Quilt Canada 2014

A quilter can really find out a lot about herself when she goes to a large quilting conference. There are so many decisions to make about how to spend your precious and limited time.
What do you like to do?

Attend classes? Which classes? What do you want to learn?

Do you hang out at the vendors mall? What do you need want to buy? Thread? Books? A new machine? Fabric? 

How about viewing quilt shows/displays? Which quilts do you gravitate to? Modern? Antiques? Minis? Landscapes? Applique?

Do you enjoy visiting with other quilters? 

All of the above choices tend to overwhelm me as I try to "do it all" and don't want to miss a thing. As I result I am exhausted and heading to bed early tonight.
But I did want to tell you about my class today with Pippa Moore. Here she is with her class sample called 
"African Sunshine".
It was an amazing day, and I learned a lot of tips that are going to make me an "expert" at piecing curved blocks. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but at least they won't make me cry anymore!

Pippa uses what she calls a "3 pin method" for piecing curves, but I call it "the no tears method"! I didn't cry or swear once! 
See the 3 pins?! And can you see all that excess fabric that somehow gets pieced into the seam?
Her method is like a magic act, and every time I tried it I felt nervous, and every time it worked perfectly, with no pleats (or tears) at all!


I even finished two complete blocks in the class! Here is one of the blocks ready for the curving step.
But I am brave and skilled now, so all is well :)




And here are all the blocks that the students finished in the class...great, right?!?!
I can see mine from here! It does stand out from the others a bit!
What a great class!
Tomorrow's class is with Cheryl Arkison of Dining Room Empire blog and author of A Month of Sundays. So exciting!

The Singing Quilter

We had The Singing Quilter Cathy Miller and her husband John at our guild meeting last night. What a wonderful evening of quilty entertainment! I laughed a lot about the crazy things that we quilters do!

From :Penguin Foundation

I liked the song about the knitted sweaters for penguins! Who knew it was a real thing?!? (click here to read about it)  And you can hear a version of this song (click here) performed by the songwriter James Gordon, who happens to be running in the current provincial election, and who dropped by the meeting to hear Cathy sing his song!

Check out this YouTube video of Cathy singing "You Can Quilt That Out". The long arm quilters in our group especially loved that one!

And now, I am heading off to Quilt Canada. I am so excited but I'll tell you that I have agonized over the class supply lists. I hope I have everything I will need. If you see me at Quilt Canada, please say 'hi', since I'm always preoccupied and a little overwhelmed at these events and won't notice anything but quilts!

Design Wall Monday

Not much has changed this week on the design wall. I have been working on the star quilt design in my head all week, but haven't sat at the machine much.

Last week

This week

Last week no one noticed (or were too nice to mention) that I didn't have all the triangle points on my red star! Today I will be fixing that and playing around with the design.
To see more design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Slow Sunday Stitching - Embroidery

From Happyologist

It's finally Sunday - a day of rest, reflection, and renewal. 
Is your day packed full of things you have to do and places that you have to go?
Same as everyday?
Well...Winnie the Pooh is reminding you that today can be your favorite day!
Slow down, breathe, live in the moment, and make time for some slow stitching.

Today I will be embroidering a few more stitches on my "Do small things with great love" stitchery. It is a free pattern from Nana Company that is still available - click here. I like the combination of stitches - backstitch, daisy stitch, and some french knots. 
If you are looking for some stitchery patterns to try, here are two more:
*here is a free Adventure BOM with really cute original designs symbolizing various travel destinations in the world
* this is a brand new redwork pattern just released on Friday called "When life gives you scraps" over at The Painted Quilt.
Enjoy your slow stitches today! Link up your hand stitching blog post below and tell us about your project.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Yellow

Over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, the colour for this month is yellow. I did a quick inventory of yellow blocks for my projects and discovered that I really don't need many more yellow spools since I made a lot of them last year.
So I will focus on some of my other scrap projects this month. This week I am sorting tiny batik scraps for some Alamo Stars. This is my scrap sorting table, with my yellow cutting mat, yellow ruler and yellow rotary cutter! Fun!

I also want to prepare some yellow pumpkin seed blocks, and some double nine patch blocks for Omigosh, but I haven't finished sewing the green ones from last month yet!
Hop over to SoScrappy to see what other quilters are stitching with their yellow scraps.

TGIF

I have started the machine quilting on the Storm At Sea... 
stitching in (or somewhere close to) the ditch!
So far so good!


T.G.I.F.

Quilt Canada Countdown

Only a few more days until my birthday present to myself - attending Quilt Canada!  I am very excited since I haven't attended Quilt Canada since 2008 and I had a spectacular time at that event!
This year it is closer to home, and will not involve extensive travel and touring, so it will be all about quilting.
It was really difficult to narrow down which classes to take since they all looked like fun. But I finally decided to take two classes -  a one day class with Pippa Moore on sewing paper pieced points and arcs (so I can finish one of my more challenging, older UFO's!) and a two day class with Cheryl Arkison on improv piecing (using up scraps - yah!)
Now I have to figure out what fabrics to bring. Don't

you always find that the fabric that you leave at home is exactly what you need in the class?!? What about if I just bring these two scrap bags to class?!? Anyone out there in blogland going to Quilt Canada?

June UFO goal

My June UFO goal was quite easy to decide. It's the same goal I had for May but didn't make a bit of progress on. I want to finish my Storm at Sea wall hanging. It's not a large project, but I want to do a lot of quilting on it, so I better get started!
I have already sewn the border on and the quilt is pin basted, so I am on my way to meeting the goal this time around.
To see more June UFO goals, hop over to A Lovely Year of Finishes.

Treadling with Bonnie

Were you able to catch QuiltCam last night? If not, you can watch it anytime on the archived version on Quiltville's YouTube channel.
I enjoyed treadling with my 1901 Singer Treadle as I listened to Bonnie's latest adventures.

While stitching, I had to wind a bobbin so I thought I'd show you what the treadle vibrating shuttle looks like. It's very different bobbin case than the modern machines have and it takes a bit of getting used to.



The long bobbins fit inside the shuttle and this is how it gets tucked into position in order to sew. 

Isn't that so cool?!

Design Wall Monday

The design wall is full of triangle stars this week. I have loosely constructed the 6 stars and am not liking this quilt yet. It seems too much like hard work at this stage, but I know that if I persevere, eventually things magically improve and the quilt starts to grow on me :)
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Have you seen the series that Caron Mosey wrote on the Celebrate Hand Quilting Blog? It covers every topic you'd ever want to learn about - from needles and thread, to batting and hoops. The posts are well worth the time to read through if you're interested in hand quilting.
This week I have returned to hand quilting my version of "Always Home". It is the perfect size for a take-along project. I have almost finished quilting the middle section of houses. 
It looks like there are a few windows and one section of trees left to quilt.

I have really enjoyed quilting these little scrappy squares.

I am not stitching much in the area of the words so far, just one single line underneath. I'm not sure what else to do in that space above the trees and houses. We'll see...
What are you working on today? Link up your blog post below and tell us about your hand stitching project.

Scrappy Saturday

It's the last week of sewing up the green scraps over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.
I made a Palm Branch block using some  dark green scraps (since I had already sewn a bright green block). This free paper pieced pattern is from Quiet Play and is still available if you want to give it a try. 

That brings the grand total of Palm Branch blocks to 12!

I do enjoy having a paper pieced scrap project to work on every month, so I think I'll keep going with more of these.



I also sewed a bunch of green spool blocks as leader/enders. What a wide  variety of greens! 






Then I joined four spool blocks together in similar greens to make a 6" block. 
I just love the variety of backgrounds too! 

To see what other quilt bloggers are sewing with green scraps this week, hop over to SoScrappy.

End of the Month Quilty News - Good and Bad

Good News: 

Another quilt is finished! 
This is Nabby's Dowry, which was a really fun mystery sew-along with Pam Buda last fall.  I like this photo, although it is a bit washed out, because it shows the quilting.




All the quilting was stitched using the walking foot. In the setting triangles, I used my Hera Marker to give me a guideline to follow when quilting. I used the width of my 1" ruler to measure each line and just marked the lines as I came to them.  

I call this "mark as you go"!










This is the backing on the quilt. 

It was pieced from all the leftover scraps. If it looks  slightly askew to you, it is! That is not something I planned at all... it's just a little special, slightly annoying bonus!!

The finished size is 36" square, which is the perfect size for a tabletopper.
Do you know what this means?!?  It means that I can start the new sew-along called Market Day! I am planning to make the mini size, so I should be able to catch up quickly.

Bad News: 
As you can probably guess, that in spite of finishing 2 quilts this month, my planned May UFO finish was not one of the finishes. I have no explanation or excuse other than I didn't feel like doing it! I did make one small step in the right direction with the purchase of the border fabric, and this is how is will look eventually, but the border didn't actually get sewn onto the quilt yet. It will get finished next month hopefully!
More disappointing news is that for the first time in many years I can't attend the Mennonite Quilt Auction.  I am hoping that someone out there in quilt land will be attending and can give me the highlights?? I thought it would have been last weekend and double booked myself. So many fun things to do, so little time!
Have a great quilty weekend!

Staying Sane One Stitch at a Time

This week has been much too busy. Between work, and doing outside yard work, and my son having his wisdom teeth removed, there is not much time leftover. But we all know that I must squeeze in a few minutes of sewing in order to maintain my sanity! 



So I set up my Featherweight on the kitchen table and sewed a few log cabin seams every time I walked by. The blocks are growing bigger slowly (the logs are 1" strips) but surely. 
Every stitch counts... and flowers help too!

Treadling on Tuesday

After getting my Singer treadle sewing machine back from the spa (repair shop for cleaning, oiling and maintenance) I realized that I needed to tighten up the belt. I hadn't done that since I installed a new one a year and a half ago.
I just opened the staple, cut about a 1/4" off one end of the belt, poked a new hole in the belt and reconnected the staple. It wasn't difficult to do, but did take longer than I expected because I don't have the proper tools. However, I made do with what I had and stuck with it, and was delighted to be successful!


The new belt made it easier to wind the bobbin, and it was going along well until I came to a knot in the thread. Can you see that knot where the seam ripper is pointing??!! That will not go through the vibrating shuttle bobbin at all, so I had to cut it at the knot.
But I had wound enough thread on the bobbin to get back to piecing some scraps....ahhhh... so fun!

Design Wall Monday - New Project!

On my design wall today is a new project... woohoo!


These are triangles that were the Shop Hop project from Goose on the Loose. I just started working on this quilt and was finding the design process a little overwhelming, especially since the whole quilt will not fit on my design wall. 




So I made two decisions to give me some direction to get started...
1) I decided to work with only one package of triangles at a time instead of tackling the whole quilt design and 
2) I decided to try to make tumbling blocks appear in the star centers. 
So far so good. I am just starting to do some sewing of the triangles and it's not terrible, but also not a lot of fun yet!
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Ahh... it's Sunday! Take a deep breath and let the slow stitching commence.
If you are like me and have weeded the dandelions (no jelly this time!) and cut the lawn, washed mountains of dishes and one crazy dog, done laundry and groceries, and completed numerous other invisible tasks yesterday, then you are probably ready for a relaxing day full of resting and stitching!

I finished 300" of hand binding this week on my Angel Solstice and enjoyed every stitch - if you didn't see the finished quilt, click here. Today I hope to finish the binding on Nabby's Dowry and then I will have another quilt finished before the end of the month!
And if I get the binding finished, I will enjoy some applique on my green pumpkin seed blocks.
What kind of hand stitching are you enjoying today? We would love to see what you're working on, so please link up your blog post below and share your progress!

Scrappy Saturday Green

There are 5 Saturdays in May, so we will have an extra week to enjoy working with our green scraps. To see what other quilters are sewing with their scraps, hop over to SoScrappy.
I have been cutting and organizing, and have started to applique some pumpkin seed blocks. I cut 16 different green seeds, which will make 4 blocks to add to the seed collection.

See those little green scissors there? I bought them for my friend Barb, but I haven't seen her recently, so I just started using them. If I don't see her soon, I might "forget" they were purchased for her, and I might claim them for myself... they are so cute and perfect for snipping green threads!
I have a lot of hand stitching ready for Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow... drop by and stitch with us!

Fantastic Friday Finish!

I am so excited to share that I have completed my "Angel Solstice" quilt! 

The photo shows that the dandelions are growing well, but the tree leaves are still not out yet!
I am happy with the weird creative thing I did in the corners of the red inner border. I was running out of red fabric and thought I would stretch it out using the gold at the corners. And then I found more of the red fabric at Ye Olde Quilt Shoppe which I used for the binding, so it turns out I didn't need to do all that work! 

The only thing I would change about this quilt top is to add another border around the outside. I cut off most of the outside triangle points when attaching the binding and I could have avoided that with an outside border. Oh well... live and learn!

The machine quilting was done by Cathy over at Eagle's Wings Quilts. She quilted the angel design that I love (which she also quilted on my Civil War quilt). 
Can you see the quilted angel flying above the angel on the fabric? 



This quilt was made from Bonnie Hunter's "Celtic Solstice" pattern that she posted as a free mystery quilt starting last November. You can see more than 100 variations of this quilt that were posted on the Quiltville link up in February - click here to see them.

This photo shows the backing for the quilt. It started with the "Angels Among Us" panel.

If you are wondering how to construct a pieced backing from your leftovers, this is how I made mine. I started with the panel, and built the backing out from there. 
First I added extra pink triangle blocks above the panel, and then added a pink bar which used up all the leftover pinks from this quilt. Then I pieced sections of black scraps to add to the top and bottom of the panel. Lastly long strips were pieced to fit and were added on both sides of the centre panel, which used up most of the remaining fabric.


The binding is made from two of the reds in the quilt.

If you want to download the pattern, it is still free (click here) until June 1st when it will be removed from the website, and will likely appear in one of her future books. A big thank you to Bonnie for another great quilting adventure!
I am linking up with the celebration parties over at TGIFF and Finish it up Friday!

Mid Week Focus

This is a photo of focus in action.

It's a lovely project and everything is going well.
As you can see, I decided to go with the straight line quilting, because although it is boring to do...the quilt really insisted on it! I should clarify that it is relaxing and repetitive, which many people would enjoy. To me it feels like work... which is just silly, because I'm quilting, which I love. And it is staying flat and the designs are going well.
But it's just not challenging enough like it is when I can do some swirly fun designs. I'll have to save it for another quilt.
The problem is...
I want to start the new quilt along. 

New things are just so fun aren't they?!?  Nothing has gone wrong, everything seems rosy, hope runs high that this will be awesome, and the endorphins 
are giving you a rush.... who doesn't want more of that?!?

But the fun part of making a quilt is over on this old project, and it's all work now to push on and do the work to get to the binding stage (the icing on the cake for me!)

But I made a promise to myself to finish this older quilt first. I want to be a person who keeps her promises or dies trying  
So... I am quilting this.
And then I can start the new quilt along.
I love this blog post by Greg McKeown - How to Simplify Your Life in 5 Minutes a Day
He said  "we make a millimeter progress in a million directions". That is a perfect description of me in my quilting room, and probably in real life too. It resembles a chicken with it's head cut off!