Foothills Quilt Blocks

I am making very slow progress on my blocks for the Foothills Quilt along with Mary Elizabeth Kinch.  Christine and I got together to sew one evening this week and I finished off four more blocks.

I have 9/25 done now.  I am using my husband's discarded shirts as my fabric supply.

Each block is unique.

The geese are pointing in the opposite direction in this block--they have gone rogue!

I have lots of parts made (half square triangles and hour glass units) but need to make more flying geese to put more blocks together.

I put all my blocks on the design wall to take a peek at how they will look together...

There will be sashing between the blocks.

It is still quite chilly where I live--we had a hard frost overnight.  My witch hazel bush is in bloom. I took these pictures after it rained all night.

I love how the water droplets just hang off of the petals.

That's all for now.  Take care and Happy Easter!

Baby Quilt Top and Some EPP

I cut out some 6 1/2" squares last week for a baby quilt.  I tried to lay them out in a checkerboard pattern--white background and coloured squares but it looked a bit blah.   I dug through my stash to see if I had some brightly coloured fabric that I could use as sashing...

This looks a lot better!  There are a lot of squares with this colour of green in them so it works perfectly!  The sashing finishes at 1".  I decided not to do an outer border and just bind the quilt in the same green after I get it quilted.  The fiddle fabric above is leftover from a pillowcase I made for my dad several years ago.  He is 88 and has played the fiddle since he was 5 or 6.  My daughter used to love watching Thomas the Tank Engine when she was little.  When I was younger, my dad taught me how to paddle a canoe.  Our canoe was red.  I love gardening, so the potted flowers had to be included too.

Here is the finished quilt top.

The puffin fabric was purchased in Iceland when my husband and I went there to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary a few years ago. One of the fabrics has cameras on it--I like to take pictures.  The glasses and pencils are for my daughter--she is an accountant.   I hope the baby who receives this quilt enjoys looking at all of the fabrics.  I will have to write her a little note explaining the significance of the fabrics.

I have not had much chance to do any hand sewing this week but did get one more EPP plus sign done with cutlery fabric!

Maybe, I will get a few more plus signs done this week.  Take a look and see what the other slow stitchers are doing over at Kathy's blog

Back to EPP

Since I finished my counted cross stitch picture last week, I needed to find another hand stitching project to work on.  I found my EPP plus signs and decided to make some more.  I recently bought some more fabrics that would be good for this project, so I cut some of them up so I would be ready to do some hand stitching tomorrow.

When my daughter was younger, I taught her how to do counted cross stitch.  She did a couple of small projects and then seemed to lose interest.   A few weeks ago, much to my surprise, she purchased three patterns on Etsy to make pictures to hang on the wall in her apartment.  The first one is a city scape of Detroit, Michigan. The first picture she sent to me did not look like much...

As she added more colours, the buildings started to take shape. 

Do any of you recognize any of the buildings/structures?

This is the latest picture that I have, taken while we were FaceTiming one evening.  She has done more stitching since I took this picture, but I have not seen it again since then.  The other two patterns are for London, England and New York City, all places that she has been before.  I love the patterns she has chosen. 

I am going to a quilt retreat in early April and the organizers set up a lanyard swap amongst the participants.  Here is the lanyard I made for my swap partner:

We will use them for our name tags at the retreat.  Here is the lanyard that I received in the mail this week:

I'm already making a list in my head of the projects that I would like to work on at the retreat...

I will be linking up with Kathy in the morning.  Go and take a look at what everyone is working on.  The link is in my sidebar.

Snowflake Beads

I have done many cross stitch pictures since I was in university but this is the first one that has had beads on it.  My husband, actually fiance at the time, bought me my first cross stitch kit.  He and I lived in different cities, going to different universities, and I was getting stressed about school.  Knowing how I liked to sew, he bought the kit at a craft store.  A school friend bought herself a kit as well and soon we made a regular habit of stitching and tea after supper for 30 minutes each night.  This kept both of us relatively sane, even during exams!

The kit for the snow people picture came with all the threads, the seed beads and two needles--one for cross stitching and one very long and skinny needle for attaching the beads to the finished picture.  I put the beads in a small glass bowl so they would not get lost as I added each one to the picture.  I had to pick them up with the end of the needle and the sloped sides of the bowl helped with this.

My friend, Pat, came over to knit one night this week so I worked on the beads while she was here.  I got about half of the picture done that night.

I'm glad I decided to add the bead snowflakes...I was not sure last week if I would.

Here is the entire picture, all done. 

I will be linking up with Kathy in the morning.  I will need to find another slow stitching project now... I think there are some EPP plus signs lurking in my sewing room that need to be made into something.

Embracing the Chaos Done!

Back in September, I took a one day class, "Embracing the Chaos" with Libs Elliott through the London Modern Quilt Guild.  I came home after the class and finished piecing my class project, picked out some backing and cut the batting and then set it aside.  I needed some time to think about how I might quilt this...

I have taken a two day walking foot quilting class with Jacquie Gering and spent some time looking through her "Walk" book considering possibilities for how to quilt my project.  I wanted to try something I had not done before and decided to use her "Geometric Curves--quadrilateral variation" (page 61-62 of her book if you have it in your library).  I used by disappearing purple marking pen and some green painter's tape to mark each line as I quilted.  The quilting lines are all straight, but it appears that some of them are curved in the finished design.

Can you see the curve?

It took one evening plus a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon to finish the quilting.  I added the binding, a navy blue Kona cotton solid, on Saturday evening. We went to visit my MIL out of town on Sunday so I took my quilt with me to work on the binding in the car.

By the time we got home, it was done!

My favourite quilt holder in action!

The backing is the same aqua dot fabric as on the front of the quilt.

I am ready for show and tell at the London Modern Quilt Guild meeting this week!

Stitching Done, Beads Up Next!

I did a little stitching this week.  Once I started, it was hard to stop.  First, I finished the outlining...

Then, I did a lot of French knots including these ones that make up the seed heads on the fireweed branches.   I have admired several other stitchers' dense French knots on their projects.  This is the first time that I have done this and I think I did ok!

There were lots and lots of French knots to do--eyes on all the birds, food for the birds and berries on the branches.

The birds on the ground with this snow-woman are eating some other type of seed...stitched as seed stitches!

I did the French knots on the branch on the right several years ago, when I first worked on this picture, before it got put away.   The knots on the left side were done this week.  I decided to leave the old knots in, as a testament to the improvements in my stitching abilities over time.

Now, on to the seed bead snowflakes.  I will need to work on the beads while sitting at a table so I don't lose the beads as I sew them in place.  I'm really glad that I decided to take this project out of hiding and back into action!