Slow Sunday Stitching

 The Swans are growing. One of them almost has the complete body outlined. It’s a lot of fun watching these animals come to life with each stitch added. I would have had all the outlining done last night, except that I discovered an error that involved some ripping. And of course once that happened, the wind went right of my proverbial sails and I quit for the evening. I’m thankful that I do pre-gridding for these stitcheries. That’s what caught the error.  So today I’ll pick up where I left off and keep going. 

I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

What we’re working on.

 No surprise to say we have more quilts on the go at our Prayers and Squares group. We had one finish, this lovely aqua and pink stacked coins quilt. It is Beverly’s first ever quilt finish so we all gave her a big “woohoo”! Susan has been making the same quilt, except in greens. It has a recipient in mind already who requested outdoorsy happy greens.  We also finished a quilt that is going to be gifted to our interim Pastor. He stepped in and has been preaching weekly since Easter, in spite of also having a full time job as a hospital chaplain. We are ever so grateful to him and his family. He loves music, singing and playing the guitar. This pattern was perfect for him.  Our regular Pastor had a fairly severe car accident back in March and has been off recovering. He’s due back the week after Thanksgiving. 

Here at home I’ve been working on some paper pieced blocks. It is a block of the month put out by Carol Doak on her facebook group page.Unfortunately, the block in the top right is one inch too small. I goofed when I printed it. I’m not sure if I’m going to try and fudge it to fit or if I will make a new one.  I’m not 100 percent happy with the colours in it so I will likely do another one. I’m also working on using up some 2 inch scrap strips and squares and am in the process of making Bonnie Hunter’s Rick Rack Nines pattern. I don’t have a picture of them. They are currently in a bag waiting to go to P&S tomorrow to choose a setting fabric. And that’s all that’s new at the moment.

I’ll link up to Mid Week Makers.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’ve gotten a good start on the Swans in my Cottage Garden series of A Year in the Woods. My seasons are kinda off though. I just realized that perhaps I should have started with the autumn ones.... oh well. But then again, come winter I’ll be working on spring and summer themed designs, so maybe that’s a good thing. It will be enough to see winter outside let alone inside too. Living in the woods in the lovely Muskoka area of Ontario, it seems an appropriate themed stitchery to work on. The colours are glorious right now, even though it is a stormy rainy Sunday. But the roads are lined with the most glorious colours of leaves. I am hoping that there will be a nice day in the coming week where we can go for a drive down highway 60 into Algonquin Park and drink in the beauty. But in the meantime, I will work on my cross stitch.

I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m a little late today posting this because I really wanted to have a finished Fox section. And it is finished so I can now move on to gridding for the Swans. That’s a big woohoo and yippee for me!! I’ll keep this short and sweet and link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then get right into that gridding process.

What we’re working on

 We have 3 more quilt tops finished for our prayers and squares group. We had a bunch of fabric squares with birds on them donated to our group which got made up into large quarter log cabins. We have a bin of 3 1/2 inch strips full of all different colours and themes so I went digging for tans and golds and browns and greens and greys to make a controlled scrappy quilt. This one was done using Bonnie Hunter’s Bricks and Stepping Stones pattern. We are divided in opinion regarding if it needs borders or not. There are enough strips left in this bin to do quite a few more of this pattern if we wish. And the last one is the autumn scene panels which turned out quite wonderfully using fabrics our group already had in our group stash. This one already has a recipient in mind. The quilting is finished and the binding will hopefully get finished this week. If I remember before next week, I’ll get a photo of our wonderful sewing area in the church fellowship hall.

I’ll link up to Mid Week Makers and then I have to get back to the apples we picked last Saturday. There is apple butter in the line up, as well as dehydrated apples. The dehydrator has been going pretty much every day to keep up with all these apples. 

Slow Sunday Stitching

 Mr Fox this past week got his full body and 2/3rds of his tail. I should be able this week to make good time and get his tail finished and then the last couple of trees. Who knows, I might even get a start on doing the grids for the swans section. I discovered that I’m running low on the white thread that I will need to finish the swans, so I decided to go ahead and order that, plus the linen for the next 3 critters to be stitched. And then since I was on a roll, I decided to go through my  threads and see what I had and what needed to be ordered and get them at the same time. Sometimes I can be organized and efficient, especially when it comes to ordering fabrics and threads of any kind. (grin) Now housework and cooking and cleaning and all that nasty takes away from quilting and stitching stuff... there I’m not so organized. (also grin).

Anyhow, it’s a lovely day here in Muskoka. The trees are turning colour, about 20% now. Which means it’s much too nice of a day to be indoors. I’m going to link to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then head out onto the deck with my stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m a day late posting my weekly slow stitching report. I have a good reason for it, though. I was digging around looking for an old abandoned project from 2016. It’s a McKenna Ryan design called Aurora Ridge. Back in 2016 I bought the patterns and the fabric kits to make the blocks and started on making them right away. But then as often happens, other things interceded and the project got packed way and, if not forgotten, then certainly out of sight and out of mind. Fast forward to this year and it has pushed its way back into my consciousness, mostly because of the similarity between the subject matter of the quilt and the surroundings we live in here in Muskoka. The thing that has been holding me back on it is how to procede with finishing it without a long arm quilting machine. There is no way I could afford to have someone else do it, not could I afford to rent a machine to do it. The only other options were to either leave it unfinished or to figure out how to finish it here. Then the thought arrived that I could finish it as a quilt as you go on my domestic machine. I’ve been playing around a little bit with free motion on it and I think I have figured out what to do. Here’s hoping it works. In the meantime, I’ve been world building and playing with the fabrics and the blocks. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy these. There is one with an Aurora Borealis above a moose family. Then there is a cabin in the woods in front of a waterfall. I’ve just started putting this one together, doing the layers on a teflon pressing sheet. The fabrics that came with these patterns are just so beautiful. 

Anyhow, all that to say that I got distracted from writing a post yesterday. I have made great progress on my slow stitching of the Fox. His body is done and I’ve started the fill in for his tail. Another week or two of working on this in the evenings should do it. 

I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching