Back from Vacation

My husband and I spent two glorious weeks in Iceland earlier this month. This was an early celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary in September. We decided 5 years ago that we should take a special trip to mark this occasion and several ideas were discussed about where to go. My husband came up with Iceland and after doing a bit of research, we both decided that Iceland would be our destination.  What a beautiful country!  Many of our friends and family members were quite surprised that we were going to Iceland, and many scoffed, but once they see our pictures and hear the stories, I think many of them will be convinced to consider going to Iceland themselves someday!

There were several different types of wild flowers.

Lupins grew everywhere.

I loved seeing the basalt columns.

More basalt columns --the perpendicular columns form from the bottom up as lava cools. There were other columns that were "curly" and they had cooled from the top down.

We went whale watching--this is a humpback whale.

 



Interesting clouds.

A volcanic crater--we hiked all the way around the top of this crater.

A rocky beach.

Dried up seaweed on the rocks.

I have not done much sewing in the past 6 weeks. I had a sick family member in the hospital and recovering at my house for the month of May and then we went on our trip. This past week was spent trying to get caught up on everything at work and at home. Christine and I will be getting together this week again to sew--we have not been able to do this in almost two months and are both looking forward to getting our quilting mojo back!

I sat in our gazebo and finished the binding on this quilt this afternoon. I used Bonnie Hunter's pattern, Majestic Mountain Majesties. This is a lap quilt, perfect for using while watching tv or reading a good book.

There are lots of fun fabrics in this quilt--all from my stash, except for the outer border and backing.

Check out the chicken feet!

Green beans and lettuce.

Corn on the cop and barnboard.  Sunflowers, too.

The quilting is oak leaves--the same pantograph used for the shirt quilts that I made everyone for Christmas from my FIL's shirts. Cathy over at Eagles Wings Quilts did the quilting on her long arm machine.

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

The Modern Wedge --workshop with Kathy Doughty

My friend, Debbie, and I had a wonderful day in Brantford last week at a workshop organized by the Red Red Bobbin quilt shop. I had read about the workshop on Nancy's blog a few months ago and immediately signed up and invited Debbie to join me. Kathy Doughty, of Material Obsession fame, has been travelling all over the US and made one stop in Canada to do three days of workshops at the Red Red Bobbin. Kathy's husband, John, joined her on her trip--he loves to travel and is a wonderful photographer, quilt holder, suitcase lugger and supporter of Kathy! He even helped some of the participants in with their machines, bags and bins of fabric! Here is a picture of Kathy talking about one of her quilts--that is John holding the quilt.

Kathy and John live in Australia and the twenty ladies taking the class were thrilled to see several of her quilts from her recent books--Adding Layers and Making Quilts. 

The theme of our workshop was the Modern Wedge and Kathy showed us several examples of what can be done with a wedge ruler and some imagination!

Fussy cutting the fabrics can lead to some fun circles!

This one is called vintage spin.

This one is made by sewing strips together before cutting the wedges.

This is an example of a pieced background for some appliqued circles made from wedges. (John the quilt holder's feet are at the bottom of the quilt!)

The circles can be layered on top of each other for a fun effect.

(Those are my feet this time...)

How about points at both ends of the wedges???

I started by sorting my fabrics into two piles--warm colours and cool colours.

I chose these two fabrics to start and cut out a few wedges and started playing on the design wall. Note how the red recedes and the green fabric comes forward!

My circle told me it wanted to go into a different direction.

Kathy suggested cutting out some shorter wedges in two darker fabrics so that that my next "worm" would recede more than the first one.

Then, two lighter colours in longer wedges were added...I like where this is going!  Kathy and I discussed background fabric ideas...She asked me if I have any dark fabrics in my stash???  Silly question, I told her!  I would like to try making a pieced background and will work on this over the summer so I can put this quilt into the London Friendship Quilters' Guild show this fall.

Debbie made several circles on her design wall and is well on her way to a beautiful quilt!

 

Thank you, Kathy, for a wonderful, fun and inspiring day!  We hope to see you again sometime.

I did some gardening on the weekend...

 

 

 

I'm still here

 



I'm still alive. I have not been doing any sewing for the last few weeks as I have had a family member in the hospital. He is home today and on the road to recovery so life may finally settle down a bit.

The slabs in this quilt were made by members of the Elgin Piecemakers Guild and I put them together in to a flimsy about 3 weeks ago. My husband held it up for me to take pictures last week on a sunny but breezy day...

It was hard to get a picture!

Cathy called tonight to let me know that my Scrappy Mountain Majesties quilt is done so now I just have to do the binding.  I have a round robin quilt to pass off to her so hopefully we can get together soon to trade parcels!

My daughter was home this past weekend and was snooping around in my fabric ...she found a kit I purchased recently at Greenwood Quiltery in Guelph to make an infinity scarf for her.  While she and her Dad played basketball in the driveway, I made the infinity scarf.  Here she is modelling it...

The garden is coming alive with flowers and many weeds...I managed to pull a few weeds on the weekend for 30 minutes or so but it still needs more work. I just don't have time right now.  In the meantime, I will focus on the flowers and ignore the weeds....

This magnolia tree is in my MIL's yard.

Progress and some more charity quilts.

I have been working away at several different projects this week, trying to tie up some loose ends and meet all of my upcoming deadlines.  I am not sure it is ever possible to "catch up" but I sure am going to try!

I put my scrappy mountain majesties blocks together this week and added two borders.  The top is now done.  I have purchased some backing and will be getting this quilt off to the quilters this week. My goal is to get the backing pieced and the label made this week sometime.

We had a meeting of the Elgin Piecemakers this past week. Here is a picture of all of our red, black and white blocks for this month's charity quilt.

One person was not able to make it to our meeting so her block will be added to that blank spot later.  These blocks will make a wonderful quilt.

This quilt has been quilted and just needs binding. It will be ready for delivery soon.

  There were six completed quilts that will be taken to the hospital adult chemo unit this week.

Today, I have been working on a round robin quilt. 3 friends and I are participating. I have already put a border on one person's quilt and this one is round 2. We will exchange again in early May for the last round.  We hope to get together for lunch to give the quilt tops back to their original owners.  We each supplied the middle block and the fabric for the rest of the quilt, although, everyone said that we could add our own fabric to each project.  No pictures allowed until the grand reveal.

I did the binding on another kid's charity quilt for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild this week. This is another group project with Nancy piecing the top and back, me supplying the batting and doing the binding and Cathy did the long arm quilting.

I walked around my backyard today and took a few pictures of the flowers that are in bloom!

These are mini daffodils.

Beautiful pasque flowers--I love the fuzzy stems.

A water drop in some unfurling columbine leaves.

My stash report for this week...  I purchased some fabric for a workshop that I will be taking later in May. I needed 1/2 yards and my stash consists mostly of fat quarters.  I also purchased backing fabric for the quilt at the top of this post.

Fabric used since my last stash report: 4.2 yards
Total fabric used this year: 53.85 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report: 10.5 yards
Total fabric added this year: 54.65 yards
Net fabric added this year: 0.8 yards

Until next time...

This week's projects...

Last week, I cut out 32 light squares and 32 medium to dark squares and made these half square triangles--64 in total.

I started making Scrappy Mountain Majesties blocks earlier this week. This is a free Bonnie Hunter pattern.

Yesterday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours at the sewing machine and made some more blocks:

I really like this arrangement of the blocks!  Lots to look at in these fabrics--flowers, barn-board, fall leaves...

By the time I went to bed last night, this is what my design wall looked like...can you see the green bean fabric?  My daughter's favourite vegetable is green beans!  The sunflower fabric is leftover from a dress I made for her when she was 10 years old.

Tonight, I finished off the rest of the blocks:

This week, I will get these blocks put together and add a couple of borders. Now that I look at the picture, I see a couple of blocks I would like to move around.

I also did some hand sewing this week:

The blocks for this quilt were made by Nancy at Life is a Stitch. I assembled the top from Nancy's blocks and pieced some batting. I found some purple fabric deep in my stash that I used as backing and binding.  Cathy at Eagle's Wings Quilts quilted the quilt and I did the binding. This quilt will be donated to the London Friendship Quilters' Guild charity quilt committee for a child in foster care.  Someone is sure to love the cats in the spinning four patch blocks!

Can you see them?

 

These cats are winking at you!

 

Nice job on the swirly quilting, Cathy!

 

 

 

I have not done a stash report in ages.  As you know, I have made some purchases recently. Pam from Mad About Patchwork was the vendor at our most recent London Friendship Quilters' Guild meeting and it is futile to resist her fabrics!

 

 

 Fabric used since my last stash report: 7.3 yards

Total fabric used this year: 49.65 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report: 19.5 yards
Total fabric added this year: 44.15 yards
Net fabric used this year: 5.5 yards

 

 

The good news...I am still in the black and I have a couple of backings to piece soon! This should help the numbers for my next stash report.

 

 

Have a good week. Happy Easter!