Slow Sunday Stitching

On this cold and snowy Sunday, I couldn’t resist the pull to begin a new hand stitching project. I recently got Willyne Hammerstein’s second book, and decided to start her project called Creme Brûlée. Here’s the first of many rosettes to come. It isn’t the most perfect fussy cutting, but I love it, none the less. Let the fussy cutting begin again!! I have lots of fabrics left that are perfect for fussy cutting, purchased when I was on the La Passacaglia binge. I think there is another binge about to happen with this project. Yes, I know I said I wanted to finish My Tweets, and I will...... eventually... But this was calling very loudly for a long time. There’s lots of motifs left in this particular fabric to choose from. So, I’ll post this and link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then go cut some more jewel shapes.

Design floor Monday

There’s nothing new on my wall. But there’s a quilting finish on my floor. It went on the machine today, got quilted, taken off and trimmed, all in one day. I’m not 100% happy with the quilting, it’s a bit unevenly distributed. But I’m saying finished is better than perfect.

That sounds good, but, this was supposed to be finished a year ago, before our grand daughter Abbie was born. She turns one on Thursday, so I decided it was time to put a rush on it. The written quilting on the left side is kinda hard to read. It says:
“Sleep my child and peace attend you, all through the night.
Guardian Angels God will send you, all through the night”


So, today makes three posts in three days. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep this up, but it’s a good start to the New Year. Blogging more frequently is one of my goals for this year. I want to get the binding made up for it tonight, so I’m going to link this up to Judy’s Design Wall Monday, and then get busy on that binding.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Happy New Year everyone!! I hope it’s a great one. I’m actually starting off the year doing well..... a blog post yesterday, and another one today. I really fell off the blogging habit last year, badly. I would like for that to be one of the things that I do better this year.
We had a fun end to our day yesterday. About half an hour after I finished writing my post yesterday, found here, where I was saying I was sad because Scott and I were sick and we wouldn’t get to see Avery again before he went back home, who should show up at our door than Avery and Noel and Mel. Avery made us up the sweetest get well picture and he brought it to us in person. He sat down with us and explained all the different parts of the picture. The bottom left picture is Avery roasting marshmallows at a campfire. He says he has bunny ears rather than people ears because he doesn’t know how to draw people ears. Beside the campfire is a tent. He said he drew a tent because he didn’t know how to draw our trailer. Then there’s a picture of Mel fishing at a small lake. And the bottom left picture is of Avery and his Daddy, complete with baseball cap, out on a lake in a canoe. He even drew in bull rushes. We are most certainly having a good effect on him when it comes to enjoying the outdoors and camping. We’ll definitely have to make sure we plan some more camping trips with him this year.
I am doing some slow hand stitching today. This quilt, Geese Around the Tulip Patch, is almost finished. The binding is done. All that is left is to hand stick down the edge of the hanging sleeve. Once that is done, I can get some decent pictures of it, finish editing the pattern, and it will be ready for release. So very exciting! So, with that in mind, I’ll link up to Kathy’s first Slow Sunday Stitching of the year, and then get stitching on that hanging sleeve.

Another year is ending and a new one begins

And how on earth did that go so fast? Well, I know the answer to that, partially at least. A lot of it had to do with this sweet darling little girl. She comes downstairs to our apartment almost every day for a visit. I cherish each and every minute of those visits. They cut into getting other things done, including blogging here, but they are babies for such a short period of time, and I don’t want to miss a thing. Our Grandson Avery, who is now 5...... how did that happen??..... has been down visiting over the past few days. Being able to spend so much time with Abbie often makes me regret the time we weren’t able to spend with Avery, since he lives 4 hours away. It makes my heart ache, which I am sure every other grandparent with grandchildren living at a distance can relate to.
We did our family Christmas celebration on the 28th, and got to spend some time with him then. We had planned on more time with him before he goes back home on the 1st of January. Unfortunately, both Scott and I ended up sick with the cold bug that’s going around. And it hasn’t been your average cold bug that just causes stuffy heads, but are still able to continue going. It’s been a flat on the back, no energy to do anything type bug, so we haven’t been able to see him.
This past year has been such a busy one. I’ve started writing patterns for publication. They are almost ready. Just a little editing left to do and pictures to add. The other hold up for the patterns is that I’m waiting on a business PayPal account. I tried setting one up on my own and came to a couple of sections where I had no clue what they were talking about, so I’m letting professionals deal with that. In fact, those professionals are building a whole new website for Eagle’s Wings Quilts, because we are expanding what we do. So far, it has been a long arm machine quilting business, dependant only on me to do the work. But in this next year we are expanding into sales. Specifically, we are going to be producing pre-cut papers for the English Paper Piecing market here in Canada. A group of three friends and I did Willyne Hammerstein’s La Passacaglia quilt starting several years ago, and ordered our books and supplies from the States. We all expressed the same shock at the price because of the difference in the Canadian vs the American dollar, and mostly because of the shipping costs. The shipping doubled the cost of the supplies. But we had to swallow it because there was no alternative. So, after much thought and prayer and research, we have decided to become the Canadian supplier for those papers. No more exchange rate costs and much cheaper shipping. It is likely going to be a month or two more before we are ready. The corel draw software needed to use the cutter, shown here in its home in the quilting studio, takes a bit of learning, but it’s coming. The goal is to eventually become the Canadian one stop internet based shop for all hand piecing, English Paper piecing and appliqué supplies. It’s very exciting, and very scary at the same time. But the best part about it is that it isn’t solely based on me. The whole family is in on this one, for learning the machine, and eventually picking orders and doing the shipping. I’m sure I’ll be talking about it lots more in the coming months.
Doing this has caused me to re-evaluate some other things I’ve been doing for a while, and revisit what I can and cannot do. I am definitely going to continue with lots of hand stitching, and participate with the Slow Sunday Stitching link ups . I’m continuing with the long arm quilting, both my own and other peoples’. I will hopefully be producing more of my own designs for sale, but that’s on a back burner as I learn the new software for the cutter. I will be reducing making quilts from other people’s patterns. I don’t think I’m going to keep track of stash this year. It seems to be one thing that I can safely leave off my “think about” list. One thing I would definitely like to do is produce a series of patterns specifically for the EPPing technique. I’ve noticed lately in my browsing through the Electric Quilt software that there are a lot of gorgeous complex designs that would be really difficult to do by machine. They have lots of odd angles, odd shapes and lots of pieces. They would be perfect for EPPing. They are totally different from anything I’ve seen out there right now. They should be showing up in my Slow Sunday stitching Reports as I test them out.
Well, that’s our hugely momentous news. I will post more as I know more. It is going to be a fun ride!

Sunday Stash and Stitching

I’m making progress on my tenth out of twelve My Tweets blocks. I finished up all the stitching on the pieces that were already prepped and on the background.
So it was time today to make some leaves.  still have to finish stitching the birds’ heads, but I can’t do that until I get their beaks and top knots done. I haven’t decided whether I’ll go ahead and make up all the rest of the components, or if I’ll stitch down what I have, and then do more.
We took some time on Friday to put up the family Christmas tree. Our little grand daughter Abrielle was kinda fascinated with what was going on, but really she was quite good about not getting into it too much. I’m not sure if that has remained the case in the days since, though. She’s really a very good little thing. She already knows the meaning of “don’t touch”. And that’s a really good thing, since she’s up and walking all over the place, even though she isn’t even 11 months old yet.
The stash numbers moved a little bit. I donated a couple of yards to the comfort quilts we are doing for guild members who experience loss or bereavement.

Used this week:                                      2 yards
Used this year:                                  83.8 yards
Added this week:                                  0 yards
Added this year:                             77.45 yards
Net stash busted:                               6.35 yards

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and Judy’s Stash Report. And then, I think I’ve decided that, since everything is out and ready for shape preparation, I’ll keep on going.

Sunday Stash and Stitching

I haven’t got any real progress to show, since the actual stitches aren’t that visible. But, the birds have their tails all finished and the bird on the left has its wing all finished, too. So there has been considerable progress made on this block today.
Another Sunday worth of stitching should take it to needing more pieces prepared. I really can’t say that I’m looking forward to doing all those circles. And then there are the top knots on their heads to do before I can finish stitching down their bodies. And little tiny triangles of beaks. It is more than official..... I’m insane.......
We a sewing day for the guild yesterday, from 9am to 8pm. I didn’t arrive until 10, but stayed until the very end. There was quite a lot accomplished, which added some numbers to my stash busted column.

Used this week:                                    2.5 yards
Used this year:                                   81.8 yards
Added this week:                                    0 yards
Added this year:                              77.45 yards
Net stash busted:                               4.35 yards

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

Slow Sunday Stitching....

Well, not so much stitching as preparing for stitching. I put My Tweets up on the wall to get an idea of the colour balance, and what I should use for the tails in the next block.
I noticed that I have a lot of pink tails and purple tails, and also a couple done in shades of yellows and oranges. So, what I’ve chosen for the next one is shades of reds, with just a touch of blue and purple added in.

This is blocks number 10. I spent most of the afternoon cutting pieces and prepping them using the liquid starch and non meltable mylar method. There’s enough here now, that I can get a start on the stitching. I’ve found that I like doing the birds first, before adding in the flowers.
I’m going to link this up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching. After that, it just might be time to tidy up from all the cutting I’ve done, have something to eat, and then actually do some stitching.