What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

In the Netherlands we have saying about the month of April being fickle: ‘April doet wat hij wil’. Strong winds yesterday, pouring rain today and forecasts indicate that we will get a taste of Summer this weekend.

To celebrate sunny weather on the horizon, let’s fill our fabrics with flowers! This weeks design ‘Finnish Flowers’ is inspired by fabric designs by the Finnish company Marimekko. Their bright and bold designs always brings a smile to my face. I have two pieces of Marimekko fabric in my collection that I have found while thrifting.

The Finnish Flower free motion design ...

I was at a quilt retreat this weekend with my quilting buddies. I brought plenty of projects to work on, but a local quilt shop had a sale going on so I bought some beautiful fabric.

Shadow Play by Maywood fabrics had a nice light, medium, dark and a great green for a backgound, everyting I needed for Hollow Cube 60’s. I had an idea and wanted to see if it would work.

I love my Star 60 tool by Deb Tucker and I love Hollow Cubes using the Hollow Cube 60 Technique Sheet. I wanted to see if ...

Hand quilting a wool eighteenth century quilt in a flat frame.

Today, after a very long time, I clicked on a bookmark link on my web browser that’s been patiently waiting for me to give it some attention since early 2019.

That link, dear friends, was to you, here on my ever-faithful little sewing blog.

A few years have gone by with a few quilts made here and a few quilts made there. Some of them life-time favourites and others I can happily forget. (Although, I don’t think there are many of these!) Other projects have been started and then instantly dumped in the ‘I’ll finish this later ...

This week’s challenge was to sky colors but not less than 10% sky blue. I had a million ideas but was very short on time. (I’ve got a t-shirt quilt that’s way overdue.) I had an idea I would have loved to do based on the title “Purp”le Rain” but it would have required a ton of time.

Instead, I used inspireation from our recent ice storm. While we were frozen in place, we were treated to some lovely sunsets over the ice so I tried to capture that in raw edge applique.

You can’t ...

More progress on this project. Today I hope to stitch the sheep’s head and tail. There’s a flower the sheep is either holding or eating. I would like to stitch that today, as well as the flowers on the left hill and the zig zag piece on the right hill. I’d like to finish the...

Denise had mentioned a Leap Year Project and then I mentioned it on here. I had a couple of charts I thought would be good ones but hadn’t decided for sure. Then Denise decided to stitch the Summer Schoolhouse Series as one piece. I’ve talked my friend, Pat, into stitching it too. It didn’t take...

That didn’t go so well! At 1 a.m., I laughed and said to myself “It’s a good thing you were building a house and not doing brain surgery!” I stitched 309 stitches and ripped out about 265 of those stitches. First let me say there was no wine involved! The side of the house was...

This will sound crazy because we’re both retired, really have NOTHING going on when it isn’t gardening season and yet my mornings and until late afternoon, I stay busy and rarely get to stitch til 4:00 p.m. or later. Oscar and Cooper take up a good bit of time. There are chores in the kitchen...

In this post I wrote about the Blessings Sampler. I almost chose Long May She Wave but went with Strawberry Harvest, which I will probably call Keep Life Simple throughout this entire project. The linen is 40 Count Legacy by Picture This Plus. I’m using some called for floss. Some colors I substituted because either...

After coming across the video that I mentioned in this post, I hardly stopped thinking about those ornaments and the dies. I guess I talked about them too because Vince said “Are you going to want to buy one of those machines?” I told him I was hoping the dies would work with the Accuquilt...

This, the beginning of the Capriccioso quilt from Millefiori Quilts 3 that I now think of as the Candy Cane quilt, was one of the projects I looked at and was ambivalent about. Until, that is, I mentioned it to a friend and showed her this picture. She persuaded me that I didn’t want to toss this one.

Particularly since all the little stars for it are done and nestled in this box.

And all the pieces for what I think of as the bow-tie unit are all ready to sew.

So I decided to sew one of the ...

 WOW --- I quickly glanced at the comments, and we are all learning new things! Life is just so cool!

OK -- this is not to make you jealous, but I have the BEST job in the world. Keep in mind that I have several jobs, and I LOVE all of them. Who else can say that? I met someone yesterday who says the same thing. He used to work in health care, and now he's an artist and LOVES every minute of his day. He probably doesn't make the same amount of money, but health and happiness trump money ...

Last October Ray and I had the opportunity to bring our youngest grand daughter home and spend a few days with her, one on one. It was delightful. We promised big sister she would have a turn to have a sleep over by herself too. Then everything got crazy with all of us being sick for weeks on end. Finally the week after Christmas we made it happen.

When I took Julia to the airport to go back to school, my son met me (this is about the 1/2 way point between our homes) and I picked H up ...

Remember these – the box full of batik sunflowers last seen here in 2017? They have been my focus for a week or so because I decided that I needed to make a few more.

A few? Famous last words. Because this was the result.

Thanks to a blogging friend who had sent me a lovely selection of batiks from her stash, which I had set aside for this project, I have a few really interesting sunflowers to be made. A few? Try 90+. I got carried away and any batik I had that I hadn’t used already for a ...

On of the projects I want to stitch sooner is And A Forest Grew by Rosewood Manor. Today I’m starting to make floss drops. Before I left home, I cut a bunch of rectangles from card stock, brought two sizes circle cutters, the floss measuring stick and all the floss. There are at least 103...

The post Making Floss Tags appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.

Celeste Creates I understand that not all of us love the same kind of stitching. While I love to see projects even though they’re something I’d never make, I probably wouldn’t want to watch hours and hours of videos from someone who totally does different types of stitching from what I like. But, when I...

The post A Flosstube Recommendation appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.

Today is NOT a good day for Vince to be home when the mail arrives but, it’s raining and I don’t see him going to town in the rain. After all the days I’ve complained about him going to town almost every day, would it seem out of character for me to suggest he go...

The post Mail Call appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.

If you’ve never seen Katie Strachan’s embroidery, please go to her website and look at those photos of her work. Brenda from Brenda & The Serial Starter mentioned Katie’s Elizabethan Valentine Heart kit/class and that’s how I found Katie. Most of what she has shown isn’t something I would do – I know I could...

The post Katie Strachan Embroidery appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.

Thursday Addie and I had this conversation: Addie: Granny, would you make a frog hat for my friend and one for me too?Me: No. You’re 10 years old. You can learn to crochet and make your own frog hat.Addie: What if I clean your sewing room and you can pay me AND make me a...

The post Learning to Crochet appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.