The LONG Journey of a Quilter!

I have been working on compiling my  "top 10" list and am finding it a little (lot) discouraging. I intend to post my 10 quilts, complete with a description of the various stages of unfinishedness some time soon...once I find them all! Really, it is turning into an archeological dig!

I will admit right at the start of this list making that I am frustrated with myself for not making more progress particularly on my "Journey of a Quilter" project. I was mortified to see (courtesy of my blog documentation) that it is now 2 years since I first started these blocks! How on earth did that happen?!? 

Well...because I have been enjoying my life journey, I guess! I have been starting and finishing lots of other quilts and have been happily busy with nonquilting things, like my garden.

 Can I brag about my garden for a minute (to help bolster my lagging self esteem)?!? In spite of terrible weather here so far this summer, I have managed to grow some huge tomato plants.  I think the credit goes to their new sunny location, not just to my green thumb abilities and TLC. I am just hoping that these giant plants will actually produce little red tomatoes instead of lots of leafy green foliage!

And my roses are even pretty this year!

Okay, that's enough distraction...back to my quilting problem...I dug out my "Journey of a Quilter" project to get back on track with it,  because it is for sure on my top 10 list.

This week I finished the buttonhole stitching around the hearts and the hand embroidery on the scissors, the flowers and the words.

Which means that I am now officially 2/3 of the way finished...6 blocks down, 3 to go!! Then I pieced the 7th block and have everything ready to begin stitching should I find some free time when we are camping this summer. Now I feel much better...I am making progress on my quilt again. I sure don't want to spend another year with this one on the back burner!

Baking and Cutting

I am happily enjoying the days of "summer vacation", which means that the kids are home but I'm still working! It is enjoyable because we have a more relaxed schedule and no homework issues to deal with. For my kids, the freedom from daily homework is remarkable! I forget sometimes how much pressure is on children now in our school system but it is really noticeable when summer comes and the real personalities of my kids reemerge when they are free from daily stress.

Although we are on a summer schedule, the weather has not been at all summery. I don't think we have run our air conditioner once this year, which is very strange. It has been perfect baking weather though! I have been making Amish Friendship Bread in various forms thanks to blog stalkers Deanna in North Bay and Louise in Goderich, who convinced me to get started by feeding me some great cake and then sending me some starter mix. Now I can't stop...it just goes on and on! Thanks guys!

While eating my cake (why don't we call it bread...it sounds so much healthier for you!) I have been surfing the quilt blogs and found this interesting article on "the Power of 10" over at Sue's blog. I need to do this to get myself organized for the guild quilt show in October.  I have to prioritize which of my quilts I need to work on to be finished by then and I need to FOCUS! 

I'm thinking about doing that, but first I decided to cut up one of my charm packs (called "Swanky") into tiny pieces to make a mini quilt or two. Look at these cute little guys just waiting for me! Can't wait to get sewing and I'll be thinking about making a list of 10 UFO's...

while I work on this new project! *LOL*

Design Wall Monday

It's Monday again...this week went by so fast I can't believe it! That is one disadvantage to posting on Judy's Monday report..you realize how quickly time goes by and how much you did not accomplish from your list of quilty goals!

However, I am delighted to report that I finally have a finished quilt top on the design wall!

This is from a Robert Kaufman kit called "Permission to Play: Kaleidoscope" that I bought at Hancocks in Paducah in April. I haven't posted anything about this quilt since May 19th, when I posted 3 layouts for blog readers to vote on - click here to see the layouts. My blog readers voted for layout C by a small margin but I decided to sew layout B, because I liked the strong vertical and horizontal lines it created.

These were very trickey seams to sew with a lot of odd angle seam matching to do. Although I don't usually use many pins, these seams needed hundreds of pins to even come close to matching! That's why it took so long...but I persevered and now it's ready for quilting!

If you want to order one of these kits from Hancocks, click here. They come in 3 different colourways - cool, warm and earth tones.

Shop Hop Bag

I haven't had much sewing time this week with the interruption of preparing for and celebrating Canada Day.  Also, all of the rain we have had has resulted in great growth (mostly of weeds!) in my garden.

I did manage to finish this little "Shop Hop" bag I had been wanting to make. I bought the magazine about 2 months ago and just didn't get around to working on it until this week.

The pattern is from this magazine,  which has several neat patterns that I intend to make. The pattern calls for diagonal straight line quilting, but I just had to do some swirly quilting for this fabric!

Look at this cute button for the perfect embellishment!

I attached the bias binding by machine and was reminded of how much I don't like the look of it, but it's okay for a bag.

And here is the inside of the bag with pockets for your

 credit cards. 

The next bag I make is going to have a longer strap because this one is too short to hang comfortably where I would want my bag to hang for easy access to the credit cards when shopping at the quilt store!

Happy Canada Day!

July 1st is "Canada Day"! Lots of celebrations will be held across the country, including parades, concerts, and fireworks.  At my house we'll be having a family BarBQ with lots of summertime salads. The weather forecast is for rain and more rain, so I guess we'll be celebrating indoors.

This is the mini quilt that will be hanging on my front door to celebrate Canada Day. I always wanted to have a special Canada Day quilt and now I do! The flag pattern is from Christine Thresh's website. If you go to her home page, then click on patterns, she has free foundation patterns for flags - one Canadian flag and three American flags. The Canadian flag pattern is 4 1/2" x 8 ".  Christine generously gave permission to our mini quilt group to make her flag pattern. Hey gals...have you finished your flag yet? Is it hanging in your home?!?

The flag was a little challenging for some of us (not mentioning any names!) and here is an interesting variation of paper piecing a right side to a wrong side...do not try this at home!! We had great giggles over this creatively pieced maple leaf!

The letters I put on the bottom of my flag are from Marcia Hohn's website - click here. I downsized them to about 1 1/4" and that was too small for me to enjoy the piecing process (and I really like paper piecing), but that was the right size to fit across the bottom of the flag. I re-did the 'D' letter 3 times! Marcia's patterns have the letters as 4" blocks and that would be way more fun but too big to go with my flag...I'd only be able to fit a 'CA' under it!

If you are home enjoying a relaxing Canada Day (or will be home on the 4th for the American celebrations) and want some fun quilty websurfing, check out this website for lots more free quilt patterns....enjoy!

Design Wall Monday

One of my sewing groups that enjoys making quilts for charities has started another quilt. (Our last quilt was sold for $475 at the Mennonite Relief Sale - you can see it here.)

Our new quilt was inspired by Deirdre Brown's quilt pattern called Split Decision - you can see her quilt here.  When we are looking for ideas for a group quilt, we want a design where 1) you can use a wide variety of fabric scraps, 2) the block is easy for all levels of quilt experience to sew,  3) the quilt doesn't have a lot of seams to match and 4) finished blocks can be squared up to the same size, because as we know, every quilter has a different 1/4" seam allowance!!

We started by selecting a border fabric from a pile of bolts (yes, bolts!!) of fabric from one of our group member's stash. Then we each took a chunk of the border fabric home and looked in our own stash for scraps to match. 

Here are my pieces, all cut up and ready to sew.  The test block is on the left of the photo. Some of these are really old fabrics and I am delighted to be using them up.

Here are 12 of my finished blocks on my design wall. Each group member will make 25 blocks, which will give us a few extra blocks just in case some are not the right size or don't look right with the colours in the final layout. 

If you want to see what other quilters around the world have on their design walls, go to Judy's blog and check it out (click here). But don't blame me for all the quilting time you wasted while surfing the quilting blogs!!

Another finish

I finished another UFO this week...yahoo!  You can read about the beginning of the quilt here. I would like to make special mention of the date that I started it...January, yes, of 2009!!!  This quilt didn't even make it out of the car at quilt retreat in February and it was so close to being done. I finally got it out and finished up the quilting. 

What kind of quilting did I do?

-even, nestled feathers in the 3 pieced rows

-outline stitching around all the Winnies and piglet

s

-crosshatching lines on all blue background fabric

-wavy lines following the words in the green border (which I don't like and wish I hadn't done there, but...oh well...

done is better than perfect!)

-varied feather quilting with a wavy spine in the outside borders

And here it a shot of the back of the quilt which maybe shows the

 quilting lines better. I was happy that I had enough of the soft green fabric to make up the binding. I don't have a baby in mind to give this quilt to. I sure am delighted to have finished another UFO.

Wait until you see the next UFO in the production line!

Iron troubles

I was sewing up some triangle blocks when I smelled something burning.  I discovered it was my iron dying...I could smell the electrical meltdown!

I am hard on my irons...they always seem to be falling on the floor and getting fusible gunk on them and generally suffering from over-use! So I buy cheap ones and replace them whenever they expire. 

Since I wanted to continue to sew,  I dug out this cute little pink iron I had bought years ago at Joanne's in the US (only $5 with a coupon!) thinking it would be good for mini quilts. But it was a major pain in the @#$! The place where the cord went into the iron was in a very awkward location for pressing and the cord plug kept falling out and the so that went in the garbage with my Black & Decker.

I headed out to Canadian Tire (which is the premier store for tools around here). My husband enjoys Canadian Tire as much as I enjoy quilting stores...he can wonder around in 

there for hours. I purchased a "Shark" iron...never had one of those before. I like the name...let's see how long it lasts with me!

Quilt Designer Blog Hop

Say what? A second post in one day?!?!

I forgot to remind you about the blog hop which starts today.

Every day there is a different blog to visit and you can collect the free patterns and win prizes.

Click on the picture below and you can hop on over and see the first pattern. Enjoy!

Design Wall Monday

It's Monday already?!? The weekend just flew by!  

I might have a little time to sew today (and recover from hemming those trousers for my Dad!) and this is what I plan to work on...my triangle quilt. You can read about the beginning of this quilt here. I have the top two rows sewn together and most of the blocks made. I think I can squeeze a few more blocks out of the remaining scraps, maybe just enough for one more row and then half blocks on the sides. I'll be working with the scraps today and seeing how far they will go. The quilt size will be determined by the amount of fabric I have left...I'm not buying anymore (no, really, I am NOT buying anymore!).

To check out the design walls of other quilters, hop over to Judy's site and enjoy surfing the quilting blogs.

Happy Father's Day

It's a busy weekend around here getting ready for Father's Day.  I have been pretending to be a domestic goddess and working all weekend in the kitchen. Here is all that remains of my rhubarb patch. Our desire to eat it outlasts the amount the patch produces, so I'll have to buy rhubarb at the market from now on.  I pulled the last bit of rhubarb out to make this rhubarb cake for the family Father's Day lunch.

Then I washed and chopped these colourful veggies for the lunch potluck.

 Then I chopped the cilantro, 

tomatoes, and jalapeno peppers, rinsed the black beans, defrosted the frozen corn, squeezed limes, and then mixed the secret ingredients for the family's favorite bean dip. We eat this dip with Tostitos Scoops and it is so yummy that it is worth all the effort to make it!

And my last task is to hem 2 new pairs of pants for my father. It's a boring job which I hate, but hey, its father's day and it's the least I can do for him. The whole time I have been working in the 

kitchen and when I was hemming these pants, I have been thinking about what I would be working on if I were quilting!

What's on...

What's on my design wall this week?

This lovely block was designed by Jenny in Australia, hand stitched by Julie in the US, and is now hanging on my design wall in Canada. Isn't the world wide web amazing!?!?!  Since this arrived in the mail yesterday, I'm counting it as a birthday present since it was my birthday! Thanks Julie! I'm not sure what it will become yet, so it is whispering possible suggestions about adding pieced borders, possible hand quilting designs, making a hand stitched border, etc. I am listening and taking notes!

To see what is on the design wall of 25+ quilters around the world - click here. The other quilters post their link on Monday but I can't seem to get this done until the middle of the week!

What's on my piano?

Birthday cards! I was thinking today about how this row of beautiful cards defines who I am and some of the special relationships I am blessed by. 

What's on my sewing machine?

I am really trying to finish up some UFO's laying around here. I just have a bit more machine quilting to do to finish up this baby quilt, so today I want to finish quilting the whole border and get working on the binding. I don't have a baby in mind for this quilt, but want to clear up my work space, so it'll be my next finish.

A Finish!

I finally have a finish to announce! These are relatively rare for me, since I do love starting quilts more than finishing them. But I must say how much I enjoyed working on this quilt. You can read about the beginning of it here and although I didn't enjoy piecing the blocks at first, I learned the tricks as I went along, achieved nicer looking blocks and started having fun. One of the trickier things about this pattern is which way the seams should be pressed to get a flat block, and then quilting in the ditches, which always switch direction half way along. Don't know if you can see it in this close up block, but again, once I got used to this, the quilting was easier. 

It was also fun deciding where to quilt, sorting out which quilting lines I like the look of, which ones I didn't like and needed to unstitch, and when is there "enough" quilting. 

I tried to control my tendency to "overquilt" and here you 

can see the quilting from the back. 

And when I say "finished" I really mean completely done...l

abel and all!! Woohoo!

I really want to open up one of my other John Flynn kits and start piecing, but I am a little motivated today to get a

 couple of other UFO's finished, and clear off my work table. We'll see how long the self discipline lasts!

What's on my design wall?

This week I am working on a new project! Way back in the winter I signed up for a "Ladies of the Evening" class at Reichards and the day finally arrived last friday night. It was also my daughter's prom night, so I had to take some photos and then race over to the class.  I only missed the first part of the class, but worked hard to catch up.  This is a mystery class where you don't know what you are making, until you are given a stack of fabric strips and some instructions...lots of fun!

The project we started is called "Balancing Act" from the April American Patchwork and Quilting magazine (p.58). Cutting out the pieces to strip piece around the triangles has been challenging. This is my favorite ruler to use for this cutting job.

These are the blocks I have sewn so far that are on my design

 wall. I still have about 30 more blocks to sew because the rows are supposed to be 12 triangles across and there are supposed to be 9 rows I think. I'm really liking the quilt but am wondering if all these triangles are going to fit together okay!!

If you want some fun surfing quilt blogs, go to Judy's site (click here) and see what is on the design wall of 25+ other quilters...enjoy!

Prom Celebrations

I try not to post much personal content on my quilting blog, but I have to make an exception today since my quilting friends have been asking about how my daughter's high school prom went, and I thought I should give a few details. 

I loved the dress she bought, even though it cost more than my wedding dress!  (No...she absolutely did not want a quilted prom dress!)  This is her on the right with one of her good friends, who was born on the exact same day (in the same hospital) as my daughter, so they have always said they are birthday twins. I loved the beads and sequins on the waist band of her dress, and it was a beautiful colour on her. They had a fun time doing their nails and hair, and getting ready for the party together. They were very excited!

Here she is on the left with her friend (and prom date). She had a fantastic evening and was delighted with the whole prom experience.

I celebrated prom by attending a mystery quilt class, which I will write more about when I have time this week to work on that new UFO in progress!

I also spent part of yesterday at the guild Quilt Bee Day working on  comfort quilts. This is Judy and me. I am putting together blocks that other guild members had sewn. I am probably telling Judy that I am so relieved that my daughter has decided to attend a university close to home next year (she had been seriously considering attending Memorial in Newfoundland)! Today we are all feeling tired and happy!

Feathering & Canning

Feather, feathers and more feathers. Once I get started with the feathers, I can't stop! It's like eating potato chips - you can't just try one! Here is one of my demo pieces which I am still working away on. The feather quilting class yesterday went really well. These are the brave souls who were willing to try something new and put their machine quilting skills to the test.  They practised for a while with pencil and paper, and then progressed to quilt sandwiches....trying to convince their eyes and hands to cooperate together, and determining how fast they could drive the machine and still get some nice curves on the feathers.

In the class I took with Hilary Rice 2 weeks ago, she promised that anyone can be a good machine quilter once they've put in 1,000 hours of practise! So this group of quilters have already put in 4 hours and are well on their way!

Today I didn't have much time for quilting...I focused on tending to the "garden"...if you can call it that! Does this look like a vegetable plant to you?!?

Some green things are starting to appear...slowly, reluctantly. I'm still hopeful that I will actually have a vegetable garden this summer!

I spent a while pulling rhubarb (which I recently learned is not a fruit but is technically a vegetable!) and then worked on canning that rhubarb. With supervision from my friend Joanne, I managed to tackle 3 recipes - a rhubarb

 jam, a rhubarb blueberry jam, and a rhubarb relish, which I have wanted to try for a long time. It's a very old family recipe from a friend of mine and it is delicious. Once we recovered from the agony of peeling and chopping 5 quarts of onions, it was fun! It doesn't look very appetizing here in the cooking  pot, but believe me, it's amazing!

And here is the evidence of all that labour. No one can eat any of it for a while - until I am done enjoying the sight of it!

Baskets

Judy over at Patchwork Times blog asked "what's on your design wall?" I enjoyed viewing the other bloggers design walls so much, I though I'd join in the fun and put up a photo of what's on mine.

Baskets...4" baskets and 10" baskets.

The mini baskets are leftover blocks from a class I taught last month, and I am making them into little wallhangings for the guild's Quilt Show mini auction.

The large basket blocks started on Sunday. At the Mennonite Quilt Auction there were packages of background fabric for sale, asking quilters to make basket blocks for some quilts for next year's quilt auction. Somehow a few of those packages got into my handbag, and on the weekend I sewed up the blocks. 

Here are the background packages which simply requested any type of 10" basket block. 

So I made a cup of tea, searched through my Around the Block book by Judy Hopkins and picked out 6 different 10" basket blocks and started sewing HST's. It was relaxing sewing and I was happy to use up all these small pieces from my scrap bag.

In teaching news...if you want to learn more about machine quilting feathers, I am teaching a class at Triangle sewing tomorrow at noon and there is room for 1 more eager quilter! This was not an advertised class, but scheduled by special request. You can read more about the last time I taught this class here. 

In the computer department...does anyone out there know why my photos do not enlarge when you click on them? They used to enlarge before I got this new MacBook computer, and now they don't. Any ideas on how to fix this problem?

Quilt Auction

One of my favorite quilting events is the annual Mennonite Relief Sale and Quilt Auction.  I have attended this event for many years, sometimes having worked on a quilt being auctioned, and/or having donated a block to one of the group quilts. Last year I helped create a butterfly quilt - you can see it here, and this year I was excited to see the Black and White block challenge quilt auctioned (you can read more about it here).  Here is the quilt hanging on the rack waiting to be auctioned. Unfortunately they placed the quilt way down the list (quilt #179) and I had to leave the auction before it was sold, so I don't know what the sale price was. Does anyone out there in blogland know? I will call the organizer tomorrow and see if I can find out.

On the right is a photo of the quilt auction. New this year was a big screen which projected a large photo of each quilt being auctioned. There were less attendees at this year's auction for sure, and the highest selling quilt when I was there was the featured quilt (click here to see it) which was sold for $7000. 

Here are the 200+ quilts hanging and waiting to be auctioned. I will check the newspaper tomorrow to see how much money the quilts raised for world relief efforts.

**Update**

I just talked to the challenge organizer and she said that the B & W quilt sold for $2,600!!  And the little wallhanging (9 blocks) that went with it sold for $500!

Quilting the Wheel of Mystery

I had my sister over for a quilting lesson and she said something really funny...

Sister said: "Are you starting something new again"?

I said "Did you think I was going to work on one of my 10 unfinished projects I can see from where I'm sitting?!?!"

Sister said: "I think you should"! Now picture me laughing out loud!

I was all ready to cut into some fabric and start the new paper piecing mystery block at Paper Panache. 

She kept giving me the evil stare, so then I felt guilted into working on a UFO! 

I had been fussing around about my wheel of mystery borders and had been unsure which fabric to pick. Since I finished piecing the quilt top on May 13th (see quilt top here)  I have literally auditioned hundreds of possible border fabrics - both from my stash and at quilt stores.

Today I decided that the problem must be that I don't really want it to have a border, so I went ahead and basted it using one of the fabrics I had bought for a possible border, as the backing. 

And then just jumped into quilting it. I quilted all the curvy seams and then decided to do some other quilting lines - I tried a second line

 right by the seam to emphasize the circles but I hated the look of that. See where my awl is pointing?? That quilting line had to go. 

And I tried quilting about 1/2" away from the seam and hated 

that...look how wavy that line is!!!! 

I must have been distracted by my new project sitting on the edge of the table - calling to me, waiting for me to cut into new fabric!

I like to post photos of these kinds of mistakes because some people think that when you are an experienced quilter, it comes easy and it always works out...not so!! Having experience just means you don't give up and you have a few more ideas or solutions to try.

I kept at it and unsewed a few more quilting lines and finally decided that I prefer the echo curves to be 1/4" away from the seams. Then I had several lines of holes on the batik fabrics where those quilting lines used to be...ugh! With a lot of rubbing of my fingers nails I think (hope) it is not as noticeable now.

As I was leaving the quilt session, I got another idea of quilting lines to make and I'll try that tomorrow. Or maybe I'll work on my new paper pieced block if my sister isn't there to give me the evil stare!!