Sashing and Borders

I am a day late for Kathy's Quilts Slow Sunday Stitching because I was working yesterday but I still want to show the progress I have made over the past week on my latest Seven Sisters quilt. Since my last post, I have prepared and stitched on the horizontal sashing strips and I have the vertical strips as well as the vertical borders ready to get stitched on. I took the picture showing a horizontal border but they aren't quite ready because they still need to be cut to size and the stitching lines need to be marked. I wish I could have taken a better photo but sadly this was the best of the lot!

I am so excited because I can see how close I am getting to beginning the process of hand quilting this baby but......I am also unsure how it is all going to look when it is done. Now that all of the pieces are finished and the sashing and borders are all laid out it doesn't quite look like I had envisioned. Hopefully, it will all look okay once everything is sewn into a quilt top and the magic of quilting happens,

Seven Sisters Blocks

They look quite blah against the light tile floor.

Before I left for my trip I was hit with a bad cold and cough that had started on Tuesday. I was scheduled to work six shifts from Sunday through Sunday but I was just feeling so bad on Thursday of that week that I called in sick which is something that I rarely do. Thank goodness I had already finished the quilt for my ex-SIL because I had absolutely no energy to work on much of anything during the week before I left.  When I delivered the quilt to her she was very happy to receive it. She told me several times that she loved the colours in the quilt and that made me happy too.

Since I have been home, I have been taking it easy and resting on the couch because I still haven't quite shaken the cold or cough. Luckily for me, I am not scheduled to work until Monday so I have one more day of recovery. While I have been sitting on the couch I have been giving my latest Seven Sisters quilt lots of slow stitching attention. Since I had all of the pieces already prepped it made it very easy to just sit and sew. I now have all of the blocks finished!

I think that later today I will start getting the sashing pieces marked for sewing and start cutting them out and then, who knows, I may get some stitched to the blocks later tonight while watching tv.

I am linking up with Kathy's Quilts Slow Sunday Stitching...boy it has been quite a while since I have joined in. Pop on over to check out the links - you just may be inspired to do some slow stitching yourself!

Home Sweet Home

I am back from from my trip and I am ready to get back to work on some quilts! I had taken this bag with me...it contains the Seven Sisters block pieces that I had prepped to work on while visiting my brother Mark. I was very optimistic and also included some cotton yarn to knit some dish cloths while we were sitting around chatting. The bag never even got opened! Not all that bad though because now I do have everything ready to finish making my blocks....no excuses!

I got home from my brother's yesterday at around 3:30 pm or so. We left his town at 7:00 am so our travel time was better coming home than going. It was an 8.5 hour drive to get me home (with two rest stops) and it took us 9 hours to get there from my place (with three rest stops). My sister Glenda still had to drive quite a bit further to drop my Mom off at her apartment and then carry on to her own place. I think it added 3 more hours to her trip. You can bet she was exhausted!

My brother lives in the small town of Cochrane, Ontario which is basically close to the northern end of the road system in the area. Cochrane is also home to the Polar Bear Express which is a train service between Cochrane and Moosonee as there are no roads to the town of Moosonee.

Cochrane is so far north it is only about 186 miles south of James Bay which is part of Hudson Bay and is the southernmost part of the Arctic Ocean. So, now that you have had your geography lesson it is time for me to get some stitching done!

Drawstring Bag

I just made the cutest drawstring bag! After I made the Kindle pouch I thought about the charging cord and the connector cords that I need to take with me. We do live in a digital age and I like having my IPod, my Kindle, my phone, etc., but all of the cables that go with them can get lost in a suitcase. Now I can keep them all together in one cute little bag.



I used this you tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcKMLG75cb0 tutorial to make my bag. I did change up the sizes because I wanted a smaller bag. The fabric measurements I used were approximately 9" x 16.5".

I sized the fabric for the drawstring channels accordingly and I placed it 1" from the top of the bag. I used 6 times the width of the bag for the ribbon drawstrings. I probably could have used less ribbon but I really was just guessing and I didn't want to cut it too short.

Looks like a present!

The bag has a flat bottom so it stands up. Mine is not perfect but it is good enough!

I Made a Kindle Protector

 
I will be going on a long drive to my brother's place very soon and I want to take my Kindle with me. I didn't have a protector of any kind for my Kindle and I didn't want it to get scratched or damaged on my trip so I made one.









I started with two coordinating fat quarters, a piece of scrap batting (yippee....I am using some up) and a piece of velcro.

As I started working on the case I decided to leave the velcro behind and I attached a loop of ribbon instead. I plan to add a button to the front of the case to wrap and loop the ribbon around but I need to purchase one.

It came together fairly easily and I am quite happy with it, although, if I had been thinking I would have made the ribbon longer and then I would have been able to just wrap it around the bag to hold it closed. Elastic would have been even better but, even though I am sure I have some hanging around, I just couldn't find it. Oh well....next time.

Floral Seven Sisters

The last time I showed my progress on this latest seven sisters quilt I had only one block completed. I also had enough floral diamonds pieced into stars and ready for joining together to make four more blocks as well as enough floral diamonds cut and ready to sew into stars for a sixth block.

Things have changed a bit and out of the twelve blocks I am making for the quilt, I currently have five completed blocks and seven blocks still under construction. All of the floral stars have been pieced and have been joined together to form the sisters for each block and now these last seven blocks are just waiting for some background fabric to be added. I did not have enough background pieces prepped to finish them up. :(

These three blocks just need the large corner pieces added to them to finish them up. The corners really are quite easy and quick to add so these blocks won't take long to finish once I get going on them. The other four blocks won't be quite as quick but, of course, most of the piecing has already been done.

I am not working today, so I plan to spend time marking and cutting the background fabric to get all of the required pieces ready for adding to the final blocks. I need diamonds, trapezoids and the larger corner pieces.