Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Retreat Success!

 Well, after a whirlwind holiday, I am back. 

Fatigued and tired but ready to jump back into my quilting.

The beautiful Bahamas were a wonder to behold.

It is a must on my future bucket 

 list of a place to revisit.

We stayed at a beautiful rental property on 

Grand Exuma. The top of the list for 

crazy things we did is:

swim with pigs


and visit an island inhabited only by hundreds of iguana.


The clearest water I've ever seen and also the 

cleanest pigs!


We had a 10-hour delay returning 

to the country but now that 

we're back in Canada it's time to face the music.

 Do housework, get into quilting and

shop for my own groceries.

Living this the life of a spoiled tourist 

is fun but not realistic!

Upon return, I was scheduled to go to a weekend quilting retreat.

I managed to make it but was a bit fatigued.

 I did have to excuse myself for an afternoon nap or two.

All my quilting goods were packed before I left 

so I trusted my planning and just loaded the car.

 Here is what I  worked on .

Since I was tired from travelling,

 I chose something simple for the first night.

I made binding for five Irish chain quilts . The tops are 

almost ready and most of the backings are already chosen!  


Now they need to be pinned and quilted up.

It was a very good night's work.

The next morning, after consulting my retreat notebook, 

I jumped right in to finishing a years old project.

Once again I discovered why I have UFOs. 

This poor project had a few errors

The first was my use of fusible web to put

 a bunch of small squares together. 

The original pattern from Quiltmaker March 2014

called for 1 1/2"  squares.

 Way too small for my clumsy quilting

 at the time, so I used 2" squares. 



This required a bit of adjustment for the sewing.

Since this project was done over a time (years)

by the time I got to the final blocks,

I had forgotten that  each row should end with a white square.

The large center squares were fine but the

smaller alternate blocks needed fixing. 

Then I assembled the top and realized 

the outside corner squares had 

interfacing showing through also, so more fixing there. 



Now all it needs is an interesting border treatment.

The top already measures 84" square. 

I usually work between 84" and 88".

 The border for this quilt needs to be very narrow so 

 I will put either a 1" zinger  or use  2" cut 

square on point all the way around.

Here is a picture of it so far. 

As I am not a fine machine quilter and 

this will have a lot of seams, 

this will be professionally

 quilted at one of my local quilt shops.

There are still  four quilting credits on my punch card 

 so this will be one of the four to use up that card.


Here is a picture of the water bird that 

visited daily while we were on vacation. 


He was just looking for a sip of less salty water. 

Stay safe and sew on!

Linking up with :

Design Wall Monday

To Do Tuesday

Monday Musings 

Wed Wait Loss

Midweek Makers

Needle & Thread Thursday

Put Your Foot Down

Free Motion Mavericks

RSC 2024

Oh Scrap

Finished or Not Friday

Off the Wall Friday

Patchwork & Quilts

Bolt to Beauty





Monday, September 16, 2024

Everywhere Inspiration

 Still on vacation but there are design ideas everywhere!

No change in stash report but lots of fun is happening.

The heat doesn't seem to slow down my cerebellum so ...

here we go!

First up the beautiful colors of the world around me. 



The depth of the water changes the intensity of the 

blue. From deep dark indigo to  the almost milky 

pale green we often see by our Canadian glaciers.



It is no wonder people of the southern hemisphere

delight in vibrant colors!

The patterns in building material are always

fuel for design ideas. 

Tiles,


grates,


windows


  and even non slip flooring, 


make me think of Chinese coins,

scrap busting tops and black bordered glass window blocks.

Having exhausted my current environment, I went to relax

and rethink and found some old familiar patterns on 

a textured quartet of wall prints.

Leaves,

webs,


and my current favorite , zig zags!

 
I think a few of these

will definitely be showing up on 

my next quilt tops!

Stay safe and sew on !

Here is a gratuitous food picture.



Quilts from the Early Years

 We all have some quilts from the early days. 

Early days of parenthood, school, adulthood, 

family and home ownership. 

 A lot of our lives have early days.

My early quilts were hidden away but recently,

ok within the last three years, I have pulled 

them out to find them a home or a display place. 

My oldest quilt is my curved log cabin. 

I started this quilt over 27 years ago in a class. 


After spending a goodly sum of money on 

fabric, I started sewing.  Not long after, I put in an 

emergency call for help to the teacher. 

The blocks were turning out way too small. 

The teacher, however, gave me the worst

advice ever.  Sew all the seams a scant 1/8.

Needless to say, my scant 1/8 was very small.

Many of the seams began to pull apart

shortly after assembly. 

I had it professionally quilted with a compact design. 

 It is part of my cozy collection. I only it for 

display and light use on beds (no children jumping).


The making did teach me a lot. I can now sew a more 

even seam and know how to repair 

many different types of mistakes. 


The next  one I wanted to show off is 

this darling little rose quilt. 




It has a crocheted edge around six

appliqued blocks. 



It was such a sweet little item, I had to 

rescue it from the second hand shop.  The yellow

is a very mellow butter colour and one of my favorites. 

The last one for this post is a foreign made quilt.  

This one was purchased when 

I was a newbie quilter and sure I would never

try this pattern. It is a grandmother's fan quilt made in China. 

Zellers sold them for $40. 


The price paid the maker must have been 

very small.  I even found a chop, (this is what I 

gleaned from Western novels I read as a young adult ),

a Chinese name symbol. The actual word for 

a name character is a hanzi. Finding it gave 

me a personal connection to the maker. 

It is machine sewn and hand quilted with bias

binding around the edges echoing the fans borders.  

Even though it was "commercially" produced, 

I do treasure it.  No, I have not yet made a fan quilt

Quilts really do take on meanings of their own. 

Enjoy your quilts.

Stay safe and sew on!




Monday, September 9, 2024

Books , books , books!

 It is holiday week for us so not a lot of stitching is getting done. 

I did have a minute to look at some quilting books!

We all have our favorites for lots of different reasons. 

Here are some of mine!


My BB gifted me this and it has been well loved. 

The spiral binding is nice and the best pages ever are:


The oiling instructions!

The remainder of the book is great too. 

David McCallum really knows his stuff and 

encourages Featherweight owners to be adventurous and 

repair their machines. Fun if you are brave but I am still 

not removing the tension knob!

Next favorite is this goody.  



I must say that this book really inspired me. 

I've made three out of this book and 2 actually

looked like the picture (more or less). 

The cover photo morphs into a completely different 

quilt if you make 150 subunits with the wrong color placement. 

Not sure how I managed but it turned out like this!


Also in this book are curved 9-patches. 

I cannot (will not, don't want to) sew

melon shapes so I waited until the 

Quick Curve ruler came out. 

I have 37 blocks made and still 

am not thrilled with the process. 

See the ruler lurking in the bag?




Then I saw a curved look one on MSQ.  I will 

post a link when I find it. They have so many tutorials. 

Here is a picture of another 'looks like a curved 9 patch'

 quilt I may try.  Always looking for a short cut!


One last thing about these books.

Some came coiled and some I did. 

We found this old relic at a sale years ago.
 


Anyone recognize these?



A box of spines!!

We had fun doing up a few books but it is a process.

You have to trim out the book, keep the pages 

in order and secure the cover. A bit tricky to do.

A business store made me one, and even

their experienced clerk put the holes on the 

wrong edge of the cover!

More about books in another post, 

I could go on and on!

The stash report number stayed the same, 

no completions this week.  

Stay safe and sew on .

Linking up with:

Monday Musing 

Stash Report

Design Wall Monday

Sew & Tell

Wednesday Wait Loss

Midweek Makers 

To do Tuesday

Needle & Thread Thursday

Put Your Foot Down

Free Motion Mavericks

Finished or Not Friday

Off the Wall Friday

Beauty Pageant

Oh Scrap!

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Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Yo Yo Binder!!

 Great fun at a guild picnic including funny names for all. 

I was called Yo Yo Binder for the evening!

 Our guild is 45 years old and still going strong so that's

very affirmative and delightful. We had some technophilic 

members at the helm when the virus hit and the 

zoom meetings and bee groups really kept us all 

going. We all appreciate our guilds don't we!!


Anywho,  this week was productive in finishes 

but not a lot of beginnings.  Two, yes two more 

log cabins were finished up. One was quilted and 

bound and the other just needed the multicolored 

binding to make it complete.

The red one is a honey and there is just something

about a 2 color quilt that warms my color center.



The sun cooperated and provided  

lots of good lighting for lawn pictures.


Quilts always look wonderful with natural items

behind them. 



We even gave the red quilt a test run in yard this weekend while 

enjoying temperatures in the 30s (celcius) with family. 

The second finish up  also turned out very well.

This multicolored quilt got a scrappy binding.

There are possibly more of these in my future

as it is a real scrap buster. 


They are both large twin sized.



Everything came from the stash, so great 

for the numbers!!

Fabric Purchased: 0 m

Used since last report  39 m 

Fabric In to date: 25.5 m

Use to date 2024 : 69 m

Scraps in : 0 m

Scraps out : 0 m

Big Batch donation : 60 m (June) 

Net Fabric in YTD:  -9 m

That is lovely site to see!

Only one more log cabin to complete! 

Backing is in the works for some 

Irish Chains so there may be some

late night pinning!

Have a great week !

Stay safe and sew on!

Linking up with :

Stash Reporting

Monday Design Wall

Wednesday Wait Loss

 Sew & Tell

Monday Musings

To Do Tuesday

Sr. Salon Pit Stop

Midweek Makers

Free Motion Mavericks

Put Your Foot Down

Needle & Thread Thursday

Finished or Not Friday

Gone Stitchin

Design Wall Friday

Stitching Stuff

Show & Tell

Oh Scrap!

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