A TaDa Moment!

This afternoon, I added the final stitches to my Winter Woods cross stitch!  There were lots of little stars to add in the sky of several pictures and a bit of backstitching, but not very much. I love this picture and look forward to getting it framed to hang up somewhere in my house next winter.  We have lots of snow right now, although not as much as many places north of us where roads have been closed for days on end as the snowplows try to clear the snow away. 

I spent some time at the sewing machine this week, quilting my shadowbox quilt with a waffle cross hatch pattern.  I have all the lines going across the quilt done and have started the lines of quilting going from top to bottom.   I hope to finish this quilt soon, so I can get quilting the next one in line. The backing is a fun Peanuts fabric that has been in my stash for a while.  I had to add a solid strip on the back to make it big enough.  

I added 3.5" to my scarf this week.  The little ball of wool is shrinking fast! The scarf is now 35.5" long. 

Christine came over for a few hours one day this past week.  I did some hand quilting on my Arizona quilt and she did some cross stitch.  We also did some machine sewing. 

I made 6 turquoise hollow nine patches for my Rainbow Scrap challenge project this week as well.  These will do nicely for blue month!

I added some shelves from Ikea to my sewing room for my rulers this week.  They are actually meant to hold framed photos but work quite well for my rulers.  This job involved moving my cutting table and vacuuming up all of the dust bunnies under it...not pretty but looking nice and clean now!  They are right beside my cutting table and very easy to access when I need them.  My assorted small rulers are in a wooden ruler stand on the cutting table under these shelves.  

On this week's hike with the hiking club, I saw this nest piled high with snow.  I love walking in the woods after a fresh snowfall!  Apparently, lots of people like to walk here with their dogs too as the evidence showed...

Finn was so cold when he came inside from doing his business once day this week that he was shivering! My daughter wrapped him in his blanket to warm him up.  

Finn just sent me a couple of pictures of my daughter's crochet progress this week. Three more book blanket granny squares and the Christmas blanket has had some attention as well.  She wants to keep working at the Christmas blanket so it doesn't turn into a UFO.  

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers, the RSC folks and Frederique this week.  Have a fantastic week.  

Rabbits!



Back in the day, rabbit ears were something you had on your tv for better reception...

This week, rabbit ears took on a different meaning in my sewing room when Christine and I got together to sew...

 

Here are Christine's rabbit ears:

Next up, the eyes...

Pretty soon, there were two rabbits hopping onto my design wall!

I decided to put all of my Fancy Forest blocks up on the design wall to see how they look:

Next week, we will be making our second rabbit blocks.  I cut mine out today--there are lots of pieces in this block.

This is Christine's second hedgehog from last week.

We have one rabbit, two owls and two fireflies left to make before we assemble our quilts.

My husband and I installed a second floating shelf in my sewing room today.   I added some birdhouses I purchased in New Brunswick when we were on a family vacation one summer several years ago.  I may put a small wall hanging under the top shelf...

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Sewing with Cathy

This past Saturday afternoon, Cathy and I got together to sew some blocks together to make a comfort quilt for the London Friendship Quilter's Guild.  Several guild members made friendship star blocks in red and blue for this quilt.  The blocks above were made by me!

It did not take too long to sew 35 blocks together and add the border.  I think this quilt really sparkles! Cathy will be quilting this quilt and another volunteer will be adding the binding.  We hope that more blocks will be donated at our September meeting so that more quilts can be made.

On the weekend, I cleaned up this corner of my sewing room and my husband and I put up the floating shelf above my cutting table.  The bins to the right of the table each have projects that need to be quilted in them.  My rulers are all organized in the ruler holder on the right side of the table.  Other corners of the sewing room do not look like this yet...  LOL!  The cutting table is custom made to my (short) height so that I don't hurt my back when cutting fabric.  (made by Eddycrest)

I spent some time on Sunday afternoon quilting.  This is the back of the quilt.  I will show the front when it is finished.  I hope to work on this quilt again tonight. 

Linking up to Let's Bee Social.

I found a kit in the sewing room...

I am in the process of cleaning out my sewing room.  When we finished our basement several years ago, we had a smallish sewing room made which I used for a little while. It does not have a window and I felt isolated from the rest of the family when I was in there, so I started sewing on the dining room table instead.  A few weeks ago, we cleaned out what used to be the home office and bought new custom sewing furniture for the new sewing room.  You can read about my new furniture here.  I am slowly cleaning up the old sewing room to make it into an organized fabric and sewing supplies storage area.
Here is a "before" picture...not a pretty sight...

Great progress has been made but I still have a ways to go.  I go at it in 15 minute intervals, maybe once or twice a week. It is slowly becoming a more useful space. The shelves actually have bins of fabric on them now...

This week, I found a bin of UFO's and kits waiting to be made.  One of the kits I found was for a hot pad.  The fabric and pattern were all in a little bag.  When Christine was here earlier this week, I worked on the hot pad while she pieced a backing for a new Christmas quilt.

There are 28 5" squares of fabric in this hot pad! 

Tonight, I hand sewed the points of each folded square down and did the binding.

Here it is with all the points sewn down:



The binding is cut on the bias so that it will go around the curve smoothly.



Here is the back.

This hot pad is a gift for someone who does not read my blog. I hope she likes it!

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

A Scrappy Week

I spent much of my sewing time this week dealing with scraps...  I have piles and piles of scraps leftover from various projects in my disaster of a sewing room. I actually do most of my sewing at the dining room table but my DH would like me to move down to the sewing room, so we can actually use our dining room table for dining!  We are going to convert our home office--no longer needed since we have a portable laptop computer now, into a sewing room with a door through to my current sewing room which will become a fabric storage area and cutting station. I will eventually get a new sewing machine table with room for 2 or 3 quilters and there will be room for the ironing board and my design wall in that room too. There is a window in the home office so that will be nice too. I think that is why I did not like the sewing room that much--I like to have some daylight coming in through a window!

I had three drawers of scraps in my sewing room plus the aforementioned piles of scraps. First, I sorted all the 2.5" strips into ziploc bags by colour...

Next, I tackled the drawer full of strings...

All labelled and easy to grab what I need...

I have been sorting through my leftovers and cutting them up into the strips for the bags...

Next, is the dreaded small scraps drawer...I will need a good long movie or two to watch while I sort that mess out.

While I was sorting, I took a couple of sewing breaks to make some more slabs for Alberta.

I have had some slabs delivered to me as well...

Carol mailed her slab...

Heather dropped off 7 slabs tonight...

Anne put hers in my mailbox last night.

Karen, Jessie and Pat  dropped theirs off last week (see the last blogpost for pictures of my first three slabs and their slabs).

I laid out the slabs on the design floor and stood on a chair to get a picture...

18 slabs so far and more are coming. I should have enough for a 24 block quilt top and some extra slabs to mail to Cheryl next week!  I know that there are some more coming in the mail and will not mail the package to Cheryl until everything arrives. Thanks, everyone, for contributing to this project!

Tomorrow is a sewing day with some people from the London Friendship Quilters' Guild so I will be working on a birthday gift for Christine and some binding. I have a kit to make a quilt as well--I may bring it along to work on if there is time.

June "Bowties" and August "Hot Sidewalk" Done

I finished off two more rows for my row of the month quilt. The Bowties are for Father's Day and the Hot Sidewalk certainly is suitable for this year! Only two more months to go and I will be caught up. Have you noticed that I am avoiding May? I will have to tackle it sooner or later! The July row is "Stars" for the US 4th of July holiday but I am changing my blocks to Maple Leaves for Canada Day. I have the fabric picked out for the July row, but not for May yet.
I am still working on cleaning up my sewing room. The fabric is all organized now into labelled drawers by colour. Onward and upward. Patterns and sewing supplies are next!

Ironing Fabirc

Not a lot of sewing going on here these days. I am washing, ironing and sorting all of my stash fabric by colour, theme, etc. I am also cutting up scraps into 2 1/2 inch strips and narrower strings a la Bonnie Hunter. I spent most of the day today on this project and just when I thought I was nearing the end, I found more unwashed FQ's in a basket in my sewing room! The fabric that I washed already is mostly ironed and put away. I am still in the midst of cutting up scraps but that too is coming along. I haven't been taking many pictures along the way but here is my pile of FQ's after ironing and before folding.
It's a big pile and I did not count them. That would have been too scary. My family reads my blog and I don't want to admit out loud how many yards of fabric I have.

I cut off all of the selvages before folding so my selvage drawer is full to overflowing. I really must get started on my next selvage project.

I am off to do some more ironing. I still have some yardage to iron. The FQ's were more fun to iron than the larger pieces will be.

Check back tomorrow for the announcement of the winner of my pumpkin wallhanging give-away. (See next post for details)

Carolina Christmas: Step 4 AND Charity Quilt quilted.

Christine and I got together on Wednesday night to work on Step 4 of Carolina Christmas. We got our HST's sewn for this step. Pressing and trimming the dog ears are this week's homework. I finished my homework yesterday.When cleaning up my sewing room, I found a few more orange FQ's that I had purchased for this quilt. I used some of them in these HST units and will also use them in the pieced border. I love the orange flame fabric! I also added a few more neutral fabrics as I was running low on those. Christine and I have planned a sewing afternoon for next week and we hope to finish Step 4--broken dishes units. THEN...we get to start putting blocks together! The excitement is building! I can hardly wait to see how the blocks will look!

I quilted the children's charity quilt yesterday--just straight lines making X's on each square. I used orange thread. I can't find my rotary cutter at the moment so I can't do the binding. If anyone sees it, please let me know!!! The binding will be orange.
In the meantime, I have started to work on tidying my sewing room. This is a major project. I went through my FQ stash last night--I am quite sure I have STABLE--STAsh Beyond Life Expectancy. Most of my FQ's were not washed yet so I sorted them into piles according to colour and washed them. Now, I have a huge pile of wrinkly fabric to iron and fold.
Before I fold everything and put it away, I am going to trim off the selvages and add them to my bin of selvages. I have another selvage project in mind...