Sewing Machine UFO and a Baby Quilt Top

I tackled a UFO this week--they will not get done unless I work on them!  I participated in a round robin with some members of the Toronto Modern Guild last summer and made a wall hanging out of my centre block with a spool border made by Terri. The other borders/blocks will be used in future projects. I found some appropriate backing fabric and pieced some batting scraps before pin basting and quilting it with my walking foot. My slow stitching project this week was sewing the binding down. It is the same fabric as the background gray around the sewing machine. 

This will eventually hang in my sewing room.  

Last week, I made a flannel baby quilt backed in minke for the church Christmas bazaar.  This week, I brought some nautical themed fabric home from the church and made this quilt top.  The blue fabric was from my stash.  I have a yard of some sailor fabric for a backing--I will have to piece some other fabric into it to make it big enough for the backing.  I will piece some batting scraps for this quilt as well.  I am attempting to clear out some of my batting scraps and make it possible to shut the lid of the very large bin where they live. 

I finished off my green scrappy drunkard's path units and took a picture of the 5 circles I have made so far... the quarter circles are not sewn together yet. 

All these HST's, 100 of them, will end up making a 10" block.  I have one quarter of the block made and the second quarter partly done. My large ruler is holding down all the pieces on my sewing table so they don't blow off. I'm still pondering about what this will become. 

Lots of work has been done in the gardens this week. All my patio and porch pots are planted and getting watered every day, either by me or by the rain. Everything is growing well, despite one particular squirrel's efforts to dig up the little plants and fling them, and a lot of dirt, all over the patio.  I have replanted several of the plants and chased him away this morning before breakfast as he was trying to do some more digging. 

My grandmother used to have lily of the valley growing beside her house when I was growing up.  My MIL has some growing beside her house too and I spotted some blooms when I was there this week.  

As I said earlier in this post, we have had some rain this past week.  I noticed lots of water droplets on this tulip as I was going out for my morning walk and took out my phone to get a few pictures. 

These little flowers are quite small and don't last for that long, but they are very pretty.  This is called a Thrift. This little bunch of flowers is less than an inch across in real life. 

Finn and our daughter went to the park this past weekend.  They enjoyed watching the people and other dogs go by.  I think the picnic blanket would be good inspiration for a quilt...

You may be wondering why I have not posted any pictures of my daughter's cross stitch or embroidery lately.  At Christmas, I received a promise to make me an embroidery picture as one of my gifts.  She has been working on it but I am not allowed to see it until it is done, so there are no pictures for the blog.  We will all have to wait patiently for the big reveal!

I will link up with Angela and the RSC group now and with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.   Have a great week.  I have plans to work on my knitting and embroidery projects this coming week. 

Baby Quilt Done and Dark Green Scraps

I had a busy week in the sewing department this week.  I quilted and bound this flannel baby quilt for our church Christmas Bazaar.  The flannel wedges were cut from donated material and the back is a light blue minke, making this quilt very soft and cuddly. I quilted it with straight lines using my walking foot.  I was worried that the minke might stretch and pucker a bit but it looks great--no puckers and nice and flat. I hand stitched the binding this week in the gazebo--my favourite place for hand stitching!

I played with my dark green scraps this week and "made fabric" for my drunkard's path blocks.  I will cut out the white pieces and get these blocks done this weekend sometime. 

I made two green selvage blocks and two gold selvage blocks as well this week.  These are cut into HST's now and have joined the pile in the RSC project drawer.  When I made my yellow selvage block, I did not have enough gold pieces, but now that the selvage bin is completely sorted, I found more gold selvages to make my blocks.  

I bought some clear shoe box sized plastic bins and filled them with the selvages by colour.  I have 17 bins of selvages, including one with flannel selvages and one with multicoloured selvages. This will make it much easier to use them.  Having to dig through the giant mixed up bin was not motivating!

I did some knitting in the car and on the front porch this week...I am about 1/2 finished this baby wash cloth. 

It's blooming season in the garden!  We purchased some annuals for porch and patio pots yesterday and getting them planted is our job this weekend. The redbud is in bloom. 

The bees are buzzing around the bleeding hearts. 

There are several types of daffodils in bloom. 

Finn is very happy to be back home with our daughter.  He's a good car traveller! He is sporting a new bandana which makes him very dapper! 

I will link up with Angela and the RSC folks as well as the Slow Sunday Stitchers at Kathy's blog. 

Knitting a Baby Washcloth and Green RSC

I just found out that someone I know just became a grandmother for the first time... how exciting!  I decided to make some baby washcloths for the new baby.  This one is about 1/3 done and will have a bird on it.  I have a starfish cloth that I made quite a while ago and I will also make a cloth with a whale on it. These do not take too long to make.  

 The Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour this month is green, specifically, forest green and sage green.  I have enough forest green scraps to make my three blocks for this challenge but sage green is almost non-existent in my stash so I will be skipping the sage green blocks.  I have lots of light to medium green scraps so they may come out to play as well. I made a black 36 patch block as well. 

Here are all the blocks I have made so far this year, plus my HST block that I have not put together yet.  Top row: black, gray and forest green

Middle row: Brown and red

Bottom row: gold, turquoise and yellow

I will work on my other RSC projects this week.  The green scraps are still out, ready to go. I will link up with Angela today. 

Our azalea bush is in full bloom.  Such a pretty colour!

My husband and I went for a long walk at the St. Thomas Elevated Park earlier this week.  They have been installing art along the trail.  This is a good piece for Spring!

Our daughter is here for a few days and will take Finn with her when she goes home.  We went for ice cream one night after supper.  This particular shop has treats for dogs called "Pawsicles"--made from peanut butter yoghurt.  Finn approves!  He could hardly wait to eat his treat. 

This picture was taken when we were sitting on the front porch waiting for A to arrive.  He was very excited when she got out of the car and he raced over to her and smothered her in kisses.  He has been keeping himself very close to her since she arrived. 

Today, we went for a hike.  Finn loves going for long walks in the woods. 

The violets in my garden are in bloom!   The original plant belonged to my husband's grandmother who passed away over 30 years ago so these little blossoms remind us of her every spring.   

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms, Grandmothers, Aunts and mother figures in our lives!  

I will link up with Kathy in the morning. 

Slow Appliqué and a Quick Baby Quilt Top

I managed to get one more house completed on my Coming Home quilt this week...this is very slow progress indeed.  I guess that's why they call it slow stitching!  I hope to get the last house on this street outfitted with a door and windows by this time next week. 

I showed these tiny HST's a few weeks ago and this week, finally laid then out on the design wall.  They will be 1" when sewn into the block.  I am not sure what to do in the middle yet.  I'm not in love with the orange HST's.  Maybe I will try to fussy cut something to put there.  I will continue to ponder. 

I belong to a sewing group at church.  We sew items for the church Christmas Bazaar and in the past have made reusable menstruation kits for young women in Africa so that they can attend school.  We have not met in over two years and are slowly getting back to planning for this year's bazaar.  We went through all of the fabric in our stash of donated fabrics last week.  I brought home a couple of pieces of flannel that I thought I could use to make a baby quilt for the bazaar.  I used my Go Cutter to cut out the wedge shapes and the top went together pretty quickly after that.  I have a piece of donated minke for the back and some red fabric for the binding from my own stash.  I will quilt it myself. Here is the finished top. The white fabric has little racing cars on it. I will trim the sides before I quilt it. 

I continue to try to use up my scraps.  This week, I made two more scrappy 36 patch blocks for my rainbow scrap challenge project.  One is gray and the other is brown--these colours are not usually chosen for the challenge but I wanted to include them in my quilt.  I will have to see what colour is chosen for May so I can get working on those blocks this week. 

We celebrated my husband's birthday this week with a hike at Pinery Provincial Park.  His sister came along and Finn enjoyed exploring the trails too. It was a beautiful day.  Leaves are just starting to come out on the bushes. 

 

We saw lots of turtles basking in the sunshine but they were too far away to get a good picture of them.  Finn fell asleep quickly after supper!

I will link up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching crew in the morning. 

Take care and have a good week. 

How I Store My Scraps

 This was not a very productive week in my sewing room.  I managed to hand appliqué a few more doors and windows on a couple of houses on my Coming Home quilt, but that's about it.  

There may have been some bribing involved in the taking of this next photo---Finn is showing you have have two more houses to do on this row.  The dark blue house will have a yellow door and windows.  The magenta house just needs the windows sewn down. This will be my project for slow Sunday stitching tomorrow. I will link up with Kathy in the morning. 

I have had a few comments on my slightly large collection of selvages.  I am still in the midst of organizing them by colour.  They are the only part of my stash that is not organized by colour.  I spent a lot of time a few years ago, getting all of my fat quarters washed, sorted by colour and organized in to plastic drawers. I then tackled the scraps.  I bought lots of clear plastic shoe boxes and went through all of my scraps and sorted them.  They now live in these labeled bins in my sewing room.  It is easy to find the colour of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge or if I am looking for some fabrics to use in a comfort quilt block for one of my guilds.   I have a small basket on my sewing desk--all scraps go into it as I am sewing and cutting.  When it is full, I spend a few minutes sorting them and putting them away in the appropriate bin. 

I also have bins for fat quarters and larger solid fabrics.  There is a bin of batik scraps and a bin for cool and warm coloured solid scraps. 

For pink month, I dug into my pink scraps below as well as my bin of 2 1/2" squares.  I made several quilts from these squares last year and I'm still working on using them up!

We have had an up and down week with the weather this past week.  On Monday, it snowed. A lot.  Finn liked it.  My husband and I, not so much. 

By Thursday, my friend and I did not need jackets on our walk and the buds on the trees at the park were bursting open.  I'm not sure what type of tree this is but it sure is pretty!

Today, my husband and I were out in our shorts, cleaning up the garden and putting out the patio furniture.  My gardens are waking up and lots of flowers are blooming. Other plants, such as this Columbine are unfurling their leaves. I saw lots of ladybugs today too.

I can't remember what this flower is called...can anyone help me?

Tomorrow, it is supposed to be 25 degrees!  This coming week, there may be flurries one evening.  This is April in my neck of the woods. 

Take care and see you next week.