Summer Solstice

I cannot believe that I have not posted since February.  Oh well, nothing to say I guess.  I have not been doing much quilting lately because the garden keeps calling me.  It is another overcast day, a good one for yard work.  I think I will take advantage and do some more weeding and fixing of garden beds.  I will take a few pictures to post, the garden beds always look better in photos.  I must also solve the weed problem in the lawn.  I don't want to spray because of the dog.

I have been taking a few minutes here and there and piecing 6 1/2 inch crumb blocks together.  They work up quite fast.  I want to get rid of all of those scraps as I am tired of the fabrics.  I want some new stuff, but I don't want to buy any more until I use up what I have.  It will get done.

Well, Fred is up so I can make noise now.

Bye for now.

Scrap HSTs

I somehow hurt my knee over the weekend.  Don't ask me how, but I can barely bend it, so I am having trouble getting up out of a chair and stairs are impossible.  I cannot get downstairs to do laundry or get at my longarm.  I just need to quilt the feathers in the centre of the piece and I can't get down to do it.  I have traced the design on tracing paper for all four sections and I hope to follow them on the squares.  I am not confident enough to freehand them because I want them to be the same.  One day I will win the lottery and purchase a Statler or one of the other computerized systems, but right now it is just me. 

So the whole point of this post is to show the picture of the bonus hst's that I am squaring up to use in a project.  These units were from the Maple Leaf quilt that I pieced many years ago.  It is still downstairs waiting for me to quilt it.  I made it king sized because my plan was to use it over our twin beds so it looked like a king but since we don't have both beds in the same room any more I may re-size it or quilt it for the kids.  Most likely I will give it to the kids. (who are enjoying the warm Florida weather right now)

I received my copy of Bonnie Hunter's new book on Tuesday and there is a pattern for a quilt that I may make using these squares.  Her quilt is called 'Holy Toledo' and it is similar to 'Lady of the Lake'.   I will play around and see if the units will work.  Quite a few of the units are not light/dark so it may look like mud.  I will see.

There is also a pattern in her book called 'Tumalo Trail' which I really like as well.  I do have a pile of nine-patches using 1 1/2 inch squares that I could use in it.  I will also have to change the name of the quilt to 'Tu-Pelo Trail'. LOL.

Here is a picture of my sweetie wondering what he did.

Isn't he gorgeous.  He is very camera shy and it is hard to get a proper picture of him.

I am off to hobble around the house again.

Happy Quilting,
Lynne

RRCB pictures

Here are two pictures of my Roll Roll Cotton Boll quilt.  The colours do not look great in the pictures.  My pinks look orange.  I am taking a digital photography course from Continuing Education and the instructor informed us that we could change the settings to get a better picture than the default settings.  Who knew.  I guess one should read the instruction manual.  I am going to play with the camera and try to take some better pictures of the quilt, probably once it is quilted.  I am so excited that I finally took the time to play around with the camera and downloaded all of the pictures on the disk.  There are some pictures of the Terry Fox t-shirt quilt I made for the charity run and one of feathers I did on a customer quilt.  I will post them another time. 

I think now that I know how to download pictures and am not afraid of doing it anymore, I will take pictures of all of my work and post it.

I am off to have a coffee then downstairs to the longarm to quilt my wall hanging.  Pictures to follow as well.

Happy Quilting,
Lynne

My RRCB is finally finished.

I have finally finished sewing the last seam on my RRCB tonight.  What a huge relief to have it finished.  I hope to put the top on the machine this week and get it quilted.  I did take a couple of pictures and I will wait to post them after I take my course next week. 

If Bonnie has another mystery next year I do not think I will join in.  I have enough large quilts right now and no beds to put them on.  I did the Carolina Christmas quilt and was not terribly thrilled with the outcome and I was really on the fence with the RRCB so I really think I need a break.  It is a lot of work to keep up and I have had enough self imposed stress the past few years.  Time to take a break from stress.  I have to use up all of my scraps on charity quilts this year before I start something new anyway.  The exception will be wall hangings for my living room and hallway.  If I need fabric for those I will buy it but I will shop the stash first.  I want to use up my batiks.

On a personal note, my back is killing me today.  I guess from either sitting with poor posture at my machine for so many days straight or from the great lunk of a dog sleeping with me all night.  Why I let him I do not know. 

We had so much snow today.  I could barely see further than the basketball hoops and the far end of the park was invisible.  It took Fred ages to snow blow and the roads were horrible to drive on.  It is a good thing we have a great system for snow plowing in this city so tomorrow we will be all back to normal.

Happy quilting,
Lynne

Plugging away.

Another cold morning.  They have started carving the snow sculptures in St. Boniface so it should start to warm up now. 

On Friday I finished sewing the string blocks and pressed and cut them in half.  Yeah!  Yesterday, I finished sewing them in twos and fours so I am ready to arrange all of the blocks on my design wall and see how they look.  I am anxious now to see it put together.  I think this will be the first of all of my quilt tops to be quilted.  I haven't decided how I am going to quilt it yet.  I think because there is so much play in each block I am going to custom quilt the top.  I know I will run into trouble if I try to use a panto and I really don't have anything that would work for this quilt.  The pattern has to be curvy because there are so many angles to the blocks.  I have a bit of time to think about this.  I am really starting to like the quilt.  When Step 7 was up I was a little disappointed but once I saw my blocks with my fabric choices I felt a little better.  Then when Step 8 was revealed I was happy, the border makes the quilt.  It makes all of the colours pop.  I think I will use the constant blue fabric as my inner border strip.  I cut too many for the hsts so they are cut and ready for me. I will audition them first.

Last night, instead of putting the RRCB blocks on the design board I pulled out my bonus hsts from Carolina Christmas and finished pressing them open and then I am squaring them up.  Not all of them square up to unfinished two inches so I am squaring them to 1 7/8".  This will be fine since I am going to make a wall hanging with just those units so it doesn't matter.  I nosed around in the quilter's cache site and found a block that should work out fine.  I may make a few more units up with a different neutral for some interest.  We will see.

I can hardly wait to take the photography course so that I can upload photos of my blocks and quilts into my blog.

Happy quilting,
Lynne

One of the coldest days of the year.

Good morning.  The temperature this morning is -26C and with the windchill the temp will reach -38C. BRRR!  Charlie doesn't want to go out this morning.  Go figure.

I have been slogging away at my string blocks for the RRCB quilt and am determined to finish the top before I start any more projects.  I am going to make the quilt smaller than Bonnie's pattern calls for, just using four prickly pear blocks by five down with the string blocks between.  I had pieced enough of everything (except for the string blocks) for the full sized quilt but I will use the leftovers somewhere else.  I am thinking of making pillow shams or cases using the seminole border strips as borders on the sham.  Why waste fabric.

I have been reading Bonnie Hunter's blog and she had pictures of miniatures of her patterns.  That inspired me to make up something with bonus hst units that I have kicking around for one of the hallway wallhangings I want to do.  I pulled out the "Combing through your Scraps" book and there are some great ideas there.  The quilts all use split nine patch blocks so I think I will sort through my scraps and make up a leader and ender kit.

I have pinned my last customer quilt (for the winter) on the rollers yesterday and will go down and start quilting today.  The customer just wants something simple and light so I have a few ideas.  The top is for her grandson who is legally blind so the colours are quite bright and cheery, nice to work on during this cold spell in January.  The basement is freezing at this time of year so I will be working in small spurts.  My hands and legs go numb.

I am looking forward to the photography class so that I can learn to post pictures in my blog.

Well off to my day.

Happy stitching.

Up early to view the final mystery clue.

I just looked at the Quiltville blog for the last clue and border treatment.  It does bring the quilt together.  I know it will be fussy work, especially the corners.  The quilt does look good but I still have not decided if I will make the whole quilt as is or my own version of it.  Too soon to tell.  I am still feeling groddy this morning so I will not make any decisions.

Once I figure out how to use this blog properly, I will start to list my projects in categories for my own records.  I have so many UFO's to complete and RRCB is now another one.    I am making a vow now not to join the mystery if there is one next year.  I have enough quilts on the go.  No one in the family is getting married and if they were most likely would not want a quilt anyway.  So NO MORE LARGE QUILTS for me.  I have a list of wallhangings and tablerunners I want to do so once I get my UFO's ready to quilt I will start on them.  The hallway hanging is the most important next project right now.