All Cooped Up

I was at a quilting class, "Improvising with Intent", on Saturday with Christine.  Cheryl Arkison from Dining Room Empire was our teacher.  I will do another post soon about the class and her trunk show but I wanted to show you our treats:  

 

 

Quilter's Chocolate!

 

 

Tonight was sewing night with Christine.  I worked on an attic windows setting for my chicken blocks I made earlier this year.  I am going to call this quilt "All Cooped Up!"   The 3D boxes really show up with this picture. I have some fun fabric to use for the border which I will add once the blocks are together. 

 

 

I also made two pillowcases for our local "Inn out of the Cold" program.  The Elgin Piecemakers Guild members each make two pillowcases to donate each November. 

Christine worked on a placemat for Meals on Wheels and on a pieced backing for a quilt top she made earlier this year.   Next week, we are going to make Christmas stockings for a homeless women's shelter before working on our own projects.  I already have fabric picked out for the stockings...

Baby Quilt in Waiting

This week, I finished off the baby quilt I started a couple of weeks ago.

I pin basted it, machine quilted it and attached the binding when Christine came over to sew on Tuesday night.   It was a very productive evening!

 

I did an organic cross hatch over the entire quilt with light gray thread.

I took these pictures outside this morning, before work. A few colourful leaves are still clinging to the branches of our worplesdon sweetgum tree.

 

I bought two of these little chipmunk fence sitters at a store in London, Ontario. They help the real chipmunks in my backyard to feel welcome!

I like the turquoise binding on this quilt.  I finished off the hand stitching last night.

The backing is soft flannel.

 

Someday, this will be gifted to someone who has a baby girl. In the meantime, it will live at my house.

 

 

Frank is DONE!

 

Drum roll please!  I am happy to announce that Frank is done!  I finished the last stitches last Sunday afternoon while on our way to our nieces' birthday party. I now need to wash it and have it framed. I am hoping to hang Frank in my new sewing room. 

 

This week, I made two place mats for Meals on Wheels. The place mats will be put into gift bags that are delivered along with the meals on Christmas day.  This is an annual project for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild. They are ready to take to our next meeting so labels can be added.

 

 

I also made binding for a charity quilt made by members of the Elgin Piecemakers for an adult chemo patient at our local hospital.  I only have part of one side to finish stitching tomorrow. Each member of the guild made a different coloured slab--they were put together into one top which was quilted by one of our Heather's husband. I offered to do the binding.

 

 



Did I ever mention that I love orange!!!???

I will be linking to slow Sunday stitching at Kathy's blog.

I went fabric shopping this past week. I just wanted to get some flannel for the backing of the baby quilt I just made..., however,  several pieces of fabric leaped into my bag and came home with me. 

The two darker fabrics are for pillow cases for our local Inn Out of the Cold program.

 

I am sure it will all be put to good use, someday!

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.