After 2 Years, Lupines is done!

I have been working on my Lupines quilt off and on for over two years.  The pattern is from the book "Quilts of Iceland" by Gudrun Erla.  I bought the book at QuiltCon in Nashville in 2019.  My husband and I went to Iceland for two weeks in 2014 to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary and the lupines were in bloom while we were there.  Apparently, they are not a flower which is native to Iceland but were introduced from somewhere else.  They now grow all over Iceland and when in bloom, everything is purple!  Fast forward to our 30th Anniversary trip to Scotland in 2019 where I bought some fabric in a quilt store in Inverness--two of the fat quarters I bought ended up in this quilt.  In 2021, I attended the virtual QuiltCon during the pandemic.  I took a class in embroidered quilt labels and made the label for this quilt as my class project. 

The quilt is queen sized and will take its turn on our bed.  I spent quite a bit of time this past week sewing the binding down by hand.  I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning. 

Christine and I got together to sew for a couple of hours and I started working on my scrappy Drunkard's Path blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. As you can see, the October colour is light/lime green. 

Finn and our daughter are home for Thanksgiving this weekend. Today, we went on a hike in the woods at Pinery Provincial Park.  It was a beautiful day for a walk and we wore Finn out completely.  He has been snoozing on the floor for most of the evening. One of the trails we walked took us out to a platform overlooking Lake Huron.  Most of the trees at the Pinery are oaks and white pines so there was not a lot of brilliant fall colour.  

Happy Thanksgiving to all of the Canadians!  

Finally Stitching the Binding Down

I have had my lupine quilt back from the long arm quilter for a couple of months now.  Finally, this past week, I had the time and energy to get the binding made and sewn on by machine.  I don't usually measure my quilts before I cut the binding.  I tend to just cut the number of strips that looks like the right amount--usually, I am pretty accurate doing it this way.  This week was no exception and I had 7" of binding to spare when it was all on. 

The binding is made from leftover backing fabric. The quilting was done by Julie and I love the pantograph we chose.  I didn't want something swirly for this graphic quilt.  The lupines are upside-down in this picture!

I've started hand sewing the binding and this will be my Slow Sunday Stitching project for tomorrow and probably into next week.  This is a queen sized quilt. 

In the cooler months, my husband and I like to work on a puzzle in the evenings.  We started this Quilts of Gees Bend puzzle this week. 

I pin basted my 36 patch Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt today.  I now have three quilts pin basted and I have officially run out of basting pins.  I hope to get this one quilted soon.  I will just be quilting it with straight lines in a diagonal grid through all of the white squares.   

Finn has an eye infection so he is wearing the dreaded cone this week.  He has eye drops from the vet and it is clearing up nicely so the cone should be gone soon. Finn wants you to notice the red leaf on the ground...He says Fall is here. 

My husband and I went for a walk in Port Stanley one afternoon this past week. I took this picture when we were at the end of the pier. 

I will link up with Kathy in the morning. 

I Need to Do Some Quilting...

Back in February, I took a Zoom class with Cheryl Arkison called Traditional Variations.  The idea was to take a traditional block and change it up in some way.  I made blocks based on four traditional blocks:  churn dash, pinwheel, log cabin and sawtooth star.  This week, I finished my last three blocks and put the top together, except for the final border which is cut but not sewn on yet.  This quilt will be donated to the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild outreach project--Quilts for Survivors of Residential Schools. My husband and I participated in a Healing Walk this morning, wearing our orange "Every Child Matters" shirts. It was very moving to hear from survivors and their descendants during the ceremony before the walk. 

I used my batik fabrics for the blocks.  This block is a variation on a pinwheel. 

Variation on a log cabin. 

For this one, I made a liberated sawtooth star block, and then cut it up and added some strips in between the four corners. 

Here is a not very good picture of my top before the final borders are added. The sashing is a navy blue Kona solid.  I will get a better picture when this quilt is done.  I hope to quilt it this week. 

 I also want to get the back pieced for my hearts quilt and get it quilted this week.  You can see why I named this post "I need to do some quilting...!"

I dug into my purple selvages this week and found that I did not have enough to make purple ones to make my Rainbow Scrap Challenge squares.  I did, however, have enough for two red-violet (magenta) squares. I do not buy a lot of purple fabric and whatever selvages I had have obviously been used!

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I had made all of the 36 patches I needed for that rainbow scrap challenge.  This week, I put the blocks up on the design wall and got them sewn together...yet another top waiting for quilting. 

I picked up my Lupins quilt from the longarm quilter tonight and will be making binding to finish this one off soon. I have some of the purple backing fabric leftover to use for binding.  Here is a sneak peak at the beautiful quilting by Julie. 

I worked on some rug hooking while talking to a friend on FaceTime one evening this week.  She was working on a cross stitch project while I hooked.  I'm working on the blue sky. 

While out for a walk this week, I noticed that the milkweed was in bloom. 

In our backyard, the Japanese Lilac tree is showing off with its creamy white blooms. 

This shamrock plant belonged to my husband's great aunt who died in 1977.  It lived on my MIL's porch for many years before she gave it to us a few years ago.  It seems to like it here!

Finn is scheduled for a doggy spa day early this coming week.  He's quite fluffy at the moment!

I will link up with Angela and her Rainbow Scrap Challenge Crew on Saturday morning and with Kathy and the people who like to stitch slowly on Sunday morning. Hopefully, I will have some finished quilts to show next week.  Happy Canada Day! 

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. 

Embroidery, Binding and What's on my Design Wall

For my slow stitching this week, I spent some time working on my embroidered quilt label for my Lupine quilt.  I removed the blue pen marks from the parts that I have done already.  I had to do some unstitching when I used only two strands of floss instead of three when I started stitching the black letters this week.  Oops!  I must say it is harder to unstitch embroidery than machine stitching!

I added the binding to another comfort quilt this week and started hand stitching it on the back.  This is a biggish square quilt so I anticipate another day or two of stitching to get it done.  The top was made by my friend Maureen and it will be donated to the Women's Shelter. I will show a picture of the top when I have the binding done. The spool holder was made by my friend Carol's Dad.  A tree branch fell down in his yard and he made lots of these which Carol gave to all her quilting friends. There is a magnet under my metal needle minder. The backing was donated by another Elgin Piecemakers Guild member who was purging it from her stash.  Julie from the Elgin Piecemakers did the quilting. 

Today was our Guild Sewing Day for the Oxford Guild.  The Vice President's challenge was the project...I used my Shweshwe fat quarters and newly acquired background fabric for my quilt top. I made lots of HST's this week to prepare for today.  Here are samples of my HST's. 

We were to make some irregular rail fence blocks as well to incorporate into our quilts.  I made a dozen and put everything on my design wall today.   I am going to tweak where things are over the next few days until I am happy with it. I am not sure I want the rail fence blocks in there.  I will consider some other  ideas before I sew the blocks together.  If you want to weigh in with your opinions, please feel free to do so in the comments!

I will continue to sew my binding and work on my embroidery tomorrow for my Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow.  I will link with Kathy's blog in the morning. 

I made some raspberry scones this week.  Here is a link to the recipe.  I froze some raspberries and blueberries last summer--my husband is not a big blueberry fan so I substituted raspberries for blueberries.  Just make sure the berries are thawed before you add them to your mixing bowl.  I have made these with blueberries as well---I think they are delicious both ways!

Finn continues to keep us all entertained.  Note that he has a treat on each foot in this picture and has to wait until I say ok (on FaceTime) to eat them. 

Have a good week!

Prepping for Guild Sewing Day and some Hand stitching.

I'm not one of those quilters who cuts everything out before starting to sew a quilt.  I like to cut a little, sew a little, press a little and then repeat until I have enough blocks. This week, I started getting ready for the Vice President's Challenge day at the Oxford Quilters Guild next Saturday.  This event, usually in person, will be on Zoom again this year.  I needed several fat quarters and some yardage for background for this project.  We are to prepare a whole bunch of HST's before the sewing day.  I am using some Shweshwe fabrics for my project. These fabrics are produced in South Africa but are distributed in Canada by Meerkat Trading. I purchased my FQ's years ago when Céleste spoke at the London Friendship Guild and I'm happy to have found a place to use them.  I still have more cutting, sewing and pressing to do!

 I finished binding the comfort quilt I showed last week on my blog.  I used cut offs from the backing for the binding but was a little bit short so I added in a piece of red to make the binding go all the way around the quilt.  You can see that I used the three extra blocks on the back to stretch the backing fabric to fit the quilt. 

Sorry about the weird angle for the picture of the quilt...my quilt holder was not home!

A group of friends are participating in our own little UFO challenge for 2022.  My February UFO is my Lupine quilt.  I need to finished piecing the quilt, embroider the label, piece the backing and take it to the long arm quilters. The top is finished now, thanks to a Zoom sewing day with Carol on Thursday.  I have no place big enough to lay out the entire top so here is a peek. 

At the online QuiltCon Together 2021, I took a class on embroidering quilt labels.  I started to make a label for this quilt during the class and then promptly put it away.  I went searching today and found the label and got busy adding more embroidery.  It's not done yet, but I will work on it this week and hopefully get the backing for my lupin quilt put together once I have finished the embroidery.  This is my slow stitching project for this week. 

My husband and I celebrated my birthday this week with a hike in the woods at a local wildlife management area. 

While our daughter was watching olympic curling this week, Finn did his best impression of a curling rock. Yes--that's my daughter's mitten in Finn's bed...he likes to play with them, but he doesn't chew them. 

My husband and I have been working on this puzzle for a few weeks now and we finally finished putting it together this week.  You can see why I chose it.  Before you ask, NO, I will not be making a quilt like this!  The puzzle was challenging but fun to make. 

I will link up with Kathy and the other Slow Stitchers in the morning.