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.