First finish of the year

 My Lazy Sunday Mystery quilt, designed by Bonnie Hunter and presented in 4 issues of Quiltmaker last spring and summer, is finished. Is it ever hard to get decent indoor pictures at this time of year. And at -13 C, there is no way I'm attempting outdoor photos, especially with the way the wind and the snow are blowing around out there. I'd be chasing the quilt around the neighbourhood if I tried it. The only place in the house that is big enough and light enough, is the front hallway. So I asked Matt if he minded if I came and borrowed his floor for a minute or two, which he was fine with, of course. Even then, it was a close fit.

It's kinda hard to see the detail of the quilting, but it's an over all free hand swirl. Lots of fun to do, and lots of texture on the surface of the quilt. It's such a scrappy and busy quilt that anything else would have gotten lost on it.

I added a 2 inch scrappy green border around the
quilt. I wanted to be able to do the faux piped
binding technique on the quilt, and without the
green border, all of the points of the pieced
borders would have gotten chopped off. After all the work on all that piecing, there's no way I wanted to lose all those points. Again, this isn't a very good picture, but if you click on it, you should be able to see the striped binding with the pink insert for the piping.
I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it Friday, in order to celebrate this finish.

Mid-week Progress report.

 Well, my well laid plan from Monday didn't survive. But I have a good reason for it, really I do. It's this quilt, pictured to the right here. It's my Lazy Sunday quilt, Bonnie Hunter's mystery from Quiltmaker magazine last summer. It came off the machine on Monday, and got really pushy. You know how these things can get, demanding to get their bindings made and put on right away, rather than get put aside and forgotten. I decided to listen to it, and do what it wanted, because otherwise it would have gotten put aside and forgotten. It has 2 1/2 sides finished now, but my shoulders started to give out on me, so I'll finish it tomorrow.

My Three of a Kind, from Judy Martin's book Scraps has grown by one block since Monday. It now counts as half done, before doing the borders, with 18 out of 36 blocks done. It is going to get set aside, for now, while I concentrate on finishing my January UFO. It's coming up to the end of the month, so it's time to move it to priority status. It would be cool to be able to join some of the Friday finish parties with a fully finished quilt, and a finished flimsy. Right now, I'm going to link up to a Canadian group, which I found through someone else's blog a couple of weeks ago, called The Needle and Thread Network. It's been fun reading though some Canadian blogs today.

Sneak Peak

I loaded my Lazy Sunday quilt, which was a mystery in the Quiltmaker magazine last spring and summer, designed by Bonnie Hunter. I had all kinds of plans for this quilt. I purchased a new pantograph that I thought would look fabulous on it. I got the pantograph all printed out and taped together, and then ran into a snag. The pantograph turned out not to be straight... my error, not the panto's. And then, once this quilt was on the frame, it told me, in no uncertain terms, that it didn't want a pantograph done on it. It didn't want anything fancy, just lots and lots of texture. Far be it from me to argue with a quilt, so that's what it's getting. I'm doing free hand swirls, fairly densely. It's a really happy, busy quilt, as Bonnie Hunter quilts tend to be, and it seemed like dense quilting, in scale with all the piecing, was what it wanted. I've done 2 passes and gone through 2 bobbins, already. I'm keeping the bobbins in one place for this one, as they are emptied, just to keep track, out of curiosity, how many it takes to do this quilt. I have a meeting tonight, so this is as far as it is getting today. It just might get finished tomorrow, which would be fabulous.

Design Wall Monday, Nov. 4, 2013

Great Granny is finally finished and off the wall. All her borders are on, and, after I took this picture of her draped over the long arm machine, she went to hang up with the rest of my quilts waiting their turn on the machine.

 So, now I have the Bonnie Hunter mystery that ran in Quiltmaker magazine last summer called Lazy Sunday, up on the wall. But It's only there briefly. I'm going to be working on this as a get it finished project, in my quest to, if not cure my startitis, at least cut down on it a bit. I'm currently working on getting the last 2 of the green triangle borders put together, so they can go on. I really like the yellow border in this. It makes it happy and sunny, just like what a lazy summer Sunday should be.
I'm linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Design Wall Monday October 28, 2013

I am hoping that this is the last week for having great Granny up on the wall.

All of the border units are pieced together and ready to be sewn to the main body of the quilt. There will be another plain charcoal border on the outside, and then I can declare this one done. Maybe this next week will see this one done, and I can cross off another UFO finished of the list of UFO's, except that I don't have a list of my UFO's. I'm afraid to go looking and actually count them. I don't really know how many of them there are, and I'm not sure I want to know. I'm just going to keep on working at them one at a time, while I resist the temptation to start something new.
After this, I have to choose, do I work on the Thanksgiving leaves quilt, or on the Lazy Sunday Mystery. I think I have 6 or 7 of these leaves blocks finished now. I need 16 for the large quilt, or 12 for the smaller.
                                                                                     

        Lazy Sunday still needs all its borders assembled. The individual pieces are all done and ready to be assembled into the borders. I have until Wednesday, when I'm going over to Gail's to sew for the evening to decide. Any opinions on which I should choose?
I'm linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday. Lots of lovely stuff to look at today.                                                                           

                                                                                      

Saturday News...

I had a really fun day today. I had planned on sewing all day today, and that's exactly what I did. But instead of sewing here all by myself, I went over to Gail's. For someone who, just a couple of years ago, was a solitary quilter, I'm turning into quite the social butterfly. My portable sewing room, aka laundry basket, was still mostly packed from the last time I was over at Gail's, so I just grabbed it and my sewing machine, and off I went. I've been working on Lazy Sunday Mystery, and I can now say that the center of the quilt top is finished. It involved a lot of getting sections turned wrong, and ripping, blocks turned wrong, and ripping, blocks in the wrong spot, and ripping, (I hate days like that), but it is now finally done. Next step... the borders. It would make sense to keep going and get the borders finished and sewn onto it, now that I've gotten this far, wouldn't it? I wonder if I will.... This makes 2 quilt tops that I now have ready and waiting for their borders.

And I have to share something about my husband, something really good. For years he's been saying that he wants to paint, but while he was working, he just didn't have the time, or the energy, or the mind set to be able to do it. Then, shortly after he finished working, we got involved in the renovations for our apartment, and then the packing and getting our other house ready to sell. Then there was the moving, and unpacking, and settling in, and finishing up the details around here. Well, a couple of months ago, he finally decided that it was time, he was ready to start what he's wanted to do for so long, with FABULOUS results.

 Here he is sitting in front of a project that he is working on for Matt and Becca for their living room. He is so talented, and I'm so proud of him, and so happy for him that he is spending his days doing something he loves. There is a lot of elements that he still wants to put into this painting. This is a commission by Matt and Becca who wanted a painting that they could look at and go to their get away place in their imaginations. There is going to be a cabin, and a dock, and a canoe in it somewhere.

And then, there is my talented son, who is a carpenter. He sent me some pictures of some podiums the theater he works for asked him to build. I'm blowing my family's horn tonight. I wish I had kept the picture of a theater set he built last year. I don't know what play it was for, but it involved 3 separate floors that were shaped like clockwork cogs, that rotated and the gears all went into the other. I have an idea in the back of my head to design the perfect sewing table/cutting table/ironing area designed for quilters, custom fitted for their height, and then he could build them and sell them. But he'd have to have his own place and work shop for that, so that would be a while in the future yet. Anyway, that's it for anything new around here. I have a few customer quilts to show, but they deserve their own posts, so I'll do that later this week, Tuesday maybe.

Design Wall Monday, August 5, 2013

Lots of stuff going on here today. I finished my Grandmother's choice quilt last night, and put it up on the wall to see what the final product looks like.

I like it. So now, it goes onto the pile waiting to be quilted.

 

Then, I wanted to see what Meteor Shower looks like, now that I have a few more blocks made. There are 13 of these squares to do. Another one that I really liking the way it looks.
 This is on my getting it done list for August, to get a couple more of the blocks done.













And then, I just had to put up some of the blocks and sashing for the Lazy Sunday Mystery, just to see what it looks like. I love it!! I so want to start sewing this one together. But first, I finish sewing the binding on my Dresden Plates. I'm trying really hard to finish things, rather than bumping from one thing to another. Although, I've bumped from on thing to another today on the wall, similar to what's going on in my mind. So many things I want to get done, but none of them get done if I keep bouncing from one project to another.I must develop some self discipline....... yeah right...... like that's going to happen. LOL!
I'm linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday, and then I'm going to start in on that binding.

Design Wall Monday July 15, 2013

No sewing done in the last couple of days, again. We went out today and picked up some blueberries and raspberries and also some farm fresh peas. I actually had never had fresh peas before yesterday, when we picked some up to try. Before then, they had always been either frozen, or canned. I couldn't believe how good they were! We shelled them and cooked them up, and had them for supper last night. There were enough left over to put into the fridge for today. I had them cold, with chicken salad for supper, and they were just as yummy. So, today's job was to shell, and blanch and package up 2 bags of peas. After they are frozen, I'm going to taste test them again, and if they work out, we'll spring for a bushel of them to do for our freezers. The raspberries and the blueberries are for jams, which will be tomorrow's job.

I did manage to get my blocks for the Bonnie Hunter Lazy Sunday Mystery put up onto the wall, just to see what they look like. I have no idea where she is going with this one. There are still lots of parts that haven't been all put together yet. I'm guessing it will be alternating blocks, set on point, with maybe a sashing of some sort between the blocks. I am noticing looking at this picture that the yellow star points have kind of disappeared, but that might be because the lighting isn't the greatest.  There are still 4 patches left over, although that might be because I made too many, and a whole pile of green half square triangles left over. Right now, it looks like I have blocks for 2 totally unrelated quilts up there, but that is the fun part of mysteries, seeing how they eventually work out.
I'm linking up to Judy's Patchwork Times where there are walls with lots of fun and interesting stuff.

Design Wall Monday, July 8, 2013

There is nothing on my wall today. I've taken down the 36 patch quilt, and it is stacked and labeled and ready to sew together. I just haven't gotten that far yet. I've been working this past week on getting the 3rd clue of the Lazy Sunday Mystery quilt finished. I can now happily report that I have all of the rectangle units done, and 5 out of 24 blocks sewn together. I'm getting very curious to see what the final product will look like.

And, my package from Thousands of Bolts arrived this morning with all of its lovely goodness. I have wanted to do a Lady of the Lake quilt for ages and ages. I've been seeing quilts lately with the colours red, yellow and grey together, and really like that combination, although I'm thinking I'll add a bit of aqua as well. So, these are the reds I ordered, some of which have the colours combined in them already.

Here are the greys, with some blacks thrown in. I'm not sure yet, whether I'll use the blacks or not. I'll have to see what develops, once I start it.












And the yellows are here. I have more in my stash to round these out.

 And then finally, for the Lady of the Lake fabrics, that is, I found this fun print with all the colours in it. I might use it in a couple of the blocks, and then also as a border. I thought it was so much fun.

 And then the rest of the box was filled with all kinds of neutral goodness, to replace the ones that have been used up over the past couple of months. You'd think that, since I've used up so many, I'd have quilts to show for it. Unfortunately, they are all languishing in the land of unfinished projects. So, I have promised myself no more starts until I have at least one finish. I wonder if I'll keep that promise? I did spend some time last night cutting more pieces for Meteor Shower. I'd like to say I'll get more cut today, but I have to work 3-11 today and tomorrow at the hospital. Considering it's 1:16 at the moment, and I have yet to have anything to eat today, let alone get my supper ready to take with me, and get changed and ready to go, it's not likely that I'll get much more done after posting this. So, I'll sign this off, and link it up to Judy's Design Wall Monday page.

Design Wall Monday, April 22, 2013

 I've been working on my getting it done challenge list for April. The first on the list was to get Cactus Rose out of its long neglected box, and get these 4 squares sewn together. This is a pattern by Judy Neimeyer, but I discovered when looking for the link, that the pattern has been retired, which shows how long I've had this on the go. I was really nervous about sewing this together. The instructions that came with the pattern said to make the whole 71 inch square quilt, and then do the applique. I didn't want to be doing hand applique on a project that big, so I did them one square at a time. That caused the pieced edges of the squares to stretch. But, they went together not too badly, with a little easing here and there. So the next stage for this one is to start working on all the paper pieced border units. I think the next few months are going to have a certain number of them assigned each month. That way it won't be quite so overwhelming.

The other thing on my wall is the beginnings of step 2 in the Bonnie Hunter mystery that is running in the Quiltmaker magazine. It's called Lazy Sunday Mystery. The picture was taken with my iphone, so it's not the greatest, but it will do.
I'm linking up to Patchwork Times design wall Monday link box. Then I'm off to make myself another cup of coffee..... French Vanilla..... yummmmm.... Then I have quilts to load.