Weekly Sewing Report

True Confessions:  I started a new project this week.  As I have been cleaning out my sewing storage area, I discovered that I have a large collection of batiks.  They had not all been stored together so I put them in their own (large) bin as I found them here and there around the room.  I decided that I needed to make a batik quilt or two in an effort to use them up.  Pulling out an assortment of blues, greens, golds, oranges, reds and purples, I decided to make Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Trips pattern.  Here is one of the blocks I have made this week. 

This will be a lap quilt with 20 blocks.  I even found some fabric for the borders in my collection...  So far, I have 7 blocks pieced and the rest of the blocks are started.  I spent some time earlier in the week cutting all the strips I will need.  I have lots of variety!

On the knitting front, I finished my first dish cloth, although I still need to weave the ends in.  I learned how to do this on a Youtube video last night so hope to do that today.

I started a second dish cloth using the same pattern and it is half finished already.  I have taught myself how to "unknit" when I made a mistake.  I'm getting faster at knitting and hope to tackle something more challenging soon. I have some wool and a pattern for a hat.  Here is my second dish cloth:

My husband could not understand how I would knit using circular needles so I gave him a demo one night this week.  He had only seen people knit with straight needles before now.

My daughter has made a bit of progress on her cross stitch feather project.  She does not have much time for stitching right now as she is very busy at work.

The Elgin Piecemakers Guild issued a Music Challenge in the Fall and the projects are due at the March meeting.  We were each given a fat 8th of a black and white music note print which was to appear in our piece in which we were to depict a song.  I picked my song and hatched a plan.  I have been working on this project over the last 6 weeks or so and, this week, finished it off.  I just have the binding left to stitch down by hand.  Here is a sneak peak of the front,

And, here is where I will be stitching today.

Finn will be coming to visit and stay with us for a few weeks soon.  We will be going for lots of walks --my sewing machine time may go down a bit when he is here but I will keep busy with hand work and knitting.

I will be linking up with Kathy's crew of Slow Stitchers on Sunday morning.

Lap Quilt Finish

I made this lap quilt using Bonnie Hunter's free pattern, Scrappy Mountain Majesties, and a pile of fat quarters purchased specifically for this quilt.   This quilt is a gift for someone special who does not read my blog.

It was quilted by Cathy at Eagle's Wings Quilts.

The backing is from the same fabric line...

As is my usual practice, I did the hand stitching in the car last weekend.  

We visited Finn and my daughter last weekend. We took Finn to get his haircut as he was starting to look a bit shaggy. We went for lots of walks and spent an evening at the dog park where he ran around and wore himself out.

Here is what he looked like before the haircut.

I will be linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers on Sunday morning.   Have a great weekend!

Fountain Art Glass by FLW --a new project

I started my new counted cross stitch project this week. It doesn't look like much yet but it will get there.  I am so happy to be cross stitching again!

The entire picture is 6" by 17".  I started in the middle.  Hopefully, it will look more identifiable as I add more stitches.

We had some strong winds last night and this happened in our backyard:

First one side...

And then the other side...

It took three of us to get it taken down and tidied up.  Luckily, there was no damage to the bushes and plants in the gardens.

Our yard looks a little more expansive now!

My daughter has been busy working on her London skyline:

We were in London, England in 2010 and my favourite building was the Gherkin (the pickle shaped building on the right side of the picture.). The tall pointy building is called the Shard...it was being built when we were there in 2010.  It's fun to identify the buildings in the pictures she is working on.

I started another I Spy baby quilt this week too.  I will show more pictures when I get more sewing done.  I am using Bonnie Hunter's pattern for Bricks and Stepping Stones.

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other slow Sunday stitchers in the morning.  I am going to a quilt show in Simcoe, Ontario tomorrow afternoon and will be meeting one of the slow stitchers at the show for the first time!  I have been admiring her Down the Rabbit Hole quilt each with on the link up and am looking forward to meeting Sandra and seeing her quilt in person.  I will post pictures next week.  The show was supposed to be today but the wind storm knocked out the power to the building so the show was postponed to tomorrow.

LFQG Summer Sewing Day

Today was our London Friendship Quilters Guild annual summer sewing day.  I had all of my projects, sewing machine and supplies packed up last night and ready to take out to the car this morning.  I brought along three things to sew today:

First up, I wanted to get this block quilted and made into a pillow.  I brought along some variegated thread that I thought would be perfect for the organic quilting that I had planned...I got about 2/3's done and then decided that I hated the variegated thread.

I spent the next hour and a half unsewing all of my quilting...not a productive start to my day.

The fabric on the back of the quilt will not show in the finished pillow as it will be inside the pillow. I ended up using a light grey thread and quilting it organically.

I then put the Canada 150 pillow aside to work on my second project...making and attaching the binding to this comfort quilt for an adult chemo patient at our local hospital--an outreach project of another guild that I belong to--the Elgin Piecemakers.  

This went much smoother that project number one, with no seam ripper involvement at all!  I will be doing the hand stitching tomorrow for my slow Sunday stitching project.

I did some of the hand stitching tonight while watching Grantchester on TV.

My third project barely got started--I have the pieces cut out for my next block, a reindeer, for my Holly Jolly Christmas quilt that I am making through a sew along at Lorna's blog, Sew Fresh Quilts. I hope to get it sewn together sometime this week before the next block pattern comes out on Saturday.

I will post pictures of the finished pillow and Christmas block later this week.

How I Met Bonnie Hunter

My husband and I went on vacation last week and drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway, end to end. My husband is the vacation planner in the family. He figures out the itinerary, places to stay and interesting things to do along the way, taking into account the requests and interests of the family members embarking on the trip. On this trip, I managed to add in a surprise detour of my own, without consulting him first!

 

We had plans to visit Old Salem, the historic district of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  Since I follow the Quiltville Blog, I knew that Bonnie Hunter lives in the area and that she was home the day we were going to Old Salem. The night before our visit to Old Salem, I sent off an email to Bonnie to see if I could possibly meet up with her to purchase some copies of her latest book, More Adventures with Leaders and Enders.  I told my husband what I was up to after clicking on the send button.  He thought I was nuts!  She will never answer you, he said.

 

15 minutes later, my phone vibrated as an email from Bonnie Hunter arrived in my inbox.  She offered to meet me somewhere so that I could purchase the books and have a short visit.  After a few emails back and forth, it was decided that we would meet at 11am in the parking lot at this restaurant:

 

As we waited for Bonnie to arrive, I received a text message from Cathy, a friend at home, who had noticed on Bonnie's blog that she was meeting a Canadian quilter that morning to deliver some books, asking if I was that Canadian quilter.  YUP!  It was me!

Bonnie had a busy day planned as she had lots to do to get ready for her trip to Italy later that week but she found a few minutes in her day to come and see me!  How fun!  Bonnie arrived, right on time, books in hand with a sharpie ready for signing!

We talked about our trip--driving the road through Great Smokey Mountains  National Park, along the Blue Ridge Parkway and then through Shenandoah National Park.  My husband took pictures with my phone and her phone so that we could both document our rendezvous.

When Bonnie heard that we were spending the afternoon at Old Salem, she recommended a stop at the Winkler Bakery to buy some thin cookies. If you are reading this post, Bonnie, I want you to know we bought the Old Salem Snack Pack with samples of 4 different types of thin cookies (sugar, chocolate, walnut and ginger snaps) as well as two types of cheese stars (plain and spicy). 

 

 

So far, we have tried the cheese stars and the walnut cookies--delicious!

 

 

I asked if Bonnie could recommend a quilt store in the area that we could visit after seeing Old Salem.  She told us about "Sew Original".  We added this stop to our itinerary for the later in the day.

I had to get a picture of Bonnie with her van and her vanity plate "Qultvlle" and the sticker on her window "got quilting?" before she had to race off to an appointment.  We had a wonderful visit!  Thanks for making time to see us when we were in Winston-Salem, Bonnie!

By the way, the quilt store was well stocked and I did a good bit of stash enhancing there which I will show in a future post.  The resident "guard dog" Shelby, greeted us at the door.

 

 

(Shelby is very famous--she has been on the Quiltville blog before when her owner and Bonnie got together for a sewing day!)

Bonnie posted a picture of the two of us on Facebook and her blog. Here is the link to Bonnie's blogpost.

Yet Another Finish

Can you tell that our London Friendship Quilters Guild Show is coming up in less than a month?  I am working hard to finish off the quilts that I will be entering in the show--bindings, labels and hanging sleeves--only one more sleeve and a couple of labels to go!

The Lazy Sunday Mystery is a Bonnie Hunter Pattern that was in 4 consecutive issues of Quiltmaker Magazine a while back. I finally had it quilted by Cathy recently and finished off the binding a couple of weeks ago. I was too busy to blog about it until now!

 That's me peeking out from behind the quilt on the left side of the picture.   The picture was taken a couple of weeks ago when Kathy, Cathy, Barb and Christine were here for a sewing day.  The colours are a bit washed out in this picture.

It looked like this from the back of the quilt!

Cathy used an angel pantograph for the quilting.

My husband and I took a drive in the country today and we stopped so I could take a few pictures.

 

 

 

 

It was a beautiful day for a jaunt along some country roads!

Back from Vacation

My husband and I spent two glorious weeks in Iceland earlier this month. This was an early celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary in September. We decided 5 years ago that we should take a special trip to mark this occasion and several ideas were discussed about where to go. My husband came up with Iceland and after doing a bit of research, we both decided that Iceland would be our destination.  What a beautiful country!  Many of our friends and family members were quite surprised that we were going to Iceland, and many scoffed, but once they see our pictures and hear the stories, I think many of them will be convinced to consider going to Iceland themselves someday!

There were several different types of wild flowers.

Lupins grew everywhere.

I loved seeing the basalt columns.

More basalt columns --the perpendicular columns form from the bottom up as lava cools. There were other columns that were "curly" and they had cooled from the top down.

We went whale watching--this is a humpback whale.

 



Interesting clouds.

A volcanic crater--we hiked all the way around the top of this crater.

A rocky beach.

Dried up seaweed on the rocks.

I have not done much sewing in the past 6 weeks. I had a sick family member in the hospital and recovering at my house for the month of May and then we went on our trip. This past week was spent trying to get caught up on everything at work and at home. Christine and I will be getting together this week again to sew--we have not been able to do this in almost two months and are both looking forward to getting our quilting mojo back!

I sat in our gazebo and finished the binding on this quilt this afternoon. I used Bonnie Hunter's pattern, Majestic Mountain Majesties. This is a lap quilt, perfect for using while watching tv or reading a good book.

There are lots of fun fabrics in this quilt--all from my stash, except for the outer border and backing.

Check out the chicken feet!

Green beans and lettuce.

Corn on the cop and barnboard.  Sunflowers, too.

The quilting is oak leaves--the same pantograph used for the shirt quilts that I made everyone for Christmas from my FIL's shirts. Cathy over at Eagles Wings Quilts did the quilting on her long arm machine.

I am linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stiching.