This and That

 I made steady progress this week on "Love Birds", a counted cross stitch picture I am making for C and M for their wedding which took place late in 2020. My goal this past week was to finish the leaves and start the next large blue flower.  Mission accomplished!  

Here is a closer up view of the section I worked on this week. 

It may take a week or two to finish the blue flower.  There are a lot of stitches in it!

My friend, A, celebrated a birthday this week so I made her a zippered pouch using some gardening themed fabric from my stash.  She is an avid gardener and was pleased with her bag.  The lining is a polkadot fabric. 

This week, I finished my "make a mini, make a friend" quilt for my swap partner in the Modern Quilt Guild, part of QuiltCon Together 2021(a virtual event this year due to COVID-19).  My partner lives in Texas and I asked that she make a mini quilt for me that tells me something about where she lives.  The quilt she sent to me arrived this past week but she has not received the one I made yet.  Once she has it, I will reveal both quilts here.  I did some colour blocks as my leaders/enders while making the swap quilt. These four blocks will be for quilts in future months.  The yellow and gray blocks are the last four needed for the February quilt. 

I am in the midst of prepping for some workshops at QuiltCon and if everything is ready early, I may have time to work on the February Colour block quilt this week. Two of the workshops are hand stitching--one is a hand quilting class with Sarah Fielke and the other is a hand embroidered quilt label class. I should have something to report on my classes by next week's blog post for Slow Sunday Stitching. 

I picked up two framed cross stitch pictures this week. The Frank Lloyd Wright window has been stitched for quite a while and the multicoloured blackwork was finished before Christmas.  As you can see below, both are now hanging on the wall!  The woman who does my framing does a great job!

As usual, Finn provided loving support during my daughter's stitching time this week.  There is a good reason that we call him the "Velcro" dog.  This is a stitch-along from the Barmy Fox on Instagram. 

Here are a couple of pictures taken while I was out for a walk one day this week.  The red berries are high bush cranberries. 

As usual, I will link up with Kathy and the gang of Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning. Have a great week!

Santa's Helper

Last week, I mentioned that I had made a surprise gift for a friend.  This block was one of 12 free blocks --part of the Quiltmas Spectacular Block sampler that is available for free until the end of December 2020.  I have printed all the blocks, hoping to make several over the next year or so --somehow incorporating them into gifts for next year.  This block is called "Santa's Helper". 

 My quilty friend, Sandra, posted the picture below on Instagram recently, and once I saw this block pattern, I knew that I had to make it for her. 

I gathered up some fabrics from my stash in the right colours to match Sandra's ensemble.

I made this little quilt in one day and sent it off in the mail.  I heard from Sandra this week that it had arrived and that she loves it!  I told her it was a portrait of her from the knees down!  So fun to surprise someone with a fun little gift at this time of year!

I have been doing some more knitting on my orange facecloth this week. 

I also still have a few secret projects that can't be revealed until after Christmas.  I will have to wait another week to post them on the blog. 

Guess who is visiting at my house?  My daughter lives alone so she was allowed to come to our house for Christmas.  Finn was very excited to see us. In the background, you can see the fence we have around our Christmas tree to keep him away from the water reservoir and the ornaments.  Finn is currently keeping my left leg warm while I type. 

My daughter finished her bee blackwork this week.  I was on FaceTime with her as she put in the final few stitches.  It took a lot longer than she anticipated but she loves how it turned out.   I love looking at all the different patterns she stitched in the hexagons. This picture was taken before it was washed and ironed for framing. 

I would like to introduce you to Santa, our newest to us Christmas decoration.  Santa was painted by my MIL when my husband was a child.  She used to do a lot of ceramics.  I think he is quite jolly!  Santa is on display on the shelves in our living room. 

I participated in a Secret Santa gift exchange through one of my guilds and received these cute ornaments as well as a small zipper pouch and some fat quarters. They are hanging on my tree and I love the bits of fabric my SS used!  So fun to get a package in the mail!

We decorated the tree last weekend and I found this ornament that my friend Meridyth made for me many moons ago.  1988!  I was not married yet in 1988!

I just starting reading this book for the book club at the library...we will be discussing it in January on Zoom.  Interesting story so far!

I will be linking up with Kathy for slow Sunday stitching in the morning. 

More Christmas Gifts

We are one week closer to Christmas and my gift making is just about done.  I finished off this knitted face cloth this week and it has been gifted to a friend.  For me, one of the best parts of Christmas is making gifts for family and friends.  Since I learned to knit this year, all of my friends received a little knitted something in their Christmas parcels.  I delivered my friends' gifts this week.  

I started one more facecloth this week, just because I had the yarn to make it and I like to keep myself busy, especially when we are in the car.  This one is orange. 

Now that I have mastered face and dish cloths, as well as a simple hat, I am hoping to move on to some more challenging knitting projects in the new year.  I want to learn how to do cables next...

I did a little bit of sewing this week.  I made a second zippered pouch for a friend for Christmas...same outer materials as the one I showed last week but this one has a polka dot lining. 

I was inspired by a photo to make a gift for another friend.  I pieced and quilted this little gift in one day as well as finishing the hand stitching on the binding.  It is in the mail and I hope it arrives in time for Christmas.  It should make her laugh out loud when she sees it. 

Finn continues to assist my daughter with her stitching projects.  The bees blackwork is almost done! She is working on the last hexagon. Doesn't Finn look proud!???

Just in case anyone was wondering what kind of snack to leave out for Santa this year, I have it on good authority that he enjoys poutine!  We saw this inflatable food truck when we were out for a walk last week. 

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

Gift Making

This has been a busy week with not very much time spent in my sewing room.  I did manage to make a zippered pouch as a gift for a swap with one of my guilds. I need to get this in the mail this week so it had a deadline!  The pattern is from Noodlehead...I have made several of these pouches as gifts over the last few years.  I don't even need to look at the instructions anymore!  

 I have a stash of zippers in various colours for these pouches so I am always ready to make a quick gift. The person receiving this pouch does not read my blog. I have a few secret projects going on in the sewing room at the moment that cannot be shared yet...

The facecloth that I started last week is just about done.  I did a bit of knitting every day this week. You can see from the picture that I also managed to do some Christmas decorating as well. 

Finn has been helping my daughter with her blackwork/counted cross stitch again this week.  He likes to guard her thread stash...

Her bee stitchery is nearing completion with only 2 1/2 hexagons to go!

We had some snow earlier in the week (it's all melted now). I go for a socially distanced walk with a friend at a local park most days and it was just beautiful with all of the snow clinging to the branches of the trees and bushes. 

Over the past few months, I have been taking pictures of quilts made by the members of the Elgin Piecemakers Guild so that I could put together a Power Point presentation for the Oxford Guild.  The EP group has 20 members and the pictures were taken at various interesting spots around our area.  The presentation was this past Thursday night --I must say that presenting on Zoom is nothing like presenting in person.  The "audience" all had their microphones on mute and I could not see them while I was showing my slides and talking about them.  I felt like I was just sitting and talking to myself, unsure if anyone out there was listening...  I did hear from several members of the guild at the end of the talk and the next day by email and telephone call to say that they had enjoyed seeing the sights and the quilts I had shared.  My husband took my pictures at the Elgin County Railway Museum.  

The quilts have all been shown on my blog before.  

1.  My neutral swap blocks quilt. 

2.  Elgin Piecemakers Music challenge. 

3.  Selvage Spools quilt made at the Beaver Island Quilt retreat. 

4.  Memory quilt for my husband, made with his father's shirts. 

The Elgin Piecemakers are a very talented group of quilters, with diverse interests.  This was a fun project for me!

I'm hoping for a bit more productive week in the sewing room this week.  Thanks for stopping by!  Take care and stay safe.  I will link up with Kathy in the morning. 

Binding and More Binding!

I took two comfort quilts to Julie, the long arm quilter around the corner and fellow Elgin Piecemaker member last week, expecting that they would not be done for a couple of weeks. I had just started to figure out which UFO I was going to tackle next, when I received a text from Julie to say that both quilts were done and ready for binding!  I picked them up the next day and got to work making the binding and machine sewing it to the quilts.  

 My hand sewing this week involved getting both quilts finished and ready to donate. 

By Friday afternoon, I had both of them done and they have now been delivered to Jacqui who takes care of getting them to the hospital for the adult chemo patients.  

This next picture shows the quilting and the backing. 

The word fabric quilt was quilted with a different pantograph. 

It's fun to read all of the words on the different fabrics in this quilt.  

On the knitting front, I finished off the squirrel facecloth, and started another textured facecloth this week. 

I've only done 5 rows of the next project so it doesn't look like much yet.  The colours are pretty. 

We started our Christmas decorating this week and I have my Christmas tree quilt up on the wall. I will continue to put more things out this week. We will decorate our tree next weekend. 

The bee blackwork project my daughter is working on is nearing completion.  She finished off a few more hexagons and another bee this week. Four more hexagons to go!

I took my blackwork project and a Frank Lloyd Wright cross stitch picture in to be framed this week.  Since they are not Christmas gifts, there is not a huge rush to get them done.  The framer will work on them when she is finished others that need to be done before Christmas. 

Finn is so helpful when my daughter is doing her work from home. 

My sewing machine is back from being serviced/repaired so I hope to get to some machine quilting with my walking foot this coming week, which will lead to more binding!   I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.