Secret Project Reveal!

For a few months now, I have been talking about a secret project. My cousin has finally received her quilt and so now I can show it to you, my blog readers!  I did some sleuthing to find out my cousin's favourite colours and was told green and purple. I raided my stash to find several purples and greens that looked good together as well as a piece of gray hash dot fabric leftover from my modern sampler quilt.  I had just enough of the gray fabric and even had to piece a few of the triangles to have enough for all of the units.   For those who are interested, I use my Easy Angle ruler for the purple HST's and my quarter square ruler for the green and gray QST's.

Here are all the units on the design wall, partially sewn together. 

I pin basted the quilt at one of our guild sewing days where there was a large table to use -- It's hard not the knees to use the floor. You can see I mitred the corners of the border to match the HST angles.  I put green borders on the sides that touch purple in the units and purple borders where they touch gray or green. 

I quilted this one myself with my walking foot.  The thread is green going on one diagonal and purple on the other diagonal. I used my Hera marker to keep the lines straight in the borders. 

All quilted!  I used a solid lighter purple fabric for the binding.  

The backing fabric was in my stash!  I had to add racing stripes on the back of the quilt to make it wide enough. Funny story.  First I added a green stripe.  When I measured the back against the quilt top, it still wasn't wide enough so I cut down the middle of the green stripe and added the purple.  Success!  The only fabric I purchased for this quilt was the green border fabric. 

My cousin lives across the country and her mother visited our area recently so the quilt was delivered by my aunt yesterday. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the finished quilt before giving it...  I will get my cousin to take a picture and send it to me. 

Since there can't be a blogpost without a picture or two of Finn...  Here he is with my daughter's crochet blanket that she is making.  It's almost big enough to cover Finn now--still lots more to do. 

Finn had a haircut yesterday and the groomer gave him a fall bandana.  Looking very handsome, Finn!

Fall will soon be here. 

Here is my cousin, all wrapped up in her quilt.  She loves it!

 I will link up with Kathy and Frederique on the weekend. 

Pin Basting and More Placemats

I added the binding to the placemats I made last week for Meals on Wheels.  Now, I have six completed placemats and I hope to make 12 for this project of the Oxford Quilter's Guild.  

This week, I started four more placemats and I have fabric pulled for a couple more.  I need to piece some more batting scraps to quilt the rest of them and pick out binding fabrics. Sorry, no picture of the 4th one. 

I finished off the last few stitches in the blue quadrant this week and started on the border of the green section to the left.  More details will emerge as I add more stitches this week.  The wonky border to the right of the fox is actually straight--it just isn't lying flat in the picture.  

I also added the outer border to the potato chip quilt I am making for the Hospice and got it pin basted.  I will be quilting this one myself with my walking foot.  

These begonias on my front porch have been blooming happily all summer.  

My husband and I went for a walk in Port Stanley as the sun was setting one evening this week.  The lake was calm and the seagulls were showing their stuff. 

Our hike with the hiking club was at the Fingal Wildlife Management area.  The leaves are just starting to turn in our area.  It felt like we were walking in a tunnel!

Finn, as usual, is a happy boy, especially when he gets to go outside!

I will link up with Kathy and Frederique.  

Placemats for Meals on Wheels

 Once again, the Oxford Quilt Guild is making placemats for Meals on Wheels recipients for distribution at Christmas.  They are due at our December meeting but I decided to get going on mine right away and get them done!  I dug into my fabric stash to see what I had--so many possibilities!  We are to make one side Wintery and the other side to be used for the rest of the year. So far, I have put together and quilted six placemats--the binding will go on this week. 

I found a few orphan blocks that I can use to make some more placemats before the deadline.  These are great projects using larger prints as well as leftover batting --I piece it using a zigzag stitch. 

On Wednesday night, I went as a guest to the Ancaster Modern Guild meeting.  The speaker was Christine of Tesselate Textiles.  Christine and I each made a quilt using her Whistlestop pattern a couple of years ago. I brought my quilt along to the meeting to show Christine and for a photo op!

I made great progress on my cross stitch project--I am almost finished this quarter of picture.  I will add more stitches to the top picture tomorrow for slow Sunday stitching. 

Finn loves to get comfy on top of all of the pillows on the couch. 

My daughter reorganized her bookshelves this week and Finn helped by keeping the piles in place. 

The cream coloured crochet blanket has 9/42 rows done now.  

My husband and I went on a couple of hikes this week--one on our own at Pinery Provincial Park where we saw this interesting plant.  It is a Strawberry bush.  It has very interesting seed pods.  

A view from one of the trails at the Pinery. 

The next day, we hiked with the Elgin Hiking club and I saw an interesting bug -- this is a spotted cucumber beetle.  Amazing what you see when you look closely. 

In my garden, my aster plant produced magenta flowers this week.  On the same plant, there are white and pale pink flowers as well. 

Have a great week.  I will link up with Kathy and Frederique, as usual.