And the Winner Is!

 

Pat of Scrapatches!! Please email me your mailing info as soon as possible so that I can get this pretty bundle into the mail and on it's way to you. I hope you love these fabrics as much as I do!

It is always so much fun to win a giveaway and I wish I could give all of my readers and followers a gift but that is just not possible :-(

Thank you, thank you, thank you...to all of you!!

I've Lost a Day - Reward Offered!

Edited to add - The giveaway is now closed. As soon as my husband gets out of bed he will draw the winner's name! :-)

If anyone finds it please contact me immediately so you can return it to me as quickly as possible. You will recognize it because it is a Wednesday and it has the characteristic hump! You will find me in my sewing studio.

What the heck happened??? Seriously, I really thought this morning was Wednesday and I asked my husband why he was getting the recycling ready to go out. I didn't believe him when he said it was Thursday - still can't!

I will pay a finders fee - this bundle of fabric. Oh...what the heck...I will just give this bundle away to one of my wonderful readers because I am sure if anyone finds an extra day they will be really tempted to keep it for themselves anyway. ;-)

I really do want to thank my followers and readers for leaving such supportive and inspiring comments. Thank you to all of you - all you need to do is leave a comment and I will have my husband pick a name out of a hat and I will send this bundle of pretty fat quarters off to the winner.

Celtic Solstice is Finished!

I finished sewing on the last bit of binding this morning and I am very happy! This quilt turned out really great. It was the latest Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt and it was a lot of fun to participate in. Bonnie has so many great patterns and this one is no exception. I really love the colour scheme and I really like the overall design but I sure wish it was a rectangle instead of a square. I know that once the mystery was revealed I could have made more blocks but, honestly, I am a quilter that really likes doing the cutting and prepping all at once and it is really hard for me to go back to make more block pieces. Unfortunately, the pattern is no longer available for free from Bonnie Hunter's website but it will eventually make an appearance in one of her books.

This quilt finished at approx 75" x 75" and is quilted with a dark blue thread. I quilted it with a fairly dense panto design and and it really does have great texture and I like it! I love the backing fabric and I used some of the leftovers to make the binding.

This quilt will find a home right here in my son Eric's bedroom. He has a green futon in his room and I think they are perfect for each other. Hurray...a quilt I made is staying home....for now!

Cuddle Quilt

When I started working on this latest quilt top I was undecided about whether to use white or blue as the center triangle for the triangle in a square block. I did decide to go with the blue and I am very happy with that decision. The block that I am using for this cuddle quilt is called Garden Patch. It consists of five 4 patches and 4 triangle in a square units. It is not a very difficult block to make and I really like the way it is coming together.

As I was making the first few blocks I was wondering if I should change the center 4 patch into a single square. I cut a few pink squares and laid them over the blocks I had already made and although I think it would work I decided to stick with the center 4 patch. I think it gives the block a more open and lacy look while the solid square sort of blocked it up.

Once I got through that design decision it was full speed ahead. I have several blocks already completed and I have more in different stages of completion...whooohooo!

Today feels like a really good day to spend some time in the studio making quilts!

Quilts Delivered...sort of!

Last Thursday I drove to my sister Glenda's house to deliver the quilts that I recently finished for my niece Amanda, and two of our nephews - Nick and Daniel. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to deliver the quilts to the guys so I had to leave them with my sister. The guys were working in the fields with their Dad and just couldn't break away so because Glenda lives very close to them she will try to arrange a time when they can meet up and she can deliver the quilts. All I can say is that it would have been great to deliver the quilts personally but it still puts me closer to achieving my goal of getting quilts finished and out of my sewing studio!

Glenda and I talk on the phone all of the time but she lives about 1.5 hours from me so we don't see each other quite as often as we would like. This time when I went to visit instead of having a rushed one day visit I stayed overnight. The plan was that as soon as I arrived we would head off to all of the surrounding second-hand stores and did we ever. We had a really good time checking out the bargains!

One of the best bargains I found was this thread. Look at this thread - it is $1 a cone. I was pretty sure this is the same type of thread that I use for my long arm but it is manufactured by a different company. There are 6000 yards on each spool and even though a couple look like they may have been used there is still plenty on the cones. The colours are great and it is certainly a welcome addition to my thread drawer.

We are expecting rain today and it looks like it will be arriving any minute so I will spend most of my day inside working on the binding for my Celtic Solstice quilt. Another quilt almost finished!!

A New Quilt - Oops!

Looky, looky...I am starting a new quilt! I didn't really intend to but you know...things happen.

I took some of my fabric to my sister Cheryl's place and she cut it for me using her Studio fabric cutter. She cut a bunch of 2" pink and 2" white strips and she also cut some triangle in a square pieces with the wing triangles in a sweet blue print.

I originally designed this quilt with a white center triangle but I wasn't convinced that it would provide enough excitement to the quilt. Cheryl had the perfect darker blue fabric and it looked really good with the lighter blue that I had already shopped from her stash ;). Because I was not sure if I wanted to use white or the darker blue as the center triangle I had her cut some of both! I am leaning toward using the darker blue but which ever one doesn't get used will go into my scrap bins and will be used in a future quilt.

I have started sewing the pink and white strips together and have already turned some of them into four patches and I think they are going to look really sweet - I love the pink fabric. It is always so exciting to start a new quilt and I am looking forward to seeing how this one turns out!

RSC - Yellow Blocks

Over the past couple months I have missed quite a few of the blocks that Angela had posted for the Rainbow Scrap Sampler but this month I am really making an effort to stay current. Last night I spent some time working on the latest blocks posted. I made Alamo Star and Economy Block and I was going to start working on Wacky Pinwheel but when I refreshed the page I was working from on Angela's site I saw that she had posted another block. So I worked on the latest one instead - Bright Hopes. It was a bit refreshing to work on this one because I vary rarely dig out my bin of scrappy 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles. It is just not a size that I use very often. This block did have a little twist to it in that it required a partial seam but it really was not very difficult to execute.

All of the yellow blocks that I have made so far.

This morning I made Wacky Pinwheel and I thought I was all caught up until I noticed there was another block mentioned in her post. I checked out the link to the sampler blocks and saw that I still needed to make the Mock LeMoyne Star. I can now check that one as done too!

Pop on over to soscrappy's site to check out all of the links.

Scrappy Patches is Finished!

Okay...I did it! Nick's quilt was done just in the 'nick' of time....hee hee! I finished the binding last night and this morning I tucked in the thread tails and there were a lot of them because my thread kept breaking when I was quilting this one. I struggled a bit for a name for this quilt but suddenly the name 'Scrappy Patches' popped into my head and I was happy!

Nick's quilt finished at 83" x 95" and was quilted with brown thread using a Starburst panto. I used the same fabric for the backing and the binding.

This design only used a ton of 2" x 3.5" unfinished rectangles :). I love the old-fashioned look of this quilt and I hope that Nick will too. This is another quilt that I only used scraps from my bins as well as stash fabric and that feels pretty darn good too!

Off The Frame

Celtic Solstice is off the frame and I think it is looking gooood! I still need to trim it and cut the binding strips in preparation of attaching them to the front by machine and then I will be ready to start hand stitching the binding to the back. I won't be doing that today though because I am still working on getting the binding onto my nephew Nick's quilt. I need to have Nick's quilt finished for Thursday and I have only sewn on the binding half way so I will have to put in some intensive binding time this evening.

close up

When I posted about loading this quilt on the frame I mentioned that I had purchased some bobbins so that I would not have to stop and reload my empties. Well things didn't go quite as planned! I had picked out the panto that I was going to use and I loaded six bobbins thinking it would be enough because this quilt is not extremely large. The problem arose after I loaded the quilt onto the frame and had everything ready because at the last minute I changed my mind on the panto. I replaced it with one that is more detailed and I ended up needing two more bobbins. I don't mind too much though because I really like the quilting design on this quilt!

back -you can almost see the quilting texture

Log Cabin Quilts

Luminous

Last Wednesday was the final meeting of the season for the Moraine Quilt Guild and one of the members, Angela, was giving a show and tell about Log Cabin quilts. OMG she had so many amazing log cabin quilts!

We were asked to bring in our log cabin quilts for show and tell as well.

Luminous backing

I have made three log cabin quilts - two for my sister Glenda and one for our neighbours. You can read about the neighbours quilt here.

I was able to pry the two quilts from my sister Glenda with the promise that I would return them safe and sound. I have not shown these quilts on my blog previously because I made them in 2010 before I was blogging. These quilts are just so beautiful and my sister loves them so much that she actually installed a new wood floor in her bedroom just so she could showcase the quilts (too funny).

Raspberry Ripple

The reason my sister got both quilts was that I started making the first quilt, named Raspberry Ripple (74" x 96") but then I had some weird thing going on and I was thinking that it was the wrong quilt for her. So, I started the second quilt which I named Luminous (70" x 92"). Of course, once I got it finished I realized that the problem was that both quilts were supposed to be for her. It is funny, but sometimes quilts do tell us who they belong to.

My sister had been going through a very difficult time because she had fallen at work and had broken her ankle in three places. The damage was so severe that she needed surgery and was going through a very long and painful recovery. I think these quilts brought some cheer to her just when she needed it the most!

Raspberry Ripple backing

Both quilts are fairly large and I quilted them in a meandering design on my DSM - Janome 6600.

Happily all is good now and she loves both quilts! I will be returning her quilts to her on Thursday and we will have a really nice visit together.

Celtic Solstice...

is on the frame and I am ready to go. I needed an extra piece of fabric to finish making the backing and I was able to get it from my sister Cheryl. Sisters are fantastic in so many ways and I am so fortunate to have so many of them - six to be exact - but we must not forget the two brothers as well!

I am going to use blue thread for this quilt and I think it will look wonderful - at least I hope it will :).

I only had a few bobbins for my Millie so I always had to keep stopping mid quilting to fill up the empties and it was a bit annoying. Recently, I purchased a whole whack of bobbins and I think it will make things go a lot more smoothly for me. I will be able to fill as many as I need all in one go....life is good!

Tada.....Another Finish!

Sideways photo!

I did finish this quilt several days ago but I just didn't have enough space to lay it out on the floor for a photo. I had to wait until my husband and my son were both available to hold it up for a picture. I am very happy with the way it turned out.

When I first started making this quilt I took some neutral and green 2" squares out of my scrap bins and just started to sew them together. I didn't really have a design in mind at first but once I got quite a few 4 patches made I came up with the design. Four patches are like nine patches....so simple but so effective and they can become such beautiful quilts!

This quilt is fairly large at approx 84" x 94" and I quilted it using a pantograph and a neutral thread. All of the fabric I used for this quilt came from my stash and that makes me happy. I didn't have quite enough fabric for the backing so I added a couple plain green patches to the back. When I took the quilt off the frame I was able to trim some nice strips from the backing for the binding but I didn't have quite enough so I used some of the plain green fabric to finish it.

I have decided to call this quilt 'Humble Beginnings' and I think the name is perfect. It started out from bits and pieces from my scrap bins but it turned into a beautiful quilt. I think my nephew Daniel is going to really like it!

Yellow Sampler Blocks

Look at that! I managed to make two yellow sampler blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. These blocks are called Lover's Knot and Framed Four Patch. After I took my photo of the blocks on the design wall I thought the second block looked a bit funky. I checked out Angela's sampler block again to see what was going on and I realized that I had sewn the two halves together incorrectly....oh well. It only took a moment with my seam ripper and sewing machine to set things to right. It looks much better now.

That looks much better!

Pop on over to soscrappy's blog and check out the other links to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge - you will find plenty of inspiration to use up your scraps!

Slow Sunday Stitching

Continuing with my theme of moving quilts along and getting them finished I have started the binding on another quilt. I just finished up my niece Amanda's quilt yesterday so today I am working on my nephew Daniel's quilt. I actually started stitching the binding down last night and I have almost got one side finished. Mmmm...mmmm.mm - I love that backing fabric! I am using every bit of scrap that I had left for the binding but I still didn't have quite enough so I added some solid green as well.

This is another large quilt so it will probably take me a couple days to finish stitching the binding and doing all of the things required to make it look neat and tidy.

I am looking forward to completing another quilt and moving it out of my sewing room and into the hands of the recipient- it does feel good!

I am linking up with other Slow Sunday stitchers over at Kathy's Quilts.