Slow Appliqué and a Quick Baby Quilt Top

I managed to get one more house completed on my Coming Home quilt this week...this is very slow progress indeed.  I guess that's why they call it slow stitching!  I hope to get the last house on this street outfitted with a door and windows by this time next week. 

I showed these tiny HST's a few weeks ago and this week, finally laid then out on the design wall.  They will be 1" when sewn into the block.  I am not sure what to do in the middle yet.  I'm not in love with the orange HST's.  Maybe I will try to fussy cut something to put there.  I will continue to ponder. 

I belong to a sewing group at church.  We sew items for the church Christmas Bazaar and in the past have made reusable menstruation kits for young women in Africa so that they can attend school.  We have not met in over two years and are slowly getting back to planning for this year's bazaar.  We went through all of the fabric in our stash of donated fabrics last week.  I brought home a couple of pieces of flannel that I thought I could use to make a baby quilt for the bazaar.  I used my Go Cutter to cut out the wedge shapes and the top went together pretty quickly after that.  I have a piece of donated minke for the back and some red fabric for the binding from my own stash.  I will quilt it myself. Here is the finished top. The white fabric has little racing cars on it. I will trim the sides before I quilt it. 

I continue to try to use up my scraps.  This week, I made two more scrappy 36 patch blocks for my rainbow scrap challenge project.  One is gray and the other is brown--these colours are not usually chosen for the challenge but I wanted to include them in my quilt.  I will have to see what colour is chosen for May so I can get working on those blocks this week. 

We celebrated my husband's birthday this week with a hike at Pinery Provincial Park.  His sister came along and Finn enjoyed exploring the trails too. It was a beautiful day.  Leaves are just starting to come out on the bushes. 

 

We saw lots of turtles basking in the sunshine but they were too far away to get a good picture of them.  Finn fell asleep quickly after supper!

I will link up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching crew in the morning. 

Take care and have a good week. 

How I Store My Scraps

 This was not a very productive week in my sewing room.  I managed to hand appliqué a few more doors and windows on a couple of houses on my Coming Home quilt, but that's about it.  

There may have been some bribing involved in the taking of this next photo---Finn is showing you have have two more houses to do on this row.  The dark blue house will have a yellow door and windows.  The magenta house just needs the windows sewn down. This will be my project for slow Sunday stitching tomorrow. I will link up with Kathy in the morning. 

I have had a few comments on my slightly large collection of selvages.  I am still in the midst of organizing them by colour.  They are the only part of my stash that is not organized by colour.  I spent a lot of time a few years ago, getting all of my fat quarters washed, sorted by colour and organized in to plastic drawers. I then tackled the scraps.  I bought lots of clear plastic shoe boxes and went through all of my scraps and sorted them.  They now live in these labeled bins in my sewing room.  It is easy to find the colour of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge or if I am looking for some fabrics to use in a comfort quilt block for one of my guilds.   I have a small basket on my sewing desk--all scraps go into it as I am sewing and cutting.  When it is full, I spend a few minutes sorting them and putting them away in the appropriate bin. 

I also have bins for fat quarters and larger solid fabrics.  There is a bin of batik scraps and a bin for cool and warm coloured solid scraps. 

For pink month, I dug into my pink scraps below as well as my bin of 2 1/2" squares.  I made several quilts from these squares last year and I'm still working on using them up!

We have had an up and down week with the weather this past week.  On Monday, it snowed. A lot.  Finn liked it.  My husband and I, not so much. 

By Thursday, my friend and I did not need jackets on our walk and the buds on the trees at the park were bursting open.  I'm not sure what type of tree this is but it sure is pretty!

Today, my husband and I were out in our shorts, cleaning up the garden and putting out the patio furniture.  My gardens are waking up and lots of flowers are blooming. Other plants, such as this Columbine are unfurling their leaves. I saw lots of ladybugs today too.

I can't remember what this flower is called...can anyone help me?

Tomorrow, it is supposed to be 25 degrees!  This coming week, there may be flurries one evening.  This is April in my neck of the woods. 

Take care and see you next week. 

Checkerboard Quilt Done!

 I finished hand stitching the binding on my checkerboard quilt earlier in the week and then today, my quilt holder did his part for the photoshoot.  It was windy outside today, so we picked a sheltered spot on the back patio.  Finn watched from the back door--he really wanted to come out to participate in the photo shoot!  This quilt was started last year as part of Debbie Brown's Colour Block Challenge on Facebook--I had a lot of black and white scraps to use up and made 25 sixteen patches for this quilt.  Yes--I still have more black and white scraps, but this one put a good dent in the scrap bin.  Even in the sheltered spot, the wind still made the quilt move around a bit--you will have to take my word for it that the edges are straight!

You can see Finn peeking out the window in this picture. 

I spent quite a bit of time this week sorting some of my selvages in to bags by colour. This is no easy task as I have been accumulating this large collection of selvages for a long time.  Most of these came from my own fabric but some have been gifted to me over the years. 

I'm hoping they will be easier to use in my projects if they are more organized!  As you know, one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects this year uses selvages.  April's colour is pink and this is not a colour I use a lot in my quilts.  I originally started digging in the bin to find more pink selvages so I could make my blocks but one thing led to another, and soon I was sorting great fistfuls of selvages into bags.  I even threw some out --mostly because they were too narrow to be useful.  I cut my selvages 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches wide so that some of the fabric shows along with the selvage. I should be ready now to complete the rest of my selvage blocks each month.  I have not sorted all the selvages yet and hope to continue to do this until I get to the bottom of the bin.   Here are my pink selvage blocks for the RSC: 

I hope to do some more hand appliqué on my house borders of Coming Home this week.  The goal is to finish the doors and windows by the end of the month.  In May, I might be able to get working on the corner blocks for this border--birds, vines and leaves.  I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers on Easter Morning. 

My spring flowers are just starting to show some colour this week.  I have some crocuses in bloom and my daffodils are going to burst open any day now. 

Finn noticed a few flowers in the woods when we were out for a walk this week. 

Happy Easter Weekend to everyone who celebrates!

Lots of Slow Stitching Projects Underway!

 I have been working on several slow Sunday stitching projects this week.  I added more windows and doors to the houses in the Coming Home quilt...I still have a few more to stitch down and one complete "street" to cut out and sew.  Some of my houses have extra "personality" with slightly slanted doors and windows...

I put the pompom on my new hat earlier today so it is all ready to wear.  There are still a few days here and there when I will need a hat for my morning walk.  The pattern picture showed the hat with no "turn up" at the bottom edge.  It looks better this way on me. 

I finished quilting my black and white checkerboard quilt and added some black and white striped binding by machine earlier today.  I hope to do some hand stitching on the binding tomorrow...I really enjoy doing this, although some don't. You can see that my assistant is always ready for a photo op. 

I did a bit of embroidery last week but did not blog about it.  I will add more stitches this week, I hope. 

You probably noticed that Finn had a haircut this week...

Before and After:

One final picture of Finn because he's so cute. 

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitching crew in the morning.