Very warm day today and spent it in the basement.

The temperature got up to 24 degrees today and it is March 19th.  We normally have tons of snow left, slowly melting at this time of year and it is much much cooler.  Not complaining.  I can take it.  It has been overcast for most of the day and we were to have a thunderstorm but it hasn't happened yet.  The dog will be thrilled if it does.

I have been downstairs working on Shirley's quilts and have tamed my fears of doing the feather meander type of quilting I have been doing.  It has gone better than expected but I am beat right now.  I hope to be able to finish it all tomorrow.  I can then bury the threads and give them back.  Yeah!!!  I can then quickly quilt the quilt for the silent auction.  I bought the fabric for the border and binding last week and finished sewing it on and making the binding on Saturday.  I also did the final border on my Crabapple wallhanging so that is ready to quilt when I have time.

I will finish the last batik quilt for the customer that lives out of town and her daughter will pick it up in April.

I can then dedicate time to quilting Sandra's lovely hollyhock applique quilt.  I pretty much know what I will quilt on it.  I am going to love doing that quilt.

I finally went to a MPQ meeting on Saturday and re-joined.  There were three women who had met Bonnie Hunter in Sarasota this winter and they told their stories and showed off some of the Quiltville quilts they have made.  It was great to see a completed RRCB and Orca Bay.  That inspired me to start working on my Orca Bay again.  I finished cutting the black triangles that I needed and I have started to sew some more of the red strip pieced squares.  I still have a lot of work to do on them and I am hoping to just use up all of the red fabric that I have instead of buying more.  I am sure I can squeeze them out.  What a blessing to have received those "scraps" from Rita.  I have used a lot of the blacks that she passed on to me and scrounged some red strips from the 1 1/2" pile that she gave me.  I am close to being able to start piecing the blocks.  Yeah.  Still a lot of construction left.

Time to finish making supper.

Happy stitiching.

Holy Snow Day Batman.

It has been snowing non-stop since last night and boy has the snow accumulated.  It starting to really blow with 50 - 60 km winds this afternoon.  My DH snow blew the walks and driveway but will have to do them again because it has drifted in again.  The dog and I just got back from a walk around the park and the path has really drifted in.  Good exercise any.  I am in my pajamas at 4:30 already because my pants are soaked and I didn't want to put on my jeans.  I am not going anywhere tonight anyway.

I tried to work on my customer quilt but I could not stand at the machine for long today.  Hopefully my gift will have settled down a lot by tomorrow.  I hope my doctor can do something for me.  This is getting old fast at 55.

Anyway,  I did sit at my work desk and started to sort some of the fabric that Rita gave me.  What a lovely selection.  I am sure there is enough there for me to finish my Orca Bay quilt and enough blue and beige squares to get a start on a Blue Ridge Mountain quilt.  The squares are 2 1/2 inches and the pattern calls for 2 inch squares so I will have some trimming to do but I don't care.  I may change up the pattern and use 2 1/2 inch squares and see how that works.  There are larger HST's in it that would have to then finish at 4 inches and that might look large.  I will have to do a mock up or see if there is a sample using those sizes to see if it looks too big and unwieldy.  I think it should be ok.  Maybe I will. Why not.

Well I should go feed his Lordship and start our supper.

Happy stitching

Gifted scrap fabric

A lovely long-time customer of mine brought over a pile of scraps for me today.  See photo.  She has been cleaning out her fabrics and donating the larger pieces to MCC and she gave me these because she knows I love to work on scrap quilts.  What a treasure of fabric.  I am going to have fun sorting through them.  My mind is overflowing with ideas right now.

There are fabrics from every colour of the rainbow.  Lots of narrow strips for strip blocks and tons of charm and 2.5" squares.  I am going to have fun fun fun.

Here is a good picture of our big boy.  Finally one where he is looking at me and not hiding or glaring.  It is hard to believe that he will be eight this summer.

Here is a picture of the 1600 quilt top that I am making for Jeff and Jackie's silent auction.  I still have to buy the border fabric and quilt it.  I am just quilting something simple and allover.

I have used the blue batik as the inner border and am going for something green for the outer border.  I better get to the fabric store soon.  The social is in April and March is tomorrow.

Back to work for me.  I just wanted to post the photo of the fabric before I sort it and put it in their bins.

Happy stitching.

Sit and Stitch with the ladies

Two of my quilting friends came over this afternoon for our monthly sit and stitch.  We had a nice visit and the coffee cake I made turned out good for a change.  I think that between the three of us only three or four stitches were made.  We spent most of the time catching up with chit chat about everything and anything. 

The girls had a tour of my workshop and we had a show and tell of all of my quilt tops waiting to be quilted and most of my UFOs as well.  Darlene is inspired to start using up her scraps now.

After panicking to have my bathroom painted and put back together, no one even went in there.  Oh well, it needed to be done anyway.

Back to work tomorrow.  I have a quilt on the machine that needs to be finished and another one started.  I have a customer dropping off a couple of quilts this week as well so I need to catch up.

Happy stitching.

Long Weekend Stuff

I am hosting a sit and stitch tomorrow with just two other women that I quilt with, therefore, I decided to paint the bathroom as it was past due and I would have been embarrassed to have anyone enter the room if I hadn't painted it.  Three tiles along side the tub broke off last year when we installed the new floor tiles so I finally glued them back on.  I finished the second coat about an hour ago so I am patiently waiting for the paint to dry.  Once the paint dries later today I will caulk along the tub and do a general caulk cleanup as well as elsewhere in the bathroom to make it look cleaner.  Our bathroom takes a beating since it is the only one in the house so that is the reason for the panic. 

I am just having a breather before I tackle anymore projects.  I would love to go downstairs and sit at my machine and sew bits and pieces together but I think that is out of the question for today.  I also need to find something to work on tomorrow when the ladies are here.  Little Brown Bird will most likely come out of hiding again.

Bonnie Hunter is hosting a thimble link up but my dimestore thimbles will not be worth the trouble to show.  I could take a picture of my great grandmother's gold thimble that my mother passed on to me but the batteries are almost toast in the camera and we only have one spare until I get to the store.  I am not sure that I want to share my blog with anyone anyway.

Well I must get back to work at cleaning up and deciding what to bake for our coffee break.

Happy stitching.

"Conway Ladies" meeting now to be called the "Scrap Bags"

     Just got home from our Conway ladies get together.  Sandra was the host this meeting.  She has a lovely condo in the south west of the city.  We had a lovely day sitting and stitching and catching up.  Our group has changed memberwise from the original bunch.  We lost some members to reasons that have not been divulged which always happens and we have picked up a few new women these past two months to fill the gaps.  Everyone has known each other for years and most of them belong to other satellite groups together already.

I worked on a "Little Brown Bird" block, but I was having trouble seeing what I was stitching.  I think new glasses or some magnifiers are in the near future.

When I got home I visited the Quiltville Quips and Snips blogspot and Bonnie Hunter has kindly pointed out a Sew-a-long in another blog to her followers.  I think I will join along.  The blocks are only six inches and machine pieced so I should be able to keep up (I hope).  I just spent the last half hour copying the instructions out.  The blocks are from a book called "Farmers Wife".  I will do it for fun out of scraps and try not to use any of the fabrics too often twice.  By the looks of it I will be able to use up a lot of my 2 1/2 inch strips and squares.  Yeah!  Good leader and ender projects.  I should kit up the blocks and have them next to the machine.  Good idea, she says to herself.

I should get moving and go downstairs and clean up the mess I left last night.  I want to finish quilting the quilt on the machine in the morning then I will need to go out and buy my son a birthday gift.  My baby boy will be 29 on the 17th.  Where does the time go.  I am not old enough to have a 29 year old child.  LOL.

Happy stitching.

What project should I work on today?

This morning the dog and I woke up to a windchill temp of -41 below.  Brrrrrr.  Needless to say the dog and I have not gone for a walk today and he really is restless.  He has asked to go out ten times today just because he is bored.  I am not dressing up to walk ten feet and he turns around and runs home because his feet are freezing.  The temps are going to warm up by Sunday and next week doesn't look that bad so we can get some major walking in.  I hope.

I eventually made my way downstairs and pieced one of the crabapple blocks together.  It looks very dull so I will have to find some nice sashing fabric to bring some life to it.  I wanted to see if two blocks across would be too big for the wallhanging space I have and I think it will if I want to do a checkerboard border.  I am going to play around.  I am not going to buy any fabric for it either.  I must use up the stuff I have and not bring anything else in for a while.  If I get frustrated with this project I will cut the sashings for the hopscotch butterscotch quilt.

I am definitely not in the mood to quilt a customer quilt.  I may start picking out some of the quilting on the RRCB so that I can make the backing bigger.  Yes, I screwed up.  I pieced a backing and did not make it long enough.  What a twit.  I am going to make of strip of the left over blocks and add them to the backing.  I did not know what I was going to do with them anyway and this is a good place to put them.  They are the uglier ones anyway so they won't be seen.  I was not going to make pillows with them or another quilt so this is a great way to use them up.

I did quilt one of my customer's quilts yesterday afternoon and that went quickly because I just did a large meander.  This quilt is going to Africa with an exchange student that has been here for a few years.  It has all Canadiana type images on the fabric pieces such as maple leaves, bears, deer and pine trees.  It is quite a clever idea for something like this.  I have two more batik Magic Tile quilts from the same client to do and they will have simple all over designs quilted on them.  One will be ferns and the other will be swirls.  My legs and back are sore today so I think I will cool it with the standing.

Anyway, enough wasting time and back to work.  My DH will be home from his business trip tonight so I should make an effort to have the place tidy as well.

Happy quilting.