Thursday, March 30, 2017

Quilt show and another small finish

This weekend there's a quilt show just north of Toronto in Newmarket.

Region of York Quilters Guild presents
Celebration of Colour Quilt Show
April 1 from 10 - 5:00 
April 2 from 10 - 4:00,  2017
Newmarket Community Centre
200 Doug Duncan Drive
Newmarket, Ontario


I am planning on going and being there as soon as they open. Hopefully, I'll have some photos to show.

I did manage a small finish today.


It's just the top but it seemed to take forever. We had a bit of snow fall this afternoon and it changed to wet snow. I thought I'd take a photo on the deck.  Tomorrow it's supposed to rain.

I always seem to debate the fabrics I want to use. This time I was hoping for a stormy feel to go with the lightning streak. Gray skies, wind and stormy seas. This is the March mini quilt.

Just a bit more free fabric. One of our guild members passed away a couple of years ago and there was a lot of fabric being given away to whoever showed up tonight at the guild meeting (stormy wet snow fell almost the whole evening.) Another member and myself were in charge of the coffee and tea tonight. Luckily, I got a lift home.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Finished, complete, done

I have been sewing or knitting whenever I had the time.

This is the quilt that Marg has been working on. I sewed the binding on and she will finish the hand stitching. Then, she wants to give it to her daughter who has MS and is wheelchair bound.

This is the one I quilted. 

I had some yarn that needed to be used up and so, I made a little hat.

Then, I made another.

And yet, another. I brought in some forsythia branches to brighten up my kitchen and they seemed like the perfect place to display the hats. My granddaughters were delighted.

And today, this...

became this. Another finish. It's part of the 2017 BOM called Sun, Sand and Sea by Sew Incredibly Crazy.

There are still a couple of things to finish up but I'm glad that these are now complete.

About a week ago the little girls planted some seeds. It didn't take long at all to see some green. Once they get a bit bigger, I will transplant then into bigger pots.

I'm going to link up with The Needle and Thread Network.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Busy

I am working on several things at once. I don't know how I got into this other than different things kept grabbing my attention.


I do have some binding to attach to the quilts that Marg and I have been working on. I'll post a picture once I get them sewn on.

On Thursday I added to the Red Herring pile.

I need to add some fusible applique to this. I'll show it to you once it's done - probably tomorrow.

Sew She Can has a mini quilt along where you get patterns once a month for a little mini. This one is for January.

This one is for February and I'm still working on March. Obviously, these need to be quilted and since they are so small, I will be quilting them on the machine using my walking foot.

I need to make some dinner for two little girls who are here for a sleepover.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Moving on to something new

Just before the first day of Spring, I bought some tulips for myself. They came in handy because I don't have to search for a different header photo or ask one of my family members if they have something suitable. The snow has gone but there aren't any bulbs coming up in my garden so these tulips were really nice.

I still have the quilt on the frame to complete but I really, really wanted to sew on the sewing machine. I wanted to start a new quilt and having attended the York Heritage Quilt Guild meeting last night gave me some inspiration. I came home and searched for patterns that I wanted to work on. Something not too detailed or strenuous. Since I have a lot of red fabrics already sorted, and since Quilts at the Creek is featuring red and white quilts this year in honour of Canada's 150th birthday, and also, since I don't normally work in red, I decided to make a red and white quilt. Here's what I came up with.

This is the beginning of a herringbone quilt. The inspiration came from Christa's free pattern. I get stingy with my white cotton fabric and I found a piece that I could use up. I'm sure I could have made the white scrappy if I needed more white but I wanted to use up this one particular piece. I could have cut 6" squares but I didn't. I decided to see exactly how I could best use up the piece and found that there would be very little waste or leftover if I bumped up the squares to 7" and that's what I did. There were just slivers of the fabric left from cutting the edge so I could have a straight cut. I managed to get 45 squares so we'll see how big this quilt gets. 
I've already got a name for the quilt too - Red Herring.

I'm linking up with The Needle and Thread Network and also with

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Using up stash fat quarters

At the moment we have three grandchildren who live close by and we get to see them fairly regularly. My husband loves to do various activities with them like making instant chocolate pudding. We now have finger paints and paper. The little ones have always had to wear one of my aprons but they are way too big on two year olds. So, my husband requested child-sized aprons.

I made two of these little fat quarter aprons for the twins' birthday last fall. I got half a metre of the chili fabric on sale and when I cut it, because it was a half metre and not a half yard, I had enough fabric for the neck strap. The ties were made from broadcloth that I had and the bias was in my stash too.

There is one pocket in the middle made from the quarter circles that I cut for the arm sections. This pocket is doubled and then the curved part is flipped down. These aprons reside at the twins' home and I needed to make some more. 

I used the same pattern and once again, I only used a single fat quarter for each apron so that they aren't reversible. The pattern and tutorial are here.

I did wonder at first what fabrics I was going to use for the aprons but then I remembered that I had quite a few fat quarters that I wasn't too keen on using in quilts. I decided to use double fold bias binding for the ties and the neck portion. I have quite a few packages of bias binding to use up so everything came from my stash and I didn't have to buy anything for these little aprons.

Hard to see, but there are two pockets in the front. Once again, I used the quarter circle parts that get cut off the fat quarter for the arm portion. This time I folded the rounded part to the reverse of the fabric and just sewed it down so these pockets are triangles.

The colours are not true in this photo but they are close. It was fun to go through my buckets of bias binding to find the ones I wanted to use.

I didn't have enough of the navy blue bias binding to finish off the pockets but, since there was red in the fabric, I used my red bias.

I must say that these were fun to make. While I did fold up the selvage on the hem of one of the aprons, I decided to leave the other two 'as is.' Mainly because the selvages didn't have any writing on them.

I got to use up all my navy blue bias binding and all of this turquoise one too.

Here they are all together. I have no scraps left. All of the fat quarter got used up and I'm now off to do something else - like hand quilting.

This is the other end of the quilt that's on the frame.

Once these two blocks have been quilted as far as I can reach, I can take a couple of turns. I really think I should concentrate on this so I can get it off the frame and put something else on.
It's cold out and I'm staying in to put some stitches in this.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Just a little finish

I needed to get a better photo of the mystery quilt that I completed and so I got my husband to hold it up.

 It was a bit windy and quite cold out but I did manage.

Spring will be here soon. Unfortunately, the weather people are predicting a snow storm for us in the next day or so.

Bob the Snowman has been hanging up in the hall since the first snowfall of the season and I felt it was time for a change - even if the snow is not finished.

My friend Judy gave me this pattern as a gift a while ago. I was itching to make something new for the hall wall so last week I worked on this pattern.

Since I want the grandchildren to enjoy the wall hangings, I simplified it a bit and just used the word spring. Fusible applique and machine quilting is not fast. This took me a few days to do but it's finished now and hanging in place of Bob the Snowman. 

Here's another shot of the new finish. I labelled it on the hanging sleeve. It saved me some time. Little Teemu likes the ladybug and the bunny.

I've got some knitting to finish and some other sewing to get done next - and maybe even some shovelling.

I'm linking up with The Needle and Thread Network. Pop on over to see what others are up to.