Sew Many Projects, Sew Little Time!

 

 

Christine came over to my house on Thursday night this week to work on our Lazy Sunday mystery quilts. We are putting together these blocks for step 3 of this mystery quilt by Bonnie Hunter. After I put the blocks out on the floor and took this picture, I noticed a little unsewing job that needs to be done...can you find it?  I have already done the unsewing but still need to sew the block back together again! Only 8 more of these blocks to put together and then on to the purple and white border units.  This is the only sewing I have done since my last blog post.

 

I have stared longingly at my sewing machine a few times as I am heading out the door to work in the garden...  My husband and I are expanding our front flower beds, adding stone edging and planting some bushes, moving and thinning out the perennials, etc. What a big job!  We have finished off one garden--I added the mulch the other night. The second garden has the stone edging and the bushes are in but we still need to thin out and replant the perennials. We hope to get this job done by the end of next week. It takes a long time when we only have evenings and limited time on the weekends to be outside. In the backyard, my Dad (83 years young) and I have put in the vegetable garden--pole beans, zucchini, peppers, cherry tomatoes (in a pot on the patio), broccoli, kohlrabi and leeks.  My Dad always had a big garden at our house when I was growing up and after I left home but he is not allowed to have a vegetable garden where he lives now so he and I do the veggie garden here. The garden is fenced so that these visitors do not eat everything before we get a chance to do our harvesting!

 

 

 

This cardinal visited the yard the other morning and perched on the top of our gazebo to survey the backyard.

 

 



Here is my stash report.

 

Fabric used in the last 2 weeks: 2.4 yards
Total fabric used this year: 96.5  yards
Fabric added to the stash in the last 2 weeks: 0 yards
Total fabric added this year: 81.08 yards
Net fabric used this year: 15.42 yards

 

If you read my last blog post, you would know that I started making a boxy stars quilt for a family member last week.

 

 

I worked on this quilt at Jacqui's last Thursday night and have 4/12 blocks completed. Friday night, we had a phone call from my husband's cousin to let us know that her Mom had died early that morning unexpectedly. I had hoped to give this quilt to Aunt M in July. Now, it will be completed and given to her daughter in memory of her Mom.

QNIC at Jacqui's

Jacqui hosted Chris, Karen and I for a Quilting Night in Canada tonight. We have not done this for ages and had a fun evening of sewing and chatting.

I worked on some more Boxy Star Blocks.

I still have 8 more blocks to make. It is fun to root around in my batiks to make these blocks.
Jacqui thinks white sashing would make the boxy stars float--I agree. I am not sure if I will add cornerstones or not...  What do you think?

Jacqui worked on a couple of baby quilts. She satin stitched around the circles tonight.

Karen quilted a table topper. Looking good, Karen!

 Chris is making a wedding shower gift--a table runner and a pot holder. Lucky Bride and Groom!

I hope we can get together for a few more QNIC's this summer!

Because I Need Another Project...

I was looking at some blogs tonight and saw that Bonnie Hunter has a preview up of the next step in the Lazy Sunday mystery that is running in Quiltmaker magazine. Christine came over for our weekly sewing night tonight so I decided to put 3 blocks together, just to see how they would look...

This is going to be one bright quilt!  This is the first time that the blue has made an appearance. I hope the magazine shows up in the store where I get my quilting magazines tomorrow so I can see the rest of the instructions for step 3.

Last night, it rained...there was lots of thunder and lightening so I could not go outside to work on the garden. Instead, I played with my 9 patch mystery strips on my design wall.

I found out my design wall is not big enough for this quilt! I may have to resort to using my design floor instead.  I will stare at this for a few days before sewing everything together so that I can make sure the colours are as random as possible.

Tonight, I started a new project. I am going to make a lap quilt using Bonnie Hunter's Boxy Stars pattern, available for free on her website. This quilt will have 12 blocks and will be given to another family member. I hope to have it finished by the end of June...Nothing like a deadline to get me motivated! Tonight, I made 4 units which make one block.

I am using some batiks and some off white tone-on-tones...all from my stash. I think I should be able to use each batik only once in this quilt. Did I ever tell you I have too much fabric???

Pinwheel Table Runner

I had planned an evening of indoor jobs tonight...we were away on the weekend and I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish. I arrived home and found my dad in the driveway with a rented rototiller to break up the dirt in the vegetable garden. I think my body is going to ache in the places where I used to play (to quote Leonard Cohen) tomorrow, but the garden is ready for planting and afterwards, I took my camera out to take some pictures of the flowers that were in bloom. The indoor jobs will have to wait for another evening.  The white flowers are in bloom on our highbush cranberry.

I also found lots of columbines in bloom in the side garden. I used my telephoto lens to get these pictures.

I think these are my favourite flowers in my garden.

I like how they pop up in new spots in the garden each spring.

The purple irises are out too.

There are lots of purple flowers in the garden right now, including these bachelor buttons.



I'll bet you thought I was going to forget to show a picture or two of my new pinwheel table runner...

Organic quilting...

This will go on the antique trunk which we use as a coffee table in our living room.

Please indulge me...I have one more flower picture to show...  The seed heads of the pasque flowers are really neat!

Until next time...

This and That

Over the past several months, I have been participating in a 9 patch swap at the London Friendship Quilters' Guild. Each month, I made one or two sets of 20 9 patches in a different colour. My 9 patches were swapped out with everyone else's and I ended up with 180 9 patches in 9 different colours --each 9 patch is different. We have been given the instructions to work on the other blocks in this quilt over the course of the swap. I now have all the instructions and I have been working on putting all of the blocks together.

These rows are for the borders and sashings...

And these ones are for the blocks...

I have not pressed any of these yet so that is on my agenda for next week. Then, I can put them up on the design wall and organize  everything so that I can put the rows together into blocks and the blocks into a quilt top. It is going to be a very colourful quilt top!  I have some extra 9 patches that I may put on the back of the quilt or maybe I will put them aside to use for another 9 patch quilt...

The binding is in progress on my pinwheel runner--I hope to finish it this weekend. I like how the organic quilting turned out.  This was my first attempt at it!

The Elgin Piecemakers met last night.  This is a very fun and productive group of quilters. Here are a few pictures.  Completed blocks for our next quilt top in red and white (I made the one on the lower right corner):

Here is the completed orange and blue top--we handed these blocks in last month.

One member of our group has offered to make machine embroidered labels for all of our charity quilts:

There were four completed tops that will soon be taken to the chemo unit at our local hospital to be given to adult chemo patients:

 

There is still lots of gardening to do around here so I don't have as much time to sew and blog as I would like to have.

I bought a few FQ's and a yard of fabric for a pillowcase in the last couple of weeks.

Here is my stash report for the last couple of weeks.

Fabric used in the last 2 weeks: .5 yards
Total fabric used this year: 94.1  yards
Fabric added to the stash in the last 2 weeks: 2.25 yards
Total fabric added this year: 81.08 yards
Net fabric used this year: 13.02 yards

I think I need to make a few pillowcases to help these numbers look a bit better!

Have a good week!

Finally back to a bit of sewing...

I have not been blogging much lately. We have been busy with yard work and last weekend, I took my husband away on a surprise birthday trip for the weekend to Buffalo, New York. We stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast called the "Parkside House" and toured two homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright:  The Darwin Martin House and Graycliff. We had a wonderful dinner at Tempo--a modern Italian restaurant which we would highly recommend. After all the stress of the last few months, this was a relaxing and enjoyable weekend. My husband did not have a clue about where we were going!  It was a significant birthday and he did not want a party so I decided to take him away for the weekend.

 

I have been working on Step 2 of Bonnie Hunter's Lazy Sunday Mystery in Quiltmaker magazine over the last little while. Here are the 96 hour glass units... (I still need to trim the dog ears.)

Today, I got together with Cathy and Chris and we had an afternoon of sewing. I worked on these units for the LS mystery. I managed to get them all done.

The next step of this mystery is not out until the next issue of Quiltmaker comes out at the end of June. Now, I will be able to work on my 9 patch mystery and other projects until then.

I have not done a stash report in a couple of weeks. I bought a bit of fabric at the Quilting Bee on our way to Buffalo last weekend--just some fat quarters for the LS mystery and a couple of yards of fabric from the 50% off shelf for my stash.  All of the little pieces for the LS mystery take a long time to sew together but they do not make much of a dent in the stash!

Fabric used in the last 2 weeks: 1.45 yards
Total fabric used this year: 93.6  yards
Fabric added to the stash in the last 2 weeks: 5.5 yards
Total fabric added this year: 78.83 yards
Net fabric used this year: 14.77 yards
Whew!  I am still in the black!

Happy sewing!

Three finishes and my (late) stash report

I was outside on Saturday and noticed that my Pasque flowers are in bloom!  I love the fuzziness of the stems and leaves.

I have not had much time to sew lately. We have been busy with family the last couple of weekends and since the weather is finally starting to co-operate, we have spent a few evenings doing some yard work.

I made this selvage stool seat cover for my friend, Karen. She loves it! 

I did the binding on my aunt and uncle's quilt and it was given to them today. My aunt said the colours are perfect and it will look great in her family room. I hope it keeps them cozy while watching tv or reading a book.

Cathy did a great job on the quilting, as usual.

I finally had some quilt holders here on the weekend so I got a picture of my finished Great Granny Square quilt.

Again, this one was quilted by Cathy at Eagle's Wings Quilts.

I would like to have my daughter's room painted this summer and put this quilt on the bed.

It is quilted with swirls.

I pieced the backs of both quilts.

You can see my daffodils and my peony coming up in this picture.

I can see this clump of daffodils from my patio door off the kitchen.

And now for two weeks' worth of stash report in one report...

Fabric used in the last 2 weeks: 2.0 yards
Total fabric used this year: 92.15  yards
Fabric added to the stash in the last 2 weeks: None!
Total fabric added this year: 73.33 yards
Net fabric used this year: 18.82 yards

Christine and I will be getting together to work on Lazy Sunday tomorrow night so there may be more to show after that.

Bye for now.