Small Community Fall Fairs

In addition to enjoying the fantastic weather at this time of year, another highlight of the season for me is the longstanding community tradition of Fall Fairs. If you live in Ontario, Canada you can click here to find the fairs closest to you. 

Give me some human flavoured taffy!

I'm not a big fan of attractions such as demolition derbies, or midway rides, or scary creatures like this one wandering the fair grounds! But I do enjoy the animal shows, and the beautiful exhibits of flowers, photography, crafts, baking, and antiques. My contribution to continuing the fall fair tradition is to maintain my fair judging certification and I try to judge at a few fairs every year. Also, for the fairs that I don't judge, I try to enter some of my photos and some quilts.

1st prize photo of Max!

My great delight this year so far has been winning the first prize ribbon at the Paris fair for "That Special Pet". Here is my photo of Granddog Max. 
He's special alright! 
Oh my goodness this little guy just makes me laugh! You wouldn't know it by this photo where he is trying to look like a fierce Santa, but he is so sweet and loving.


And he's not only just "special" to us, he beat out all these other special pets in the category. I couldn't even get all the entries in this photo, but let's just say the competition was stiff for our little Max! There were so many entries, they gave out double ribbons, so in truth he tied for first place.

These were my quilts that I entered in the fair last year. It's always fun to see ribbons on your quilts. Last year I had 3 hand quilted ribbon winners and I was tickled about that. I don't have as many finishes this year to enter, but there will be a few.
I encourage you to continue the tradition of attending community fall fairs. Get out there and find out what you enjoy the most!
Linking up to Wandering Camera September linky party ... if you enjoy photography, hop over to see some amazing photos!

Plein Air Quilting

There has been very little indoor activity inside my quilt studio.  But a lot of quilting has been going on at "Silent Lake", and of course since I arrived, it is no longer "silent"! LOL 
The weather has been my absolute favourite, and I am feeling refreshed and renewed from all of the "plein air" quilting. Just look at this view. The sun is casting long shadows because it's almost time for the sun to set. I cannot soak up enough of this sunshine and fresh air to get me through the long cold winter ahead. 

I saw this sign at the entrance to the park where I am camping and thought of Lorna's MOD Bear Paw Quiltalong. She has posted the cutting instructions and as soon as I get home, I'll be starting to cut bear fabrics.

Slow Sunday Stitching - Marking

Welcome to Slow Sunday Stitching! Grab a cup of coffee or tea and join us as we update you on what's happening in our world of hand stitching.

Bohin chalk pencil, Frixion pen, and Hera marker

I have been hand quilting my civil war reproduction bow tie quilt. As I was basting it, I decided on the design of the quilting but wasn't sure how to mark the lines. There are so many marking options and I like them all, so it was just a matter of picking one. I decided on using these three just to make it more interesting!
On the light backgrounds I am using the hera marker to make a slight crease in the fabric. It's easy to see and doesn't result in any marks to remove on the light fabric.

hand quilting bow ties

But I find it hard to see hera marks on dark fabrics so I am using either the chalk marker or the frixion pen on the bow ties. I like both of these markers and I am using whichever shows up better on each fabric. On that grey/brown bow tie you can see I marked the left side with red frixion and the right side with chalk. Mostly I prefer the chalk because it just brushes off so easily. 

Today I will be happily hand quilting more bow ties.
What are you working on? We love to see your hand stitching projects, and cheer you on in making slow progress.

   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Scrappy Saturday - National Sewing Machine Day Sept 10th

Today is the day we honour our sewing machines! It's National Sewing Machine Day! I use a sewing machine almost every day of my life and cannot even imagine my life without them. 
To honour my sewing machines (and keep track of them all!) I created a page on the top of my blog called "The Herd". It details all of the machines I have, where I found/bought/inherited them from, and why each one is special. It might be an unhealthy relationship I have with my sewing machines. I leave it up to you to decide. I'll be in my sewing room playing with the herd and cutting fabric for my next Alamo Star leader/ender blocks.

These are the Alamo Star blocks I made over the last couple of months... two pink for July on the bottom row, two light purple blocks for August, and I'll be cutting fabric for some red blocks for September. No wait... I'll be fixing that crazy looking star block first!
To see more rainbow challenge blocks, hop over to SoScrappy.

Circa 2016

It's Friday!
Here are the blocks for last week's Circa 2016  installment.
These are 3" sawtooth stars with a 4 patch centre block.
I adore them! I think I want to make a whole quilt of these little babies!
We need 3 for the Circa 2016 project and I made an extra block "just in case". But one of the blocks is kind of a dud... the one with not enough contrast, and it might be voted off the island!
Have a fabulous friday!

New Fall Quiltalongs

I just love quiltalongs. It's so fun to see many creative versions of the same quilt, and I enjoy the energy of a group working on a project.
Lorna over at Sew Fresh Quilts is hosting another quiltalong this fall. Have you seen it? The pattern is called MOD Bear Paw and you can get all the details here.
I don't have time to start a large project, but I have seen several bears this year, both live ones and dead ones, so I HAVE to make this quilt. Maybe I'll make a smaller version.

And also Red Crinoline Quilts is hosting a Block of the Week Fall Mystery, which I am also hoping to start. The first block has been posted here and is only 6" so it will be quick and easy... how can you resist!?! My Circa 2016 project will be winding up soon, so I've been looking for another weekly project to work on. 

Are there any other fall quiltalongs happening that I may have missed? I hate to miss out on starting a new UFO!

Leader-Ender Challenge Update

Bonnie Hunter's Leader-Ender Challenge this year is the hourglass block. I chose to make my own version of a quilt inspired by a quilt from the 1800's made by Clarissa White Alford. You can see the original quilt here and learn more about it here.

I have just finished sewing the second block. Each block is made of 36 hourglass blocks, which I am sewing in a leader-ender fashion.
However, when it comes time to sew the block together, it's a concentrated effort. There are a lot of thick seams to match, and lots of points that I don't want to lose in the seams. I sure do love that blue/teal fabric that has sewing machines on it. I don't have much of it left and will sprinkle the remaining scraps in some of the future blocks.

Here are the first two blocks side by side. I like the ways in which they are the same and yet they are different.

Clarissa block #1 and #2

New Quilt - Kissy Fishy

Lorna from Sew Fresh Quilts released several new patterns this summer, and one of my favourites is Kissy Fishy. I was lucky enough to be a pattern tester for her, and this has been such a fun project to sew.

I am finally using my favourite Kaffe Fassett Paperweight fabrics (that I pick up every time I visit the Hyggeligt booth at a quilt show) for the fish bodies, bright polka dot scraps for the faces, fins and tails, and different blues for the ocean background. It's so fun to try to find little 1" scraps to use for the fish eyes! 

These are all left facing fish, and the right facing fish blocks are all cut and ready to sew.
You can see Lorna's Kissy Fishy over at Sew Fresh Quilts, and you can get the pattern at her etsy store here.

Design Wall Monday - September's UFO

This is a project that hasn't been seen on my blog for a long time. These are some of the sampler blocks from Barbara Brackman's project called Grandmother's Choice - Votes for Women. This was one of my favourite projects and I really enjoyed making these blocks, many of which I made by hand in 2012/2013.

Then the project sat in a box for a while waiting for some layout inspiration to arrive. Finally in 2014 I started sashing the blocks and finished about half of them before progress came to a halt. I was probably just distracted by other wonderful projects, and again it went to the UFO closet.
My goal for this month is to make a quilt top from the blocks. I discovered that for some unknown reason I was missing block #49, so I will make that block to have the complete set. Then I will finish sashing the blocks, and see what happens after that. I am thinking of adding a light sashing with cornerstones, but have to see how it looks on the design wall first.
To see more UFO projects, hop over to One Monthly Goal and to see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Slow Sunday Stitching and Swimming

Welcome to Slow Sunday Stitching! 
The summer of 2016 is coming to an end here which means it's time to put away the pink flamingos and prepare for the cooler weather. 
You never really know where your stitching projects might take you, and this summer my stitching project and I went to a pool party. It was lovely weather for enjoying some relaxing swimming and stitching time. 

One last float around the pool seemed like a good idea, after all it was a really hot day and summer is almost over! 

But then the floaty wasn't coming back to the water's edge, so we had to send the shark in for a search and rescue mission.
Mission accomplished! 

Life is Beautiful block #28

The stitchery was eventually returned to shore and work has continued on the pineapple block. Hopefully it will be finished before fall officially arrives.

What adventures have your stitching projects taken you on lately? We love to see your hand stitching projects, so link up your blog post below.

   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Scrappy Saturday Paper Piecing

Last week we finished up working with our light purple scraps over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I hadn't worked on my Palm Branch project for a while, so I decided to add a light purple block to that collection. I didn't have any extra patterns to sew on, so I had to print out a pattern. 

size difference in paper piecing patterns

That proved to be a challenge since my old computer refuses to talk to our newer printer. So I went over to my parents where you need to hop on one foot, hold your mouth just right, and/or say magical words to get their printer to cooperate! I hate printers! The first few attempts resulted in patterns that were not the correct size, and I had to resize the scaling several times.  Note to self... print all the patterns you will need for a project at the same time!

Palm Branch block #10

I made my first palm branch block in 2012 and really enjoyed having a paper pieced RSC project. But I haven't worked on it much this year and was happy to spend some time making this block. You can still get the free pattern called "Red Herring" over at Quiet Play (who has a new pattern coming out in September that is perfect for all you rainbow scrap quilters to make for your sewing room!) Click here for the free tutorial and palm branch block pattern.

It's interesting to note that this is the 14th block for my palm branch quilt and each block uses 14 small coloured scraps and a background fabric. The number of the day is 14! 
I need 2 more blocks for a total of 16... which two colours should I add?
To see more RSC projects, hop over to SoScrappy.

Circa 2016

Here are the latest Circa blocks fresh off the sewing machine. 

This week we made easy peasy pinwheels. I made an extra block to make up for last week's fail. I really like the one with the brown stripes, which are all oriented correctly. 
However the pinwheels are creatively spinning in various directions, which I am not unhappy about!
Hop over to Temecula to see what we are sewing this week to add to our quilt.

Fall is Here!

Well, I know that the first official day of fall is September 22nd, but as soon as the calendar changes to September 1, fall has arrived as far as I'm concerned. It's my favourite season... comfortable cool weather, no humidity, beautiful fall colours to enjoy, and it's fall fair time! 

Here is the bag of quilts I delivered to the Paris Fall Fair yesterday. Small community fall fairs are a tradition that I hope will continue, and I enjoy contributing by entering my quilts and photographs in some local fairs, and by judging at other fairs.

To celebrate the start of the fall season I made this pumpkin block. I picked up the kit for this block at The Hobby Horse in the July Shop Hop. It was great fun to do some paper piecing again!

After the block was pieced I added just a bit of applique for the stem and leaves, and some hand embroidery to combine all of my favourite activities in one little block!
BTW, the quilt layouts for the July Shop Hop have now been posted on line so you can see what can be made from 14 quilt blocks. 

I didn't collect all the blocks, and there are a couple blocks that I picked up but likely won't make, so I'm thinking my quilt might become a table runner using 9 of the blocks.
Here are the first 4 blocks for my version of the July Shop Hop project.

Finished Quilt!

I am so happy that I finished my UFO this month! This quilt is called Triangle Stars and was started on a Shop Hop in 2014. It was such a great shop hop experience... you could buy a package of triangles at each quilt store and there were many unique samples of how to use the triangles in various projects. My quilt is based on some of those samples.  

This picture was taken on one of the binding sessions down by the river as it was being finished on the weekend.
I didn't know it when I started this quilt, but it is quite challenging to sew an entire quilt from triangles, since there were are lot of bias seams, a ton of seams to match, and all the seam intersections are very thick. But it is completed now and I am very proud of all of my hard work on this one.


Although the piecing was very challenging, the quilting part was great fun. Most of the quilting was done in white thread, but I really enjoyed choosing the thread for each of the coloured triangles.

I quilted approximately 1/4" on both sides of every seam in the quilt, which gave it lovely texture.

I have never made a quilt with this much white before. The background triangles are white, the backing is a piece of solid white yardage, and the binding is white. I wonder how long it will actually look clean?!




Here is the finished quilt! 
I tried to make a tumbling block using light, medium and darks in the centre of each star and I'm happy with how that turned out.
I'm so excited that it's actually a finished quilt AND that it's finished one day before the end of the month!
Finished size: 53" x 60.5"

To see more UFO completions, hop over to One Monthly Goal linkup.

Design Wall Monday

On the design wall today is Scrap Dance Tango blocks. This was a mystery from Carole at From My Carolina Home, which started in January and the reveal was in June. My blocks haven't made an appearance on the blog since June. At that time they were my leader-ender project, but since then that role has been totally taken over by the Clarissa hourglass blocks, and the tango blocks were just sitting quietly in their tin waiting for some attention. 
In June I was ready to start joining the blocks but was stuck at a decision point. I liked all the layout options that I played with on the design wall and really couldn't settle on which one to sew. 

Finally I convinced myself that they were all great and I couldn't go wrong with any of the choices, so I went with the layout that was easiest to piece. These are complex blocks and it would be easy to get them turned around and mixed up, so why give myself an extra headache?  I decided to start by sewing 4 blocks together at a time. Seeing these 9 larger blocks on the design wall makes me wonder about adding some sashing and maybe cornerstones? 
Now there are two things that are bugging me: 1) that blue square that calls attention to itself for some unknown reason, and 2) that scrap of fabric in the top row middle block that looks like creepy eye balls. I might have to do a scrapectomy and remove them!
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the community of slow stitchers where we celebrate the art of creating things with our hands, where we connect to our ancestors by using time-honoured techniques to make things we could easily buy for a fraction of the cost, and where we recognize the value we add to our own lives by engaging in this restorative practice. 

This week I finished machine quilting my UFO of the month and am so happy that I get to hand stitch the binding today. Binding is one of my favourite things to do, and this is one of my favourite places to do it! You wouldn't know it looking at this photo, but this is right in the heart of the city where I live. There is a beautiful river and walking trails, and stitching benches. Well, maybe the benches were made for resting, but I often use them for stitching.

Did you know there is such a thing as "binding needles"? I did not know that until recently and so of course I bought a package to try them out. I will let you know if they are smoother and/or faster than using any other regular needle.

What are you hand stitching today? 
We encourage you to pick up a needle and thread, and join us as we make time in our busy lives to rest, to breathe, and to stitch. Link up your blog post below and share your hand stitching project with us.

   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Sort of Circa 2016

Well last week's Circa 2016 block went right off the rails over here! It was the rail fence block and it just did not appeal to me. It looked too big for this project, and I got the brilliant idea to make a smaller block since that worked out so well for me last week. But once I got started I had trouble with the math, and started slicing it up, and it didn't turn out anything like a rail fence. I didn't love it, so didn't make another one like it! We were supposed to make 3 rail fence blocks, so I will have to make up 2 more blocks somewhere along the way.

Here is a small sampling of some of the blocks I've made so far for my Circa quilt. 
Pop over to Temecula to see what we're supposed to be sewing this week.

Non Quilting Requests

There are many creative sewing tasks that a quilter is often expected to perform. I detest mending and hemming pants as I may have mentioned several times over the years! But there are also unusual requests that come up from time to time.


Here are a few I have reluctantly completed recently...



*sewing more student badges for my brave sister who is going back to school for her nursing degree






*repairing half eaten toys for irresistible grand dog Max

*sewing chair cushions for the dining room chairs






*making head bands for my daughter's paintballing boyfriend. This is by far the oddest sewing request I have had. 
But he had a sample that I could make a pattern from, he purchased all the supplies, and he was so excited about getting new "custom made" head bands, how could I possibly say "no"?!? The ones on the left and the right have the black nylon fabric that hangs down from the head band to keep the sun off the top of his head and his neck. It had to have a sweatband where the forehead is... what a production that was! Never again! Unless of course he loves them :)

*stitching two lines of thread across my Dad's new socks so he will know which of his thousands of black socks go together!

Okay everyone, I'm done with these "non quilting" sewing tasks! 
We will now resume our regularly scheduled quilting tasks!

Quilting Prep

Although I already have one or two projects in the hand quilting stage, I decided to go ahead and prepare the bow tie quilt top for quilting. Why?
Because quilting is my hobby and I want it to be fun. So I work on whatever inspires me and makes me feel happy. And today, I want to quilt my civil war reproduction bow tie quilt, but first I have to prepare it. It's actually a lot of work to get a quilt top ready for quilting. 
First you need the appropriate batting for the type of quilting you're going to do, and it has to be the right size for your quilt top. This is my favourite batting for hand quilting - Dream Cotton in either the 'request' or 'select' loft. And this one is the perfect size. Excellent!

Next you need a backing that is the right size.  I bought this piece of Jo Morton yardage on sale, not knowing what it would be used for. It's perfect to back these civil war reproduction bow ties.
Excellent!

And once you have everything ready, then it's time for pin basting. I clamp the backing to the table, spread out the batting and then the quilt top making sure there are no wrinkles. It takes me about an hour to put in the safety pins. 
And after all that ... it's finally ready for quilting!
I like this quilt so much it might not even hit the UFO closet! Now that is a rare occurrence!