Design Wall Monday

Well here it is... my version of the Scrap Dance Tango quilt with the sashing and cornerstones finished. I'm loving it and happy that it is ready for the final border. I have to go shopping for that fabric, so progress is stalled for the moment. It was so fun to work on this in the midst of working on two other large on point quilts. It was easy sewing with manageable seams and everything fit together... gotta love that!
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times. 

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! 
It's time to take a deep breath, pick up your needle and threads and take some stitches in your project.
Guess what I will be doing tonight?!? 


My most favourite quilting activity - hand stitching a binding! 

I finally finished hand quilting my bow tie quilt and it's ready for the binding. It's so exciting when you get to this stage of making a quilt. It's especially true when you have worked on a project for hours and taken it everywhere you have been for months. This is a terrible photo, but when I have time for stitching, it's always dark and difficult to get good photographs. By the way, did you see all the great comments on lighting tips at the link up two weeks ago? Click here to check it out.
Maybe next week I'll have a finished project to show!?!
What are you hand stitching today? Link up your blog post below and share your progress with us.

   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Scrappy Saturday Spools #3

For the rest of the year, I am really trying to finish my scrappy spools quilt. You can read more about it in my blog post here.

Add caption

This week I am working on the bottom left corner. I have to make the right colour of spool block to fit in the spaces of the setting triangles at the end of the diagonal rows. Then each of those spool blocks needs two neutral squares added to either side. 
I'm really tempted to put this away and make some fun scrappy blocks! Part of my challenge is that I had been working on Allietare which is also an on point layout and I am tired of tackling these long seams. I keep getting distracted by thoughts of wanting to start something new, but am really committed to finishing this quilt top.
Must. Push. On.
To see more RSC projects coming to completion, hop over to the Saturday link up.

Circa Update

The Circa quilt is still on the radar. The HST border is being constructed this week. I decided I liked the light side of the blocks facing toward the centre of the quilt and have sewn the blocks together in four border strips to go around the quilt. I just have to figure out how the corners will be and be brave in sewing the borders onto the quilt. The last border added will be black.
Maybe it will be done by next Friday?!?

Scrap Dance Tango Update

I have been working on my version of Carole's mystery quilt called Scrap Dance Tango. I finished sewing 20 blocks and then had to decide how to put them together. In order to avoid matching millions of points (and becoming best friends with my seam ripper) I decided to add sashing. Good decision. 
But that leads to many more decisions.
What size of sashing? Narrow? Wide? 
Should it be scrappy? Yardage? Neutral? Dark?
I thought about what size of quilt I wanted this to be, what sashing size looked more visually appealing to me, and played with some options on the design wall.

Finally I decided on neutral sashing cut the same size as the blocks. But then I got an idea to use square in a square blocks for cornerstones and started sewing some of these. Cute! 




Here is the quilt top so far.
I love the effect of these little cornerstone blocks in the sashing.
Now I think I need to make 18 more of them to add a sashing border around the whole quilt. And then I think it's finally done!
And just in time because Carole has started another scrappy quiltalong called Scrap Dance Waltz!



And another fun event happening this week is the release of Quiltmaker's new 100 blocks magazine. You can see some of the blocks on the Quilty Pleasures blog. This is volume #14 and I can't wait to get my hands on this latest issue of my favourite magazine!

Local Shop Hop Project

At the beginning of November there was a local 5 store shop hop that I was able to fit in my schedule. It was a lovely day for a drive and the stores are within a workable driving distance to visit in one day. Here is the cute passport for the hop, which was stamped at each store you visited.
In addition to having lovely gift packages for draws in each store, they also hosted a free mystery project. You picked up a small piece of fabric at each shop, and when you arrived at your last store you received the pattern to go with the fabric. 

Even though my unfinished Halloween project was sitting on the table, I brought this fabric home and started cutting! The project turned out to be a cute snowpeople tablerunner (12" x 41") that was fun and easy to make. The next step is pin basting and machine quilting, and then hand stitching the little snowpeople faces. In the middle of working on some challenging patterns and large projects, it was so refreshing to have a quick project to enjoy!
Linking up today with Lorna's party over at Let's Be Social.

Allietare is on the design wall!

I must start off today saying I am quite proud of myself!  
I have my 2015 Quiltville mystery blocks sewn into a quilt top! And all the lines in the setting triangle fabric are going in the right direction!
Woohoo!
It measures 73" x 85" at this point and I don't know if I want to add another border or two. But for now, I am just admiring it!
This means I am ready to start the next Quiltville mystery called "En Provence". I have my fabric selection well underway and will be ready when the first step comes out at the end of the month.
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Fearless Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to Slow Sunday Stitching! 
Today's topic is being fearless! 
I am teaching an intuitive hand beading class at my local quilt guild next year and have had a few people ask me multiple questions about the class while trying to determine if:
1) they would like it, and/or 
2) if they could realistically be successful.

Killarney

Okay people... let's start the pep talk with a quote from Megan who blogs over at The Bitchy Stitcher said:

"If you make ANYTHING, you are a magician."

I love that!
If you have an interest, if you are drawn in any way to a topic, a book, a class, a quilt pattern, or a person, then trust that there is something magical about that interest, that it might be your invitation to an adventure waiting for you, and maybe a fresh new experience to learn and to grow.

Some of my beaded bindings

So, all you magicians out there... open up your craft bins, enjoy all the sparkly items you have collected over the years because you were drawn to them, fearlessly open up your UFO closets and see what magic you can create with all this stuff! And have some FUN!!

Indian cooking class supplies

The worst that can happen is that you hate the technique and never touch the supplies again. That's okay! I took an Indian cooking class once. It was a blast and I learned a ton. And I will never try cooking this again because it was way too much work to create something that might taste good and will be gone/eaten within minutes! I learned that my truth is... I would rather be stitching and painting and beading, and buy take out Indian food! But I am delighted that I tried to learn, because I want to be a life long learner and someone who embraces new experiences. 
So here is your personal money back guarantee for any life adventures you are drawn to:

Be fearless!

I personally guarantee you will enjoy something about the experience, have at least one interesting conversation with a fellow human, and learn at least one invaluable life lesson OR crafting technique (both are equally valuable) that interests you.
Optional: you might have FUN, even if you don't enjoy it or are terrible at it!
Be a fearless magician! Go sign up for that class you have been wondering about! Try that technique you've been interested in!
We hope you will link up your blog post below and tell us about the hand stitching project you are working on right now so that we can encourage you in your magical slow stitching progress!

   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Scrappy Saturday Spools #2

For the rest of the year, I am really trying to finish my scrappy spools quilt. You can read more about this project in last Saturday's post.
Progress has been made and I have completely finished the top left corner. That was a lot of work filling in the setting blocks on the edges and sewing the diagonal rows together.

I think I procrastinate this stage of quilt making because it is challenging to sew the long rows together and the whole thing is just unwieldy and not fun. I am pinning every seam join as I go along which takes a long time. Sometimes I don't use pins at all, but this project just needs them.
Linking up to RSC over at SoScrappy and Oh Scrap.

Circa Update

Work is continuing on the Circa 2016 quilt project. All the HST blocks were constructed, then sewn into twosies, then foursies, and now they are mostly in sixies (not a real word!)
Time to figure out the math and see how these blocks will attach to the main quilt, and whether a coping border will be necessary. If the math is too hard, some coping beverages may also be necessary!

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada. We pause at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month to remember those courageous individuals (and their families) who have fought, and continue to fight for the privilege of living in a peaceful and safe country.

En Provence Fabric Selection

The annual Quiltville mystery is starting at the end of the month (click here to see the intro and fabric requirements). The fabric selection process is always the most challenging step. Some years I have followed the recommended colours (Easy Street and Allietare) and some years I went right off the rails (Orca Bay, Double Delight, and Carolina Crossroads). 
If you are a beginning quilter, I would recommend following Bonnie's fabric choices exactly as outlined. But if you're an experienced quilter and have a stash you want to use up, have some fun and pick your own colours. I love all of my Bonnie mystery quilts and I know that whatever fabric I am inspired to use, I will have lots of fun AND her patterns will produce a great quilt.
I did discover in making Grand Illusion that I do not enjoy sewing quilts using yardage. In my heart I am a scrap quilter, so I don't like to use 1 yellow fabric when I could incorporate 10 different yellows! More = more fun!
Bonnie said: "Let your quilt make a statement that is as uniquely you as your own handwriting is."

And so... drum roll please... I present my fabric selection for 2016-2017 En Provence. I really wanted to use the Good Neighbours fabric line by Amanda Jean Nyberg, which is a bright and happy grouping of primary colours with an amazing selection of neutrals that I love. I did remove the red fabrics out of the project in favour of the dark pinks. A few other fat quarters have been added to some of the colour groupings.
Dark blue will be the purple, lighter blue will be the lilac, green is the green, pink is the magenta, and I can't decide whether the orange or the yellow will be the yellow. The yellow looks like it might blend too much with the neutrals. But the orange might compete with the magenta?
What are your thoughts?!?
Are you playing along with the mystery this year?

Broken Dishes Swap Blocks

Barb hosted a block swap last month and I had so much fun with the bow tie swap last year, I just had to participate in her swap again this year! This year's block was called 'broken dishes' and we made them using muslin and repro reds. It was a bit more of a challenging block to sew than the bow tie was, but I managed to get them in the mail in time.

Here are half of the fabulous blocks I received in the mail! There is a wide range of interesting red prints and they will make a really great quilt!
I picked out a pattern by Hyacinth Designs to make with these blocks and can't wait to get started on it. But I'm thinking this will make the perfect project to work on at Christmas time so you might not see it in production on the blog for a couple of weeks. Also I want to finish the bow tie quilt from last year's swap before I start the broken dishes quilt. 
Thank you to all the block makers and to Barb for hosting a fun swap for us!
Linking up today to the quilting bee over at Sew Fresh Quilts.

Design Wall Monday

One of my projects that I would like to finish by the end of the year is the Scrap Dance Tango. I started this quilt in February and finished 12 blocks. Then I decided I wanted to make it bigger and needed 20 blocks (4 blocks across and 5 blocks down). Here are the blocks on the design wall. The bottom blocks are only partially finished and I need the components to make one more complete block. It's so close to becoming a quilt top!

This is such a wonderful scrappy project and there are hundreds of fabrics in these blocks. But every once in a while I come across a block I just have to fix. When I am trying to sew random scrappy blocks how is that these two fabrics ended up right beside each other?!? I remind myself that "random" does not mean evenly spaced. However, I really can't leave it like that! The seam ripper is ready to separate them!
I am linking this post to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

Slow Stitching Sunday - Lighting

Welcome to Slow Sunday Stitching! Do you live somewhere in the world where you turned your clocks back 1 hour last night? If so, that means you have one extra hour to stitch today! However you will likely be spending more time stitching in the dark!


Do you have any lighting tips for us to make sure we can see well enough to stitch through the long dark winter?
This is a photo that shows my favourite Ikea lamp that I use for hand work. It has a solid base and a flexible neck to focus the pool of light where I need it. This is my winter hand quilting project which is great to cuddle up under on those cold winter nights. I will return to working on it once I finish the bow tie quilt.

Speaking of which, I did finish one corner of the bow tie quilt this week. It looks good in real life, but I couldn't get a decent photo of it last night. It's too dark!
My goal today is to finish the second corner and the quilting will then be more than half way done!

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



   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Scrappy Saturday Spools #1

For the rest of the year, my Rainbow Scrap Challenge focus will be to sew together my spools quilt.
In 2012 Bonnie Hunter hosted a spool block leader-ender project using a 3" spool block. I didn't start my spools until the summer of 2013 because I had so many other leader-ender projects on the go at that time. Each month I sewed a few spool blocks in the colour of the month with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I did that for 2 years and then sewed them into colour blocks of 4 spools each.
Then the blocks were put on point and roughly organized into colour ribbons.
I worked on it at quilt camp in February and made a lot of progress.
Here is how it looked on the design wall. Where to start? 
I decided to start on the left side and work on filling in the setting blocks.



While working on the edge blocks, I realized there were too many brown Sweetwater fabrics with text. Can you see that there are 3 of them right there? I was hoping that this spools quilt would be like a traditional charm quilt, which features a repeating block and never repeats a fabric twice. And for sure it doesn't have 3 blocks from the same fabric right near each other!! 
I will have to fix that by either separating those blocks or eliminating them from the quilt.
To see what other scrap quilters are finishing up this month, hop over to the RSC link up.

Twin Circas

My friend Sandy and I have both followed along with the Temecula Circa 2016 mystery quilt. When she came to visit this week she brought her project so the two Circa quilts could meet.

My scrappy version is on the left and Sandy's red and neutral version is on the right. You will notice that she has already put on a coping border around the quilt, which makes it the same size as my quilt is without it's border! My quilt is about 2" larger than Sandy's. 
Hmmmm... darn that 1/4" seam allowance!
Anyway, the sampler blocks are together and I spray misted my quilt top and pinned it to the carpet to dry. It dried fairly flat, so I'm happier with it now. 
The next border is made of HSTs, so we are busy sewing those this week. This is the production line - 30 done and about 100 more to go. I'm still loving my BlocLoc ruler.

Hourglass Leader -Ender Update

Clarissa block #4

Clarissa is my primary leader/ender project at the moment. I am making these 12" blocks using hourglass units to reproduce a quilt made by Clarissa White Alford in 1880. You can read more about the original quilt here. 
This is my latest Clarissa block. It has a blue plaid pinwheel in the centre, followed by a butterscotch with white dots round of hourglass blocks, and a light teal with brown circles as the outside round. 

Here are my first 4 Clarissa blocks on the design wall. I like how the value placement is working out but I think I need to add in another colour... maybe a pink or red? I'll keep my eyes open for some fresh scraps to add in!

Sew Fresh Quilts Class

On Saturday my local quilt guild hosted a class with Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts and I was lucky enough to get in the class!
It was sooo fun and the classroom was filled with lots of laughter as we all tried to make various creatures from her patterns.
I chose to make Lorna's Elephant Parade quilt and took my white featherweight to class to use for the day. But the tension was way off and I didn't want to spend my class time working on machine adjustments. 
Luckily I had taken Lucy as a back up machine. Lucy is a long bed 301 Singer built in 1953 and she worked perfectly sewing these elephant blocks all day long. 

However, the sewing machine operator was not working perfectly! 
There were a few elephants requiring surgical repair! This repair required one consultant (Lorna), one sewist/surgeon (me), one component extraction, one 90 degree part rotation, and one re-insertion. No problem!

Here are the elephants that I finished so far. See the surgical patient elephant - top left block? He recovered nicely from surgery and you never would have known there was a problem!
I have the 5 large elephants done and 3 of the 14 small elephants.

Here are all the students in the class holding up our blocks. Lorna is one of the monkey holders in the front row! I am in the back row on the left laughing at the monkey in front of me! 

Do you see all the creatures we made? 

Birds, elephants, some cross-eyed cats, dogs of all shapes and sizes, chickens... it was a total zoo with all these animals and quilters in one room!

A huge thank you to Lorna for such a fun day and for being such a brilliant pattern designer! I'm linking up to the Sew Fresh Quilts party and then I'm back to sewing more elephant blocks!

November UFO

Well, I made a lot of progress on my October UFO goal, but whether I reached my goal or not is debatable!

I wanted to get my Votes For Women blocks into a quilt top. I did get the block layout done, and I did get them sewn into 3 sections. I decided to machine quilt the sections separately and then join them in a quilt-as-you-go method.
But I never got going on the quilting part because I got distracted by all the other fun things happening in the sewing studio. It's all good!
So my goal for November will be to get the machine quilting done on the 3 panels. 
Check out the other UFO goals for November over at One Monthly Goal.

Happy Halloween Design Wall

It's time for trick or treating and I haven't finished my new Halloween wallhanging yet. This is how far I am - the base is ready with a rail fence border made from fun Halloween fabrics.
The problem is that the hat pattern doesn't fit inside the orange space. I double checked the measurements, and I followed the instructions, but it doesn't fit. Which is hilarious because the words say "if the hat fits" and it doesn't fit! I plan to consult with some of my quilting gurus on Wednesday and they will help me resize the hat. I guess this project will be done in time for next Halloween. 

This photo shows the reason why I wanted to make this kit quilt.
I have a very similar hat, so a little quilt that says "If the hat fits..." is just too perfect for me!

Happy Halloween everyone!

To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Slow Stitching Sunday

Welcome to Slow Stitching Sunday where we make time to slow down our lives, to breathe deeply, to pick up a needle and thread, and take some slow stitches. 

"Grandma, let's have a slow day to read and quilt"

I have been reading a book called "In Praise of Slow" by Carol Honoré. Here is my favourite quote so far:
"In this media-drenched, data-rich, channel-surfing, computer-gaming age, we have lost the art of doing nothing, of shutting out the background noise and distractions, of slowing down and simply being alone with our thoughts." I must admit that I really cannot fathom doing "nothing", but I am often alone with my thoughts while stitching and enjoy the peacefulness of silence.

I have been slowly hand quilting my reproduction bow tie quilt, and enjoying every stitch. These blocks were from Barb's block swap last year.  It is fun to quilt through each bow tie, and to admire the fabrics. Primarily I am quilting with brown thread but sometimes I change to blue or maroon or yellow just to make it more interesting to stitch.

This is the corner of the quilt that I hope to finish today. I try to hand quilt at least one bow tie block each day. It doesn't take long and usually it is so enjoyable that I don't stop after one! After all these years, I still love to admire the texture that hand quilting creates!

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

   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Scrappy Saturday

It's yellow and orange month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I have been focused on using up my yellow scraps. I used a lot for this Mad City Mama block... 157 scraps to be exact! This block pattern is from Bonnie Hunter's book Adventures with Leaders and Enders. 

Here are the 6 blocks I have made so far. I like how they are all similar yet different. I just noticed that the blue block needs a one quarter rotation to be right side up on the design wall!

To see more scrappy projects, hop over to the Saturday link up at Angela's.

Circa 2016 blocks are together

After working on this project all year, the quilt blocks are finally sewn together!

This is a major accomplishment for me since my block sections surrounding the centre medallion did not fit together. Any changes to the seam allowances would result in mutilated blocks, so I had to figure it out differently. I resized the black coping strip border around the centre medallion and used a thousand pins to make everything fit together. It doesn't lay very flat, but I'm hoping all those little waves will "quilt out"!

I am so excited to have the quilt to this stage! Next up is the HST border which might require another coping strip border to be added, but that's okay. 

It's Mystery Time!

Bonnie Hunter posted the fabric requirements of the new mystery quilt this morning! Click here to read all about the next quilt I'll be starting with Bonnie and thousands of other quilters around the world. 

I have been working diligently on getting last year's mystery quilt finished before the new one starts... well, the quilt top at least. 

This quilt has fifty 12" blocks to sew together in diagonal rows with a lot of seam matching requiring the use of pins. I'm not a fan of pins, but there is just no other way to get all these seams to match up. But this is one of the things I really enjoy about Bonnie's quilts - complex blocks with lots of small pieces which make an interesting pattern. So I'm not complaining... just working hard!
Are you joining the mystery fun this year with En Provence?