Happy Easter!

It will be a busy Easter Sunday here today.

For the first time we are hosting an Easter brunch. I'm quite looking forward to it, as it means creating a different sort of meal than usual....thank goodness for Pinterest!

There was not much time to prepare through the week as I had two custom quilts to work on. 

One went fairly quickly and was a lot of fun to work on. It's a baby quilt made by a friend of mine for her first grandchild...due in mid-April. Well, babe had other things on his mind and came early, and thankfully all was well.

The quilt feels very organic and has a lot of movement and energy...love it!

The second quilt was much different and soooo pretty, I love the fabrics! The pattern is MetroScope by Sew Kind of Wonderful...and my friend is calling it Metro Retro!

I tried to remember on this one to take pictures through the quilting process...

The pups have gotten used to their little bed in the studio and are usually keeping me company...

As for my applique....this week I can finally say that the lower border of FlowerGarden is complete! I appliqued the final couple of pieces this morning with my coffee.

Even the teeny circles that I had been dreading that represent the water in the fountain. Not perfect but not bad!

I'd better get in the kitchen and try to get started on my brunch recipes...I'm so looking forward to it, I hope everything works out. There are two recipes I haven't tried before...but my family is familiar with experiments!

Hmmm, now that the FlowerGarden border is complete I think I'll have to spend some time later preparing the next bit of applique. I think it's time I re-visit my Auntie Green's Garden. 

I am tempted to just do a bit of stitching on a couple of Life is Beautiful blocks. 

I'm inspired by Kathy over at Kathy's Quilts. She is working on her Life is Beautiful this week and has even started to assemble a few blocks. Check it out, and you will also be able to see what others are slow stitching on this Easter Sunday. It's funny, even though this weekend may be busy with family get-togethers, we still find a few minutes for our peaceful past-time! 

I'm also linking up with Cynthia over at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework for Oh,Scrap!, since my FlowerGarden is scrappy. 

Have a wonderful day!

Spring!

Today we welcome the day of Spring!.....woohoo! Even though we haven't had much of a Winter, it's still so exciting to realise that we'll see the buds on the trees soon, etc. I've seen three robins this week, so it's official!

I wasn't able to celebrate National Quilting Day yesterday, except for a few extra applique stitches in the afternoon, so that's what I plan for this afternoon....some quality sewing time. 

This morning I sat with my applique on my FlowerGarden quilt and realised that the pile of prepped pieces has finally dwindled down. None too soon, as I've been itching to switch to something else lately.... it's probably time to get back to my AuntieGreen'sGarden!

I've actually started to wonder about the busy-ness of these borders....but after doing these few bits today I'm back on track.

Have a visit with Kathy's Quilts to see what others are stitching on on this first day of Spring!

365 Update

I don't quite know how it happened but I've fallen a bit behind in my 365 Quilt Challenge blocks.

I felt so behind that yesterday I considered letting this project go.... 

.....but then I took a bit of time at the end of my day to do a bit of sewing and realised I still love these little blocks.

I like the little Scottie block, but it took me a few minutes to realise why it didn't look like the instructions. I did figure it out but it'll stay as-is. In the grand scope of this project, little oopsies will just blend in with the crowd!

I only have half of the centre medallion sewn, but that's ok, I'll get to the rest of it when I feel like it...

So, I am glad that I took a bit of time yesterday to do these blocks....it really won't take much to catch up and it's shown me that I do still like this project. 

I'm also a little behind on my Quilty365/Day in my Life. 

Here's a reminder of my quilt so far...

I have to admit that I even wondered lately if I can keep this up for a year. I will though because I still love seeing this quilt grow month to month. I know I will very much like this quilt when it's done.

So I have prepped the blocks I need to get me caught up...

I'll take these to my monthly applique group this afternoon to stitch on....that's if I go. I have a sicko at home today, so I may have to pass on the outing. 

When I picked a fabric for March 14th, I was really hoping to find something to represent "Pi day".... I knew I didn't have any novelty fabric with "pie" on it, but I did think this one was kinda geometric looking...

I liked finding the ladybug fabric also, since they seem to be coming out of hibernation lately!

Seems like it will be another dreary day...hopefully you can sit back and do some stitching, perfect day for it!

Thimble love!

After finishing the piecing of my "Moonlight" quilt lately, I just knew that I had to start the quilting right away. I've been itching to do some hand-quilting for a few weeks now.

I've decided to try big-stitch quilting on this with perle cotton and some lovely needles I bought on Saturday at Quilt Junction in Waterford. Lana suggested them and I have to say they are very nice to work with. They seem quite strong...which is nice since this quilt is quite thick in some areas.

I also love the chance to use my Thimblelady thimble. 

This thimble is fairly new to me and takes a bit of getting used to but so worth it. It involves learning a whole new way to hold your hand while quilting....and you can quilt with it without using a hoop. It was a bit of an investment, but this will probably be my go-to thimble forever.

Maybe you can tell, I get fairly attached to my thimbles! However disorganized I may be, I can be sure to tell you where my four best thimbles are at any given time!

So here is a picture of the beginnings of the quilting of "Moonlight through the trees"...

I've started in the middle with some quilting along a marked line. After that, I decided to just go freehand, doing some gently waving lines of quilting. 

It's very difficult for me to do these big honking stitches after over 35 years of trying to master perfect, tiny, evenly-spaced quilting stitches! I'm having a hard time keeping them even and, being so big they just look messy to me. Hopefully I'll get a bit better at big stitches and like them a bit more! 

Actually, I think they will enhance this quilt perfectly in the end!

It's another dreary day....hard to push myself up to the longarm when all I'd like to do is some piecing and curl up with my book!

Yesterday I worked on a client's scrappy quilt....which always makes me happy. To me a quilt like this just screams "authentic".

Today I am linking up with Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday.

Have a great day!

Is this what "creativity" feels like?

In my last post I lamented on what to do with my neutral blocks.

They are part of an exchange with friends and my theme, obviously, was neutrals.

All of the blocks were beautiful and expertly sewn.

......but.....on the design wall they just didn't seem to "go"....

Also in my last post, I said how if I left the blocks up they may soon speak to me. 

Well, on Wednesday morning they not only spoke to me.....they actually raised their voice and shouted a little!

The idea they were presenting terrified me and thrilled me at the same time! Could I do as they asked? What would my friends think of what I would do with these lovely blocks they had made for me?

 It didn't take me long to realise that I wanted to love this quilt, so I had to be ruthless and go for it!

So I took all those blocks and sliced them up into 3.5" squares!

As I did this, I stacked them into 5 piles...light, light/medium, medium, medium/dark and dark. 

I hesitated before cutting the last block, the feathered star that I had painstakingly paper-pieced.....

...but, yes, it got chopped up also!

I had an idea to start at the centre of the quilt with the lightest 3.5" blocks and work out toward the edge with the darker ones...

As soon as I had them all up on the wall I could see it was a "picture" of the moon...

Here is the finished piece. I am calling it "Moonlight through the trees".

The very centre of the quilt is an appliqued circle from what had originated as an dresden plate block...

To take time to look at all the little individual blocks is fascinating. I took the original blocks and made them into 182 beautiful little abstract blocks! Here are a few...

Even my feathered star is included...

It's so strange to me how this idea caught hold and had me slicing and sewing like a whirling dervish. I know that at the beginning of the year, my hope was to try to explore creativity. Well, I certainly felt creative this week!

I do hope when my friends see the finished quilt they will understand that their hard work is still there, just in a different configuration....and in a quilt that I love!

While trying to think of ways I may quilt this, I thought it might be a nice piece to try "big stitch" quilting. I've got a few balls of perle cotton that would be just right to try this out.

For all the creative sewing I was able to do this week, it feels like my applique is moving at the speed of molasses. Oh well, even a little a day gets the projects moving along!

I'm getting so close to finishing the bottom border of FlowerGarden. I'm so glad because I'm afraid I'm getting a little tired of working on this one. Thankfully, the side borders will go a lot quicker.

I've appliqued a couple of little birds just to give myself a little break from the neverending circles that are on this border.

...and managed to put a few stitches into last week's block of The Splendid Sampler...

I'm linking up with SoScrappy for her ScrapHappySaturday so I can show that I've started my RSC16 in purple for March. I am doing the blocks she is sharing in her Column-along, a butterfly block...

A nice easy block....only eight more to go, no problem!

I hope today is as nice as yesterday as we plan to plant some peas today. We emptied our compost into the vegetable garden in the Fall and the soil looks wonderful. I love this time of year when you can feel the nice weather just coming around the corner!

I'm linking up with Kathy over at Kathy's Quilts to see what others are working on today. 

I am also linking with Cynthia for OhScrap over at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.

Have a wonderful Spring-forward day!

Neutrals, what was I thinking??!!

I don't know if it's being of a certain age, but one of my favourite things is going out for lunch with friends, family....whoever!

Today I'll be meeting my sister-in-law for lunch at a restaurant I've never been to, Ferrera's in Simcoe. I'm quite looking forward to it...I don't know much about it except to hear a friend say that this restaurant has the best breakfast around.

Yesterday I worked on a quilt that was designed and made by my friend, Debra Allan. It's such a sweet quilt. She named the pattern Beary Love and Butterflies....and you can see why.....

A couple of years ago I was part of a block exchange that we called the Shoebox quilt. Everyone in the group ( I think twelve of us ) picked our own theme, made the first block, then passed the blocks around for a year 'til we ended up with our own Shoebox again. During that year we couldn't see what others were contributing to our own Shoeboxes. Every month we would have a month to construct a block ( or two ) for other participant's quilts.

We have finally set a date in July to try to get our blocks made into quilt tops, if not completely done!

There were a lot of fun themes....snowmen, trees, houses, fairy garden to name a few. My theme was neutrals. I've always been intrigued with the challenge involved in the making of a neutral quilt. 

Yesterday I figured I'd better at least get the blocks on the design wall. I really had it in my head that as I put them up they would magically fall into place into a pleasing arrangement!

Bwahahahahaha!!! Not so much!

I am totally stymied on what to do with my blocks! I'm going to rely on a old, faithful technique....leave them up there for a while until they talk to me and give me the answer!

I do have a kind of radical idea, but I don't think I have quite the courage :( 

Monday evening I went to a guild meeting. So many people showed their centre medallions of the 365QuiltChallenge block-of-the-day. I will have to take a bit of time out of my day to do mine after being inspired by every else's blocks. 

The beauty of being a bit behind is hearing everyone's advice on the piecing of the medallion....thanks, guys!!!

I did piece a block this week that was quite challenging. It's part of a BOM called Happy Days by Sarah Fielke. This is going to be a stunning quilt. I especially like that it will be challenging and using techniques that I'd never come across. 

Here is this month's block...

The middle bit is almost perfect but some of the dots in the fabric really make it look way off! Oh well, it's done and I like it! I also like that the tigers in the corner fabric all came out standing up by happy accident. 

I am linking up with Quilt Story for their Fabric Tuesday to see what others are working on today!

Have a great almost-Spring day!

Stitching on a Sunday

Well, not much time for slow stitching today. I am such an early riser but there's the odd time that I actually sleep in!

 Not the best day for that as we are heading down to have lunch with some of the family at a wonderful restaurant called Johnny Rocco's. It's one of my favourite restaurants and I especially love it when it's a first it's a first time visit for someone....today that person is my daughter. I hope she likes it!

This morning's applique was just one little heart for my Quilty365/Day in My Life...

This was a heart for yesterday, commemorating working on a lovely scrappy quilt made by a friend of mine for her granddaughter's first big-girl bed. The heart is a wee scrap I stole from the leftover scrappy backing of my friend's quilt. The piggy background used because my friend always seems to incorporate a pig fabric in her quilts...

The quilt turned out great, it is one of the prettiest I've ever seen...

Usually working on my Quilty365 I try to pick fabrics that reflect the day, but it's not always easy. This week, though, it seemed I had a few good ones!

On Tuesday I heard a wonderful speaker from Ottawa, Elaine Quehl. She is a prolific dyer of fabrics, saying she does about 5000 yards of dying per year!

 Here is my heart for that day....using a hand-dyed fabric out of a stash I've been coveting since 2007 and the heart is one done by me in my short experimenting with dying many years ago...

I quite enjoyed dabbling in dye. I don't know why I didn't continue.

And here is my heart for Leap Day. I was hoping to have a bit of frog fabric, but all I could come up with was a couple of little bunnies...

I've been successful in keeping up with The Splendid Sampler so far. I quite like Thursday's block. It went together nicely. I'm not quite sure of my fabric choices, but I did want to define the pieces. I didn't want to lose the design. In the end, I'm sure it will play nicely with the other 99 blocks!!

I'd better get started for my outing....but will share a picture of little Miss Minnie basking in front of the almost-done fireplace. I'm positive she thinks we installed it just for her....if it's running you can be sure she's stretched out in front of it!

I'll be linking up with Kathy's Quilts to see what others are stitching today.

Have a good one!

Day in My Life

Isn't Mother Nature funny! We had a bit of an ice storm last night and today is bright and sunny and not much wind. It seems to often be like that. 

I had to go out this morning and was a bit nervous of the roads.....there was some ice, but not too bad. On my way home it was totally fine. 

I thought I'd do a quick blogpost as I have an extra coffee for today in an attempt to stay awake. It was one of those mornings when you wake up at 3 and lay there for an hour before admitting that more sleep is just not going to happen!

I did get some nice applique done. I stitched down this little flower in my FlowerGarden quilt and I just had to take a picture. For some reason this little flower really pleases me! Funny, eh?

I am linking up with Quilty Folk for Audrey's monthly tally on our Quilty365...or as I'm calling mine, my Day in My Life.  

Here are 7 rows of 15 blocks....105 blocks! I have two more sewn and a few to catch up on. 

I'm very happy with the progress. I'm also very happy with the way the "scrappiness" is playing out since I'm doing this without any real plan to co-ordinate the blocks in any way. 

I once heard that if you make a scrap quilt out of your stash you are bound to love it since it is made up of all the fabrics that you originally bought for the very fact that you liked them! Makes sense to me!

I also want to share a blogpost by "Quilting is more fun than housework" which you can see HERE.

I've followed Cynthia for a short time, but I'm so surprised that I've never caught a glimpse of her Quilty365! I love it! I think if I had seen this in the beginning I definitely would have been "inspired" by Cynthia (meaning copied her, I suppose?). 

Well, off to enjoy my coffee and call my applique mentor. Always good conversation with her. The only problem is is that out of these recent conversations comes a niggling feeling that we will be starting a new applique project. Oh brother, what is wrong with this picture????

Have a lovely day!