Circa 2016

Last Friday the centre medallion layout was posted for Circa 2016. I had all the blocks made, so I just had to figure out a setting fabric. Grey was recommended, but I am tired of grey right now, so I decided to use a neutral background kind of fabric. 

But when all those striped fabrics were in there, it was a little much. My friend Sue loaned me a civil war repro print that worked perfectly in the centre 9 squares. 
Are you wondering what the next step will be in this fun mystery quilt? Me too! I'm hopping over to Temecula to check it out!

Happy DWD

It's Drink Wine Day today!
I'll be doing some of that using my new glass that I adore...it is covered in happy faces and shiny beads and says "you can never have too much HAPPY"! This glass makes me feel happier, no matter what it's filled with! 

It was a near disaster this week when I went to do some machine quilting and the light on my sewing machine was dead. Luckily I was able to pick up a replacement bulb and hardly missed any sewing time.

You sure can tell which of these bulbs is the new one and which is burnt out!
Back to the machine to work on another Swoon block.

Swoon #2

The second Swoon block is quilted. You can see the first block I quilted last week here. I tried to quilt this second one using a similar design. I lost my bearings once or twice, but I don't worry about that. I just get back on track as soon as possible :)
Machine quilting is only enjoyable when the machine and the supplies and the operator work well together. A big part of the learning curve for me was finding the threads that my machine liked the best. 

50 wt. Aurifil threads run through my Brother domestic sewing machine like butter. And believe me I have tried every thread out there. Although there was a bit of tension adjustment to make at the beginning of quilting this block, there was not one single thread break! And I was quilting at high speed most of the time. 
Then I started the prep work for block #3. I am using up small batting scraps for this quilt-as-you-go project and joining them together using the Heat Press tape (review here). The iron must have been on too high a setting, and I melted it. That's the first time that's happened! I will be more careful with my iron as I continue to join together these batting scraps.

BOM Decisions

How to make a decision!

Life is a just series of decisions of which quilt to start next. Well, maybe that's only how it is for quilters? The world is full of so many choices now, and there are endless options for how to spend your leisure time. The decision making process can be overwhelming, but when it's done in a thoughtful and deliberate way, it does help to crystallize who you are and what you enjoy.
I found a great list of free 2016 BOM's over at Seams to be sew. There are themes to appeal to everyone including hand embroidery blocks with the Outlander theme, a paper pieced quilt with a travel theme, an Old MacDonald mystery quilt, an 1857 applique reproduction quilt, Lorna's ugly Christmas sweater  quiltalong, and the one that I am resisting starting ... Scrap Dance Tango.

I enjoyed looking at all these options and considering this question: "If I was only going to start one new quilt this year, which of these would I pick?" This question really helped me to identify what my preferences are in quilting designs at this point in my quilting life.
Ironically, I realized that so far this year I have already started 5 new quilts - Circa 2016, Westering Women, Aurifil BOM, Scrap Dance Tango and the Quiltbug Superbowl mystery.
Oh dear! I am a very bad influence!
Another project that I really love is the Fat Quarter Shop's Crossroads Quilt Along. Their concept is unique - they post the block patterns for free and ask for a donation (if you are able) to the March of Dimes charity. This charity is near and dear to my heart, with their mission of "a fighting chance for every baby". Fat Quarter Shop will match donations up to a total of $10,000. And their finished sampler quilt will be auctioned with proceeds going to the same cause. Love that! 
And then there is the Splendid Sampler which just started this week. This BOM features well known quilt designers, giving us two free 6" block patterns a week, for a total of 100 quilt blocks! The fun and choices never end!! I think this might be my 6th start of 2016!
What BOM's are you joining this year??

Design Wall Monday

The layout decision for the Quiltbug mystery Peekaboo has been made and the blocks are sewn together. I always enjoy sewing a quilt that has a variety of possible layouts. And this was a fun mystery to sew with well written instructions.
Now I am calculating how much fabric is leftover to maybe add a border or two.
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Slow Sunday Stitching

It's the middle of the winter here, and as I write this blog entry the temperature outside is a very frosty minus 23. MINUS 23! 
This is the time of year when I love hand quilting the most. A big quilt is the perfect project to keep warm under while enjoying some hand stitching. 
And of course the best place to hand quilt is in the bright sun. When the sun comes out, I put my chair right where the sun beams are and soak up some vitamin D and Q! 

Ahhh... take a deep breath, pick up a needle and thread, and renew your love affair with hand stitching! Of course chocolate will probably be consumed in between stitches because it's Valentine's Day! 

Are you stitching a heart project today? Link up your blog post below and share what you are hand stitching. Happy Valentine's Day!

Scrappy Saturday

It's the second week of using up brown scraps over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I have been making more leader-ender Alamo Star blocks. Every time I sew a set of these blocks, I feel like they could make a wonderful mini quilt all by themselves! If I sewed these 9 blocks together, the quilt would measure 6.75" square having 153 pieces.
Now that's a mini miniature!
It's time to go visit SoScrappy and see what brown blocks are being sewn today.

Circa 2016

It's Friday!  Time for another Circa 2016 installation!
Here are my 28 hourglass blocks from last week's step. They aren't as scrappy as I would like because I used the traditional method of making QSTs (start with squares, draw a diagonal line and sew both sides of the line, etc.) which makes two identical blocks.
Total Circa blocks made = 44
Hop over to Temecula and see what we're sewing this week!

First Finished Swoon

Here is my first Swoon block finished already!  It was really fun to quilt since the block is only 24", so there is no pushing and pulling it through the harp of the sewing machine. 








And here is a photo that shows the quilting design a bit better. I love how the design turned out in the centre block. I wish all the curves were smooth lines, but hey, it's made by a human so it's never going to be perfect!
One block down, eight to go!

Hosting a sewing event

If you like sewing with your friends, why not host your own sewing events? It is sew much fun you will wonder why you don't do it all the time. Well, except when you have to work the next day, and you are exhausted from your laughing and sewing marathon. 

Here are the steps to hosting your own sewing party...

Step #1 - decide on a theme and/or date
For the past few years I have hosted a mystery sewing day in the winter, either on New Years, or Super Bowl Sunday. Fellow blogger Andee hosts a Quiltville mystery kickoff party that I would love to attend, except that she lives over 2,000 miles away!

Another idea is to host a monthly event. I used to host a Friday Night Sew In, but have been so busy that it has fallen off the schedule. That must be remedied immediately!

Step #2 - Decide on a guest list
I have room for 4 - 6 sewers and one presser in my space. Sometimes we can't force entice someone to be our presser and we have to do our own, but quilting is always faster when someone else does your pressing for you. It's also important to invite friends who will enjoy the type of sewing you would like to do. I love to sew mystery quilts, but not everyone enjoys that. If you want to host a mystery quilt event, you have to invite people who like adventure, who don't get stressed about figuring out quilt designs, who are handy with a seam ripper, and who are willing to risk making a quilt they don't love (sometimes even "ugly") while they have a fun day of sewing.

Step #3 - Prepare
The next hurdle is that you have to clean your sewing room! Once you've thrown everything into the spare room organized your projects, vacuumed, dusted, and cleaned up your space, you are ready for a nap your sewing party.


Step #4 - Purchase necessities
These are the minimum requirements: lots of water for hydration, buckets of chocolate and assorted snacks for energy, and each quilter needs a tin of "calm down" mints.

You can make your event as complicated or as simple as you desire. The important thing is that you spend time with people in your quilting tribe, and you make wonderful memories to enjoy long after the event is over.

Back to Swoon

Have you made a Swoon quilt by Camille Roskelly?!? It has been a very popular pattern for years and I started my Swoon project back in 2012 using black and white, grey, and gold fabrics. I really enjoyed sewing the blocks and then they sat for a while until they were ready to become a quilt.  I have no idea why this quilt bubbled to the top of the UFO list this week, but it is finally coming together in my mind, so I decided to start the machine quilting. The blocks will be individually quilted and then I will join them using the "Quilt-As-You-Go" technique (good photos of the technique here).

I treated myself to a brand new pair of Machingers, which I really like to use when machine quilting.
The batting was joined together from some scrap pieces using fusible batting tape.

The design will be free motion curved lines. It is a great brain stimulating activity to plan out how to quilt as much of the block as possible without stopping/starting.

Design Wall - Super Bowl Sunday

Did you celebrate Super Bowl Sunday by sewing or by watching TV? I'm sure you can guess what I did!


I had some friends over to sew the Quiltbug Super Bowl Mystery quilt called Peekaboo.
Here are the fabrics I started with which are way, way far away from the recommended colourways. But I really wanted to use up stash fabric, and it was a challenge to get the necessary yardage.



Here are the blocks from the 4 of us who sewed the mystery. We each chose very different colours. The one closest to the recommended colourway is the floral pink, green, and yellow which is the column of blocks second from the left.
It was a great day of sewing and these are some of the possible layouts I came up with using my blocks.

layout #1

layout #2

layout #3

layout #4

layout #5

Which of these layouts would you pick to be your favourite?  To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Slow Sunday Stitching - February

Life Is Beautiful block #20

It's time once again to enjoy some Slow Sunday Stitching! I am starting off February with another finished Life is Beautiful embroidery block. I think this is my favourite block so far, but maybe I say that every time I finish one?!
This block took more than 2 months to finish and for some unknown reason the pattern had faded and was getting difficult to see. Maybe my eyes have deteriorated, but it was hard to stitch the last half of the block.



I traced over the pattern again with a red frixion marker and was able to see much easier to continue stitching. 
This particular block had a lot of lazy daisy stitches, which made up all the leaves on the two trees. 



What do you do while you are slow stitching? Do you listen to music or TV or radio? Do you like to stitch in silence, or while in conversation with loved ones? I enjoy all of the above at different times in my stitching life.
When putting in some of the stitches in this block I was "watching" Bonnie Hunter on QuiltCam, and of course while watching Downton Abbey on Sunday nights. 
But recently I discovered (reading Cheryl Arkison's blog) that there is a "Slow Stitching Movement"! Who knew?!? The website has a list of 20 podcasts to listen to. I started with Cheryl's podcast and really enjoyed it, so am now listening to Gail Pan. It is fun to be slow stitching while listening to thoughts about slow stitching! There is some annoying background music at the beginning of the podcasts, but it goes away at about the 1 minute mark so stick with it. 
I have another block ready to go into the hoop to begin stitching today.
What are you working on? Link up your blog post below and show us your hand stitching project.

Scrappy Saturday - Maverick Stars

It's brown month over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I needed some brown blocks for my Maverick Stars collection. 
I made a light star on a brown background, and a brown star on a light background.

And here's the whole collection so far on the design wall. It is such a fun project to work on to use up small cutoff triangles for the wonky star points.

To see more brown projects, hop over to SoScrappy.

Circa 2016

I am having such a blast with the new Temecula sewalong. It is my favourite kind of quilting project - tons of small scrappy pieces. For these little nine patch blocks, I cut 108 tiny squares from the scrap bin. 



This is how my work surface looked with all the pieces cut and ready to sew.  And today is Friday, so there will be another new block pattern posted and I'll be back to cutting and sewing more little pieces. This is my idea of fun! Click here if it's also your idea of fun!

Aurifil BOM

Aurifil is my favourite thread - I buy it in every size available and use it every day. So of course I had to check out their new BOM. The January block looked like an interesting challenge with 40 components, and I was curious about it would be constructed. 
Because I had been sewing with a lot of blue in January, I needed a break from blue, so went with red and white. I can say that it is the most difficult block I have ever sewn, although I'm still not sure why it took me hours to make!
The cutting directions are complex and I made several errors. A lot of time was spent staring at the computer screen, checking and double checking measurements and pieces. And still, a couple of times I had to add on pieces from strips that I had cut too short. 
Then my centre pinwheel block ended up the wrong size according to the directions. I had to unsew, trim each HST by 1/4" and resew the pinwheel. 

But perseverance pays off, and here is the finished block. You can see some creative versions of the block at the Flickr group here and at Pat Sloan's link up here. 

UFO of the month

I have been excavating in the deep, dark, endless UFO closet looking for a project to finish this month. Look what I found!
This is an old quilt top that I finished sewing in June 2011. It has been "in waiting" ever since. The pattern was by Sindy Rodenmayer of Fat Cat Patterns. I don't see it on her website anymore but she has some great patterns there and a free BOM for you to check out. And I did finish the bright version of the same pattern (without the sashing) in 2011 - see it here.

Brown is not one of my favourite colours, but I do really like sampler quilts, so I think I will enjoy machine quilting this project.  I'm going to try to quilt 3 of these brown blocks each week and will blog about it on Saturdays for the brown RSC. 
The first step will be the 3 B's - getting a Backing and Batting, and pin Basting.
To see more February UFO goals, hop over to One Monthly Goal link up.

Allietare Update

On my design wall today are the finished star blocks for the Allietare mystery quilt. 
And when I look at the photo on the screen, I just have to say "there is one in every crowd"!!
Oh brother :( 
Where's the seam ripper?

It sure is a big quilt and this is only half the blocks taking up my whole design wall! The other half of the blocks are also sewn and you can see them here. To work on the layout of this quilt, I'm going have to build my bigger portable design wall. I think I might take this project to work on at quilt retreat this month.
To see more versions of Allietare, Bonnie is hosting a link up over at her Quiltville blog. I am amazed at how many of the mystery quilts are already completely finished!
Happy Groundhog day!

Finished Quilt on the Design Wall!

My January UFO is finally finished on the very last day of the month! 
Here is my version of Deckade the Halls pinned to the design wall. It measures 56" x 68" which is wider than my design wall, so the edges of the quilt look a little bit wonkier than they really are.
This was a free pattern from the Fat Quarter Shop to celebrate their 10 years in business in 2013. It was such a fun quilt to piece with the Christmas themed blocks of ornaments, stockings, presents, trees, gingerbread people, mugs, stars and wreaths.

Although I am pleased with how the quilted grid design turned out, I wouldn't recommend it to a quilter who might have any perfectionistic tendencies, as it is very tricky to keep the lines at the same angle across the entire quilt. 






I am linking up my first finish of 2016 over at One Monthly Goal and Design Wall Monday.

Slow Sunday Stitching - Binding

Can you believe that January 2016 is already over?!? I really cannot believe it! We are already one month into the new year... how are you doing with your resolutions? 
I am so happy with my progress so far this year. I have already managed to (almost) finish a UFO! It was one big challenge that I have been working on either in my mind, or in my hands since November. Once I got the border problem solved, and the quilting started, it practically finished itself! Well, not really but it was quite fun and I'm so thrilled.

Stay the course!

It's time to give myself a big pat on the back. We all know that it is so much easier to start new things that are fresh and enticing, with no challenges or problems to solve. But there is such a sense of growth and satisfaction to "stay the course", to solve the problems that arise, to push yourself in new directions, and to actually accomplish a huge task.

Today I get to enjoy the wonderful task of finishing a quilt that I started in 2013. Isn't that a great striped binding fabric?  Binding a quilt is one of my favourite hand stitching activities, so I am in for a very enjoyable afternoon of slow stitching.  

What are you hand stitching today? Are you able to stay the course, meet your goals, and finish projects to completion?
Link up your blog post below and share your progress with us.

Scrappy Saturday Blues

It's the last saturday of the month and I have finished two blue scrap blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.


The first block is Mad City Mama (a pattern by Bonnie Hunter in her Leader Ender book). This is a great scrap pattern and uses 133 blue scraps and 12 yellow scraps. That's a lot of small pieces!
I'm not sure I really like how the yellow wonky corners turned out, so I'll try something different on the next one.


When that block was done, I sewed the first Westering Women block. It has a lot of unusual measurements... lots of 7/8's, but the block turned out to be the right size. I used blue scraps because they were all over the cutting table. I'm not sure if this will be a RSC project, or if I will make all the blocks in blue, or if I will start over and make a new 1st block in reproduction fabric. I have a whole month to decide before the next block is posted.
To see more RSC projects, hop over to SoScrappy.

Circa 2016

Temecula Quilts has a new project this year called Circa 2016. I have made several wonderful projects with Temecula over the years, including Hugs and Kisses, Little Letter Quilt, Summer Stars, and Countdown to Christmas.



This project has 2 attractions for me:
1) it's a scrappy project (no new fabric purchases) and 
2) the blocks will be small and finish at 2.25" and 3". 
How can I resist this little gem?!?

These are my first 4 blocks. I really like them!

I love Fridays

New blocks will be posted on Fridays.
I'm hoping over there right now.

I love Fridays!