Preparing...

This week, Christine and I are going to a two day workshop with Jacquie Gering:  "Machine quilting with your Walking Foot".  This weekend, I am preparing my quilt sandwiches to use in the class.  I have everything cut out and I am in the process of hand basting all of the sandwiches. I am using up all of the spools of thread in my stash that just have a little bit of thread left...so far I have emptied 5 spools! There are 11 sandwiches in various sizes to make.  This is using up lots of stash fabric and lots of my batting scraps as well. I am using fusible tape to piece the batting.

I have taken two classes with Jacquie before.  In April 2014, she was the speaker at the London Friendship Quilter's guild and did a workshop called Stitch and Flip.  Here is a picture of my project:

 

(I have still not finished this project but plan on taking it with me to the retreat next weekend so I can work on it.)

 

 

The second class was Improvisational Piecing and took place at Black Creek Pioneer Village in July 2014.

 

 



I finished this project and quilted it with a spiral using my walking foot.

 



I plan on taking this quilt with me this week to show Jacquie. 

I am really looking forward to the workshop this week.  I am fairly proficient at "organic quilting" with my walking foot and feel confident with spiral quilting but would love to have more "tools in my toolbox" for machine quilting my own quilts. 

 

 



We are each supposed to bring a quilt top that we have made and part of the class with be discussing quilting possibilities for each of our quilts. I am taking my "Modern Wedge" quilt with me.  I have the backing ready and hope to quilt it next weekend at the retreat after getting some quilting ideas at the class.



Jacquie is an excellent teacher...if she is ever teaching a class in your neck of the woods, you should go!!!  I am so excited about seeing Jacquie again and learning all I can from her this week!!!

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

Here is my stash report...lots of fabric out this report for my daughter's quilt and those quilt sandwiches!

Fabric used since my last stash report: 10.25yards
Total fabric used this year: 38.5 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report: 3 yards.
Total fabric added this year: 46.25 yards
Net fabric added this year:  7.75 yards

I am digging myself out of the red hole...

Also linking up to Patchwork Times...

"In the Coop" is DONE!

Finally, a sunny day and my husband was home to hold the quilt for the photoshoot!  I spent Sunday hand sewing the binding and managed to get it all done.  Yesterday was too cold and rainy/snowy to take pictures outside. 

Cathy at Eagles' Wings Quilts did a lovely job with the custom quilting.  There is wood grain quilting on the coop looks great!  The chickens have feathers and the wings have a paisley quilting pattern.  There are eggs in the chicken wire border.

Sorry about the shadows from my Eastern Redbud tree in the pictures.

My chickens are happy to be out in the sunshine!!!

I like the pebbles in the yellow backgrounds too.

It is so nice to have a finished quilt to show to all of you.  I will be taking my quilt to the Elgin Piecemakers meeting later this week for show and tell.  This fall, the London Friendship Quilters Guild will be holding their quilt show and this quilt will make an appearance there too.

Progress and Some Slow Sunday Stitching

My crocuses are in bloom so it must be Spring!  The daffodils are in bud but no flowers yet...maybe by next week.

I have spent some time most days working on my daughter's graduation quilt.  I finished the first half last week.

This week, I have been working on the mirror image which will go to the right side of the half shown above.

2/3 of the second half is done.  Only 10 more rows to go.  With any luck, I will be able to finish this off this week.  I still need to get some fabric for the backing --my daughter wants a flannel backing.  I have ordered a new 40 yard roll of batting.  I have run out again...I find it easier to just buy a roll and then I don't have to keep going out to buy batting.  This will be my 4th roll...

I took my chicken quilt to Cathy at Eagle's Wings quilts a few weeks ago and picked it up yesterday.  Today, I did a poll with some friends to see what colour I should use for the binding.

After all the votes were counted  (6 people weighed in with their opinions...), red won!

This afternoon, I machine sewed the binding to the front of the quilt. Tomorrow, I will do the hand sewing for my Slow Sunday Stitching with Kathy and the other hand stitchers.

I know this picture is upside-down, but it shows the custom quilting that Cathy and I decided on...

There are eggs quilted into the chicken wire border.

With any luck, I should have a finished quilt for show and tell at our Elgin Piecemaker's Guild meeting on Thursday night.

Sewing Day at Home

I have had a whole day to myself today and spent most of the day down in my sewing room. I worked on my daughter`s quilt most of the day. Some cutting, some sewing, some pressing and more sewing...all while listening to CBC podcasts.  Blissful!

 

I managed to make 10 rows today.  The top 10 rows were finished and sewn together earlier this week, so today, I doubled the size!

 I still have to sew the bottom 10 rows together and then join them to the top section. This represents a third of the quilt top.  As you can see, my design wall is full, floor to ceiling!   I need to do some more cutting before starting to sew the next set of rows for this quilt.

Tonight, I did some hand stitching while watching the Brier--the men`s national curling championship for Canada.  We are all big curling fans in our family.

I`m working on my pillow.  I need lots of pins for hand sewing this curved seam.

I am hand sewing the small quarter circles to the paper pieced arcs.

I will machine sew the outer gray section to each arc. Four done...only 12 to go.  Good thing the curling will be on for another couple of hours!!!

I will be linking up to Kathy`s Slow Sunday Stitching.  

Here is my stash report as well:

Fabric used since my last stash report: 20.65 yards
Total fabric used this year: 28.25 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report: 41.25 yards.
Total fabric added this year: 43.25 yards
Net fabric added this year:  15 yards

I have plans for much of the fabric that I have purchased recently so it will soon be in the ``used`` column!

My Daughter's Quilt

 

My daughter finished university over a year ago and I told her I wanted to make her a quilt as a graduation gift.  She moved into a new apartment last summer and decided that a new quilt would be nice for her new bed. She is pretty fussy about what she likes and does not like so it took a long time to look at different patterns, fabrics and colours. On Family Day weekend, we went to Mad About Patchwork and chose a pattern (Four Corners by Nancy Purvis) and fabric. 

You may remember seeing a picture of the fabrics a few posts back...

I bought enough fabric for her quilt and took it home. I washed it and ironed it. After cutting a couple of strips of each fabric and making some squares, I spent some time arranging the fabrics to figure out the order of the colours.

I emailed the pictures to my daughter so she could have input.

She hated the yellow fabric.

No matter where I put the yellow, she still hated it. So I dug into my stash for other options...

She did not like white (and neither did I!!)

Next up, a darker gray...the pattern was too big and the colour was too dark.

Next, I tried a mid gray with stripes in it.  She and I both liked this better.  I left this up on my design wall for a few days and consulted with my fellow quilters from the Elgin Piecemakers when we met at my house last week. They all thought the gray with the stripes fit in well.  I checked with my daughter again and she gave me the final approval. 

I only have a fat quarter of the striped fabric so I ordered a couple of yards from MAP and it should be here shortly.   Tonight, I cut some triangles and squares out of all of the fabrics and started to figure out the pattern.

Here is the first strip. 

Then I put together another strip, and another...

There are 5 strips in each section and 8 sections in the quilt.  This may take a while...

We are in the middle of a winter storm with freezing rain, ice pellets and snow tonight.  I predict shovelling in the morning!


 

Pillow progress

One night this past week, I paper pieced the last 4 arcs for the pillow I am making.  

Here are all 16 arcs, trimmed and ready to go. 

I tried to machine sew the small 1/4 circle onto the arc, but that did not work...  I unstitched and decided to hand stitch it instead.  This method worked out much better!  I was able to machine sew the outer part of the arc to the bigger piece of the block.  

Here is the first block of 16...

Only 15 to go.  They are 5" squares finished.  

In the meantime, I am just about done appliquéing the modern wedge quilt and hope to finish it off tomorrow during Slow Sunday Stitching.  

Modern Wedge Slow Stitching

 

To prepare for Slow Sunday Stitching tomorrow, tonight, I hand basted the wedges down to the background on my modern wedge quilt. I started this quilt at a workshop taught by Kathy Doughty from Material Obsession in Australia when she was in Ontario a couple of years ago.  I have been playing around with layouts on my design wall for a few weeks now and finally settled on this layout:

 

 

 

I used red thread for the basting. I thought about just pinning the curved sections on but was afraid that the pieces would shift as I sewed them. 

 

 

Basting on the wider wedges:



 

 

I need to get this project finished up so that I can free up half of my design wall for my daughter's new quilt.  There are lots of pieces to keep track of and they all need to stay in the right places or the pattern will not work out properly.   I washed the fabric for her quilt this week and will start cutting this week.  In the meantime, I will be hand appliqueing the wedges down onto the background fabric.  I started tonight with the narrow wedges...

I am turning under about a 1/4" as I sew and trying to keep a smooth curve in the process. So far, so good!

Next, I will have to figure out how to quilt this project.  I am going to do it on my DSM. If you  have any ideas, please let me know!  The London Friendship Quilters Guild is having their quilt show this October and I want to finish off a few of my UFO's in time to put them in the show.

I will be linking up with the other slow Sunday stitchers at Kathy's blog.