Stitching, Knitting and Cutting

I think I spent some time every day this week working on this table runner--the quilting took a long time and two bobbins of thread to finish. I made the string pieced triangles in an online workshop with Sarah Bond, hosted by the Modern Quilt Guild, 3 weeks ago.

The backing is a fun fabric purchased in the last year.  I like the orange accents in it and the random "Hello".  The binding is an orange solid I had in my stash. The bobbin had 50 wt thread in it but the top thread was 30 wt.  Those quilting lines are the width of my walking foot apart.

The runner fits nicely on my coffee table and also on the dining room table.  This was a fun way to use up some scraps.

Finn and my daughter are back home.  Finn enjoys being outside in the evenings. 

There is another baby, a boy, on the way in about 6 weeks so I started working on an I Spy quilt today.  These rectangular 4 patches will be between each I Spy fabric.

I started cutting out the I Spy fabrics tonight.   I will sew the top together this week and quilt it myself.  I have a lot of novelty prints to use for I Spy quilts.

A few weeks ago, I purchased two hanging baskets with fuchsia in them for our front porch.  Almost immediately, a mourning dove took up residence in one of the baskets, built her nest and laid her eggs.  She does not budge off of the nest, even when we water the flowers.

This week, we had a wild thunder storm and the basket swung to and fro and she still sat on the nest.  The next day, we got our first glimpse of the babies.

They are growing fast and are very calm, like their mother.

Our gardens continue to produce new blooms...Peony

Salvia

Pincushion Flower (appropriate in the garden of a quilter!)

These verbenas are in a pot on our patio. 

Our first daylily bloomed this week too. 

I spent quite a bit of time knitting this week and have just about finished the facecloth I started last week.

I am reading a book right now called "This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History".  My husband gave it to me for Christmas.  The author travelled around Britain to study the subject and knitted several traditional patterns as she travelled.  If you are a knitter, you might be interested in this book.

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning. 

Four Finishes and Another New Project

Christine finished the binding on the quilt we made for a family affected by the tragedy in Nova Scotia a few short weeks ago.  This quilt is ready to be packed up and mailed to the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild for distribution.  The binding is a medium blue fabric with tiny daisies on it that I found in my stash.  Christine has a clothes line in her backyard that doubles as a place to hang quilts for photo ops. We hope that this quilt brings comfort and peace. There is love in every stitch. 

The next two finishes are gifts for special people in my life.  Each block represents a memory I have of the recipients--retired farmers and quilters.

I hope these wall hangings will be enjoyed for years to come. They were custom quilted by Julie C. and she did a fantastic job!

I have made several quilts from my collection of 30's prints and still have enough for a couple more small projects.  They have been put away for now.

I finished knitting another dish cloth this week--this one is rectangular in shape, rather than square as I cast on too many stitches initially and could not get another skein of yarn the same colour to make it square.  It's still just as useful, even though it is not square!  I started another simple dishcloth today.

Finn likes to lie on the back of the couch and look out the window.  He keeps an eye on who is going by our house--lots of dog walkers and people riding bikes. 

Earlier this week, the Modern Quilt Guild offered a webinar on string piecing taught by Sarah Bond.  My swap partner in the Make a Mini, Make a Friend MQG swap in February mentioned that Sarah was one of her favourite quilt designers/teachers so I thought I should take her class to "meet" Sarah virtually.   It was a fun class--I sewed my solid warm scraps as Sarah taught the class.  She paper pieced her triangles but I don't like removing the papers so I used light weight non woven interfacing for my base for the triangles instead.  Here are my first few triangles completed during the webinar using chain piecing.

I have a three bins of solid scraps--warm colours, cool colours and neutrals (white, cream, black, brown and gray).  I did not even make a dent in my warm scraps!  I have a plan for a project using these triangles...stay tuned. It might be finished by next weekend.

We had a heat wave this past week and the air conditioning had to be turned on.  More flowers popped out this week including these thrifts:

these Icelandic poppies:

and the Bachelor Buttons.

I noticed that the chestnut flowers were out when I was out walking this week too.

One last close up of a block from one of the farm quilts--Local strawberries should be available this week in my area...I can't wait.

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.  Thanks for stopping by and for commenting on my blog.  It's fun to hear from people from near and far each week.

Sewing with Strings

Last Friday marked one year since my Dad died.  I had signed up for a quilting workshop with Mary Elizabeth Kinch, author of "Small Pieces, Spectacular Quilts" a few months ago and decided I would use my Dad's shirts for my project.  Mary Elizabeth spoke at our London Friendship Guild meeting on Thursday night and we had a great trunk show of her quilts, including the workshop quilt, "Go with the Flow". 

I met Mary Elizabeth several years ago at Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Quilt retreat in Elk Rapids, Michigan.  It was fun to see her again and catch up.

After some discussion about string quilts in general and different ways to make them, we cut into our fabrics and started sewing the strings together.   Mary Elizabeth also showed us pictures of several antique and newer string quilts.  Here is her "Go with the Flow" quilt.

By lunch time, everyone had made at least one row of strings.

Here are my two rows, not pressed yet

Two more, pressed and ready to trim.

Tonight, I made a couple more rows and then made my first block of the 16 needed to make this queen sized quilt. 

As I sewed, I thought about my Dad and the times that he wore these shirts.   Dad loved to stop at Shaw's Ice Cream for a Black Cherry Cone so my husband and went there on the weekend. 

It seemed like a fitting thing to do. 

Coming Home--Applique

Finn joined me on the couch this week for some applique for part two of Coming Home, this year's Sarah Fielke BOM project. The instructions for part two came out at the end of February, so I am a little bit behind, but I'm sure I will catch up at some point.  I am just enjoying the process of picking out fabrics and working away at the various parts of this quilt.

I finished sewing the starts to the magenta squares and cut them out into circles for the next stage of the applique.  Finn provided moral support as I sewed the stars to the chartreuse background squares.

Kathy asked last week about how I used my block book...I use it to organized the parts for my applique blocks and to keep the completed parts flat and safe from being lost in the shuffle.  Since it has a hard cover, it is also handy as a work surface on my lap as I sew, as shown in the first picture above.

This afternoon, I put the first of four sections together for the next border.  The other sections are laid out, ready to sew.  I hope to get to them early next week. The templates for part three are cut out of cardboard, ready to trace on yet to be chosen fabric.  Look for more progress next Sunday.

Finn and I enjoyed some porch time in the sunshine one evening this week.

I attended a quilting workshop on Friday, which also happened to be one year since my father died.  It seemed appropriate to be starting a new project using fabric from his shirts.  I will do a post about what I am making with these strings sometime next week.

I will be linking up with Kathy in the morning for Slow Sunday Stitching.