Update

We lost our lovely boy October 21, 2016.  He will be forever missed.

We also lost my Mom December 29, 2016 after a lengthy illness.  She was not well, not happy and is now in a better place.  Shortly after her passing a picture popped in my head of her when she was younger and she was leaning against my Dad with a big smile on her face looking very happy with my beloved Charlie leaning against her.  I know now that they are all safe, no longer ill and in pain and happy together.

Enough sad stuff.  On to quilting.  Because my life has not been my own these last few years I have got quite behind with blogging, sewing and stuff in general.  I have sewn a couple of charity baby quilts ready for batting and backing.  I think I will just make tops and do the finishing all at once.  Easier to store.  I also made all of the six inch blocks for a 'Trail Mix' quilt.  They are pinned in rows ready to sew when I can get around to it.  I have three customer quilts that need to get done before I tackle it.  Having said that I gave been playing at the machine paper piecing blocks for a 'Pineapple Crazy ' quilt.  I decided that it is too tedious and not enjoyable to work on so I am just going to make a wall hanging and call it done.  I gave put that away until the customer quilts are done and gave just been sewing crumb strips and string blocks for future charity quilts.  I am hoping to use up every last crumb and string because I am overwhelmed with them and also sick if the fabrics.

I have been doing a bit if Charity knitting as well but that will be in my next post.

Well since today is Saturday I am not going to work on the customer quilts and just do fun things with the hubby.

Happy quilting.

Post to save some photos just in case.

Charlie having a snooze.  Charlie showing me where the treats are?  Charlie relaxing in the snow, weird dog.  Charlie after successfully destroying his Christmas toy.  Handsome boy.  Yum, ice cream.  Flowers from my sister for my 60th.  My pretty little patio display, weeds and all.  Giant zucchini from the garden.  It is either the third or fourth picked this year.  I made two small and one large zucchini breads.  I also had four cups left over for zucchini pancakes. 

Crazy spring

I have not been inspired to post anything to the blog.  I think I would like to change the name because I am interested in more than quilting these days.  I taught myself to knit more than scarves last year and have tackled socks, hats and mittens.  I have knitted socks for Fred, Nicole and myself so far and they did turn out ok.  I don't think I will bother again unless I can afford the good sock yarn and it is not wool because it makes me itchy.  I have made hats for Fred, Mike and Nicole.  I have made several hats for Koats for Kids and mittens as well.  Knitting for Koats for Kids is a great project for me for sitting in front of the tv and for taking along to appointments.

I finally finished my last customer quilt the week before last.  Thank goodness.  I cannot take that pressure and responsibility anymore.  I guess it has to do with everything that has been happening I. My life the past few years.

My mother is finally in a temporary personal care home and she hates it.  She is sharing a room right now but will eventually be moving to another home when a space becomes available.  I hope it is soon because I am sick of her games and I hope she will be happier having her own private space.  She is not the easiest woman to deal with.

The weather has turned and we have had below zero nights these past few days.  I am hoping the rhubarb, hollyhock and shallots I have planted survive.  They are covered up.

I have to come up with a new name for my blog and try and figure out how to make the changes.

Happy quilting

Happy belated New Year 2016

I haven't posted for quite sometime because I forget to.  I did make and complete a couple of projects for Christmas gifts.  I quilted the Mexican Star top and gave it to Nicole for Christmas because it was purple and I made a Winter Wreath tablerunner for Ruth my hairstylist.  Job well done for a change.  Forgot to take pictures of them of course.

I have some customer quilts to complete but Christmas, my mother's frequent hospital visits, appointments and my rotten cold have thrown me for a loop and I can't imagine ever getting caught up.  

My DM has been panelled for a spot in a personal care home, yeah.  She will hopefully get a spot by the end of the summer, then clearing out if all of her junk begins.

I have to say that I am so glad I did not do the mystery quilt this time around.  I knew I was going to be too busy and when the colours were announced I knew that I did not want a quilt in red, gold, gray, black and neutral.  The quilt revealed is quite hideous.  I like most of the ones that did not use her colour choices so much better because I do not like red and gold together unless green is there to neutralize the combo.  Eggs and ketchup, yuck.  Happy I did not waste my time.  I am hoping she will come up with an autumn coloured quilt for the mystery one year.  I will keep my fingers crossed.

I wrote to the company that distributes self threading needles because there usually is only one needle in each package that doesn't shred the thread and I could not find it in the package I had.  Well, they kindly sent me all of the loot in the photo following.  Lucky me.  I will never run out, I hope.

That is it for me.

Happy quilting.

Easy Street done.

My 'Easy Street' quilt , pattern by Bonnie Hunter, is done.  This was one of her mystery quilts from a couple of years ago.  I finally quilted it this summer with a pattern called sticky buns and finished binding it last night.  I wish I had put a border on it but it would have been way too big for my bed.  I want to make some pillow shams to match since there is not pillow tuck room.  I also need to make a label for it.  I just have to find the details to include on the label.  Photo below.

Next up is quilting the baby quilt for the neighbour and then I just found out my doctor is expecting in November and since she has been so good to us and my mother that I felt I must give her something and a baby quilt is one of the best gifts as far as I am concerned.  I saw a cute easy one on Pinterest that I may use as inspiration.

Happy quilting.

My potato reveal.

It started out to be a nice cool morning yesterday, after the above 30 degree weather we had last week.  I decided it would be a good day to harvest the potatoes and have them for supper.  My 

DS and his girlfriend were coming for dinner.  I was surprised by the outcome, there were more potatoes than  I expected but less than I had hoped.  They had scab too which disappointed me so I can't really store them.  I think we can eat them all up this week.  What a difference between fresh potatoes and store bought, very crisp when cutting up to cook.  I have since learned that I should not have used manure in the buckets, so next year I will get better soil and look for specific potato fertilizer.  The experiment was fun. 

I managed to sew the binding on my Easy Street quilt.  It does look nice on the bed however I wish I could have put on a border.  It would have been way to big for my bed if I had.  I am sure I will get used to it being borderless.  One more almost finish.  

There is a baby quilt on the machine for the neighbour's first grandchild that needs to be quilted.  I have to change the backing because the fibres pop through with the stitching.  I may just quilt zigzags on the domestic machine and call it done.  Don't know yet.

Next up on the machine will be a fall themed wallhanging for the hallway.  Hopefully it will be done before Christmas, lol.

Happy stitching.

First UFO a finish of 2015

This quilt was started in October of 2000 at a class taught at a now closed quilt shop called The Old Cotton Shop.  I finally put in on the machine in December meant as a Christmas/Birthday gift for the DH.  It took awhile to get it quilted because of the holidays and it was time consuming due to all of the thread colour changes.   It is done and on the bed, yeah.

I have some customer quilts  I am working on right now but once done I will get started on another long time UFO.  I have a lot of quilts in the queue for quilting plus my niece is having a baby in April so a couple of baby quilts are in my future to make.  One will be a rag and the other who knows.  

I have a couple of on going scrap quilt projects on the go.  I am paper piecing a 'Wild & Goosey' project.  I don't know how big it will get because I am just going to use the batik scraps I have on hand and I will keep on going until they are depleted.  I need to make at least 196 three and one half inch paper pieced squares for a throw size and I have only completed eight so far.   The other scrap paper pieced project is a 'Pineapple Crazy' quilt and that is using even smaller pieces than for the W&G.

I also have charity quilts to get started working on but they can wait.

Better get at it.

Happy quilting

Happy New Year 2015 !

It looks like a cold and sunny start to the new year.  I have been playing with fabric this morning working on putting the mystery quilt together.  The reveal was posted last night and I really like the layout.  I spent a couple of hours last night finishing up one of the steps so that I would have everything  ready to put together if the reveal was posted at midnight.  I was still downstairs sewing when it was posted but my iPad was out of juice so I did not see it until I went upstairs to bring in the new year with DH.  I did not have the energy to go back down and start working on it.  I need to download another audiobook to keep me company while sewing and I will most likely spend the day sewing.  

As well as finishing up the clue for GI, last night, I pieced the triangles together for the first border of CS.  It looks not bad.  I do think I will donate it to St. Amant or somewhere.  It is way too bright for me and I think a child would love it. 

Trying to add the Grand Illusion graphic button but of course I can't figure out how.  I will try on the PC because the iPad gives me grief when trying to do anything other than read posts.  

Happy Quilting. 

Christmas has snuck up on me again.

Of course I am not ready but I have a week to get caught up.  I am trying to quilt a quilt for a gift for my DH.  He has complained for years that I have never made him one so this is my chance, especially since I don't have any money of my own to buy him a gift.  I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can get it done. 

I have been busy trying to set up my Christmas village.  I saw a picture on someone's blog a couple of years ago where they had set up their village under their tree.  I thought it was a great idea especially since we really don't have gifts to put under the tree anymore.  I also like the fact that the tree doesn't look empty after Christmas.  

I think it turned out great.  I smelled like a locker room after but it is done.

Happy quilting

Finally some decent weather and 37 baby quilts.

Ha

     After such a long cold winter we are finally enjoying some warm double digit temperatures however things are not well with our little family.  DS has been struggling with bi-polar disorder, not properly diagnosed, and it has spiralled out of control.  He has been highly delusional these past few days and it has gotten worse with a desire to commit suicide to stop all the thoughts and feelings.  We took him to the crisis centre twice and they sent him away.  We finally had to call the police to take him in and after a whole day of my DH sitting with him there they admitted him to hospital.  I pray with all my heart they can help him.  He is highly paranoid right now and the bizarre things he has been saying scare the hell out of me. He has a long way to go before he is well enough to go back to work if he still has a job.  We will worry about that later, he needs to get well first.

Since this blog is supposed to be about quilting I better include some of that in my post.  The Thelma Wynn project has ended for the year and we had the tea on the 15th of May.  I have posted a few pictures of the quilts I made/donated.  One day I will get the hang of adding pictures to my posts but since this iPad has a mind of its own I doubt I will ever get there.   Some I quilted and some were tied by one of the ladies in the group that does not sew but likes to help out.  I made 37 quilts this year, three bibs and several burp cloths.  I am tired so I packed all the leftover fabric away for now and quilted a customer quilt for a change.  

     Another of my longtime customers, that no longer drives, wants a couple of quilts done.  DH, the dog and I will do a road trip and pick them up.  The customer is in her late 80's and she lives in one of the lake communities so we don't mind the trip since it is a nice area to visit.

I am hoping our son is recovering by then so we can take time out and not have to worry about leaving him alone.

More pictures.

Happy stitching.

Winter's Song top is finally finished and on the longarm.

I finally finished appliquéing and piecing the wallhanging and have it on the machine.  I drew out some quilting ideas on the freezer paper pattern and then started quilting the sky.  It looks like crap so far.  I can't even look at it right now.  I am going to let it sit a day and see if I still hate it, if is, I will pick it out but only after I have quilted most of the rest of the top.  I think I need to quilt the sky a little tighter with smaller feather fronds as well. I am not even posting a picture of it because I am so disappointed and discussed.  

I have decided to make charity quilts with my Celtic Solstice blocks.  The quilt is way too bright for me and goes with nothing in this house so making them into children's quilts makes sense.  I also would have to make more parts to make it fit on one of our beds and I had no desire to buy more orange fabric or the will to sew any more of the parts.  I can split them into either four or five tops depending on whether I want to make squares or rectangles.  The pattern is out of whack if I make a sixteen block square but I think it would not matter to the baby receiving the quilt.  We will see.

Well DS brought his laundry over because they don't have machines in his building yet so I better go put his next load in.  How come I get the honours?  Once a Mom always a Mom.

Happy Stitching.

It is the middle of January already.

It is hard to believe that this is the middle of January already.  The temperature was to be around zero but we ended up having blizzard like conditions and of course DS was moving today.  His 

box spring ended up being airborne and his mattress got wet.  Hopefully everything will have dried out before he goes to bed.

I spent most of the day finishing up the appliqué on WInter's Song.  I have it all done except I have to fix something I fixed.  Not happy with my fix so back to the drawing board tomorrow.  Sashng and borders go on tomorrow as well.  Yeah!

I have all my blocks done for CS and I am looking forward to sewing them together.  Maybe on the weekend I can get to it.  I have to take my mother grocery shopping Friday morning and then I have a sit and stitch with some quilting buddies.  We haven't seen each other for awhile so I am looking forward to it.  We all decided to do CS and are all at various stages of completion so we are looking forward to seeing what we have done.

Photos tomorrow.

Happy stitching.

Another frigid January day.

Charlie and I are still curled up on the couch not wanting to get moving this freezing cold morning.  Anyway, DH and DS have both gone off to work so I do not have to be quiet.  I think some major vacuuming and cleaning should be done while I have a chance.  I also want to head out to Target to get those flannel sheets that are on sale, they also have some gift bags on sale for cheap so I will pick up some more if any are left.

I am taking a break from my Celtic Solstice quilt for a couple of days to get caught up with Winter's Song.  I may change up my setting because of the design that someone posted on Facebook.  It looks great but only if all of the oranges are as saturated a red orange colour as in the design.  I will play around with the blocks later on and make a plan.  I am not ready to quilt it right now anyway so I can wait and play.

Below is the EQ design for CS that I am in love with.  Enough of sitting around.  Time to get going.

Happy stitching

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

First post of the year.  Hopefully I will post a little more often in the future.

I spent most of the day squaring up my Celtic solstice mystery quilt units.  Bonnie Hunter posted the reveal as a surprise so I made up two of the blocks to see how they looked.  I may put it together like someone posted on fb instead of the Quiltville setting.  Someone else posted a great border treatment as well that I may steal.  My units are all in a storage bin waiting for me to get going on the top, hopefully I can work on it tomorrow.

I put all of the fabric away and sorted all the scraps into their bins as well.  I feel good now that the mess has been cleaned up.  I need to get back to the appliqué so that I can it ready and quilted for the quilt show this spring.  Better get busy.

I also want to make a list of UFO's that I want to complete this year.  I say it every year but I want to try to not buy any more fabric this year unless I need it for borders or backing to finish up a project.  this is the year of using up my scraps.  I like the wonky stars pattern that Bonnie is working on, that should use up a lot of 2 1/2 inch squares and scraps.  I also want to work on Tumalo Trail and get rid of those little squares.  Good luck to me.

Happy stitching

Good Minus 31 Celsius Sunday Morning.

Woke up early because I have been sleeping on the couch since Christmas Eve and my hip is protesting.  DS may have found an apartment and occupancy is immediate so hopefully I will have my bed back sooner than expected.  I am also going to buy new girly print sheets for my bed to celebrate.  I hope it sticks this time.

I am waiting to see if DH wants to brave the cold and go to church this morning.  If not I plan to go downstairs and work on CS.  Yesterday we had blizzard like conditions with wind chill warnings so I worked on CS for most of the day.  The colours of parts 3 and 4 can't help but cheer a person up.  

Here is a photo of what I have been up to.

 

I feel like doing something quiet right now, as it is 8:06 a.m., so I think I will cut out the pieces for clue 5 then I just can sit and sew when the mood strikes.  Oh boy is my sewing room a mess.

A photo of the mess on my cutting table.    My plan is to get all my scraps cut and sorted before I start any new projects.  I do need to finish Winter's Song for the quilt show and The Thelma Wynn project should be starting up again in the new year.  Busy, busy.

Back at it,

Happy stitching.

Working on clue #3 of the mystery.

Testing my new iPad to see if I can post pictures right to my blog entries.  Here goes.

These are bits and pieces of clue 3.

It will take some getting used to, I can tell right now, but how great is that to be able to post photos right away instead of pulling from camera downloads.  This is the best Christmas gift ever!!!!!

Clues 1 and 2 above waiting to be sewn into the quilt.  I should be finished clue 3 this afternoon, 100 of the squares are sewn into clue 5 and 100 are sewn into pinwheel blocks.  I need to start the four patches today or tomorrow, then I will start clue 5.  Yeah! I am catching up.

Better get back to it.

Happy stitching.

Boxing Day Coma

We are having a nice Christmas so far.  Our DS stayed over Christmas Eve and Christmas night and may be coming here again after work tonight.  It has been great to have him here.  He is not getting along with his roommate and is finding things difficult.  He is welcome to stay here until he can find somewhere else to live which I hope will be by Feb 1.    

Leftovers for supper and soup started simmering for supper tomorrow (with homemade noodles).  Yum.

On a quilty note, I finished up Clue 2 and started Clue 3. I am mixing up the methods for construction of the hst's.  I am making some using the magic 8 method and some by using the easy angle ruler.  Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to finish them up and start on the four patches.  Clue 5 should be posted tomorrow morning so I will still be as behind tomorrow as I was today.  Oh well, it is not a race. I am finding that I do not have much variety left in fabric choices.  I sure do not want to buy any more fabric if I don't have to. 

Photos tomorrow as I am too tired to mess around with trying to add photos tonight.

Happy stitching

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

I have not posted for some time because I have been crazy busy.  I finished up some client quilts and made a table runner for my mother for her birthday which was yesterday.  I forgot to take a photo, oops.   I have also started the Celtic Solstice mystery quilt offered by Bonnie Hunter.  I will post some photos this week of my progress once the Christmas festivities are over with.  My favourite day of all is Boxing Day as we do not go anywhere, supper is leftovers and we just veg out.

I have to figure out how to add a photo from my iPad to my blog before I post any pictures.

Happy Stitching

Posting some pictures of completed quilts and my beloved Charlie

It has been some time since I blogged so I thought I better post some pictures of my completed mystery quilts before I start the next one.  I have talked a friend into making her own mystery quilt.  She has fabrics in the colours from a stash her sister-in-law gifted her so why not.

Anyway, here is a picture of my RRCB, on my bed, in my own room.

It looks great on the bed.  The curtains are from Ikea and the rag rug was made by me by using the 'French knitting' method using a four pegged knitting spool.  It took mega yards of fabric to make.

Here is a picture of my Orca Bay completed.  It is a bit too small for the bed.  I do not know why I did not double check the size before I quilted it.  I guess because I still had my bed stuffed into the office and did not have any room to turn around let alone think.

You can see bits of RRCB peeking out underneath and it does not go over the bed on the far side very far.  It did turn out quite nice anyway.

Here is a picture of Charlie getting ready to go to Tim Horton's for morning coffee.

He has to take his dinosaur for the ride.  I love him to bits.

Anyway, back to house work.
Happy quilting.

It is the middle of September already!

It has been ages since I last posted.  The summer has sped by like no ones business.  The weather has been absolutely gorgeous and should continue to be mid 20's for at least another week so spending the day in the basement is not the way to go.

I have not done the machine quilting that I had hoped to do but I have not wasted the summer.  Charlie and I have gone on a lot of good walks and I have played in my flower garden more than I have in the past years.  I have enjoyed that.

One of my missions for the summer was to use up the leftover fabric scraps from last winter's 'Thelma Wynn' project.  I have been going great guns this past week and  I have managed to cut up scraps for two scrappy baby quilts and organized the pieces into something fairly nice.  I also was playing with some navy and yellow bricks to make something that looked nice and also used up all of the fabric and I finally came up with something.  I am not using the yellow because it just screamed ugly at me.  I managed to cut enough bricks for two smaller sized tops and I will see if they need a border once they are pieced.  I took a trip to Fabricland to see if there was anything there to go with the yellow flannel but there was nothing.  I think a trip to Berry St. is in order but I am in no hurry as these quilts don't need to be done until the spring.  I hope to use up most of the scraps by that time.

I bought some small colourful plastic bins to organize all of the scraps and hope to do that tomorrow afternoon while everyone is snoozing.  I hate having a mess to wade through every time I want to work on those baby projects.  I want to make baby bibs with all of the scraps that I cannot use in the quilts.  I saw some samples in Pinterest and thought that would be a great idea to use up some of the pieces.

Pictures of the tops next post.

Happy quilting.