Moving on to Outlining

We spent part of our day today at my cousin's farm where we went through his corn maze and had a BBQ with everyone in the extended family.  It was a beautiful fall day--the sun was shining and it was not hot like last week.  I took this picture in the maze--most of the corn had brown and shrivelled up silk but this one was bright pink. I did some sewing in the car on our way to the farm.  Last week, my picture looked like this:

I managed to finish the snow in this section as well as the bird.  I started on the outlining today in the car after doing the last few stitches of the snow

I like the way the outlining makes the snowman stand out against the snow. 

There's still more snow to do at the other end of the picture but for now, I think I will continue with more outlining. 

I am linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching link up tomorrow. 

Baby Quilt for the Talent Auction

My church is having a talent auction this weekend to raise money for a new roof.  My talents lie in the area of sewing and quilting, so I decided to make a baby quilt for my donation to the fundraiser.  I found some fat quarters in my stash and purchased the yellow background fabric. The pattern is from 42quilts.

I cut out the pieces and sewed the blocks together one night, and added the borders another night.

I found the backing fabric in my stash and had to add a light blue strip to make it wide enough for the quilt. I added a label before quilting.

The animals on the back are fun!  I used the serpentine stitch on my sewing machine to quilt it with my walking foot.

Christine was here to sew last night and she voted for red binding.

I hand sewed the binding last night and this morning, before I went to work.  Tonight, I showed my finished quilt at the Elgin Piecemakers' Guild meeting.  I will deliver the quilt to the organizers of the auction tomorrow.

My favourite quilt holder helped with the photo shoot.

I will be linking up with Crazy Mom's Finish it Up Friday tomorrow and to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching link up on Sunday. .  There are links in my sidebar...


I hope someone likes the quilt enough to buy it!

Fall Weekend

It feels like summer here this weekend with sunshine and temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius.  My husband and I had lunch out today on a patio and these lovely flowers were beside our table. I took a few pictures while we waited for our food to arrive.

This is unusual weather for this time of year where we live. We were very thankful for air conditioning this weekend.

On our way home, I did some sewing in the car.  Last time I showed my counted cross stitch project, it looked like this:



I have managed to fill in a lot of the snow in this section.

There is one bird left to do in this part and then I will fill in the rest of the white.  The other end of the picture still needs to be done as well.  Maybe I  will do some of the outlining after I finish the snow at this side...Come back next week to see what I decide!

I am linking up tomorrow with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Libs Elliott Class: Embracing the Chaos

Last Saturday, the London Modern Quilt Guild hosted Libs Elliott to teach an "Embracing the Chaos" workshop.  I signed up for this workshop months ago, but of course waited until the night before the shop in my stash for suitable fabrics and gather my supplies.  I needed to find around 10 co-ordinating fat quarters --I started with the fabric in the middle of this photo and added the other fabrics to the pile.  I ended up using the chartreuse fabric on the upper right but not the yellow on the upper left. 

Some of these fabrics have been in my stash for a while and a couple were recent additions.

Libs told us about how she designs her quilts using a grid and a randomizer on her computer to place pre-chosen blocks into the grid.

She brought along three quilts to show us and we spent quite a bit of time examining them and asking questions about how she chose her fabrics, colours and how she put the blocks together to make her quilts.

She recently was asked by Absolut vodka to design a special label for their Canada 150 bottles.  Several of the quilters brought along their bottles for her to sign.  (All bottles remained sealed during the workshop!)

Some people used pencil crayons to colour their designs before cutting into their fabrics but I jumped into using fabric and picked the fabrics as I went along making the blocks.

By the end of the day, I had all my blocks pieced except one. I pinned my rows together and labeled them so that I would be able to lay them out when I got home.

Earlier this week, I put my last block together and sewed all the blocks into a 30 by 30" flimsy.  I have picked out some thread for quilting and just need to get this top pin basted and quilted.  I will do another post when it is done.  This was a fun workshop and I would recommend taking a class with Libs if you ever get a chance.

Snow in September

Even though I have not done a Slow Sunday Stitching post for a couple of weeks, I have been working on my counted cross stitch snowmen picture when we are travelling in the car.  This works well when the sun is shining and I have lots of light to see what I am doing, but part of our drive last weekend was though a rain storm so the stitching got put back into the bag.  This picture was taken just before it started to rain.

The last time I posted about my CCS project, it looked like this:

I added a second bird...

And more snow...

Now, my picture looks like this:

It just might get done before the snow flies.

BTW, I bought some Thread Heaven and since I started using it, I am getting a lot less tangled threads.  Thanks to whoever it was that suggested that!

Christmas Lights and a Tree

Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts released the pattern for the last block of the Holly Jolly Christmas quilt a couple of weeks ago but I did not have time to make it until last night.  This one did not have as many pieces as some of the blocks so I was able to cut it out, sew it together and press it all in one night!  Some of my fabrics that I put aside for this quilt are down to very small scraps so that limited what I could use for my "lights".

I also made a Christmas tree block from some of my green scraps to add to this quilt.  It is the same type of block as I used for my pillows last fall-my own design!

I want to have 16 blocks for this quilt--I am using 14 of the 15 blocks made through Lorna's quilt along (I decided not to use the partridge in a pear tree block) and the tree block is #15.  I am going to make a snowman block for #16, again, my own design.  I hope to get it done soon so that I can work on getting this top together and off to the long arm quilter's house for quilting.  I have already bought the backing fabric and I found some red and white stripes for the binding.  I will be finalizing the layout as soon as at the snowman block is done.  It has been fun making the blocks but I am ready to get this project done!