What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Marrying someone from halfway across the globe has its perks.  There is always something new to learn. Recently Paul introduced me to the Addams Family.  I fell in love with Wednesday and she is the inspiration for my May project! 

Wednesday Mock-Up in EQ8

The Island Batik challenge for April is Crazy Quilts with Aurifil Threads.  

The Zippered Pouches - in progress

I received the Frangipani Color Builder from Aurifil Threads.

To ensure that these threads/embroidery/stitches showed well on the fabric, I decided to use Island Batik solids.  Since I also wanted to make a modern interpretation of Crazy Quilts, the solids were a perfect choice ...

 I have been missing in action the last couple of Sundays for my weekly blogpost.  Our Christmas took some unexpected turns this year ---as the saying goes, life happens when you are making other plans.  Our daughter's dog, Finn, had surgery on Dec 19th to remove a broken tooth. After the surgery, he went into kidney failure and was in the animal hospital for 10 days in intensive care to receive treatments to improve his kidney function.  Thankfully, his kidneys are now working normally again and he is home and feeling much better.  The vets at the hospital called ...

 I have been furiously sewing this week to finish off some Christmas gifts in time for the big day.  Just a little bit more to do! My cousin and her husband came for lunch on Friday.  We do not get to see each other very often but often talk on the phone about our mutual genealogy project--shaking the family tree on our mothers' side of the family to see what we can find out.  The majority of our family members are Scottish with some Irish as well.  I made my cousin a wide open zippered pouch with some fabric I ...

 The Island Batik Ambassadors challenge for November 2022 is Creative Christmas Stockings.

Paul: Well, some people may actually use it for stuffing Christmas presents.
Me: Hmm... I thought about that.
Paul: And?

 I belong to a sewing group at church--we get together every couple of weeks for a few hours to make items for our upcoming Christmas Bazaar.  This past Tuesday, 5 of us met at the church to sew.  P and I made two zippered pouches each.  J and M made bunting for Christmas, Valentines and Halloween.  K worked on another type of pouch.  The bin with our new items for this year's bazaar is filling up. We also have some stock left over from the last bazaar in 2019.   Here are the pouches that I made.  The pattern is ...

 I made some rug hooking progress on my class project. The sheep is now done, including the tail and the legs.  The wool strips are not trimmed yet so the wonkiness in the legs and tail is due to that.  Next, I will work on the flowers.  Then, there will be lots of sky and grass to fill in.  

The red scraps were flying in my sewing room this week.  I have decided to do three rainbow scrap challenge quilts this year. When I made the selvage hot pads as Christmas gifts, it quickly became apparent that my selvage collection is out of control!  I had sorted some of my selvages into bags by colour so I grabbed the red bag and some light-weight non-fusible interfacing and made two squares. 

Let's ignore Paul for now.  I have been consumed by the bag making process and my excitement sometimes (okay, often) spilled into his area.  

Island Batik teamed with ByAnnie for the September Challenge.  We picked a pattern of our choice from ByAnnie. I chose the backpack Got Your Back 2.1.  All fabric was provided by Island Batik. I chose Moonlight Sky - designed by Kathy Engle for Kate Colleran of Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs

ByAnnie provided the detailed ...

Our office recently moved to a new location.  There are no lunch places within walking distance but there is a café in the basement. The food is good and the service is great. Naturally, I became a regular :-) Fami works in the cafe and she is usually behind the counter so it was a few weeks before I noticed her pregnant state. To be sure, I asked Frank - Is she expecting a baby. Frank nodded. When I asked, he told me that the baby is due in October. She'll be going on leave soon.

So I did what most ...

In May, I took a virtual walking foot quilting class with Jacquie Gering with my local guild. Her class was a wonderful variety of walking foot skills. We filled 5 panels with quilting during the 6 hour class.

And... right at the beginning of the class she talked about open toe walking feet. Did you know that a walking foot can have an open toe!? I did not. Our class started at 9am that morning, and when the local sewing machine shop opened at 10am, I called up and asked if they had an open toe walking foot that would ...

The March 2021 Island Batik Challenge is to make a Scrapbuster Quilt.  

Being a new ambassador I do not have a lot of Island Batik fabrics.

 I made steady progress this week on "Love Birds", a counted cross stitch picture I am making for C and M for their wedding which took place late in 2020. My goal this past week was to finish the leaves and start the next large blue flower.  Mission accomplished!  

Here is a closer up view of the section I worked on this week. 

It may take a week or two to finish the blue flower.  There are a lot of stitches in it!

My friend, A, celebrated a birthday this week so I made her a zippered pouch using some ...

I started one more facecloth this week, just because I had the yarn to make it and I like to keep myself busy, especially when ...

Picture the scene at the end of the party.  Empty bottles, missing silverware, dirty dishes, stained carpet, mess everywhere and you don't even know where to begin.

Scraps Explosion

Half Made Blocks

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge feels like a party and it IS a lot of fun...till you get to this time of the year.

Now the party is coming to a close and there are blocks everywhere. How many blocks? Did I lose/misplace some? I was going to redo that one but then forgot. Where do I even start?

Framed Jewel Blocks (Light Borders)

I should ...

I’m working on something new, which is always exciting and uncomfortable at the same time. *Digression alert* That word -uncomfortable – is also used when you go into a doctor’s office to have a surgical procedure done and they say, “This might pinch a little” or when you go to the dentist to get your… Continue reading “Discomfort” & Designing

Exciting News! Both The ThreadGatherer and Global Artisans have put together thread kits for my latest design, The River Rocks Pouch. I’m so grateful to both, for all their hard work in putting these kits together. In addition, both have thrown in discounts to anyone purchasing the kits. Both kits are needed to complete this… Continue reading Exciting News & Questionable Humor