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!

Liberated Sampler Blocks 1-8

I made my 8th liberated sampler block tonight.  Christine was here to sew with me--she was away at the cottage for the past couple of weeks so we spent lots of time catching up and chatting as we sewed. This is a variation of one of the blocks from 42Quilts.com.  The block that is suggested has 51 pieces in a 6" block.  I opted to do the easy version...

As promised, here is a picture of all of my blocks so far.  Eight down, only 56 to go!

I had hoped to make one a week but I don't always have time.  This quilt will be my long term project. 

Sewing Night

For the last three sewing nights with Christine, I have been working on a Canada 150 block.  It is a paper pieced pattern that I found online. Here is the link.  I found this block a bit challenging...there was some unsewing involved!  I decided to use prints instead of solids for my block.  In the end, it all worked out and the block lies flat.  I will probably not be making another one!

I decided to make a pillow with my block so I added borders to make it the right size for my pillow form.  I will quilt it and put the pillow together on Saturday at our guild sew-in day. I still have to figure out what to use for the back of the pillow.  I don't have enough of the grey.

After finishing the Canada 150 block, I made another block for my liberated sampler quilt.  This one is called Hashtag.  I am using a little bit of my focus fabrics in each block. I have seven blocks done now.  There are 64- 6" blocks in this quilt.

I will try to post a picture of all my blocks next time. 

Making Blocks in the Sewing Room

I made a couple of blocks for my liberated sampler quilt this week.  This little liberated basket is made using Gwen Marston's method.  It is meant to be a bit tipsy!  I am just going to add a touch of orange here and there on this quilt and the basket handle seemed like a perfect spot for some orange.

This one is called a cross block.   Each block is 6.5" square and there will be 64 blocks in this quilt.  I still have lots of blocks to make--I have 6 done now.  I will try to make a few more this week.  The pattern is from 42quilts.com.  The basket block was my own addition to the quilt...she has a couple of blocks that I am not keen on so I will just substitute my own blocks for those ones.

On Saturday, I had a friend, Cathy, over to sew for the afternoon.  I made the most recent block for my Holly Jolly Christmas quilt.  There are only three blocks to go...

Here is my completed wreath block.  Below, you can see all of my blocks so far.

My garden is looking great right now.  We have had a lot of rain so everything is very lush. I planted this red echinacea last year.  There are lots of flowers just opening up on this plant.

The pink ones are putting on a show as well.