Sapphire Net is Finished

It’s done, finished, finally. Sapphire Net is a finished quilt. The blocks measure 12 inches finished. The entire thing, as shown, measures about 35 inches square.



Not only is the quilt finished, but the pattern is done too. Double added extra bonus for me so I can call it done and done. And the third done is that it’s been added to the website. Printed pattern or pdf pattern and the papers for it too, since it’s English Paper Pieced.  If you are interested, you can find them here Sapphire Net.
Amanda Jean, at Crazy Mom Quilts, took the summer off from her finish it Friday posts and I must say that I’ve missed them. It’s good to have her back. So, saying that, I’m going to link this finished to Finish it Friday.
After that, It’s time to get some work done on the long arm on a customer quilt that was supposed to be done by September...... whoops.......

Slow Sunday Stitching

I have a couple of Slow Sunday Stitching project finishes this week. First off, the class sample - which really does need another name - any ideas anyone? Not that I can respond to thank you or say that I like it since blogger continues to have issues with forwarding comments to my email.......

Anyway, here’s the picture.



And then I finished off and added borders to Sapphire Net.



It’s an Electric quilt public domain block, and that was the name given in Electric quilt, so I’ll keep it. The border is quite bright and in your face, but it works well with the large scale florals that are in the centre of the quilt.

And because those two are done I’ve given myself permission to start a new one. I’m calling it Friendship Chain. It is also from the Electric Quilt software in the Barbara Brackman Blockbase. I’m still working on figuring out exactly how to put it together. It’s quite complex and I’m not sure off the top of my head how to tackle it. I’ve started cutting pieces and it will be English Paper Pieced using my scraps with each of the intertwined chains a different colour. And that’s the part that is causing the  difficulty in putting it together. A two colour quilt would be easy but since when have I ever done anything the easy way?

Anyhow, I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching before going back to more cutting to get ready for this new project. I’m hoping lots of scraps will be used up in this one.

Slow Sunday Stitching

I finished putting together the class sample for Stitch It Central and appliquéd it down to a background square. I am very pleased with the way it looks so far. It needs a couple of borders to finish it off and then I can get it quilted and into the hands of the quilt shop so they can promote the classes.

We had a vendor’s booth at the Sarnia quilt show on Friday and Saturday. What a great time we had. We met lots and lots of people and introduced a lot of them to the English Paper Piecing techniques. So many of them thought it would be so hard and after showing them the basics of it they came away realizing that yes, they could do it. I even did a couple of demonstrations to a couple of groups. Anyone who knows me well realizes what a challenge that is for me, and yet it went well and I had fun and wasn’t nervous at all. It used to be that when I had to talk to people I didn’t know, especially a group of people, I would get huge knots of anxiety in my stomach. I seem to have gotten over that and I think a large part of that can be credited to several very good and supportive friends, (yes Gail I mean you) Belonging to the quilt guild and being an active part of their programs has also helped immensely. Here I am showing someone what the paper is like and how it looks after being used and removed.

Since the class sample is finished I picked up Sapphire Net again. I started this ages ago and then it got set aside while I worked on Leo’s Mane. It’s time for this one to make some progress now. The floral units are all stitched together. All that is left is to do all the background units and then I can call this one finished.

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching before going back to more stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

As usual, I’m plugging away at Leo’s Mane. I love the project, and the way it is coming together. Here are more parts for the fourth border. I’d say I’m almost 2/3rds of the way finished this particular border. I’m making the individual parts, and the slowly sewing them into the border. I need to get most of the purple units done so I can get an even distributions of the colours.

Every now and then I need something that isn’t quite so small and fiddly. This next project has been around for a while but I don’t know if I’ve ever actually taken a picture of it and shown it here. It’s a public domain design from EQ7 called Sapphire Net, and it’s a perfect candidate for English Paper Piecing.
The octagon shapes are 5 1/2 inches long, and are perfect candidates for using up some of my large scale floral stash I have hanging around here. So far it measures 24 inches across. Whether I make it any bigger than this or not is yet to be determined. There will eventually be papers and pattern available for this in our web store. I’ve been working on it this week when I get tired of Leo’s tiny pieces.
I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching, before going back to more stitching.