Scrappy Saturday

January is red month over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I am playing in the red scraps this month. 

Red Log Cabin Loonie block

Last year Julie hosted a log cabin loonie quilt along and I enjoyed making those blocks so much that I am continuing this project into 2019. You can get the cutting instructions at Julie's blog if you want to try one. The log cabin blocks are make with 1" strips and measure 4.5". When you put 4 blocks together, you get this great block which is 8.5".
The red block joins 4 other finished blocks from last year, but it is awkward to take a good photo of 5 blocks, so here are 4 of them. There is also an orange block just out of view.

What are you sewing with your red scraps this week? Hop over to the weekly link up to see what other RSC'ers  are up to.

One of the challenges of blogging

It is important to me to take good quality photos of my quilts and quilting adventures to post on my blog, but some days it is a real challenge. This week my friend Gayle (and her dog Molly) helped me to take a photo of my recently finished "En Provence" quilt. I do love photo shoot outings (see some of my favourites here, here, and here).
First you have to find the perfect location to take a photo. 
Isn't this a great rail fence?!?
Then you have to manage the weather conditions. As soon as we found the perfect place, the wind picked up and the quilt kept falling off the fence. We tried to think of different ways to drape it and put things on it to hold the quilt in place.

Too Windy

Photo shoot assistants put sticks and rocks on the quilt to hold it down.

Then the sun came out... say what?!?!? We haven't seen the sun in days! Yet there it was, making the quilt look too back lit. But we were very happy to see the sun, so we just soaked up some vitamin D, and waited for a few minutes until it was gone again.

Too Sunny

Then it started to snow and about an hour later it looked like this outside. So of course I had to go out again to take another photo and see what it would look like. 

Too snowy

Even though it was challenging to get a good photo, it was also a fun outing in the forest. Here is the shot that I decided on for the blog header. 

Just right!

For more information on this quilt, click here to read all about it. Okay... now I'm back inside to do some actual sewing so I'll have more quilts to share. Inside photos are so much easier to take!

Stringing Along

Since my String-Along blog post I have been sewing up the strings in my scrap bins. I'm trying out a "quilt-as-you-go" version of string piecing, sewing scraps onto long pieces of batting. 

You know the pieces you cut off the sides of quilts? We all have these batting scraps, but what to do with them?
I have written a few blog posts over the years about how I have used batting scraps such as joining them together into larger pieces, using them in small projects, for dog beds, etc.


Now I am using the long pieces in a string piecing project. It's a bit of a challenge to deal with the long units, and you can see how I have rolled up the excess and clipped it together on the ends. That has worked fairly well.

As I'm sewing, I've been singing to myself a song called "Swinging Along", which is a song my parents used to sing in the car when we went on childhood holidays. It brings me very happy memories! Of course I change the lyrics to "stringing along" LOL
I'm making a version of a quilt from Gwen Marston's book called String Quilts for Bea's "Dust off a quilt book" blog hop in February. I'm off to a good start and am happy with how it's coming along. The great thing about this method is once the strings are sewn together, it's already quilted. 

I do find that I can only work on a string project for a certain period of time, and then I start to feel overwhelmed by the disaster of a mess that gets generated from the scraps. I'll work on this periodically as mess tolerance allows and hope to finish it in time for the blog hop next month.

Good Fortune on the Design Wall

The big reveal of the Quiltville mystery was posted on Friday. It's a very beautiful and complex design, with two alternating blocks and a few pieced borders. 
I had been sewing half the units in an effort to keep up with the mystery adventure over the holidays and thought I would just make a smaller lap quilt. But I really like how the finished quilt looks, so the plan of the moment is to keep making more blocks for a larger quilt. 
I had enough part and pieces to sew 24 blocks and here they are on the design wall. I would like to make 11 more blocks for a layout of 5 blocks across and 7 blocks down.
This will be a good  project to sew at quilt retreat so it might go into storage until then.
Linking up to Small Quilts and Quiltville link up. 

Slow Sunday Stitching Goals

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! Pull up a chair, make a cup of tea or coffee, and enjoy a few moments visiting hand stitchers around the world. It's so fun to see the creative ideas that other folks are working on.

Since it's the first link up of the year, I'm thinking about the top 3 hand stitching projects that I'd like to focus on in 2019.


1) "I Stitch" BOM by Gail Pan -  Many happy hours were spent last year stitching these sweet little blocks. I have a few more designs to embroider and am still thinking about how I want to put these blocks together.




2) Life is Beautiful - This has been one of my favourite projects for the past 4 years. I have greatly enjoyed each step along the way... the hand embroidery, appliquéing all the circles, and hand quilting the blocks. I would like to finish the quilting this year and get started on the process of joining the blocks together in the quilt-as-you-go style. 

3) I intend to continue the hand quilting on my oldest UFO. I still enjoy the process and do make slow and steady progress throughout the winter.

We thank you for all the ways in which you contribute to Slow Sunday Stitching... 
by joining the linky party with your blog posts, by visiting the stitchers who've linked up, and by encouraging them with your comments. We all know that when you've been working on a hand made project for years, it does help to increase the motivation to continue when someone cheers you on! 
Let's see what your hands are stitching at the beginning of  2019!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

One Monthly Goal

It's hard to pick one of the projects on my lengthy UFO list (on the right sidebar) to focus on in January. But I finally decided that I will try to finish the Circle of Squares quilt. The quilt top was pieced in December and I have some ideas for how I want to quilt it, and want to get going on it. I want to "strike while the iron is hot", so to speak!

The first 3 steps are to prepare a backing, cobble together some batting scraps, and start the pin basting. Then the fun part starts!

Linking up to One Monthly Goal.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2019

It is exciting to be starting another year with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I have several ongoing scrappy projects that will be carried into 2019 for scrappy additions.

*Mini Arrowhead Blocks - these are 3.5" blocks made from 4.25" squares (pattern here and cutting for alternate sizes here). They are fun and quick and I'll add a few more each month. I made 2 red blocks to add to the collection this week.

*I will be on the look out for more 5" block patterns to add to my RSC 2018 Squared Away BOM.

*Maverick Stars - I really like this block and how the layout I have chosen works so well with the light and dark backgrounds.I'll make more blocks this year to make the quilt larger.

*Omigosh - this quilt needs over two hundred 5" blocks and I have made just over half of them. I save all my 1" squares and strips for these blocks. I think I will be making them until I die :)

*Mini log cabins - this was a new project in 2018 that was sparked by Julie's Log Cabin Loonies (cutting instructions here). It's such a great block pattern for using up tiny strips. I will continue adding blocks to the collection this year, starting with sewing a red block today! 

*Scrappy sprouts - It seems I only want to work on this in the spring when it's gardening time. The rest of the year it seems to languish without much attention from me.

*Alamo stars - this project is entering it's 8th year and I've lost interest in making any more blocks for it, so it's time to get this one done. I have never put them up on the design wall together, so maybe that will happen this month?

Hop over to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge link up.

Elsie 221 Featherweight

Since posting about my new (to me) old vintage machine, and receiving some email questions about her, I realized I needed to write a whole post about this lovely machine.

Elsie 221

It has been sitting used for many years. You can see that there is residue from a piece of tape that was stuck on the machine, likely as a seam allowance guide. Even after a lot of elbow grease, I was unable to get it all off, but it's better than it was.

Vintage Singer Needles

I was gifted this machine by someone I didn't know very well, but she knew I was a quilter and wanted to give her special sewing machine to me. I know the value of this gift and was reluctant to accept it for a while. It had been sitting in her closet for a long time, and then it sat in my closet for a long time, while I slowly came around to accepting this generous gift. Elsie joins my sewing machine collection (otherwise known as "the herd") as machine #17 - you can read about the others here.

Using the Singer Featherweight webpage on dating machines, I discovered that this machine with serial number EG642139 was born on May 16, 1951 which makes her 67 years old!



One of the very special things about this machine is because she was born in 1951, which was Singer's centennial year, it has a special badge that says "A century of sewing service" on the blue oval edge of the badge.

wrong position

After dismantling, cleaning, oiling and checking all the working parts, I couldn't get it sewing properly. But I had forgotten one important feature of Featherweight machines. 
Okay... see how the "positioning finger" is at the 9 o'clock position? 

right position

It must be at the 12 o'clock position. After removing the faceplate and cleaning the years of gunk under there, I had not repositioned it correctly. 
That problem had me stumped for a while, but once I solved that problem, it sewed perfectly. The tension was exact and she may now be my new favourite machine!

This is the box of accessories that came with her. Only one of these bobbins is for the 221 machine (the top left one) so I'm not sure what machine the other bobbins are for.


And sew... as soon as I'm done work, I'll be in the sewing room with Elsie to start sewing the last step of Good Fortune. Bonnie surprised the quilting world with posting the mystery design reveal this morning. Can't wait to put some blocks together to see how my version of the quilt will look!

Good Fortune Update

To sew step #6 of the Good Fortune mystery quilt I got out an old Singer Featherweight that hasn't been seen on my blog to date.  
This sewing machine has been sitting in her black box for at least 20 years.

Since I decided to sew this year's mystery on my vintage machines, I got out this old gal for the first time to see what kind of condition she was in. I cleaned and oiled all the parts and pieces, played with the tension, wound a bobbin, solved a few problems (will write about those another time) and got it sewing perfectly. 

I strip sewed all the units on phone book paper. I tried sewing the big pieces with long strips, and then trimming them to the correct size when completed, but it was not as much fun for me as sewing on smaller pieces and using up the smaller scraps.

The paper removal is quite boring, but I didn't hate doing it. I just would just prefer to be sewing instead of ripping paper. I could definitely see the benefit of piecing on paper for stability with bias edges and angles.

And as soon as I had finished step #6, step #7 appeared, so I finished up those units too. It was a quick step to sew. Here are some of my red 16 patch blocks on the design wall and the rest of the blocks in a storage bin waiting to see what happens next.


Hop on over to this week's Good Fortune linky party and the Let's Bee Social party.

New Year Flare up of Startitis

Happy New Year to all my quilting friends!
It's "the most wonderful time of the year", but also the worst when you happen to have a diagnosis of chronic Startitis.
Here is the definition from the Urban Dictionary: 
"Startitis: noun - repeatedly starting new projects while still having multiple uncompleted projects."

At the beginning of a new year, many quilters have inspiration to start new quiltalongs and invite us all to join in. 
YES... OF COURSE I want to join in the fun!
But how am I going to get more hours in my days to actually have time to sew more projects!?!?

*Sandra told me about Anina's Temperature Quiltalong which looks like a fun challenge.
*Cindy is hosting a year long BOM called Garden Sunshine.
*There are 2 bloggers that are offering Harry Potter Quiltalongs - Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts and Kelli at I think it needs stitches.
*Barbara Brackman has created another interesting project called Stars in her Crown, which is a 10 week paper piecing  quiltalong starting in January.
*The Fat Quarter Shop is running a Threadology Quilt Along.
*Sindy has 2 great BOM's going on for 2019 and I especially like the Hen Party.
*You can find some links to other quiltalongs at Busy Hands Quilts and at Seams To Be Sew.

What is a vulnerable, helpless, quiltaholic to do?!?
Well, I'm going to start a new project today, that's all I know for sure! LOL
What new projects are you going to start to welcome the new year?!?
If by chance I have missed a new Quiltalong, please let me know in the comments below. I am excited to start the new year with lots of new projects!! No wait... don't read my blog post from yesterday!

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!

Finished Quilt!

It is so rewarding to have my last blog post of 2018 be about a finished quilt! This is "En Provence" which was the Quiltville mystery that started in November 2016.

En Provence

The quilt top was finished in February 2017 which was record time for me (less than 4 months). Then it sat in the UFO closet until it was aged for the perfect amount of time, which was a total of 20 months. In November I got "a bee in my bonnet" and really wanted to finish this quilt before the next Quiltville mystery started. 

The machine quilting took many hours over November and December and it was a joy to work on. The quilt measures 70" square and it was easy to manage the quilting on my domestic sewing machine, so I am encouraged to tackle some of my larger quilts this year.

This is what the quilting design looks like on the back of the quilt. I love this fabric which is from the "Good Neighbors" line by Amanda Jean Nyberg.

For the photo shoot I clipped the quilt to the fence during a rare moment when the sun was almost shining. This is the back of the quilt with the "Good Neighbors" yardage in the centre and leftover blocks and scraps on both sides. Looking at the photos I realize I forgot to put on a label. Again. I will sew one on "tomorrow".
It sure feels great to have a finished quilt on the last day of 2018!
I'm linking up to One Monthly Goal finishing party, and Design Wall Monday over at Judy's. 

Slow Sunday Stitching

Can you believe it's the last link up of the year for the Slow Sunday Stitchers?!? We have put hundreds, perhaps thousands of stitches in our projects this year, and this is traditionally the time when we pause to recognize our achievements from the past year. I did not finish any hand stitched projects this year, but put stitches in several different multi-year projects that I am enjoying. 

Next week I'll write about my slow stitching goals for 2019, but today I'm writing about my big quilting accomplishment this month, which is finishing on my version of En Provence. This was the Quiltville mystery in 2016, and by the end of 2018 it will be a finished quilt. SO excited about that! The binding is attached, the pink threads have been chosen, and I will spend many relaxing hours today and tomorrow hand stitching the binding to the back of the quilt. It's my favourite slow stitching activity and I've been looking forward to it!

This will be my view for the next few hours. I plan to be drinking tea, visiting the link ups below, and watching old home videos. That's the perfect way to end the year (for me)!

How are you spending the last Slow Stitching Sunday of 2018? Link up your blog post below and share your project with us. My wish for all of us is to be blessed with many happy creative moments spent with needle and thread as we wrap up another year of living and stitching!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

2018 RSC Review

It's time for the last Rainbow Scrap Challenge link up of the year, which is the perfect time to review the RSC progress made in 2018. 

Circle of Squares

It was another productive year here in my studio, sewing up little bits of fabric that most sane quilters throw in the garbage.
I ended the year getting my Circle of Squares quilt top sewn together. It was such a fun project started in June 2016 and used up 160 colourful 2.5" squares with no repeats... a great scrap collection! It will go on the UFO list for finishing in 2019. I already have my quilting design in mind, so maybe this will be first on the list for January.

My biggest RSC accomplishment this year was finishing the Tied Up in Knots quilt. I worked on this quilt for 6 years and sewed 672 little 1.5" scraps into these blocks. 

I can't even tell you how much I love this quilt because it is uniquely me and combined all my favourite things ... from finding the block idea in my favourite 100 blocks magazine (pattern by Tina Curran issue #3), to the use of tiny scraps, to the scrappy backgrounds, to the machine quilting designs I created. It is an example of how participating in the RSC has helped me to create projects I love, with the encouragement of the scrappy quilters each week at the link up. 
My other big RSC accomplishment was finishing all 40 Squared Away 5" sampler blocks which used billions of small scraps. I plan to make more blocks in 2019 to make this sampler quilt bigger. Thanks again to Mari and Angela for gifting this project to the RSC community!

Thank you to Angela for years of RSC adventures! I have a true appreciation for the time commitment of hosting a weekly linkup since I know how much work goes into it. You have such a busy life and we are grateful that you continue to do this for us!
Hop over to the linkup to see more projects being finished.

String-Along!

Serendipity...
the quilting world is exploding with lots of fun inspiration and opportunities to do some string piecing. Step #4 of the Good Fortune mystery involved string piecing and it was really fun.

Bonnie Hunter's new book called String Frenzy has just been published. I have been drooling over the quilts and reading every word. I love a well written, concisely organized book. And is it weird if I even love the smell of this book!!?!??? LOL

Humble Quilts is having a stringalong for 2019 with a linky party at the end of each month, so I'll be participating in that for sure.

AND there is a Moda String-Along happening TODAY with a block check in on January 7th. My friend Debby is coming over and we are going to sew until we drop. I'm going to start with these two bags of scraps.


In February Bea is hosting a "Dust off a quilt book" blog hop. I had already signed up and wanted to make a string quilt based on Gwen Marston's string book. 
And now everywhere I look I am surrounded by string projects, string books, and string quiltalongs. 

Maybe I have died and gone to heaven?!?!

After I finish sewing the two big bags of scraps above, I'll start in on this huge bin and make a fantastic string quilt for Bea's blog hop.

***AND... step #6 of the Good Fortune mystery was posted today and guess what? 
More string piecing!

Linking up to Oh Scrap!