Design Wall Monday, June 29, 2015

It's been a while since I've done a design wall post. Nothing much on my wall had changed enough to warrant doing a post. However, that changed a bit today. Jennette and I have been swapping Disappearing four patch blocks for the past six months. I took down part of Texas Chain that's been hogging the wall for months now,   so I could lay them out and see how they look. I really, really like it! However, I discovered an oops that happened somewhere along the line. We started out with doing 1 1/4 inch cuts for the centre crossed ares so that we ended up with 3/4 inch finished crosses. Somewhere along the line, we switched over to 1 1/2 inch cuts, ending up with 1 inch finished crosses in the centres. It's not an absolute disaster, though. It can be put together with some creative sashing.... maybe a narrow border and put the different ones on the outside. We're taking a break for the summer months, and will start up swapping again at the end of September.
After I finished playing with these, I took them off and put Texas Chain back up on the wall. I did a couple of hours worth of sewing and arranging on it, and it is getting much closer to being done. The end is in sight. Just one more row of chains left to do, and the  I can move on to the borders. It's getting late, so I think I'll link up to Judy's Design Wall Monday, and then maybe find something light and fluffy to watch on Netflix. There might be some stitching on La Passacaglia going on, as well. Which means it will be listening to something light and fluffy, rather than watching.

Sunday Stash and Stitching Report, week 26, 2015

Here's this weeks' progress on La Passacaglia. I've started the last of the large rosettes, which puts me way over the halfway done mark. I'm approaching this one a bit differently, as far as construction methods go. Rather than doing the complete stars and then adding them, I'm doing the points separately. It's much easier to sew them this way, rather than wrestle with all those unattached points that catch the sewing thread all the time. However, it is harder to picture them finished this way.

I've been a bit distracted this past week. We were told a piece of news last Sunday, appropriately enough on Father's day, but since all the important people hadn't been notified, I couldn't share it. However, I have now been given the go-ahead............ wait for it.........
MATT and BECCA ARE HAVING A BABY!!!!!!!!!!! Arrival date sometime in January 2016!!!!!!!!! Squeeeeee!!!!!! The excitement over that has rather trumped everything else! They have decided to find out boy or girl as soon as they can. Once that news is shared, let the baby quilt making begin!!! Shall we all yell YIPPEE!!!!!  WOOHOO!! and any other celebratory loud sound available.

On a more boring subject...... stash usage.... needless to say, not much. But once the baby sewing begins, that will change. I could start an I Spy quilt any time, couldn't I? Don't need to know boy or girl for that one, do I? I have lots of fun I Spy type fabrics.  Hmmm........ let the planning begin.

Used this week:                            .7 yards
Used this year:                           47.3 yards
Added this week:                          0 yards
Added this year:                       59.25 yards
Net stash added:                       11.95 yards

I'm linking up to Judy's Fabric Report, Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Angie's WIPs Be Gone.

Beth's Hexagons

This quilt is filled with lovely, delicious colours and prints. I don't know if it was a collection, some of it probably is, but they all look wonderful together.

















Look at this gorgeous floral. I happen to have some of this stuff in my stash, as well.

The fabrics in the quilt decided the quilting design. The Fossil pantograph picks up all the shapes of the flowers, and especially the jagged edges on the blossoms. Simple shapes plus gorgeous fabrics equal lovely quilt.

Micki's QOV

Micki brought me this rectangle four patch quilt to do up for the Quilt of Valour outreach our guild does. I really like the asymmetrical setting for this one, using an extra piece of fabric alongside the blocks.   I quilted it using a very simple loop-de-loop pantograph. The circles of the quilting offset the angles of the blocks quite nicely.

This quilt is yet another example of complicated is not necessary for a striking looking quilt.

Rosemary's Computer quilt

This fun quilt belongs to Rosemary, although I think its eventual owner is actually going to be her son. The print on the fabric is all kinds of different electronics, not just computers. I should have thought to get a picture of the backing as well as the front. She used a velour type knit. It's the first time in 10 years of long arm quilting I've worked with it, and wasn't sure how it would quilt up, due to its stretchiness. I loaded it so that the stretch went from side to side, and took it very easy on the side clamps so that it wouldn't stretch out of shape. The result was gorgeous!
We decided to go with the Square Spiral pantograph for the quilting design. It added some lovely soft curves to the quilt, and continued the square shapes and the diagonal movement in the quilt piecing.

Jacqui's Challenge Quilt

This gorgeous quilt belongs to Jacqui.  She found the pattern as a tutorial on the blog Tamarak Shack. Jacqui belongs to the same guild as Tina, whose house quilt I also did. For more detail about the challenge check out Jacqui's blog at Treadle Quilts. She talked about her quilt here and their reveal party for the challenge quilts here.
Jacqui's request was for the quilting to be similar to the original, but not quite as dense, because she wanted it to have some softness and drape to it for using as a couch quilt. So we decided to reverse the density of the quilting. The original was mostly pebbles in the white background, with a few swirls here and there. This one is mostly large swirls, with the pebbles filling in here and there. I love doing swirl quilting. It is fast to do, and it just flows from the needle of the machine and goes where ever the mood strikes.
This quilt actually took two passes to do. First, all the coloured triangles were done using a coloured thread, and continuous curves, with a tear drop shape thrown in to fill up the space in the triangles. Once all the triangles were done, I rewound the quilt and changed to white thread for doing the swirls and pebbles. It was intense, but so much fun!

Sunday Reports on Monday

We were away for the weekend, visiting with our oh so cute grandson Avery. Noel came with us and we had a fabulous weekend camping and visiting. And, we seem to have beat the Shepherd camping curse........ it didn't rain!!! We had a great weekend, as I said, and Avery came out to the campsite to visit with us. He's a happy, talkative little chap, who wants to be in the centre of whatever is going on. He's at the "why" stage, and wanted to learn all he could about how to set up a trailer, chop wood, and build a campfire. 
There are three generations of men here, working to build that campfire. Oh my melting heart! And, of course, what camping trip is complete without marshmallows. However, Avery had no wish to wait for the marshmallow to be roasted over the fire. He'd rather go for a walk through the woods to the beach and eat his uncooked marshmallow at the same time. We sent him home just a tad sticky. We met up with them one last time on Sunday for a Father's day lunch. Avery had gifts for his Daddy        from Sunday school, complete with the obligatory new tie.
When we got home from camping yesterday, Matt and Becca had supper ready for us, as a Father's day treat for Scott and we all sat outside and enjoyed each other's company, talking and laughing until late in the evening. At which point, I was too tired for my brain to process everything and write up a post.
I did get quite a lot of slow stitching done in the past week, and finally finished up the third large rosette for La Passacaglia. I have one more of these big ones to do, and I think I'll do that one next. Then I'll be able to see the distributions of colours, and what will need to be added where.
I also did a lot of cutting for a project that is going to be featured for the next year, or so, on the guild's blog as a free sampler quilt, starting in September. So between that, and being able to count the fabrics in this rosette as outgoing, now that it is finished, I had a significant amount of out numbers. Not enough to bring me back into positive numbers, but that's ok.

Used this week:                                  5.6 yards
Used this year:                                 46.6 yards
Added this week:                               0 yards
Added this year:                               59.25 yards
Net stash added:                               12.65 yards

Sandra's Stonehenge Ocean Quilt

Sandra made this quilt using the Northcott Stonehenge line of fabric in its Ocean theme. To go with the water themed fabric, Sandra wanted a wavy watery feel to the quilting. So I Took inspiration from the water print fabric in the quilt and did an over all free hand swirls with lots of echos and waves added in. It looks like what water does when a mild breeze blows across it. This was the second of two quilts that Sandra brought me, and I could quite happily have given both of them a home here. However, I think Sandra would have protested.

Sandra's Disappearing Nine Patch

This quilt was made using Moda's French General fabric. I have heard of this line of fabric before, but up until this quilt had never actually worked with it. May I say that this stuff is some of the softest, silkiest, most petting worthy fabric out there! I really didn't want to let this one go home. Those fabrics are on my want-to-get list. It would be sensational to sleep under! Or maybe even better, as a couch quilt, because then I'd be awake to enjoy it. Anyway..... I digress......
This was quilted using the Lorien's Fossil pantograph, a particular favourite of mine. It seems to suit so many different styles of fabrics and quilt designs. It gives lots of movement and texture, without detracting from the quilt itself.

Tina's House Quilt

Tina made this quilt in response to a challenge from the guild she belongs to. Everyone was given a batik print, and then each person went and chose a batik that went with it and shared that fabric with the rest of the group. They each ended up with around 20 different fabrics. I believe this quilt was from a pattern in a Fons and Porter magazine.               Tina wanted custom quilting,  similar to what was in the magazine.

There are shingles on the roofs and clouds in the sky backgrounds, each square having the clouds in a different arrangement. The front top part of the houses were quilted with vertical lines and the bottom front and also the sides of the houses were done with horizontal lines. The windows got window panes. Each door on the houses were different. The grass area underneath each house received wavy grasses.
The cornerstones all got a feather type flower and the sashes received extended feather motifs.Here's a closer look.

Some of the people who were part of the challenge gathered at the beginning of June to share their quilts at the Cherished Pieces quilt shop in Tillsonburg. This was a wonderful, and challenging quilt to do. It was fun to be included in this project, even though I'm not a member of that guild. Have i mentioned recently that I love my job? I get to play with so many different quilts, without having to actually do the work of making them.

Leslie's Jelly Roll Quilt

I was really struck by the wonderful simplicity of this quilt. It is sure proof that a quilt does not need to be full of complex designs, or hundreds of pieces in order to be beautiful. Some 2 1/2 inch strips and some white background fabric were all this quilt took. I love the way the white strips in between the others are narrower. It gave it just a touch of asymmetry. The fabrics in this quilt chose the quilting design- straight lines and then a wavy figure eight type of motif. There is actually a fabric in this quilt with that figure eight as a design element. This was a fun quilt to do.

Slow Sunday Stash and Stitching Report, week 24, 2015

I have nothing I can count as used fabric this week. I have a round of stars left to add to my La Passacaglia rosette, an then I can count that whole big one as fabric out. In the meantime, this is what it looks like, so far.
And here is where I think it will fit into the over all project.
While looking at this thing tonight, and trying to plan ahead for the next big rosette, I realized that there is a shortage of purples in this project. So I went digging around in my stash looking for purples to put in. I found some violets to fussy cut to put into the centres of the stars that are going around this one, and then I can introduce more into the next big one.
I haven't been blogging lately, other than this project and customer quilts, because nothing else is happening. Some day, I will get back to regular quilting. But I'm still having way too much fun on this to quit.

Used this week:                               0 yards
Used this year:                               41 yards
Added this week:                              0 yards
Added this year:                             59.25 yards
Net stash added:                              18.75 yards

I'm linking up, as usual, to Judy's Fabric Report, Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Angie's WIPs be Gone. We've been having a Back To The Future movie marathon today, so once I've finished here, I'm going back to watching/listening to the movies, and more stitching to get the stars done.

Sunday Stash and Stitching Report, week 23

I've been stitching up a storm in the past couple of days, working on the third of four large rosettes for La Passacaglia, found in the book called Millefiori Quilts, by Willyne Hammerstein.

 Right now, I'm working on putting on a round of the bright greens. Then, there will be another round of pentagons, and then a partial round of light grey stars. Here's a close up of part of the rosette that shows the fabrics better.
This project continues to captivate almost all my time and attention, limiting the amount of work I'm doing on other projects that would use up fabric a lot faster. I won't count the fabrics in this rosette as used until it's done. Unfortunately, due to my incoming stash in the past couple of weeks, that puts me very deeply in the red. I did shopping while we were away, and then I had 2 packages delivered this week. Almost all of the fabrics were designs that are appropriate for fussy cutting for this project. I now have way more fabric for this thing than can possibly be used for this, so I really don't know exactly what I'm going to do with all of it. Oh well, it's new, and all of the stuff I've been buying lately is completely different than anything else I have in my stash. There are several other quilts in the book this one came in, so that might be an option. This report is actually for two weeks, since I didn't do one last week.

Used this week:                              0 yards
Used this year:                               41 yards      
Added this week:                           21.5 yards
Added this year:                            59.25 yards
Net stash added:                            18.25 yards

I'm linking up to Judy's Fabric Report,  Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and Angie's WIPs be Gone. Then, It's back to more green pentagons and diamonds.

Weed therapy

Doesn't that sound like a fun topic? I'm not talking about the kind of weed that is smoked,though. I'm talking about the old fashioned garden variety weed, as in the type that is growing way faster than the plants that are supposed to be there. The back area of the garden is an absolute mess of weeds. I don't have a lot of stamina or strength, so I'm doing small bits at a time. Hopefully by the end of the weekend, all the weeds in this area will be gone, new perennial plants will be in, and mulch put down to prevent it from getting this bad again.

 

There's quite a steep drop from our yard to the one behind us. The previous owners stabilized the drop off with a large amount of stones. However, there is also a lot of soil in amongst the rocks, which allows for all kind of weed growth down on the hill as well. But, since I can't see it, I am for the moment at least, going to pretend those weeds don't exist. So, excuse me while I go get dirty.

 

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Cold weather therapy

What are people supposed to do when you are camping out in the woods and it's either cold or pouring down rain? You go quilt shop hopping. We went to one quilt shop yesterday, called The Quilt Bee. They are in Fonthill and are a fabric shop and a long arm dealer combined. I picked up some grips for the leaders of my long arm, which are going to hopefully speed up the process of loading and unloading quilts. And of course, while I was in there, I had to pick up some fabric. These are slated for some fussy cutting.

Then today, considering it was still cold, although not pouring down rain, like yesterday, we elected to go for another quilt shop hunt. Well, to be closer to the truth, I elected to go, and Scott consented to drive. On the way to the quilt shop, we stopped at the Welland Canal. I have a fascination for these large ships, and the mechanism of these canals. How something this large can float is astounding. And the power of water to lift these just boggles my mind. We arrived at the viewing platform just in time to see a ship pull in and we got to watch the whole process.

 

This thing is HUGE! While watching the ship pull in, I noticed that someone had hung a swing outside what I assume to be the living quarters.

 

K

We finally ended up in Niagara on the Lake, and a quilt shop called The Modern Bee, filled with all kinds of fun modern fabric. It is essential, we all know, to support the local economy, so I had a couple of fat quarters, and a couple of half yards cuts come home with me. They are also destined for some fussy cutting.

La Passacaglia is growing some more, and these new fabrics will fit right in. We were able to get out for a walk this evening. The clouds have blown over, and it is noticeably warmer. It should be lovely and dry for packing up in the morning, which is a really good thing. In the meantime, for the rest of this evening, I'll be listening to a book and doing some more stitching.

 

 

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