Just Fascinating!!!

Like many people, my family got up very early on Friday morning to watch Kate Middleton and Prince William's wedding on TV. My sister in law and her daughters were doing the same at their house. Earlier in the week, they paid a visit to the dollar store to purchase some items to make themselves fascinators to wear to celebrate along with the happy couple. Today, they were at my house for supper and they brought their fascinators along to show us.

My SIL wore this one all day on Friday at work--she is a teacher. The children in her class were just fascinated!

The happy couple on her fascinator are having a delicious picnic!!!

Niece 1 wore this lovely creation...

She coloured those KD noodles with an orange marker...

Niece 2 promoted good oral hygiene with her headpiece. I am sure Kate and William brush their teeth often since they have such beautiful smiles!
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No sewing this week  ...  I have been too busy with other committments but hope to get back to my machine this coming week.

My Arcs are DONE!

I have been sewing a little bit most evenings this week as well as this afternoon and I am happy to say that my Indian Orange Peel Arcs are done!---All 120 of them!

I hope sewing up the last of these arcs gives me some momentum to keep working on the paper pieced border sections...still lots of sewing to do. I will have to lay out my blocks on my design floor to see where these arcs fit in.

I also did some mending today--my most un-favourite kind of sewing. At least it is done and not cluttering up my sewing area.

I found a pattern for a cute table runner this week...It is made with a charm pack and I happen to have a Moda charm pack in Spring colours that would work for this pattern.   Maybe that will be my next project as I keep working on the paper piecing for the IOP.

Sewing all Weekend...

I sewed Friday night with Christine and most of the day yesterday as well as this afternoon...and I am pleased to announce that my Blue Ridge Beauty flimsy is done!!!  My husband was away for the weekend so I had lots of uninterrupted time to just sit and sew.

It was raining and snowing all afternoon, but after supper, the sun came out so I asked my Dad and my husband to hold my quilt so I could take a picture. My Dad is a little shorter than my husband so the left side of the quilt is a bit lower in the picture!

This picture shows the detail of the borders--all made from leftover 2 1/2" and 4 1/2" strips from making the quilt blocks.

There are lots of memories in this scrappy quilt--places I have visited, friends who have given me strips of fabric, previous projects, and gifts I have made for others. The turtle, rabbit and dragonfly fabrics were purchased from a speaker we had at the London Friendship Quilters' Guild a few years ago. The blue dotty fabric was leftover from my Liberated Wedding Ring quilt which I made from selvages.

The blue daisy fabric was once a window topper in my daughter's room when she was 7 years old.  The white fabric with the flowers on it in the middle of the photo was purchased about 25 years ago for a hand-sewn sampler quilt that I never did finish.

My husband did a little shopping on his way home today--he stopped at the Quilt Foundry in Maumee, Ohio and bought me a Moda "Just Wing It" layer cake and a Bali Pops "Blue Hawaiian" jelly roll.  He is such a good husband!  He was the only man in the store.

Now, I will have to figure out a couple of new projects to use these up!

QNIC/FNSI with Christine

Christine and I got together tonight for an evening of sewing.  I have had a really busy week and have been craving some machine time all week. We sewed for over 3 hours tonight --Christine worked on finishing off a leaf bowl as well as another quilt that she is making as a gift. She top stitched about 30 circles with blanket stitch on her sewing machine. (The thread was green so you can't really see the stitches in this photo.)

I kept working on my Blue Ridge Beauty quilt. 

The end is in sight... I have one more row to sew together and attach to the rest of the quilt.

I should be able to finish this off in the morning.  I have an idea for a pieced border for this quilt so I can use up my leftover strips from piecing the 120 blocks. I don't want to purchase any fabrics for this flimsy--I will have to get something for the backing though :-).

Look what arrived in the mail this week--I ordered them online with a gift card that I received for Christmas.  More inspiration....sigh.....I need more sewing time...

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Andee in Arizona!  She is the winner of one of my fabric postcards!  I have already sent Andee an e-mail to let her know that she won and hope to hear from her soon so I can get it into the mail for her!

I am making slow but steady progress on my Blue Ridge Beauty quilt. I will post a picture of the flimsy as soon as it is done.

Blue Ridge Beauty progress and a Postcard Give-away!

I had this morning to myself so I did some sewing!  I put 5 rows together for my Blue Ridge Beauty--there are 12 rows in total so I am almost 1/2 way there...

I am still hoping to finish putting this together by the end of the weekend.

When I finished sewing on the 5th row, my bag of scraps from my Indian Orange Peel started calling out to me. 

 I had been thinking about making some postcards out of these scraps. I sorted the scraps into warm and cool colours and ironed them onto a piece of timtex. I put some netting over top of the scraps and did some free motion quilting over top to hold everything together. 

Three of these postcards have destinations already, but if you would like to win the 4th one, please leave a comment on this post by Monday evening at 7pm EST and I will pick a winner. 

To close, here are a few pictures of my garden. It is a beautiful sunny day here today so we are going out to do some yard work this afternoon.

The columbines are coming to life. I love how the leaves unfurl.

Crocuses in my front garden.

The bees were buzzing around these crocuses in the backyard.

Don't forget to leave a comment to win one of the postcards!

Blue Ridge Beauty Layout and some Quilty Mail

TaDa!  I decided to go with layout #3--the large diamonds--for my Blue Ridge Beauty quilt. I had 101 blocks made and after some math to figure out how many I would need to make this a generous queen size quilt, I decided I needed 120 blocks. I made 19 more blocks--I had to cut and sew some more HST units but I had just enough 4 patches made already. In fact, I had one 4 patch leftover when all is said and done. I will use it for my label on the back of the quilt!

None of the blocks are sewn together yet. I want to stare at it a few times to make sure I like the way everything looks. I shuffled a few blocks around tonight where two pieces of the same fabric were touching each other. I have some time to sew on Saturday so maybe I can get all the blocks together then.

I received Quilty mail two days in a row this week!  On Monday, I received two books that I had ordered from Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville. I have spent lots of time this week pouring over the patterns and ideas in these books and have several projects in mind to work on at some point.

On Tuesday, I received these green charm squares in the mail from Quilter Kathy. I won them in a guessing game on her blog.  Thanks Kathy! 

That's all for now. Time for bed!

Blue Ridge Beauty Options...

I have been playing around with my Blue Ridge Beauty blocks on my design floor this morning. I took some pictures to show you the options I have come up with...

This first one is the same as Bonnie Hunter's version--a traditional "Barn Raising" pattern.

This one has dark and light diamonds (I am not using all my blocks in these samples as my design floor has limited space unless I start moving furniture around!)

Here are some larger diamonds:

How about these zig-zags?

A different view of the zig-zags--these look more like giant "W's":

And, last but not least, up arrows...

Obviously, there are many more possibilities, but these are the ones I am considering at the moment.

Please let me know which one (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6) is your favourite by commenting on this blog post. I am open to suggestions...

QNIC at Jacqui's (and a carrot...)

Last night, Chris and I went to Jacqui's for a little QNIC (Quilting Night in Canada). I worked on some more blocks for my Blue Ridge Beauty Quilt. I put 31 more blocks together last night using most of those HST's I made earlier in the week.

I now have 101 blocks done. I have a few more 4 patches and HST's left to make some more blocks if I need them. Tomorrow, I hope to lay out the blocks on my design floor in a few different configurations to see which one I like the best. I will take some pictures and post them here so you can offer your opinions on the matter. I am open to suggestions...so come back later on tomorrow to see some of the possibilities...