Sewing Night with Christine in my New Sewing Room

Christine came over to sew for a few hours last night in my new sewing room.  When I ordered my sewing furniture, I designed it with a spot for a friend to sew.  Last night was the first time someone tried it out and it worked out beautifully. We both had lots of room and could easily sit and chat while we sewed.   I put the blocks together on my baby quilt first.  I need to purchase some fabric for the backing before I can quilt it.

Next, I made a charity quilt block for November's meeting of the Elgin Piecemakers.  The colours are lime green and navy. It originally was supposed to be a disappearing 4 patch but I measured wrong so it turned into this:

At the October meeting of the London Friendship Guild, we were asked to make a few 6.5" blocks for a charity quilt.  --A brightly coloured 2.5" square surrounded by a light fabric...I made 4.

In November, we are also supposed to bring in two placemats for Meals on Wheels to the LFQG meeting.  I used some leader/ender tumblers to make one placemat.  I even quilted it so it is ready for binding.  I have more tumblers cut out to make a second one.

The backing fabric has snowmen on it.

I took this picture a couple of weeks ago as we ate our last meal on the patio for this year.  One of the shadows looks like a chicken to me.

We are supposed to have some rainy and windy weather for the next day or so...I think we are going to have naked trees by the end of the day tomorrow.

Slow Stitching with Frank and a New Project

I was at a conference for a few days this week for work.  One of the vendors had an artist present doing caricatures of whoever wanted to stand in line long enough to pose for a picture.  I had to tell him how I love to spend my time...of course, I told him I was a quilter!  He immediately asked me if I had Rubbermaid bins of fabric.  I had the feeling that he had run across a few quilters in his time!  He has me quilting by hand and machine at the same time, using my feet for the machine quilting.  I am not so sure I could do that in real life.  

I made some progress on Frank this week and only have a bit of outlining and cross stitching left to do.  There will be some time tomorrow during a car trip to see if I can finish this project off.

I spent some time this past week organizing my sewing room.  In the process of putting things away, I found a jelly roll and decided I needed to make something.  I have made 16 blocks and will be putting them together this week into a baby quilt in waiting.  No baby on the horizon to give this to but it is good to be prepared with a gift just in case!

Here are my fabrics:

And here is what I did with them:

I have 16 blocks made to make this into a square quilt.  I hope I can find something in my stash for backing.  I will quilt this myself.  

Happy sewing to you!!!

Something New and Frank's Progress.

You might remember from my blog post a few weeks ago that I mentioned that I had ordered something that would be delivered in a few weeks...today was delivery day!  This is my front hall after everything was out of the truck and in my front hall.

 

 

The delivery people carried each piece down the stairs to the basement...

 



where they put everything together...

in my new sewing room!

This room used to be our home office, but like most people these days, we have a laptop and don't need an office for our computer anymore.  The desk was donated to Habitat for Humanity a couple of weeks ago to make room for my new sewing machine cabinet and cutting table.

They even put my machine into the recessed part and set it to the right level.

The cutting table has drop down sections on each side which can be put up to make it bigger as well as lots of storage. There is a slot at the back behind the drawers for large ruler and spare cutting board storage.   The chair in the corner will be perfect for hand sewing.

The furniture was made by Eddycrest Design and Build. Adam Eddy started up this company and made his first sewing table for his mother, customizing the height and storage to her needs. My sewing furniture was customized to my specifications and my (short) height so that I will not strain my body while doing lots of cutting and sewing. My kitchen table is too low for cutting and the kitchen counter is too high, but my new cutting table is just right!!!

I spent some time tonight putting supplies into some of the drawers.  There is still lots more to do and I will show more pictures in a future blogpost.

In the meantime, while waiting for my furniture to arrive, I did lots of sewing on Frank this week.  Here is Frank last week:

Frank is coming along quite nicely. I even did some sewing in the gazebo last Monday (Thanksgiving).  This weekend, we have has some snow in the air, so I will be sewing inside, not out in the gazebo!

I think I should be able to finish this project by the end of October!

Not much time for Frank this week

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian readers!

 

Today, my husband, my daughter and I went for a walk at the farm. My daughter took this picture of my husband and I. It was a perfect fall day!

The barn is missing a few boards here and there.

The trees have not changed colours much yet.  My daughter is in the picture below. The sky was very blue.

I have not had much time to spend working on Frank this week. I did some more backstitching so I am just about done the top left section of the window.  Only two more sections to finish!

I have not shown a photo of the entire window recently, so here it is...

It is unlikely that I will have time to stitch tomorrow since I will be hosting Thanksgiving dinner at my house.  Maybe there will be time for stitching on Monday.

Ugh! I hate unsewing...

I have been on a bit of a roll this week with Frank...I managed to find a little bit of time to stitch almost every day this week!  I even worked on Frank at lunch at work! 

Last week:

This week:

Today, on our way to visit my MIL, I worked on Frank again in the car.  I was doing some more back stitching when I discovered not one, but TWO! spots where I had put my stitches one thread away from where they should be.  UGH!  Unsewing counted cross stitch is not fun!  It involves picking out each stitch individually in the opposite order that they were put in...this works well until you can't figure out the order...then, unsewing involves very fine pointy scissors and small pieces of thread to pick out.  Thankfully, the mistakes have been rectified and I am on my way to making progress once again.

BTW...ever since I started bringing extra needles along when I am working on Frank in the car, I have not dropped the needle even once!

Cold and rainy all day today so no lovely pictures of fields and pumpkins and trees with colourful fall leaves today... maybe next week!

Elgin Piecemakers Meeting

The Elgin Piecemakers held their first meeting of the season this past Thursday. There were four completed quilts to donate to the local hospital for adult chemo patients. I love the piano key border on this blue quilt.

Joanne made this quilt with a block she made at a workshop and some donated fabrics.

Heather used some donated fabrics to make the blocks and used some polka dots from her stash for the sashing and border.

The turquoise sashing really livens up this gray and black quilt.

We each made a block using 30's prints this month.  I forgot to take my block to the meeting but delivered it to Chris on Saturday morning. We laid the blocks out on the floor to take a picture.  Chris hopes to have this top done before our next meeting. Two more people need to make their blocks to add to the collection.

At our next meeting, we will be deciding on some themes and colours for next year's donation quilts.

Any ideas are most welcome!

Afternoon Roadtrip with Frank and my Husband

Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis must realize by now that I often stitch in the car and today was no exception. My husband and I had the afternoon to ourselves so we took a drive in the country with a few stops along the way. I did some stitching on Frank in the car on the way to our first destination.

 

I actually did some stitching one night this week when Christine came over for a couple of hours of stitching.  You can see her project on her blog here.  She is making a wool candle mat for a Christmas gift.

I took this picture at our main stop this afternoon.  Some of you may recognize this place...Country Patchworks Fabrics and Quilts. 

I purchased some orange thread--I have been wanting to get a new spool of orange thread for months! Also, three pieces of fabric came home with me.  I love the snowmen riding in the trucks!

I also purchased something else while I was there but you will have to wait a few weeks until I can show it to you.

Our next stop was at the Dairy Queen, but I did not take any pictures of our ice cream!

On our way home, we were on the lookout for some pumpkins for our front porch.  We stopped at a farm on a country road where they had apples, onions, squash and pumpkins for sale.

 

I bought two types of squash ( a green one and a striped one) and white and orange pumpkins.

 

 

These pictures were taken at the farm. I decorated my porch when we got home but did not take a picture and now it is too dark.

We also saw some farmers out harvesting their soybeans.

It was a perfect day for a drive in the country!

There were even some leaves changing colour on a few trees.

I will be linking up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow.