My New Projects and Knitting

I started these blocks at a recent guild retreat after mulling over the design for a couple of months.  I made two at the retreat and one more today.  I have more colours pulled to make nine blocks for this wall hanging. Here is the pink block. 

And here are the three blocks I have made so far. 

The centres are a cute print that I have had in my stash for a few years.  I have the green and blue blocks in line to do next. 

I have been knitting most days this past week and my scarf is now 41.5" long.  I finished off the first ball of wool and have started on the second one now. 

I took an online class with Cheryl Arkison a couple of weeks ago and here is my first block--an improv tree.  In her Scandi Village class, she taught us how she made the trees and houses on her quilt which you can see here.  The background material is leftover from backing of the teal and brown potato chip quilt that I made for my cousin. I am using solid scraps for the trees and houses.  When the background material is gone, I will put the blocks together.  Each tree and house will be a different size depending on the size of the scraps that I use.  It will be a bit of a puzzle to put it all together but I like doing that!  I hope to make some more trees this week. 

I also put a quilt top together that I started at the retreat.  It's a gift so no pictures.  I have to buy a backing for it before I can quilt it.  I don't have anything suitable in my stash. 

We have had some warmer weather this past week.  All of the snow is gone and there are signs of spring in the garden...daffodils are up and the Columbine is showing some life too. 

In the late afternoon, the sun streams in our front windows and Finn found the perfect spot to lie to catch a few rays. 

I am one of those people who like Daylight Savings Time--I love to take a walk in the evening after supper this time of year.  Finn also likes our evening walks. 

He also likes to supervise me in the morning while I dry my hair.  

My daughter has been busy at work so she doesn't have a lot of time to read or crochet these days.  The border on her Christmas blanket did get a bit of attention and is nearing completion.  She still has lots of ends to weave in. There is one more border after the light green one. 

I will link up with Kathy and Frederique as usual.   

Broken Dishes Swap

After reading about Kathy participating in a Bow tie block swap last year, I decided to jump in and join this year's swap at Fun with Barb.  Barb actually is running two swaps--both with 4" finished broken dishes blocks.  I joined up for the modern swap using solids (red and another colour of my choosing) and Christine signed up for the Civil War swap.  Barb was hoping that 40 people would sign up for each swap but only 30 signed up for the Modern swap. (I think 40 signed up for the civil war swap.)  The instructions soon arrived by e-mail.  I needed to make 60 blocks--30 in each of two colours with the constant red.  (Christine needs to make 80 blocks--in a way, I am happy I only needed to make 60!)

For my first set of 30 blocks, I decided to pair orange with the red.  I used my Go cutter to cut out all of the triangles...

A lot of sewing ensued followed by pressing and then more sewing.

I had some tension issues with my sewing machine so I switched to my older machine and took the newer one in for a check up at the sewing machine doctor...

I thought I had done enough sewing but, after counting, discovered I only had 28 1/2 blocks! Just 2 1/2 blocks to go.

More sewing, more pressing, more sewing again... This morning I finished off the blue and red blocks.  I am all done!

Christine and I will be mailing our blocks together so I will put mine in a bag, ready to go, and wait for her to get her civil war blocks made.

Yesterday, my husband and I went to the apple farm to get some pumpkins and apples. I just love the colours of  this season! 

Weekly Sewing Report

These blogposts are becoming a weekly report of my sewing activities. There are just not enough hours in the day to blog any more often than once a week!  The fabric postcard above was made this past week for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild fabric postcard exchange. I made another one as well which is in the mail to a friend that I have not seen in a while. The fabric is leftover from the pillowcase I made myself recently. I quilted it on the diagonal, but you can't really see it in the picture.

I also made two placemats this week for Meals on Wheels--they will be put into giftbags for shut in seniors in London at Christmas. The two blocks are orphan blocks leftover from another project.

Christine and I got together on Wednesday night to work on our RRCB quilts. I put some of my blocks together and cut the strips for the pieced border. I hope to get some more blocks together this week and work on the pieced border at the annual Quilt 'til You Wilt day next Saturday.

Christine worked on her daughter's quilt. She has all her RRCB blocks together already!

Today, Pam from Mad About Patchwork did a workshop for our guild where we learned how to do not one but two quilts!

In the morning, we worked on "Through the Trees"--

And "Quartered Squares" in the afternoon.


(Those are both Pam's versions of these quilts!)

I used some flower fabric that I purchased years ago with some co-ordinating brights  for my Through the Trees quilt.

We had to cut all of our fabrics the same size, stack them up in a certain order and then slice in a wonky way.  We then reordered the strips so that each block would be different...

It did not take long to sew the 8 blocks together. We talked about various ways of putting the blocks together...I decided to make a wonky coins quilt with bright green (Kona Sour Apple) sashing and border. I even managed to finish this top before the end of the day, although it still needs a little trimming at the top and bottom...

I have picked out some pink fabric for the binding--I will have to search though my stash to see if I have any suitable fabric for the backing.

I decided to use solids for my Quartered Squares quilt and got one block done.  There is a lot of cutting for this quilt and I did not get all of it done. I decided that I needed to have one block completed as an example of what to make at home!  There are at least a dozen different solids in this quilt.

Another project to work on at Quilt 'til You Wilt....

This week, I hope to get some more RRCB blocks together and get my fabrics cut for the QS quilt. I have to get everything ready for QTYW too...

Until next time... Happy sewing!