A Finished Quilt Top

I pulled out various colours to use for sashing for this blue colour block quilt including orange, golden yellow and red.  As you can see, red won!  The sashing was cut 1.5" wide and finishes at 1".  I will have to piece the backing of this quilt and I will likely add some medium blue solid binding when it is quilted. 

I have a bunch of quilts ready for walking foot quilting, most of which are already pin basted...I need a chunk of time and also must clear off my sewing table to do this.  This is difficult when Finn is here as he can't come in the sewing room...too many things for him to get into in there.  

I made one more block for the Modern BOM this week. This one involved some paper piecing. 

I laid my blocks out on the kitchen floor to take a picture. 8/12 done now. I have the pattern for #9 and the last three blocks will be released over the next coupe of months. 

Finn wandered in to see what I was doing.  He loves to get his picture taken so he posed nicely. 

One pose was not enough, obviously!

My daughter had a wee bit of time this week to do a bit of embroidery as a break from her heavy work load.

I watched a movie on Netflix, The Bucket List, and worked on Love Birds. I have started the next blue flower now. I sure hope that there are no counting errors so that as I close the circle, it comes together as the pattern says it should!

There was some knitting time this week as well. I seem to be getting better at the cables as I add more rows to the practice piece.

Lots of Spring buds and flowers this week when I was out for my walks at the park and in our backyard. 

I will link up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (this month's colour is blue) and the Slow Sunday Stitching crew.  I hope to do some more work on Love Birds tomorrow, perhaps in our gazebo.   Take care and stay safe.  

Making Blocks

Happy Easter!

 Lucky for me, the colour of the month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is Blue for April.  I had already started making blue blocks for my Colour Block Challenge quilt for April so these two challenges will be met together.  I ended up making 12 medium/dark blue blocks and then found I had a stack of light blue squares as well.  I made 4 light blue blocks and put them all up on the design wall to consider my next steps.  I looked at my stash and found some red solid fabric which I will use for sashing, but not between every block.  If you come back to visit next week, I should have the top completed.  This is my third Colour block quilt made with my 2.5" squares from the scrap bins.  I still have lots more squares so there will be more quilts!  

I made one more Comfort Quilt block this week for the Elgin Piecemakers.  This one was easy--the fabric was provided and already cut. I like the way the stripes look on this block. 

I finished three of my pineapple blocks this week and made progress on the remaining nine after the setback last week. The completed blocks are 8.5" and I am aiming for a table runner that is 6X2 blocks. We will see how that looks when the blocks are done. 

One more Modern Sampler block was made this week too.  Only two more to go to get caught up. 

My cable knitting is coming along as well.  I did some knitting in the car earlier this week as well as at home with Finn snuggled up beside me. This is just a practice piece so I can figure out what I am doing before tackling a bigger project. 

My husband bought me this beautiful wooden yarn bowl, just because.  I am excited to try it out this week! It was made locally and purchased at the local yarn shop, The Little Red Mitten. 

The dark green leaves are almost done in this section of Love Birds. I hope to be working on the next large blue flower by next week. Somehow, I did not have much time to cross stitch this past week. 

Some of our daffodils are blooming!  (despite the snowflakes in the air on Thursday!)

The primroses are also showing their colours. 

Ontario is in another lockdown due to increased COVID-19 numbers.  My vaccine is still weeks if not months away so we continue to stay home and only go out if necessary.  We remain hopeful that the situation will improve as more people get their vaccines. 

Finn keeps us busy and entertained.  We take him for a long walk every day.  Mr. Carrot is his favourite toy. It is Finn's 3rd Birthday on April 4th!

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning as well as the Rainbow Scrap Challenge folks. 

Slow Sunday Stitching and a Couple of Blocks

I finally got back to working on my Modern Sampler BOM blocks this week.  I was four blocks behind before this week and now I just have three more to do to catch up!  I have a bin with my fabrics and block patterns in it so it is out on the sewing table now so I can get them done! My focus fabric has glasses on it and then I am using orange and blue stripes and dots for the other fabrics with the gray hash dots for the background. 

I put another blue colour block together as a leader/ender project this week as well.  I have 9 blocks made now and I am aiming for 16 or 20. These will be used for the April scrappy Colour Blocks project. 

Christine and I got together on FaceTime earlier in the week to sew some more logs onto our pineapple blocks.  The three blocks that I started in class are just about done.  I just need to add a few more orange and green logs to make them square. 

You may remember from last week that I had started the remaining 9 blocks that I needed for this project.  I sewed logs on them this week during FaceTime but, after sewing for over an hour, noticed that the middles did not look the same as the blocks above. 

The centre white square should have points and not be cut off by the next white logs.  After consulting with the teacher of the class and doing some measuring of the correct and incorrect versions, I figured out that I had made a trimming error on 7/9 of the blocks.  UGH!  These are small blocks but very time consuming to make.  After sleeping on it, I decided to take the outer white and coloured logs off so that all of the blocks will be the same. 

The top pile is garbage.  The white strips can be used again.  I will try to get back to these this week and make some progress without mistakes!

Love Birds is coming along slowly. The green parts that I am currently stitching are some leaves and then there is another large blue flower. 

My daughter added more stitches to the Munich cityscape.  It is really coming to life as she adds the orange and yellow parts. 

I was doing some sewing by machine earlier today and Finn decided to assist. He is so very helpful!

We were outside reading quite a bit this week. He loves to sit outside in the sunshine on my lap. 

My cable knitting is getting bigger.  This will just be a dish cloth--I wanted to practice doing cables before starting the bigger pattern that I have.  I think I have the hang of it!

We took Finn for a long walk this afternoon at a local walking trail.  There was a pond beside the path with sunbathing turtles. I remember seeing them in the same spot last year. 

I will link up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.  

Table Runner Finish and Pineapples

I remember saying last week that I thought the project using the leftovers from my recent quilt top finish would be made into a finished project before the quilt...I was right.  These HST blocks called my name early last week.  I tried several different ways of laying them out for the runner, but this one was the one I liked the best.

 I hand sewed the binding on in the car on Wednesday while we were on our way to pick up Finn for his annual stay at our house while our daughter is busy at work.  The backing was just fabric in my stash that I want to use up. 

It is a long drive to where our daughter lives so I usually bring multiple projects in the car to keep me busy and awake.  I added some more stitches to Love Birds. 

Earlier in the week, I watched a YouTube video about how to knit simple cables.  I started a small project to practice on.  So far, so good!

I always have a book in my bag as well.  I'm reading the 11th book in the 44 Scotland Street Series, The Bertie Project" by Alexander McCall Smith as well as the next book for book club "Five Little Indians" by Michelle Good.  

My daughter made me a beautiful flower embroidery picture for my birthday in February and gave it to me when we were there to get Finn.  This is another Barmy Fox project. 

I brought her the last few colours she needed to finish her coffee pot picture and it is done now too. 

I finally guessed that the cityscape is Munich, Germany!  A few more stitches were added to it this week too. 

For International Quilting Day, I added another  round to my pineapple blocks...

I started 7 more pineapple blocks .  I think I will need at least another two for a total of 12 all together. 

These blocks take a long time to make as there is lots of pressing and trimming for each round. I will not run out of scraps before they are done...

My next colour block quilt will be blue.  I made two more blocks as leaders/enders while making the pineapple blocks.  I have 7 blocks made now. I am not sure how many I will need for the next quilt. 

I have a couple of crocuses in bloom this week. There was even a bee buzzing around.

Finn was very happy to see us but not so happy when we drove away with him in the back seat, leaving his "Mom" behind. He is fine now.  We took a long walk at the park today and he is tired out tonight. 

Happy International Quilting Day, everyone!  I will link up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.