Another needle work block done

Another needle work block done for my Flower Garden quilt.  Two more to go.  This one was mostly done at the hospital during my stay with my Dad. Needs to be ironed a bit and trimmed to size.

 

Now I start work on this one. Staying all night tonight with Dad, so while he sleeps I will work on this.

Still not much time for anything else these days, but soon things will get back to normal.

Just a little bit if time

Today is Sunday and I have just a little bit if time to fit in some quilting.  I took out the pineapple test blocks for the corners and the edge half squares.  The sizes are right and so I am ready to go with this.  Will start doing some more blocks after I finish the rest of the spiderweb blocks.

Today though before heading to the hospital in the afternoon have to get in the garden to plant the vegetables. Things should get back to normal some time next week.  First thing I do is take some time for me and get some quilting in.  My hour is up, had my wake up tea, now have to head out to the garden.

Appliqué for my Flower Garden quilt

During my stay at the hospital with my Dad, I was able to finish two appliqué blocks that are part of my Flower Garden quilt.  I haven't trimmed the blocks yet.  Now I have two more appliqué blocks to do for this quilt.  I also have three more hand stitch blocks to do as well.  One of the hand stitch blocks is coming with me today to work on while we sit through the night.

These two blocks are obviously a heart and some tulips.  The next two are a wreath and a flower basket.  They are made to look a bit primitive.  The whole quilt is casual with a feel of cosiness with soft colours.

Bits and pieces are getting done.  Very little time to do much else.  You'll have to be patient with the sporadic posts, until thing around here get back to a semi normal state.

Miss calculation on block for Spider Web quilt

Can you image my disappointment when I found out that I, yet again, miscalculated the number of blocks needed to complete my Spider Web quilt.  I was all ready to put my quilt together and placed it on the design wall.  That was when I noticed I was short.  Instead of needing eight single blocks, I actually needed eight sets of four blocks.  In other words eight large blocks.

So that makes me twenty-four blocks short.....off I went to Staples to get more copies.  Twenty-four blocks means fourth-eight wedges to copy.  Back home to start cutting the centre pieces for the wedges.  Good thing I had enough of this green. Just enough.  My sewing table is all set up with the strips. Now to only find the time to sew them up.  May take a while.

Life is pretty hectic around here these days and now with the beautiful weather I have to clean up the gardens too.

Grab and go bag

With working overtime eleven hours per day and hanging out at the hospital for my dad there has not been much time for much else.  No family time, no quilting, no renovations, not even cleaning. On top of all that, for the past couple days I have been experiencing a bad headache bordering on a migraine.  But I have to keep pushing forward.  No time to stop now.  Tonight is my night to stay at the hospital, overnight with my dad.

Today while sitting with a cup of tea, I have been getting a few things sorted out and thought to look after my grab and go bag.  I usually have some hand work that I can take with me when I am sitting around or waiting for things.  I thought though that if spending the evening and the whole night I may want to organize a bit more.  I have to thing about bringing hand work or if the pain to my eye gets to bad to bare, I will bring some listening stuff like an audio book or soft music.  Need to think about food as well and a blanket.

The bag above is something that is often close to me wherever I go.  Inside I already have a light, a few small projects, my chargers for the iPod and when done with this post the iPad.  The metal container in front of the bag is where I put my glasses so they do not get broken, with my snippet scissors, needles and floss.

I think I am ready to go now.  Catch everyone later.

Continuing work on the Xmas Mystery quilt

I was going through some pictures that I took to see what I could post and came across this one from last weekend.  Between everything, I am still plugging away at Bonnie's Celtic mystery quilt.  I call it my Xmas Mystery quilt.  I have been working on more of the gold/yellow and red pinwheels.  I have completed pairing them off and ironing them open.

I managed to get half of them sewn up into pinwheels.  Currently they are all done.  One of Bonnie's mystery quilt steps is complete.  One of seven, I think.

Tonight I should have some time to show you what I did from my grab and go bag.

Deboning shirts for use in quilts

On the weekend I also took some time to clean up a bit in my quilting room. I gathered up the men's shirts that I had.  I collect men's shirts to make a scrappy quilt.  There is a lot of fabric in a mans shirt.  I deboned the shirts.  Below is a pile of the garbage.  I don't keep the cuffs or the collars.  I have to admit that I am lazy and couldn't be bothered to cut so intricately around all the seams.

As you can see my bin of men's shirts is full.  With the next batch of shirts I get, I will have to decide what pattern I will make with them.  I am not sure what, but maybe along the way something will come to me.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  At one time I was thinking of a triangular log cabin block.  What do you think?

This quilt though, stays on the back burner for a while.  I still have 23 others to try and finish first.  Part of quilting is preparation and part of preparation is collecting the fabrics.  Collecting the right fabrics for a project is time consuming, but part of the fun is in the hunt, isn't it?

I had a brainstorm with my Pineapple quilt

Today has been a pleasant day, being Mother's Day and all.  Thank you to everyone for their wishes.  The dinner, flowers and card were beautiful.  Besides that I had some quiet time at home.  Did a bit of puttering in my quilt room.  While I was enjoying my tea that hubby made me, I was looking at stuff on the design wall.  I have a number of these pineapple blocks completed.  More than you see here in the picture.  

I was thinking that I have to come to a conclusion on how I want to set this quilt.  I had a brainstorm.  I have decided that I like the block on point.  Doing it this way will allow the light fabric to make a diagonal grid across the quilt.  I also decided that I want the black to be my first border.  I needed to make this decision now as the outer blocks contain the border within the actual block.  Where the green or blue corners are, they will be replaced by the black on the outside blocks.

After my tea I took out some paper, pencil and rulers and started drafting the pattern to fill in the side half squares and the four corners.  I want them all to extend the pineapple block right to the border.  I took the time to draft the quilt on EQ5, so that I knew how many blocks I needed and what the finished quilt size would be.  I went to get the photo copies that I needed to finish this quilt.  

Looks like the Pineapple quilt may be going up the ladder to the main quilt to work on.  I need to make one of each pattern I did to confirm they are the correct size, before doing them all up.  First I need to wash the white flannel that is the base of the paper piece block.  Once done this will be one heavy and warm quilt.

Mini Trips quilt

Today I can't get to any quilting, so I will just share with you a photo of a quilt call Mini Trips.

I've made several quilts like this one. Two were large double size and a bunch of kid sizes like this one.  It measures about 40" x 58".  This works great with my pre-cut 2" strips.  I got the pattern from www.Quiltville.com, Bonnie has many free patterns she offers tutorials for.  Go check it out, but make sure you have a lot of time to do it, because you will lose yourself within all the neat stuff she has there.  Love her site and I enjoy her blog as well.

Off to work on the bathroom. Trying to get it finished.  A job that has been hanging around far too long.  Enjoy your evening everyone.

Progress on the Xmas Mystery quilt

Last Saturday I got some quilting done on a quilt for a friend from my Quilting Bee.  I was able to get all the in-the-ditch quilting done.  Now I am trying to process in my brain what will look nice for the quilting and what my friend will like as well.  So, while I take some time to find the right design, I put the quilt aside and started on getting some steps of Bonnie's Celtic mystery quilt done.  

I now have all the HSTs done.  I sew them in sets of five.  Place them on the ironing table that I keep beside my sewing table.  When they are all done I will iron them, snip the thread between them and snip the dog ears.

See all the nicely piled rows of HSTs.  I organized them in groups with the red triangle all the same.  

From here I grouped them in groups of four to complete the pinwheels that I need to make.  Doing it this way helps me to make sure I done have repeats or end up with all the same fabrics getting place together.  What you don't see here is the next step that I started, which is to sew the top two together and the second two.  This is so I will not lose the order or if things get dropped I won't have to start over again.  Once they are sewn into pairs they are safe and if I need to move on to something else for a time I will know exactly where I left off.

Crazy Log Cabin quilt

I posted my post yesturday just in time. Shortly after I posted I got a headache with the chills and achy bones.  Been fighting the cold the family has been going through for the past week and thought I was lucky to not get it outside of the stuffy nose. But no such like.

Didn't make it to work today and had to cancel the Quilting Bee meeting tonight as well.  Getting better though.  Just didn't want to spread my germs.   

This is a picture I took yesturday while taking the pictures of the Double Irish Chain quilts.  This quilt is called a crazy log cabin.  

The way you make it is, you take three 10" squares.  Place them on top of each other.  You slash the block at various angles to make your logs.  While you cut you are going in the reverse motion as when you assemble the blocks.  Make sure that when you slash you take that log and place it aside in the same order that you cut it to keep it in the block form.  You need to slash enough logs to make two rows and one centre block(this should be eight slashes). Round and round you slash, going in the same direction all the time.

When you are done slashing you are going to arrange the fabric.  Take the top piece of the first four logs and place them at the bottom of the pile.  After this, take the top two pieces of the centre and place it at the bottom.  You are ready to sew.  You construct the blocks starting with the centre. And built the block the same as you would a log cabin block.  Once you have made all the blocks pick the smallest one and see what size block you can get out of it.  Trim all the blocks the same size.  That is it.  Arrange the blocks how you want them and assemble the quilt.

This next picture is of the quilting.  Because the quilt is busy, you don't want to do anything too fancy.  I chose to do a simple stippling.  This quilt is a twin size.  I am keeping this one for now, until I find someone to give it to.

A Double Irish Chain quilt

The Double Irish Chain quilt done in Amish style with solid colours.  The first picture does not do the quilt justice.  The quilt was too big for me to get the whole thing in the frame.  The colours are turquoise and purple on black.  The second and third pictures are close ups of the quilting.  The third photo also shows you a section of the backing.

The next quilt is of my scrappy Double Irish Chain quilt.  This was in the beginning of my learning to quilt.  I was learning the importance of light and dark to help your design to stand out.  In this one I feel I may have stretched the boundaries a bit too far.  You can see it when parts of the design blends into the row beside it.

I thought I only had the two Double Irish Chain quilts.  There is one more though.  This one is a little different.  This one is a mini quilt.  As you can see from the picture below the quilt is 10 1/2" wide.  The little blocks themselves are 1/2" square.  The second picture below is a close up of the quilting.  This quilt was done using my red and white collection of fabrics.  The smallness of the blocks makes it a bit more difficult to make, especially when it comes to the quilting. 

Hope you enjoyed the collection if Irish Chain quilts.

A Single Irish Chain quilt

This is my fall coloured Single Irish Chain quilt. This is one of the quilts for my own bed.  This quilt was made of 2 1/2" squares of all different fabrics.  When I started in quilting there was a quilt store in St. Jacobs, Ontario, Canada, that used to have fabric clubs.  One of them was for 2 1/2" squares.  Basically they sent you blocks from all of the new bolts once a month.  Unfortunately the store closed down, but I have a memory of it.  This quilt does not have a repeat block.  I tend to gravitate to light coloured backgrounds, so this quilt was made to push myself out of my norm.

The following two pictures are close ups of the quilting.  The second one includes the small border. The quilting in the quilt looks a bit puffy because the batting is wool. This close up you can see the actual units that make up a Single Irish Chain quilt.  Can you see the 9-patches and alternating plain blocks?

The next two quilts went to Project Linus. This first one with pink background was made entirely from fabric that was given to me by two different friend that where finished with their projects.  He picture does not do this quilt justice. It really looks soft and feminine.

Here is a picture of the close up to show the quilting and a better view of the fabrics used in the quilt.

This last one was using a bunch of scraps, both for the pinks and for the whites. I don't have a close up of the quilting, but if you enlarge the quilt you can see the quilting quite clearly.  The quilting was in the beginning when I was just learning to free motion quilt.  Things are not all that smooth.

I think tomorrow I will continue with the theme and show you the Double Irish Chain quilts.

A Triple Irish Chain quilt

This quilt above was made by a friend.  One of the ladies in the Quilting Bee.  She made this for her son and his wife, I believe for a house warming gift.  She asked me to quilt it for her.  This one is a king size quilt.  An Irish Chain quilt is pretty in most any colour, even in scrappy.  I will show you the scrappy one another time.  This one is a Triple Irish Chain, as it uses three colours to form rows/grids across the quilt.  The more common of the Irish Chain quilts are the Single Irish Chain and the Double Irish Chain. 

I like doing simple lines in an x through the squares.  In the plain blocks my friend wanted some hearts.  If you look closely you can see the four hearts between the loops.  Unfortunately I don't have a picture if the border.  The border was done in a double overlapping design. The three loops are all upright, swirls down to loop upside down and back again.  The overlapping design is the heart design between these up and down loops to fill in the space.  You may be able to see it on the border of the quilt picture at the top, if you enlarge it.

I may take the next few post to display some other samples of Irish Chain quilts. They can look quite different with different colours.  I've made some Single Irish Chain quilts and some Double Irish Chain Quilts. My friend really liked the finished quilt and so did her son and his wife.

Women gathering together

This is the type of landscape that the St. Augustine people are exposed to.  Beautiful blue blue skies, vivid green growth and lots of rock. This place in the picture is a little island not far from St. Augustine.  Very remote with no residence.  Only a few cabins  are here.  One that was pasted down to my uncle from my grandfather that used the small cabin for his livelihood during the summers for fishing. Very beautiful place where one could just get back in touch with nature. It could be a tough place to live as it is very remote and not much work.  In order to get to St. Augustine you would have to either take a small plane or a freight boat, though the freight boat only comes around but once a week. It is a place where you have no choice but to slow down.

These photos were taken at low tide.  The above picture is of a boat that has been stranded here for a long time.  From what I understand the tide no longer comes in the inlet this far. It looks like such a rough terrain. There is wild life living here on the island.  Unlike what I am used to, here you have to plan things, like if you are going to a city taking care to get everything you need in the one trip.  My Aunt told me that they enjoy the winters for the ability to be more mobile.  With a snowmobile and snow you can do a lot more visiting with farther communities that would otherwise be more difficult or longer to get to.

My son picture above had no worries here.  In low tide where there is usually water is now beach sand.  My daughter and second cousin just to the right outside of the picture frame, were enjoying the late afternoon, carefree making tunnels to detour water along make believe streams and castles. So peaceful. 

In places like this it becomes more crucial to become a close knit community.  Everyone knows everyone.  People help each other.  It's like one big family.  As women did for many years past, these women get together to socialize, share tips of information and do hand work.  They are the 50s+ club.  They do things for the community, organize events or raise money for different needs.  I was fortunate to be welcomed to their group one day while visiting.  I got to see the different things they worked on and they were interested in what I was working on.  I thank them very much for their hospitality.  

I was remembered of the group of ladies when I went on Wednesday to my own group of ladies.  I belong to a quilting bee, I refer to them as the girls.  Maybe I can get a picture of our group one day.