What I’m working on

 I’m slowly making my way through putting this quilt together. It doesn’t have a name. It’s made up from leftover border fabric and a really cool ribbon like block made from triangle squares. There are two more border fabric rows to add and one more pieced row. 
As all the other quilts I’ve done recently, it is quilt as I go. The border rows aren’t getting any added quilting to them other than what happens when they are sewn on. The triangle rows are getting stitch in the ditch on either side of the long centre row of triangles. I hope to get another couple of sections added to this today. 

We finished the binding on one of the quilts for the Prayers and Squares group last week. This one also used this border print fabric, but the butterfly section rather than the floral section. We are slowly getting the bindings done. 

I’m linking to Mid Week Makers.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m still working on the big stitch quilting on Noah’s Journey. I think I’m almost halfway done. If I can keep going at this rate I will be able to enter it into the quilt show in June. I’ve got until the end of April to register quilts into the show, so I’ll know more then. 

These are the three sections I’ve finished this week.

 I’m not doing any detail quilting in the animals. I’m going around the outside of the bigger animals and then going under the grass embroidery. That seems to be  enough to give the right amount of quilting density and also give it a bit of depth. With the big stitches and thicker thread I wouldn’t be able to get around the smaller areas, for example the bunnies. 

I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

Slow Sunday Stitching

 For my slow stitching I’m exclusively working on my Noah’s Journey hand quilting. Looking at this laid out on the floor makes me think I just might be up to the 1/3rd finished mark. I tried to get a picture of the whole thing, but all it showed was tons of wrinkles and no detail, so I took pictures of the sections instead. Here are the blocks on the top left. This is the ark. I’m so glad I went with the whimsical clouds in the background. And here’s the right side of the top section. I’m currently working on the hippos and moose block. That cloud on the right might be a bit too big.

I finished up another Prayers and Squares quilt this week. This is the most up to date picture of it. After this picture was taken it got top and bottom borders. Since this is done, I’m able to add it to my stash used numbers.

Fabric in:   0 yards               

Fabric out: 5.7 yards            

Balance: 31.25 yards used year to date.

We got a good amount of snow yesterday, in spite of it being 2 days away from the beginning of spring. I think there is another 4 or 5 inches of new snow out there. I ordered my spring supply of seeds last week and I’m itching to get some of them started. We will be setting up some grow lights and starting the tomatoes and peppers once they get here. I suspect I ordered way more seeds than our 2   4 foot x 8 foot raised beds can accommodate, so we may have to get creative about where to put it all. Anyhow, I am going to link to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then get my second cup of coffee. Our grand daughter is coming down after lunch to make pumpkin cookies. A good activity for a cold winter day.

What I’m working on

I’m almost finished the large scale floral quilt I’ve been working on the past few weeks. The blocks were all quilted individually before sewing them together. I’ve added the 2 side borders and just need to do the top and bottom border, bind it and this will be another finish. I’ve hit a small snag in that I don’t have enough of the backing fabric to finish the top and bottom borders so I’m going to have to figure out a work around. That will be today’s task. 

I’ve also finished this month’s blocks for the two versions of the Atlanta Garden block of the month I’ve been working on- earth tones

 and florals. It’s fun doing these in different colour palettes. I’ve also reversed the placement of the lights and darks in each version, just to change it up even more. 

I’m linking up to Mid Week Makers

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m continuing with the big stitch hand quilting on the Noah’s Journey quilt. Most of the big ark block is done. I really like the depth and definition the quilting is giving. I decided to go with the idea of quilting clouds into the background. I have one cloud finished on the left hand side.I like the concept, but I’m not sure I like the way the actual cloud quilting looks. I’ve been doing a lot of the quilting in hand, without a hoop and for the most part it works well. But the cloud isn’t laying properly so I may end up taking it out and using a hoop for it.

I’m also working on hand stitching down the binding on this flying geese quilt. It’s destined for the Prayers and Squares group that I belong to. I usually leave the hand binding to one of the other ladies who like doing it. But on Thursday there were only 2 of us available to meet and the other lady doesn’t do machine sewing. So we decided to have a quiet afternoon of hand stitching on bindings and chatting. It was lovely. All that’s left is the corner to finish. I do love the bias printed stripes for bindings. And I still have a fairly significant stash of them.

I am going back now to keeping track of stash numbers. Back when the pandemic started and we assumed more responsibility for looking after our grand daughter my quilting time was vastly diminished and I stopped tracking my numbers. Now that I seem to be back at it significantly, I’ve started to track those numbers again. These numbers here reflect finishes and additions since the beginning of January. After this I will start back to weekly. 

Fabric In: 4 yards        Fabric Out: 29.55           Balance:        25.55

I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and to Sunday Stash

Slow Sunday Stitching

 And now for something completely different from my usual slow stitching. I’ve started the big stitch hand quilting for the Noah’s Journey quilt. Being big stitch quilting, it’s going fairly quickly. Doing the pieced sections is quite easy, actually. The sections that I thought might give me trouble are the embroidered blocks. There is an extra layer of thickness in them due to the fusible backing that prevents the embroidery floss from showing through the fabric. And it is in fact a bit more difficult to quilt through. The big stitches are going to be bigger there and so far I’ve only been able to get one stitch at a time on the needle, so these big white areas of embroidered blocks are going to go slower. I may have to take it out of the hoop to get a bit more movement of the fabric which might help. In fact, I just tried that, and it does work much better. I am planning on quilting around the bigger elements and then perhaps doing a cross hatch in the backgrounds. I’ll decide on that once I get a bit further into this first big block. Stylistically, I’m not sure the cross hatching will work with the whimsical nature of the embroideries. The other alternative, for this large block at least, is to add in some whimsical clouds to the background. I will likely have made a decision on that by this time next week. I’ll do the grass under the bunnies but likely won’t be able to do around the bunnies. They are quite small and the quilting stitches too big to go around the bunnies smoothly.

I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

What I’m working on

 I’ve continued to work on my Scrappy Trips blocks, a free pattern from Bonnie Hunter, found here. They are all done now. I made a total of 20 blocks for a 48x60 inch finished quilt. I’m going to quilt each block separately and then sew them together.

In between the Scrappy Trips blocks I sewed some other blocks. I don’t know the name of this one, but it used up some large scale floral fabrics and also some of the leftover 2 1/2 inch squares from the Scrappy Trips strip sets. A win win sort of two for one quilt. This one is going to need borders, probably some more 2 1/2 inch squares

Today’s job is to start the quilting on these squares. I’m linking up to Midweek Makers