Lupins, Slow Knitting and a Finished Quilt Top

My lupin blocks continue to accumulate...I finished 4 more blocks this afternoon. 28/48 blocks have been completed.  This fat quarter adds some more red-violet to the mix. 

I have four of each of these 7 blocks. 

I started a new knitting project last weekend...another facecloth in turquoise.  I have a few more repeats of the pattern to go before this one is done. I will be working on it tomorrow. 

The final layout for the London Modern Guild HST BOM was published this past week so I set to getting my blocks sewn together.  My blocks are 9" squares so the quilt was a bit small, even for a baby quilt.  I decided to add a navy striped border to bring the final size up to 34 X 44".  I found some backing material in my stash and will get it pin basted and quilted soon.  I have enough orange fabric leftover for the binding.  I will likely use orange or navy thread for the quilting. 

 My daughter has started two new handwork projects.  She is teaching herself to embroider by doing a small sampler and trying out different stitches including satin stitch, lazy daisy, stem stitch and French knots, among others. 

She has also started a blackwork project which will be a Christmas gift for someone who does not read my blog. 

I am still deciding on colours for my blackwork project... Stay tuned...maybe there will be pictures next week. 

Fall is in full gear around here.  My husband and I went for a walk this afternoon at the local elevated park 

Last weekend, we hiked by Lake Huron. 

Finn enjoyed a walk with my daughter today.  He loves being outside. 

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

Rainbow Scrap Challenge update

 The colour for October is yellow so I pulled out my yellow and gold scraps and made two blocks for my RSC quilt. I had lots of fun yellow scraps for my block. 

As I dig through the scraps, I remember the projects I have made with these fabrics. The daisy fabric was a border on a baby quilt that I made several years ago--the baby is in school now.   The yellow Kaffe fabric is being used on a current project that has not been shown on my blog yet.  Soon, it will be revealed. 

This block was made with my gold scraps..The block looks more gold in real life!  The cat fabric, lower right corner, was used to make a maternity dress for my  SIL. My twin nieces are now in their 4th year of university!  The fabric above the cats was used in a dress for my daughter when she was in grade 1--she wore it at her holiday concert at school. She is 8 years older than her cousins. 

I also made a brown block.  The coffee bean fabric was used recently to make a face covering for my husband.  The baseball glove fabric was leftover from a quilt made for my brother in law.  There are a few quilt backings in this block as well as a fall table runner made for my MIL.

I hope to make 16 blocks for this quilt and have 13 made so far.  Here are all the blocks on my design wall. I am still pondering layouts for these blocks. 

That gold block looks much better in this picture of all the blocks!  I have used 325 different fabrics in these blocks so far.  

I will link up with the scrappy quilters at So Scrappy later today. 

Lupins and 4 Finishes!!!

Four more lupin blocks made this week--I am not sure where I bought this purple fat quarter.  Here are samples of all the blocks I have made so far...24/48 blocks made.  I am half way there!  I have a few red-violet fat quarters in my pile so the raspberry lupins will blend in more once those are added. 

I finished the starfish baby wash cloth.  It is actually light blue...not gray. 

The "Let it Bee" cross stitch is done too.  I almost forgot to add the antennae!  I will frame this in a small hoop and hang it in my sewing room. 

I purchased a pattern for a blackwork project to work on next...I am in the process of getting my supplies gathered and hope to work on it this weekend. 

My daughter also finished her Nashville cityscape.  She has started a new project...not a cityscape.  I hope to share a picture of it next week. 

Finally, my Tula Pink 100 Modern Blocks sampler is completed!  I spent a few hours this week hand sewing the binding down.  I took this picture while standing on a ladder to get a full view of the quilt. 

I used three fat quarters of ombre fabric for the colourful bits in most of the blocks as well as my extensive collection of black and white fabrics for this quilt. The binding is the same darker gray solid as in the horizontal stripes.  

The colourful fabrics on the front and the backing fabrics were all designed by Tula Pink.  I purchased the three fat quarters for the front at QuiltCon 2019 in Nashville.  

My quilt was custom quilted by my friend, Julie C.  Each block is different and the background areas all have horizontal lines.  This quilt will go on our bed--our first new quilt on the bed in many years.  I have several quilts that fit our bed and rotate them about once a month so every quilt gets a chance to be on display and lay flat. I love looking at all of the blocks and finding little scraps of fun fabrics and admiring the quilting on each one. 

My friend and I go for a physically distanced walk every morning and today was foggy.  Water droplets clung to the spider webs we saw along the trail so I had to take a few pictures. 

I will be linking up with Kathy on Sunday morning along with all of the other Slow Sunday Stitchers.  

Paige at Quilted Blooms has a new link up on Fridays for people to share their finished quilting projects. Thank Goodness its Finished Fridays--TGIFF!!!

Have a great weekend!

Slow knitting and stitching.

 I now have 5 sets of 4 lupin blocks...I made one at 6:00 o'clock in the picture above this week.  This fabric has Celtic knots on it and was purchased in Inverness, Scotland when we were there last summer. I had picked out a different fat quarter to use for this week's blocks but when I went to cut it, I found that it was not big enough...I need at least 21" in length for the strips for these blocks.  Funny how fat quarters can vary so much in size. 

I did some knitting this week on the starfish baby washcloth...it's about 2/3 finished.  

My daughter continues to work on her Nashville cityscape in counted cross stitch. It is getting close to being done.  The patterns for her cityscapes are from Awesome Pattern Studio. 

My cross stitch bee is done except for the words above the bee and a small amount of outlining on the wings.  The words on the pattern are "Bee Well" but I am thinking of something different. 

My big accomplishment in the sewing department this week was to make and add the binding to my Tula Pink 100 Modern Blocks sampler quilt.  This is a huge quilt-- 100" square!  I have started the hand stitching and have one side done and have turned the corner to the second side.  I will be working on this for slow Sunday stitching with Kathy and the gang tomorrow. Maybe, I will have it done by next weekend. 

I did some weeding in my garden beside the front porch earlier this week and a couple of days later, broke out in a rash with itchy blisters...poison ivy.  I noticed that one on the weeds I was putting into the compost bag had the telltale three leaves...I went inside to wash my hands right away but it was too late. Calamine lotion is my best friend right now.  

The fall colours are just starting to show in our neighbourhood this week.  We had frost on the ground this morning so more are sure to follow. 

Have a great week!

Rainbow Scrap Challenge: Red-Violet

This month's colour for the RSC is red.  I had already made my red block a couple of months ago so I decided to do a red-violet block to add to my collection. 

 As I make these blocks, I am always surprised how easy it is to come up with 25 different fabrics to make each block.  I guess I should not be surprised...I have been collecting fabric for years!

I also made a gray block this week.  A few of these fabrics are leftovers from the Christmas tree skirt I made a few years ago and some are from backings or borders of more recently made quilts. My favourite fabric in this block is the zipper fabric. 

Dark green also made an appearance this week. The flower print was leftover from a dress I made my daughter when she was little. 

Here is a picture of my first 9 blocks, not including the gray block. 

Including the gray block, I have 250 unique fabrics in this quilt so far. My scrap bins still runneth over!

Slow Stitching this Week

I finished the cross stitching on the bee this week and moved on to the wreath of flowers and hearts around the bee.  There is still some backstitching to do as well, but I will do that once I am done with the cross stitching.  I have not done any counted cross stitch in a while and I am enjoying this little project. 

In the knitting department, I finished the sheep baby washcloth and started a starfish cloth.  I am accumulating a pile of baby wash cloths to use as gifts when babies come along. The starfish cloth is actually light blue, but looks more gray in this picture. 

Four more lupins were made this week using a Kaffe paperweight fat quarter in purple.  I have had almost all of the different colours of paperweight fabrics in my stash at one time or another. 16/48 blocks are done now for this quilt.  I have a whole bin full of purple and red-violet fat quarters set aside for this project. 

Here are the four fabrics I have used so far. 

My husband and I went "glamping" for two nights this past week.  We stayed in a large tent on a wooden platform with a king size bed, our own washroom, complete with shower, sink and toilet as well as our own metal fire pit. There were lots of hiking trails nearby and we enjoyed several trails.  

We also brought our bikes and rode them from Port Dover to Simcoe and back to Port Dover on the Lynn Valley Trail--an old railway line that has since been made into a hiking/biking trail. We rode about 21km all together.  It was like riding through a bright green tunnel almost the entire way...we want to go back when the leaves are turning later in the fall. 

This week's flower pictures were taken on our hikes. 

Spotted Touch-me-not

Fungus on a dead tree

Jerusalem artichoke

Aster

Canada Thistle

Goldenrod

Jerusalem artichoke

Blue-stemmed goldenrod

White Baneberry

I looked up these flowers in my Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers...if I made any mistakes or you can identify the white flowers in the first picture, let me know.  The white flowers were not in the book.  I am not sure what type of fern I have pictured either. 

For Slow Sunday Stitching this week, I will continue with my knitting and I will work on getting my Tula Pink 100 Modern Blocks quilt bound.  I will link up with Kathy tomorrow morning. 

Our local public library just had a beautiful mural painted on its east wall and I took a picture of it this morning.  I love the teapot and teacup well as the tea being poured--very quilty!