I’ve been busy

I’ve been busy and it’s been a good busy too. It’s been a long time since I sat at a sewing machine and made a quilt. There’s a baby shower coming up on December 13th for a couple at our church. I hemmed and hawed about what I was going to do for it since I don’t have any little girl baby quilts hanging around here. Should I or  shouldn’t I make a quilt? My go to solution for questions like that is to head to my Electric Quilt software and see if I can come up with a good design that can be done quickly. I was successful  It went from block choice using 6 inch and 3 inch squares, to quilt design on Thursday evening.

The black borders are 1 1/2 inches finished and the pink border is 3 inches finished.



 I picked some fabrics and started some cutting and piecing that evening. By Friday the centre of the quilt was finished.



Saturday saw the borders added and the backing pieced.



I’m so pleased with myself! And better yet,  I rediscovered that I like to make quilts by machine. So Saturday I started the process of cutting for another quilt.

Also this week I made 3 more rosettes for Battle of the Stars.  The yellow one will be surrounded by the red pieces. I haven’t decided yet what will  go around the green or the blue.



That’s the last I’ll see this quilt for the next month or so. I’ve packed it away into its project box and I’m going to pull out Hold Onto Your Heart and get back at it this week. I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching where there are lots of fun things to see, all made by hand. I have bonus time today for stitching too. It is freezing rain outside and everything is covered with ice. So church is cancelled for today. I’ll put some stitches into Hold Onto Your Heart and maybe continue with cutting  for a new machine pieced quilt.

Progress and decisions

More progress on Battle of the Stars. Last week I left everyone, including myself, hanging about what fabrics I was going to use for the filler diamonds and for the outer edge stars. I studied what I had done so far and it led me to 2 decisions which involved only a little bit of stash diving. The stars that surround the centre of this pice are done in 2 colours - a light green and a bright pink.



I decided to repeat this in the stars that go in the outer edges.



The other fabric I found is a stripe that had most of the colours I’ve already used and seems to fit with everything else.



I’ve cut them to form a chevron. Here’s the stars laid in place up against the stripe.



And a photo of the whole thing so far.  The stars and that outermost rosette are actually one of the corners.



I think I am going to get this corner done and then put it away. I’ll pull Hold Onto Your  Heart back out for the month of December or until I get another of the sides on it finished, whichever comes first.

I’m going to link to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Battle of the Stars.

I’ve made real progress on this project in the past week. The centre section is now finished.



I’m starting on the corners and the sides now.

I haven’t 100 percent decided on all the fabrics yet, but this is a start for one of the corners. I’ll need to do some stash diving to decide on what else to use. There are some five point stars and some setting diamonds that go in between these 10 point stars, I’ll get these 3 large 10 point stars done and then I’ll lay out some colours and fabrics with them to determine what is going to work. I should know what I’m doing with it by the end of the week. So my job for today, after I link up with Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching will be to finish off these large stars.

Battle of the Stars

I’ve retired the appliqué project for a bit and gone back to one of my english paper pieced quilts instead. The last time I had this one out was back in July, going by what I was writing about here on the blog. (At that time it was the middle of the summer and we were in the middle of a wonderful camping trip. Now, it’s cold and snowy out..... sigh.... I want summer back..... Anyhow, I got a bit distracted there for a moment.) And that sounds about right because I started the appliqué project in early August. The bonus of having so may different things on the go is the lack of opportunity for boredom..... not that I’m ever bored. But  I needed a bit of a change. I added two more of the ten point stars to the centre section today. And since I took those pictures I’ve added on a thin green diamond unit to the right of the yellow star. The next one is aqua coloured. But this is what it looks like so far. Another of the bonuses of having multiple projects going is the ability to rediscover the enjoyment from one to another.  I love doing EPP and also love doing appliqué. So it seems only fair to do both. Or at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Stitching....

Slow stitching to the point of being almost non-existent. I’ve been sick, with drags everything to a halt.... stitching and knitting and blogging. But I’m on the mend now other than being very very tired.It wasn’t anything drastic, just a cold, but every one I get as I get older seems to take more out of me and longer to get over. But I guess that’s true of most things as we age.

I’ve pulled my Hold Onto Your Heart quilt back out and am getting ready to start back at it.  The centre section of this quilt is almost halfway done. 



I’m also thinking of getting out one of my hibernating English Paper Piecing projects, but that hasn’t gone any further than just thinking. I hate this feeling of being too tired to even think let alone do anything else. But as always, it will pass. In the meantime I do web browsing and youtube surfing and marathon Primevideo watching. I’ve gotten into watching Doc Martin lately. It’s quite a lot of fun,

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

Applique and knitting

I did more knitting than appliqué these past couple of weeks. I’ve started a new sweater called Moon Pulls, found here, using a wonderful wool called Washted by Malabrigo. It is so deliciously soft!!! I don’t want to put it down. It’s worsted weight yarn so it is going really fast. In addition to this much of the body, I already have the sleeves already done.



 I watched a few youtube videos and learned how to do two handed stranded colour work. I’m clumsy at it since my left hand has very little coordination, but it is a great improvement over one handed and having the colours of yarn twist around each other. And just because I’ve learned that new technique, I have to make sure I get lot of practice...... all new techniques require lots of practice don’t they? You know where this is going don’t you? I ordered more yarn and bought another pattern for yet another sweater. It’s likely going to be another week or 10 days before the new yarn gets here. I wonder if I can get this project done before then? Wanna see a picture of the new one? It’s called Canyon Road and is found here.
This seems to be my year to get engrossed in knitting. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d done until I got curious the other day to look at all the projects I’ve finished since last January. I won’t bore you with the names and details of each of them. But I did come up with an interesting statistic when I added up the yardage used on all of them. Over 18,000 yards of yarn which converts over to over 10 miles used in the past 10 months! YIKES!!
However, today I am determined to get back to my appliqué. I have half of this section finished but got stalled because I needed to trace out more of the shapes and draw in the embroidery lines.



The tracing of the shapes isn’t bad, but the placement of the embroidery lines is a bit more time consuming and bulky. It involves a makeshift light box using a desk lamp and a large clear tote box. The tote box gets balanced upside down on a foot stool and my lap with the desk lamp on the floor underneath everything. Then I have to wrestle the paper pattern that has been taped together and the quilt over top of that in order to do the placement tracing. All of which explains why I’d been putting off doing it. But now it’s done and I’m ready to go.



Time to fill up that empty space in between the diamonds and the berries with another pineapple and  pomegranate and all the other fun details.
Before I get to that I’m going to link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Hand on your Heart

I’m continuing to work on this quilt. It has so much variety and interest that it is continuing to challenge me to keep going. I have the bird scenes finished now, except for a little bit of embroidery.



So now I’m moving on to what Esther Aliu calls the Bowl of Plenty Scene.



  These pieces are just sitting there. I have some embroidered stem to do before actually basting and stitching the elements into place. There are some leaves and flowers yet to prepare for stitching as well.  That pineapple took 3 tries with different fabrics before I got one I was happy with.



I’m not going to get much done on it this afternoon unfortunately. I have a dentist appointment..... very close to the top of the list of things I hate to do. I’m Linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching. I’m looking forward to seeing her post next week about the slow stitching retreat happening today.