Traveling

We are on the way home. Stopped for a brief visit with my sisters and will hit the road again in the morning. So far not getting the worst of the storm yet. Just overcast and windy. Not much to take pictures of. I have one of my sisters and I at lunch but it is on my phone and those always load sideways so will leave it on my phone.

A finish of sorts

Not. my finish but my daughter's and her fiancée.  Finished this portion of their education.

Aren't they just the sweetest graduates.

Arrived

Another day of driving brings us to our brother's in Cape Breton.

 

It is great to be here with them except they're both working.

Oh, well, they will be here soon.

On the road, again

We are enroute to our DD#1's graduation. 7+ hours driving yesterday. And off we go for another bunch today.

Finally finished

Two weeks of focusing only on the floibunda quilt have paid off. I have it finished two whole days before we hop in the van to head east. Since a recurring theme in my quilt giving has been to be still sewing the binding on the way to delivering them, this is a marvelous milestone. Now I even have time to kit up some hand sewing for the trip.
Here it is:

Swagging along

A day of steady quilting has the hearts and scribbles done. Plus three border rows, two straight lines and one zig. Just started on the swag.
Since today is Try it on Tuesday over at Jo's, I'm linking up.  Today I've been trying new ways to free motion quilt on my Floribunda quilt. I've always used chalk, mostly in the roller. Tried the pounce the other day and maybe didn't have enough holes because it didn't show up very well.  I found a border quilting design in Mary Covey's book of Civil War designs and she mentions using tracing paper to transfer the pattern. So I dug out an old dress pattern and copied the design on it. It was easier than I thought it would be and I cut and taped pieces together to get the whole length and make sure the repeat ended at the right place, which I'm sure wouldn't have happened if I was just winging it. My phone invariably posts pictures sideways, but here you can see the paper pinned to the edge and the sewing lines going through it. Definately going to keep this idea around.

 

Still Quilting

After a brief interruption for paid work, I am back to quilting. Before the week-end I got diagonal lines of quilting done with the walking foot, along each side of the ladders. Then I started free motion quilting inside. Doing meandering/stipple in the ladder sections and a linked heart in the bigger block. Was doing great until my bobbin ran out. Reloading it and restarting set off a rash of tension problems. Had to do some ripping out.

But here I am about 3/4 of the way through the body of the quilt.

Plus I have found a design for the border quilting. A swag from Mary M. Covey's "Follow the line Quilting Designs".  Feeling confident I will get this done in time. Maybe too confident, I went and accepted an extra shift for the weekend. I better get back to the machine.

Floribunda Update

Once Thanksgiving was finished, the work on Floribunda resumed. Since the borders were on it was time for a back. Several fabrics were auditioned, this is what i came up with, it wasn't big enough so I did a windopane thing.

 That took a day and a bit to get together, including a momentary brain fart where I cut the side borders at 2.5 instead of the 3.5 they needed to be.  Then on to sandwiching. The kitchen floor wasn't working out, not enough room to walk around the fabric, so I just happend to have this empty room where the painters had just finished

 Sorry for the glare but there were no curtains.

 Several hours later, I quit for the night

Good thing I used the room when I did because this is what it looked like about the time I quit quilting. My DS and DH had gotten this much moved it and it is starting to look like a bedroom instead of a work in progress.

Plotting another I Spy

I was bitten by the I Spy bug years ago.  But have only finished a half dozen of them. One of which I don't count because it was a "cheater" panel. They have resurface these past two years as gifts for friends having grandchildren. Especially one particular friend whos daughter and daugher-in--law seem to be popping them out every couple of months.
These are the quilts I've given her so far:

The last one I did as a memory game, using two of every image or similar object. The problem is how to top these, because another baby is coming.  And the answer came from crusing blogs. Mrs Goodneedle posted about doing a Picture Play quilt which lead me to http://amisimms.com/, and today my own Picture Play book arrived with a ton of ideas.  Just have to get that Floribunda together so I can play.

A Day at the Craft Fair

Today DH and I did something totally unusual and went to a fall craft fair. This is a pretty big one, held annually on Thanksgiving weekend and is really three fairs pretty close together. We had a wonderful time and some great finds.

 

The booths went on and on it seemed like forever, the whole town was covered in vendors. The rain held off, but it did get quite chilly when the sun ducked behind the clouds.  One of our finds was a friend, with a booth selling his wood turned bowls and stuff. And the biggest one was from our ash tree, we had gifted him a large burl when it was taken down and this is what he made from it.

The fall colours had really popped out, too bad I didn't get a picture until we were on the highway.

Our best find of the day came at the very begining.  While driving into the town where the fair was taking place, lots of people were taking advantage of the traffic to have yards sales. And at one sale, sitting under a saddle in the back we spotted this. DH did a wonderful job of turning around and getting back there once we realized what we had seen. And he even talked her down $10 since it didn't have a machine. But I do have a 1920's Singer that we think will work just fine in here once we get it cleaned up.

 

All in all a great day.  

Productive day

Today I buckled down and pushed a mountain of fabric through my machine. With visable results. Finished all the piano key borders.



Stupid phone, this is sideways,

Addendum

Couldn't get my phone to load both pictures at once. I also got the first border on Hopscotch

The Fairies are here!

The Fairy Fabric I ordered arrived today, a rather speedy delivery if I do say so. It only took two weeks, that is nothing for an order from the states. ( I think the customs guys at Canada Post sit around trying to guess the colour of the fabric through their x-ray machines, that's what takes so long).  However, I am being firm with myself and insisting that I finish at least one on-going project before I cut into the new fabric.  The piano keys for the Floribunda are in the lead for the moment, but while searching through all the boxes my fabric is stored in during the great  paint and move adventure, I found the sashing for two other projects and got them up and running.
So here is what I've gotten done so far today:


Hopscotch With Braid border
 

Piano keys
 

 In Bonnie's book "Leaders and Enders" Hopscotch is shown with a piano key border, however I am already doing one for Floribunda, so I decided to try the Texas braid border. The one I did for the Scrappy Bargello, used 2.5" wide rectangles but the braid pattern in Leaders uses 2" plus the red cornerstone.  This is all the sashing I have found so far for the Crayon Box quilt. I so hope the painting and moving is done soon, having everything either boxed up or spread around the house is driving me bonkers

Crayon Box with sashing started

Faries, uncut



 

Florbunda borders

Working on piano key borders for Florbunda

Hand Sewing Update #4

Well here it is the month has passed and I didn't get as much done as I hoped but I am getting better at the fans. Mostly it feels good to be getting this UFO done finally. Amd I am halfway through the body of the quilt, a big chunk done. I figured out the determent to sitting and sewing has been the shows that my DH has been watching. If I can get there first and pick something I want to watch a lot more stiching gets done.

Oopsy, forgot to put a link back to Bonnie's post showing our updates.
http://quiltville.blogspot.ca/2012/10/simple-one-hour-of-needle-thread-round.html
It has been interesting to see what the others have been working on. Glad Bonnie suggested this.