Flannel Vortex Baby Quilt DONE!

Over the past few months, I have been using some of my many bright flannel scraps to make a flannel vortex baby quilt.  This is my third vortex quilt...I did my first one as part of a quilt-along with Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts.  The second one was made with my darker flannel scraps and was given to a friend who was going through cancer treatments.  A friend's daughter is having a baby soon so this quilt will be a gift for the new baby.

I used my walking foot and my favourite serpentine stitch to quilt this one. I wanted to make sure that there was quilting through every piece of fabric for stability when it is washed.  I make my baby quilts to be used and washed over and over again!

Some of these scraps have been hanging out in my sewing room for a long time.  Most are leftovers from PJ's I have made for my daughter and my twin nieces.  Does a scrap of flannel from 23 years ago count as vintage???

The quilt was just a bit too wide to use one width of fabric piece for the back so I pieced a strip of little birds into the middle of the dotty fabric to make the backing wide enough.  The binding used up almost all of the dotty fabric --there may be a few scraps of dotty fabric to add to my next flannel vortex quilt.

Happy Canada Day!  Happy 150th Birthday, Canada!

Snowman #3 done, Starting #4.

I have been working on this snowman (number 3 of 4 in this project) for a few weeks now and today I finished all the cross stitching on him. The picture above shows where I was last weekend. '

Here he is this week, all done except for the outlining.  Saturday, after dinner, I started on the mitten of the next snowman, #4.

Once the snowmen are done, there are a few birds and all of the snow on the ground to do. The kit also came with some small beads to add for snow in the air.  I think it will be a while before I get to add the beads...

I took some pictures this week of our backyard.  I love sitting in the gazebo to sew or read.

It's relaxing to listen to the bubbling rock and the birds as I sit and sew. I will be linking up with the other Slow Stitchers at Kathy's blog.

Starting a New Project

A while ago, I saw that Jenifer at 42 Quilts.com is hosting a Modern Monday quilt along--she first did this quilt along in 2011 and has decided to run it again.  Many of the blocks are liberated versions of some traditional blocks.  I have not made a liberated quilt in a while so I decided to jump in and make my own version of the Modern Monday sampler quilt.  There are 64  6.5" blocks in total. A couple of weeks ago, I went searching through my stash for some fabrics to use for this project.  I found these three fat quarters that I purchased over a year ago and decided to use the colours in these fabrics for my version of the quilt.

I am not sure what line of fabric they are from as I cut off the selvages for my selvage collection...

I have some green, magenta and turquoise fabrics picked out as well as some grey which may be used for sashing. Tonight, I made my first four blocks.  I decided not to follow the directions that Jenifer is supplying on her blog...I am just going to look at each of her blocks and make my own version in my own way. 

Here is my first block--Crossroads.

My second block is a liberated Log Cabin--home of a cute little bird. 

Shoo-fly was up next. 

The last one I made was a liberated Churn Dash. 

I'm going to use a little bit of one of the focus fabrics in each block. 

I hope to make some more blocks next week when I get together to sew with Christine again next week. 

Christmas Ornaments

Over the past few months, I have been making one block every two weeks for Lorna's Holly Jolly Christmas quilt-along.  Christine came over on Thursday night to sew.  I worked on my Christmas Ornaments block.

I was happy to be able to include the Santa fabric on one of the ornaments.  I used that fabric for the mitten block too.  This block looked easy at first glance but it involved quite a bit of ripping and resewing...  It took me all evening to get it right!

Here are all of my blocks so far.  I am thinking of changing the colour of the partridge in the partridge in a pear tree block...I don't like the brown. I think my partridge might be blue instead.

There are only three blocks left!  I have an idea for an extra block so I will have 16 instead of 15 blocks.  I will be making a square quilt...

Lots of Snowmen in the Gazebo

Pat came over this afternoon for a couple of hours of slow stitching in the gazebo.  We sipped iced tea and chatted as we stitched.  I worked on my cross stitch snowman...he now sports eyes, a carrot nose, a second arm and a completed hat as well as more white fill in stitches. The face adds a little more personality!

Last week, he looked like this...

He seemed to like chilling in the gazebo this afternoon...

This picture is coming along nicely.  I managed to sit and work on it three times this week.  I was ready for work early a couple of mornings and spent 30 minutes each day stitching before I left.

Pat is working on a Christmas gift for her sister.  She is blanket stitching around each shape.  All she has left to do is to add the button eyes.  She is thinking of hand quilting this little wall hanging. It should be done in plenty of time for Christmas.

My peonies were in bloom this week. They came from my husband's grandmother's garden and have a small tinge of pink.

In the front yard, the alliums are in their glory....

I would love to plant some of these in the back yard too...

I will be linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching linky tomorrow morning.

Snowman Progress

For my hand sewing this week, I worked on two projects...  The first...I did the binding on a donation quilt.  You can see it on my previous post, here.  Yesterday and today, I worked on my counted cross stitch snowman project.  Here he is last week...

I filled in some of the white on his arm and body this week. 

I will be having company tomorrow so there may not be any stitching time but I will have time this week to add more stitches. I think I am going to work on the hat and face this week. 

Last week, my husband and I had a date day in St. Mary's and Stratford.  One of our stops was the St. Mary's museum where this yoyo quilt was on display. 

Here is a close up picture of some of the fabrics in the yoyos.

I did not count all of them but there sure are a lot of them in this piece!

Are any of the slow stitchers reading this post inspired to start a yoyo project???

Better Late than Never

Just over a year ago, Fort McMurray in Alberta was devastated by a wild fire which sent people fleeing from the community and burned up homes and businesses.  My friend, Christine, and I decided we would each make a quilt to send to Fort McMurray for families who had been affected by the fire. Christine finished her quilt several months ago.  She used a layer cake and other fabrics in her stash to make her quilt.

It has a cozy, pieced, flannel backing.

I also used a layer cake for my quilt.    

I quilted my quilt on my DSM with a serpentine stitch grid.

I will put these quilts into the mail this week.  I am very happy to finally have this quilt done and ready to send!

I also made my June block for the Elgin Piecemakers Comfort quilt.  We were given a 10" square of the blue dandelion fabric and asked to just use yellow with it and make a block.  I used a pattern from www.toefeather.blogspot.ca for my circle of squares block.  I did not have enough of the yellow fabric to make a yellow centre in my block so I just used the dandelion fabric instead.

I had a visitor in my backyard this morning.  

It was interesting to watch him pull himself along, going in the direction of my hostas!  Yikes!

Holly and Berries and Snowmen

With this post's title, you might think we are in the depths of winter!  It was actually a beautiful sunny day today and most people were wearing shorts today when I was out.  Two of my current projects have a winter theme...

These are all the pieces for the Holly and Berries block for the Sew Fresh Holly Jolly Christmas quilt.  This is block number 10 of 15.

Here is the finished block. The berries on the edge of the block look a bit odd, but will be "rounder" when the block is sewn into the quilt.

My 10 blocks on the design wall...

For Slow Sunday Stitching this week, I have been working on a counted cross stitch snowmen picture which I started many years ago.  I have had a few car trips this week so made quite a bit of progress. On one car trip, I was happily stitching away, chatting with my husband, and then I noticed that I had forgotten my scissors that I use to cut the threads.  Ugh!  We stopped at the next service centre and I went into the little variety store in search of scissors...no scissors, but I did find these....They work quite well to cut the threads and now they live in the car for my use when I sew as we travel.

Last week...

And this week...

There is a lot of white to fill in on the snowman's body and arms.  Maybe, I will get some of that done this week.

I will be linking up with Kathy's Quilts with the other Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.