Beach Cottage quilt finished

 As well as working for the past week on the quilt
Summer Rental, I've been doing the quilting on
Beach Cottage. It is now finished, and bound, and can
 be added to my list of finishes for the year. WOOHOO!! I have been studying this tutorial for doing an overall feather meander for quite a while, and decided that this was the quilt to try it on. I am so pleased with the results. I absolutely love the effect, especially when combined with these fabrics. They seem to fit each other perfectly.

This is one of the fabrics that I bought earlier this year, intended as quilt backing. I didn't have a specific quilt in mind for it, but it fits this one. I love the way the feathers show up so well on the backing. And now, I'm off to get something to eat, and go back and do some more on Summer Rental.

Time for a tea break............

Time for a break, and a progress report. The quilt Summer Rental, (I have no idea why the author named it that), by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company, is coming along quite nicely, and I'm really happy with the way it is looking. I almost always start working from the centre of a quilt and work outwards, when beginning  a new quilt, and assemble enough of the elements to be able to see what it looks like. I'm too impatient to to all the block elements first, and the sew them into blocks. I like working a few blocks at a time. So, I cut a bit, sew a bit, press a bit, and repeat. The exception this time was all the star points in this quilt, which is what all those triangles off to the side are. Considering this was only started this past week, not bad, not bad at all. I'm hoping to have this to at least a finished top stage before I go back to work on the 12th. Unless I come up with a sudden inspiration on how to quilt this, (any suggestions gratefully received, by the way), I don't imagine it will get quilted before then. And now, tea break is over, and I'm going back upstairs to sew.

Design Wall Monday Oct. 31

 I must confess to totally enjoying this time off work. I have managed to get soooooooooo much done, both finishing a couple of older projects, and starting a couple of new. Beach Cottage, from the book Scrap Basket Sensations is now a flimsy. It is actually off the "design line" and onto the longarm for quilting. I'm going to try a free hand meandering feather on it.  On my actual wall are a couple of things. The crumb quilt for the Crumb along is almost done. I need to finish off a few more letters, and then some squares for the last side.

Then, I succumbed to the temptation to start a new quilt. It's a pattern I've had for quite some time, called Summer Rental by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company. I'm using the fat quarter bundle of Etchings to make it. I've just started to get into using fabric lines when doing quilts. Beach Cottage was the first time I'd ever used a complete fabric line, in a jelly roll. This is the second time I've done this. So far, I'm happy with the results. These are some of the alternate chain blocks for the quilt. I'm hoping to get started on some of the star blocks today. It's looking rather Christmassy right now, but it won't stay that way. I go back to work on the 12th of November, and would like to see if I can get this one done before then.

I'm linking this post up to the Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times where there are lots more sights to see.

Stash Report October 30

Well, my purchase numbers went way up this week. That bolt of white that I ordered arrived. Fifteen yards at one swipe. Yikes. Good thing I'm not doing this in order to reduce stash, but just for curiosity, or I'd really be mad at myself right now. I've been doing a fair amount of sewing this past week, and also had a couple of finishes. One completely quilted and bound, and another to flimsy stage (pics tomorrow). I've picked out a fabric for backing, and am going to try and get that done this afternoon, but it will show up in next weeks numbers.

Used this week:                                                5.6 yards
Used this year:                                             119.7 yards
Purchased this week:                                      20.5 yards
Purchased this year:                                      156.5 yards
Balance:                                                                 36.8 more yards in than out.

There is more fabric coming this week, as well. I found a perfect fabric for the backing for Sweet Treats and couldn't resist. And that's it for today. Time to go make that backing. I'm linking up to Patchwork Times for the weely stash report.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival

 There is a festival of quilts happening over at Amy's Creative Side I've spent some time over there this afternoon, and there is a LOT to see. I've decided to jump in, and add one of my own. When I was over there grabbing the link, there were a whopping 271 entries, so far. That is a lot of quilts!!! We can go to a quilt show, and never leave the house. And, with the wonderful Pinterest boards, there is a great way to save the favourites of them all.

So, to my entry: it's a quilt I did 3 or 4 years ago, before I started blogging, called New England Beauty. It is from a book by Judy Martin called The Block Book. I actually received this book as a Christmas present from my parents shortly after the book came out in 1998. I fell in love with this pattern as soon as I saw it in the book, but had to wait a large number of years before my skills were up to it. I've mentioned before that I love Judy Martin's patterns. They are well written and easy to follow. I particularly love patterns that create secondary designs, and this one definitely does that. The individual blocks disappear into the overall effect of the quilt. I'd had my longarm for a few years by the time I did this quilt, and so was confident enough to be able to do some custom quilting on it.

There are feathers in the backgrounds of the eight pointed stars, as well as feathers in the points of the 4 pointed stars. This is one of my favourite quilts, and it has place of honour on my bed. If you get a chance, go over and browse through some of those quilts, but be prepared to get caught up in all those quilts, and lose track of time. I think I'll try to portion them out to something like 20 at a time.

There are feathers in the backgrounds of the eight pointed stars, as well as feathers in the points of the 4 pointed stars. This is one of my favourite quilts, and it has place of honour on my bed. If you get a chance, go over and browse through some of those quilts, but be prepared to get caught up in all those quilts, and lose track of time. I think I'll try to portion them out to something like 20 at a time.

Another finish.....

I have another finish!! Yippee, woohoo, hurray!! Finished as in quilted, bound and first wash so that it is in its soft and cuddly self. It's a pattern from Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times site called Connect the Dots.  She offered it as a mystery I'm not sure how long ago, but I must confess to having cheated. I saw a picture of some one's partially finished quilt, and so I had a good idea of what the finished product would be, before I selected my fabrics. I am extremely happy with the way it turned out. It is quilted with a curvy spiral pantograph that I adapted from a border stencil. I like the way the diagonal lines of the quilt are reproduced in the spiral, but the curves soften the angles a bit. I used my favourite binding technique of faux piping, which I first saw demonstrated here It is a nice way to do binding completely by machine, and have it look really good. I had bought a large amount of the blue fabric, and so I was able to use it in the top, binding and backing. It was a purchase from Len's Mills when they had one of their 50% off the lowest ticketed price sales a few years ago. The quilting design is quite visible on the back. I'm linking

this post up to a blog I started following recently, called Crazy Mom Quilts She has a linky party specifically for finishes accomplished during the week. It is actually a good motivator. There is also a linky over at Amylouwho show and tell friday that I'm going to link to as well. It's worth while checking out both of these. I have a couple more that I want to see if I can get finished before next week. It's a great way to establish a goal, and a timeline to work towards. And now, I'm off to go work on one of those quilts.

Design wall Monday Oct 24

I've made some progress on the Beach Cottage quilt, using the Charlevoix jelly roll I had in my stash. I have the first 4 rows sewn together. And the bonus triangle units are all sewn together into a partial pieced border, to go on opposite corners of the quilt. I am thinking, at this point, that I will do up the same number of four patches per side, as the triangle units, to go on the other corners, to balance it off. I'm not sure what I'll do to make up the distance left between the four patches and the triangles. I think there will be another green border, and then I have a whole pile of 2 1/2 inch squares left from the jelly roll to make another pieced border. At that point, it will measure somewhere around 63 x 75. Does that classify as a twin sized quilt? Hmmmmmmm..........  
I'm linking up to Judy's Patchwork Times for her design wall monday linky party, where there is always lots to see.