but I like it so I might just trim the top a bit and start sewing it together in which ever layout is preferred. Thanks for you help!
Linking up to Small Quilts

Having PATiENCE with letters!

For some reason my Unity quilt wanted words added, so I have been sewing letters this week. 

sewing letters

It is a completely different process to sew traditional  pieced blocks vs. letter blocks. When I am sewing letters I get in a "creative zone", just sewing and cutting and not really evaluating or counting, but just playing. 
And then I have to step back and see what I actually made. 

I say to myself "what 3 things would I like to improve?" I do that because I know that the 'evaluation stage' can take forever and cause the project to move into the UFO closet. 
So I give myself a limit to pick 3 things.
Here is the first set of letters for the word 'patience'. I made all capitals except the letter 'i' for some unknown reason, but I like it. 

The 3 things I wanted to change... 
1) make the letter 'p' taller, 2) make the letter 'a' background narrower, and 3) fix the letter 'n' which didn't look right to me.
Once those changes were made, the next step is to figure out the length of the word needed to fit the border space. I needed to sew 2 more pinwheel star blocks and add a piece of white to each side of the word to make the border fit the size of the quilt.

I was very happy with how it was coming along, but then the letter 'G' in COURAGE was still bugging me, so I will make a tiny alteration. 

Next up... flying geese blocks will be flying onto the top and bottom of the quilt!

Pandemic Themed Quilt

From: The Week

Of course all creative people are going to create art that reflects our experience of this global pandemic. It's just what we do and we can't help it! I have especially been enjoying the political cartoons lately.


For me, this creative coping process has focused on a cute little pig block (pattern by Kelli) that I made on National Pig Day. I worked on a farm for 5 summers while putting myself through university (see a photo of me as pig wrangler here) and I know pigs.

Baby pigs are vicious as they compete with their litter mates for milk. They are driven by instinct to be "me first" and will stand on the necks of their litter mates to be first in line to feed. We often had to remove the runts of the litters to rescue them from the vicious behaviour of their siblings.

From: Winnipeg Free Press

I was reminded of this while watching some people's greedy, selfish, hoarding behaviour during the pandemic, which allows them to be fully stocked for 20 years to come, while other people go without. So of course I wanted to make a quilt about it. 

I decided to sew some words to add to my lovely pig block - "TAKE (only) WHAT YOU NEED". That is the takeaway lesson that I have been meditating on ... only take what is essential for you and your family... from the grocery store, and from the planet in general.

I haven't sewn letters for a long time so my brain enjoyed the challenge of remembering how to do this. I referred back to my book by Tonya Ricucci called Word Play Quilts. This is an out of print book but one of my classic reference books. You can get an ebook version from Martingale or you might find a used copy of the book for over $100!

It took a while but eventually my brain kicked into gear and I managed to get a good start on the letters. I'm working with 1" strips and aiming for 3" high letters to fit the size of the pig block.The seam ripper is an essential tool when sewing letters. See how the T isn't right? And the angle on the A might need to be changed since it's too wide. Although since taking more than you need is the theme of the quilt, I might leave it that way!

Are you feeling inspired to make a Pandemic quilt? It's a wonderful way to work things out in your own brain... a meditative protest perhaps?

Letter Making

Today I am working on some improv letters to add to my bear quilt. This project started with Lorna's quiltalong over at Sew Fresh Quilts. 
It will become a camping quilt to commemorate the year I saw a bear up close and personal. That experience has become a family legend, complete with a song written by my brother-in-law, and therefore this legend requires a commemorative quilt. I'd like to have it done in time to use for camping season this year.

There are many ways to sew letter blocks to add to a quilt, or to be the main focus of the quilt. I have tried many techniques over the years and have enjoyed all of them. 
Here are some of the many resources that I have consulted:

1. Letter Sew-along hosted by Lynne Tyler. She teaches how to make make letters using improv piecing. If you need inspiration, she has many creative letter quilts on her blog Patchery Menagerie. My finished quilt from the sew-along that I finished in 2013 can be seen here.

traditional patchwork letters

2) Temecula Quilts hosted a quiltalong called "Little Letters" and it made an adorable baby quilt. The free pattern is still on their blog here and is made using traditional patchwork techniques.

3) Patch and Dot is hosting a new quiltalong making ribbon letters using traditional patchwork. You can read her ideas and see the first 3 letters here.


4) My two favourite reference books for improv pieced letter blocks are Word Play Quilts and Out of the Box.

improv letters

Scraps and Improv

I am teaching an improv piecing class in Paris (in Ontario, not France!) on Saturday and am getting all my samples out of the closet. I decided that I really wanted to have my Scrap Vortex finished to show the students. It's one of my favourite quilts and it demonstrates how you can use crumbs, scraps and letters to make an "interesting" quilt. 


I started this quilt in June 2015 and this is how it looked when it came out of the UFO closet this week.

I still loved it, and particularly loved that the 'S' in SCRAP turned out to look not as bright as the rest of the word. That's seredipidy!
However, I really wanted to have the word 'vortex' in the quilt, so I pieced the letters, surrounded them with scraps, cut the quilt top in half and inserted the vortex strip.

Here it is...
UGH!
OH NO! 
Definitely not serendipity!

The R's cannot be right above each other! That just didn't look like how I had envisioned it!




Out came the seam ripper, and the quilt top was dissected again! 
I inserted a scrappy strip between the words. 
Better.
But there are a few things that need to be changed so I can like it more. And a great border idea popped into my mind, so this project isn't close to being a finished quilt top yet! But it's ready for a road trip to Paris on Saturday!

Linking up to Cynthia's Oh Scrap! party!

Friday Finish

Can you believe that May is over?!? 

And can you believe that I finished my May UFO for the Lovely Year of Finishes?!?

Me either!

This quilt was started at the Red Letter Quilt Along almost 2 years ago. The letters were made using Tonya's book called Word Play Quilts (a great reference book that every quilter should have in their library IMHO). The 37 asterisk blocks were inspired by Jean's quilt, and I used a tutorial at the Selvage Blog to learn how to sew them. They were really fun to sew and I think I will probably be making more of them in my quilting future.



It took a while to settle on a machine quilting design to go around all the letters, but I decided on a swirly pattern. 

Then I had some thread snapping issues.
I tried to slow down, but this did not help.  This is the point at which beginning machine quilters struggle, and sometimes give up.  For sure it can be really frustrating, but I always encourage people to just kept trying a different combination of thread and needles.  It is totally dependent on the quilt sandwich, what batting you used, how thick the fabrics are, the combination of the type of thread that is on top and in the bobbin, and how your machine feels on that particular day! For me this week - the quilting needles and the embroidery needles didn't work, but the Topstitch 90/14 needle solved the issue completely.
I was happy to find this fabric in my stash which was perfect for the binding...and I had enough of it to go all the way around! That hardly ever happens...I usually find the perfect fabric, but don't have enough of it :)

The backing of the quilt is a plain white fabric with letters on it.
Click here to see other quilts finished this month.

Virtues Quilt

When I saw Jean's blog post about sewing UnRuly letters, I just got a craving to sew some letters. There is something about that process that is more relaxing and creative than other kinds of sewing for me.
But what to sew??? I decided to add to my Virtues quilt and went to the master list of words and guess which word I picked to sew next?!?

After spending almost every non-work moment this past month with my brother, the only word I could sew was "DETERMINATION". The definition of determination is  - "You focus your energy and efforts on a task and stick with it until it is finished. Determination is using your will power to do something when it isn't easy. You are determined to meet your goals even when it is hard and you are being tested." 
My brother's determination to continue to live through pain, has been always been inspiring to say the least.  Here he is on his first outing (outside of hospital or his apartment) in over a month, at his favorite tea shop. The lung drainage tubes are cleverly hidden in the shoulder bag...it was an ingenious solution.

Here are the virtues I have sewn so far. I have no colour co-ordination for this project and have just been gathering dotty fabrics that I have found on my travels. To sew all 52 virtues would make a humongous quilt, so I think I will pick my favorites and soon decide how big of a quilt this will be.

Design Wall Monday #43

I finally have some progress to show on my red letter quilt along, which was inspired by Word Play Quilts. I showed it on my design wall blog post 3 weeks ago and although it doesn't look much different from that post, it is very different!

It took me this long to get all the bits of sashing around the 32 various sized asterisks blocks, then join them together to be the border to fit around the letters. I am very happy with how it looks now, I am just not sure yet if it is finished, or if this quilt wants to be bigger?! Any suggestions?!?
To see other design walls today, hop over over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday #39

This project is still on my design wall but lots of progress has been made. I followed the advice that Krista gave on last week's design wall Monday comments, and moved the purple asterisk in the 3rd row to the left of the letter 'P' and I like that better.
The letters are now sewn together into rows (which took way longer than I thought it would!) and I just need to make all the rows the same size by adding pieces to the sides of some of the shorter rows. 
Then I made 12 more asterisk blocks to make into a border. I love how those blocks are all different sizes depending on the width of the strip of fabric I used. I plan to keep making asterisks until all the strips are gone and might end up putting some on the back of the quilt.
If you want to make a similar alphabet quilt, check out Lynne's Red Letter Quilt Along. And to see other quilters' design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday #38 and Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is the Canadian Thanksgiving and everyone is enjoying a relaxing day at home. I will be doing some gardening and some cooking, but hope to sew most of the day.
Today is also Design Wall Monday and this is what I plan to be working on... my Letter Quilt Along project.

I made each letter with a random choice of the colours in my focus fabric, and am not loving how the red letters line up, but I decided that I am not going to fuss with any of the colours. Nor am I going to worry about the shape of each letter. I know that some letters are too tall or too small, too thin or too wide, but I am just learning how to make letters so I keep repeating to myself "it is what it is"!  Now I have to make all the letters be the same height, and then I have to make the rows be the same length.  Thanks to Tonya for her great book Word Play Quilts and to Lynne for all the tips and inspiration. 

I got the idea for adding the asterisks from Jean's letter quilt, and used the tutorial on the Selvage blog.  The green block was my first one using the tutorial sizes. Each successive block grew a little smaller and now I am totally in love with this block and want to make a whole border of the asterisks blocks. I don't know how far my fabric will stretch, but I decided to just start making them and see what happens.... how fun!

To see other design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian blog readers!

Letter Along A to Z finished!

I have been slowly working on my letters for Lynne's Red Letter Quilt Along, and have finished to the end of the alphabet. Some of the letters were so easy (T and U) and some have a few tricks to make them manageable. Between Lynne's tips and Tonya's descriptions in her Word Play Quilts book , I managed to get most of the letters done quite easily. 
I had a little trouble with the 'W', not leaving enough space on the bottom of the 'W' so that joining it to a sashing would cut off the bottom. It was fixable though, and not too many swear words were heard in my sewing room!
I will post my whole alphabet as soon as I find where I have hidden safely stored them.
Now I have to decide on some spacer blocks and am reading my new book for some ideas.

Letter Quilt Along

I have been the lucky winner of two blogland draws recently!
I won a book I had been wanting to read called "Out of the Box" from Lori at Humble Quilts. And I won two pair of fabric earrings from Julie's 900th blogpost celebration giveaway.
Thanks so much to Lori and Julie for sharing these gifts with me!

After my big UFO finish this week, I have slowly been working away on my letter project and am caught up to the Letter Quilt Along. I am now finished up to the letter 'R' and am amazed at how these letters look so different when they were all made from the same piece of fabric (which you can see in this blog post).
And when I saw "slowly" working...
I mean s l o w l y! I have been working with making some of the letters a little different...like making the top of the 'M' look yellow, and the bottom look green by cutting the fabric creatively. I also tried to get my 'O' to look a little more circular.
Some of these letters were tricky and my stitch ripper was put to good use! Look what happened to 'Q'! 
Since it's Saturday, I should mention that the colour this month for the Rainbow Challenge is black.... and I don't have any black scraps, so I'll be taking the month off from that challenge and getting some other projects finished up.

Design Wall Monday #30

Thanks so much to everyone who offered suggestions on last week's design wall dilemma. I have read every comment and have become frozen with indecision. I am working through my positive self talk strategies following my Mom telling me (after looking at the quilt on the design wall) that it is "a nightmare"! Thanks Mom!
So on my design wall today is something different - my letters from the letter quilt along, based on Tonya's book.
I am up to 'J' and finding that each letter takes me quite a while to figure out. No matter how hard I try, the size of each letter varies considerably. I guess that getting a consistent size takes more practice? I am resisting the urge to trim the letters as Lynne recommended.

I practiced making some 'E' blocks to make another word for my virtues quilt, but this is as far as I got this week.
To see what other quilters are working on this week, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday #28

This is what is on my design wall this morning....two Unruly letter projects.
Lynne is hosting a letter quilt along...what's not to love about that?!? I have been trying not to start new projects, but I couldn't seem to resist this one. I can just hear you saying "doesn't she already have a letter/word project in the works"?? Yes...at the top of the design wall are the first 4 words of my Virtues quilt project and I am still enjoying it and wanting to make more words, so the letters are just a quick little irresistible side diversion.
I have been watching Jean's and Judy's adorable letters appear and they have worn me down (I have to blame someone for my lack of self control!)
I got out an old Laurel Birch fabric and cut it into colour strips and I'm going to make each letter from one of these strips.
Here are my first 3 letters:

Either 'B' is too small or 'C' is too big! I was supposed to be putting the spacer strip on the right of each letter...I changed it on the 'C' and hope I remember for the rest of the letters!
Are you looking for some relaxing web surfing on this long summer weekend (it's the civic holiday in Ontario today)?

Here are some ideas:

1) Vicki's Web Field Trip

2) Lee's W.I.P. Wednesdays

3) Quilter's Home Magazine's list of 55 best quilt blogs to visit ( a little harder to access because it is an article and you can't just click to link)

4) Quilting Gallery's list of 5,410 quilt blogs (no...I haven't visited all of these!)
5) Design Wall Monday

There now...that should keep you busy for the day!

Scrappy Saturday - Pink

If you're looking for the quilt auction report, please come visit tomorrow...I haven't even had a nap or downloaded my pictures yet!

Today is the last Saturday in May for the pink Rainbow Challenge. I was able to make 2 words this week using the letter patterns from Word Play Quilts for my Virtues Quilt. Thanks again to LeeAnn for the inspiration for this project!


My first pink word was only 5 letters and was made with scraps from this quilt.

"Trust" was quick and easy to make. If only the virtue was as easy to build ..."Trust is having faith in someone or something. It is a positive attitude about life. You are confident that the right thing will happen without you trying to control it or make it happen."

The second word I picked to sew is joyfulness:
"Joyfulness is an inner sense of peace and happiness. You appreciate the gifts each day brings."
This is a generally an easier word for me in my life, but to sew it was quite challenging and used almost 2 fat quarters!


Here are my first 4 words together... 2 from the purple month and 2 from the pink month.


It really tickles me that I spelled 'Joyfulness' wrong! I can't decide if I want to change it or not! Would you?

Scrappy Saturday - Purple

I'm late in posting my Scrappy Saturday post...I didn't actually sew anything on Saturday this week, since we were celebrating my mother-in-law's 86th birthday. But I did work play this week with my purple scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and I also started a new project...whoops!
The inspiration came from LeeAnn at Nifty Quilts when she posted her new project on the UnRuly Quilting blog.  She is making a word quilt, based on the Virtues Project. I was looking for a project to practice making letters from Tonya's book Word Play Quilts which I got for Christmas, and this seemed to fit the bill perfectly!
I decided to combine this project with the rainbow scrap challenge and got out my purple scraps. Then I checked the list of virtues and picked out some of the shorter/easier words. This word seemed to be the easiest one to start with, and the perfect word to post on Easter Sunday!

I decided to select the background fabrics from my collection of dotty fabrics, and tried my second virtue (with the Canadian spelling, which generally follows the British spelling!)

These were fun words to sew and I am always amazed that the process outlined in Tonya's book actually produces words - like magic! It's a great start to my virtues quilt. I don't know how many words I'll sew, or how big the quilt will be. I'm sure I won't make all the words in purple, but am very happy to have used up these purple scraps. To check out what other quilters are sewing with their purple scraps, hop over to SoScrappy's blog.

Today I will be sewing star blocks for the border on this quilt...here are a few stars made from my purple scraps: