What we are working on

 I’ve been missing in action the last couple of weeks here on the blog. Life has been busy with the renovations continuing here and also summer days with our grand daughter now that she is out of school for the summer. So there hasn’t been a lot to show and share here. However, today there is progress. Our quilting group is making a quilt for a wedding gift. We started on the cutting and the sewing last week. The very first thing we did was to make sure that everyone was sewing with an accurate 1/4 inch seam. Once that was established we were able to get down to the sewing. Last week all the strip sets were sewn together, cut into pieces and then sewn back together into four patches. This is the quilt we are aiming for. The colours are very soft and light. Here is an actual block. Also very soft and light. The bride is decorating with the colour cream and eucalyptus branches for her wedding. There are five ladies sewing on this and all the obsessing over the 1/4 inch seam allowance for everyone is paying off big time. The blocks are fitting together beautifully. By this time next week we should have it to the point of the quilt all together and ready for the final borders.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I started a new cross stitch project this week. I needed a break from all that fussy hardanger. I found a new design publisher called My Big Toe designs. They do a lot of scriptural and hymn based pieces. There were a lot to choose from but I finally decided on this one. I changed out all the thread colours because I was using a linen I bought at the quilt show a couple of weeks ago and it is no where near the colour of the sample piece. It’s quite a challenge choosing colours online based on the picture of the thread colour while holding the linen up to the computer screen to see if it will maybe work. The good news is that it worked and all the thread colours are good. This piece is going to take enough concentration to keep my mind and hands occupied without the complexities of the hardanger. With the renovations going on around us and our grand daughter home for the summer something a little less intense was necessary. Having the words of the hymn cycle through my head while working on it is a big added bonus.

I am going to post this and link to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then I may make an attempt at sitting outside in the hopes that the bugs won’t be too bad.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I managed to get all the satin stitching done for the pulled thread work necessary on the third last band of my Quilters Bee cross stitch sampler. And then, I was able to spend a few evenings doing the cutting and tread removal for the Hardanger Lace section. What a slow process that is, to make sure to only cut the correct number and location of threads. Whew! Am I ever glad to have that done. I have set it aside again for a few days while I refresh my memory as to how to do the specialty stitches in the empty spaces and around the remaining threads. 

We looked after our grand daughter the last couple of days, as well as having an electrician come in and do some work in our living space. Between those 2 things there were a couple of early mornings with another one happening tomorrow when the electrician comes back to finish the work. That all means that concentrating enough to figure out these stitches is going to have to wait a while. So in the meantime I will post this to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and get on with the onerous task of doing next to nothing while I rest.

What we are working on

 Our Prayers and Squares group needed a quilt done quickly with an emphasis on purples. I had some blocks here that I have been working on that were intended for this group. They all use 3 1/2 inch strips. I switched out some colours and made up some purple blocks. We started the meeting with 19 different blocks to choose from. We narrowed it down to 12 and the began the task of deciding on sashing and border fabrics to get it up to a size we needed. By the end of the afternoon the blocks were a finished quilt top. I am so impressed with how much our small group of ladies can accomplish in an afternoon. Hopefully we will have the backing fabric for this by next week. Then we can get it layered and quilted

I am going to continue on here using up some more of my dot print fabrics and continue making blocks to go with the 7 that are left.

I’m linking up to Mid Week Makers.

Slow Sunday Stitching.

 I’ve missed a couple of weeks posting on my slow stitching progress, mostly because there hadn’t been any progress. It is renovation and gardening time, so not much stitching was happening. I tried to change that last evening only to have to take out most of the stitches I’d put in due to not looking closely at the instructions. There are stair step type satin stitches at the bottom the piece that were supposed to have five stitches in each group. I had only put in four stitches per group. I am hoping to change that today. It is a glorious summer day today and I am planning on spending it sitting beside the window and enjoying the breeze and the sound of the birds. I would love to be actually outdoors enjoying it but this has turned into a nasty year for mosquitoes and that most horrible of creatures...... the black fly.... tiny little critters that take out chunks and leave large intensely itchy welts in their place. So I will concede defeat and stay indoors until they are no longer a threat.

Last September I joined the Pinetree Quilt Guild, fully planning on attending as many meetings as I could. It turns out I got to one.....  the first one in September. After that something always came up that prevented attendance and then they went to zoom meetings for the winter. I dislike zoom meetings. However, this was their quilt show year, so in spite of not going to a lot of meetings, I was still able to enter a couple of quilts. Noah’s Journey was one of them. I was able to get a really good full shot picture of it hanging. 
Not quite bang on square in front of it, but pretty close.

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.