Thursday 30 May 2013

Busy like bees

 

We’ve been as busy as a whole hive of bees here. The long weekend we just had is traditionally the time to plant ones garden here in Canada, and we’ve been going to it with great gusto. Not much sewing done at least none finished and who wants to look at ongoing projects, not.

Was planning on doing a link with Colorado Lady’s Vintage Thursday to show off these Ruby Flash dishes I found while thrift store shopping

100_2612but her linky seems to be closed.

Oh, the on-going project currently under the needle is a Trip Around the World from Bonnie’s directions.

100_2614

Working on the centre strip now.

Wednesday 15 May 2013

100th Post


I almost  missed this milestone. Luckily I glanced at the post counter. Then there was the dilemma of what to say.
thnku 
And this cute card that came today says it all  “Thank YOU”.  Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting and a big thank you for not telling me that I”m a terrible writer.
Maybe I should do a give-away but what??? Anyone want some fabric?

What a coincidence. Was scrolling back through the posts to see exactly when I started this. I knew it was in May but what day.  And it is also a year today. 

Saturday 11 May 2013

Dash of Flower

My Dash of flowers quilt is done and drying a whole day early. Presenting it to MIL tomorrow at brunch.



So funny, I took this picture with my phone and wrote the post on the phone. Hung the quilt sideways because the phone usually posts my picutes sideways, instead it turned the picture upside-down.

Thursday 9 May 2013

Vintage Thursday

 

I really don’t need more sewing machines and I definitely have no room  for more. Given those two facts, I don’t usually browse the sewing machine section on e-Bay. And seeing what happened the one day I did, not going to again.

 

100_2595

My newest machine .

Straco Sew - o - Matic Senior Little Betty Sewing Machine

And it fits in my sewing room. On a shelf.

Linking up today Colorado Lady's Vintage Thursday

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Mindless piecing

 

I spent the day trying to figure out a back for the floral churn dash. Finally came up with a plan. The hardest part was the multitude of choices. I have so many pieces of yardage, especially floral. But I’ve managed to use up a big chunk of one of them. I found it last year at the thrift store and paid about $3. Two yards of Pat Sloan’s Old Blooms. Which seemed very appropriate for my MIL’s quilt.

Old Blooms

The centre square is from another floral pint and is a nosegay. The orange side bars are a result of an arithmetic error but now that they are in place it sets everything off so well I’m calling it a design choice.
Here’s the finished front.
100_2598

One of the fabrics doesn’t photograph well and I get that glare every time.

While I was working on this I need something for leaders and enders that was pretty mindless so I pulled out Easy Street. I’ve been meaning to get back to this and realized it has been months since I touched it. All the containers of pieces have been cluttering up my sewing area so time to get it out of the way.

100_2596

My design wall is not big enough for this, I have more done, only a dozen blocks left.

Monday 6 May 2013

Fortunate Sighting

I was lucky to catch sight of a fabulous sunset tonight from my up-stairs windows.  So I hurried down and walked over to the lake to try and capture it before it ended.

100_2589

I was almost too late. 

It was a good diversion from trying to decide on borders for the Floral Churn Dash.

100_2586100_2587

I think the purple is staying but with a black outer border, the one at the far left in left photo. It has multi-colour tulips on a black background. But I haven`t fully decided yet.  So I`m puttering about with another Sister`s Choice while I ponder.

Sunday 5 May 2013

A Finish–but not mine


I was so excited to see the pictures posted by Jo over at Jo’s Country Junction. She finished the top I sent her and it is wonderful.  She’s done an awesome job.  I can’t believe all the quilts she has done to donate to West, Texas.  The time and effort she’s put into all this just takes my breath away.
This was not a top I did, as I think I mentioned before. Just a mercy bid on a good looking quilt top, that I wound up winning. The seller also included the backing and binding.  Which gave me some trouble, since in the two years since buying I had moved my sewing room twice and things became separated. But all ended well.  
The detail in this top was amazing.  The seller had pieced crumb blocks for the alphabet with every fabric in the block matching the letter.  And some letters had more than one block, making it huge.  Plus numbers in rows on the top and bottom. A work of art.
Meantime, I seem to have misplaced a week or two and somehow Mother’s Day is 6 days from now. These floral churn dash blocks are supposed to be a lap quilt for my MIL.
100_2585
I finished the last blocks today after work. I should be able to finish this up in time. Just have to finalize the border decisions. 

Friday 3 May 2013

yikes, look how long it’s been


I did get the quilt top packed up and shipped off to Jo.  And after worrying all week about it, got an e-mail today saying it had arrived and had been quilted. I’m so very happy. She’s even going to show pictures of it  on her blog!
While waiting and worrying, I worked on the nine-patch I unearthed. And I was very happy to have such a large clean floor space as it quickly became to big for my wall.
Several errors occurred in the piecing of this top, setting rows on the diagonal was new to me. But I used the un-sew function and kept moving on.
001001
Hopefully they all were corrected. It is still waiting for a second border.
I also did some quilting, finishing off a baby Sister’s Choice.
001The colour on this is really bad, that is a vivid raspberry outside border. DH is being a very unhappy quilt model, as there are still pins in the binding, luckily there is no audio.  Only a simple quilting because it has a high-loft batting. The last I had, pieced together all the scraps to make it big enough.