Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Minions to the Rescue!

Managed to squeeze one of my own quilts in between my customer quilts - so all it needs now is a label then off it goes to Hong Kong Daughter-In-Law.  She is a Minion aficionado.

 
I don't like the quilting on the dudes, but not changing it.  Was trying to make them look roundish but it didn't work.  Next time. 
 
 
 
The daughter of a friend crocheted a Minion hat, too, which I think is fabulous - DIL will get that too.






 


Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Queue Them Up!

It's fall again.  The summer was frantically busy with quilting, road trips, a cruise and sewing! 

I didn't intend for it to get carried away - but it did: Row by Row.  I thought I'd pick up a few to support our local stores.  In the end I think I have between 30 and 40 row kits and/or patterns!  What will I do with them all???  More to the point - when???  Anyway - it was a lot of fun.  We planned a couple of little road trips and picked up many of the Alberta rows and a couple from Saskatchewan.  Then we did the Alaska cruise and picked up rows in Juneau, Skagway (which has the distinction of being THE MOST EXPENSIVE at close to US$40 - it has precut applique pieces, which the store felt obligated to charge for - other stores either did precuts for "free" or gave a choice of precut or cut your own, which of course would be less - but I'm not being judgemental here - just observing that the store was taking advantage of it's "captive market" of cruise ship quilters), and Ketchikan.  THEN, a friend and I did a road trip to BC to take a Judy Neimeyer class with "certified instructor" Maureen Wood.  We stopped at 8 stores on the way on the last day of the Row by Row.  So that's how you end up with ~ 30 - 40 kits/patterns. 

I had an avalanche of customer quilts come in over the summer months so have been trying to quilt my way out of that pile.  Making progress and it will go faster now that I don't have any travel plans for the next while. 

And I've made a couple of quilt tops to add to the ones already queued up waiting for quilting. 

 
I got this one section finished of a Glacier Star (Judy Neimeyer) at the Abbotsford retreat with Maureen Wood.  I have all the subcomponents made except for the rest of the curved flying geese in yellow.  Need to find some time to get those finished then I can assemble the rest of the quilt and quilt it.

 
One of my daughters-in-law is a Minions fan so I picked up the Minions panel and some Minions prints and put this together the other day.  A bit bigger than I was thinking, but I like it.  It will get priority in the quilting queue so I can get it in the mail to Hong Kong maybe in time for Christmas.

 
This is the "burst block" that popped up in my Facebook feed one day.  It's a "Man Sewing" video - which I think is related to the Missouri Star Quilt Company.  I liked the block but didn't like the way he did it  - sort of a stack and whack with precut 10" squares.  Since I typically don't get precuts, I wasn't trapped by the need to use them, so I make my own paper pieced pattern that worked MUCH BETTER.  I'm pretty pleased with the top - so just need to quilt it.  Same problem - stuck in the queue. 
 
Our fall weather has been fabulous, as it often is.  We've had a bit of rain, which we really needed in the summer but, oh well, hopefully it will be "banked" for next summer.  Here is a shot of our fall colours taken by my ever talented husband. 
 
 
And speaking of hubby - he made me a fabulous work table with batting and other storage!!!!  It's so awesome.  He took the top off my Ikea gate leg table, and built an entire new underneath for it to sit on.  It's counter height so I don't have to bend over to cut and I can put two rolls of batting on bars underneath, then there are drawers and shelves at the end.  I'm soooooo excited!!!!!
 
 
 

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Tea Time and Posies

I made these Judy Neimeyer Tea Time placemats back in the spring, but finally got around to getting the quilted and bound.  Don't really know what I'll do with them - maybe use them out on our deck table.  I'm taking a JN course in a couple of weeks so this is the tune up. 
 


 
Still trying to use up some stash fabric and I bought a "Tri-Rec" ruler set so thought I should try it out.  This is what I came up with.  I actually made two of them, but managed to get this one quilted and bound last week.  They will be going to friends.  I'll be naming them Laughing Flowers and Happy Flowers. 





Friday, May 22, 2015

Big Bang! ... and other things

 
This is "Big Bang".  It's similar to an earlier quilt I made.  I wanted to make another one 1) to use up the Laurel Burch panel that I had, 2) because I like the quilt and gave the first one away, and 3) my quilting is a lot better now - and  4) for fun of course!  I submitted it for consideration as an entry to the Canadian Quilters' Association show, but they did not accept it.  I got some weird comments - my favorite suggested that I should reverse the colours so that it would look more authentic.  Hmmmm, nice to know there are astrophysicists on the selection committee!  It just struck me as funny.  Anyway, they didn't want my quilt, which means I can post it here and dis the CQA at the same time!  :) 




 
 
Joan is "modelling" Big Bang.

Joan and Kristie are modelling the placemats they made for a charity.

This (above) is the first quilt I've made for my house.  Started it at our retreat last spring and finally got it quilted in the last few months.  It is now actually on the guest bed in my house! 
 
Below is a little quilt I made from a fat quarter bundle that Joan gave me as a "get well" gift following surgery last year.  The quilt went together really well - it's the Lemon Squares quilt.  Easy pattern and I used it to play with quilting. Every block is quilted differently.  I had a lot of fun with it.












 
Joan and Carol and I did a "mystery quilt" class back in March.  This is one of the quilts (not mine) that resulted.  I think it might be Joan's but at this point, not sure.

 
I finished my quilt quite quickly (how's that for three "q" words in a row?).  I wanted to make my sister some of these cupcake hot pads  so I used the left over time to do that.  Joan is modelling them.  In the end, I think I made six of them. 



Joan and Laura (the mystery quilt instructor)  modelling a little creation of Joan's.
 
Below is my mystery quilt.  I have to admit, I don't like it.  I used a lot of really nice fabric (Laurel Burch horses) on this quilt and in the end, not real happy with it so I won't be doing another mystery quilt class in the future. 

 
 
I've been asked to teach a class on "matchstick quilting" - class dates: June 11 and July 9.  The next five pix are the samples I made for the class.  I used a variety of colours of Wonderfil thread - experimenting. 
 
 
Overall "matchstick" (above).

 
Matchstick in circles with horizontal lines (spaced a bit wider than matchstick).

 
Making designs with matchstick with "fancy" stitching as accent on the right.

 
And some more.

 
Matchstick outlining a design or words and some other straight line quilting.
 
Next up - a little quilt I made for the daughter of very good family friends.  Roz is not a "girly girl" and she likes red, so this is what I came up with.  It is a pattern on the Connecting Threads website.  Again I had fun with the quilting. 
 


Roz and Will, the happy couple.

 
I had collected a few fabrics with a "Steampunk" theme.  I used them in the big blocks. ( I called the quilt "Steamfunk". )



Roz is a biologist so I put a DNA helix in there.



Will is a computer guy so there is a string of ascii text in the bottom of the above red section.  There are 8 digits for each letter in ascii so I only had room for two letters.  I chose the word "us". 



Blue, yellow and white is one of my favourite colour combinations.  I made this little mini for our mini quilt exchange at the Modern Quilt Guild that I belong to.   I used the Quick Curve Ruler that I bought.  Pattern is here.
 
I've been making purses for my Mom for the last few years because she doesn't like "store purses" - they are too heavy.  So I broke down and bought a pattern/class from Annie's Crafts.  It was worth the investment - very happy with the result.  So is my Mom. 
 
 
Mom liked it so I offered to make one for a couple of my sisters.  They said yes - so I've got them cut out and ready to sew.  But I also asked if my bro-in-law would like a "man bag".  He thought he would use a messenger bag so I said sure - I'd make one.  Well, a messenger bag is a great opportunity to figure out something for the front flap.  I found some dragon paper piecing patterns here, so I made one (below).  It took me three days to make it - very detailed.  But I LOVE it.  So I made the bag and I love that, too!  So I'm going to "test" it.  Dan might get it after I make another one!  :) 
 
 
 
Above is the block, below is the finished bag.

 
I think I'm pretty well all caught up with my stuff now!  Tomorrow, off to the annual Heritage Park Festival of Quilts and vendors market!  And the weather is supposed to be fabulous so really looking forward to that.  And I'll be sitting at our Modern Guild table at HP on Sunday.  So a busy quilty weekend coming up!