Shop hopping with the girls

During my holidays at the end of June, the quilting bee ladies and I went on a bit of a shop hop.  I was the driver.  We had no real plans that day, so I took out my GPS and asked what direction the ladies wanted to go.

No one knew, which was of no help to me.  I decided to call out quilting store names that were in my GPS.  Eventually, someone mentioned that they had heard of the store and wanted to go see it.  That store was Evelyn's Sewing Centre, also known as The Quilting Store.com.  Off we went......

While we were there, the ladies were on the hunt for enough material for a baby sized quilt for my friend Flo's grandson.  Flo had the pattern and the ladies and I filled the fabric requirements.  It was kind of fun.  Everyone had their own interpretation.  Flo chose the main fabric/colour way and we all filled in the coordinating fabrics.  It's going to look great.

Me, I was also looking for strips.  Lot and lots of strips.  The top four fabrics in the picture above meet that requirement.  I love the candy cane stripped fabric.  I am going to use that one for my Christmas quilt.  The top strip fabric is part of the collection for this years Row by Row event all across Canada and the United States.  The last three fabrics were to add some light blenders to my existing fabric collection.  I seem to always be short on them too.

This next fabric I got just because.  I think it looks funky.  It may fit into my Retro quilt I will be making, but if not......no worries, it will get used somewhere.

After we finished here, we headed to lunch.  The store recommended a good place to eat.

By the time we finished lunch, the day was still young.  I suggested to the ladies, that we had some time to choose another quilt store. One that we could head to on our way home.  There were at least three of them that I knew of along the way.  So the process started again.  I looked them up on my GPS and named some of the stores.  Someone called out the name of the store that they thought sounded interesting and that they may like to see.  So, we were off......we started on our way and ended up at The Country Concession.

I thought I was done shopping for the day, but the first thing I saw when I entered the store was this pretty little bundle of Moda fat eights.  I must really have a thing for the retro colours.  I love the blue, green, coral, red and yellow.  They are just so delicious.  I think of strawberry shortcake, watermelon, green apples and picnics, when I look at these colours.

This yellow fabric is going to be the border.  The colour in the picture is a little off, but it is the same colours as the bundle above.  It is from the same line of fabric.

I can't wait to start working on this quilt.  I am still deciding on two possible quilts I want to make with these fabrics.

Closing off the edges of the hexagon quilt

I finished quilting the centre of the diamond hexagon quilt.  Now I have to trim the batting even with the edges of the hexagon pieces, and cut the backing fabric to a 1/4" from the edge in order to turn under the edges to sew them to the hexagons.

Here is a picture of the edge of the quilt.  After I trim the two different layers, I turn under the backing fabric, over the batting, and pin it to the hexagon,  I work like this in sections of about a foot in length to make it easier to manage.  Once that is done I slip stitch the opening shut.

I started on the right hand side of the quilt edge and will work my way across the edge all the way around the quilt.  Here is a picture showing the first three hexagons done and the forth half way finished.  After I finish all of them I will quilt the last row of hexagons to finish the quilt.

This process will take some time.  It takes a bit longer than actual binding, but for an older quilt I feel it is the only choice. When I am finishing an older quilt, I prefer to keep as close to period as possible.

In the meantime, when I am not able to sit and do handwork,  I will continue to work on the other quilting that needs to be done.

My next quilt is also a hexagon quilt.  It is a lap size quilt with larger hexagons in the shape of a grandmother's flower garden with white hexagons between.  I'll share pictures of that one in another post when I am done the quilting.

Hexagon lap quilt

Here is Flo's second hexagon quilt.  This quilt is next in line to be quilted.  Flo really liked what I did with the last one, that I am doing this one the same.  I have the backing fabric washed, the left over piece of batting from the last one and will soon look to pin baste the quilt layers.

I am almost done the current hexagon quilt I am working on.  I am about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way done.  After doing the quilting of the centre, I will need to trim and turn in all the edges of each hexagon to stitch them by hand, and quilt the last perimeter hexagons.

Now that I finished painting the last batch of doors on the backside, while I wait the required six hours to recoat, I am going to see if I can finish the quilting on my current quilt.  

Wish me luck.  Not for the quilting part, but for no distractions while I am doing it.

**Progress on my top 12 list (which turned out to be 18 instead)**

Work in progress:  

3. Quilting - Lise's hexagon quilt (family)..........2/3 quilted now and half way down the next row

4. Quilting - Navy blue & cream quilt (my own)

7. Main work - Spools quilt (my own)..........first row done, taking a break to do some quilting

8. Main work - Mel's romance & roses quilt (family)
9. Leader/Ender - 16-patch pinwheel quilt (my own)..........working on between projects
10. Handwork - Reconstructed Dresden plate quilt (my own)...........9 full blocks left to do

11. Quilting - Lise's Dresden plate quilt (family)..........top is done, waiting to be quilted

12. Handwork - Machine wall hanging (my own)

13. Paper piece - Pineapple quilt (my own)..........these are put on hold again for a bit

Total number of quilts completed - 9
Total number of quilts left to be completed - 9

Completed quilts:
1. Quilted Flo's hexagon quilt (commissioned).  

14. Sabryna's 16-patch pinwheel quilt (family)

16. Reversable crazy quilt & matching doll quilt (charity)

15. Log cabin quilt (my own)
18. Small wonders quilt (charity)
17. Scrappy stripes quilt (charity)

2. Michelle's midnight flight quilt (family)

6. Jean material quilt (charity)

5. Midnight flight runway quilt (charity)

Some orphaned log cabin blocks

Here I have a bag full of log cabin blocks and log pieces that have been given to me by my friend Sharon.

I am not sure what she had intended to make with them.  It was not going to be your regular log cabin block quilt, because the log cabins are of varying sizes, both the blocks and the size of the logs as well.  I am curious as to what the design was supposed to be, but Sharon does not give the pattern with the pieces.  She would prefer to see what I come up with, with her left over pieces.

When I get a chance to clear my design wall and all the quilting I have lined up, I will have to take these out and play.  Maybe leave them up on the design wall to let the ideas percolate.

When things are on the design wall, just sitting there, they have a tendency to swim around in my head, even if I am not there.  Sometimes my daughter will come along and move things, just for the sack of it.  This may spark something else, some other idea to play around in my head, and eventually, we come up with a design.

I take this process slowly,  it's more of an evolution.  My daughter and I enjoy bouncing ideas off each other this way.  No idea is better than the other, just different perspectives, put together to make one great quilt.

Stay tuned....

Little red hearts

So......I thought I would share a bit of what is going on around here.

At the moment I am still quilting away on the diamond hexagon quilt for my cousin, and when I get a chance to do some handwork, I work on the label for the quilt.  It is going at a snails pace though.  The hexagons are being each and every one of them echoed inside.  This is when I get to use the phrase "within an inch of it's life".  The quilted hexagons are literally about an inch in size.

But......that is not the only reason things are slow around here.  Well, I guess I should rephrase that.  Things are a bit slow quilting wise, because the rest of my life right now feels like I am on a fast moving roller coaster ride.  I am still house hunting for my mom, the kids are finishing school shortly, my daughter is graduating from high school, I am trying to keep up with the weeding of my garden, a few extra trips into the office for work and the renovations of my laundry room.

Enough to keep my head spinning.  However, at the end of the day, or whenever possible, I steal a bit of time to get my quilting fix.  I am now over 1/3 of the way done quilting the hexagon quilt. I am guessing approx. 1/4 of the way done the second third.

In the meantime, I thought I would share with you some blocks that my friend Sharon from the Quilting Bee gave me.  Sharon is our hostess of the Quilting Bee.  Sharon has made quite a few quilts herself.  She really enjoys the hand quilting process.

Sharon has been doing some reorganizing in her quilt room and taking inventory.  She came across a few projects that she started and decided it was not for her or she no longer wanted to do them, so she gave them to me.

This was one of them. The box has blocks of solid cream coloured fabric with a little red heart on each of them.  They are about 10" square and there are I believe 20 blocks.  Enough to make a fair sized quilt.  I will have to come up with a design to do these blocks up.

So....I may not be posting quite so often, but life keeps moving along.  That is what makes life so interesting.  I will continue to post when I can.

I am hoping everyone is enjoying this beautiful weather we are having.  Take care.

Carol's crazy block

At our last Quilting Bee meeting, Carol brought in her crazy quilt block.  As you may already know from one of my previous posts. I would at one time like to make a crazy quilt, or at least a wall hanging.

This block is Carol's.  She used mainly cotton for her block with some shinny fabric as well (sorry, don't recall what it is called).

Like most people, I am attracted to the fancy stitches that are used to embellish the blocks.  Each seam is embellished, usually with a different type of stitch.  Some of them may be simple, but most of them get pretty fancy.

Some of the embellishments include lace as well, like the picture below.  I also like the swag in this section that includes what appears to be embroidered tassels. I've even seen some people use buttons and ribbons to make flowers or clusters of interesting designs

The stitches divide the different fabrics and usually hide the seam altogether.  This section of the block below, even used French knots to fancy up a vine, and one of the rows of stitches uses two colours.

This section also has a seam that uses two colours in a fancy chain stitch.  Do you see the cream coloured fabric with a large lace in the centre?  When the scrap pieces are big enough, some people get very elaborate with larger pieces of lace fancied up with stitching.  Others may use the space for clusters of ribbon flowers. I've even seen full sceneries.

The possibilities are endless.  You can take a block as far as you want.  From simple to extremely complicated.  The choice is up to the maker.  It looks like so much fun!

I am going to try this one day.......maybe others would like to join me?

Simple yellow blocks

Last week, before I got started back on quilting the hexagon diamond quilt, I wanted a few minutes of sewing.  Well.......maybe a bit more than a few minutes, but who is counting.

So.......I started sewing these bright cheerful yellow blocks.  I wrote about the material coming from a friend in an earlier post.  The material is a light weight linen fabric.  I've never worked with linen for a quilt before, so thought I would give it a try.  Since the fabric is light I figured simple 3 1/2" blocks would be best.  The folded fabric the blocks are sitting on, is going to be used for the backing.

This is going to be a little baby quilt, so what would be more fitting than the alphabets that are printed on the fabric for the backing.  I like that it too is a cheerful yellow.

I am putting this quilt together in a web format.  Column 3, 4, 5 & 6 are all attached and folded on top of each subsequent row, in a web form.

I messed up when putting column number 1 together.  Instead of putting it together with column 2, I forgot and put it together in a row.  I've already taken it apart and will sew it together properly, when I get a chance to get back to this little distraction.

I call it a distraction because this quilt is not on my list of quilts to do, nor is it on the list of quilt pieces waiting to be done.  This project was just a flash of inspiration that came in a bag from my friend Carol.  It's all her fault that I am distracted. LOL!