Modern Swap Blocks

Sorry I have been MIA for the last couple of weeks.  I have been doing lots of sewing but it has almost all been secret sewing which I can't share here yet.  I have also been working on blocks for a swap and since I finished them today, I decided to show them on my blog. I have participated in Barb's modern block swap three times now.  The first year, we made broken dishes blocks with red and another solid colour.

The second year, we swapped churn dash blocks in jewel tones.

(I have all of these blocks in bags, ready to make into something...waiting for inspiration to hit! They are on my UFO list to be done sometime in the next 6 months or so.)

This year, we are exchanging star blocks.  I made one to make sure the size was going to be ok, and it was!

I used a variety of colours of solids along with some of my black and white prints for the centres.

By the time I was finished sewing all of my blocks for the swap, I found that I had some extra flying geese so I made myself a few extra stars which I will add to the ones I receive from Barb for the swap.

Thanks, Barb, for organizing the swap.  I can't wait to get my parcel back in the mail in January sometime. 

I visited my daughter last weekend...there was Christmas shopping, Christmas movies and walks with Finn.

Frank and Some Gift Making

I spent a little time with Frank this week and made some progress on this project, finally.  It is not as interesting to do the outlining as it is to do the cross stitching so I may be guilty of avoiding FLW for the last little while.  I am determined to finish this Waterlilies window so I will get moving on it. 

A group of friends/former colleagues and I got together for dinner last night and I made each of them a zippered pouch...

The other four pouches are shown below.

It's fun to dig through my stash to find just the right fabrics for each gift.  I used up almost all of the zippers I had on hand but, alas, I still have lots of fabric left...

I also made one microwavable bowl holder for one friend.  I didn't think he would appreciate a zippered pouch but he was quite pleased with the bowl holder...he said he could have used it the day before when trying to take a bowl of soup out of the microwave without burning his hands.

We had a glorious sunset tonight and I ran out to the front porch to take a picture.

It has been cold and snowy where Finn lives so he has taken to wearing his coat and boots when he and my daughter go for a walk.

Finn doesn't mind the coat but the boots, not so much.

Have a great Sunday and take a look at Kathy's blog where you will find a whole tribe of Slow Sunday stitchers!

Busy Week with lots of Sewing!

I must say that retirement is agreeing with me!  I spent one day this week sewing with members of the Oxford Guild where I worked on the assembly of my Tula Pink 100 Modern Blocks sampler.  They had nice long tables for me to lay everything out for measuring the strips that go between the rows of blocks.  I could not do this at home.  I managed to get almost half of the quilt assembled by the end of the day and hope to finish the quilt top this coming week. 

I am still walking an hour every day, even when it is cold out. We had some snow this week... I had to bring my boots up from the basement.  I managed to get the front gardens cleaned up and the leaves raked before it snowed.  I attended not one, but two quilting workshops this past week.  Friday, I spent the day with Bill Stearman taking his Double Disappearing Nine Patch class.

Here are some sample blocks that I made in class.  He provided kits (for a fee) which included all the parts needed for each block.  The colourful fabric was hand dyed by Bill.

I have some ideas for baby quilts based on the DD9P method he taught.  They will have to wait until I finish a few other projects first.

Today, I took a Weight of Love class with Libs Elliott at the London Modern Guild.  I spent much of my time this week picking out 17 fabrics for the quilt and getting all of the pieces cut before the class.

Darks:

Mediums: (the blue and green solids on the left are lighter than the ones in the picture above...just hard to tell in this picture!)

Lights:

The prints were all purchased at a quilt show in Ailsa Craig earlier this year that featured quilts from New Zealand.  One of the vendors imported some NZ fabrics for her booth.  There was a lot of cutting for this quilt!

At the workshop, we did lots of block assembly first and then laid them out on the design walls/floor.

The blue sticky notes helped me keep track of the blocks.

We learned how to sew the blocks together with Y-seams.  I didn't do too badly with my first attempt!

I will get back to working on this quilt after the Tula Pink sampler is done.

I sat down to do some counted cross stitch tonight and noticed that I had a stain on the Aida cloth--likely dried blood from poking my finger.  I used some Oxyclean gel to remove almost all of the stain and then rinsed it out and laid it out to dry.  No stitching tonight.  Hopefully, it will be dry by the morning so I can do some stitching tomorrow.

I will be stitching along with Kathy's Slow stitchers tomorrow.

Flannel Vortex Baby Quilt

Early this week, I took all of my blocks of various shapes and sizes, and cobbled them into a quilt top.  This was my 4th vortex quilt, inspired by Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom quilts, made in an attempt to tame my flannel scrap bin.  I even used some flannel leftovers to piece the back.  These strips were purchased at the modern guild rummage sale a few weeks ago.

Many of these flannel fabrics are filled with memories--lots of leftovers from PJ's made for my daughter and nieces when they were little---now, all three are in their 20's.

I quilted this one on my DSM, using my walking foot, with a pattern of two straight lines, followed by a curvy line.  I wanted to make sure there was lots of quilting to keep all of those small pieces stable, wash after wash, as the quilt is used by a baby.

I got to the end of the quilting, pleased to be done, ready to trim the quilt, to add the binding.  Looking good on this side, but then I turned it over...

Yikes.   I had quilted 4 inches of the edge  backing onto the back of the quilt.  I took out my super sharp scissors and cut away much of the overlapping fabric, without undoing the quilting.   After getting it down to 2", I took out my ruler and my rotary cutter, and trimmed off the remaining overlapping chunk.  No one will ever know that I did this, so please don't spill the beans!!! (LOL!)

I found the binding fabric in my stash--it has made an appearance in other baby quilts that I have made in the past.  I did some of the hand stitching yesterday afternoon and some today in the car.  Here is the finished quilt...I just need to add a label.

I will be linking up with Kathy's slow Sunday stitching group tomorrow.