Binding, Quilting, and Two New Quilts Started

Since I have finished 4 quilts in the last few weeks, I thought I could give myself permission to start a couple of new projects.  (Even though I still have lots of UFO's that I should be working on!). These house blocks are a free pattern from Cluck Cluck Sew.  I have a half yard of the lighter fabric and have pulled lots of fabrics in the colours found in that fabric to make houses and backgrounds.  I will use all of the fabrics as both houses and backgrounds.  I plan to add some words to this quilt...stay tuned. I have made two blocks so far--I will need 72 for a lap sized quilt.

I have had a red, black and white jelly roll in my stash for years and decided to make a quilt using it and some Essex Linen that is in my stash to make a hexagon quilt. Here is the first block, not sewn together yet.

My friend, Christine, and I are making a quilt for families affected by the shooting in Nova Scotia a few weeks ago.  We each made 14 blocks and then Christine sewed them together.  She handed the flimsy off to me along with some backing fabric and I did the organic wavy line quilting.

I finished the quilting last night and today, gave her the quilt and some potential binding fabric.  She hopes to finish the binding this weekend and then we will mail the quilt to the Maritime Modern Guild early next week for distribution to the families.

I hope the recipient feels the love that we put into every stitch.  The heart block pattern is from Jaybird Quilts. 

Here is the backing fabric:

For my slow stitching this week, I hand stitched the binding on two quilts which will be gifted shortly, so you will have to wait to see pictures. 

My Canada 150 tulips are blooming right now.  I planted these a few years ago to commemorate our country's special birthday in 2017. 

These blue flowers are in the garden at the side of my house.  I think my daughter planted these bulbs when she was 7 years old and they have come up every year since then.

I bought a new plant for my perennial garden last summer and it is now in bloom...problem is that I can't remember what it is called...anyone out there know???

Have a great week, from Finn and I!

You can check to see what the Slow Sunday Stitching community is up to over at Kathy's blog.

Camp Kintail Retreat--Part 2

If you read my previous blogpost, you will know that Christine and I spent the weekend at Camp Kintail at a crafter's retreat.  I worked on 4 projects..placemats for Meals on Wheels, a table topper (both of which were in the previous post) and a wall hanging.   In August 2017, I took a workshop with Jacquie Gering in St. Mary's Ontario about making house blocks.   You can see my post about this workshop here.   My houses have been hanging around on my design wall for over a year and this retreat was the perfect time to get them made in to a quilt top.

I brought along a flannel design wall and laid it out on the floor.  I added a painter's tape grid to help plan my quilt layout and then put a building in each space on the grid.  

The background is Moda Grunge in Ocean blue.  I added pieces of the background in each "block" on the grid and then sewed the blocks together.  It is a bit like putting a puzzle together and is one of my favourite ways to build a quilt!

Only one more piece of background to add!

I added borders to each side (not all the same size) to make the house blocks float on the background. I think I would like to live in this neighbourhood!

The trees outside were beautiful, even in the rain.

I liked the festive decorations on the tables in the dining hall at the camp.

As you can see, there were lots of people crafting at the camp on the weekend!  I am on the far right of the picture holding up my table topper.

I bet you are wondering about my 4th project...

We are into the season of secret sewing so I can't show it to you right now.  It will be revealed in due time. Suffice it to say that progress was made at the retreat...

Weekend Sewing

I had a busy day yesterday--I went to the local Farmer's Market, did the laundry, dishes, cleaned up a corner of the garage, had a picnic lunch with my dad and went for a walk in the park with him, followed by errands, reading in the gazebo, dead-heading some flowers in the garden and watering my plants.  Whew!  By the time the evening arrived, I was ready for some ME time in the sewing room!  My regular readers will know that I attended a couple of classes with Jacquie Gering this past week.  You can see my post about the first class here.  I had a few more houses to complete when I got home so I made a couple on Thursday night when Christine was here to sew and completed the third one last night.   Here they are:

I call this one "Penthouse".

Would you like to live in this apartment building?

I needed one more house with a green background and had very little green fabric left so I had to piece it to build this house, "Corner Window".

I will work on a layout for my houses sometime soon.

I also made one more liberated sampler block--this one is a pinwheel.  I have 9 blocks made for this quilt now--there will be 64 blocks.  They are 6" blocks.  You can see the rest of my blocks here.

Cathy and I often FaceTime to sew together.  She is doing a giant EPP project and I work on my counted cross stitch snowmen.  It's fun to chat while we sew. I worked on the snow and a little bird.  I love how technology lets me sew with a friend without the travel time!

I hope for some gazebo sewing time later today to add some more stitches to this project.

I am linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers.   Have a great day!

Building Houses with Jacquie Gering

I have taken classes with Jacquie Gering, past president of the Modern Quilt Guild, several times.  The first class was stitch and flip which I took with other members of the London Friendship Quilters Guild.  You can see my stitch and flip garden here.   My next class with Jacquie was at Black Creek Pioneer Village "Quilts at the Creek" and was all about improvisational piecing.   Last year, Jacquie was in St. Mary's and taught a two day "Quilting with Your Walking Foot" class.    Jacquie was a teacher before she quit her job to quilt full time.  She is energetic and enthusiastic and takes great delight in passing on what she has learned as she explores modern quilt making.  Jacquie is a life-long learner and encourages her students to keep trying new things.  Jacquie teaches concepts and then sets her students free to make their own individual projects using what they have learned.

This past Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I took two classes with Jacquie.  On Monday, Christine, Carol and I participated in her "Mid-century Modern Houses" workshop in St. Mary's, sponsored by Hyggeligt, a fabric store specializing in Kaffe Fasset fabrics in St. Mary's.  We were asked to bring a focus fabric (a print) and lots of solid scraps as well as some larger solids and a background fabric.

First, we cut up our fabrics into squares and rectangles of various random sizes.

You can see my focus fabric has cameras on it!  Jacqui encouraged us to use fabrics with colours from our focus fabrics as well as fabrics that just "go" with those colours, including some bolder colours.

We chain pieced pairs and then put the pairs together to make building blocks for our houses.

Here is my first house:

We started with simple and then explored other shapes and sizes of houses.

This house has a carport!  One of the other quilters thought a smart car would fit perfectly in my carport!

Next, I added a house with an attic.

Every house quilt needs an outhouse!

Here is my neighbourhood by the end of the day.  I have more ideas for future neighbourhood development... The turquoise grunge fabric will be my background.

Thanks, Jacquie for a fun day!   I will blog about the second class later.

Puttering in the Sewing Room

I have spent a few evenings in the sewing room during the last couple of weeks.  I made another house for my 30's prints neighbourhood--this is house #3.

I put together the 9th liberated basket quilt for my basket sampler quilt from the workshop I taught in January.  I used selvages for this basket.  If you look closely, you can see that the handle fabric also has scissors on it. I have some machine applique to do on one more block before I can assemble this quilt top.

 

Last week, I celebrated my birthday and my husband gave me a couple of quilting books..."Free Range Triangle Quilts" by Gwen Marston and Cathy Jones, and "Quilt Lovely" by Jen Kingwell.  There are lots of inspiring quilts in both books.  I was drawn to a quilted pillow in Jen's book and decided to make one for myself.  I need 16 paper pieced arcs for this pillow.  These are the first two arcs.

 

 

I have been working on more arcs and have 10 done now.  I need to go digging through my scraps before I make the last 6. They are not very big and will measure 2" in the finished blocks.  There is quite a bit of curved piecing in this pillow...I will get to that when I finish the arcs.

 

 

I have figured out the final layout for the modern wedge quilt.  I took the lighter wedges off the wall and will use them in another project.  I will be hand appliqueing the curvey parts onto the background, perhaps as my slow Sunday stitching project this weekend.

 

 

 

It was cold and frosty on my way to work this morning so I just had to stop the car at the side of a country road and take a few pictures.  Everything looked so sparkly!

 



This and That

Since my design wall was installed last week, I have been puttering in my sewing room on various projects.  I made a second house block using my 30's prints.  They look like good neighbours!

I also made some more mug blocks.  We will call this picture a "mug shot"...  The darker blue one on the left side may be too dark for this little quilt so it may become a mug rug.

The colours for this month's block for the Elgin Piecemaker's charity quilt are rust, brown and cream.  I designed this block myself...no pattern used.

I also made a low volume rail fence background for my modern wedge quilt.  This is one block of 12.  I figured I used almost two yards of fabric for this project...funny how the bin of low volume fabrics still looks just as full.

I have been playing with how to arrange the wedges on the background...this is why I wanted a design wall before completing this project.  I have not made a final decision yet and would welcome any comments you have about the layout of the quilt...

I am not sure I have found the right layout yet...

Have a good week!