Sidetracked

I am still slowly working on my hearts. I have the quilting done around the butterflies and flowers & stems. I have marked out the filler quilting for behind these things. I will get back to it tomorrow night!!! This is a promise. The problem is that I have read three books since Friday. One arrived from Amazon on Thursday. The library notified me Friday that two that I had reserved were in, so I ran & picked them up. The author is Dana Stabenow. She has written 19 in a series about a modern native woman in Alaska. I had gotten two for Christmas and rapidly added three more from the used book store soon after that & was totally hooked. Over half of them are available at my local library. The four I was missing, I found used on Amazon. One has arrived and I am waiting for the other three. There is one more on reserve at the library. So I have read 15 of them since Christmas. The characters are great and flow from one book into the next. I am starting to worry about what will fill my time when I finish them all. Number 20 in the series comes out in October 2012. It is going to be a long summer, waiting to see what happens next! Yes, I am crazy!

Hearts

I got my heart project planned out. I think it is looking interesting!

"All About Hearts" in progress.

The outside hearts that look white are just the paper off the steam-a-seam. I traced around them and will quilt them in white, I think. I did the stems as embroidery with my sashiko machine this evening but am too tired to take more pictures tonight. I decided to have the corner hearts on the diagonal pointing in. They look much better this way.

Work tomorrow, so it may be a few days before I get more done. I must layer and hand baste it next which will take a couple of evenings.

Happy quilting!

Show & Tell

It has been a crazy week. Really didn't do anything that I planned to. I was sick Monday and Tuesday. Dragged myself to work on Wednesday and went to Evening Treads Quilt Guild in the evening to show my rail fence quilt.

Show & Tell at Evening Treads Quilt Guild

The guild bought an accuquilt GO, so our craft time was spent trying it out. We had been instructed to bring 5 - 10 pieces of red, pink or burgandy fabric, 5" x 10" with Steam-A-Seam ironed to the back of them. We all cut out hearts.

Some of our hearts!

This was a great way to get us all used to the machine and answer any of our questions. Then came the fun part. A new challenge from Sue. Make a wall hanging or quilt blocks or something with the hearts we cut out and bring it to the next meeting! I ended up with 10 large, 10 medium and 30 small hearts. This is going to take some thought! I did use three of my Asian reds as they have a pink hue, so go well with pinks. Asian makes me think of indigo background and sashiko. What can you make out of hearts...hearts, flowers, butterflies! I am seeing a garden of hearts! On to my sketch book! More to follow! Wait a minute...what about the back for my rail fence quilt? It will just have to wait!

Rail Fence Top Finished!

I did it! It is Sunday evening and I finished the quilt top!

Not a great picture, but not too bad. Here are a few close-ups to give you a better look at the fabric I used.

Those are swirled piano keyboards in the outside border. There is a lot of music fabric scattered around as well. The person this is for is a great pianist. She was also a teacher (Dr Seuss and alphabet fabric), mother of two boys (running shoe fabric), and a daughter (who sews, so scissor fabric), and loves dogs (dog commands & bones fabric).

That last one has all sorts of sewing, embroidery, irons, thimbles, pins, scissors, etc. for all the quilting, etc that she does. There is also a floral for her gardening. The only big thing I missed was her knitting. Oh well, I will add that to the label that I will do when the quilting is all finished. I really like this music fabric.

I put in eight blue strips in the entire quilt. It just breaks up the pattern a little & is her favourite colour as well.

Well four days of work coming up and quilt guilds Wednesday & Thursday evenings, so not much chance to sew this week. I will try to do something! I do have to plan out how I am going to quilt this top. That will keep me dreaming until I can get back to it. Maybe I will have time to sew the back together! Happy quilting!

Block of the Month

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to get caught up this week with my Block of the Month, with Evening Threads Quilt Guild. I finally managed to do that today. We are doing Thangles Buck A Block Series #8. We are supposed to do two blocks each month. Here are the first four months.

Sue Polera at Thimbles & Things, where our guild meets, picks out the fabric each month. She love green, so promised there would be some green. She has kept her promise! I love batiks, so this is perfect for me. It is the first time I have ever used Thangles. My family room floor looks rather nice with them. I think I will be using some brown in the borders when we get that far.

Squares are together!

Well it took me three days but I finally got my squares for the rail fence put together. Life and a good book just kept getting in the way! It didn't help that I decided to switch a bunch of the squares around after all.

It will probably be next weekend before I get around to putting the borders on. It is laundry tonight and back to work for the next four days. I do plan to get the December block of the month pieced during the week. We are doing Thangles "Buck a Square" Series #8 at Evening Threads Quilt Guild.

I should have lots to show by next Sunday!

Something Old & Blue

This is a wall hanging that I still have up after five years. I love it! When I don't have the hall light on, but do have the kitchen light on, the stars really appear to be shining!

I borrowed the pattern from a friend of my sister, but can't remember the name of it. Sorry! It is from back before I started doing proper labels, with all the information on them.

To share or not to share

Well I got really brave yesterday and gave my blog address to our middle daughter. She has declared it "a most excellent blog"! Wow! Now I have shared it with our youngest daughter. If that review comes back OK, I will be very brave and share it with my quilting friends. Look out WWW, here I come! Well maybe a total of eight people? Not exactly earth shattering, but really this blog is for me and it is making me more organized and I am certainly progressing on my rail fence quilt! (Just not tonight as it was a long day at work.)

Tomorrow I start sewing squares together. It should go quickly as I have the layout already set.

In the meantime how about another one of my wall hangings? This one went to England for our oldest daughter's birthday this past September. Yes, that is Sam holding it up for me!

How about a nice picture of where it ended up?

That looks good! She did a great job of decorating to match the hanging! I quilted it with my Sashiko sewing machine in a basket weave pattern with King Tut blue varigated thread.

Kindred Group

I had my kindred quilting group over tonight. Everyone was able to come, plus one of my friends phoned and asked if she could bring her aunt, so there were nine of us altogether. One friend brought "20 Favourite Quilting Tips of 2011" that was in New Barn Quilt Newsletter. Some of the ideas were so simple, but really smart. A couple of the girls brought problems they were having. I think the group solved one, but had to refer the other to the expert at our local quilt store. Two brought other things they were working on, one knitting & the other hooking. It is always fun to see these other projects! I got to show off my tree skirt and my Advent calendar!

Tea, coffee, a loaf cake I picked up from a local bakery on my way home from work, and some Clementines rounded out the night! There was even leftover cake that made Sam happy. He earned it, by cleaning and tidying the house while I was at work!

Finished Squares

I think I like this layout. Now I just have to get the squares sewn together and then add a 1" red border and a 5" final border. Wait 'til you see the fabric for that!

Too severe?

I put my squares on the family room floor and think an all black, white & red quilt is too severe.

Maybe I should mix in a little blue to soften it? It happens to be a favorite colour of the person the quilt is for.

Just noticed the top left hand square is upsidedown. I need to make some more blocks to get greater varity in my layout. Back to my sewing machine! Did I mention that I am making this quilt on my 1947 Singer Featherweight? Sam mentioned to me that it is not good to have a machine sitting not in use for a long time. I realized that I hadn't had my Featherweight out for about a year, so out it came. I oiled it up and away I went. Now I remember why I love it so much!

I am told that some of the parts were made before 1940, as after that the plates were more plain. Here is a photo of mine.

New Year

I got 12 more squares made before it was time to put sewing aside for a few hours to enjoy New Year's Eve with Sam. That makes 48 of the 72 that I need. We had calls from three of the four grown kids in the course of the evening and heard from the fourth one this morning. I behaved myself today and resisted sewing, in favour of taking down my tree and other decorations. It took all day, but at least I can go back to work on Tuesday without worrying about finding time to do it. I hope to get back to my quilt squares tomorrow. Sam says he will clean house for me Wednesday while I am at work, so the house will be in good shape for my kindred group visitors Wednesday evening.

Since I didn't take time to lay out my squares for a picture yet, I will show off what I call my African wall hanging. It was inspired by a quilt show in London, Ontario a few years back (Quilts of East Africa), where I purchased the native embelishments, that I placed in the middle of some of the squares. The original design was from October 2009 American Patchwork Quilting, called Stepping Stones by Mabeth Oxenreider (same designer as my rail fence quilt). I made everything bigger to end up with a 40" x 56" hanging. The bottom right hand square doesn't show up very well, but is a map of Africa.

I had been saving what I felt were African type prints for a while, wanting to do something with giraffes for my youngest daughter and finally found the orange & brown fabric to tie everything together. This is the second one I made, as my daughter got the first one. Sam liked it so much, that I made this one for him, a reminder of the year he spent in Kenya long ago.
I think I might just have time to make a few squares tonight before my bed calls me...this blog is starting to do exactly what I want it to do, keep me working steadily on my projects!