Saturday 30 March 2013

An Unexpected Finish

 

I’ve been pretty busy with cooking and cleaning this past while but did manage to squeeze in some time for quilting.

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This is the Lighthouse Lap quilt I was working on for DH. His father’s birthday was this week and as we wracked our brains trying to come up with a gift, I threw out the suggestion that I could finish this up for him provided DH wasn’t too put out to have “his” quilt given away. Since he want something bigger than lap size he wasn’t bothered at all.

We presented it to him at the family dinner last night and he was very pleased.

Last Friday I gave Tinkerbelle in the Log Cabin  away to her recipient.

100_2551Thus I’ve finished and presented 5 quilts this month. I think I’ll give myself a “Whoop Whoop”  Pretty sure this is the most productive month ever, although since most of these were started in previous months, Feb and Jan have to take some credit.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Totally Side-tracked Tuesday

I was doing so good focusing on finishing Superman and cleaning house. Then I saw some blog posts that sparked an idea and I just had to do a sample block to see if it worked… And then it became Wednesday.

The first de-railment was a comment on the Album block in Bonnie's post. It got me thinking about how to turn a nine patch into an album block and I had to try it.

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Then while I was cleaning off a bookcase, I found a quilting book I had forgotten about. While flipping through it to see if it was worth keeping, I came across a block called Birds on the Tracks and it looked like it could be a way to use up some of the bonus triangles from clipping corners. So I had to give it a try.

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I think it is going to use up these pinks that are left over from an I Spy I did – the one with the star sashing. Not sure I have enough to do more than one block, maybe I’ll make it the centre of a medallion quilt.

But I did get the borders done on the re-make of the Superman quilt. Now to get it quilted.

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Monday 18 March 2013

Finally a finish

This baby bargello has been taking so long to finish that I was getting tired of it. The fact that I had to un-sew and re-sew one of the panels and re-cut a new fourth panel didn’t help endear it to me. But here it is finished and hanging to dry on the clothesline. Where it ended up freezing solid instead of drying as the temperature dropped and snow started again. Six days until spring? I think not.

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Sunday 10 March 2013

Happy Thoughts

Some good stuff to go along with the bad. Thursday DH and I drove into Toronto to meet up with his brother and deliver two quilts to his cousin. I made the Thomas and Princesses for his cousin's grandchildren.  While there his other cousin brought out the quilts I had made for her boys back in the 90’s.  At the time I made these quilts I wasn’t photographing my quilts like I do now so I have very little documentation. So I was very glad to get a chance to take some photos and to see how they have held up to the years.
007From 1992, hand turned applique of Sue and Sam. I still have one of these blocks in my orphans.
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By 1994 I was doing fusible applique and sealing the edges with fabric paint. The blocks in the middle are his initials. Other than the puppy losing an eye it’s held up well. I really regret not doing more quilting on these, I just did a basic in the ditch around the sashing.
A really happy visit albeit brief.

Disappointment

I had high hopes going into this weekend that I would get two quilts done for co-workers. And perhaps if I had been better at time management maybe I might have. But yesterday we went to my SIL’s and helped install a bathroom cabinet and wound up visiting late. So very little done on quilting.  This morning I resolved to jump right in and get going, yeah like that happened. Finally by 2 I had Superman basted and under the needle

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Things were going so well, until I got to the border and had a glimpse of the back,

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So frustrated. I don’t want to un-sew all this. What I’m really tempted to do is go back to the cutting board and start over. Throw a binding on this one and donate it. I hate making mistakes and I hate trying to fix them.