An Excellent Week

I have had an excellent week, filled with fun activities and lots of stitching time so there is lots to blog about today. As you know, I like to cross stitch in the car.  This week, I finished off the light purple lupin on the right side of my cross stitch project and now I am working on the lighter green coloured leaves at the bottom.  There are also a few more pink stitches to add, but I will soon be doing the outlining stitches. 

A friend has a new granddaughter and, of course, I made baby E a quilt.  Her parents sent me this picture along with their thank you note. Such chubby cheeks!  So cute.

Earlier this week, I noticed a Facebook post by Nancy at the Secret Life of Squirrels.  Nancy is a retired teacher turned squirrel photographer and children's book author.  Several years ago, I offered to send a mini quilt I had made to her for one of her squirrel photos.  She used the little quilt in a scene with a sewing machine that she made out of modelling clay and then returned the quilt to me.  The next year, that photo was included in the calendar that she made.  This week, her FB post was about a new puzzle by Cobblehill Puzzles that features nine of her photographs, including the one with my little quilt in it! How exciting!  I went into my quilt storage area and pulled out the little quilt to show my husband.  I ordered a puzzle at a local store and will take my quilt in to show them when I pick it up. 

I made this little quilt at a miniature quilt making class over 10 years ago with Kathy W. who hosts the weekly Slow Sunday Stitching link up on her blog.  It was made with scraps from another quilter at the workshop. Each HST is 3/4" --the quilt is 6.5" square. 

Our shamrock bloomed this week.  This plant once belonged to my husband's Great Aunt.  When she died in 1977,  his parents took the plant home and it bloomed happily on their back deck for many years.  His mom gave it to us a few years ago and we shared a piece of it with my SIL.  It makes me happy to see this plant come back to life every spring after spending the winter dormant in our basement. The flowers are very tiny--my picture is taken very close up so it looks much bigger than it is. 

Finn has been a hot dog this week!  He still likes going outside though. The heat wave has broken where he lives and he is looking forward to finally being able to go for a walk today. 

I worked on my hand quilting project for a few hours this week and it is coming along. Lots more to do but I am enjoying every stitch!  The pattern is called Put a Ring on it by Latifah Saffir

A friend retired recently and hosted friends and family for a celebratory dinner this past Thursday.  I made her a Sew Together bag.  She told me she is hoping to have more time to sew now. The outside fabric is the same as the one I made for Christine for her birthday but the lining and pocket fabrics are different.

I bought the cute little measuring tape tag at QuiltCon at the Sarah Hearts booth a few years ago.  I wish I had added one to my bag too but forgot that I had them until this week.  The wool piece is a needle landing. 

The garden is exploding with colourful flowers this week. All that rain and hot weather has helped! This first flowers is called Veronica.

Shasta Daisies

Coreopsis

One last bit of good news--I heard that Quilts for Survivors far exceeded their goal of 1000 blocks donated at Quilt Canada!  I was very happy to participate in this very worthwhile and meaningful project.  I will link up with Kathy and Frederique as usual.  Thanks for stopping by.  I love to read your comments. 

A Little Quilt Done

I had an evening with Christine last night in my sewing room.  I spent my time quilting my little quilt that I showed in my last blogpost. I used green Aurifil thread about the colour of the green square at the right side of the picture above to do straight line quilting with my walking foot.  The bobbin thread was white to match the backing.

I found the white with black polka dots in my stash.  I started the hand stitching on the binding last night and finished it tonight.  I tried out a few bright colours for the binding but decided that the black looked the best, although I do hate sewing with black thread on black fabric!

The finished quilt measures 45 X 52 cm.  I just used the new measurement app on my cell phone to measure my quilt...how cool is that?

All ready for show at tell at the next Elgin Piecemaker's Guild meeting later this week!  I will add a label later tonight.

Quilt Show Report

I spent most of the day yesterday at the London Friendship Quilter's Guild show.  I had four of my quilts on display including "Elephants on Parade", shown below.  There were three elephant quilts on display, all started at a workshop with the designer, Lorna McMahon.   

My "Fancy Forest Friends" was on display beside the elephants.

There were 8 animal quilts on display together.  It was fun to see all of them--each one was unique with the different fabric choices.

"Flannel Vortex" showed off my flannel scraps, leftover from PJ's I have made for my daughter and nieces over the years. 

My Christmas sampler quilt was one of several seasonal quilts.  I managed to get all of the hanging sleeves attached on time for the quilts to be delivered to the show, despite some assistance from Finn, our grand-dog.  This was all the slow stitching that got accomplished this week.  Next week, I will be back to my hand quilting and cross stitching. 

Christine and I got together to sew one night this week and I put this mini quilt together.  I had the coloured squares sashed already and finished off all of the sewing.  The coloured squares were a little package of 2.5" charms that I received at the modern quilt guild retreat a couple of years ago.   I will be quilting this little quilt next week. 

Finn supervised our activities in the sewing room from this spot....

I will be linking up with the other slow stitchers on Sunday morning.

QNIC at Jacqui's House

QNIC or Quilting Night in Canada took place last night at Jacqui's house. She has an amazing sewing studio with a house on top of it (LOL) and 6 of us gathered to sew, eat and sew some more.

Deb worked on her "Stars for My Friends" mystery quilt.

Karen worked on a "Spinning 4 Patch" table topper.

Chris, just home from Florida, worked on her mystery quilt too.

Jacqui did some machine quilting.

Roxene worked on a blue and white Bonnie Hunter quilt.

I also worked on my mystery quilt and this, another mini from Kathy's workshop in mid March.  The bits of batik fabric are leftovers from my hexagon quilt. Kathy calls this pattern, "Fish Food".

Karen finished her table topper flimsy by the end of the night!  It looks great, Karen!

We enjoyed a wonderful supper of pizza, vegies and homemade strawberry pie.

Sorry there is no pic of the pie!  It disappeared before I could take a picture!

We hope to get together for another QNIC very soon.

Another Mini and a Pillowcase

I finished off a couple more little projects yesterday after making the Dresden Plate pillow in my previous post.

I had started a couple more mini quilts at Kathy's workshop a few weeks ago and managed to finish another one yesterday. I called this one "More of Lynda's Garbage".

I have a third mini started and hope to finish it off this week sometime. I will have lots of things to bring for show and tell at the next meeting of the London Friendship Quilters' Guild!

On Monday night, I did a trunk show for a church ladies' group. I also did a demo of how to make a pillowcase. Here is the one I made. This will be a gift for someone who has a green thumb.

I also finished off another 8 blocks of the March step of the "Stars for my Friends" mystery quilt. I have 8 more blocks to sew together and then I will add this border to the centre. (It is a medallion quilt.)  I keep taking pictures of each step of the mystery so that I can eventually show them here on my blog. For now, that is a no-no. 



Lynda's Garbage

This afternoon, I finished quilting and binding my mini quilt top that I made on Friday. It even has a label.  This is the smallest quilt that I have ever made!

The backing and binding are abrown civil war fabric with small paisleys on it that I had in my stash. I used a 1 1/8th strip of fabric for the binding. The name of this quilt is "Lynda's Garbage"--it is named for the quilter who gave me her scraps instead of throwing them out!

I also finished of the baskets I started earlier this week. Here is my entire basket collection...

I have 51 baskets finished (two are not in the picture above) and I think I will make more than one project with these little blocks. I have a few more baskets cut out and ready to piece so I will likely finish those before I start to put them together.

Now, I am off to have a cup of tea and start cutting out the next step of the "Stars for my Friends" mystery quilt. We received our clue on Thursday night at the guild meeting. We receive the final clue in April and then will have until September to finish off the project for Show and Tell. Our guild has a quilt show in late October so I am hoping to put my mystery quilt in the show. Over 30 members of the guild have participated in the mystery--it will be interesting to see the fabrics that everyone is using!

Have a good week!

Miniature Workshop Today!

I took a vacation day today so that I could go to a miniature workshop taught by Kathy W. of Kathy's Quilts fame. Kathy brought along many of her own mini quilts and taught us many different ways of making our own quilts.

We all started by making two colour 9 patches which Kathy put together to make a mini quilt which she will donate to our guild for the raffle table at our quilt show in the fall.

I brought along some HST's that I made from LW's garbage at our recent Quilt Til You Wilt day.

 I had sewn them into HST's already and spent much of the morning ironing, trimming and arranging these 1 1/4" HST's into two mini quilts:

I sewed the first one together before lunch. It finishes at about 6" square.

I hope LW will not want her garbage back!

The second one came home with me to finish here.

I spent much of the afternoon trying out Kathy's "Fishfood" quilt.  It is done with a mile-a-minute method.

This came home unfinished but I will try to finish it up soon so I can bring it to the next meeting for show and tell. You may recognize the scraps from my hexagon quilt. Kathy is all about using up scraps from projects to make mini quilts!

Two other quilters spent all day making tiny tulip blocks.  I don't know that I will ever try to make something this small!

I had a great day!  Thanks Kathy!

I have a few projects on deck for this weekend. I have to finish off the baskets I started earlier this week when Christine came over to sew. I have the next clue for the "Stars for my Friends" mystery quilt to work on and I would like to finish off my second and third mini quilts...  There are just not enough hours in the day!

Happy sewing!

A Mini Finish

Funny as it may seem, considering the size of this mini quilt, I had this quilted by a long arm quilter. Each block has a different quilted "medallion" on it and there are double loops in the outside border. The quilting was done with orange thread and I added the orange binding this afternoon. It is all ready for the quilt show now! I even have the label on! I love the bright colours and how they contrast against the navy sashing and border. (Thanks to my husband for being my quilt holder. He does a great job and is quite experienced!) This quilt was made from leftover HST units from my Carolina Christmas quilt which is still in the piecing stage...

I took this picture this afternoon of a hibiscus flower in my garden. My MIL gave me this bush a few years ago and it never fails to provide a lovely show of these dinner plate sized pink flowers late in the summer.