Design Wall Monday #47

This is what is on my design wall this week - 66 shaded four patch blocks for step #3 of the Easy Street mystery.

They are really pretty if I do say so myself! These blocks will be coming off the wall to make room for my Christmas quilt that is "in development" (and hasn't been seen since December of last year - sure hope I can find it in the UFO closet!).

Before these above blocks went up on the wall, the flying geese blocks for step #2 were up there.

And there's one renegade leader/ender block that hopped on the wall.
Get out of that flock of geese and back into the proper project box...don't you know I'm trying to be more organized?!?

Hop over to Patchwork Times to see what other quilters are working on this week and then over to Quiltville to see the Easy Street postings...
just love Mondays!

Slow Sunday Stitching

Finally - it's Sunday! 
Make time to pick up a needle and thread and do some slow stitching today. Especially with the hectic rush of the season, it's important to have time to rest and relax, and catch your breath.

I got an early start this weekend... I started stitching last night when Bonnie Hunter was on QuiltCam. I took some time to relax and enjoyed hand quilting my "Journey of a Quilter" while watching Bonnie sew on one of her vintage machines. 
My daughter came in and said to me: "Are you STILL working on that quilt"!?!
I defensively say: 
"What do you mean? I just started quilting it last month!" 
Well, I guess it's true that she has seen me working on it for more than 5 years now. But that's not a very long time in quilt land! Wonder how many more years I'll be quilting on it?!? LOL
Can anyone give me ideas for quilting this large block? I am mostly quilting 1/4" inside all seam lines, but in this block, there are no seams and it's too large to have no quilting in it. Should I run a wavy stitching line across the block under each line of letters? I can't imagine shadow quilting each letter. Any other ideas?
Wasn't last week's link up so fun? We had some cross stitch, hand piecing, hand applique, hand quilting, and binding!
Link up your blog post below and show us what hand work you have been working on.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge

Here is my second brown/black Knot block sewn together, which I like just as much as the first brown one. It just tickles me that I wasn't even going to make a brown block, and ended up making two of them! 


And here are all 11 Knot blocks from my 2012 Rainbow Scrap challenge on the design wall. I love 'em! One more block to go which will be a lime apple greenish Knot, and then it's layout decision time!

I am already planning my projects for 2013 and am looking forward to the new projects. Thanks to Angela for hosting the scrap project and link ups. If you haven't joined in before, why not join in next year and turn your scraps into colourful quilts?!

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

It's Quiltarama!
Many of my nieces and nephews were together last weekend for a family celebration, which is the perfect opportunity for a quilt airing. The kids could use sleeping bags for "stay awakes" (we used to call them "sleepovers", but changed the name because not much sleeping goes on!) but it's not nearly as much fun as getting out all the quilts. Pass 'em around and snuggle in...so fun! This photo brings me great comfort and joy!

And speaking of joy, I'm hoping over to see the newly released clue #3 for Quiltville's mystery project. Hope we get to sew some aqua and green this week!
Are you joining in the fun?!? 

Blogging in 2013??

My sister asked me why I spend so much time blogging when I am so busy. Good question! It gave me an occasion to reassess. I have been blogging since 2006 - that is 6 years of commitment to this regular practice!
I thought again about why I blog, and if I want to continue. 

I came up with a list of reasons:
1) I love quilting, and photography, and I also enjoy writing. Blogging combines all of these enjoyable and creative tasks. 
2) A blog is a quilting diary that I can read, and revisit years of projects started (some are even finished!) and connect to some great quilty memories. Also, when I give a quilt away to someone, and I know I won't see it again, it is great to have a blog post with photos and details of the project.

3) It gives me a great sense of accomplishment reflecting on all those stitches taken by hand, and with my machines. So much of what I do in my life, as a woman, as a mother, as a homemaker, and a social worker, is invisible work. No one knows the amount of thought, time, effort and life energy I put into these tasks, except me. But with a quilting blog, I can see the tangible results of my efforts.
So, will I continue my blogging habit in 2013?  Absolutely! 
Stop by on the weekend for Slow Sunday Stitching to see what I'm hand quilting (in the above photos) this week!

Votes For Women - Blocks #13 and #14

I am happy to share that I am almost caught up with the posted blocks for the Grandmother's Choice: Votes For Women sampler.

This is block #13 called "Everybody's Favorite: Universal Suffrage".

This is block #14 called "Bride's Knot: Invisible Women".

Both of these blocks were quick to cut and sew, so it was easy to catch up.

Are you sewing along with Barbara Brackman's Votes For Women sampler? If you are, you will already have 14 blocks sewn. Right now I only have 12 blocks, so I am going to attempt to hand piece 1 of my missing blocks (Kansas Sunflower), encouraged by the challenge issued by Deb at VTQuilter. I hope to be able to finish it by Christmas. It helps to have a deadline, and I don't have enough to do this month! LOL

Design Wall Monday #46

55 flying geese have already been sewn for step #2 of Bonnie's Easy Street mystery.  Some of my fabrics look like they are blue, but they really are all purple.

I have all the rest of the pieces cut out for the other 73 geese that will be flying through my sewing machine this week. Very fun sewing to look forward to!



I love cutting the little dog ears off the sides of the geese, and saving them in the jars that I collect. Why do I do that? Because it makes me happy when I look at them, and that is a good enough reason! 
Hop over to Quiltville to see other flying geese being sewn for mystery quilts, and then over to Patchwork Times for more design wall inspiration. Don't you love Mondays?!?

Slow Sunday Stitching

For the last few months, I have been accomplishing a lot of stitching on the bus back and forth to work. But my hand work time has been dramatically decreased for the last month for two reasons: 
1) we switched to daylight savings time and   
2) it's the end of the school semester.
What do these two events have to do with my hand stitching? Well, with the time change, I am now coming home from work in the dark, which means no stitching on the bus. And, it's the end of the semester, so all the students that should have been going to school all along, have suddenly started to actually go to school, so the bus is jam packed and I have to stand all the way to work in the mornings, which believe me, is not conducive to stitching! 
Once exams start, I will be able to sit again and get some stitching done on the way to work.
I have started a new project in anticipation! I am hoping to be able to finish it for a Christmas gift, but that may not happen for this Christmas!

Once I loaded this photo I realized how crooked my needle is! Did you notice that?!? My goodness, it's time to splurge and get out a new needle!
And I have a few gifts to get in the mail to blog winners over the past month or two, so I'll try to get that done this week. 
What are you stitching this week? 
Blog links this month will go into a draw to win a little Christmas quilt kit called "Deck the Holly". Link up your hand work post below and share your project with us. 

Grey and Brown - Typical November!

Today I will be going to my Uncle's funeral, but don't feel sad for me/us...he was not a good person on this earth, and caused a lot of grief for his wife, his son, and his sisters, so no one is actually sad today. That is truly the sign of a wasted life, when no one mourns for you.
Anyway, I'll be making sandwiches, making fruit and veggie trays, and helping my parents to host all the relatives and friends coming to town. 
Truthfully, I can't wait until after the dishes are done and everyone leaves.  I am "dying" for some quilting time today... sorry, bad joke!
I will be working on Bonnie's mystery. This is what my step #1 looks like...
130 - 4 patch blocks, in my very fancy storage system - a shoe box!

And I hope to work on step #2 of the mystery. I have all the pieces cut out and ready to stitch. I love my variety of purples/violets, and my black on white strips. I have so many special scraps that I am including in this quilt. I remember when I purchased each one. 
For example, I have a bit of my Hancocks fabric, which I purchased on my "one and only" trip to Paducah. I can't "save" it my whole life! I want to use it and include bits of it in many of the quilts that I sew. It makes me happy to see it, and to remember my wonderful quilting friends who helped me to have that amazing experience!

And I hope to sew another Knot block today for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Well, brown is the colour from last month, but I am still working away on it. I think I have the colour gradation right (or at least "good enough") for my second brown block. To see my first block, click here. To see what other RSC'ers are sewing this week, hop over to SoScrappy's.

November Quilt Square Quilt Along

For November's Quilt Square Quilt Along there was a choice of two blocks. I liked them both, so I made two this month.

This has been a really fun project and I have used almost all the scraps left over from last year's  Quiltmaker mystery. I bought mostly fabrics from the Sweetwater Pure line when I was in Vermont in 2011 (actually that store may have been in New Hampshire?)  I really did have way too much fabric if I could get two quilts from that supply list! Now I am running low on the lights, so I used a couple different fabrics for the outside border on this block (and didn't use the 4 patch border blocks).

And the second block this month was really easy. I changed up the measurements, and skipped the QST's in the border. 

There might be enough fabric to squeak out another block, which will make a perfect quilt layout of 12 blocks - 3 across and 4 down.

What will the last block be? For me, it will have to be one without light fabrics for sure!
Hop over to Jo's Country Junction and see the other blocks that have been sewn this month.

November Free Motion Challenge

I missed doing October's Free Motion Quilting Challenge because I built it up in my mind as "too hard"! When we face a big challenge, most of us tend to procrastinate and/or never try. I can't count the number of times I have heard quilters say "I wish I could free motion quilt". You can!  But you have to be willing to put in the practice time! 
My plan is go back to October's lesson and spend more time on it over the Christmas holiday...practice and more practice! 
Here is November's lesson with Sarah Vedeler which I  finished on the last day of November! It is one of my all time favorite quilting designs - spirals!  I used this design on my Dr. Seuss quilt,  Disappearing 4 Patch, and the Kwik Scrappy Star quilt...to name a few.

The hardest part of this lesson was to quilt the spirals in a straight line. On paper, the lines helped me to keep the swirls in a row. 

But on the fabric, I tried to stitch a straight line of spirals on the diagonal of the block, and then swirled out! You can see at the top of the line, I forgot that my plan was to swirl in a line and made a couple of little swirls to the right, but I got right back in line!
I have really enjoyed the lessons that have been on the SewCalGal blog this year. Free lessons posted by award winning teachers... it doesn't get any better than that you quilters! If you haven't checked it out, hop over there and read or print out the lessons. There is only one more month left and the teacher is Patsy Thompson! I can't wait to see what she will teach....should be posted tomorrow.

November UFO Report

There hasn't been a UFO report on my blog for a long time. I was doing such a good job for the first half of the year, working each month to complete a quilt on my UFO list (see list on right sidebar of my blog). Seven quilts were finished! But then I started another job and quilting time has been reduced to mostly during the night when I can't sleep :(
So, I didn't even look at UFO # 9, which was the project for November. It makes me feel a little sad, because I love that quilt, and I can't even believe that November is over and that poor quilt didn't even make it out of the closet!

And now it's time to look ahead to December, and quilt #4 is the UFO of the month. This is a flannel quilt that I started to use up scraps. The center snowball blocks were from a friend's retreat quilt which she threw in the garbage and I "rescued"! Yep... self confessed dumpster diving quilter here! (PS I'm trying to get over that problem now!) 
And it has leftovers from a quilt I made for my daughter's 3rd grade teacher. She is finishing her science degree at university this year, so that tells you how old some of this fabric is! Time to get it into a quilt! 
I hope that I will have time this month, in between making some Christmas presents, to make some progress on this quilt.
To see some finished UFO's from this month, hop over to Patchwork Times. 
And step #2 has been posted for the Easy Street Mystery, so I am also hoping to sew some purple flying geese this weekend.

Votes For Women #12

The block last week for Barbara Brackman's BOW is called "Little Boys Breeches: Dress Reform". I had fun picking out the fabric for each of the breeches/britches, and made two in pink fabric to symbolize women starting to wear pants.




I didn't want to sew "set in seams", so I made a paper piecing template from studying the block on the computer screen and it worked out perfectly.
I will go to great lengths to avoid set in seams! LOL



The history lesson for Grandmother's Choice block #12 is about "Dress Reform" and how women's fashion developed. Barbara Brackman wrote: "Women's fashion was a pretty prison". Interesting that some of our modern day fashions still make it difficult for women to walk, and move freely :)

I thought this would be a great opportunity to show you some of my women ancestors and the clothing they wore. 

This is a photo of my maternal great grandparents taken in England.  How scandalous of my grandmother to be showing her ankles in the early 1900's!

Look at that fancy belt and the waist treatment on Grandma's dress. 
BTW... no one in the family inherited her curly hair (if that is her hair and not a wig?)

It is interesting to note that my Great Grandmother was completely illiterate. She made her signature by writing an 'X', she never had a bank account, or paid a bill, or voted in her lifetime! In fact she rarely left the house because she had no need to.

FYI - I still have that locket that is around her neck but it is too fragile to wear. It needs some restoration some day.

Family photo in the 30's:
This is a photo of 3 sisters and 2 sisters-in-law...
Aunt Nellie, Ellen - my Nana (SIL), Aunt Nora, Aunt Orpha (SIL), and Aunt May.

Love the fashion, from the hair styles, the dresses, collars and belts, to the shoes. These women are have all died now but throughout their lives, they never wore trousers/
pants/breeches...always dresses or skirts. 
My mother very clearly remembers the first time she bought a "pant suit" in the late 1960's, having worn skirts/dresses up until then. 
I am very thankful to be a woman in 2012 when I get to put on my britches, comfortable walking shoes, and go to work!

Design Wall Monday #45

Wow...this is the 45th time this year that I have posted on my blog what is on my design wall on Monday morning.
Today...this is what I'm looking at!
I am working on Bonnie Hunter's "Easy Street" mystery. I posted my fabrics and more details about my mystery quilt addiction on Saturday's post - click here if you want to see that.

I spent time on the weekend organizing my black on white fabrics because I need some large pieces to make more (maybe 8?) enormous 24" Swoon blocks and I couldn't remember which fabrics I had in mind for that. On the design wall is a 24" Swoon block and a little 8" Swoon block. Next I'm going to make a 16" block just for fun and see what size I like best. So today I measured out the largest black on white pieces and set them aside for more Swoons. All the other black on white scraps are going in the step #1 - 4 patch blocks for Easy Street.

I have finished sewing 70 4-patch units laying on the tray, pinned together in sets of 10 like Bonnie has suggested. And I have the strip sets sewn together to finish the rest of the 4 patches this week. It should be no problem to finish by Friday - the day of step #2 release. Wouldn't it be great to be able to keep up with the mystery?!?
There is a lot going on in blogland today! If you want to see more design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times. To see more blog postings on the Easy Street mystery, hop over to Quiltville.

Slow Sunday Stitching - Big Finish!

A big finish to announce...

drum roll please...

I finished the hand quilting and binding on my 36 patch scrap quilt, and it has already been gifted to it's new owners. 

Here it is, in it's new environment up in gorgeous cottage country.
Just look at that amazing sky!






I like this photo which shows...
*the scrappy border made from the leftover squares,
*a bit of the white backing 
*the diagonal quilting lines, and 
*the light floral binding.


This was such a fun and happy quilt to "work" on, and I enjoyed every moment. I was amazed at how much I like the finished quilt, since I did not like many of the old (1990's) floral fabrics I used in piecing the blocks and was happy to be using them up. 


I actually felt sad when the quilting was finished and the binding stitched down. The last stitches took way longer than they needed to, as I lingered over each one.  I have some great memories stitched into this quilt! 
Luckily I have another special quilt to enjoy more hand quilting today. 
What are you stitching this week?

Saturday on Easy Street

Anyone who reads my blog, knows how much I love mystery quilts. I may think (briefly) that I really should not start another quilt, but I know that I will! And if it's a Bonnie Hunter mystery, I don't even play that game with myself....

I know I'll be doing it! 

Here are some of my previous Bonnie mysteries:
Carolina Crossroads, Double Delight, Orange Crush, and Orca Bay. Of these quilts, only Orca Bay is not quilted yet.
I like to use up stash fabric as much as possible, and I could not believe that I had a chunk of the same old grey fabric in my stash as Bonnie is using in her project!  Bonnie said she has had it in her stash since the 90's and I probably have too. I don't have enough of the grey, so I'll add in some of the fabric with the leaves on.


After the mystery was announced, I was in a little town that still has a Stedman's department store - do you remember those? I found these fabrics in Stedman's to add in but sadly I think I'll have to leave the pink and yellow out!







Here are the other fabrics I have pulled from the stash which may or may not make it into my mystery quilt:
PURPLE: 

GREEN: 

COOL AQUA:

I am off to start sewing a million 192 4-patch blocks for step #1.  

The colour of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is grey, so I'll link up to the RSC post to show them what I'm making with my VERY old grey fabric! 

Miss Molly on the Mountain Trail

Miss Molly had a photo shoot on the "Mountain Trail"!

Which is more beautiful...
the quilt or the dog? 

It's a toss up in my opinion!

"Show me the treats or I ain't gonna smile"!






"Is this a dog photo shoot with a quilt background, or a quilt photo shoot with a dog in it"?

Miss Molly wants to be (and is) the star of every moment!

"If you don't start giving me the treats, I'm going back to bed!  Hand 'em over"!

"I love this gig! 
I get to wear a spiffy new red bow, get a few treats, and I'm sitting on a quilt...woohoo"!

Molly has done so well with recovering from her surgery in the summer. A large tumour was removed from her left eyelid, and you can't even tell that they resected the eyelid back together...amazing!




Finished Mountain Trail:

*24" x 29"

*Design and instructions by Lori at Humble Quilts 

*Fabric - Vintage Modern with a red Kona path

This is the backing, but you can't see the feather quilting very well.

Maybe you can see it in the photo on the right?

Bottom left corner of the mountain trail.

Thanks for the fun Lori!
Can't wait to see what we're sewing next...
no pressure!