What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 The Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour for June is Purple so I made two purple blocks for my project this week...one is purple (violet) and the other is magenta (red-violet).  Some of these fabrics have been in my stash for a long time and others are more recent acquisitions. 

Here are the 8 blocks I have made for this project so far. I will keep making one or two blocks a month until the end of the year and then put the top together.  I really like building a quilt this way--just a little sewing and cutting each month and ...

The Honey Fig tree is doing very well. Next week I will remove more grass and add mulch.

This is a pine tree seedling David got from Lowes. They were giving them away. The tree stump it's sitting atop was a dead pine tree that had to be removed.

The bougainvillea is really doing well. You can't see but there are several bright pink flowers on one stem.

Well, winter did not rear its head this week, thankfully, even though it was a bit chilly for a couple of days.  

I managed a few hours in the sewing room this week and completed two more placemats for Meals on Wheels.  I have three more tops made and they will be quilted and bound this coming week.  I have fabric picked out for the rest of the dozen placemats I will be making and hope to finish them soon as well.  I am the type of person who likes to get things done ahead of time so I don ...

Last weekend, I took a class with Mary Elizabeth Kinch on piecing with small bits of fabric.  The quilt I am making is called Summerhill.  It has 4 blocks surrounded by some borders.  I have now finished two of my blocks.  Each square in this first block finishes at one inch. 

The second one is a Courthouse step block--each log is .5" finished.  This is not paper pieced. 

I am using scraps from my cool Kona solids bin plus red violet.  About half of the scraps are all over my cutting table so I am going to have to keep ...

 My lupin block collection continues to grow...although, this week, the blocks were made with Finn's assistance, which means they took a lot longer to make than usual.  This week's blocks were made with a purple grunge dots fat quarter. 

So, now I have a total of 12/48 blocks made for this quilt.  Here are the three lupin fabrics I have used so far:

I have a FQ chosen for my next set of blocks. 

I started a new counted cross stitch project this week--a free pattern from The Blackberry Rabbit (Sorry, I can't provide a ...

As planned, I made 4 more lupin blocks this week, this time using a recently purchased fat quarter with raspberries on it.  My whole family loves raspberries!  At our first house, we had a raspberry patch. As soon as our daughter was old enough to discover the berries, they never made it into the house.  She ate them all, straight off the canes as soon as she went outside for the first time each day.  Here are my raspberry lupins.  (I checked google and lupins can be spelled with or without an "e" on the end--lupin or lupine)

I have always been someone who likes to get a head start on projects with a due date...I did this in school with essays and assignments and I do it now with gifts for special occasions such as birthdays or Christmas. So, yes, I have already started to make some Christmas gifts, which I cannot share on my blog for fear that the recipients will see them here before they unwrap them in December.  I am also working on a 20th Anniversary challenge for the Elgin Piecemakers Guild which I cannot show yet either.  All that being said, I ...

My goal for this week was to finish the y-seams on my Weight of Love quilt and get started on the appliqué...I am happy to report that I managed to accomplish this goal!  Those y-seams sure take a long time.  At the time I took this picture, I had one more seam to do. Note that my toe nails match my quilt...

Back in January, the program committee at the Oxford Quilt Guild issued a challenge.  Each person that wanted to participate was asked to bring in a yard of batik material and a pair of scissors.  We stood in a big circle and listened for instructions...  Fold the fabric in half, snip it at the fold, rip it in half, drop half in front of us and pass the other half to the person on our right.  "Fold it, snip it, rip it, drop it, pass it!"  This was repeated with until each of us had 7 pieces of batik fabric ...

Over the course of 16 months in 2018-2019, 10 quilting friends and I made and exchanged 20 neutral blocks each month.  We could use any neutral colours including cream, beige, brown, white, gray and black and each block was to be made using two lights and a dark or two darks and a light. This way, each of us ended up with 320 neutral blocks at the end of the swap.  I divided mine into two piles--1:  white, gray and black and 2: cream, beige and brown, and decided to make two different projects with my blocks.   

I found some ...

The neighbourhood is expanding!  I have 20 houses made now and lots of fabric set aside for more of them.  This will be an ongoing project for a few weeks.  

I also made the June and July blocks for the London Modern Quilt Guild HST block of the month mystery quilt.  There was one block for June and two for July so now I am all caught up until the next block pattern comes out in August.  Each month, we learn how to make HST's in a different way for our block that month. 

I started another knitted facecloth ...

Last week, I showed my first finished face cloth which I had knitted and this week, I made another one.  The second one went much more quickly.  I will be starting a third one tomorrow for Slow Sunday Stitching with Kathy and the other sewers, knitters, crocheters and embroiderers. 

The variegated yarn makes an interesting pattern.  

My hexagon quilt top is done.  As you can see, I decided to add 1.5" filler strips between the columns of hexagons. I needed the quilt to be a tad wider to make the proportions right.  The size of the borders was determined ...