Secret Project Reveal!

For a few months now, I have been talking about a secret project. My cousin has finally received her quilt and so now I can show it to you, my blog readers!  I did some sleuthing to find out my cousin's favourite colours and was told green and purple. I raided my stash to find several purples and greens that looked good together as well as a piece of gray hash dot fabric leftover from my modern sampler quilt.  I had just enough of the gray fabric and even had to piece a few of the triangles to have enough for all of the units.   For those who are interested, I use my Easy Angle ruler for the purple HST's and my quarter square ruler for the green and gray QST's.

Here are all the units on the design wall, partially sewn together. 

I pin basted the quilt at one of our guild sewing days where there was a large table to use -- It's hard not the knees to use the floor. You can see I mitred the corners of the border to match the HST angles.  I put green borders on the sides that touch purple in the units and purple borders where they touch gray or green. 

I quilted this one myself with my walking foot.  The thread is green going on one diagonal and purple on the other diagonal. I used my Hera marker to keep the lines straight in the borders. 

All quilted!  I used a solid lighter purple fabric for the binding.  

The backing fabric was in my stash!  I had to add racing stripes on the back of the quilt to make it wide enough. Funny story.  First I added a green stripe.  When I measured the back against the quilt top, it still wasn't wide enough so I cut down the middle of the green stripe and added the purple.  Success!  The only fabric I purchased for this quilt was the green border fabric. 

My cousin lives across the country and her mother visited our area recently so the quilt was delivered by my aunt yesterday. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the finished quilt before giving it...  I will get my cousin to take a picture and send it to me. 

Since there can't be a blogpost without a picture or two of Finn...  Here he is with my daughter's crochet blanket that she is making.  It's almost big enough to cover Finn now--still lots more to do. 

Finn had a haircut yesterday and the groomer gave him a fall bandana.  Looking very handsome, Finn!

Fall will soon be here. 

Here is my cousin, all wrapped up in her quilt.  She loves it!

 I will link up with Kathy and Frederique on the weekend. 

More Quilts for Survivors Blocks

I decided to make lots of HST's for this week's batch of blocks for Quilts for Survivors.  I did not have very much of either of these two fabrics for this block--I ended up piecing the middle square from three pieces of fabric to make it big enough.  You probably would not have noticed if I had not told you!

How about some flying geese?

Slanted Diamonds

Broken Dishes

Economy block variation

I actually have 14 blocks ready to donate now.  Two of them are not in this picture. Only 6 more to go to meet my goal of 20 blocks. These will be taken by a friend to the QFS booth at Quilt Canada in Edmonton.

Building has begun on our local hospice and I am collecting quilts from local quilters to be used on the beds at the hospice.  I have made one quilt already and will make another one this summer. I have lots of batik fabrics to use for this quilt and I am deciding on a pattern/colour scheme.  Here is the quilt I made in 2019 for the hospice.   I used Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Trips pattern for this quilt. (building the hospice was delayed by the pandemic)

I spent a few hours cross stitching this week on my Lupins.  There is a lot of backstitching to do on this picture which will help to define the flowers and bring out the details.  I backstitched the stem on the left lupin this week just because I wanted it to look more like a lupin and less like patches of light purple.

There is a pond at one of our local parks--the bullfrogs were talking to each other, loudly.  I named this one "Jeremiah". 

Finn was angling for a belly rub while my daughter worked from home this week.  Who could resist those eyes?

We went to the local nursery and bought flowers for our patio and porch pots.  Everything is planted now and is being watered every day.  The flowers will grow and fill in the pots nicely, as long as the neighbourhood squirrels quit trying to dig them up everyday...

The purple clematis is in full bloom. 

My husband and I went on another hike with the local hiking club this week.  It is our plan to go on one hike a week with the club.   The Mayapples were in bloom. 

We missed the peak of the bluebells but there were still a few in bloom. 

Dappled sunlight on the trail. 

I had to buy a new 1/4" foot for my sewing machine after breaking mine--it was 23 years old so it didn't owe me anything.  Anyway, now that I have a new foot, I hope to do some more QFS blocks this weekend as well as some machine quilting on a lap quilt. I will link up with Kathy and the slow Sunday stitchers in the morning as well as Frederique today. 

A Variety of Projects

Somehow, I managed to do some sewing almost every day this past week. Two sunflowers are almost done in this quadrant of my sunflower cross stitch.  I also added a bee and some leaves. 

I'm going to a wedding shower tomorrow for my cousin's daughter.  If you know her, please don't spill the beans.  I am quite sure that the bride to be does not read my blog!  I made her these pillowcases--they like to go camping so the canoe fabric was chosen with this in mind. 

I also made her two coiled rope hot pads.  The fabric scraps in these are dark green.  They are about 9" in diameter. 

Today, I met another cousin's new grand baby (this cousin is on the other side of the family!).  I gave him a flannel vortex quilt that I made a few years ago using scraps from PJ's I had made for my daughter and my nieces as well as other scraps accumulated over the years. We talked about how the quilt can be used to play I spy or a matching game when he gets older and is learning to talk.  It has a flannel back and will be quite cozy for story time too.  

I found a fabric pumpkin pattern online (just google it and you will find several patterns) and decided to try making one this week.  I have lots of orange pumpkins to decorate with and decided to make a lighter coloured one.  I have a stick to cut up to make a stem as well as a piece of green felted wool for a leaf.  I will finish it off this week.  I wanted to show my friends at the Slow Sunday Stitchers the slightly gathered running stitch I added to give the pumpkin a more interesting shape. I used pearl cotton thread for this. 

I also found an easy free pattern for a leaf quilt online and decided to just make a small wall hanging instead.  The background is Essex Linen.  I still need to add an outer border in the same background colour and quilt it.  This will be a gift for someone special.  

I started quilting my Shweshwe quilt ages ago and finally got back to working on it again this week.  I hope to do some quilting on it most days.  Of course, I have decided to quilt it rather densely so this will take a while.  I do like how it looks though so will continue to persevere.  

It has been quite cool some mornings this past week but my fuchsia plants are still blooming happily on the front porch.  

Finn certainly enjoys his naps, especially when he can touch my daughter at the same time. 

He likes to be comfortable and use all of the pillows. 

I will link up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning. 

Wedding Shower Gift and RSC purple Drunkard's path blocks

We were away visiting our daughter last weekend and did not get home until Wednesday night which meant that there was not a lot of sewing time this week. Since the end of July is quickly approaching, I needed to get my purple Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks finished up.  The colour for August is orange so I will dig out my orange scrap bin and my orange selvages this coming week. 

Our daughter is in her friend's wedding party this fall. I decided to make the bride some hot pads as a wedding shower gift.  These are the colours that she likes. The selvages are top stitched down onto the insulbrite and then I add the backing and the binding--my hand stitching project this week. 

A few weeks ago, I showed a block I was making from 100 1.5" HST's.  It has been on the back burner while I made the baby quilt and the Quilt for a Survivor of a residential school but today, I got back at it and finished the block.  It is 10" square.  I'm not even sure what I am going to do with it!  For now, it will just live on my design wall while I wait for inspiration to strike.  I'm always surprised how much the block shrinks after all the seams are sewn. 

We had a fun visit with our daughter and Finn last week. We went on lots of walks. One walk took us past Finn's favourite place--the pet store where they get his food.  He was very disappointed that the store was closed and he could not go in to greet the staff and get a treat. 

In 2019, we purchased tickets to see Hamilton in 2020...  We all know that that didn't happen in 2020, and then it didn't happen in 2021 either, but we did see the play this past week with our daughter.  It was really good--great music and wonderful acting.  The tunes have been running through my head all week! 

I took this picture of some thistles on one of our walks with Finn. Great flowers for purple month!

I will link up with Angela and the RSC folks now and with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning. 

Two Quilt Backs and Some Knitting.

I tackled one of my least favourite parts of making a quilt this past week, not once but twice!  Some people don't like hand stitching the binding but for me the worst task is piecing the backing.  My lupin quilt used 8 yards of fabric for the backing and wrestling all of that fabric through the machine while trying to keep it all from falling on the floor is not fun. BUT, it's done now and ready to take to the long arm quilter's house.  Phew!

A group of friends is participating in our own little UFO challenge.  Getting my lupin quilt ready for the long armer was my February project.  For March, I am hoping to get this quilt to the finish line.  I make the backing this week from fabric that was in my stash. I had to insert a chunk of pink fabric leftover from the front into the backing to make it big enough. There's only three yards of fabric in this backing so it was not such a chore to get the backing made. I made the quilt top last year as part of the Colour Blocks challenge with Debby Brown on Facebook. I pin basted the quilt today on the kitchen floor so it is ready for walking foot quilting this week when the mood strikes.  I have several ideas for quilting floating around in my head and need to settle on one before I get started.  

My Shweshwe HST quilt top is done and I am in search of a suitable backing fabric, preferably from the stash.  I have already decided how this one will be quilted so hopefully, the backing fabric will appear from the depths soon. 

I made a mistake in my hat that I am knitting and could not figure out how to fix it so I ended up ripping all of it out and starting again.  I have made good progress and hope to finish the hat this coming week. I should be able to wear it this year as we still have some days that are cold enough for a hat when I go walking every morning, especially if it is a bit windy. I have a few hats that each work well in different temperature ranges to keep me warm. 

Our daughter sat on the couch to do some work this week so Finn snuggled up with his head on her shoulder to supervise.  He is an excellent neck warmer. 

The first sign of Spring in our garden:  the witch hazel is in bloom, even though it was snowing the day I took this picture. 

I will link up with Kathy and the slow Sunday stitchers in the morning.