Two Finishes and a Comfort Quilt Block

As you can see below, I finished hand stitching the binding on my Summerhill Quilt this week.  I added a hanging sleeve and it is now on the wall in my dining room. I had fun quilting this one --it took several hours even though it is only 30" square.  I am especially pleased with the inner gray border.  I quilted an X in the intersections and then echo quilted in each elongated hexagon. I had not seen this done anywhere else before.  

Here are detail pictures of the blocks and borders. 

While I was in the mood for walking foot quilting, I changed the thread in my machine to a 28wt red and got busy quilting my "Big Love" heart quilt.  This quilt is 36" by 42". I decided this one just needed texture so it is quilted with straight lines horizontally across the quilt.  I used the edge of my walking foot as a guide. 

I found the perfect colour of turquoise solid to use for the binding and hand stitched it down for my slow stitching this week.  You can see that I pieced some red and blue flannel for the back of the quilt--all from the stash.  This quilt will hang in my front hall from now until the end of February. 

We had our Elgin Piecemakers Guild meeting on Zoom last night. We determined which colours we will be using for our comfort quilt blocks each month for the rest of the year.  First up is red and gray.  I dug into my scrap bins and made this Drunkard's Path block for the February block.  Since red is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour of the month, I will link up with those folks in the morning. 

My husband took some kitchen scraps out to the composter today and when he took the lid off, this is what he saw.  Spiky frost!!!  He called for me to get my phone so I could take some pictures. So cool, literally and figuratively!

Finn got some snow on his whiskers today when he went out for a walk. There are all kinds of good smells underneath all that snow!

I will link up with the Slow Sunday stitchers at Kathy's blog on Sunday morning.  

Binding a UFO and a Valentine's Day Quilt top

Back in October 2020, I took a class with Mary Elizabeth Kinch.  She loves to make big quilts with small pieces, but this class was for a small sampler quilt of four blocks with a border and sashing.  The pattern is called "Summerhill Quilt". I had it all pieced, including the borders within a couple of weeks of the class. I used colourful solid scraps from my scrap bin and some Essex Linen to make this quilt.  Several months ago, I pin basted the quilt and then it sat.  I looked at it often, trying to figure out how I was going to quilt it--Overall texture OR custom quilted with my walking foot.  This week, I finally decided on custom quilting with my walking foot.  This is the first block that I quilted. Each square is 1". 

I worked on it for several hours every day this week and today, I finished the quilting!  I will show close ups of the rest of the blocks when I reveal the whole quilt next week. I used Aurifil 28 wt turquoise thread for the quilting. This picture shows the centre of the quilt. 

When the quilting was done, I trimmed it and tried various colours for the sashing--turquoise, three shades of green and magenta.  In the end, magenta was chosen.  I started hand sewing the binding tonight and will continue working on it tomorrow for my Slow Sunday Stitching. 

When I was not quilting, I managed to get all of my bonus HST's trimmed.  Now, they are waiting on my ironing board to be pressed.  They are 1.5" square and will finish at 1" in the quilt.  Once they are pressed, I will play with a layout on my design wall.  

 A "squirrel" ran through my sewing room this week when I saw a free heart quilt pattern by Modern Handcraft called "Big Love" on Instagram.  I have had these fabrics in my stash for years and had not been able to find the perfect project for them until now. I scaled the pattern down to make a wall hanging. 

The plan is to quilt this one over the next few days and hang it up for the month of February for Valentine's Day. I will be piecing the back with fabric from my stash. 

My husband and I went for a hike at a local conservation area on Thursday afternoon.  It was cold but there was no wind and the sun was shining!  Perfect day for a walk in the woods!

Finn wants you to know he is keeping an eye on things!

I will link up with Kathy in the morning.  

Red Scraps and a Gift

The red scraps were flying in my sewing room this week.  I have decided to do three rainbow scrap challenge quilts this year. When I made the selvage hot pads as Christmas gifts, it quickly became apparent that my selvage collection is out of control!  I had sorted some of my selvages into bags by colour so I grabbed the red bag and some light-weight non-fusible interfacing and made two squares. 

I also pieced some smaller red scraps together and used my drunkard's path rulers to make 4 quarter circle blocks.  They are not sewn together yet as I am not sure how I am going to put this quilt together yet.  

Here are all my red scrappy blocks for this month. I cut the selvage squares in half--they may become flying geese or HST's--I'm not sure yet. 

At a crafting retreat in the fall, one of the crafters was making Christmas cards with her Sizzix machine. She had a variety of Christmas/Winter dies with her. I offered to make her a zippered pouch if she would cut some shapes for me to use in my Christmas scrapbook.  She agreed and gave me a baggie filled with shapes before she left as well as her address so I could mail the bag to her.  I finally got around to making her bag this week in her colour of choice, purple. It's in the mail and should arrive soon. 

For my slow stitching this week, I finished off the binding on the children's comfort quilt for the local women's shelter.  I also finished knitting the green dish cloth but did not take a picture. I made a backing for another bed sized quilt for the women's shelter and will show it when I get it back from the long arm quilter. 

Someone at the retreat gave me a bag filled with cut off triangles, mostly black and white, with a few blue and orange ones thrown in.  I sewed them all into little blocks this week and now they are waiting to be pressed and trimmed. The sewing took a little longer than it should have as I ran out of bobbin thread and did not notice until several seams had been sewn with no thread!  I'm not sure how I will use these yet.  They finish at 1 3/4" squares. 

It's very cold where my daughter and Finn live.  He had a haircut this week and is looking quite skinny!  They went for a walk yesterday and he wore his coat and his boots. I think he was glad to get home and curl up in a warm blanket afterwards! The eagle-eyed among you will notice that my daughter's coat and Finn's match.  

I will link up with Angela for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching.  

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2022 and Comfort Quilts

 Last year, I made a couple of RSC quilts using the monthly colours at Angela's blog. This year, in an effort to use up even more scraps, I will be working on three projects.  I managed to get one block for the first quilt done this week using leftover red 2.5" squares from last year's projects.  The white solid squares were cut from my solid scrap bin. 

We took a long drive in the car this week to take our daughter and Finn home.  I volunteered to bind a comfort quilt for the Elgin Piecemakers Guild and did the hand stitching in the car. 

As you can see, I used the cut offs from trimming the quilt to make the binding.  I had 6" to spare! A simple block, one made by each member, makes a fun quilt. 

I also did some knitting in the car---I am just about finished this green dish cloth.  

Here is a picture of the last hat that I made for a friend for Christmas.  I was not able to give it to her until this past week--she loves it and put it on right away.  It even matches her new winter coat that I had not even seen before!

The Elgin Piecemakers had a donation of several bags and boxes of children's fabrics and so three of us got together last summer to make up 20 kits to make kids quilts for the local women's shelter.  The kit that I put together was very simple--a panel with borders and cornerstones.  I basted and quilted it on my DSM this week and added the binding.  I am about half finished with the hand sewing of the binding.  I will show a picture of the completed quilt next week. 

It's rather quiet around here without Finn and our daughter.  We took down our Christmas decorations and tree today and put the furniture back where it belongs.  I'm hoping for some more stitching and knitting time tomorrow for slow Sunday stitching with Kathy and her followers.  

Have a great week!