Scrappy Saturday

Four more 3" Economy Path blocks were made this week (pattern here). This was one of my favourite 2019 Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. During the months of November and December we are encouraged to finish up our RSC projects. It's time to turn these blocks into a finished quilt!

Layout A

Piecing the blocks is easy... deciding on a layout is not!
Can I ask for your help in picking the layout? 
Each of these 3 layouts has a slightly different colour arrangement.

I tell myself "there are no wrong answers", and truly I do like them all! 

Layout B

Layout A above has all the brighter colours at the top. Layout B put the purple blocks in the top half and brings the aqua and green to the bottom half.
Oh shoot I have the grey blocks turned incorrectly... ignore that!
I like this layout also but does it make the aqua blocks stand out a bit too much?

Layout C

Please help me decide by voting on your favourite layout in the comment section. Final decision will be made after a tally of your votes and I'll try to get it finished by next week.

Happy Scrappy Saturday!
Linking up to the weekly RSC party.

Finally... A Finish!

auditioning threads for the bobbin

When you are a quilt addict and have so many quilts on the go (because you can't say "no" to more new projects) it is a terrific feeling when you can finally focus your efforts and finish one of them! 

walking foot straight line quilting

This is Lori's most recent mystery quiltalong called "Almost Amish". My version is in civil war reproduction fabrics, so I'm calling it "Almost Reproduction"! 
That title makes me smile :)

The quilting is all straight lines using the walking foot. I used a hera marker to mark a square shape to stitch in the black fabrics as I thought it needed a few extra stitches there.

This is finished quilt #18 for 2019 ... woohoo!

"Almost Reproduction"

Linking up to Alycia's Finished (or not) Friday

Happy Little Things BOM

It's time to reveal block #4 of the Happy Little Things BOM!

Block #4 Happy Little Things

Since I really enjoy hand embroidery, I must admit that stitching the flower design in the centre of these blocks is my favourite part! These flower designs by Jacquelynne are so sweet and very relaxing to stitch. 

 preparing half rectangle triangle units

In this block we are sewing 8 half rectangle triangle units. I always need to check, and double check that I have the placement correct before I sew these blocks because it doesn't "look right" to my quilter's brain that wants all the edges to be aligned. But if you follow Jacquelynne's instructions, I promise you they will turn out perfectly every time.

I love my four Happy Little Things blocks! Just wait until you see what I am doing for my quilt layout! Jacquelynne's pattern has several fun borders to add (which I'm doing) and I am also making my version of the quilt a little bigger.

Hop over to visit Jacquelynne's blog The Art of Home to learn more about the Happy Little Things BOM and get your free pattern.
And of course there is a terrific monthly giveaway which this month is a Morse Code Quilts book (so you can make quilts with secret messages!) and a package of adorable holiday pins from Just Another Button Company! 
You can enter the draws at all of these terrific blogs: 
A Quilting Life
Podunk Pretties
The Crafty Quilter
Flamingo Toes
Allie-Oops Sweet Happy Life
Happy Quilting Melissa 
The Quilting Nook 
Kathy's Quilts (that's me!)

The giveaway is open to all quilters around the world... one prize per person per monthly giveaway. 
You can enter my draw by leaving a comment below and tell me what is making you feel happy today! The winning comment will be randomly drawn on November 10th.
Linking up to Design Wall Monday over at Judy's.
Thanks for visiting!

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party!
Last night we turned the  clocks back one hour because it is the end of Daylight Saving Time. Which means (in theory) that we all get one extra hour of time. In truth it feels like I get an extra hour of darkness every day!
What are you going to do with the "extra hour"? 
I'm sure we'll all have a little bit more progress on our projects because we'll all be stitching for one more hour! LOL 

I'm happy with my hand stitching efforts this week because in spite of a flare up of hand pain, I was able to  finish my Scrap Dance Tango quilt  including 239" of hand stitched binding!

I also finished up two embroidery blocks. This is a Gail pan pattern from her I Stitch club last year (this year is a Christmas theme).

You'll have to stop by tomorrow morning to see my other finished embroidery block as it's the centre of   block #4 for the Happy Little Things blog hop. 

What are you hand stitching today? We hope you will link up your blog post below and share your project with us. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

November UFO

I'm taking on a doozy of a UFO this month!
The project is my RSC spools quilt. I sewed spool blocks for 3.5 years and they were finally sewn together at the end of 2016. The quilt top has now aged to perfection and is ready to become a finished quilt by the end of 2019 (hopefully).

I'm certain I could not finish the quilt in one month, so I will make my goal to complete the pin basting and finish HALF of the machine quilting in November.
This is one of the largest quilts I have ever made and because it's so heavy with all the piecing in it (612 blocks) it will be a challenge to machine quilt on my DSM. 
But the evenings are long, dark and cold in November, so if I have a quilting goal then maybe I will (hopefully) use my  time constructively instead of hibernating.

This is the wonderful wide backing fabric I found - a  Wyndham Fabric from the  "Be Mindful" line called "Friendship". I adore it!
Linking up to One Monthly Goal.

Scrap Dance Tango Finish

Scrap Dance Tango

This quilt started as a mystery project by Carole at From My Carolina Home. I started working on the quilt in February of 2016 because my friend Gillian gifted me with over 200 scrappy HST blocks which were the perfect seeds to grow this quilt. What a goldmine! I loved making the first blocks and had fun photographing them in the middle of winter.
Although the blocks were sewn together by the end of that year, the quilt top needed to sit in storage to be curated. Just like cheese needs "affinage" and wine needs "maturation" to become their most delicious versions, (my) quilts need to be ripened to perfection over time. They rest in the "temperature controlled UFO closet" until they are adequately cured for the next step! *snort*
This quilt required about 3 years of aging to be ready for the quilting to begin! 

 prepping the binding

I spent hours and hours on machine quilting this project, starting with a grid and then free motion quilting the blocks and the border. I quilted feathers in the border because I'm teaching a quilting class in December and wanted some  practice. The feathers stitched with red thread on the red border almost made me blind. Even though it was a challenge, I stuck with the red thread because I didn't want the border quilting to detract from the great border print design.

Note to self... I used 2" binding strips on this quilt to ensure I had enough fabric, but I don't like the look as much as when I use a 2.25" strip.

Drum roll please... a finished quilt!

Some quilty details...
*this quilt has Warm and Natural batting, which is my favourite for machine quilting (but is NOT fun to hand quilt)
*thread for piecing and quilting is always 50 weight Aurifil (no affiliation, just an avid fan)
*total number of scraps used - 2,264!
*finished size is 54" x 65.5"

Linking up to One Monthly Goal... yippee! 
So excited to meet my goal this month!

Also linking up for the first time to Cheryl's celebration called Favourite Finish!

Design Wall Monday

A little bit of progress has been made on the modern alphabet paper pieced baby quilt (pattern by Tamara Kate). There are only 3 more letters to sew and the fabrics are already selected. It's so close to being a complete quilt top. 
Hop over to Small Quilts to see more design wall blog posts.
And also... while you're hopping around the internet, drop by Humble Quilts and see all the amazing mystery quilts link ups. There are over 30 already posted for us to enjoy. It's inspiring to see all the different versions of a mystery quilt pattern and see how quilters put together a wide range of colours to make beautiful quilts!

Slow Sunday Stitching Hands

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! 
If you are an avid hand stitcher over many years, you have probably experienced my current dilemma.... hand pain. My hands are often tired which is not surprising given how hard I make them them work every day. But I am also having some recurrent pain in my right thumb.

Drive to work

My right hand does carry most of the work load since I'm right handed, and it is letting me know that the current demands exceed it's capacity!

I thought it might be fun to snap photos of all the things it has to do in a regular day.

First of all, I work at a job where I hand write notes all day long. I actually hold a pen and write words for 8 hours a day. Totally old school! That might be part of the problem!

Preparing food

Then there are all the household tasks that require my hands to work hard. Peeling and chopping potatoes, carrots and other vegetables are regular chores. 

Washing and drying dishes

I have never had a dishwasher in my life, so I am used to hand washing dishes and find it meditative. 

This time of year is also hard on the hands due to raking leaves, and soon it will be time for shovelling snow. 

Playing piano

And then when all the work is done, I can sit down and practice learning a new song on the piano. But that also requires my hands to work hard. The benefits to my brain and heart are worth the pain!

Hand quilting

And then if I still have any energy left, and my hands are not too sore, I get out some hand stitching for relaxation. I try to spend at least a few minutes each day with my hand stitching as part of a mental wellness plan. Rest, create, breathe, renew.

In case you are curious, this is my current "go-to" pain relief cream (although I do have a selection of products now!)
Do you have a solution to hand pain that I haven't tried? Leave a comment below and share your tips with us.
Today I hope to finish the hand quilting on my Friendship Album quilt and maybe even get the binding on to hand stitch.

What are you working on today? Link up your hand stitching blog or instagram post (and link to me at ssskat7).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Scrappy Saturday

It's time for the weekly rainbow scrap update. 

FNSI with Barb and Sandy

Last night was "Friday Night Sewin In" and here are a couple of us sending an instagram photo to another group of quilters sewing in different city. Sew fun!

Sandy brought me a collection of little grey triangles that she rescued for the guild orphan box, and half of them are a print with tiny little dogs.  
So I had to make 2 fun Shoo Fly blocks.

Can you see the dogs in the little triangles? So cute!
There are lots of grey fabrics in the sewing room right now from working on the Modern Alphabet paper piecing baby quilt. So I "whipped up" (over the course of a few hours!) 4 grey Economy Path blocks (free pattern here). 


This is not a good photo and was taken late at night, but here are all the Economy Path blocks made so far.
That's a lot of sewing over the course of the year, and it's still a very small quilt about 18" x 24"! I'm working on the brown scraps today and hope to finish another set of 4 blocks.

Hop over to the weekly Rainbow Scrap Challenge linkup to see more scrappy projects.

Flirting Fabrics

A few weeks ago Audrey over at Quilt Folk wrote a line in her blog post that said...
"You know how it goes when fabrics aren't being used up fast enough and before you can even blink, there are newer, shinier fabrics flirting with you instead."


Did you even know that fabrics are "flirting" with you?!?
What a fun concept! It lead me down a rabbit hole of thinking about that verb, what it means with human interactions vs fabric interactions, and about how I didn't even know that this was going on in the quilt studio!! The whole idea makes me giggle (which is definitely a flirtatious behaviour!)

Shoo Fly Shoo!

There are few activities that make me happier than digging around in another quilters' scraps! At the Slow Sunday Stitching retreat day I was gifted with two scrap bags and I have been having a great time with finding flirtatious fabrics for Shoo Fly Shoo blocks... so FUN! Look at these new blocks featuring a fussy cut centre! 


I'm not an ODC quilter who has a fancy fabric/scrap organizing system. 
This is my system! 
It's called bags of scraps! 

free range scraps

My friends make fun of me for this (lovingly I hope!) and it is one of my "distinctive features" as a scrap quilters that I adore all scraps and they are permitted to roam freely in my sewing room!
Let's call them "free range scraps! LOL 

Tonight is Friday Night Sew In. 
Wendy from Sugarcane Designs hosts the official monthly online FNSI but I can never seem to get my schedule to jive with hers. So tonight is my night to get together in real life to sew with some of my quilting friends. 
The scrap bags will be out for sharing!

Machine Quilting Class

I haven't done much teaching lately and had a desire to teach a machine quilting class. So I arranged to teach a Saturday class at Triangle Sewing on December 7th. 

feather quilting

In addition to covering the topics of basting and tools I use, the class will focus on how to quilt 3 of my favourite designs - feathers, ribbons, and swirls. 
It is a "hard sell" to convince some quilters that (after lots of practice hours) it is possible to experience great joy and find the whole machine quilting process to be very relaxing. 
But it's totally true for me! 

I finished up some small samples to hang at the store to show the designs, and this one is my favourites. I love stitching feathers both as a "fill in the space" design on small pieces, and as a border design on larger quilts. 

I really enjoy taking a piece of fabric that I have painted, then quilt it, and then add more paint or beads or text, or whatever it calls out for. It's definitely a work in progress.
I'm not sure if it should hang horizontally or vertically?

If you are interested in taking the class with me in December, you can find more details at the Triangle Sewing website.
Happy Quilting!

Wednesday Design Wall

I've been a bit under the weather this week with the first sickness of the season. It's not too terrible, but has resulted in less energy and required me to get more rest/sleep, which means less quilting time. 
I did get my baby alphabet quilt blocks out and put them on the wall. This pattern is called paper piecing the modern alphabet (Free pattern) by Tamara Kate Designs. I have finished up to the letter R and sewn the blocks together in columns. There are still 8 more letters to piece and I'm picking out the fabrics today with the hope of doing some sewing after work if there is still any energy left.
I want to get these blocks sewn to use up the scraps in my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks this month.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party!
Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee or pumpkin spice latte to enjoy while visiting the blog links of stitchers around the world. It's so inspiring to see what other people are creating with their own two hands.

This is the Gail Pan embroidery block I am still working on. I haven't made any progress on this little 3" block since guild meeting earlier in the month, and all it needs are the lazy daisy flowers under the house to be stitched.
Also I'm determined to finish up the hand quilting on my Friendship Album. I really wanted this quilt to be finished in the summer, but the fall season has arrived and the stitching continues. It's cold enough to get out my oldest UFO for hand quilting, and I must get the little quilt finished so I can tackle the big one once again!

What are you hand stitching today? Share your progress (or lack thereof) and link up your instagram photo or blog post below.
Happy Slow Stitching Sunday!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

More Shoo Fly Love!

Did you start the Leader-Ender challenge with Bonnie Hunter this past July? It's never too late to join in! You can make a mini quilt, a table runner, a king size quilt... whatever you want.

I am making the 4" size of the Shoo Fly blocks and love making them. I always have a pile of pieces cut out and waiting beside my sewing machine to put under the needle between the other projects I am sewing.

I have been using up some charm squares leftover from other projects. This is how I cut the squares to make the background pieces for one block. There is very little waste and it's awesome to get these pieces used up. You can cut 4 to 6 of these charm squares at a time if your rotary cutter blade is sharp.

I do try to focus on the colour of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge when I'm sorting scraps to use. This month is using up the darks... browns, greys and blacks.
One of the down sides to using the leader-ender technique for sewing blocks is that sometimes pieces get lost because they sit beside the machine waiting for their turn to be sewn. The block on the bottom left is missing an HST. I wonder when that will show up?!? Eventually I'll make a replacement from other scraps if it doesn't reappear.

Here is the Shoo Fly block collection as of last week. 
Oh my goodness... every time I put these on the design wall I see a problem block to fix! Do you see the problem one this time?

Hop over to the RSC link up to see more scrappy projects in development.

Meadow Mist Mystery Update

Step #2 of the Mosaic Mystery Quilt was posted last week and it's a "square in a square" block, which is one of my favourites! 
I pieced the blocks on my Sweet Baby Jayne 1964 featherweight and they came out the perfect size with very little trimming required.

These blocks are:
7 fabric A and background fabric
and 8 background and fabric C.
It's a fun and easy step this month.

Click here to visit the mystery link up and see all the wide variety of blocks being sewn this month.

Mid Month UFO Update

Quilting is going full steam ahead on the Scrap Dance Tango.

machine quilting - see the pretty backing fabric?!?

The first step was my usual vertical and horizontal grid to stabilize the quilt. I stitched on both sides of all the sashing strips for a total of 22 straight lines.
And while I was quilting those lines, I was studying the quilt and thinking of quilting designs to add once the grid was finished. The possibilities are endless and limited only by my imagination, motivation, and purpose of the quilt.

Even though it is very popular now, I am not a fan of densely quilted stiff quilts that don't feel cosy and snuggly. 
AND there is a whole closet full of UFOs here so I don't want to spend too much time quilting complex designs. 
PLUS this UFO has been going on for 3 months now! 
I just needed to make a decision and get going!

I finally decided that the next step would be to quilt a straight line through the centre of each block (one horizontal and one vertical). I tried sewing right across the sashing/quilt but didn't like how it looked, so that got ripped out. As a result I decided to make 40 lines, which is a lot of stops/starts. That's okay... it had to be done.

marking straight lines with the Hera marker

And then I got a great idea for a continuous line within the block but it would be tough with twisting and turning the whole quilt to sew with the walking foot on. So I had to try it with the free motion foot. It's hard for me to quilt a straight line with the feed dogs down and without the traction of the walking foot. I decided to draw the lines with a Hera marker (doesn't leave any ink, chalk or pencil, just an indentation in the fabric)  to help me quilt the lines a little straighter.

It's slow going.
That's okay because I really like how it's turning out. It's "just enough" quilting for my liking.

One block done, 19 more to go!

Almost Amish Mystery Quilt

The quilt layout for the Humble Quilts mystery was revealed last week, but I resisted looking at the finale until I was caught up with all the steps. I like a mystery to last as long as possible because the older you get, the more the surprises you get seem to be mostly bad ones! Mystery quilts are the best kind of surprises because even if I don't love the final layout, I can play with it to create something I like better, or give it away to someone who will love it. So it's all good!

This mystery was sewn on my Sweet Baby Jayne 1964 white featherweight, and she had a few random troubles with stitching a good tension.

See how the thread wasn't tight on the back? That tension is way too loose and the whole bobbin thread comes out with a slight tug.

I realized the thread kept slipping out of the thread tension disc when I started sewing a seam at too high of a speed. See where the stitch ripper is pointing? There is no thread in that hole and there should be!
So Sweet Baby Jayne is going in for a day at the sewing machine spa soon. I think she'll also get the toe pedal loosened up, the belt replaced, and maybe get a new bobbin winder tire.

In spite of the technical difficulties, I finished the mystery top this weekend. Here it is on the design wall. I'm very happy with how my mystery turned out! It's a little darker than most of my quilts, but it used up a lot of small pieces of reproduction fabrics and it's the perfect size for a hand quilting takealong project!
Thanks to Lori for another fun mystery adventure!
Linking up to design wall Monday over at Small Quilts.