No Design Wall!?!

No design wall posting today because nothing is on the wall! I have been machine quilting lately and did hand stitching yesterday, so I haven't been working on any quilt designs.
But mostly I have nothing to share because my furnace isn't working. It is almost as cold inside the house as it is outside. Good thing we have lots of quilts to snuggle under until the furnace is fixed and the house warms up!
I be back when I thaw out!

Slow Sunday Stitching - Don't bring the stress!

This week I finished two quilts for my quilt guild challenge, which involved 111" of hand binding. Even though it was hand stitching, which I usually really enjoy, it was not at all relaxing because of the impending deadline for submitting the challenge quilts.
I have been thinking about this since then. The same relaxing activity that I do on Sunday, was not at all relaxing on Monday and Tuesday. It was the same task, but my thoughts were different, and so my feelings were different. And I was bringing my stress to my stitches. Not good.
Today I'm bringing a healthier mindset and intention. It's time to rest, relax, and recharge the batteries for the week ahead. I will be doing some hand embroidery, with some backstitching and making more lazy daisy stitches on my 3rd Life Is Beautiful block. I will remind myself that my project is not called "Life is Stressful"!

What are you hand stitching today? Will you be enjoying some relaxation, or will you bring your stress to the stitches? Link up your blog post below and share your hand stitching project.

Scrappy Saturday - Yellow

Yellow is the colour of the month at the Rainbow Challenge and we are digging into the scrap bins to find the sunshine!
I was given these wonderful batik scraps which are perfect for my Alamo Star blocks. I laid out all the scraps and started cutting pieces using my Tri-Recs rulers. 



I have 8 Alamo Star blocks ready to sew as leader/enders this month. 





I was able to sew 4 little stars with some yellow in them, but look forward to getting the rest of these blocks sewn up this month.



I have been surrounded by yellow (and blue) quilts this week. It's odd how that happens.

First - I have been working on my log cabin blocks and have a big hunk of the corner sewn together now.

Second - I adopted this yellow and blue quilt when I was at guild meeting (it was random, I have no idea why I did that!)  I started machine quilting it yesterday. 

Third - I sewed a label on a donation quilt made by my little sewing group. The fabric was all from our stashes, and we were amazed at how big it became - 80" x 109".  One of the group members thought it should be long enough to have a pillow tuck at the top. 




It's long enough for a pillow tuck, and then some! It needs to go to a home with tall people ;) 
Anyway, the quilt is hand quilted and will be auctioned at the Mennonite Relief Sale on the last Saturday in May.

To see more yellow scrap projects being made, hop over to SoScrappy.

Scrap Squad - Pam's Pointed Prisms

Being a member of the 2015 Scrap Squad at Quiltmaker is such a fun experience. I have just received my second assignment, which is a pattern that will be in the May/June issue, and this weekend I will be searching the stash for fabrics to start sewing the blocks.

Kari Ramsay's Pointed Prisms

"Pointed Prisms" was my first assignment. This pattern by Kari Ramsay is in the March/April issue of Quiltmaker magazine.
This is her version of the pattern that was in the magazine.

My version of Pointed Prisms

This is my version of the same pattern. You can read more about it on the Quiltmaker blog here, or on my blog post here. There are three members of the Scrap Squad that are making this same pattern.
Pam Snow's version of the pattern will be posted today. Hop over and visit the Quiltmaker blog to see what she created.

Today I will be working on this lap quilt, which I adopted at guild meeting this week. Someone else pieced the blue and yellow top, and pin basted the quilt, but became frustrated with the quilting of it. Everything was in the bag including thread and binding fabric. I plan to do easy straight line quilting with the walking foot. TGIF!

Challenge Quilt - Wallhanging

This is my finished wallhanging for the guild challenge. It is called "The light side of the moon" and the perimeter turned out to be 77".

I enjoyed every part of constructing this quilt. These are some of my favourite things...

I had fun positioning the two owls as though they were peaking out from behind the moon.






The machine quilting process was really fun. I used the  walking foot and stitched wavy lines from top to bottom. Each path between the moon columns has two different colours of thread that  I tried to make look like ribbons. I enjoyed using a variety of pretty thread colours.




Even sewing the strange binding angles worked out okay. I made a two fabric binding with a predominantly white starry fabric on the left and a bold black and white stripe on the right.



What I didn't like was that in spite of trying to create variety in the background blocks, and checking the layout several times, I still managed to put two of the same blocks touching each other in the final quilt. Look at that!
Oh well, that's life I guess. Those moon just wanted to be together.

I can't wait to see all the challenge quilts hanging together at the show. It is always mind blowing to see what happens when you challenge a group of quilters with the same fabric and theme, and they create such a diverse range of quilts. The quilt show is at the beginning at May - here's the link. Hope you can come and see our challenge quilts. Don't worry, I will remind you again closer to the show date!

Challenge Quilt - Miniature

Yes... both challenge quilts were finished in time to meet the submission deadline! It was close, but I made it.

Here is the 34" miniature quilt (with the corners rounded to meet the size requirement of under 36") and it is called "The wisdom of friends helps survive the darkest night". I love the friendship star blocks around the owl centre block. The pattern is by Camille Roskelley. In the description of the quilt I wrote "Good friends are like stars. You don't always see them, but you know that they are always there."

I had to block the quilt to get it to lay flat, and thankfully this worked wonders in uncurling the corners. See all the pins in around the curves? I pinned it (after soaking it) to my June Taylor mat and let it dry overnight. If I would have known the edge was going to be rounded, I would have used a bias binding, and saved myself the hassle. Oh well, the remedy worked, and beading could commence.





I thought the quilt needed some sparkle, since it was a starry night quilt. The background purple beads with a tinge of gold were perfect, and I was happy with how they added to the quilt. 




I didn't end up liking the effect of the gold beads on the stars as much as I thought I would.
But a finished quilt is a wonderful quilt :)
I will write a post about the second quilt after I have my morning coffee.

Perseverance

My challenge quilts are approaching their completion.  The mini quilt just needs a label, a hanging sleeve, and a few beads. I had to block it to get it to uncurl on the rounded corners, but it's tolerable now. (You can read a good article about quilt blocking here.)
And the wallhanging is almost ready to finish. I sewed the blocks together as they were on the design wall because I didn't have the time to fuss with it too much. I pieced together some batting scraps using fusible tape that I was given, and went right to the machine quilting as quickly as possible. One of my favourite steps in quilting is picking out quilting threads. I unravel lots of spools and lay the threads on the quilt and see what I like.

One thing I have noticed is that the longer I quilt, the more colours of threads I want to use. There was a time when I picked one... yes only ONE colour of thread for a whole quilt. That rarely happens now. Why use one colour when you have a whole box of colours to play with?!? 

I quilted very simple wavy lines between the moons, and was careful not to "over-quilt" (which I sometimes do because I am having so much fun) so it lays nice and flat. Again I have some unusual edges to bind and hope I can get the points to fold nicely. Have you ever called into work "sick" because you have a quilt deadline? 

Me neither.

Design Wall Monday

The blocks for my second challenge quilt are on the design wall (you can read more about the challenge here). I was inspired by Julie (who was inspired by Nancy Mahoney) to stitch moons onto half square triangle blocks for the theme of "Nightscape". 

This is a bad photo, taken at night, but you can get the idea of how this is starting to turn out. 
I started with yellow moons, and was gradually drawn more to the oranges and pinks, and then a bit of purple to balance out the owl challenge fabric. 
I was thinking the quilt would maybe be 5 blocks across and 7 down for a total of 35 blocks. I made a few extra and when I put them on the wall to figure out which ones needed to be voted off the island, I liked them all and ended up with this unusual shape. I kind of like it and might keep that layout. I'll have to fill in the edges with something.
Tonight I will be finishing this quilt somehow... a bit of quick machine quilting, and then hand stitching the binding down to meet the submission deadline of Tuesday night. Nothing like an adrenaline rush to get the creative juices flowing!
To see more design wall posts, hop over to Patchwork Times.

International Women's Day

Life Is Beautiful Block #2

Welcome to Slow Sunday Stitching and International Women's Day....two great reasons to celebrate today! It is fitting that I recently finished the second embroidery block for my "Life is Beautiful" project, which celebrates the laughter and love of friends.
And in keeping with the theme of Women's Day, I started stitching the third block while on a trip with my Mom and sisters. I have been blessed with a solid foundation of support from my female tribe!
Today I will be hand stitching the binding on my little challenge quilt,and hoping that my straight cut binding will be able to go around the newly curved edges. And I will be adding a few beads to sparkle up the star circle.

What are you hand stitching today? Link up your blog post below and share your progress with us...

Scrappy Saturday

Yellow is the colour for the month of March at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. That just happens to be one of the colours for my guild challenge, so that works out perfectly for me!

Today I am appliqueing little yellow circles/moons onto black and white HST blocks.
I was inspired by a RSC project that Julie is making - you can see her blocks here.

I recently bought myself a new Jansjo LED lamp. I first saw this light on Bonnie Hunter's blog, and have been on the lookout for one ever since. I finally found them, bought two (one for me and one for a friend) and just love it! It has a solid base so it won't tip over. It has a long flexible neck for easy positioning, and it has a focused pool of light which is perfect for hand stitching. 

I am really enjoying using up some of my yellow scraps under the supervision of my quilting angel. She was a gift from my friend Susan.

To see what the quilters are sewing with their yellow scraps this week, hop over to SoScrappy.

The challenge becomes more challenging

I make a quilt in much the same way as I drive a car. I start out with a destination in mind, but don't pay too much attention to the details as long as the scenery is lovely, I am enjoying myself, and I am heading in the correct direction. I know I always get there, and trust that the way will become clear as I make all the decisions that must be made as I go along. It's a fun way to travel and to create, until the deadline approaches and I'm not near where I need to be! 

I have to hand in my guild challenge quilt on Tuesday, and the clock is ticking loudly ... tick tock, tick tock.
It's time to stop having fun and make some decisions!

My little HST blocks decided to become their own quilt, since they couldn't play nicely with the other blocks I had made. I used a Camille Roskelley pattern to make a small circle of friendship stars.

Then I machine quilted a free hand spiral that turned out okay.

But when I was ready to sew the binding on, I realized that this quilt is too big for the miniature category. Look at this... it would be one inch too big for the 36" perimeter rule!! Ugh. My bigger HST blocks are hopefully going to become something for the wallhanging category, so I had to size this one down to less than 36"


And so I did. I took a plate to trace a curve, and cut off two of the corners to make it a bit smaller. Shhhh...it's top secret that the corners were cut off to fix a mistake. Hopefully people will think I meant to do this from the start, and will consider it an endearing design element!

Now to try to get a straight cut binding on rounded corners!

The challenge of a challenge

My quilt guild is having a challenge for our upcoming quilt show. We were given these 2 fat quarters and a theme of "Nightscape".
The thing about a challenge is that it is ... well, it's a challenge. It is "a test of one's abilities or resources in a demanding but stimulating undertaking". It's not supposed to be easy, and sometimes it is really a struggle.

I have changed my mind many times about what I would like to create. I have a lot of creative ideas spinning around, have discarded a few lofty ideas, had a couple of false starts, and have settled on one or two possibilities that might become a quilt that I could like. Last week I made some tiny HSTs and made some bigger ones this week, but still haven't decided yet how these blocks are going to fit together into a quilt. 

I have also made some circles using my favorite method of Karen Kay Buckley's circles, and liquid spray starch. That was really fun. 
And now I need to figure out what to do with the circles. Are circles necessary for a nightscape? Well, I was thinking of moons, and started out with yellow scraps, but somehow the oranges jumped in there, so now I'm not sure!
Stay tuned to see how this challenge turns out... or not!

February Binding Blitz

Julie is hosting a Binding Blitz party for us to celebrate our completed quilt bindings in February. Stitching binding is a task that not everyone enjoys, so Julie is encouraging us to finish the job and link up our blog posts.
I have two completed bindings this month:
* a miniature quilt called Hugs and Kisses that measured about 10" x 13", for a total 46",
* and my Scrap Squad quilt (with a green backing, using green stitching tools!) with a whopping 280" to add to the total.

Drum roll please....

February's binding total is 326".
Not as fantastical as January's total of 586", but definitely enough to celebrate! Hop over to Julie's enjoy the link ups.

Winter Adventure

It has been a very busy week, with just returning from a wonderful trip to Niagara Falls with my Mom and Sisters.

We enjoyed wonderful winter views of the falls from our hotel room.
This is the sunrise over the mist of the Canadian falls.

This is a view of the American falls as seen from the Canadian side. We were lucky enough to see a rainbow one day. 

It really was a winter wonderland, but very very cold and windy. 






Of course I took some hand stitching to enjoy while taking in the wonderful views. This is another block for my new "Life is Beautiful" project. This block says "wherever you go, go with all your heart". 
We certainly did that in Niagara. 




And when I came home, look what was waiting for me... 
a gift from the January Binding Blitz draw at Julie's Quilts!  It is time to post our binding successes for the month of February - hop over and check it out here.

Design Wall - UFO

Well, I didn't get my UFO of the month finished last month - for the second month in a row.  In my defense, I did finish 6 quilts so far this year, but just not this one. Sheesh.

But I did make a backing for the quilt, and here it is on the design wall today. I sewed a huge log cabin block which I thought was very clever for a quilt with a lot of log cabin blocks. The fabric in the middle of the block will also be the binding of the quilt.

And I did put a border on this UFO, so progress has been made and it is now ready for basting and quilting. 
Do you think the third time is a charm? Want to make bets on whether I'll finish it this month?!?
To see more design wall posts, hop over to Patchwork Times. And to see more UFO goals for March, hop over to A Lovely Year of Finishes.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Can you believe that the first two months of 2015 are already over?!? It is now the month in which SPRING arrives, and not a moment too soon. 

Life is Beautiful Block #1

I am stitching my way to spring with my new embroidery project - Life Is Beautiful. Even in the dead of winter, life can indeed be beautiful!



I have finished the first block and have a good start on the second one. 

And speaking of stitching our way to spring, if you would like to celebrate the arrival of spring by participating in a hand stitchers blog hop, you can sign up over at Sew We Quilt.  We will meet stitchers from all over the world. It's going to be a great event with lots of giveaways! Hope you can join in the fun.
What are you hand stitching today? Do you have some cross stitch, embroidery, english paper piecing, applique, binding, or hand quilting to show us? If your project involves your hand holding a needle and thread, we want to see it!
Link up your blog post below...