Two Finishes and a Comfort Quilt Block

As you can see below, I finished hand stitching the binding on my Summerhill Quilt this week.  I added a hanging sleeve and it is now on the wall in my dining room. I had fun quilting this one --it took several hours even though it is only 30" square.  I am especially pleased with the inner gray border.  I quilted an X in the intersections and then echo quilted in each elongated hexagon. I had not seen this done anywhere else before.  

Here are detail pictures of the blocks and borders. 

While I was in the mood for walking foot quilting, I changed the thread in my machine to a 28wt red and got busy quilting my "Big Love" heart quilt.  This quilt is 36" by 42". I decided this one just needed texture so it is quilted with straight lines horizontally across the quilt.  I used the edge of my walking foot as a guide. 

I found the perfect colour of turquoise solid to use for the binding and hand stitched it down for my slow stitching this week.  You can see that I pieced some red and blue flannel for the back of the quilt--all from the stash.  This quilt will hang in my front hall from now until the end of February. 

We had our Elgin Piecemakers Guild meeting on Zoom last night. We determined which colours we will be using for our comfort quilt blocks each month for the rest of the year.  First up is red and gray.  I dug into my scrap bins and made this Drunkard's Path block for the February block.  Since red is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour of the month, I will link up with those folks in the morning. 

My husband took some kitchen scraps out to the composter today and when he took the lid off, this is what he saw.  Spiky frost!!!  He called for me to get my phone so I could take some pictures. So cool, literally and figuratively!

Finn got some snow on his whiskers today when he went out for a walk. There are all kinds of good smells underneath all that snow!

I will link up with the Slow Sunday stitchers at Kathy's blog on Sunday morning.  

Binding a UFO and a Valentine's Day Quilt top

Back in October 2020, I took a class with Mary Elizabeth Kinch.  She loves to make big quilts with small pieces, but this class was for a small sampler quilt of four blocks with a border and sashing.  The pattern is called "Summerhill Quilt". I had it all pieced, including the borders within a couple of weeks of the class. I used colourful solid scraps from my scrap bin and some Essex Linen to make this quilt.  Several months ago, I pin basted the quilt and then it sat.  I looked at it often, trying to figure out how I was going to quilt it--Overall texture OR custom quilted with my walking foot.  This week, I finally decided on custom quilting with my walking foot.  This is the first block that I quilted. Each square is 1". 

I worked on it for several hours every day this week and today, I finished the quilting!  I will show close ups of the rest of the blocks when I reveal the whole quilt next week. I used Aurifil 28 wt turquoise thread for the quilting. This picture shows the centre of the quilt. 

When the quilting was done, I trimmed it and tried various colours for the sashing--turquoise, three shades of green and magenta.  In the end, magenta was chosen.  I started hand sewing the binding tonight and will continue working on it tomorrow for my Slow Sunday Stitching. 

When I was not quilting, I managed to get all of my bonus HST's trimmed.  Now, they are waiting on my ironing board to be pressed.  They are 1.5" square and will finish at 1" in the quilt.  Once they are pressed, I will play with a layout on my design wall.  

 A "squirrel" ran through my sewing room this week when I saw a free heart quilt pattern by Modern Handcraft called "Big Love" on Instagram.  I have had these fabrics in my stash for years and had not been able to find the perfect project for them until now. I scaled the pattern down to make a wall hanging. 

The plan is to quilt this one over the next few days and hang it up for the month of February for Valentine's Day. I will be piecing the back with fabric from my stash. 

My husband and I went for a hike at a local conservation area on Thursday afternoon.  It was cold but there was no wind and the sun was shining!  Perfect day for a walk in the woods!

Finn wants you to know he is keeping an eye on things!

I will link up with Kathy in the morning.  

A Little of This and a Little of That

The November Modern Block of the Month pattern was released this week at the Twilight Quilt Guild blog, so I dug out my fabrics and got sewing.  The chevrons were paper pieced. The glasses fabric will appear in every block in my quilt along with other assorted dots and stripes in orange and navy.  I was afraid I was going to run out of the gray hash dot background fabric but managed to find some at a localish store and had them ship it to me. 

 I added the final borders to my Summerhill quilt from Mary Elizabeth Kinch's workshop.  I have a plan for the quilting--I just need to pick a backing from my stash and get my other sewing machine back from repair. I used lots of solid scraps in this quilt, but as is the case with all scrappy quilts, the bin still looks just as full as it did when I started. 

Several years ago, Jacqui and I set out to make two quilt tops for the Elgin Piecemakers outreach project, comfort quilts for cancer patients at our local hospital.  We managed to get one top done and the second top cut out in one day. The second quilt top was never assembled and got lost in Jacqui's sewing room, never to be seen again until a few weeks ago. It was unearthed during a deep clean and was brought to me to put together.  Each member of the guild contributed a few 10" squares of word fabric to this project--there was no colour scheme stipulated, but the fabrics all had to have words on them. I got all the pieces out of the bag and looked at the instructions for the blocks.  I spent a good hour yesterday laying out the blocks on my design wall and will sew them together this week. 

My design wall was not quite big enough for all of the blocks so I will sew what I can see so far and then lay out the final column of blocks.  The pattern is called The No-Waste Windmill and is from a book called Rotary Cutting Revolution by Anita Grossman Solomon.  The bag even has the binding all cut and a backing for the quilt as well. 

My latest knitting project, a baby facecloth with a squirrel on it, is about half done. I will work on it again tomorrow for Slow Sunday Stitching with Kathy.

Finn is excited to show off my daughter's stitching project.  Isn't he a great stitching model? 10/19 hexagons done. 

My blackwork project is very close to being done--only one more square to finish. This picture was taken earlier in the week. The colours were chosen based on what I had in my thread stash. 

Now, it looks like this:

A friend's daughter is getting married in a couple of weeks.  I gave her and her husband to be a couple of choices for a cross stitch picture for their wedding gift.  They have chosen one of the patterns I proposed and once we have the colours finalized, this will become my next project. I told them that the gift will be delivered sometime next year and they were fine with that.  We will be watching the wedding on Zoom instead of being there in person. 

I will link up with Kathy in the morning. 

Machine and Hand Stitching

Essex Linen seemed to be the fabric of the week in my sewing room over the last few days.  First, I finished the last two blocks of my Summerhill quilt and then added linen sashings and borders...the colour is called Pepper. I like the texture of the linen surrounding my blocks.  I am in the process of making a pieced border from more tiny pieces of Kona solids. I'm hoping to get the final two borders on this coming week. 

Next, I made a pillow for an online Christmas bazaar.  I had the three trees made already--they had been pinned to my design wall for the last couple of years so this was a good way to use them. I was pleased that I had enough scraps of the right colour of linen to complete the top of the pillow.  The back is a Christmas print that was in my stash--I added a zipper closure. 

My third Essex Linen project was this quilt top:

I participated in a broken dishes block swap with Barb at www.funwithbarb.com a few years ago and finally assembled the four blocks a couple of months ago.  I did not have the right fabric for the sashing and borders in my stash until the Essex Linen (pepper again!) arrived in my sewing room.  I already have a plan for the quilting on this quilt but need to purchase some red thread in 28 wt. and make a backing.  My sewing machine that I use for quilting is in at spa right now for a repair and a deep clean, so the quilting will have to wait for a bit. 

My blackwork project has almost all of the gray and black frames done now. I also added some more blue to that section. 

Our daughter was so busy following the news this week that she did not get any hand stitching done at all. Hopefully, she will have some progress to report next week. Finn would like to report that they had some snow this week where he lives, and it tasted good.

I glanced out the kitchen door today to discover that a squirrel was hiding a walnut in my wreath.  Mostly, they hide the walnuts in all sorts of strange places and then promptly forget where they are later. 

We had a beautiful day here today--sunny and 17 degrees C.  We spent part of the day raking leaving and cleaning up some gardens. Then, we went for a bike ride on a local trail and came home and cleaned the windows.  A very productive day!   I will be linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning. 

Piecing, Stitching and Knitting

Last weekend, I took a class with Mary Elizabeth Kinch on piecing with small bits of fabric.  The quilt I am making is called Summerhill.  It has 4 blocks surrounded by some borders.  I have now finished two of my blocks.  Each square in this first block finishes at one inch. 

The second one is a Courthouse step block--each log is .5" finished.  This is not paper pieced. 

I am using scraps from my cool Kona solids bin plus red violet.  About half of the scraps are all over my cutting table so I am going to have to keep working on the last two blocks and the pieced border before working on any other projects this week. The next two blocks are started.  

Earlier this week, I sewed my last 16 lupin blocks together...this took longer than I expected but I am glad to have them done.  All 48 blocks are in a bin, waiting for me to cut the setting rectangles and then lay everything out on the floor to put it all together.  This is a queen sized quilt and is too big for my design wall. 

This scrappy yellow block is the first in my next rainbow scrap challenge project.  Even the white pieces were cut from my Kona scraps.  The pattern for this block is from Gudrun Erla's Quilts of Iceland book. 

I started a new baby washcloth this week...so far, I just have the lower border done but I will be working on this again tomorrow for Slow Sunday Stitching, along with my blackwork project. There are 9 coloured squares and 4 gray ones in this Celtic knot design.  

My daughter's blackwork bee project looks amazing!  She sent me this picture today after finished another bee.  There are 19 hexagons in her picture, as well as several bees. 

Her embroidery has lots of wonderful texture!

We planted four different types of daffodil bulbs in our back gardens today. The squirrels tend to leave the daffodils alone so I'm looking forward to seeing these interesting blooms in the spring. 

We didn't have very many Trick or Treaters this year, but the few we did have were all very cute! I gave them their candy with a long tool that belonged to my parents--they used it to pick things up off the floor or from a high shelf. It worked very well to deliver treats to the kids' bags at a safe distance. Until next week, have a great week, filled with lots of sewing, knitting and stitching. 

Stitching Report

I finished off the walking foot quilting on my London Modern Guild HST BOM quilt this week. The orange diamond was my focal point and the quilting lines ran parallel to each side of the diamond, creating an X of parallel lines and other areas of cross hatching off each corner of the diamond.  I used orange thread for the quilting and even though this is a relatively small quilt, I went through 3 bobbins of thread!  

 The orange binding is leftover from the HST's. I just love those seagulls!

I purchased the backing fabric on sale several months ago, before COVID, just to have on hand for a backing.  You can see the quilting a bit better in the picture below. 

The second block in the Modern BOM was posted this week and I did not waste any time getting it done.  I added some more fabrics to the bin for this quilt and will continue to use the glasses fabric and the gray hash dot fabric in every block.  I have chosen several other striped and dotty fabrics for this quilt. 

Here are the two blocks I have made so far. 

I figured out this week that I probably do not have enough of the gray Michael Miller hashdot fabric and have been checking with local quilt stores to no avail.  If a Canadian Store near you has a yard of this fabric, please let me know and I will order it!

I attended a quilting workshop today taught by Mary Elizabeth Kinch on Zoom. I met Mary Elizabeth several years ago at the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat that Gwen Marston used to run. Mary Elizabeth is in love with making large quilts out of tiny pieces and today's class was an introduction to her methods for cutting and sewing small pieces of fabric. The finished quilt, Summerhill, will include 4 blocks as well as a pieced border. We made a start on the four blocks today and here is the result of my day of sewing.

I am digging into my cool solid scraps for this quilt and throwing in some red-violet scraps for fun. Stay tuned for more progress on these blocks. 

My blackwork project is moving right along--I'm working on the 5th colourful square now.  My daughter is also stitching along on her landscape and the honeycomb.  

I have 4 sets of four blocks cut out for my lupin quilt and hope to sew these this coming week.  As you know, the cutting takes quite a while!

My husband and I went for a walk by Lake Erie today before supper and came across a large flock of seagulls taking to the air. 

I will be linking up with Kathy in the morning for the weekly Slow stitching party at her blog. If you would like to read the story of my music challenge quilt, you can read it here.