Monday, October 20, 2025

A Finish Finally

 The Little Owl quilt is a finish!

Pulling off the cover of  big Bernie was the answer,

and I had a wonderful evening stitching up lots of pink.


The quilting ran along the straight horizontal strips,

and finished up with a rough outline of the Little Owls themselves.


Notice how nice and poufy it is?

I used a bit of my remaining high off poly batting

to make it soft and comfy.

The back also used up a majority of the leftover pink flannel strips .

Added to the nobly wide white strips I was gifted,

the flannel strips and minky bits made it a really cozy back.


A few of the leftover strips even made it into the binding!



This little quilt is nothing but pink.

There was one Little Orphan owl who really needed a place to be.




It would have taken me a while to find another project to add him to,

so he found a place on the back.





It will be a nice surprise for the future owner of this quilt,

 to flip it over and find yet another owl.



Big Bernie is also performing well after the trip to the shop.

So far the push button needle threader has performed

eight out of 11 successful trips to the needle,! Yay!

Stay safe and sew on!

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Put Your Foot Down 










Friday, October 17, 2025

A Buddy Retreat , More Tops!

 The sewing group I joined when I first moved

to northern Alberta no longer meets but

we still manage a retreat each year. 

I took along the second hopscotch box

to work on.  There were about 1/3 of

blocks made up so I had a pleasant afternoon

stitching away on twosies to get it underway.


Then, I arrived at the edges. 

The original pattern shows a confetti like 

border but I wanted the blocks to flow 

into the border and appear to be floating. 


That meant the blocks touching the edge 

have to have the border fabric added. 

There were three choices for the border fabric. 

 Once again the winner was the one with

enough quantity!  It was going to be tight

but the math didn't lie. 

The winner was sliced up,
 

and all the edge blocks were modified to
 
flow into the border. 










Only a few snuck by without their border
partners, but they were soon altered. 



Tada!  Here it is in all its wonder. 

I am not sure if the center really floats but the 

thought was nice. 


The border fabric was the perfect amount!

Just a few scraps remaining!


Now I have 2 hopscotch tops to quilt! 






Onward to the pinning table!  I have more pins!

Stay safe and sew on!

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Mountain Rest Stop

 I took a small hiatus and hung out in the 

beautiful Alberta Rockies for the weekend.


My YS (youngest son) and his darling wife ran in the

 grizzly paw Mountain Trail Marathon.


1800 runners over 2 days at the 

Canmore Nordic center. 

We enjoyed fantastic weather, 

lots of camaraderie and the kids both 

finished well in their classes.

The Young Buck of the family actually 

ran all five legs of the marathon and finished 8th in his class,

so overachievement all the way around!

We managed to get it all four seasons in one weekend.

Saturday morning was cool and fall like.

Later in the morning it was still cool 

but beautiful like a spring morning.

Early afternoon was bright and sunny,

without too much heat for the runners,

The evening began to cool off 

with a tiny spit of rain by dinner time.

A perfect day for running through the woods.

The next day we awoke to.... Snow!




We walked thru the beautiful town of Canmore 

and had a delightful lunch at a café. 

Truly a wonderful vacation.

Now on to the stitching!

The cover is coming off and 

I'm going to start working

on decreasing my personal backlog.

First up will be that adorable little owl quilt.



Horizontal stitches across the quilt,

will run up to each of the owls.

The owls will be outlined and 

maybe accented with one line of echo quilting.

A nice complimentary binding and it should be done!

Happy Stitching!




Monday, October 6, 2025

Owl Quilt is a Hoot!

A little owl quilt is turning out to be quite a hoot!



The strips of flannel were given to me in a bag of scraps

from one of the guild's charity groups. 

 


There was a wealth of blue and pink flannel scraps.

The little owls were part of a grab bag at a quilting garage sale.

 The mention of a quilt needed for a new cousin

by one of my DILs, made my brain

jump into action and the cuteness of the 

little owl print squares did the rest!


It came together right on the design wall,

with no written plan, so the spacing of the owls

is very random. 




It turned out well and now

the same is happening with the back.

A white strip of donated knobbly minky,




combined with leftover strips,



then widened with some leftover yardage,


and some more pink flannel strips,



are going together to make a nice pieced backing.

This top may or may not end up with batting

as the weight of the flannel and the minky 

could make it cuddly enough without a batt.

That will be decided at the pinning stage.

~~pin, pin, pin~~

This little quilt definitely needs a batting.

The different weights of the minky and the flannel

will be evened out by a batting.

Oh the pinning was fun!


We'll see the finished quilt in a few weeks!


It was definitely a hoot!


Linking up with:

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musings

SrSPS

Handmade Monday

Sew & Tell

To Do Tuesday

Oh Scrap



Monday, September 29, 2025

A Border Too Wide

The last retreat did not produce a border for

the many strings quilt,

but it did  inspire a new quilt using the borders that were too wide .

Pinned up on the design wall it looked like this.



I had great plans to use the sew along 

leftover gold 2" strips

as sashing for this quilt,

but they weren't really making the colours pop.

So I started auditioning colours.

Just like Goldilocks,

the black was too dark

there's not enough of this green,



a bit too bright,


a lot too dark,



it's so hard to decide!


Finally, I found just the right one.

Some time was spent repairing the edges.

I'd forgotten to do the stay stitching and with 

the curing time it spent in the closet,

there were quite a few stitches that had come
 
undone just enough to require repair.

So what did I choose?

Green! (I found more)




Now I have another flimsy to pin!

I'll have to find some more pins!

Stay Safe and Sew On!

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Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Diamonds In the Rough

My year of making string quilts started out

with these lovely color family isosceles triangles.

The blocks are coming along nicely.


Smaller amounts of lovely greens and purples,




and yellow, blues and oranges.


Surprisingly, a large amount of browns, 


and the same amount of beige/white units!


Red seems to be the big winner!


They will end up in a few different tops.


It is possible that one will be completely blue,

with maybe a hint of yellow or green thrown into spice it up.

Maybe even black, which always makes the colors pop.

Blue is my largest scrap color 

so there are a lot more scraps to be sewn up. 

There weren't any gray strips lining up

to go into the triangle blocks.

The gray drawer in my storage bin,

has an abundance of strips so I may revise that,

 in order to add gray to one of the colors 

that's a little short on blocks.

That was my initial plan but a 

color wash top would be fun too!

The color piles were moved in to storage bins in 

the workroom to present a bit tidier look for zoom meetings . 

The tidy lightens up the mood too!



Stay Safe and Sew on

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