Design Floor Monday

I’m plating with McKenna Ryan fabrics and designs today. I just love her stuff. I don’t very often buy kits. But one of the vendors at our quilt show had kits for one of the newer quilts, called Aurora Ridge. Since I love the fabrics she uses in her pieces, and try to purchase them in order to do her stuff, kits seemed very appropriate. These are from Sew Creative, a store in Mt Brydges, about a 20 minute drive from her. The kits were very well prepared, and I’ll be buying the rest of them for this quilt. This was the easiest block of the four I have in my possession.
It took about 3 hours this evening to get it all traced onto the fusible web, cut out and fused onto the various fabrics, and then cut out of the fabrics and fused onto the background fabric. I am very much looking forward to doing the rest of them.
I’m linking up to Judy’s Patchwork times

Slow Sunday Stash and Stitching report

I’ve pulled an old project out from the black hole beneath the stairs- My Tweets. The last time I worked on this was in February of 2014. I am hoping to work on this for the rest of this year, while I wait on supplies for another English Paper Piecing project. I put the last of the stitches into block number 8.


Then  I took out what I’d already done on block 9


and then prepped some more pieces for it. There are 2 more leaves to go onto the bottom on either side of the point of the heart, and then this one will be ready to finish stitching.


It’s been ages and ages since I posted a stash report, mostly because for the longest time there wasn’t anything going in or out.
This gorgeous, sweet little face just might have something to do with it. Given a choice between spending time playing and cuddling with her, or sewing, I’ll take our little Abbie every time.

And then there’s our little Avery, who isn’t so little any more. He was down visiting with us last weekend, and we’re hoping he’s coming next weekend, as well.
He’s 5, and in big kids’ school. How did he get to be 5 and Abbie get to be 10 months so incredibly fast?

But the last several weeks have seen some movement in the stash department, so I thought I’d post one, and get it going again. I’m not sure if it will be weekly, but certainly more often than every other month like it’s been the last little while.

Used since mid September:                    12.8 yards
Used this year:                                        79.3 yards
Added since mid September                        1 yards
Added this year:                                    62.45 yards
Net stash busted:                                   16.85 yards

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

WIP Wednesday....

Geese Around the Tulip Patch is finished, or at least the top is. Here it is hanging off the end of the deck.
This is one of the few times in my quilting life that I have started a project and kept working at it until it was done, without starting anything else. And, to top it off, I kept with my goal of doing the label at the time of the finish, before making the backing.
This means I can actually piece it into the backing, rather than having to hand sew it on after quilting. I do these up in the Electric Quilt software, and then print them onto printable fabric sheets. Now all I have to do is make up the backing and get it quilted.
I’m linking up to Lorna’s Let’s Bee Social and to Finish it Friday in celebration of this finish. Now, to decide how to quilt it.......

WIP Wednesday

Now that the quilt show is finished, I have time to get back working on my own projects. I did up a few more of the secondary blocks for Geese Around the Tulip Patch and put them up onto the design wall. Here they are up close,
 and also from a distance.
I have seven of the blocks finished, fourteen left to go. Then I can sew it all together and get the borders onto it. I’m looking forward to seeing it finished. This one is eventually going to be offered as a pattern to purchase.
I’m linking up to Lorna’s Let’s Bee Social and to The Needle and Thread Network WIP

Quilt Show Sneak Peak

One of the many bonuses of quilts shows is the ability to actually see a quilt hanging, from a distance and to be able to get a picture of it. I’ve been trying to weeks to get some pictures of my recent finishes, but every time I think of it and actually have a bit of time, the weather outside, where I typically take my pictures, has been horrible. So, as the editor for the guild’s blog, I was able to go in today while they were doing the set up, and get some pictures. I’m going to post the pictures of my quilts here. I entered 9 of them, 7 bed sized and 2 wall hangings. I have never been so glad to see the end of hanging sleeves and labels!! If this doesn’t teach me to do them as I finish quilts, nothing will.
All of the following pictures can be biggie sized by clicking on them.

#1 Blooming Nine Patch.

#2 Canadiana Row Quilt


#3 LFQG Blog Sampler. This is a free pattern, found starting here. There is a tab at the top of that blog with all the patterns listed, in reverse order, going back to September of 2015.

#4 Sisters Across the Miles

#5 Grandmother’s Diamond Ring

#6 Great Granny Square


#7 La Passacaglia

#8 Playing With English Paper Piecing

#9 Bon Echo Rock

  Whew, that’s a lot. But there are tons more from lots of other people at the quilt show. It’s gonna be a great one!
I’m going to link up all these finishes, a lot of them new finishes, to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Sunday Stitching

As the London Friendship Quilters’ Guild quilt show has gotten closer and closer, my time for fun slow hand stitching has gotten scarcer and scarcer, as my to-do list has gotten longer and longer. What hand stitching I have been doing lately has mostly involved sewing hanging sleeves to large quilts. How utterly tedious and boring! Note to self.... always do hanging sleeve and label while finishing the quilt, rather than waiting until just before the quilt show.
All the hanging sleeves on the big bed sized quilts are now done. I’m down to two wall hangings to finish. The have their bindings machine sewn to the front. Today’s slow stitching will be to hand stitch them to the back, and to sew down the final sides of the labels, and to sew down the bottom edge of their hanging sleeves.
Both of these quilts are the results of workshops done at the guild in the last couple of years. Joni Newman does stained glass quilts, and I opted to do her version of the cliff at Bon Echo Provincial Park. The backing is camping themed, to go along with years of memories of camping at this park. 
The second quilt is from a workshop by Karen Howes, involving pieced hexagons. It also has its binding sewn to the front, and its label partially attached.  
I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching, before taking the opportunity to do as she suggests.... take a deep breath, relax, and slow down. Quilt shows are wonderful fun things, but the work involved in putting them on and getting stuff ready for them is sometimes overwhelming. So today is for relaxing and clearing my head.

WIP Wednesday

That was a fast week. It seems like I wrote my last post just a day or two ago, not a week ago. I’m continuing to work on Geese Around the Tulip Patch. All the big geese blocks are done and up on the wall. I’m loving the way this is looking. The patch of tulips in the centre is so pretty. I’ve started making the small geese needed for the alternate blocks, all 192 of them. It’s a good thing I like making these things. There are almost 100 finished. Then they have to be sewn into pairs. But, all things considered, this is going together pretty quickly. I very rarely ever start a quilt and stick with it until it’s finished, but this one I am going to. I started this back at the beginning of September, so this isn’t bad progress, at all.
I’ve been working on customer quilts a lot lately, since there is a quilt show coming up this year. that also means getting lots of my own done. So time spent working on a new quilt is precious and revitalizing. I’m going to link up to Lorna’s Let’s Bee Social and the Needle and Thread Network’s WIP Wednesday. Then it just might be time for some supper and a few more geese to come off the machine.