A mystery, for sure!

I've been working on a Monthly Mystery BOM through one of the guilds I belong to. The last couple of days I thought it would be nice to get caught up before our meeting on Monday.

I've worked on many mystery quilts over the years. My philosophy is to enjoy the process and hope for the best in the end. I do expect clear and concise directions, though! This one has been a bit of a challenge.

Here's a picture of what is sewn so far...

 I'm using some fairly contemporary fabrics which are fun and a bit out of my norm. I am doing the twin size and to give you an idea of the trouble I'm having I'll tell you about the four-patches. The instructions said to have 12" of background, so I bought a half yard. Then we get to last month and were told to cut thirteen 2" strips.....huh???? Even my half yard wouldn't be enough....so I decided to just carry on and do what I could and hope it turns out in the end.

I was able to get 8 strips out of my background. In the next month, we were told to have 68 fourpatches made up. Well, that only required 6.5 of my strips....I'm glad I hadn't had enough to cut the 13 strips we were told to cut in the previous directions, they would have been wasted!

This is a Canada-wide mystery quilt. I hope others are doing better than I am at understanding the instructions. Maybe I'm just reading the pattern wrong? Anyone out there having the same problems, or is it just me???

On a side note, my back has given me problems for the last week or so. I thought I felt relief yesterday, but now it feels like my back is breaking in half. Maybe this explains the whiny post today???

Have a great day! I think this should be the last of the awful cold temperatures....at least, that's my hope! Hopefully, my snowbird friend is having a nice warm winter in her neck of the woods (although I'm quite envious). 

A UFO no longer....

I have finished my Raise the Barn Roof High and I like it!

I really enjoyed the whole process of this quilt. The pattern was well written, it went together quickly. I really followed Victoria's colours closely, but next time I will try something different and maybe a larger size. This has come to measure 36x36...a perfect lap-size for my early morning applique/coffee time!

I also thoroughly enjoyed the hand-quilting of this....I used wool batting, the fabrics were super soft. I wanted to quilt it similar to Victoria's, also, and thought it would be awkward on the longarm. It's quilted in a spiral design from the centre out. I started in the middle with a spiral template I have....that took care of the middle 12" or so of the quilt. I thought it would be nice to try quilting the rest by just eyeballing as I went....not striving for perfect spacing, but close enough! Well....it soon became apparent that this wasn't going to be the best plan, so for the rest of the quilt I used my Clover White marking pen and sketched it out as I went along.
It was a very relaxing process and I'm happy with the outcome. It probably won't win any awards at the Fair but it pleases me!

I also followed Victoria's tutorial on "facing" a quilt. The instructions were awesome and I would recommend trying this.Here's a picture of my work this morning...

This will be a method of finishing a quilt that I will definitely do again. The pattern, the tutorial and Victoria's blog can be found HERE at The Silly BooDilly.

Something else I recommend.....when you've done a quilt, let the designer know how you enjoyed his/her pattern or technique. I've done this a couple of times, and have always found the designers to be interested in how people have put their spin on their creations. Although, in the case of this quilt, I really followed the colours/quilting design quite closely!

Have a great day!

More flowers for the "garden"

Here are my latest blocks for my "Flower Garden" quilt...

These blocks are so nice to stitch, I'm really enjoying them. A few of my friends are also doing this quilt...one in Fassett fabrics as I am, one in batiks and the other in William Morris fabrics. All quite different, and all quite beautiful!

It's nice to work on these blocks and dream of Spring, which will be around the corner....won't it????? lol.....today is another record-breaking low temperature.

Have a great day, and keep warm!

Dracula

On Saturday we took my grandson to the Binbrook Little Theatre to see Dracula-the Panto. I love that we can give him an experience outside of the norm of video games. This is our second time taking him to such a production and he loved it! He's the perfect age for this.

Before last year I didn't really know what this type of "pantomime" was, evidently they are quite the thing in the UK. The audience is encouraged to interact with the entertainment....for example, whenever Dracula came on stage, we would all boo him, and he would face the audience and shout back at us....the kids loved it!

Also, it is traditional in panto's to have a lot of gender switching...the character, Jack, was played by girl around 11 years old. The chefs, Steak and Kidney, were teenage girls playing the part of the male characters. The character that got some of the most reaction was the mother figure, Rosie Glow. Here is a picture I got afterwards with her/him....

And, here I am with Dracula...

...played by a talented young woman! A good time was had by all!

This week I quilted up a beautiful baby girl quilt. I love the fabric and colour choices and will try something like this in the future when the need arises...

Now, to get up and about and decide whether it will be an Ikea day or not....the scene out my window just makes me want to disappear into my sewing room for the day!

Have a great day!

Dreaming of palm trees...

Oh, how nice it would be to be lounging on the deck of a pool in Cuba looking up at the palm trees.....maybe next year!

The topic up for discussion these past few days is, of course, the cold temperatures. Here's my answer to how cold it has been....as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words....

This is the red wine we have had aging in the garage for use at our wedding in the summer....frozen solid and most of the corks popped.....as well as 36 bottles of white in the same condition! We have never had a problem storing our wine in the garage. Needless to say, we'll be finding a new spot to store the bottles! I don't know if the wine is ruined, but I'll be heading out today to re-cork.

It's been quite a week, with no time at all to post on my blog. It started out with a squeezed-in, kinda secret-for-now, custom job. By the end of the four days it took to complete the quilt my "feathers and pebbles" were getting a bit wobbly....my eyes had had about enough! It did turn out nice and my friend was quite happy with her quilt. Here's a pic of a feather near the end of the four days...

As soon as the quilt was done, we had to put it into high gear to prepare for a houseguest from Alberta. We had a great weekend, buying too much wine at some of our favourite Niagara wineries and having a huge lunch at the Mandarin on Sunday. Thirteen of us were able to attend the Mandarin, and it was wonderful!

At the same time as all this was going on in the past week, my father has been in failing health. I won't go into this too much, but I have to admit that none of us thought he would be with us by then end of the week. I think it was on Friday that they took him off IV and medications and were prepared to make him "comfortable" til the end. Well, we went up to the Kitchener hospital where he is yesterday.....and didn't he look 4x's better than when I saw him on Thursday! He will go through some tests to see if his "numbers" have improved. We are astonished at the difference. It was a bit sad though, he seems a bit farther gone this past week into his Alzheimer's....he was quite confused on why my mom hadn't made it up to see him yet, and she's been gone for a few years now :(

Yes, a stressful week...some of it good stress, some of it not so much.  Sunday morning we thought the water pump had quit....in reality, it was just that we had no hot water in the kitchen....such a mystery. All we can think is that a pipe froze, even though it's not against a wall and has never happened before. There's more, but I just want to put it all behind me and start fresh this week! What a lot of "stuff" squeezed into a short time!

Through it all I have managed to poke away at some handwork most mornings, as per my regular morning routine. One project that I've mentioned here before is my Raise the Barn Roof High.

Two more mornings should see the quilting complete on this quilt and now I'm thinking that instead of doing a traditional binding, I will try to follow the tutorial on Victoria Gertenbach's blog on "facing" a quilt. This quilt is her pattern and I think it would be a good opportunity to try using her tutorial to complete the quilt. It might work best on a flatter piece, this one is puffy with the wool batting, but it will be nice to try something new. You can have a look at her tutorial HERE on her blog, The Silly BooDilly.

Although I'm so close to finishing this quilt, I spent my morning coffee-time working on a couple of my circles. After such a hectic week, I wish I could just stay cuddled up in my pj's and work on my applique!

I may be down to the final 10 of the 72 circles needed for this quilt. I'll have to book this one in to the line-up as I would love to have it quilted up in time for the fair in the fall.

Have a great day and keep warm!

Is it Spring yet?????

What a busy time around here lately! Lots of custom quilting going on....I've barely had time for anything else. I'm not complaining, mind you....I'll just be ready for some "edge-to-edge" quilting next week!

I recently finished quilting a beautiful applique quilt which was made up of provincial flowers. There was a challenge since the client wanted maple leafs quilted in the fabric that was between the blocks. They turned out pretty good...although a couple of them could be mistaken for holly, perhaps. Here's a pic of one of the blocks (I'm not going to post a picture of the whole quilt, yet, since she hasn't got her quilt back yet)...

Another important custom quilt is on the go now. I'll just show you a teaser picture, all will be revealed at a later time, for reasons I'm not able to divulge at the moment.......sorry :(

On a food note....Last evening we had a lovely roast chicken dinner. For a side dish, I threw carrots, parsnips and turnips into the ActiFry. I seasoned them with Old Bay.

Near the end of the cooking time I  put in a dollop of butter. What a great dish of roast vegetables, we'll definitely be doing this again. Every piece was perfectly done, not like when you do it in the oven and some pieces could be overly crispy, etc., and no having to turn the veggies since the machine does it for you. Am I a fan of the ActiFry....you bet! Later this week we'll be making Tandoori Chicken, another awesome dish done in the "hairdryer".

On top of being busy with quilting this past week or so, we are also having a bit of a scare with my dad's health, so if everyone could send a little prayer his way I'm sure he'd appreciate it. To throw more into the mix, we are expecting company from Alberta this week. I'd like to say "it never rains, but it pours", but looking out my front window as I'm typing this, surely there must be an appropriate phrase with all that white stuff going on out there???? I just came in from shoveling and I have to admit, I had a little dream of Cuba in my head.

Have a great day!

Winter wonderland

It looks like an old-fashioned winter out there and there's actually more coming down as I look out the window.

I've never minded shovelling, but I think I'm at the point where I can see myself operating a snow-blower. My muscles are screaming at me this morning...so maybe I should listen....or start getting into better shape to better handle the snow??? lol

Part of my snow-day on Monday was working intently on a custom quilt. That takes a bit of a toll on the muscles, also...so today I was hoping for a visit from the so-called quilt police and they would tell me to stay in my comfy chair and continue with some hand-quilting for the remainder of the day! No such luck, but I did have a nice hour working on my Raise the Barn Roof High. I'm just kinda free-handing the quilting design...not sure how it will look, but I'm enjoying it!

I had plans for this small quilt to be a wall-hanging. I'm changing my mind, though. I am using luscious wool batting, which is heaven to quilt, but it doesn't actually make for a nice flat wall-hanging. It's quite puffy, and lovely to snuggle under. I was going to put a muslin backing on it since it was going to be hanging on a wall and no one would see the back, but then decided that this piece of fabric was perfect for this quilt....

Love it! So now that it has a pretty back, and is too puffy to hang, this will become a nice little lap quilt....just the right size for my morning applique/coffee time! Sometimes people (aka significant others) will ask "who's that quilt for?". I find that most of my quilts aren't meant for anyone in particular but by the end of the process, the quilt has dictated exactly what it's purpose is!

On another quilty note....is there a need for yet another quilting project in my life....no!!!....but this little block on my design wall is speaking quite loudly to me!

I'll let you know if I decide to listen in a future post....have to get at my day, for now!

Have a great day!