Rainbow Houndstooth

Two more quilts all finished!  

First: Houndstooth.  There are a number of versions of this on the net.  It's a fast, easy, fun quilt to make.  I'll be teaching this at Wonderfil on Mar 8 and 22.  The class will be for new quilters and cover every step of making a quilt from cutting to binding.  

This one is the burst block from Man Quilter.  It popped up in my Facebook feed last year and I liked the look of the block, but didn't like the way he made it.  So I drafted a paper pieced version and here it is!

Getting Caught Up

I was so busy doing customer quilts last year that I hardly had any time to get my own tops quilted.  I took most of December to do a few of my own things so that helped.  But things have slowed down for me since Christmas so I am all caught up with customer quilts and have had time to do more of my own.  Yay!  It feels good to get some of my own things done!

This first one is a little quilt from a book titled Quilting Happiness by Christina Lane and Diane Gilleland.  I have called mine "Chatbot" (a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users) because it reminded me of something digital. 

I belong to the Calgary Modern Quilt Guild.  I love this guild!  Our project for 2015 was to do Patchwork City by Elizabeth Hartman.  The idea was to do 6 blocks/month, which would total 24 of the 25 blocks - so we'd just finish the last one whenever.  I got mine put together in December. I couldn't stand the mound of scraps that had accumulated on my table as it's an entirely scrap quilt (well except for the white).  So I finished it and quilted it.  Mine is the first one done of the group - it won't be the nicest - but it's the first!  :) I've decided it will go to a certain cousin who lives on the Sunshine Coast - which is actually not known for it's sun.

Next up is a quilt designed by Susan Madu of Modern Blended Quilts.  I've quilted three of these quilts already.  One of them is the quilt used on the cover for the pattern and the other two were made by her friend and pattern tester, Armiel.  Susan gave me a copy of her pattern so I figured the least I could do was make it!  :)  This is my version - I added a border to make it a bit bigger. (Thanks for the pattern Susan and thanks Marlow and Joe for "modelling".)

Front:

Back (Ikea fabric):

Happy 2016!

And - snap - just like that!  Another year!  Welcome to 2016 - I hope it brings only good things to you and your special people.

Here are a few things I've been working on in the last couple of months.

These are "one hour baskets" - a free pattern found on Craftsy.  I attend the Calgary Modern Quilt Guild and we decided to do a basket swap so I made up these two, took them to the last meeting and swapped them for two different ones.  They are fun and fast to make - although slower than one hour if you do a bunch of piecing and decorative stitching like I did.

I made my Diva friends each a little sewing kit - let them choose their own because all a little different in terms of embellishments and fabric.  I will have a couple left over so will have to find them homes.

I made a prototype (the top one in the pix below).  This one is more or less the way the tutorial (Fat Quarter Shop - binding kit) has it.  What I found is that the only section I really used was the zippered section on the left.  The centre panel has a little pocket for scissors - completely impractical as they kept falling out, the right side has a larger pocket, which I really didn't think was any more useful than a zippered pocket.  So when I made mine, I did all three panels as zippered pockets - everything can go in a zipped pocket - works like a charm!  

I made these two tree blocks as mini quilts to give to a couple of friends as gifts.  Note that one is bigger even though the same pattern.  I forgot to uncheck "scale to fit" on the printer options and so ended up with a smaller size on the second one.  So lesson learned: always make sure the scale is set to 100% before printing a paper piecing pattern.  This one is one of many found on Craftsy.

Husband needed a little add on to get his order to $25 for free shipping.  I didn't realize you can get quilting supplies on Amazon, but you can - not a lot, but some.  Among them, these little clips.  I ordered 50 for $7.60.  If I were to go to a fabric store, they would be about $1 each.  Crazy!  No wonder the stores are going out of business.  There were only 49 in the bag though - but I'll suck it up.  :)

I made these three "wide open zippered pouch" bags as experiments and to use up fabric - the first one (far right) turned out so well, I made the other two and will make more.  I gave them as Xmas gifts and the ladies love 'em!  The butterfly and cupcake paper piece patterns are free on Craftsy.

And at long last - the Metro Rings (Sew Kind of Wonderful) quilt for Eric and Jess - complete!  They loved it and I'm glad its done!!!!

I made two of these little guys - one is "regular", one "scrappy" to use up the fabric.  I'm really happy with the way they turned out - they will be going to friends - "just because".  

So that gets me pretty well caught up.  Looking forward to another year of quilting fun!

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.

 

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!!!!!