Slow Sunday Stitching

I finally chose the fabrics for the flower head for this section of Hold Onto Your Heart. I knew I wanted purples, but I couldn’t find the right purples in the fabrics I already had out. That meant I needed to go to my storage area under the stairs and dig out the purples box. Why is it that the colour I want is always the one on the bottom behind all the other boxes? (sigh) Anyhow, after I made a mess by pulling out the boxes, I found the colours I wanted and got busy making a flower head.



The background fabric for this project actually adds a whole other dimension. I love the teddy bear and the tea set sitting beside the flower.

I also finished my sweater this week.



I still need to weave in all the end bits, a job I’m not too terribly fond of. That’s it for my slow stitching this week. I’ll link up with Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Stitching

I’ve made some progress on Hold Onto Your Heart this past week. The embroidered stems are done and the leaves are all prepared and glue basted down. There is still a flower to place on top of the stem on the right but I haven’t decided on the colour it will be yet.



It will have three rows of petals. Right now I’m leaning towards 3 shades of purples.
I’ve also started piecing on a new quilt by my favourite designer Judy Martin. This one is from her book on Log cabin quilts. I love the secondary design formed by the pieced logs.



I have six more blocks than this done now, but don’t have a picture. The blocks are 12 inches finished with the individual logs finishing at 1 inch. I’ll be doing 36 blocks, so I’m over half way there. The cutting and piecing, like most of Judy Martin’s quilts, is quite time consuming and intense but I’m enjoying the process. I’m doing 4 at a time and trying to get a good mix of fabrics in each block. I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

I have a slow stitching, or make that slow knitting, finish this week The pattern is called Canyon Road. I have fallen in love with this persons patterns and have happily fallen into the rabbit hole of colour work sweaters. 

 It still needs to be blocked. After it is blocked the lace and colour work around the yoke will be even prettier.

I have some yarn left from this one, but of course it wasn’t enough to do a full sweater so of course I had to order more yarn. And then after I ordered the yarn to make up the difference so I could make another sweater, I got a notification that I had reached a milestone and therefore had a $25.00 store credit. Which meant, you guessed it, I ordered yet more yarn. With the yarn I already have here and the yarn that is coming I figure I have enough to do 5 more sweaters. And that’s not counting all the leftovers from all the other projects. Yep, I’m building a whole second stash, with yarn instead of fabric.  

In between the knitting I’ve been working on my Hold Onto Your Heart design by Esther Aliu. I’m working on the houses and the foliage surrounding them. 

Her design for the houses had shutters by the windows. I’ve left those off and have instead added some lace trim inside the windows for curtains. I’m doing embroidery for the stems of the foliage rather than using bias fabric. This afternoons job is to prepare the leaves and get them glue basted in place. And maybe get some more of the stems done.

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

Slow Sunday Stitching

We’ve had an eventful couple of weeks that prevented me from posting. Our son was moving from one job in one city to searching for another job in another city. For years he’s worked as a carpenter in various theatres, never being able to stay in one place or one job because most theatres are seasonal. He finally decided he’d had enough of the itinerant lifestyle and made the decision to move to the small city where his son lives. However, minus a car, he had no way to get there nor did he have a place to stay while he searched for work and a place to stay. So in the middle of August we packed up our trailer, picked him up and then grabbed a campsite to give him a centre of operations. It also gave us a great time to visit with him and also with our grandson Avery for a bit. A win win on all counts. It ended up that he got a job and found a room that he could afford. Such a blessing and an answer to a lot of fervent prayer. While we were there we saw a couple of interesting things. This park, which is on the southern shores of Georgian Bay, used to have a shale shelf along the waterfront. This picture of me laying out my La Passacaglia quilt was taken there a few years ago. You can see how wide it was at the time. This picture was in 2015. Four years later that entire shelf in under water. We saw this really interesting willow tree that has some kind of red moss or something growing around the base of it in the water. There is none of the shale shelf showing at all. It is all under water. There are spots where the wave action of the water is starting to effect the waterfront road of the campground.

During our time camping I got a lot of stitching done on Hold Onto Your Heart by Esther Aliu. There is still some embroidery to do on the pansy corner blocks. None of the elements are actually stitched down to the centre background. This is this year’s block/element of the month by Esther Aliu. It started in January, so I’m way behind. But that’s kinda good because it means I can work at it to my own pace and do the placements the way I want. I’m thinking of doing one side at a time rather than all the single elements at the same time. It might cut down on the tediousness of making the same element over and over again. It also will mean I can change things up as I go to make it mine.

Since we got home a week ago I’ve been working on a workshop sample. We are doing a Trunk Show at the Twilight Quilter’s Guild Monday Evening and then a workshop in October. They requested a two part workshop. In the morning we will be doing the basics of English Paper Piecing and then in the afternoon they requested a Brimfield Block. This is my sample for the workshop. I figured it would be a good idea to make one before teaching a group of people how to do it......

I’m going to link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then get back to my stitching. I think I might start on the embroidery on two of the pansies so I can count them done and then maybe start the actual stitching of things down to the background.

Bitten by the startitis bug

I have been eyeing this lay’s website for several years now... Esther Aliu .... ever since she came out with the Love Entwined pattern with is a redo of an antique applique quilt. Every year she does a free Block of the Month and a paid Block of the Month. I follow her facebook group and have been drooling over this year’s quilts, both the free and the paid, but especially the paid one called Hold Onto Your Heart.  I’ve been giving myself all kinds of talks about how I have way more than enough projects already started, that I don’t need anything more, etcetera, etcetera. Anyone who is prone to this illness knows the drill and the self talk that ends up being of no use. So, I did it. I bought the pattern.... I told myself it was a birthday gift and that starting the new quilt was a birthday gift and the new fabrics that I needed for this quilt were a birthday gift. I have the centre section of it ready for basting and hand stitching. We are going to be heading out for a week’s camping next weekend, so I’m putting a push on to get a bunch of pieces prepped and ready for stitching.

However, I have kinda promised myself that I will keep working on Connections as well. I have the second section half done, so it is making good progress. The pattern for it is almost finished, but I’ll wait to release it after we get home.

So I’m going to link this post up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then do some more prep work for this quilt. I’m going to do up a whole pile of 1/4 inch bias stems and then get to working on the pansies for the corner squares in the centre of the quilt.