A few Christmas Items

I was exploring random quilting sites and came across this blog where the Oct 4/12 post showed these really adorable little baskets.  That blog in turn directed me to this site where the tutorial is.  It's always fun to find new ways to use up the left-overs.  I made a prototype (far right above).  They are really easy and pretty quick (under an hour) to make - including cutting.  My special people will be getting these for Christmas.  It turns out that a rolled up T-shirt fits perfectly in one basked.  This is good, since it seems T-shirts from our travels are a favorite gift.  Chris will get the one below with these most adorable little mini Mexican figurines (is that what you would call them?).  I'll probably make a few more. 

End of Summer...

Summer - it came and went so quickly!  It seemed like I was pretty busy so didn't get that much sewing time in - but I did manage to get a couple of quilts done - and a top is ready for Harley although I'm not including it here as I don't have a pix yet.

 

This is "Follow Your Dreams".  I made it for my very good friend Pam.  We were in a fabric store and she spotted a bundle of 1/2 meter cuts and liked them so bought them.  That was probably about 3 years ago.  I said I'd make a quilt for her with the fabric - I just didn't say when!  It started to call to me so I thought I'd better get down to business and get a quilt going for her.  This is what I ended up with.  I cut the panel of six "tiles" up - then used a block called antique mosaic or something like that.  It seemed appropriate.  If you've ever worked with a panel, you will know they are notorious for being NOT square so the challenge is to match them up with something to add on and square up.  I ended up working with 12" * 12" blocks. 

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 Then there is "Into the Mystic" - a quilt I made for another very good friend of ours - Marlow.  Same panel issue as above.  the large block at the bottom left is the entire panel.  Then I cut up another part of the panel into separate animals and put those into the centre of some wonky log cabin blocks.  I think in this case I was using 8" blocks.  The animals reminded me of native west coast art of mystic animals, hence the name, which is also the name of a Van Morrison song.  It was only after I had the name when I noticed that the fabric on the back is actually called Mystic Animals!  I guess it must be pretty obvious...

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In other news, Harley is in the shop awaiting a tune up.  I have pretty much decided to upgrade so in anticipation of selling Harley, I thought I'd get it tuned up.  It turns out that for machines made within a certain three year period, they are replacing all the electronics under warranty.  Harley falls into that category so the "tune up" is taking longer than anticipated as the parts are still en route from somewhere in the US.  They were to have cleared the border last Tuesday - then of course they have to be installed.  One of these days I'll get it back - none too soon as I have a backlog at this point. 

Joan, Kristie and I have signed up for our first ever quilting retreat.  This one is nearby in a local community centre hall and coming up on Oct 19.  I've booked the Friday off from work and we are all looking forward to three days of sewing.  In anticipation, I've got two quilt tops cut and ready to go - I am going to try for a third.  I expect three is quite ambitious and I probably won't get three done, but I'd rather have it and not need it than run out of things to do! 

Gotham

 Gotham finished.  No helpers for pix so had to put it on the ground.

 I quilted it on my "regular" machine - bats. Small ones - above, and a couple of larger ones like below.  Not sure if it shows up in that pix.

 I also made a top for the the entertainment centre Joe made for Eric - Batman "left-overs". 

Jessica's Tote

Eric has a new girlfriend.  We really like her.  It's her birthday coming up so I made her this tote bag. 

I thought it would be a good time to try out my Olfa tool that cuts circles.  It works really well!  And a lot faster than if I'd used scissors.  I'm pretty happy with this considering I put it together quite quickly due to various time constraints.  Hope Jessica likes it!

June 23 Divas Day

This is our first Divas Day at Joan's.  Seems like we have fun wherever we are!

When we inherited "Shirley's" fabric, there were a number of finished quilt tops, so we committed to turning them into finished quilts to give back to her family.  I quilted them on Harley, then at our Divas Day, I put binding on a couple - or three.  We decided to speed up the process by doing the binding by machine.  So these first few quilts are Shirley's.

 Dorothy (above and below) and Kristie (below).

 Brenda at the ironing board and Joan at her counter cutting.

Here we are back at the Divas quilts.  The one above is just the top, the bottom one is now finished, compete with machined binding.  Can you tell the difference between hand and machine binding?  :)  (Yeah, I know - not in these pix!)

Gotham

The Batman quilt top is almost done!  After a few weeks of getting caught up with quilting some Divas quilts and going to quilt shows, and admittedly procrastination because I was still working out how to go about putting my idea into the quilt, I finally got going on this on the weekend and finished it up tonight.

 I'm actually pretty pleased with it!  As usual, the pix doesn't really show it too well, but the idea is that Batman is silhouetted against the moon on top of a building, surrounded by many buildings.  The Bat Signal is up there in the night sky (which is a Bargello experiment!). 

 I made some of the buildings, and used building fabrics (grey/black generic city and dark blue/yellow New York) as some of the buildings. 

All that's needed is to satin stitch around the moon and Bat Signal.

Stash Infusion

Or - STEP AWAY FROM THE FABRIC STORE!

Two quilt shows in two weeks.  A fat quarter here, a fat quarter there.  OK - so most of them are from Hamel's but whatever... 

When I add up all the fat quarters it equals 20 meters...  My rule is to not buy unless they are $2.50 or less (=$10/meter) - so that's what these were - many less that that.  I was going for bright colours and mostly that's what I got.

 Except for a few, like the letters (which are actually words) below, that I liked.

Then there is the Canada fabric that I pre-ordered and picked up on the weekend for another 7 meters.  That makes a total of 27 meters of new fabric in the last two weeks.  Just shoot me.  Or lock me up with my sewing machine for a few months.  Sort of like solitary confinement - until some of it gets used up!