Just three things... well maybe four

I have a few things on the go.  First of all, I am back to work and at a new school this year so that is keeping my busy!  Kids will be back in school next week and then we will get in the grove.  Secondly, the weather has been the story here in southern BC.  We had a terrific wind storm on the weekend and while we had little damage and were only out of power for about 9 hours, some people are still not back on the grid.  Apparently over 700,000 people were out of power at the height of it all.  YOIKS!!!  Today, there was a major thunder and lightening and hail event along with RAIN!!!  But I missed all of that, because I was in a hotel with some of my staff at a conference.  Oh, did I mention the earthquake that woke us up the other day?  Seriously!

Anyway, 2 quilts are on the go.  The St. Louis 16 patch on the design wall is a donation quilt and I will finish it up this weekend.  And my scrappy purple quarter log cabin is sitting on the floor waiting for quilting.  I need to get busy!  Thank goodness for  the long weekend coming up!

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday!

Working away on Offset

iPad photo.  Not the best quality that is for sure.  But this is what I am working on.  The pattern is called Offset and it is a new pattern by SpringLeaf Studios.    Once I decided on the fabrics, it came together fast!  Used up a lot of grey, yellow, aqua scrappy strips too!

I am off to sew with Cynthia today and her visiting friend Bea.  I was a bit concerned when I woke up to a major power outage that affected the Eastern Fraser Valley.  Seriously people, I have a sewing day planned!  Husband made me toast and coffee on the BBQ.   Awesome!  And as I am now blogging, yes, the power has been restored.  Have a super day!

work in progress... scraps for a baby girl

Sometimes it is so satisfying to piece together 4" squares in simple patchwork.  It just ticks all those boxes for me in sewing land.  I took a bunch of squares from my pre-cut scraps and laid them out on the design wall.  I added in a few extra gray squares and then I was away to the races.  I used up a bunch of pinks that have been lingering.  Of course the pink roses are not by any means modern but somehow when the gray dots and gray text fabric was added in, it just worked for me.  Another baby quilt for the pile.  It is nice to have a few of these stashed away for baby gifts.  Son and daughter-in-law have several friends having babies in the next while so baby quilts are a must.  I said to my husband on Saturday afternoon, "Oh, I made a baby quilt today."  And I did.  Sandwiched and ready for quilting on the weekend.  Linking up with Lee for Work in Progress Wednesday.

Work in Progress Wednesday

I have two projects on the go at the moment.  I have the Illusions quilt (Missouri Star Quilt Company) on the floor and basted.  I am totally debating the quilting of this one.  Hmmm.  My go to straight lines but in what particular permutation????? More thinking on that one.

I also started a new baby quilt.  Two of my teachers had babies in January so I need to replenish the baby quilt inventory.  I saw this simple rail fence block over at Red Pepper Quilts in pink and yellow.  Perfect.  I dove into the pink and yellow scrap boxes and added some black and white prints for fun.  Just like that.  Instant baby quilt on the go.   Well.  It did take me a good part of a day but I used a lot of scraps. And that is a good thing!

 Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday!  Quilt guild tomorrow night.  Woo hoo!

Works in Progress...

I started doing something with the MQG Michael Miller Cotton Couture challenge bundle.  I am not sure how many of you are familiar with the bundle but it was a selection of muted pastels.  Lovely but not my palette.  I ordered some brighter fabrics and finally took the plunge.  And this is what happened.  A whole lot of little blocks.  It will be a baby quilt.  Nothing too innovative for sure but there it is.

I also started a Christmas gift and this is a sneak peak.  With a monogram on Kraft-Tex no less.  And if you look closely you can see a golden retriever hair in the centre of the photograph.  Good grief.  What a fur ball!

A new thrift store opened up in our town last week.  I went in for a peak and left with 2 hats for my costume box, a bag of buttons all in pinks and some perle cotton.  The pink buttons were awesome with lots of vintage lovely including the buckle and some wonderful pink glass buttons.  Thank you, thrift shop.

And I picked up this amazing calender at the local book shop.  Seriously.  Weeks and Ringle and it comes with all the patterns.  Squeal!  Perfect for my sewing room.

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday.  Have a super rest of your day!

Work in Progress Wednesday

It is Remembrance Day in Canada today.  We had the day off school.  I would have spent the day with a lot of sewing time but the wind kicked up and then we were without power for several hours.  Anyway... before the power went out, I did get the back made for this quilt and it sits basted and ready for quilting.

The blocks up top are bee blocks for Toni.  For the month of November, Toni asked for red white and blue with a touch of grey for a July quilt using Cluck Cluck Sew's tutorial.  I already have these blocks in the mail and feel pretty good about that.  I realized after they were in the mail that I did not follow the tutorial.  I am so programmed with making wonky stars that I did just that.  My points are pretty uniform so I hope they work for Toni.


And then when the power was out, I spent some time reading.  We have a curved piecing workshop coming up at my guild so I am getting a little excited!

I also have this pile of Michael Miller Cotton Couture staring at me for the MQG challenge.  I ordered some extra solids and they took FOREVER to get here.  Like a month from ordering to delivery.  Seriously.  

Don't forget about  Sew Sister's Blogathon Canada if you are a Canadian Blogger. You can read all about it and about all the awesome sponsors over here.  Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday.

Work In Progress Wednesday: Little bits of something

I spent the weekend quilting my 12 Trees quilt.  It is now quilted, bound, photographed and hung so I will have that to show you later in the week.  I am sooooo happy with how it turned out.  I also added a little bit to Autumn Gemstones.  It is a wonderful HST variation and the dissimilar fabrics all seem to work out in the end as long as I play be my self-imposed colour rules!

12 Trees is free motion quilted in random squiggles which in mind are supposed to represent wind.  Just go with it people.  I changed thread colours with each tree and buried a lot of knots.  Yes, I did.

And my sewing room reno is completed.  Thank you, Husband!!!!!  I am spoiled with space and lovely cupboards.  I do have a little kitchen for canning and stuff and then my husband finished the cabinets on the sink wall and counter tops throughout.  We also replaced the sink and I love my new sink.  It is fabulous!  So have a little tour.  The floor is still 70s chic but that is just fine!  And I do have such a lovely view out the windows!

Linking up with Lee for Work in Progress Wednesday!  What are you working on?

Work In Progress Wednesday

My design wall has been looking a little busy.  I have the whole Lucky Stars BOM going on.  Two more months and we will call that one done.  Phew!

Then I have been working on 12 Trees.  And it is actually all together and waiting for a quilting decision.  I am making this for a specific wall and that is why I decided to make 3 blocks wide and then 4 blocks long.  I am really pleased with how it looks and I have to say that these trees were so much fun to piece.  And what can I say about Oakshotts?  To die for.  Seriously lovely fabric.

And I started something else too.  This is the Gemstones block and I making it in scrappy Autumn colours with low volume fabrics as the neutral.  Lots of HSTs but it just looks so nice!  I made a tone of HSTs at my guild sew in last Saturday.  Along with lots of socializing.  Lots of socializing!

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work In Progress Wednesday!

Okay, so much fun!

I broke open my bundle of Oakshotts and started playing the other day.  I thought I would need more time to think about it.  In fact, I even told Mum that I needed to think about it for a bit and that I was not thinking of starting to use them yet.  But I did.  And it was so much fun.  Before I took the ribbon off the bundle, I threw it at my husband like a football.  That was fun.  It is a very substantial stack of fabric and it surprised him.  Then I took the bundle apart and paired up the colours.  I tried not to take too much time doing this because, let's face it, all the colours are fabulous.  

Then I got cutting.  Eek!  And piecing.  Eek!  Trees!  Look at all of them.  It is almost a forest!

Linking up with Lee for Work in Progress Wednesday and the Needle and Thread Network for Canadian bloggers.

Sorting Buttons and other works in progress

My sewing room is going through a bit of a renovation as we speak.  We are closed to the end but my husband has been working VERY hard on replacing the sink and painting and all sorts of other stuff.  It is very exciting.  I have really been missing the sink which seems strange in a sewing room but I am used to being able to fill up my iron and empty it right there and I haven't been able to do that!  I know.  This is really a first world problem.  Anyway, the renovation is one of the works in progress.  As part of it all, my husband listened to my crazy request for a button jar spice rack.  I thought it would be fun to have a place for all my button jars.  So... he made me one.  I love it!  The little drawers are awesome!  So there it is and as a result I have been sorting a lot of buttons!

You can see that the counters are not quite finished in this picture and the paint buckets remain but we are almost there.  And doesn't everyone have squash in front of their design wall?  I do.

If you have been following along with me, you might remember that my sewing room has a kitchen area.  It is a great place to do the canning and all that jazz.  Plus it gives us an extra stove when we really want to cook up a storm.

And finally,.. I have been quilting this.  While my husband was working on all sorts of construction stuff, I was constructing this quilt which is almost ready for a reveal.  Scrap quilt number 2 for this quilting year.

Linking up with work in progress Wednesday!  What are you working on?

Progress...

I continue to make progress on my scrap buster number two which is a block from the book Modern Bee:  13 Quilts to Make With Friends.  Surprisingly, I am still using white from my scrap whites.  I am trying to use all those leftover setting triangles and bits and pieces from other projects and so far it is working.  I am working my way through my other scraps but found that I just too darn short in the orange department so have resorted to some orange fat quarters that have been lingering in the stash to make up for the scrap shortage.  These blocks all need trimming but it is very satisfying to take these oddly shaped bits of fabric and slice them into something pretty.

 I plotted out the size of the quilt on my design wall so you can see that the blocks that extend out into space are marking how big the quilt will be.  I just need to fill it all in.  And as a matter of fact, I have already filled in a lot more since I took this picture.  Notice the squash all lined up under my design wall.  I don't know why they are there but Husband decided they should live there when he brought them in from the garden.  They are a beautiful colour!  While I was making these blocks on the weekend.  Husband was busy with the renovation on the sink wall of my sewing room.  I am quite excited about that as we had left that side of the room until now. Stay tuned!  Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday!

On the go...

I had a great long weekend with lots of sewing.  With being back to work, I was away for a bit of last weekend for a work thing and then spent Sunday making and canning salsa so sewing was on the back burner.  I have to say I was suffering a little sewing withdrawal.  I have also been having sewing machine woes.  I wore out the automatic thread cutter on my Janome Horizon 7700.  Seriously.  Apparently it is a first for my sewing machine shop.  I do use it a lot.  Anyway, the folks at the shop were lovely and helpful and got everything sorted away once the part came in and I am back in business for only the price of the part... no labour!  Really nice!

So what was I up to?  I worked on a few secret projects.  More on that later  and I made great progress on my scrap buster two project.  As you can see in the picture above, this is growing by leaps and bounds.  I stood on a chair to place the blocks way up high!  And I am busting a lot of scraps.  Even the white has been from scraps.  Bonus!

When I got tired of making scrap blocks, I made a bag for Mum out of some pretty thrift store home decor fabric she found somewhere.  I just have to attach the handles.  I used this tutorial.  I am not using leather handles as you can see.  Rather, I made my own with 2.5" strips folded and pressed into nice narrow handles but the same length of the recommended leather handles.  I think Mum will like it.


What are you working on?  Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday and The Needle and Thread Network for Canadian bloggers.

Scrap Busting: Project Number Two in Progress

I shared this picture the other day on our guild Facebook page.  I just took a quick iPad photo to show my buddies what I started  because I started something new.  This is my scrap buster quilt project number two.  I am seriously trying to get through the boxes of scraps that I carefully tuck away into "organized by colour" plastic shoe boxes.  Even the white is from the white scrap box.  I will eventually run out of suitable whites and have to resort to yardage but for now, I am scrap busting totally.

This is a pattern from the lovely book, Modern Bee:  13 Quilts to Make With Friends.  And while I am sure this would be lovely with fat quarters, the block lends itself to scrap busting.   One of my guild members asked if my colour choices were random but I would say focused random.  If that makes sense.  I decided that one of the scraps had enough of the colours going on that made me happy that as long as the scraps I pulled were colours found in that one fabric, then they would be allowed to play.  What that meant then, were scraps of orange, green, purple, blue, yellow and some magenta.  The colours needed to be intense and saturated for the most part.  I think it is awesome!  Just my kind of scrap happy!

I am more than a little bit determined to use up scraps and I even bagged up all my little bitty "sawdust" scraps and will pass those off to a friend.  I felt much lighter after that!

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday!

Work in Progress Wednesday...July 9, 2014

First of all a big work in progress is my suitcase!  Leaving for Sisters, Oregon tomorrow!  Quilts, fabric and friends!!!  But I also am catching up on other things before I go... especially since I am officially on summer holidays !  This is the Lucky Stars June block.  It came together easily.  Sometimes they make me a little crazy but this one was just fine.  I have done every block including the bonus blocks except for April.  I didn't do April.  I might later but today July is on the table.  This is going to be a big awesome quilt with 2 years of paper pieced stars!

Yep.  Christmas in July.  Marla in That Stash bee is making a Christmas quilt.  I used some of my buddy Cynthia's fabric in the one on the right.  The mod poinsettias and the ornaments.  Retro Christmas for Robert Kaufman.  Cynthia has a new line coming out and I cannot wait to get my hands on it... Sewing Studio!!!!
The selvages are to die for!

And then I have a table runner... a special request for a friend to give her sister.  The pecs were neutrals.  I think it fits the bill.  I just need to get some Kona stone or parchment for the binding.  Lots of matchstick quilting and linen.  So fabulous!

And finally the best work in progress of all!  Today my husband and I celebrate 31 years of marriage.  We were married on my parent's ranch way back in 1983 and here we are today.  Joined at the hip.  Forever and ever.

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced.... for Work in Progress Wednesday!

Things I am making...

I grabbed a bunch of my sewing themed fabrics on the weekend and made your basic quilt as you go 3 binder cover.  This was a first.  I thought it would be a good thing to do.  I have been using this binder for all my quilt guild stuff.  I need to be organized because I am the incoming president of the guild.  Eep!  This is what I have learned when making a 3 ring binder cover.  I made it too small for this binder.  It is just a little too snug so I need to look around for a slightly smaller binder for this cover.  I like the way the binding works.  And another first, I actually machine stitched the binding.  I have n.e.v.e.r. machine stitched binding before.  I was thinking it would potentially be a complete disaster but it actually worked really well.  I don't know that I would machine stitch quilt binding but for something like this.  You betcha.

Then I started a little plus quilt just for fun.  I love making these.  I get such a kick out of the perfectly matched seams.  So there.  My work in progress Wednesday report on a Tuesday.  Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced.  And now I am off to a meeting!

Work in Progress Wednesday...

This just looked so pretty on the ironing board... final pressing before putting it altogether.  I managed to find some fabric that worked for the backing that I think I have had for about 20 years.  It feels good to use something that has been lingering for that long.  

After quilting, I was pinning the binding and I noticed that even the pins I was using coordinated very nicely with the quilt.  And that was a very happy quilting moment. Before you know it, this will be a finished Warp and Weft Sewing Society project!  Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday.

Sneak Peak, a work in progress and a poppy!

I started a new Warp and Weft Sewing Society project... a baby quilt with a stack of fat quarters.  A whole lot of pinkness.  I cut 3" squares and got busy making a whole pile of wonky stars with Kona white as the stars.  The small 8" star block are just so darn cute.  I think it will be just lovely when finished.

And in the spirit of pink, here is a lovely pink poppy in the garden the other day.  Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday!  

Work in Progress Wednesday

I must confess to being behind in my Lucky Stars BOM.  This weekend I got busy with the April block.  It caused me to grind my teeth and stomp a bit.  I actually contemplated tossing the whole mess and saying take that April block.  But instead, I put it aside and went outside and declared war on more buttercups in my flower beds.  Stinking buttercups!  Then I went back to April.  It was much less frustrating and while not perfect, it is now a finished block.  May isn't over yet so I still have time to tackle the May block.  I recommend buttercup pulling when you have quilting struggles.  Everything seems so much better after you have filled a wheel barrow with weeds.

The other thing I did this past weekend was make another zippy pouch.  Our guild is swapping with the Victoria Modern Quilt Guild and they signed up 22 members for the pouch swap and we signed up 21 members.  I made an extra pouch.  It turned out quite nicely.  Lovely Essex linen and some text squares.  Once you nail the zipper techniques, pouches are fun and fast.  I like to use zipper tabs at the ends for a neat finish and I never use a zipper foot.  I just lift the pressure foot and move the zipper tab out of the way and then keep going.  I boxed the corners on these ones so they stand up.  

And a buttercup free picture of the poppies opening up!  Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday!