A Busy Week

 It was a busy week with lots of activities happening, but not a lot of time for sewing.  I managed to make some progress on my cross stitch project, adding more trees, border stitches and starting the snow at the bottom of this section. I'm hoping to finish the mushrooms in the forest this coming week and move on to the next part. 

The church bazaar was yesterday.  Here are the three pillows that I made for the sewing table.  We had a family wedding to attend out of town yesterday so I only had time to stop briefly at the church.  

My daughter also had a busy week so not a lot of time for crocheting.  She started the next part of the border--it looks like a candy cane. 

Finn finds the balls of wool make wonderful pillows. 

Christine and I are going on another quilting retreat next weekend so I need to get my projects lined up this week.  I have some gifts to make!  I will link up with Kathy and Frederique.  

Retreat Report

 I had a very productive weekend at the guild retreat last weekend.  It was glorious to have three full days to sew--meals provided and no dishes to do!  I added binding to two quilts that are gifts so I can't show those yet, but they are both hand stitched now and ready to gift.  I quilted the table runner I showed last week that will be for sale at our church bazaar next weekend and added the binding this week when I got home. I hope someone will like it enough to purchase it! I also worked on three pillows for the bazaar but forgot to take a picture.  I will do that for next week. 

I also finished off the last of my 12 placemats for Meals on Wheels.  Our guild is collecting them and they will be presented to a representative from MOW at our next meeting. 

And here are all twelve:

I made the scrappy square blocks a couple of years ago for one of my rainbow scrap challenge projects and then turned them into churn dash blocks a few months ago.  At the retreat, I added sashing, cornerstones and borders and it is now a quilt top, ready to be quilted.  I made blocks for three baby quilts at the retreat as well but can't show them here yet. 

My Winter Woods cross stitch now has some mushrooms in the woods--more trees and another mushroom  still to add. 

My daughter is making good progress on her Crochet-a-long Christmas blanket.  She is on step two of six.   Finn was oblivious to modelling the sections she worked on this week. 

The lavender in my garden is still blooming despite having several hard frosts. 

The fothergilla bush in the backyard is putting on a show right now too. 

I was happy to see that my butterfly weed has decided to plant a few seeds in my garden.  It is one of my favourite plants with its bright orange flowers. 

You know Finn and his love of sunbeams!

I will link up with Kathy and the slow Sunday stitchers, Frederique and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge folks too. 

Getting Ready for a Quilting Retreat

I am getting ready to go to the fall retreat for the Oxford Quilters Guild this weekend. I have a big bin full of projects--two just need binding, one is a pile of blocks that need to be made into a quilt top, some are Christmas gifts (secrets!), three new quilts to put together--pieces are cut already in preparation and also my last two placemats for Meals on Wheels.  I will not have time to get bored!  I finished the second secret project this past week and will not be able to show any pictures of it until it has been gifted. 

The second quadrant of my Winter Woods cross stitch is done--I love the pinecone!  I have started working on the border of the next quadrant and should have more to show next week. 

The framer called to tell me that the winter cross stitch I did last year was framed and ready to pick up. The red frame was chosen to bring out the red in the picture.  I will wait until after Remembrance Day to hang this up somewhere in my house. 

The church Christmas bazaar is coming up soon. I have been working on a winter themed table runner to put in the sale.  I also have three pillows that I am making.  I will work on these this weekend at the retreat. 

My daughter has been working on her Christmas crochet along blanket.  The centre square, a gingerbread house, is done and she is working on one of the borders. 

We went for a hike with the hiking club this weekend there was some interesting fungus on a rotting tree stump. 

Finn and our daughter went for a fun walk in the park and Finn found lots of good smells to sniff.

I will link up with Kathy on Sunday and Frederique on Saturday. 

 

Moving Right Along

This has been a productive week in the sewing department!  I finished quilting the potato chip quilt I made for the local hospice.  I used the cut offs from the backing to make the binding, remembering after I had machine stitched it to the front of the quilt that it needed to be machine stitched down, not hand stitched as I usually do.  Oops! This is because the quilts for the hospice will be washed and dried by machine often and the binding will stay on better if machine stitched.  I did not want to un-sew all of the binding so I just machine top-stitched it from the back. It's not perfect on the front but it will stay on when it is washed.  I'm very happy with how this quilt turned out!   

Here is the back.  You can see my straight line quilting easier on the back. There is lots of quilting to keep it together over many cycles in the washer and dryer. 

I pin basted a gift quilt this week and it will be next up for walking foot quilting.  I will show pictures of it once it has been gifted. 

I finished off two more placemats for Meals on Wheels.  I have two more to make to reach my self-imposed goal of 12. 

Lots of cross stitching done this week--I am well on my way to finishing the second quadrant of my winter/Christmas piece.  The pattern is called "Winter Woods" from Satsuma Street.

My daughter has become addicted to crochet and has started another project.  This is a Christmas crochet-along blanket.  Finn is modelling the centre square which will be a gingerbread house.  It is about 1/2 done.  Finn thinks the balls of wool made a nice pillow for his bum. 

This sleeping position is very comfortable but resulted in a serious case of bed face. 

The fall colours are peaking here.  This is the Worplesdon Sweetgum tree in our backyard. 

This picture was taken at the park while I was on my morning walk earlier in the week. 

 Here are a few more photos from our recent SW USA adventure.  We took a two hour boat tour on Lake Powell at 8am.  Turned out to be just us and the guide as no one else wanted to get up that early!  Beautiful day and not too hot at that hour in the morning. The guide was very knowledgeable and told us the history of the Glen Canyon Dam that was built to form the reservoir.  The first picture was taken from the Glen Canyon Museum and the second from a lookout above the lake. The rest are from the boat tour. 

The level of the lake fluctuates depending on how much snow falls in the mountains at the source of the Colorado River. You can clearly see how high the water was at one time in the next picture.  

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.  I will link up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge folks and Frederique today.   Have a great week!

Getting Back to Normal

I have been reacquainting myself with my sewing machine over the past few days.  I decided to get going on quilting the potato chip quilt top I made for our new hospice (opening in the Spring of 2025).  First I quilted two lines in the sashing to get everything stabilized and ready for quilting the blocks. I also added a row of stitching around the entire quilt the width of the walking foot into the beige border and then a 1/8th of an inch from the edge of the border to keep it flat.  I hummed and hawed over what colour of thread to use and finally decided on a beige thread on top and a light blue in the bobbin.  The backing fabric is blue. The picture below shows how each block will look when all of the edge to edge straight line quilting is done.  The second picture is of the back of the same block.

I spent a bit of time each day this week adding some stitches to my cross stitch picture. The bear needs four more stitches in his cheek and there are a few snowflakes to add in the air.  I have added more stitches to the border at the bottom too. 

You may remember that I am making a dozen placemats for Meals on Wheels--an outreach project of the Oxford Quilt Guild.  I had 6 done before my vacation and managed to finish two more this week as well as get another two to the stage of hand stitching the binding. Only a couple more to make to meet my goal!

Finn sent me a couple of pictures today of my daughter's crochet progress...three more "fried egg" (I mean daisy...) granny squares and more rows on her cream coloured blanket. 

I sorted through some of our vacation pictures this week.  The first few are from Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona.  We did a guided tour of this beautiful slot canyon. Amazing what flowing water will do to sandstone. 

The next pictures were taken on our favourite hike of the trip... The Queens Garden/Navajo Loop/Wall Street combination hike in Bryce Canyon National Park. It was a really hot day but we dressed to protect ourselves from the sun, used sunscreen, wore hats, hiking boots, ate salty snacks and drank lots of water.  Our daughter gave us hiking poles for Christmas last year and they were used on all of our hikes. As you can see below, the scenery was breathtaking. There were lots of ups and downs on this hike.  We hiked up all of those switchbacks in the first picture at the end of the hike. 

We met a little friend when we stopped for a drink and a snack. (we did not share our snacks!)

I'm not sure how this tree is even alive!

Yes, that is the trail down there!

We hiked earlier in the day and we were back to our car in time for the picnic lunch that we had in the cooler bag. We slept well that night (and every night!). 

That's enough vacation pictures for this week.  I will share more next week.  In the meantime, I will link up with Kathy and Frederique.