Resurrecting an Old UFO

Back in October of 2014, I took a class called "Overlapping Tiles" with Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Malby.    At the end of the day, I rolled up my project in a piece of flannel design wall, gathered up my fabrics and put all of it in a bin, never to even look at it again until this past Monday. I knew it was in my sewing room because every so often, I would move the bin around, always thinking that I should get back to this project and get it done.  The last time I moved the bin, I remembered that I originally wanted to make a queen sized quilt for our bed, and decided that maybe a lap quilt would be big enough. I really just wanted to get it put together and be able to put the fabrics in the bin back into my stash.  This past Monday, I brought the bin with me to the weekly Oxford Quilter's Guild sewing day. I unrolled the design wall and found lots of very wrinkly squares.  I sorted out my fabrics and decided I needed to add another column of  tiles to the right side of the quilt.  I cut out some more squares and ended up with what you see in the picture below. 

Here is a picture of the squares rolled up in the design wall. 

I fiddled around with colour placement before lunch and then after lunch, I started sewing.  I got this far before it was time to pack up and go home.  The constant fabric is a very old Kaffe fabric.  The section that is sewn looks so much better now that the squares are not all crumpled up!

I hope to finish getting this put together at our next sewing day after the quilt show this coming week. 

I added more stitches to the sunflower cross stitch project.  This pattern is from Satsuma Street.  As you can see, I am almost finished the centre sunflower.  

Finn provided support as I added sleeves to two more quilts this week.  Only one more to go and it will get done tomorrow.  The quilt show is next Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  I will be at the show on Friday and Saturday. 

We had a lot of rain this past week and they do say that April showers will bring May flowers...  These mini tulips are really pretty...my favourites in the garden. 

Bleeding hearts are blooming their hearts out!!!

My MIL picked out this Columbine for our garden.  

Finn had his very first Puppuccino today.  He liked it, a lot!

Finn thought these hamburger buns looked good enough to eat...fortunately, he was not tall enough to get them off the plate and we were able to eat them with the hamburgers that were cooking on the BBQ. 

We took Finn for a walk at the park tonight after supper and these two geese were hanging out at one end of the lake.  I have a feeling that there will be lots of goslings sometime soon. 

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning, although I am going to have to sew fast to get the last sleeve on the quilt for the quilt show. 

Slow Stitching Report

I spent a few hours this week hand stitching sleeves on my quilts for the upcoming Oxford Guild quilt show..5/9 are done.  The three larger quilts still need their sleeves sewn on. I can get them done this week.  

I only managed to work on my sunflower cross stitch once this week so there is only a small change from last week.  I'm hoping to finish off this flower this week. We will see how much time there is after sewing the sleeves on the other three quilts. 

Finn had a haircut this week. He was looking a bit shaggy...

Now, we can see his eyes!

The groomer gave him a new bandana with monster trucks on it.  

Finn was quite concerned earlier today when I put two of his toys in the washing machine.  He came to the laundry room to get them back when the load was done.  

I am working on weeding our interlocking brick patio.  I have a tool to clean out the cracks and a bucket to put the moss and weeds into.  When the bucket is full, I stop for the day.  I have done three buckets full so far.  The cleaned up areas look much better. We will get the special sand for the cracks when I am done.  I want to get this job done before we put our patio furniture out.  The gardens need a top up with mulch this year too.  We spend a lot of time outside in the summer so all of this work is worth the effort. 

The azaleas are in full bloom. 

This is a Pasque flower seed head forming. It looks windswept in this picture. 

The bleeding hearts and yellow tulips are blooming in the side garden.  Have I ever mentioned that I love this time of year???

I will link up with Kathy in the morning. 

Sunflowers, Sleeves and a Quilt Show!

More colourful petals were added to the sunflower in the centre of my project this week.  This picture will end up being a 12" circle so there is a long way to go still. I like the turquoise background--the colours in the sunflower really pop. 

I may not get as much cross stitching done this week as I have entered 9 quilts into our guild quilt show in early May and I need to hand stitch the sleeves onto 8 of the quilts. (the smallest one already had a sleeve). This afternoon, I made sleeves for 6 quilts and they are all pinned in place and ready to hand sew.  Guess what I will be doing for Slow Sunday Stitching this week???   Here is the information about the show for those of you who might be close enough to attend. 

I made two hot pads for the church Christmas Bazaar this week.  The sewing group will be making more on one of our sewing days and I wanted to make a couple of samples so they could see the finished product. 

It's quilt show season in our area and the first one of the year was in St. Mary's.  I attended with three friends.  We examined every single quilt in the show, did a little shopping, had lunch in the tearoom and enjoyed each other's company.  The quilts were spectacular and the turnout to the show was huge.  I think there was a pent up desire to attend a quilt show after three years of no quilt shows due to the pandemic. I especially liked quilts that included some machine stitching as well as hand stitching.  

Lots of tiny pieces in this "starry night" wall hanging. 

This baby quilt was just plain fun to look at.  I love all of the different textures in the animals. 

Our gardens have new things to look at every day.  It rained this morning and the sedum caught some of the water in the new leaves. 

At the beginning of the week, the azalea looked like this:

A day or two of sunshine and the flowers were in bloom!

Purple Scrap Blocks and a Sunflower in the Making

I got to work on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks this week using my purple and red-violet (magenta) scraps.  These squares are 6.5" square.  I still have lots of purple scraps but my red-violet collection is almost non-existent now.  

I made another pineapple log cabin to add to my collection. 

We had summer-like weather this week and the garden has burst into bloom.  These red-violet hellebores came from my MIL's garden. 

The daffodils in my garden also put on a great show this week. 

The grape hyacinths are so pretty!

Ladybugs  and bees are making an appearance as well. 

There are so many flowers on this primrose that I can't see the leaves. 

My new counted cross stitch picture did not look like much last week but this week, you can start to see that it will be a sunflower.  This will be my Slow Sunday Stitching project this weekend. 

We took Finn for a long walk in Port Stanley this week.  He was very tired that evening!  He likes to be outside in the sunshine.