My wall

What's on my design wall today? "Kaitlyn's Stars" I finished piecing the blocks this afternoon and I have been playing with them to try to arrange them so that the same fabrics are not beside each other. This is harder than it sounds!

In the middle of sewing merrily along this afternoon, I ran out of bobbin thread but did not notice until several blocks later... I had to go back and resew several borders on again...I am sure none of you have experienced this problem!

I also sewed one block together for my Christmas Lights mystery quilt. I will try to do the rest tonight.
Supper is ready. My husband is on cooking duty tonight.

Works in Progress

Here are the beginnings of a baby quilt that I am making for Kaitlyn, a new baby on my husband's side of the family. I did a bit of sewing on the weekend. The pattern is called Lucky Stars and is shown above. I am only doing 9 blocks. One of the stars is shown below. I like these bright fabrics--lots for a baby to look at!
Each star has a different white on white background fabric and two different fabrics to make up the star.

In the top picture, you can catch a glimpse of some of the blocks for my Bonnie Hunter Christmas Lights mystery quilt, all laid out, ready to sew together.

I spent most of my day yesterday working on a special gift for my daughter who is going away to university this fall (not her quilt, which I also have to finish!) Sometimes, although she would not admit it to her friends, she looks at my blog so I cannot reveal what the surprise is yet...

Mel's prize

Mel won my recent 100th post giveaway and here are the things that I sent to her. She e-mailed to let me know that they have arrived so now I can show you the pictures. I tried to mail the postcard to her but it came back to me with a sticker on it saying that there was no postage on it. I know that I put a self-adhesive stamp on it so I think the stamp was taken off or fell off somewhere along the line. I will make sure I take my fabric post cards to the post office to be hand cancelled from now on when I mail them... I put a little dragonfly button on the loyalty card wallet in keeping with my garden fabric theme. I will have another give-away closer to the time when my counter gets to 10,000. Stay posted.

I picked up my daughter's university quilt from the machine quilter's last night so I will be working on the binding this week. I have started the baby quilt I cut out the other night but don't have any pictures yet. I also have to finish step two of the Bonnie Hunter Christmas Lights mystery quilt. There won't be a dull moment around here this week!

I think it is supposed to rain again tomorrow so perhaps I will get some sewing time in.

I'm back...

to blogging, that is...

I have done some boring sewing lately, but no quilting until tonight. The boring sewing included fixing a sports equipment bag for my daughter, fixing a Disney purse for my SIL, shortening 3 pairs of pants for my daughter, fixing a pillow for my father and finally, shortening a pair of capri pants for myself. I am what some people call "vertically challenged" and recently got a good deal (1/2 price!) on a pair of black capri pants that I can wear to work--however, they were not "petites" like I usually buy. They looked more like "flood pants". Now, they are fine and I have even worn them to work already!

Tonight, Nancy and I got together for some sewing time. Another mini QNIC! Nancy worked on sewing her blocks for the Bonnie Hunter "Christmas Lights" mystery in Quiltmaker magazine, with some help from her cat, Gibson.
I also had some help from Gibson as I cut out the pieces for a baby quilt which will be a gift for a new baby girl on my husband's side of the family. She was born last week. I am using Nancy's Lucky Stars pattern from Atkinson Designs. I am making the quilt 3 blocks by 3 blocks. He was quite enthralled by the rotary cutter and small scraps of fabric only kept his attention for a short time.













Gibson also helped Nancy to put her Sunbonnet Sue blocks together by holding the fabric down so it would not slide off of the table. Such a helpful cat!











I have all the pieces cut out and matched up for the blocks for the baby quilt. I bought this fabric in the US while I was on vacation last year.



Check out Nancy's blog for pictures of her projects! We figured out an interesting setting for the mystery quilt blocks--I wonder if we are close to the real layout???

Mini QNIC

Nancy and I got together last night. We were going to take some quilts to the long arm quilter, but she wasn't home. Since we are not people who let a perfectly good quilting evening go to waste, we decided to do a little QNIC. Nancy worked on trimming some blocks she has made using some striped shirts.

I cut my squares into triangles...
And then sewed some of them back into squares again... Here is a preview of what one block will look like.

I still have lots of triangles to sew together. This may take a while.

Piecing a New Quilt and Stash Building...

These are the blocks I have been working on for the last week. The large block is cut up into 4 pieces as shown on the left. These smaller blocks get cut up again and then sewn back together. I am still working on sewing all of the strips onto the blocks but wanted to share a picture of some of the ones I have done so far.





I also did some shopping this weekend and added a few fabrics to my stash... I only bought one pattern. The white "fabric" at the top of the picture is actually fusible fleece to make some bags using a pattern borrowed from a friend. The big stack of FQ's are flannel. I will make something cozy with this fabric, although I am not sure what it will be yet.

6 Quilter QNIC!

Six quilters came to QNIC tonight at my house! This is a record. For our snack tonight, we had tea and raspberry/blueberry shortcakes. Very yummy! They were eaten so fast, I did not get a picture!

You are probably wondering what everyone was working on...

Sandra, a recent convert to quilting, was putting the binding on her first quilt which is the 7 shirts quilt designed by Nancy at Life is a Stitch

It is her first quilt and looks great. Sandra is taking some quilting lessons from Jacqui who was working on putting the binding on a quilt that will be a wedding gift. The wedding is on Saturday and the quilt should be done on time! This quilt is a curved log cabin quilt and she found some wonderful cut logs fabric for the backing.

Nancy was cutting up some striped shirts she bought at one of the local thrift stores in preparation for another shirt quilt. You can check her blog for pictures which I am sure she will post as she is working on this quilt.
Karen started a new project and working on cutting out the pieces. She is making a table runner. Her focus fabric is the Canadian postcards fabric from Thimbleberries.

Roxene sewed the binding on a quilt that she made from leftovers from a previous project. There was much discussion around the table about how to sew the binding on it--all of us used slightly different methods.

I worked on a project started in the wintertime. I stopped working on it to make a bunch of gifts and my daughter's university quilt. This is one of those quilts that is made by sewing strips around a large square and then cutting them up and sewing them back together again. I am still on the sewing the strips on stage of this project.
Roxene brought over a new tool to show us. It is a needle threader made by Clover. Nancy has one at home --her husband bought it for her but she has never used it. She will be getting it out now! The needle threader got passed around the table several times and now everyone has "tool envy"... Santa--if you are reading this, we have all been very good and would like one of these in our Christmas stockings this year!
We laughed lots and did a little sewing as well. We are all looking forward to the next QNIC. We may even go on a field trip for some SEX...(Stash Enhancement eXercise).