Purple Scraps and Love Birds

 The Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour for June is Purple so I made two purple blocks for my project this week...one is purple (violet) and the other is magenta (red-violet).  Some of these fabrics have been in my stash for a long time and others are more recent acquisitions. 

Here are the 8 blocks I have made for this project so far. I will keep making one or two blocks a month until the end of the year and then put the top together.  I really like building a quilt this way--just a little sewing and cutting each month and in a year, you have a quilt!

I have started quilting my yellow and gray Colour Blocks Quilt--I have been having some intermittent machine problems while working on this quilt so it is going a bit slower than I anticipated.  Hopefully, the sewing machine co-operates and I can finish quilting it soon.

The Toronto Modern Guild has organized a round robin --I am in a group of 6 people and we are each making blocks or borders for each other's quilts. I made the sewing machine block and the spool border was made by the next person who mailed the borders to me. My group is made up of people who do not live in Toronto so we are just emailing pictures and the size of our quilts to the next person each month.  I wonder what the next person will make for my quilt?  I am still thinking about what I might do for round robin partner this month. 

I managed to get quite a bit of work done on Love Birds this week.  Thankfully, when I joined the circle at the bottom of the wreath, the stitches ended up right where they were supposed to be!  There are some leaves in two colours left to do as well as the Bride bird.  The end is in sight!

My husband and I went bike riding at a provincial park about an hour from where we live on Monday.  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed a picnic lunch before riding all afternoon.  The next time we go back to Rondeau Provincial Park, we are going to leave our bikes at home and go hiking on some of the trails instead. 

My daughter's stitching on the butterfly embroidery is looking fantastic.  The butterfly looks like it is going to fly right off the fabric!

I have a new plant in my garden which is currently in flower.  The flowers are very tiny on this ice plant but up close, the colours are spectacular. Great colour inspiration for a future quilt, I think!

Finn is feeling fine again and is back to his usual helpful self this week.  He will be going for a haircut soon! We can't see his eyes!

I will link up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge folks in the morning and with the Slow Sunday Stitchers on Sunday morning.   Have a good weekend. It's going to be hot here!

Challenge Met and UFO done!

Back in January, the program committee at the Oxford Quilt Guild issued a challenge.  Each person that wanted to participate was asked to bring in a yard of batik material and a pair of scissors.  We stood in a big circle and listened for instructions...  Fold the fabric in half, snip it at the fold, rip it in half, drop half in front of us and pass the other half to the person on our right.  "Fold it, snip it, rip it, drop it, pass it!"  This was repeated with until each of us had 7 pieces of batik fabric in various sizes in the pile on the floor in front of us.  The challenge was to make something with our fabric, including a piece of each fabric.  We could add other fabrics to the project, if we wanted to.   Here are my seven fabrics.   

I put my fabrics in a plastic bin to give myself some time to ponder...

Then, COVID-19 arrived and the meeting where the projects were to be revealed was not to be.  Last week, it was announced that we would be having a Zoom meeting in August where we would share our challenge projects...the deadline pushed me to get this project out of the box and done this past week. 

I made some square in a square blocks and trimmed most of them to be asymmetrical.  I played around with them to figure out how to make them into a wall hanging.  (the brown patch is just my table!) I slept on it and came to the conclusion that this was not where I wanted to go with this project. 

I made some more squares, and added a few more fabrics and ended up with this. 

Next, how to quilt it...another night of sleeping on it and an idea formed. 

There are some spots where I stitched in the ditch and the line of stitching disappears, but it is there. I used turquoise thread. The binding is the same fabric as the middle square.   I hand stitched the binding on this one--one of my favourite parts of the quilt making process. 

The backing was made from stash fabric.  I'm using what I have as much as possible!

Done in plenty of time for the August meeting!

Julie, the long arm quilter, finished my Scrappy Trips quilt in no time and I trimmed it up and applied the binding by machine this week.  I sewed the binding to the front first and then folded it around to the back. I used a narrow zigzag stitch to sew it down.  My stiletto came in handy to keep the binding folded over as it entered the presser foot.  In retrospect, this would have been easier if I had sewn the binding to the back of the quilt and then did the zigzag from the front of the quilt.  Live and learn. 

Here is a picture of the quilting.  This quilt will be donated to the hospice and will be washed often and should hold up well. 

Here is the whole quilt. 

On the knitting front, I finished another dishcloth this week.  

I will likely try another pattern for my next one.  

I made a few fabric postcards over the last couple of weeks.  They are all in the mail and some have arrived at their destinations. 

My daughter finished her latest cross stitch city--Vienna. Such vibrant colours!

She sent me this picture of Finn tonight...so funny!  

He had his hair cut this week and is feeling much cooler in this hot weather. 

More garden pictures from this week...

I will link up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching in the morning.   Take a look and see what everyone is up to.  The link is in my sidebar.  I will be doing some more knitting tomorrow. 

Have a good week. 

Sneeze Challenge

The Oxford Quilt Guild issued a challenge at the September meeting...we were each to chose a Kleenex box and made a quilted item using either the colour scheme or the pictures on the box as our inspiration.  They called it the "Sneeze Challenge".  Today, all of the projects were revealed and we had to match the boxes with their respective projects.  There were 30 challenge projects completed and it was fun to figure out the inspiration for each quilt. 

The flattened Kleenex boxes were on display above the quilts, but not necessarily near the quilt that they matched.  

My project was a pillow cover, shown above as item "N".  My Kleenex box was number 18.  The organizers had to take the pillow form out as they could not hang it up on display with the form inside. 

I used 6 different shades of turquoise with a grey print background and quilted it with a 28 weight thread so that the quilting would be more prominent against the gray background.  This was my first time using the heavier weight thread for quilting--no issues at all.  There was a 50 weight matching thread in the bobbin.  

Here is my finished pillow.  At today's meeting, the program committee announced that there will be another challenge starting in January.  Bring it on!!!

Camp Kintail Crafters' Retreat: Part 1

Christine and I went to Camp Kintail this past weekend to sew for a couple of days.  There were over 70 crafters at the retreat--knitters, crocheters, painters, quilters, scrapbookers, etc.  Christine and I had a corner to ourselves at the retreat and both of us were very productive!  It rained most of the weekend --great weather for staying inside to work on our projects.  Of course, we both brought more  projects than we could possibly get done in a weekend but it was good to have choices.

I started out on Friday night working on two placemats for Meals on Wheels, an annual project of the London Friendship Quilter's Guild.  Each member makes two placemats which are given on Christmas Day to Meals on Wheels recipients.  The staff and volunteers at MOW are always happy to receive the placemats.  I used some orphan blocks and some stash fabric to make my placemats.

Here are my finished placemats.

Saturday morning, I worked on a large table topper...I made the flimsy years ago and found it in my quilting room this week as I was looking for supplies for the retreat.  I decided to get it quilted and bound and get it off my UFO list.

I did some orange peel quilting in the centre section and a wavy line in the narrow border.  The outer border has some straight line quilting and there are X's in the corners.

"Flame" (her camp name!) and I holding my finished quilt.  When my family went to Camp Kintail Family camp many moons ago, Flame was our camp counsellor.  It was so nice to connect with her again.  I have donated this quilt to the camp for a silent auction fundraiser that they are having in a few weeks to raise money for a new building "The Nest" that was built this past year.  In fact, Christine and I stayed in one of the rooms in the Nest and we sewed in a large room in the basement.  It is a beautiful building with many multipurpose spaces as well as rooms to stay in while at camp.

It was too wet to sit outside this weekend but wouldn't this be a great spot to sit and do some hand stitching when it's warmer and dryer?

The food was delicious all weekend.  Saturday morning, we were treated to pumpkin scones...

We met these ladies at the retreat...  They came out of the henhouse to greet us as we headed to the dining hall for lunch on Saturday. 

I'm glad we brought our raincoats!

I will do another post about the rest of the retreat later this week.

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.

Creating Texture

I have spent much of my sewing time over the last 2-3 weeks creating texture in the background of this quilt.  I started this top at a workshop in 2014 with Kathy Doughty from Australia. The workshop was called "Modern Wedge".  

I put the background together earlier this year and hand appliqued my snaky wedges to the background.  I brought the quilt top to the Walking foot quilting class I took in April with Jacquie Gering.  It was Jacquie who suggested the asymmetric grid for the background of this quilt.  It has taken me several hours, but I am finally finished quilting the texture into the neutrals.  

I have an idea of how to quilt the curved parts but wanted to finish the background parts first.   Now that this part is done, I can change my thread colour and start on the curves.

 Don't forget to come back to see if my idea works!