What We’re Working on

 We had quite a few finishes yesterday at our Prayers and Squares Meeting. Lots of quilts got their bindings and a few more were either started or made progress on. Janet has been working on this quilt for a few weeks now. She took it home last week to get the binding finished. Once that was done she started another using 5 inch squares.  It is very bright and cheerful. It will have white sashing between the rows and then a very bright and happy border around it. Pat has been working on this lovely quilt at home. She brought it in to get some opinions on size and a sashing colour. She found a purple in our stash that worked really well with it. Marg worked on these next 2 quilts, both of which are quilted and in line for binding.

                                                            

And then these 2 quilts got their binding on. They are now ready to be gifted when the need arrives. 

                                                                  

We are starting to build up a bit of an inventory, which is great, although Susan came in yesterday with requests for 4 different people, which will deplete that inventory somewhat. We’ll keep going though, and keep making quilts.  I’ll link up to Finished or not Friday.

Stay at Home Round Robin

 The new prompt to the stay at home round robin was announced on Monday. We are to do stars. It took me a while to come up with an idea and then even longer to decide on colours, based on what I had here at home. I finally decided to do 6 inch Variable Stars, 3 per side of the quilt. I have plans/hopes for what will be on the corners, based on further possible prompts. This quilt will eventually go into the Prayers and Squares mission pile so I don’t want it to end up really big. So the hopes are to combine the prompts into a border. I’ll Link up to Quilting Gail for this rounds link party.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 All my slow stitching this past week has been focused on the hand quilting for My Tweets. I managed to finish 2 blocks. I really want to get this done this winter. If it isn’t finished this winter, I suspect it will go into time out again until next winter and I really don’t want it to linger that much longer. In theory, I can get a block quilted in about 1 1/2 to 2 weeks. There are 9 blocks left, plus the outer border. So it just might be do-able.

I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then perhaps put in an hour of hand quilting before heading to my sewing room to do some doll clothes for our Granddaughter.

What We’re Working on

 We have ourselves a couple of finishes. The Pat Speth sampler I did towards the end of last year is now bound. And the Pat Speth pattern called Balancing Act is also bound and finished. There seems to be a focus on Pat Speth designs lately. I really enjoy her style and the fact that she puts out a new block at least once a week, if not more often. It’s a wonderful source for sampler quilts, which I also really enjoy doing. I have 8 blocks done towards the next sampler of 12. I am doing them quilt as I go, which is a great way to enable detailed quilting on the individual blocks which wouldn’t be possible without a long arm machine. I sold mine before we moved up to Muskoka. Sometimes I wish I still had it, but where we are living now there would have been no place to put it. And anyhow, I’m past being able to stand at it for long periods. But still there are days when it would have come in handy. I guess it’s a way to force me to learn new ways of doing things, like the quilt as I go techniques. Here’s the front of a block, and the back. I quite like the way it looks. My last Pat Speth design, for now, is Cross Creek, a quilt along that she hosted on her Facebook page, which is also where she posts all the new blocks. The quilting is finished and it is just waiting to have the binding sewn on. Marg at the Prayers and Squares group has been doing all the bindings. She says she’ll do this one next Thursday. Back in the summer we purchased some animal scene panels to use for giving away and also, hopefully, for some fund-raising this summer when the cottage and camping people return to our area. These will eventually turn into a pattern called Step Into Moonlight. It has a way to go yet. 

And finally, the starship enterprise is finished. One of our ladies is away on vacation. When she returns we are going to do some lessons in paper piecing and hopefully get the rest of this quilt under way. The patterns for this quilt will all come from the Fandom in Stitches Star Trek page.

I’ll link up to Finished, or not, Friday

Stay At Home Round Robin, prompt 2

 The second prompt for the Stay At Home Round Robin came out on Monday. This week’s prompt was “triangles”. I like it when the prompts lead for lots of possibilities. There are so many blocks with triangles. I thought, oh good, the possibilities are endless. Well, it turns out, not so much. As in the previous round, much of what I tried ended up overpowering the centre section of the quilt. So I stayed simple, a round of sawtooth triangles. It was fairly quick to do because I used these 12 at once triangle papers. Not having to draw all the lines saves buckets of time. I had to add a 1 inch finished border to get it up to size for the triangles. It now measures 26x26 inches.

I’ll link up to Anja Quilts. There are some really fun and interesting quilts to see there. 

 

Slow Sunday Stitching

 Last winter, or maybe it was the spring, anyway sometime last year I decided it was beyond time to get the quilt called My Tweets finished. Because I no longer have my long arm quilting machine and because I can’t afford to pay someone to custom quilt it, I decided to hand quilt it. I started it back last year sometime and then stalled out. Actually, I just looked back at a picture taken of the beginning of the quilting and it is dated March 13, 2024, so that answers that particular question. There’s no way I would have worked on it during the spring and summer. I have picked it back up in the last couple of weeks and am making good progress on it. I would love to have it finished before the warm weather and outdoor activities return. The centre of the quilt is finished and I’ve moved on to the first of the 12 blocks around the outside. I had originally thought that I would continue the straight line background quilting into the outer squares. But the more I look at it and the more I work on it, I realize that they don’t need it. The appliqué on those squares is so dense that the straight lines would get lost. I’m outlining the appliqués and that will be it. I can only work on this for a limited time each evening and then the finger on the back side of the quilt starts to get sore from feeling the needle come through, so then I pick up my cross stitch. The Jackrabbit from A Year In The Woods is slowly growing. I had hoped to continue with my one critter a month finishing on this, but the hand quilting has taken over and that’s ok. It has been a true Muskoka winter this year, very cold and a fair amount of snow, although nothing like the 4 feet of snow that was dumped about 45 minutes south of us. It still makes for a good time to be staying indoors where it is warm and cozy and play with fabrics and thread. I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

What We Are Working on

 We didn't get a whole lot of sewing done in our Prayers and Squares group yesterday. We did get 6 quilts layered though, several of which needed backings sewn. I’ve shown pictures already of the quilts we layered, except for this latest top finish. It is called Cross Creek, a design by Pat Speth. I’ve done 2 more sampler blocks, also designs by Pat Speth. I have a total of six now, almost enough to start on the quilt as I go process on them. Our group has also received a request for a Star Trek themed quilt. I recently discovered this website, called Fandom in Stitches which has all kinds of mostly paper pieced themed designs, including one for the original series Enterprise. I have the back end of the ship finished, which will take the ship to halfway done. There will be lots of other elements added to the quilt before it is finished and ready for gifting. I’ll play with this some more tomorrow and hopefully get the ship finished. I brought 3 of the layered quilts home with me and will begin the quilting process today using my domestic machine and walking foot. 

I’ll link up to Finish, or not, Friday