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.

What we are working on

 For the past month or two our little prayers and squares group has been working together on a project. It is going to be a silent auction fund raiser for us once it is finished. It is using some of the seemingly bottomless boxes of scraps and strips. This is called a Scrappy Lattice. Someone sent me the youtube video instruction for it found here. Anyhow, at the last minute before we left today, I remembered to get a picture. Next week we sew it together and put the borders on.

What I’m working on

Our prayers and squares group is working on a quilt that we are planning to use as a fund raiser. It is a string pieced crossed X. It has been a lot of fun getting together with a small group of friends to work on this every week. All of the blocks that require groups of 4 are now sewn together and the quilting on the blocks can begin before sewing them all together. This is just a small selection of the blocks. It was lots of fun digging deep into various boxes and bins to put together the string units. Some of us went random... whatever came to hand that was long enough to cover the space was sewn in. Others went more matchy and coordinated. When it is all together I think it is going to be quite striking. 

I’m linking to Mid week makers

 

Slow Sunday Stitching

Spring has finally arrived in our neck of the woods so there has been lots of time spent outdoors in the last few days. Unfortunately, it is May in Muskoka, which means black fly season and they are out in force. So far the non-deet bug spray we are using is keeping them from biting. But it doesn’t stop them from swarming around our heads. It might be time to get out the bug jackets.

Since I have my hand quilting project finished I’ve brought my cross stitching back out. The quilt section is almost finished. Then it is on to the border bands under the quilt section. This is going to keep me occupied for the next month or two. And after this is done, I may either go on to hand piecing some quilt squares or pull out another cross stitch sampler. I’ll decide much later.

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

 

Slow Sunday Stitching

 Noah’s Journey is completely finished, including hanging sleeve and label. Here it is. It is so lovely to have this finished!! I still have no idea what it is going to end up doing or being, but the whole process of making it was fun, so that will have to be its purpose for now. It is getting entered into a quilt show along with another quilt which still needs a label and sleeve, so that will have to be my slow stitching for the next week or so. There isn’t going to be a lot of time for any other stitching for the next while. We are entering gardening season and also renovation season for our main living and kitchen area. There is packing up and organizing to do which is going to take up what stitching/sewing time I usually have. But it will be lovely to have it finished.

I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

What I’m working on

 In my continuing quest to use up my fabric stash..... we all know the futility of that, but it’s fun..... I started some new blocks using 3 1/2 inch strips. I’m using the EasyAngle ruler to cut the triangles. Each block is using a 42 inch wide strip of fabrics for the lights and darks. I am aiming for 20 blocks since that is the limit of the polka dot background fabric. So far there are 8. These sew up quite quickly. And I just noticed that there is something wrong with the lime green square. One of the corner triangles is turned the wrong way. Time to get out the seam ripper. It remains cold and wet outside which means it is a good day for ripping and then sewing. The weekend forecast looks fabulous and I’m looking forward to working in the garden.

I’m linking to Mid week makers. 

What I’m working on

 I have finished off the Twirling at the Disco quilt, pattern found here. Since this photo was taken, the binding has been applied as well. All it needs is to have the hand stitching to the back finished and it is done and done. While I was doing the binding I had a very helpful..... not......visitor who seemed to think this was the perfect place to sit and rest. If you look carefully out that window, it was snowing!!!! This seems to have been a very long winter this year. We had to go out this morning and it was snow pelleting. I am so ready to be done with winter!

I’m linking to Mid Week Makers after which I’m heading back to my bin of 2 1/2 inch strips to finish piecing another quilt.

What I’m working on

 I have the blocks to another quilt finished and am starting the quilt as you go process on them. The quilt is called Twirling at the Disco found here. It’s a fun and easy quilt to do with so many different options for layout. I took the easy route to avoid having to match a lot of seams and to also avoid having to pay attention to fabrics being next to each other. There are 6 more blocks to go. I’ve run out of batting however, so the last 6 will have to wait until I can pick up some more. The coloured sections of this quilt came from my bin of 2 1/2 inch strips.

So in the meantime today I worked on April’s blocks for the sampler Atlanta Garden. I got both the floral and the earth tone blocks done.

I’m linking to Mid week Makers

Slow Sunday Stitching

 The quilting on Noah’s Journey is so close to being finished.

 Just the bottom corner star and the four squares are left. Then I can trim it down and get the binding on and I can declare it done. I have no idea past that what is going to become of it, but I sure enjoyed the process of making it and that seems to me to be the whole point of slow stitching. The plan at the moment is to use a green binding which will pull together all the green grass in the embroideries.

In the meantime I have a little grand daughter here waiting for help with putting together a costume for her super hero day at school, so I will post this and link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

What I’m working on

 I’ve got the starts of a new quilt going in my continuing quest to use up my bin of 2 1/2 inch strips. I don’t know the name or source of this. I saw a picture of it and am doing a variation of it. It will have a solid or tone on tone fabric in between each of these finished rows with a row of 2 inch squares. It will look something like this drawing from Electric Quilt when it is done.

The border fabric ribbon triangle quilt that I’ve been working on for the past month or so is finished and almost ready to be gifted from our Prayers and Squares group. The hand stitching on the binding needs to be finished and a label added. I really enjoy working with these border prints. They go together fairly quickly and end up looking quite pretty. I have another scrappy quilt going too, but I don’t have any pictures of it yet so writing about it will have to wait until next week.

I’m linking up to Mid Week Makers

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I want to wish everyone who celebrates it a very happy Easter! Christ the Lord is risen today! Alleluia!!!

 I’ve been absent for the last couple of weeks. I didn’t really have any interesting progress photos or reports on hand stitching for last Sunday. After a while all the hand quilting starts to look the same. And then Wednesday we woke up to no hydroid our region due to the freezing rain during the night. It was out for maybe 18 hours total before coming back on right at supper time. So no blog post Wednesday either. I don’t really have any interesting progress photos to show of the hand quilting today either, but I don’t want to fall out of the habit of writing in the blog, so here are a couple of shots. I had to alter the lighting in a couple of them. We have some of our plants for the vegetable garden started and growing under lights. The lights throw a very red tinted light, which I didn’t realize was reflecting onto my photos until I went to upload them here. So the ones showing the embroidered blocks are quite blanched due to removing the red tints. They are still quite pink.  I’m down into the bottom third of this quilt now. Another couple of weeks should see it finished. 

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

What I’m working on

 I’m slowly making my way through putting this quilt together. It doesn’t have a name. It’s made up from leftover border fabric and a really cool ribbon like block made from triangle squares. There are two more border fabric rows to add and one more pieced row. 
As all the other quilts I’ve done recently, it is quilt as I go. The border rows aren’t getting any added quilting to them other than what happens when they are sewn on. The triangle rows are getting stitch in the ditch on either side of the long centre row of triangles. I hope to get another couple of sections added to this today. 

We finished the binding on one of the quilts for the Prayers and Squares group last week. This one also used this border print fabric, but the butterfly section rather than the floral section. We are slowly getting the bindings done. 

I’m linking to Mid Week Makers.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m still working on the big stitch quilting on Noah’s Journey. I think I’m almost halfway done. If I can keep going at this rate I will be able to enter it into the quilt show in June. I’ve got until the end of April to register quilts into the show, so I’ll know more then. 

These are the three sections I’ve finished this week.

 I’m not doing any detail quilting in the animals. I’m going around the outside of the bigger animals and then going under the grass embroidery. That seems to be  enough to give the right amount of quilting density and also give it a bit of depth. With the big stitches and thicker thread I wouldn’t be able to get around the smaller areas, for example the bunnies. 

I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

Slow Sunday Stitching

 For my slow stitching I’m exclusively working on my Noah’s Journey hand quilting. Looking at this laid out on the floor makes me think I just might be up to the 1/3rd finished mark. I tried to get a picture of the whole thing, but all it showed was tons of wrinkles and no detail, so I took pictures of the sections instead. Here are the blocks on the top left. This is the ark. I’m so glad I went with the whimsical clouds in the background. And here’s the right side of the top section. I’m currently working on the hippos and moose block. That cloud on the right might be a bit too big.

I finished up another Prayers and Squares quilt this week. This is the most up to date picture of it. After this picture was taken it got top and bottom borders. Since this is done, I’m able to add it to my stash used numbers.

Fabric in:   0 yards               

Fabric out: 5.7 yards            

Balance: 31.25 yards used year to date.

We got a good amount of snow yesterday, in spite of it being 2 days away from the beginning of spring. I think there is another 4 or 5 inches of new snow out there. I ordered my spring supply of seeds last week and I’m itching to get some of them started. We will be setting up some grow lights and starting the tomatoes and peppers once they get here. I suspect I ordered way more seeds than our 2   4 foot x 8 foot raised beds can accommodate, so we may have to get creative about where to put it all. Anyhow, I am going to link to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then get my second cup of coffee. Our grand daughter is coming down after lunch to make pumpkin cookies. A good activity for a cold winter day.

What I’m working on

I’m almost finished the large scale floral quilt I’ve been working on the past few weeks. The blocks were all quilted individually before sewing them together. I’ve added the 2 side borders and just need to do the top and bottom border, bind it and this will be another finish. I’ve hit a small snag in that I don’t have enough of the backing fabric to finish the top and bottom borders so I’m going to have to figure out a work around. That will be today’s task. 

I’ve also finished this month’s blocks for the two versions of the Atlanta Garden block of the month I’ve been working on- earth tones

 and florals. It’s fun doing these in different colour palettes. I’ve also reversed the placement of the lights and darks in each version, just to change it up even more. 

I’m linking up to Mid Week Makers

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m continuing with the big stitch hand quilting on the Noah’s Journey quilt. Most of the big ark block is done. I really like the depth and definition the quilting is giving. I decided to go with the idea of quilting clouds into the background. I have one cloud finished on the left hand side.I like the concept, but I’m not sure I like the way the actual cloud quilting looks. I’ve been doing a lot of the quilting in hand, without a hoop and for the most part it works well. But the cloud isn’t laying properly so I may end up taking it out and using a hoop for it.

I’m also working on hand stitching down the binding on this flying geese quilt. It’s destined for the Prayers and Squares group that I belong to. I usually leave the hand binding to one of the other ladies who like doing it. But on Thursday there were only 2 of us available to meet and the other lady doesn’t do machine sewing. So we decided to have a quiet afternoon of hand stitching on bindings and chatting. It was lovely. All that’s left is the corner to finish. I do love the bias printed stripes for bindings. And I still have a fairly significant stash of them.

I am going back now to keeping track of stash numbers. Back when the pandemic started and we assumed more responsibility for looking after our grand daughter my quilting time was vastly diminished and I stopped tracking my numbers. Now that I seem to be back at it significantly, I’ve started to track those numbers again. These numbers here reflect finishes and additions since the beginning of January. After this I will start back to weekly. 

Fabric In: 4 yards        Fabric Out: 29.55           Balance:        25.55

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

Slow Sunday Stitching

 And now for something completely different from my usual slow stitching. I’ve started the big stitch hand quilting for the Noah’s Journey quilt. Being big stitch quilting, it’s going fairly quickly. Doing the pieced sections is quite easy, actually. The sections that I thought might give me trouble are the embroidered blocks. There is an extra layer of thickness in them due to the fusible backing that prevents the embroidery floss from showing through the fabric. And it is in fact a bit more difficult to quilt through. The big stitches are going to be bigger there and so far I’ve only been able to get one stitch at a time on the needle, so these big white areas of embroidered blocks are going to go slower. I may have to take it out of the hoop to get a bit more movement of the fabric which might help. In fact, I just tried that, and it does work much better. I am planning on quilting around the bigger elements and then perhaps doing a cross hatch in the backgrounds. I’ll decide on that once I get a bit further into this first big block. Stylistically, I’m not sure the cross hatching will work with the whimsical nature of the embroideries. The other alternative, for this large block at least, is to add in some whimsical clouds to the background. I will likely have made a decision on that by this time next week. I’ll do the grass under the bunnies but likely won’t be able to do around the bunnies. They are quite small and the quilting stitches too big to go around the bunnies smoothly.

I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

What I’m working on

 I’ve continued to work on my Scrappy Trips blocks, a free pattern from Bonnie Hunter, found here. They are all done now. I made a total of 20 blocks for a 48x60 inch finished quilt. I’m going to quilt each block separately and then sew them together.

In between the Scrappy Trips blocks I sewed some other blocks. I don’t know the name of this one, but it used up some large scale floral fabrics and also some of the leftover 2 1/2 inch squares from the Scrappy Trips strip sets. A win win sort of two for one quilt. This one is going to need borders, probably some more 2 1/2 inch squares

Today’s job is to start the quilting on these squares. I’m linking up to Midweek Makers

What I’m working on

 I gave in to a tiny case of “start-its” this past week. I have a full bin of 2 1/2 inch strips of fabrics, plus an excess amount of orange fabrics that don’t really have a place to go any more. The project I bought them for didn’t use up nearly as much orange as I thought it would. So they have been sitting for quite a while. Time to move them out and use them up. I’ve started a Scrappy Trips quilt which is a free design by Bonie Hunter. I am using the orange in the same place in each block. I quite like the way this is looking. There are 9 blocks so far, each measuring 12 inches finished. I will be doing 20. I started this quilt because I needed a break from the quilt as I go Scrappy Stars. I have 2 rows of the stars all sewn together and quilted and 2 of the border strips added to those rows and also quilted. But I needed a break from it. I think I will get back to it today though. I want to get it done. Here is what it looks like now,

 along with a close up showing one block and the quilting. 

At our Prayers and Squares group we are working on a new project. This is just a sampling of the blocks. We have enough done to start putting them together. However the weather forecast for tomorrow isn’t going to cooperate with us getting together so it will have to wait for another week. 

I’m linking up to Midweek Makers and Wendy’s Peacock Party

 

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’ve made good progress this past week on my very bright sock. I’m down to the toe decreases. The progress on the Quilting Bee cross stitch sampler is a bit slower. There are a lot of white work squares which require concentration and focus so they go slowly. I think I got 4 of them done this week. I just might focus on getting all of the white work squares done and then go back and finish the rest of the coloured squares.

We have family visiting this weekend, so I’m going to make this a short one and link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

What I’m working on

 I have all the scrappy star blocks made and all of them have been quilted using the quilt as you go method. I had to lay them out to make sure the colours were all evenly distributed. I hadn’t realized I’d done as many blue stars as are there, but oh well, it works. I’m now in the process of adding on the long border sections in between the rows of blocks.  

I am still liking the quilt as you go method, even though I think I decided on too many lines of quilting in those borders. But it will look good in the end and it is still easier than trying to quilt it all at once. This is all I’m working on at the moment, so I will close this post and link up to Midweek Makers