Reporting on my wild and goosey blocks

I thought I would post about the wild & goosey paper piece blocks I have been working on.  This was the part of the "block-a-day" that I am trying.  

This last batch has a lot.  I started this system at the end of June and since, I have been trying to do one per day, plus an extra to catch up for the beginning of the year.

To be honest, it's not been going too well.  I started falling behind almost from the start.  Do you know how hard it is to commit to doing something once a day?  It's not that it's hard, because it isn't.  It's not even time consuming, as I can finish a block in about 15 minutes.  It's really all about the consistency of getting to it every single day.

Since I've taken the above picture, I have finished the top half of August.  I still need to do at least two per day though if I want to finish the blocks for December.  As I fell behind, I was doing four per day just to get me back to the current date.

I still have faith that I will catch on to doing a "block-a-day" and once I am done with these blocks I can move on to the mini log cabin blocks.

Wish me luck!

Hearts quilt

Yesturday morning was some me time.  It was my late day at work, so in the morning I got to do some sewing.  I loved every moment of it.

I started and finished the 27" square NICU quilt to give to Project Linus.  I had all the fabrics cut out already, which saved a lot of time.  The solid cream blocks with the hearts were given to me.  This is the second NICU quilt I've done with the stack of 20.

With the last 12 heart blocks, I am making a larger version of the one above.  This one will be made of 5 blocks by 5 blocks.  The reds in this one are all going to be scrappy.  Yesturday I also had time to sew up 6 of the 13 alternating blocks.  This quilt will also be a donation quilt.

This will be the last post for a few days.  We're heading up to a cottage for a yearly family reunion.  See you all later.  

Enjoy your weekend.

Started my Line Gallery cross-stitch

During my vacation a week and a half ago, I decided that I was going to take a day for me and me alone.  That morning I sat with my tea in my chair going over everything on my list of 'to do..'  I had big plans for everything from renovation, landscaping, quilting for me and for customers, work at my mom's and watching the Mama Mia movie that recently came out.

I got to see the movie on the half price Tuesday night with my sister, my daughter and my mom.  We all thought it was good.  Worth the time to watch.  A carefree, feel good, musical.  I also did some work at my mom's place, quilting for customers, landscaping here at home, but my list was still very long.  Not that I expected to get everything done, but I do make an effort to see just how many I can get crossed off my list.

I can't even remember which day it was, but on this particular day I felt a real need to take it easy and rest my body and mind.  While I was drinking my tea, my eye spied the corner of the frame of my cross-stitch.  I took it out to look at it and said to myself, "why not".   So, that is what I did.

I started at the top lefthand side with the clouds, moved on to the clothesline, onto the tree in the background, the quilts and the woman's arm.  Fourteen colours so far.  I enjoyed my peaceful day mainly sitting and working on my cross-stitch.  It looks pretty already.  The day ended at 2:00 am, when I ran out of time and put it away, so I wouldn't get distracted for the remained of the week.  Though it made me happy and I enjoyed myself, I knew I would be disappointed with myself if I didn't get more things on my list done.

One of the things I got done was planting a tree in my front yard garden.  This is the tree I chose. 

I didn't like the tree that was there.  The hydrangea tree was not doing well in my clay'ish type soil.  My sister helped me plant the tree.  In the picture below you will see two trees fairly close to each other.  The small green one is the hydrangea.  That is the one coming out.  My sister will take it and plant it at her place, where the soil is better suited for it.

After we planted the tree that Saturday, she says, "while I am here, we may as well get started on the French trench/drain", that we had planned to start on Monday.  Good thing we did, as it took use the remained of the Saturday afternoon, all of Sunday and most of Monday too.

Wow, what a job that turned out to be.  It took a lot longer than anticipated as we didn't account for the clay soil being a lot harder to dig out,  even the sit down back hoe we rented had a hard time digging up the clay.  You can read more abut that on August 14th post.

I know......I know what you may be thinking.....I just started something new to add to my list of things to do.  But, I really enjoyed starting the cross-stitch and I really needed a day just for me.  I have no regrets.  I bought the cross-stitch & floss and had every intention of starting it at some point.  Why not now, when I needed the break from all my other demands.

Sometimes you have to calm the nagging voice inside that keeps you running at a mile a minute, trying to get everything done.  Everything will get done sooner or later, I personally need to work on relaxation and learn to go easy on myself.  That is a hard thing to do, for someone like me, who is an over achiever.  I am sometimes my own worst enemy.  I am trying though......

A little of this and that

Since gathering the scraps for my Jelly-roll rug, cutting everything up and making the long strip using bias sewing, I've finished the next step of sewing the rope.  The rope is the scrap material and the batting sewn together into one big long rope type shape.

In order to keep things tidy I rolled the rope into a large ball.  The same as you would do for left over yarn or wool.  It doesn't look big, but I cannot span my hands around it to touch my fingers to each other.  

The next step is going to require that I switch out my machine for the one that has a flat table surface and a zigzag stitch.  I think I will wait for that step, for a bit.  I have a lot of other things I want to get caught up with first.

I though I would share the finished picture of my laundry room.  I finished the tiled backsplash shortly after my July vacations.  It took me a while as things kept coming up to distract me.

Distractions......there are always distractions, but that is part of life and part of what makes life interesting.

This weekend for example, I had plans to deliver a customer quilt and go to my mom's place to finish her doors, however that is not exactly what happened.  

I did deliver the quilt, I did make it to my mom's place, but that is where it ends.  I didn't get her doors done, because I only had a couple of hours, as I had to get home to repair my own roof that lost some shingles and caused a leak in the house.  It was also a race against time, as they called for rain that afternoon.  

I went up on the roof with my son in tow (he was really wanting to get up there and see for himself).  I never saw him jump so fast, as when I told him it was time to go up.  It took us approx. 2 hours in total to get the ladder and tools up on the roof, pull off the damaged shingles and replace them with new ones.

I no sooner get down off the roof and my daughter is now wanting me to work on the garden at the side of the house.  This is the one that she has been working on this past week.  While I was delivering a quilt, she went with her father to the dump to get ride of stuff and while there, they picked up a load of compost in the pickup truck.  

It wasn't raining and didn't look like it was going to, so now that I had the soil, I was able to start the planting.  We both, with the help of my grand niece & nephews ages 3-7, placed some of the stepping stones and planted some of the bushes.  We got almost 1/3 of the pathway done, before we were invited next door for dinner (my niece and these grand niece & nephews are my neighbour). 

The next morning I was out of the house at 7:30 am on my way to my sister's place, to help her with a job in Newmarket, for one of her customers.  It went well.  We got one whole section of garden installed, planted, mulched and merged in with another side garden, with a bit of clean up there as well.  All this was done by 2:30 pm.  By this time, our bodies are feeling the pain of unused body parts....lol.  

By the time we get home, clean up, take showers and head out to dinner at my nieces house, I for one was done for the day.  A glass of wine in hand, sit and chat with company, eat a lovely dinner and take it easy for the rest of the evening.

I had a full weekend that is for sure, but aside from making another four or five wild & goosey blocks on Saturday morning, there wasn't much time for quilting.

Distractions........you just have to work around them.  Everything gets done at some time or another.  There's just no telling exactly when.

I've been bitten by the Jelly-Roll Rug bug

A couple of weeks ago, just before my holidays, I was on Pinterest and came across a post about making a Jelly-roll rug.  That is all it took for me to be bitten by the bug.

I am always looking for ways to help use up those scraps of fabric that are hard to fit into a quilt, like the older type themed type fabrics with beige backgrounds and characters like bears or bunnies, and sometimes angles or rag dolls.

So, I got online and ordered a pdf version of the pattern and had it printed within minutes.  The next day I was sorting through my scraps for difficult to use up fabrics.  The pattern calls for two jelly rolls.  When I looked it up online, I found that two rolls would measure about 50 meters.

By the time I sorted through what I had pulled out and cut the strips, I had just enough.  I pulled from my scraps of cotton batting and started cutting them into strips too.

Do you like my pile of fabric strips?  This is the pile after I sorted out the colours in the order that I wanted them with a general order of starting with the lightest fabric and working out to the darkest.  This is the pile of fabric strips flowing on the floor as I sewed all the strips together using a mitered seam, like you would use to make a binding.

Thus far it has been fairly easy.  I am taking my time going through the steps, as I work on many other things that need to be done around here.

I can't wait to see how the colour choices turn out.  I am thinking that this rug pattern would work with just about any type of fabric colours and combinations.

Have you been bitten by the jelly-roll rug bug yet!!!

Beige swirly HST quilt progress

Since my last post about the beige swirly HST quilt, exactly a month ago, where I was in the process of cutting and sewing the HSTs, I've made some progress.  I have a quarter of the quilt completely assembled.

I reaffirmed that I find it easier to assemble a quilt in quarters, especially for small or medium sized quilts.  I had enough room on my side sewing table to place the units in their orientation.  I only had to reach over and pick up the pieces in order to sew them.  I assembled these by webbing them, and finished off by sewing the horizontal rows.

This quarter panel has the centre piece of the pinwheel and all the other rows spin off of this one, extending in the direction of each pinwheel blade.

I like that there is a contrast between the background fabric and all the patterned fabric.  The patterned fabrics are different, yet similar that at times it is hard to tell where one fabric end and the next one starts.  This quilt definitely has more of a masculine feel to it.

I don't have much more to say about the quilt above, so thought I would also share with you a picture of our little baby.  Our four legged baby, Maddie.  She is so cute.

Enjoy your week!  Me, I am trying to get back into the swing of things at work.  Doing bits and pieces of stuff here for the house, at my mom's and for my longarm business.  Definitely keeping busy!

Still working on my Xmas Solstice Star quilt

Through all that I have been doing around here, I still managed to find little snippets of time to stick in some stitching, even if it is only one seam of a border or piecing parts of the border.

This top that I am still working on is July's American Patchwork & Quilting UFO Challenge quilt.  I am a bit behind, but I am still chugging along.  A little bit here and a little bit there.  During the work on the French trench and reservoir along the side of the house, I would get to sew some in the mornings before a decent hour to start making all the noise.

As you can see, I have all the blocks done, assembled into rows and attached together.  I even have the first black border, the pieced red and black borders, and now I am working on the last 3" black border to complete the quilt top.  

I do find it difficult to work on Christmas quilts in July.  My mood is just not into it.  Though at this early date, it should give me enough time to quilt it and bind it, to put on my bed this Christmas.  That will be nice.

Here is a picture of the work we've been doing.  This is the channel for the French trench on the right.  My daughter is in the process of taking up the small patch of grass so I can plant a small garden path.  As of yesturday, she cleared out all the bricks and rocks on the left and a large portion of the grass.  It is still very hot these days, so she has to takes many water breaks.

The picture below is from the front of the house, which also shows the digging we did for the reservoir.  

Now I have to let this hole settle a bit, before I can put some fresh soil and re-sod the area.  There is still a fair amount of work to be done at the side of the house, but it's getting there.  I'll take some after pictures when I am done.

Sleeping bears

I quilting this cute little baby quilt for a client.  The quilt is primarily done in soft blues and pinks.  Now that the quilt is quilted, the client will be able to add in the sleeping eyes of each bear.  The eyes I am curtain will make a big difference.  It's often the little details that make the most impact.

  

To my eyes, the bears are sleeping on a quilt made up of small squares.  The squares are sewn together and the Bears are appliquéd laying on top of their quilt.  The stars in the sashing corner stones are also appliquéd on. 

My client decided to go with the edge to edge hearts pattern called Whole Lotta Love from Urban Elementz.  I love the texture it creates.

It turned out well and the customer was happy with the results.  That makes me happy.

Watching Bonnie Hunter while catching up on some binding

I finally found some time to sit and sew down the binding on my bear paw quilt.  It's been pretty busy around here lately.  My daughter is progressing very well with her recovery from oral surgery.  I am trying to clean up the chaos around here and getting the house back in order.

As I am writing this post, I realize there is a lot that has happened since my last post.  There has been so much going on around here, that it has distracted me from having the time to write about it.  Such a whirlwind, that I am having trouble remembering everything.  So for now, I will start where I am at and as I remember I will share.  I will share the finished pictures of the above quilt in my next post.

Here are a couple of garden photos.  I love the simplicity of a daisy flower.  They were blooming in perfusion a couple of weeks ago.  Now the heat is here and the garden is baking.  At this point, it is mainly greenery throughout the garden and some colour through the annuals, like the begonias below.

I like my little girl holding a basket of flowers, sitting on a bench.  It's pretty.

Today there is going to be some more clean up at the side of the house.  Last weekend we finished putting in the French trench and reservoir to catch all the rain water from our eaves and the neighbours property.  Now I am taking out the useless little patch of grass and putting in a garden, all along the side of the house. I'll post about it too another time.