Frank Lloyd Wright and Prague

My daughter has started another counted cross stitch city---this time it is Prague.  She visited Prague earlier this year with a group of friends when they toured Eastern Europe.  She has decided to stitch only cities where she has been to visit.  This time, she is doing one colour at a time so it doesn't have any recognizable buildings yet.  

I continue to work on the silver metallic thread outlining on Frank...I spent some time in the car today and did some stitching.  There is more car time scheduled for tomorrow and I should be able to finish this project during the drive.

Just a bit more outlining to do in this corner...

I have been working on some Christmas gifts this week so I can't show anything on those projects yet.  Stay tuned.  There was some hand stitching on the binding involved...

I went to visit my daughter and Finn last weekend.  This is one of Finn's favourite toys, Mr. Carrot.  He has a squeaker and during playtime, he lost one of his green sprouts.  Grandma to the rescue!  I sewed the sprout back on and Mr. Carrot was as good as new.  

Finn was happy to have Mr. Carrot back.

Finn likes to nap with his head on a quilt...he's a dog after my own heart!

The London Friendship Quilter's guild had their December meeting this past week...We celebrated the season with a proper Tea Party with china cups and saucers, scones with clotted cream and jam, crustless sandwiches and other goodies.

It was a fun and delicious meeting with lots of visiting and games to play. 

We all wore fascinators, made by the organizers. 

I even won a prize for the "What's in your purse?" game.  There were points given out if you had certain items in your purse...I had mittens, a zip-loc bag, and earplugs, to name a few of the items that  earned points.  The prize? A Christmas cup and saucer!

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.

Christmas Sewing

This hexagonal table topper is a Christmas gift for my MIL.  The pattern is called "Picnic" by Jaybird Quilts. My MIL has a small round table in her kitchen and this is the perfect size for it.  This topper looks a little more wintery than the flowery one she has there currently!  She loves to put the quilted gifts I have made for her out each season.  Her Christmas runner from a couple of years ago is currently on her dining room table.  (if you know my MIL, please do not spill the beans!)

I just finished hand stitching the binding tonight---this will count as my slow stitching for this weeks link up with Kathy's blog on Sunday morning.

What's not to like about snowmen and a striped binding???

We are getting lots of fluffy white stuff today...it looks so pretty on all of the branches of the trees and bushes.

Last Saturday was the sew in day with the London Friendship Quilter's Guild.  I worked on a new wall hanging for my hallway. I raided my grays, browns, and greens to cut out all of these triangles.  The pattern, Bountiful Boughs, is from Christmas Quilts and More by Better Homes and Gardens.

Here it is partly together...it took some effort to keep all of the triangles organized and sewn together in the right order.

By supper time, I had the top together.  It is in line to be quilted soon as I want to have it up by next weekend when we are having company.  I have some backing picked out...pin basting is up next!

I have not had any time to work on Frank this week but hope to do some stitching this weekend.

Foothills Quilt DONE!

I have not completed a bed sized quilt for a couple of years and I am very happy to finally have one finished and ready to share!  The above picture shows off the oak leaf quilting that I chose for Cathy at Eagles Wing's Quilts to use for my quilt.  You can read more about why oak trees are a special part of our family story on this blogpost from 5 years ago.

I had the binding all made before I took the quilt to Cathy's so I would be ready to sew it one as soon as I picked up the quilt.

The binding is the same navy blue Kona cotton as the sashing and borders.  I made just the right about of binding!

There was a bit of a breeze when I was trying to get a picture of the back of the quilt today.  Besides the navy fabric, all of the rest of the fabrics in this quilt came from my husband's discarded shirts.  I pieced the shirt backs together to make the back of the quilt.

Another shot of the quilting, taken outside today.

And, here is the completed quilt!

This will be going on the single bed in my daughter's old room.  

This quilt was made during a quilt along with Mary Elizabeth Kinch over the course of several months earlier this year.  It is based on an antique quilt that she showed on her blog last Christmas during her annual 12 days of Christmas quilt show.  The original quilt was 5 X 5 blocks but I decided I wanted a bed sized quilt rather than a square quilt.  The piano key border was added to make it big enough for the bed...I think it frames the quilt nicely!  The original quilt had some quirky piecing and so there are a few quirks here and there in my piecing as well. They are not mistakes...just an attempt to match the flavour of the original quilt.

Today, my husband and I went to the annual Christmas Carol service at the Old St. Thomas Church.  I love to kick off the season by attending this service.  It was a beautiful day with the sun streaming in the windows.  The Salvation Army band played and there were church shaped cookies and mincemeat tarts, and hot apple cider for everyone.

This church service has been held annually for the last 27 years and we have attended it most years since it started.

I will be doing another blogpost about the London Friendship Quilter's Guild sewing day later this week.

Pincushions, NYC, Frank and Some Binding

Christine and I have been making some pincushions recently.  I had to buy more stuffing for mine so even though I made them a couple of weeks ago, they did not get stuffed and the openings sewn up until this week. The top 5 are mine and the two in the bottom of the picture are Christine's.  I would like to make a few more and, goodness knows, I have lots of scraps to use to make them!

My daughter recently finished her New York City counted cross stitch picture.  The background is white, like the other ones that she has made.  She went to the store today to buy more floss for her next projects, although she is not sure which city scape will be stitched next.

I did a lot of hand stitching this week...I spent three evenings hand sewing the binding on my Foothills quilt.  The binding is navy blue to match the sashing and borders.  You can see in this picture that the backing fabrics are also shirts.  I will do a blog post about the finished quilt later this week after I get some pictures in better light.

I am very close to finishing off my FLW counted cross stitch project...I worked on it a few days this past week and finished off the second last section from the bottom and started on the bottom section.  I am almost out of thread on the first spool of silver metallic thread but I bought two so there is no need to panic!  I don't want to get into a running out of thread situation again like I did with the grey thread earlier in this project!

It is harder to get a good picture of this these days since I do my stitching in the evenings and it is dark so early this time of year.

Today was Quilt 'til You Wilt with the London Friendship Guild ---I was there by 9am and wilted about 8pm.  I will do a blogpost about my accomplishments later this week.  I will link up with Kathy and her gang of Slow Stitchers in the morning.

Frank

I spent a few hours in the car last Sunday and, of course, I worked on my Frank Lloyd Wright project as we travelled.  Today, we were in the car again for a couple of hours so FLW had more outlining stitches added.  The bottom rectangle in the picture below is the last section that needs to be outlined (besides the little squares in the next section up!).  Tonight, I watched a movie on TV and did some more stitching.  At this rate, FLW will be done in no time!

The Elgin Piecemakers Guild met this past Thursday.  As usual, there were several Comfort quilts in various stages of completion at show and tell time.  Our blocks this month were scrappy churn dashes, adapted from a tutorial by Crazy Mom Quilts.  Yvonne and I will be working together to put these blocks together in to a top.  We just need to make one more block...

Julie quilted this grey, yellow and white quilt and the binding will be added by the next meeting.

Two other finished quilts were ready to be delivered to the hospital.

I hope to have some slow stitching time tomorrow after doing a few jobs around the house.  I will be checking in at Kathy's blog to see what the other slow stitchers have been up to this week as well.  I have a quilt back from the long arm quilters so maybe I will get the binding machine sewn to it tomorrow as well...perhaps there will be a finish to share soon...

Another Baby Quilt

At last weekend's sewing day, I started making plus sign blocks with 30's prints for a baby quilt.  The pattern for the blocks came from Cheryl Brickey and Paige Alexander's book, Modern Plus Sign Quilts. In the book, they made a table runner with their blocks but I decided to make a baby quilt. 

There are two blocks from each print--I thought it would be fun to play a matching game with the quilt when the baby gets a bit older.  (There is no baby in mind for this quilt--it is another one of those baby quilts in waiting.)  When I put the blocks up on the design wall, I was not entirely happy with the way they looked...so I decided to add some strips of white fabric between the rows...

Much better!

I may or may not add white strips to the sides of the quilt...What do you think?  If I add the strips to the side, the backing fabric I have may not be wide enough.  Maybe, I could add narrower strips to the side so the backing is still wide enough... the jury is still out on this decision. I will continue to ponder. 

Grand-dog Finn had his first encounter with snow this week.  He liked it!  My daughter said it was hard to get his picture as he was tearing around in the snow and did not want to stop to sit for her to snap a pic. 

I did some more outlining on FLW this week.  The outlining in this section makes all those blank spots look more intentional.

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers on Sunday morning.  I will be doing more outlining tomorrow...

Elgin Piecemakers Sewing Day

Twice a year, the Elgin Piecemaker's Guild has a sewing day at a local church.  This past Saturday, 13 quilters gathered and sewed all day long!  We had a couple of ironing stations and a place for cutting fabric in the kitchen as well as 13 tables for sewing around the room.  It was fun to see what everyone was working on as the day progressed.

Fran was working on a jelly roll rug to match her shirt!

Heather is attempting to use up her Christmas scraps for a paper pieced courthouse step quilt.

Farruk is a friend of Yvonne and is a new quilter.

Anne was using a collection of bicycle fabrics to make her blocks.

Yvonne finally finished a Christmas project that she started two years ago...Don't we all have this type of project aging in our sewing rooms???  LOL.

Christine made two acorn mug rugs.

Beth is making a winter quilt from flannel--so cozy for a cold winter day.

Chris's colourful leaf quilt is coming right along!

Pat made 8 blocks for her 365 challenge quilt. 

Jacqui managed to make three owls for her grand-daughter's Fancy Forest quilt. 

The other Yvonne quilted a lap quilt.

Jane is starting a new quilt --I can't remember the name of the pattern...

I started two new projects...A spinning four patch quilt with some Kaffe fabric purchased years ago...

I cut out all of the squares... and then assembled the blocks. 

Here are a few of my blocks:

I made 33 blocks and now I have to figure out how I am going to assemble them into a quilt.

In the afternoon, I started a baby quilt using 30's prints.  

I started assembling the blocks and then had to pack up before I got any done.  Stay tuned for another post later this week about this quilt.  

We had the room at the church booked until 4pm but I wanted to keep sewing!  Alas, I had to pack up and go home.  There may have been some more sewing time that evening...