Slow Stitching in the Car

One of my favourite spots for stitching is in the passenger seat of the car as my husband drives us to our destination.  In my last post, I talked about how we visited my daughter last weekend.  It is a bit of a drive to get to where she lives, so I got lots of stitching done in the car last weekend.  Here is my picture from last week's post for comparison purposes...

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fountain Glass window is beginning to look a little more like a stained glass window with each stitch.

My husband and I were out for a drive in the country when the sun was setting on Friday night and we stopped so I could take some pictures.

The place where we stopped had some flowers in bloom... Lily of the Valley...

Lilacs...

and Chestnut tree blossoms.

My daughter sent me this picture earlier this week...she has finished the London, England cityscape!  I love the double decker bus,  the London Taxi as well as all those interesting buildings!

She will be working on her third cityscape soon---New York City.  

I will be joining the other Slow Stitchers at Kathy's blog today.  Take a look at what everyone is making!

Last Minute Block

Last night, I hosted the May meeting of the Elgin Piecemakers.  Our comfort quilt blocks this month were to be made with polka dot fabrics. At 10:30 pm on Wednesday night, I realized that I had not made my block yet...Yikes!  Luckily, all my polka dot fabrics are kept in one drawer in my fabric storage area so I picked out three fabrics and then went through a few magazines to look for some block inspiration.  I was looking for something easy so it would not take too long to cut out the pieces or sew the block.  I ended up with what you see above.  Whew!  I was done by 11pm.

Here are all the blocks that were brought to the meeting last night. 

There were a few people missing last night so we are short a few blocks so the members making this quilt will wait until they receive them to put it together.

We had a few comfort quilts finished or nearly finished on display last night as well.

These quilts will be donated to the adult chemo unit at our local hospital.  It is always fun to see how the blocks we make each month are transformed with some sashing and cornerstones into beautiful quilts!

My husband and I visited our daughter last weekend. She moved to a new apartment earlier this year and this was my first time seeing it.  I brought my sewing machine along as her drapes were all too long and pooling on the floor.  I had to move the furniture away from each window and then pin the drapes to the right length in place followed by ironing the hem, trimming and pinning before setting my sewing machine up on a small table or the ironing board and sewing the hem.

This is not my usual sewing set up, but I managed to get 8 drapes shortened, all to the same length, and they look much better!

The quilt in the foreground is the one I made for my daughter when she started university.

The quilt on her bed was her graduation gift when she finished university.  She picked the pattern and fabrics for both quilts.

I am hoping to have some time for some quilting this weekend...we shall see.  

Ongoing Projects

I have a few projects in process at the moment and work on whatever strikes my fancy when I have a bit of sewing time.   I took a scrappy appliqué class with Shannon Brinkley a couple of weeks ago and am in the process of quilting my wallhanging.  Here is a sneak peak.  I will do a more detailed post about the class and the quilt when it is done. I'm using orange thread for the quilting. 

I'm also working on an I Spy baby quilt...the top is pieced and it is waiting to be quilted.  I will do the quilting on my DSM.  My main machine is in getting serviced at the moment.  I hope to have it back next week.  It has a bigger throat and is easier to use for quilting than my older portable Janome.  I used Bonnie Hunter's Bricks and Stepping Stones pattern for this quilt.

I have managed to get some more stitches into my Fountain Glass Window (Frank Lloyd Wright) counted cross stitch project as well.  One night this week, my daughter and I stitched together over FaceTime.   I will try to get an up to date picture of her London Cityscape to add to this post later. 

Here's my picture...

I noticed my fothergilla bush is blooming this week...I love the delicate white flowers:

I will be linking up with Kathy and her gang of Slow Sunday Stitchers on Sunday.

Slow Stitching Friends and a Colour Change...

I was supposed to go to the Norfolk Quilt show last Saturday with my friend, Karen, but the same wind storm that knocked down my fences, also knocked out the power in Simcoe, so the show was postponed until Sunday.  Karen could not go on Sunday so my husband and I went to the show together.  I met up with not one, but two other Slow Sunday Stitchers:  Sandra from  Quilting at the Cro's Nest and Kathy, the fearless gang leader of the Slow Sunday Stitchers!  That's me in the middle.  Behind us is Sandra's amazing Down the Rabbit Hole quilt, which she has been showing most weeks for the last while on Kathy's link up.  It was fun to meet Sandra and see Kathy again.  Sandra gave us a full tour of the show and told us the back stories on several of the quilts. 

Here we are again with Sandra's Tula Pink sampler.  

My husband was quite interested in the quilts and used his ballot to pick his favourite one for the viewer's choice award--He picked another one of Sandra's quilts.  Make sure you enlarge the picture to see Sandra's longarm quilting--just breathtaking! (I voted for Down the Rabbit Hole, but wished I could have had two ballots to vote for this one too.)

While working on my Frank Lloyd Wright Fountain Art Glass cross stitch picture this week, I discovered that I had used the wrong colour in the dark parts shown below--it was supposed to be a lighter shade of grey.  Ugh.  Some un-stitching happened this week.  It is not easy to pick out counted cross stitch and I did not enjoy this part of the process.  I learned to double check my colours before starting to stitch...

Despite the time spent removing the dark stitches, I managed to make some progress this week.

Above, you can see both colours--when I took this picture, I still had to remove the part above my needle.

Here is what it looks like now.  The gold squares are looking a bit random at the moment but will look better when I fill in the parts around them.

My daughter also made progress on her London, England cityscape.  You can see the London Eye and the Tower Bridge now.  Yes, that is a little raincloud over the top of some of the buildings...

Our azaleas are in bloom this week!

Fountain Art Glass by FLW --a new project

I started my new counted cross stitch project this week. It doesn't look like much yet but it will get there.  I am so happy to be cross stitching again!

The entire picture is 6" by 17".  I started in the middle.  Hopefully, it will look more identifiable as I add more stitches.

We had some strong winds last night and this happened in our backyard:

First one side...

And then the other side...

It took three of us to get it taken down and tidied up.  Luckily, there was no damage to the bushes and plants in the gardens.

Our yard looks a little more expansive now!

My daughter has been busy working on her London skyline:

We were in London, England in 2010 and my favourite building was the Gherkin (the pickle shaped building on the right side of the picture.). The tall pointy building is called the Shard...it was being built when we were there in 2010.  It's fun to identify the buildings in the pictures she is working on.

I started another I Spy baby quilt this week too.  I will show more pictures when I get more sewing done.  I am using Bonnie Hunter's pattern for Bricks and Stepping Stones.

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other slow Sunday stitchers in the morning.  I am going to a quilt show in Simcoe, Ontario tomorrow afternoon and will be meeting one of the slow stitchers at the show for the first time!  I have been admiring her Down the Rabbit Hole quilt each with on the link up and am looking forward to meeting Sandra and seeing her quilt in person.  I will post pictures next week.  The show was supposed to be today but the wind storm knocked out the power to the building so the show was postponed to tomorrow.