Christmas Lights is Done!!!

It has even got a label!!! This quilt was quilted by the quilting man--a quilting friend's husband who has claimed their quilting machine as his own. There are holly leaves and berries quilted on it, which go quite well with the border fabric.
There are no decorations on our tree yet. My daughter just got home from University last night so we are going to decorate the tree all together, maybe tomorrow night. My husband is out at a meeting tonight for work. We bought the rocking chair when my daughter was first born--she turned 18 last week. Where did the time go???? The Christmas tree skirt which I made when we got married 20 years ago will get put around the tree once the decorations are on.

Christmas Lights Flimsy Done!

Here it is!!! I purchased the fabric for the borders on Friday night at Cherished Pieces in Tillsonburg. I washed the fabric this morning and then put the borders on this afternoon. Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville is starting another mystery, Carolina Christmas, this coming weekend which I hope to make. Christmas Lights is the first Quiltville mystery I have ever done. I do not think I will do this next mystery quilt in Christmas colours. I have to take a look at my stash to see what I can come up with...

I just spoke to the long arm quilter and he has time to quilt this quilt next weekend!!! It will be ready for Advent/Christmas! I bought flannel backing for this quilt which I will have to piece early this week. This quilt will probably live on the back of our couch in the family room for the Christmas season--nice to cuddle up in while watching old Christmas movies with my husband and my daughter, when she gets home for the holidays from university.

I finished my Inchie Ornaments for the swap and they will go out in the mail tomorrow to an address in the USA. I will post a picture when I hear that they have arrived at their destination.

Onto the next projects--table runners which will be Christmas gifts, and two placemats for Meals on Wheels--this is an outreach project for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild. I will post pictures when they are done.

Christmas Lights Layout Winner

The votes are all tallied. I received some votes via my blog, some by e-mail and others on the quiltvillechat website. Thanks, everyone, for your input!!!

Here are the results:

Option 1- 11 votes

Option 2- 18 votes

Option 3- 35 votes.

I will sew the blocks together using option 3 shortly and will post a picture of my completed top shortly.

Thanks again for your help!

Maggots and Flying Squirrels!

Yes! The title is correct! I went to a quilt class last night at Jacqui's house. She designed a pattern she called the Spinning 4 patch and I went to the class. We were to purchase a large print fabric with 4 repeats. I purchased my fabric at Cherished Pieces in Tillsonburg--it is a wild Australian print with bugs, maggots and flying squirrels on it!! Jacqui wondered if this would be too wild for her pattern...

I cut out all of the squares, and started to sew them together...
WOW!! They look great! I think my "Spinning Squirrels and Maggots" quilt will be very interesting. Jacqui still thinks people should not look too closely at the fabric.

Here are a few close ups of some of the blocks.

And, here is a picture of all of my blocks--32 in all. Now I just have to figure out whether to put them on point or straight with sashing... Check back to see what I decide to do. This project may have to go on the back burner for a while so I can finish "Christmas Lights" and I also need to make some PJ's for my twin neices' birthday gifts.
I will post the final results of the voting on my Christmas Lights settings in my next post.

I need help with Christmas Lights!!

If you are here for the Online Quilt Festival, please look at the next post...


I finally finished piecing the Bonnie Hunter Chrsitmas Lights mystery quilt. I have laid it out on the floor of my family room (I don't have a design wall, yet!) and would like you to help me pick how to lay it out in the quilt. Here are the options: we will call the first one "#1"
We will call this one, "#2".


And, here is "#3":

I hope to put these blocks together later this week so please let me know by Thursday at supper time which one you like and I will decide that night...

QNIC at Jacqui's House and My Friend's Fall Table Runner--done!

Jacqui has a beautiful new house built on top of a wonderful new sewing room. Tonight, I spent the evening in her sewing room with Jacqui and two other quilters, working on finishing the "red" blocks of the Christmas Lights mystery designed by Bonnie Hunter. My reds are scrappy and the 2" squares are scrappy Christmas fabrics. The only fabric I had to purchase for this quilt was the black fabric and the borders. I still have a few gold blocks to finish and then I can play with them to figure out a layout.
Jacqui worked on a spinning 4 patch quilt which will be a wedding gift.
Chris worked on hand sewing the binding on a quilt which will be in a raffle.
Roxene did a little ironing for Jacqui and I. She was too tired to sew!

I finished the binding on my friend's Fall table runner on Sunday night and delivered it to her. It looks nice on her dining room table.

Here's a picture of the completed runner with binding.
Now, I just have to quilt and bind my Fall table runner before Sunday when everyone is coming here for Thanksgiving dinner...

My wall

What's on my design wall today? "Kaitlyn's Stars" I finished piecing the blocks this afternoon and I have been playing with them to try to arrange them so that the same fabrics are not beside each other. This is harder than it sounds!

In the middle of sewing merrily along this afternoon, I ran out of bobbin thread but did not notice until several blocks later... I had to go back and resew several borders on again...I am sure none of you have experienced this problem!

I also sewed one block together for my Christmas Lights mystery quilt. I will try to do the rest tonight.
Supper is ready. My husband is on cooking duty tonight.

Mel's prize

Mel won my recent 100th post giveaway and here are the things that I sent to her. She e-mailed to let me know that they have arrived so now I can show you the pictures. I tried to mail the postcard to her but it came back to me with a sticker on it saying that there was no postage on it. I know that I put a self-adhesive stamp on it so I think the stamp was taken off or fell off somewhere along the line. I will make sure I take my fabric post cards to the post office to be hand cancelled from now on when I mail them... I put a little dragonfly button on the loyalty card wallet in keeping with my garden fabric theme. I will have another give-away closer to the time when my counter gets to 10,000. Stay posted.

I picked up my daughter's university quilt from the machine quilter's last night so I will be working on the binding this week. I have started the baby quilt I cut out the other night but don't have any pictures yet. I also have to finish step two of the Bonnie Hunter Christmas Lights mystery quilt. There won't be a dull moment around here this week!

I think it is supposed to rain again tomorrow so perhaps I will get some sewing time in.

I'm back...

to blogging, that is...

I have done some boring sewing lately, but no quilting until tonight. The boring sewing included fixing a sports equipment bag for my daughter, fixing a Disney purse for my SIL, shortening 3 pairs of pants for my daughter, fixing a pillow for my father and finally, shortening a pair of capri pants for myself. I am what some people call "vertically challenged" and recently got a good deal (1/2 price!) on a pair of black capri pants that I can wear to work--however, they were not "petites" like I usually buy. They looked more like "flood pants". Now, they are fine and I have even worn them to work already!

Tonight, Nancy and I got together for some sewing time. Another mini QNIC! Nancy worked on sewing her blocks for the Bonnie Hunter "Christmas Lights" mystery in Quiltmaker magazine, with some help from her cat, Gibson.
I also had some help from Gibson as I cut out the pieces for a baby quilt which will be a gift for a new baby girl on my husband's side of the family. She was born last week. I am using Nancy's Lucky Stars pattern from Atkinson Designs. I am making the quilt 3 blocks by 3 blocks. He was quite enthralled by the rotary cutter and small scraps of fabric only kept his attention for a short time.













Gibson also helped Nancy to put her Sunbonnet Sue blocks together by holding the fabric down so it would not slide off of the table. Such a helpful cat!











I have all the pieces cut out and matched up for the blocks for the baby quilt. I bought this fabric in the US while I was on vacation last year.



Check out Nancy's blog for pictures of her projects! We figured out an interesting setting for the mystery quilt blocks--I wonder if we are close to the real layout???

Christmas Lights

Tonight, I finished the first step of the Bonnie Hunter Christmas Lights mystery. I tried to finish it last night, but my sewing machine decided to try to eat the thread instead of sewing smoothly so I stopped. I had to clean out the fluff from the machine and rethread it. It is working well once again. I will put this project away for a while until the next set of instructions are published in the Sept-Oct. issue of Quiltmaker. There is another QNIC tomorrow night so I will likely have some more pictures to share after that.

Another QNIC!

Tonight was QNIC (Quilting Night in Canada)--this time we met at Jacqui's house. There were 5 quilters there this time for about 4 hours of quilting, chatting and, of course, eating. Jacqui made us a wonderful fruit crisp from the Looneyspoons cookbook.

I spent all evening working on my table topper/wall hanging made of leftovers from a quilt I made earlier this year. (See previous post) My quilting friends helped me to come up with the ideas for the setting and borders of this project. This is the first time I have made something without a pattern. I have not decided how to quilt it yet. It is about 19" square. I just love it!

I cut out the black pieces for the Bonnie Hunter Christmas lights project last night and started sewing a few of the blocks together tonight. I will have to finish them and post a picture later in the weekend.

I would like to do a Celtic knot project that I found on line as well...I will have to dig into my stash to see what colours of fabric I can use...

Another Layout of the University Quilt

After taking all comments on the first layout into account and some ideas that others had, here is the revised version of the university quilt:I think the wild colours are tamed a bit by putting a framed block in between each larger square. My daughter likes this layout better. We still need to tweak the squares to distribute the colours more evenly.

I also cut out the rest of the lights and all of the golds for the Bonnie Hunter Christmas lights mystery quilt tonight. No photos yet. I will take some when I get some sewing done.