Annual Shop Hop Report

My friend Louise and I attended our annual shop hop last week. I think this was our 13th year of attending this event, which used to be called the "Goose on the Loose" shop hop and is now called "Hills and Valleys Quilt Shop Tour".

For many years it was the same list of stores, but in the last couple of years there have been changes with stores closing and thankfully new stores opening. We are still sad that 2 of our favourite stores have closed (Quilter's Line in Markdale and Lilac Lane in Alliston) but we are happy that there were 5 stores willing to participate this year. 
When you see the same sequence of events playing out in different stores (excited quilters shopping in droves) you really notice things such as the difference in energy and enthusiasm of the staff, the range of items they stock, and the (in)efficiency of their checkout/payment systems. It's easy to make decisions about what stores are the favourites and that is confirmed by the purchase receipts!

Louise at Creekbank

We loved the Creekbank store in Mount Forest and Louise bought the finishing kit for the featured sampler quilt. See that amazing border fabric that is navy blue on the inside of the border and cream on the outside? It's such a unique print and was available only at that store. 
Each store gave shop hoppers 2 free block patterns, and you could buy fabric kits if you wanted to make the featured blocks/quilt. 

We found the most fabulous place to eat lunch. Affairs Bakery in Creemore had delicious homemade soups, salads and sandwiches, and 10 varieties of tarts that were to-die-for! We liked the sign they had in the cafe, and we did talk like it was 1995... for about 8 hours straight!


Here are some of my purchases... batting, pieces for a baby quilt, my favourite hand stitching needles, a new tool called Clearly Perfect Angles, a border print for a RSC project (multi coloured squares) and 2 backings (for Clarissa and Ringo Lake).

2019 Planning Party

Sometimes I start the blogging new year with a photo of the UFO closet. You can see my 2015 post here and truthfully, the closet still looks pretty much the same today! I can compare the photos and see that some of the quilts are different in each photo. I tell myself that progress has been made in 4 years, but I have come to accept the fact that this view of the UFO closet, chock full of quilt tops will be a constant until I can't quilt anymore. I understand that I will chronically start more projects than I finish, and will always have many projects on the go in various stages of completeness. 
It's just how I roll!
Over the years I have tried to set goals to impact this situation, but to no avail apparently because look at the closet!
So what do I want to accomplish in 2019?
I made a list of projects to complete from 2018 and was shocked to find 14 projects! Here is the list:

1)  Clarissa

2)  Circle of Squares

3)  Secret Santa

4)  Blue Anita’s Arrowhead

5)  Blockheads I

6)  Square Dance 1 and 2

7)  Emerald Stars

8)  Pumpkin Spice latte mystery tabletopper

9)  Deb’s floral mystery quilt

10) On Ringo Lake

11) Improv dots and dashes

12) Churn Dash swap blocks

13) Wacky Web with paper templates

14) Snowman charm tabletopper

Now these are just quilts from 2018. That does not include the UFO lists on the sidebar (on the right side of my blog) from previous years. It is disconcerting to see that I have several UFOs that STILL are not finished from those previous years. 

So... my goal is to complete as many of the projects on this list as possible, and to not start any new projects this year. Well, after New Years Day, because I am starting a mystery quilt that day. 

But after that... no more new projects for sure! 
LOLOLOL

Linking up to the 2019 Planning Party over at Yvonne's... come join us and share your goals!

July Shop Hop

For the past few years there has been a July Shop Hop in Southern Ontario. It involves visiting 15 stores to collect block patterns and the fabrics to make those patterns. Each store makes their own version of a quilt layout using the same blocks and it's amazing to see the 15 completely different quilt layouts. 
They ask that participants not take any pictures in order to keep it a mystery for everyone until the end of July, so I reluctantly comply with that rule and don't have any quilts to show you.  

shop hop blocks plus teal

But believe me we saw some lovely quilt layouts which will eventually be able to be seen on the website here. I think you can still see the 2017 quilts when the theme colour was grey. The 2018 quilts will be posted any day. This year the colour was beige/neutral and the blocks are kind of boring. So I decided to spruce those up with some teal fabrics left over from 2 of my previous quilts - Clarissa and a Patchwork Times mystery. The idea to add teal to the sampler quilt came from the Cherished Pieces shop in Tillsonburg.
Some of the shops I travelled to on my own, and some parts of the journey I was able to car pool with some quilting friends. 

Esther of Heart N Home Creations

I was happy to be able to visit each one of the shops during the month of July, and ended my journey at Esther's shop in New Hamburg called Heart N Home Creations. A huge thank you to all the quilt store owners for organizing this fun summer event for us. The Shop Hop is a lot of fun for quilters but it's also a lot of work for the store owners. I hope it is financially worthwhile for them otherwise they won't continue to offer it. You can rest assured that I bought something at every store and definitely did my best to support the effort! I treated myself to a new cutting mat, a roll of batting, new needles, marking pens, and perhaps a bit of fabric here and there! LOLOLOLOL 
I am well stocked for the year (well, for years to come actually!)

Scrappy Saturday

It's aqua month over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and for some unknown reason, most of my projects at the moment involve aqua, so the scraps are everywhere!
First I got a lovely surprise package in the mail from Sarah from Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge. Just look at these pretty Kate Spain fabrics which are mostly aqua, with a bit of lime and purple. The colours reminded me of a triangle quilt I made in 2009, and the Starburst quilt made in 2015. I searched around in the scrap bins and found the leftover blocks and scraps from both of those projects! It's a disaster in my quilt studio but miraculously I can usually find things I need!

Here are all the pieces I found. The plan is to combine the Kate Spain fabrics with the leftovers from these two finished quilts. It's so fun to make an improv quilt using this process. It's kind of like looking in the refrigerator and making a casserole from whatever is in there. You never know how it's going to turn out! 


I also finished up some quarter square triangles for the next border on my Clarissa quilt.

To see more aqua projects in the making, hop over to the weekly RSC link up.

Clarissa Quilt Top

Clarissa was started in 2016 as a leader-ender challenge by Bonnie Hunter. The challenge was to make a quilt using hourglass blocks. It was the perfect incentive to make a quilt similar to one I had seen at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. The original quilt was made by Clarissa White Alford circa 1880. She raised her own 9 children, plus 6 children from her husband's first marriage, and after surviving that, Clarissa made her famous quilt completely by hand. That's right... no rotary cutter, no rulers and mats, no sewing machine, just scissors, needle and thread!

Almost 140 years later I used all the modern quilting tools to construct my copycat quilt top. Each block has 144 triangles, and my version of the quilt with 20 blocks has a total of 2,880 triangles plus the 48 sashing triangles for a grand total of...2,928 triangles in this quilt!
I did meet my May UFO goal of getting these blocks to quilt top status, but I'm still undecided about a final border. I'm thinking of a white border with the quarter square triangle (QST) cornerstones, then maybe another border of a million more QSTs. I haven't had the time to make a stack of blocks to see if I would like that, but that is the plan of the moment!
To see more Monthly Goals postings, hop over to the link up.

Clarissa is on the design wall

It's the last week of May and I'm fairly close to meeting my UFO goal this month. The final Clarissa block was made and the layout decided. There was a lot of moving blocks around and you know how that goes... fix one thing you don't like and create another problem you don't like even more. So finally, with the end of month deadline looming, I just started sewing the sashing to the blocks.
The quarter square triangle blocks are the cornerstones of the white sashing, but I'm not sure about what to do around the outside? A plain white border? With or without QST cornerstones? The decision making agony process will be dramatically shortened due to the end of month OMG deadline, which is probably a good thing.
Linking up to Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts.

Clarissa on the Design Wall

Here it is... drum roll please... the last block has been made for my Clarissa quilt top. It was fun sewing this block knowing that it's the last one. I used up many odd triangles sitting in the project box. This is a classic Clarissa block, with a pinwheel in the centre, surrounded by a dark round of QSTs, and around the outside of the block are light QSTs.
The next step is to finalize a layout (first I have to find the other blocks in storage), cut out the sashings, and sew it all together. 
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Small Quilts. 

Also, today is the start of the Wish Upon a Star blog hop... prepare to be inspired!  I am still working on finishing my quilt... my day to post my star quilt is Thursday. Here is the line up of blogs to visit today...

May 21

Moose Stash Quilting

Tu-Na Quilts, Travels, and Eats

Quilt In A Not-Shell

What About Rheema?

Clever Chameleon Quilting

Sunlight in Winter Quilts

Life in the Scrapatch

Sew Many Yarns
Hazel’s Daughter

Machine Quilting

Although Clarissa is my "UFO of the month", one of my other UFOs has tried to hog the attention spotlight recently. The culprit is the broken dishes quilt... "look over here"... "I'd like to be a finished quilt"! 

I usually have one machine set up for piecing and one machine set up for machine quilting so I can work on whatever suits my fancy in the moment!
The noisy broken dishes quilt is now pin basted and machine quilting has started. It's always good to "do shots" before you start quilting... just to get the creativity flowing!

I'm starting with the walking foot and stitching "in the ditch" a grid pattern as I usually do to stabilize the whole thing. If I've done a really good job with the pin basting, there will be no fabric mountains popping up in the front of the walking foot. Little hills are manageable... this is a little one, but reminds me that the quilt top was not pulled taut enough when I was setting up the quilting sandwich. But so far it's pretty much smooth sailing. Next I'll be putting on the free motion foot and seeing what curved lines I might want to stitch.

Happy Friday!

Hope you have a full weekend of relaxation and quilting ahead!

Midmonth UFO Update

My UFO goal this month is to finish the Clarissa quilt top. The first step is to make the 20th and final block. Each block has 144 triangles, so the cutting takes a while. The pieces at the top are leftover triangles I found in the project box. In true Clarissa style I wanted the last block to be scrappy and use up the extras. I cut the triangles with Bonnie Hunter's Essential Triangle Tool. 

Then I got out Charity (my adorable 1952 Featherweight) to sew the hourglass blocks. These old machines really need to be able to sew regularly to keep them in good shape. She's old and although she sews beautifully, she doesn't have any seam markings. I just put a piece of tape on the bed of the machine where the edge of 1/4" seam allowance should be, but it's not perfect.

That's okay... all the blocks need to be squared down anyway using the Bloc-Loc ruler. As you can see, not much needed to be trimmed away... I guess the accuracy was better than I thought!

Linking up to Let's Be Social over at Lorna's.

What's up with Clarissa!?!

There hasn't been a Clarissa sighting on the blog for a long time with the previous post being in December last year! This kind of time delay is usually a sign that there is either a problem/"challenge" with the project, or there is a big decision pending (and not being made!)

With Clarissa, the hold up was the debate about how big to make my version of the quilt. The original quilt was 6 blocks by 7 blocks for a total of 42 blocks. My Clarissa has 19 blocks so far. With adding one more block, it would be a layout of 4 blocks by 5 blocks. I like the rectangular shape for this quilt, so if I were to make mine bigger, that would mean making at least 4 more blocks for a layout of 4 blocks by 6 blocks, or 10 more blocks for a layout of 5 blocks by 6 blocks. 
Realistically, that isn't going to happen. I have loved making these blocks but it's time to move on to new projects and wrap this one up.
So my UFO goal this month is to make the final block, figure out the sashing and borders and get this to quilt top status by the end of May. To see more quilty goals, hop over to the One Monthly Goal link up.

Clarissa is back!

block #19

We haven't seen a new Clarissa block for a long time. I got caught up in the mysteries going on now and had so many pieces to use as leader/enders that I didn't even think about Clarissa. 
But here is the next block that was finished this week. It is block #19. 







And here are all the Clarissa blocks on the design wall. Each block has 144 triangles so there are 2,736 triangles in this project so far!
One more block to go!

Linking up to Sew Fresh Quilts.

A New Clarissa Block

Clarissa #18

Clarissa is my hourglass leader-ender challenge that started with the quiltalong last summer at Quiltville. There is a new leader-ender challenge for this year, but I'm still working on this one. This project is inspired by a quilt from the 1800's made by Clarissa White Alford - see the quilt here. I just finished block #18.

And here are all the blocks on the design wall. There are tons of little scraps in these blocks!  I try to make each block a little different from all the others.
My friend Cathy who blogs over at Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting is also making a Clarissa quilt and you can see some of her blocks here.
Hop over to the link up at Oh Scrap!

Clarissa is on the design wall!

This is block #17 made for my version of the Clarissa quilt. I wanted to include more of the dotted butterscotch fabric in the quilt since it does seem to draw attention to itself when all the blocks are together. The key to dealing with "attention seeking" fabrics is to sprinkle more of them around the quilt. 

This block collection has outgrown my design wall, so I just put up a few more blocks to surround this new one. You can see the first 16 blocks here.

I think I'll make 3 more blocks for this quilt for a total of 20, with a layout of 4 across and 5 down.

To see more quilts being designed, hop over to Small Quilts.

Clarissa is on the Design Wall!

Block #16 for the Clarissa quilt is finished. Because this is a leader-ender project, some blocks are made quickly and others take a while depending on how much piecing I'm doing. This block progressed faster once the machine quilting on the Bear quilt was finished. This block has a darker pinwheel centre, with a light teal and white inner border, followed by a darker outside border. I think the outside border has 4 different brown scraps... plus my favourite plaid.
Here are all the blocks on the design wall.
Yummalicious!

























Total number of pieces in this quilt so far = 2,304!!

It is so exciting to have another quiltmaker inspired by the original Clarissa quilt. Cathy who blogs at Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting is making these hourglass blocks too - click here to see her blocks.

Linking up to Design Wall Monday over at Small Quilts.

Design Wall Monday

Clarissa is on the design wall this morning.
This is block #15.
I try to make each block a little bit different and I like how a few well placed hourglass blocks give this one a diagonal emphasis.

Here are all the blocks together on the design wall. I wanted to see what they would look like all smushed together with no sashing space.
I miss the sashing space!
I think my goal is to make 5 more blocks.
Total # of pieces = 2,160
To see more design walls, hop over to the link up at Small Quilts.

Rotary Cutter Blades

A couple of months ago I bought an aqua "Splash" Olfa rotary cutter which has a new system for replacing the blades in order to reduce the probability of cutting yourself during the process. Okay, so this product was actually "new" in 2013, but it's new to me in 2017!

I needed to cut bazillions of triangles for Clarissa and the Bear so I got out the new rotary cutter. And somehow I got a nick in the very first blade of my new rotary cutter. I have no memory of cutting anything other than fabric. I am very careful to always keep the safety shield in place when I set the cutter down (since I have seen terrible injuries of quilters accidentally cutting themselves) so I really have no idea how the nick happened.
The blade was really sharp when I started using it, but after a few cuts it was missing threads consistently. I was able to easily replace the blade and think the new blade replacement system is great.
However, I do hope that this new $7 blade lasts longer than a few cuts!
Here are my questions:
1) What do you do with your old/nicked/dull rotary blades?
2) Do you get them sharpened?
3) Have you had any experience with using the blade sharpeners yourself? Is it a good investment?

Clarissa Design Wall

Clarissa block #14

I have been away and missed my regular design wall posting yesterday, so here it is today. Clarissa is on the design wall!
This is block #14 and is quite pale compared to most of the others. I think it will provide a some contrast and interest in the overall quilt. The dark brown and the Sweetwater text fabrics were both given to me by my friend Debby. They are from her Aunt's stash of fabric, which she recently inherited. I promised her they would be put to good use and here they are already in a block! 

This is my Clarissa block collection so far.

Total number of pieces in the quilt blocks so far = 2,016

To see more design wall postings this week, hop over to the link up at Small Quilts.

Clarissa #13

Clarissa block #13

This is the next block to join the Clarissa block collection (you can see the other blocks here).

This one has more dark red triangles than the other blocks. The project seemed to need this kind of a block.
I like the unique (inspired by a mistake) corner hourglass blocks with 3 dark triangles and 1 light.

This is how block #13 looks from the back. I have tried many ways to press the seams as I made each block, and have settled on this as the best so far. My favourite thing is spinning the centre seams on the hourglass blocks to make them lay nice and flat.
Total number of pieces in the quilt so far is 1,872!

Clarissa is on the Design Wall

Here is the 12th block for my "Clarissa was a Superstar" quilt. There are 36 hourglass blocks in one 12" Clarissa block. This one is really scrappy and used up a lot of small pieces. Up close the block really is a bit of a scrappy mishmash, but far away, it's fantastic!





Here are all 12 blocks on the design wall. 
Total # of triangles = 1,728!
I wasn't sure how many blocks the quilt would be when I started this leader-ender hourglass challenge. I'm still not certain, but I do know it will be more than 12, because I'm still having fun and want to keep going with this project. The original Clarissa quilt has 42 blocks! That's probably not going to happen, but 20 blocks is looking like a reasonable goal at the moment. 
To see more design wall posts, hop over to Patchwork Times. So sad to read that Judy has discontinued Design Wall Mondays. This has been a part of my routine for a long time. I looked forward to Monday mornings to see what the quilters were designing each week. Thank you Judy for hosting the fun Monday link up for so many years!

Clarissa is on the design wall

Here is block #11, fresh from the ironing board!
I cut into one of my brother's shirts to get that rich dark brown fabric. It was quite an emotional task to cut into the shirt, but I really do want to use these fabrics in quilts. Right now his shirts sit in a bag in the closet, and that's not what I want. So I took a deep breath and started cutting. 



Here are all 11 of the Clarissa blocks on the design wall.
It's totally intriguing to study the effect of value and how each block looks so different.
I know I say this every time I post a new block, but I LOVE this quilting project!!!

Total number of triangles in these 11 blocks is 1,584!

Linking up to Patchwork Times and Sew Fresh Quilts.