Happy Snowman Day

Today is declared "Snowman Day" on the Stashbuster's yahoo discussion group. Although we don't have enough snow here in Southern Ontario, Canada today to make a snowman, we did a few weeks ago and I posted some photos here.

This week I tried to teach some quilters how to sew paper pieced snowpeople blocks...not mentioning any names, but some of them had a little trouble with their blocks! It seemed particularly enticing to some quilters to sew the background fabric as the faces, instead of the white?!?! Here is my little wallhanging which is hanging on my front door for the month of January.
It is from Wendy Vosters pattern (click here for her website) and she was very generous in letting me teach this block to another group of unsuspecting quilters! This is a fun block to sew and Wendy provides the free pattern on her website. She also has patterns for a paper pieced alphabet quilt as a free giveaway to celebrate her new Mini Quilts paper piecing book (in photo on the left).

Special thanks to Leanne who brought everyone an adorable little chocolate snowman - it was almost too cute to eat!

Step #6 Finished

This week is just speeding by me! The last block of Bonnie's mystery quilt has been posted and I am so close to working on it. But first I had to finish sewing 16 of these Ohio Star variation blocks. I was glad that I had carefully squared up the hourglass blocks from step #5, since it was tricky to get these blocks to join together well at the seams.
Here are my 16 blocks on the design wall. I like the design that these blocks make when displayed all together. But that's not how it will be sewn...this is only less than half of the blocks I need for the mystery.
I can now start to sew my last blocks from my remaining 100 rail fence blocks, 100 9 patches, and 25 light squares.
Back to "work"....

Step #5 half finished

I didn't have much time to sew this weekend since it was my son's 13th birthday celebrations. It was a weekend of shopping for, feeding and tolerating the noise of a pack of loud boys! But they are great kids really and I'm happy that my son enjoyed his memorable 24 hour party!

I did have some sewing moments, hiding away from all the chaos, and was able to sew up the 16 Half Star blocks. I just keep hoping that my quilt doesn't end up looking like a dog's breakfast! These blocks are quite busy looking, don't you think?? I am looking forward to sewing the 4 Quarter Star blocks and then 16 Star blocks. Some of the quilters on the Mystery Quilters blog ring (links are on the right side of my blog) have already figured out the mystery! I wish my brain worked like that, but I still do not have a clue how this is going to some together. Look at all these blocks sitting in my plastic bin! Where are they going?!?!

Step #5 finished

I finally had time to open up my Christmas present and become acquainted with my new sewing machine. I thought this might be a good block to sew since the quarter inch seam is so different on this machine and it was not as necessary to be perfect in this block. We were working well together as a sewing team and quickly producing the 100 hourglass blocks for the mystery quilt, until I noticed a problem with my blocks. Can you see it in the photo on the right? When I sewed the second seam, somehow it pulled the fabric back in the centres. Some blocks were just fine, but this was happening on about 25% of the blocks. I tried very hard to fix this, putting the blocks through very carefully, but couldn't seem to solve the problem. I ended up having to take out 2-3 stitches in the middle of the seam, fold the lip back and resew that part of the seam. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what is causing this?

Anyway, I persisted and resewed the problematic blocks, and then squared up the blocks to 3.5". It was a lot of work, but I was determined to catch up before Bonnie posted step #6. And I just made it! How are these blocks going to be sewn together?!? It's a mystery!

Step #4 finished

I finished step #4 of Bonnie's mystery quilt today, even though my son has been home sick from school. In between waiting on him hand and foot (and doesn't everyone love being waited on when feeling under the weather?!?) I really enjoyed sewing these cute little units.
Ruthie emailed me to help with my calculations on my previous posts about how many little squares we are sewing in the 9 patch blocks for the mystery quilt...it was even more than I had thought! I adjusted the numbers based on correct addition :)
And another fun happening was that Jeanne honoured my blog today...you can read what she wrote here.
That really made my day!

Step #3 finished

I forced myself to get those little 9 patch blocks done and here they are!

They look so cute sitting there...don't know what all my fussing was about!!!

Now I am ready to get going on step #4. Bonnie said she might post Step #6 on Thursday or Friday, so I am still optimistic that I can get #4 and #5 done before then. Here are all my finished blocks, waiting in a plastic bin...rail fence on the left, 9 patch in the middle, step #2 blocks and filler squares on the right.

I was at quilt guild meeting tonight and I always come home revved up on quilting energy, so maybe I'll go sew some step #4 blocks now...can't sleep anyway!

How small is "too small"?!?

I can't believe I'm saying it, but I am tired of 1 1/2" squares! That's right - I said it!

Step #2 had 900 1 1/2" squares. (Done)

Step #3 has 720 1 1/2" squares. (Halfway done)

Step #4 only has 120 of these squares. (Not started yet)

And so I took a wee break from the squares today and jumped ahead to Step #5 to sew something different...don't tell anyone!

On the Stashbuster's Yahoo group there has been some discussion this week about how small is "too small" of a piece of fabric you would keep. I keep everything - even the seam trimmings from paper piecing blocks and very rarely throw out anything except snips of beige thread. I put the tiny scraps in jam jars and line them up on the shelves of my sewing room. Here is one of my shelves. I will sometimes sort through the bits and take out specific colours to make a mini quilts such as I did for this quilt. But mostly I just admire the pretty colours and it makes me feel happy. So here is a photo of what I was doing tonight...cutting off the dog ears, putting them in the jar. Looks like I better look for a new jar...this one's getting full. There's probably still room for the other 180 snips to fit in!

Step #2 finished

I am on a roll - this is my fourth blogging day in a row! And I am sewing along like crazy, trying to catch up to the rest of the group. I have finished step #2 - 100 9 patch blocks (3" finished). I sprinkled in a few blue squares because I was getting tired of the green and now I like the blocks better. I had a few renegade blocks...don't know how that happened! There are no blocks like these two on the left (so far) in this design.
Now I am off to sew more 9 patches with darks in the corners.

Step #1 finished

I sewed all morning and finished the first step of the mystery - 100 rail fence blocks. Here they are...not looking nearly as wonderful as they should for all that time and effort! Oh well, they will look better when they are put together with their friends! It sure has been great to use up all the small bits and scraps of these fabrics that were just sitting in a box. I already have cut lots of 1 1/2" strips to go right into step #2 this afternoon.

Quiltville Mystery

Yippee...I am finally starting the Quiltville mystery called Carolina Crossroads! I have been thinking about it, dreaming about fabric combinations, and wishing for time to sew, and here it is! My husband is taking the kids to a football game tomorrow, and I get to sew all day...can't wait!
As I wrote on Dec. 26th, if I couldn't make the entire quilt from my stash fabric, I wasn't going to do this project. I dug around in the boxes today and came up with a huge pile of browns, blues, rusts, etc. but wasn't happy with the thought of sewing all those dark colours. Then I found a box of fabrics that were black backgrounds with lots of colour and I was happy to have those as my dark. Then I settled on white fabrics with some black patterns for the lights, and picked bright green for my accent colour. I'm not sure if I'll have enough green fabrics, so I have pulled out some blue to use if I need to. I have cut enough strips to get started on the rail fence blocks.

2007 Quilt Review

It has been a beautiful winter wonderland here, with overnight temps of minus 20. My dog is refusing to go for walks in this cold weather, so yesterday I went for a nice walk by myself and took a few photos of the snowmen made by the nieghbourhood children.

I think they are really creative...especially the one on the right, which has great detail!

I have been pondering making a list of my UFO's, as many of my fellow bloggers have bravely done (go look at Meredith's list). But I know that would be too time consuming, overwhelming and probably discouraging for me. In 2005 I started a list (didn't dig too deep) and came up with over 50 UFO's. I made a short list of 12 projects to work on and by the end of the year had finished 7 of them. In 2006, I made another short list of 9 and finished 3 of those. I did like having this list to keep me somewhat focused, and might try to do that some time this week.

I thought it might be more fun to review my accomplishments for 2007 and here is a summary of what I accomplished:

Mini Quilts - Abstract Challenge: finished 3 pieces ("family", "country", and "orange" themes)

Paper Pieced Mystery blocks completed: 3 blocks sewn (still just at block stage)

Mini Quilts - 7

Wallhangings - Pieced 56 blocks and quilted Guild President's Challenge by the deadline

Pieced and Quilted the Spring Shop Hop banner

Baby Quilts - 2 finished and given away

Lap Quilts - 2 for nieces; pieced and quilted Christmas Quilt (made of 80 HST blocks)

Mystery Quilts - 3 tops completed (2 sizes from Quiltaholics spring mystery and 1 from fall)

Charity Quilts - made blocks for the UFO group quilt last year and blocks for this year's

- Assembled blocks and quilted one guild BOM quilt; quilted a second BOM quilt

Classes - took 3 classes this year - a Quilted Vessel class with Christine Ford, a Bead making class with Judith Eckhardt, and a Paper Piecing class with Denise McKenna

Teaching - Taught 23 local quilting classes

Other quilting highlights:

-attended a 2 night/3 day quilt retreat; attended Quilt Festival, where 3 of my quilts were displayed; lectured at at the Georgian Quilt Guild; lectured and taught at the Orillia Quilt Guild; made a halloween costume for my son (no quilting involved but lots of sewing); hand embroidered and sewed 10 pillows for Christmas; went on 2 Shop Hops

Ongoing projects started in 2007:

1)Bead Journal Project - finished 4 months so far

2) Journey of a Quilter - finished stitching 4 1/2 blocks

3) 365 Quilt - finished 8 months

It was a very busy and fun quilty year! I look forward to continuing my ongoing projects and finishing some of my UFO's from previous years. I would really like to get my scrap management system improved. The problem being that once I start playing in the scraps, I get distracted and start making things instead of organizing...click here to see the last time I tried!

Well, I better get going on making some supper, and retrieving the children from their friends' homes. This is the view I enjoy from my kitchen window this week...takes me longer to cook when I keep gawking out the window!!

Happy Quilting in 2008!

Happy New Year!

It is already New Year's Day 2008...how did that happen?? It seems that I am in an accelerated time warp where days and weeks speed by way too fast to savour. This past week has been a frenzy of family and friends, travelling, cooking, and partying, and I am too old for all this frenetic activity! I have enjoyed our great Canadian winter weather when taking my dog for a walk. Here are two photos from Boxing Day, when all the trees were covered in sparkly ice/frost. On the right is the view I have when walking by the river at the end of our street...just beautiful.
Since my Mother-in-law is too ill this year to qualify for health insurance to travel in the US, we decided to meet in Niagara Falls for our Christmas Celebrations. It was farther for our American relatives to drive but it worked out okay. Here are the views from our breakfast table...the photo on the left is the American Falls and on the right is the Horseshoe Falls.

We have lots of wonderful memories from this past week. I was delighted that I was able to accomplish as much as I had hoped, getting all my presents finished and wrapped on time for each celebration.
Now it is time for some much needed rest and relaxation. If you can believe it, I have not even opened the box to see my new sewing machine! I hope to do that today. I am disappointed that I do not have the energy to sew the mystery quilt projects that are going on today. So much quilting excitement, so little time! Kim, one of my fellow stashbusting bloggers, told me about this mystery at Planet Patchwork and there is also a mystery over at About.com (although I don't like the "pop ups" at this site) . There is also a video mystery quilt posted at Quilt Bug which looks interesting. I am still hoping to be able to do Bonnie's Quiltville mystery quilt although I am already 4 steps behind!
I wish all of you, my wonderful blog readers, a healthy and happy 2 008. Thank you for the encouragement and ideas that you have shared with me this past year...here's to lots of quilting time this year!

Merry Christmas

It is a frosty, beautiful day here...as soon as I get dressed, I'll go outside and take some photos. I am enjoying a quiet morning, drinking my Vanilla Chai tea, listening to my new Josh Groban Christmas CD, and surfing through the Stashbusters webring sites, wishing my quilt blogger friends a Merry Christmas.

We had a wonderful, but exhausting Christmas day yesterday. Everything that needed to be done, was done in time. Including our gingerbread house...which was still full of candies on Christmas Day (see last year's blog entry to see why I am happy about that!). To see some amazing gingerbread houses, go to Mare's blog...she is obsessed with them :)

I have cooked 3 huge meals in 3 days...turkey with fixings on Sunday, Roast Beef on Monday, and Ham yesterday. Today I plan to not do any cooking...to relax and rest.

Here are the pillows that I gave to the first batch of nieces and nephews yesterday...I was happy with how they turned out.The pink and red pillows match fabrics in quilts I have given previously, but the rest of the pillows were made from a soft, wintery flannel fabric.

This afternoon I hope to open up my new sewing machine...yes, Santa brought me a little Janome Jem Platinum!! I must have been a good girl this year because I sure was spoiled yesterday! I have wanted a light weight machine to take to classes for a while...my Brother was getting too heavy for me to lug around. I hope to test run this machine by starting Bonnie's mystery quilt. I haven't had time to think about it until now, and have decided that I will only make this quilt if I can use up stash fabric...no fabric purchases. So I'll have to sort through the stash and see if it can be done in a way that would result in a pleasing quilt. Sounds like a fun day to me!

Almost Ready for Christmas

I have been so busy with shopping and wrapping, cooking and going to parties...and loving every moment! I used to feel very stressed out at this time of year, but now I try to remember that everything that needs to be done, will somehow get done...it always does.

I have been sewing some Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews. There are 14 grandchildren altogether in our families, and I have always made something for each of them at Christmas. This year I am making them 14" flannel pillows with their names hand embroidered on a little pocket, which will have treats and candies tucked inside. Here are some of the pockets embroidered and waiting to be sewn together.

And in my spare time, I have continued to be obsessed with beading these little stars. The top two were my first stars made at guild meeting when I learned how to make them....thanks to teacher Kristy Finnigan. Then, of course, I thought that I would like to try to make them smaller and in different colour combinations. Then I added a little beaded loop so they could be tree ornaments. The bottom five were made with size 10 beads and ended up being almost 2". Each star uses 318 beads!

Okay...must get back to wrapping presents now...only 24 hours left before Christmas Day!!

Dreaming of a White Christmas

We had a beautiful snowy weekend here in Southern Ontario, Canada. And we have spent a lot of time shoveling that snow! But the weather forecast is calling for rain with a high of 7 degrees on the weekend, and the snow might all melt! So I thought I should run outside tonight and take a photo of our house. You can tell by the clear sidewalks that some of the snow has already melted but you can also see that the snow had almost hidden my little Peace Angel. I noticed that my husband had dug a path around her so she could still be seen from the street! She is still holding up quite well after all these years...I think she is at least 15 years old!

Slowly but surely I am getting things done for Christmas. One of my goals this year is to get my Christmas Cards actually mailed so that they arrive before Christmas!! I've already missed the deadline on that for the overseas and US cards, but I haven't given up yet on the Canadian ones arriving on time.
I taught two mini quilt classes on the weekend. Many quilters seem to be tired and as overwhelmed as I am...many are "burning the midnight oil" getting quilted gifts finished in time for gift giving. Here are some of the projects they brought back from previous classes.
I finally got all my Christmas quilts hung up and thought I should show you one of my favorites...a table topper on my dining room table, an older design by Deb Kaffunger of Quiltaholics.

Christmas Sewing

I enjoyed a wonderful day of "working" and laughing with the "Sew 'n Sews". We "worked" on designing our group quilt (click here to read more about it) with the butterfly blocks we have been sewing forever. The deadline is approaching for submission of the quilt top for hand quilting, so we have to make some decisions. Making decisions is not one of our group strengths! However, after auditioning about 100 sashing fabrics, we have narrowed it down to "we need to go shopping for more fabric"!!!

Here we are at our sewing day. Mostly the group was working on their Christmas gifts - sewing boxer shorts, tea cozies, and placemats, etc. I was madly trying to finish the binding on my Christmas quilt...and I finally finished it. I used a really pretty striped fabric and was happy with how it turned out. Here is the finished quilt shown at guild meeting this week.

Beading and Beaded Gifts

I think I am getting the message to get back to more beading! This week I received a gift in the mail all the way from Grace in Indiana...check out her blog here to see her beautiful bead work. I was one of the lucky winners of her brooch giveaway! My photo is not great, so you should hop over to Grace's blog to see how it really looks...her photography skills are way better than mine. And her fine bead work is even more amazing up close!

Then at guild meeting tonight, the project was a beaded snowflake, which I loved making. I have not done this type of beading before and was fascinated. Again, you need to check out Grace's December BJP project where she made some similar snowflakes that I was admiring. And what are the chances that I show up to guild meeting and find that I get to learn how to make one!?! Here is a photo of the first snowflake I made. ..and a photo of me working with my beads, and not able to see past the end of my nose without my glasses on!I really enjoyed making this project and I'm thinking of making more for my December BJP. I had to force myself to remember my social skills, because it was, after all, the last guild meeting of the year, and I really should visit with other guild members! Sometimes I get into the "beading zone" and can't think of anything else. And here is the last photo of the night...9:15 pm and everyone else has gone home...something about bad weather? I couldn't get the second snowflake to work...must have made a mistake and I'll have to try again tomorrow morning when the eyesight is better.

Now all I want to do is beading...and I have so much stuff to do for Christmas. Hey...maybe I'll make beaded snowflakes for everyone!

Paper Piecing Class

On Saturday I treated myself to a fun day of paper piecing with Denise McKenna from Meadow Lily Bridge. The quilt guild had sponsored this class and I had been so busy with my MIL in November that I thought I wouldn't possibly be able to go. But since I am having a wonderful break for a couple of weeks, while my MIL is finally getting some excellent medical care in a senior's facility, my schedule is not as crazy as it had been. My husband encouraged me to get away for the day and spend time sewing with my guild friends, so I did!

In the morning, Denise taught basic paper piecing skills and since I didn't want to do the beginner block (I've made many many heart blocks over the years!) I started working on my advent calendar blocks. I have wanted to make Denise's advent calendar for a while, since 2 of the quilters in my UFO group have finished their advent calendars. I had "quilt envy" and wanted one too! I picked out fabric to make my first blocks and in the morning I was able to finish a tree and a candy cane...2 down and 23 more blocks to go. Obviously this won't be finished in time to use this year, but it will be fun to have a Christmasy project to work on over the holidays when I have a few moments (I can dream, can't I?!?!).

Here is a photo of Denise holding one of her Advent Calendars. (You can click here to order the pattern if you have "quilt envy" too!). One of the interesting things about how Denise paper pieces is that she uses Chiropractor Headrest paper that you buy at medical supply stores for her foundation. It is stronger than tissue paper, but you can see through it easily so you don't have to hold your project up to the light to see where the fabric is. I enjoyed trying that and found it easy to work with. The draw back is that you can't run it through the printer and have to trace your block before you sew.
In the afternoon we worked on a more challenging 7" star block, and believe me, it was challenging! You sew the inside star block separately and then glue it to the overall pattern. Then Denise taught us how to make a flat piping border on a paper pieced block. I just love to learn new things and was happy with how it turned out. I think I might use a heat resistant batting and turn it into a potholder (not one to use of course, just to look at!).

Christmas Preparations

I am quilting away on my Christmas mystery quilt. First I stabilized all the vertical and horizontal seams by "stitching in the ditch" with my walking foot. Then I outlined stitched 1/4" away from the seams in the centre star blocks to emphasize it a bit more. This was easy quilting but rather boring. Then I decided to do something more fun and started free-motion quilting hearts in all the triangle blocks. I am about half way done the heart quilting and am eager to finish up and get the binding on. This is one quilt that isn't going to the UFO pile...it's going to be used to cuddle up in while we watch Christmas movies.
On Sunday we picked out and chopped down our Christmas tree. It had snowed all Saturday night, so it was a very pretty day to look for our tree. But then it started to drizzle and we were soaking wet and freezing cold by the time we found the perfect tree. Here's my hubby and kids...I look at the photo on the computer screen and ask myself where has the time gone?!?! Are my children really that old???