Quilting and other Things

Oops!  Forgot to post the completed list for June.   I did get Milkweed 3 done in time for show n tell at our Guild meeting at the beginning of the month.  It is now hanging in the entrance way  The quilting was inspired by a fern in a bunch of flowers I had bought for myself.  I took it downstairs and had it sitting near the sewing machine while I quilted.  This wallhanging has a facing rather than binding. The other goal for June was to finish my Cherrywood challenge quilt for the Diana Challenge.  I was making good progress when Cherrywood announced an extension to Dec 31 due to the COVID 19 pandemic.  I finished the step I was working on, washed the piece to get the washout marker out and ironed it.  Its now ready for the pieces to be appliqued on but I've paused to consider if I want to make any changes since I have extra time.  I'll get going on the centre as that won't change.  Maybe by the time that's done, I'll have de...

My first quilting goal is to get my Cherry wood challenge quilt made and submit the picture.  I have a design I think I should be able to complete easily in the month.  I've made a couple of samples of one part out of other material to ensure I know how to do it with the actual material so I think I'm ready to begin.   The second goal is to quilt my Milkweed 3 quilt and get a start on the final winter milkweed quilt.  I have photos selected to base the winter quilt on, I just need to decide how I'm blending them.  I finished the top yesterday and sandwiched it so its ready to quilt this week.  We are having a virtual guild meeting on Thursday so it would be nice to have it quilted by then.  Its about 20 X 30 so not a big wall hanging.   I'm thrilled with the amount of progress over the last few days with this piece.  I'm also loving how its come together.  It was so nice to be chatting with the ladies at Elaine's virtual retrea...

May was a good month quilt wise.  I had three things that I wanted to accomplish.  The first was my mini quilt swap project, the second was my Milkweed 3 piece and the last was a design for my Cherrywood Challenge. In January I signed up for the Canadian Quilters Association Mini Quilt swap.  I chose to swap by mail as I hadn't planned to attended the conference.  The conference has subsequently been cancelled due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and all the swaps are being done by mail.  The mailing date is June 1st.  My partner and I decided to exchange table runners rather than wall hangings.  The maximum size of wall hanging was 24" square.  I had a list of colours and shapes my partner likes and in an email conversation learned some of the designers she likes.  The starting point was dragon flies.  When I think of dragonflies I think of waterlilies so I needed a pond.  I decided my pond should have a field of flowers and my tab...

I need to get the table runner done for the CQA exchange this month.  It needs to be ready to mail June 1st so its crunch time.  I did spend some time on Thursday and have a two alternate designs.  They are similar so I can choose how to place elements as I proceed.  Designs and finished pieces aren't often the same.  Yesterday I pulled a selection of fabrics.  I'm not sure how many of these will end  up in the runner but it gives me a good starting point. I'll have to double check the selection.  I thought I had a variety of values but this looks like they are all darks or lights.  It may be just they way they are stacked but perhaps I need to look for some additional values. I'd also like to get Milkweed 3 finished and start the design of milkweed 4 which will be a winter scene.  I think it will be smallish but I'm not certain. First up is to make the butterfly and caterpillar and then select the background If time permits I need to ge...

While I had great goals for April quilting I got sidetracked by a Photoshop virtual conference, sketching and transcribing old diaries.  Some libraries / museums online have handwritten journals that they are trying to transcribe.  They've put images of pages up and asked for help transcribing them to make them easier to search.  I also have access to some old family journals that I'm looking at.  So many possibilities for working on.  I also did some reading and have been able to get out for walks.  Most days I try to get my main walk early in the morning as there are fewer people out walking so maintaining my distance is easier. I did spend sometime on the Milkweed 3.  Most of the components now have their internal stitching done.  I need to still make the caterpillar and the butterfly.  I had fun(?) pulling potential backgrounds out of the stash.  I pinned one to the design wall and pinned all the components to it.  I did not wan...

It looks like most of April will be spent safe at home, staying away from others as much as possible.  The schools here won't be re-opening on Monday.  I do need to go to the store this week for fresh fruit.  This month I'm working on three things.  I started Milkweed 3 and want to complete that this month.  Its a summer version of my milkweed series.  The components are all cut out and the centres and veins have be fused since I took this photo.  I think I've also cut out more components since this was taken as a trial layout said there wasn't enough pieces.  The second thing is this little quilt made with blocks I won at the guild block of the month many years ago.  The paper with one possible layout was printed from EQ5 which means the blocks have been lingering for more that 15 years if my google searches are correct. This isn't the suggested layout but I think I like the little stars better so I'll go with it.  I found a...

March has been a very interesting month.  So many cancellations and trying to minimize how much I'm out and about.  I still get my daily walk in although I'm trying for earlier in the day when fewer people are out.  That hasn't worked so well the last couple of days because I am definitely a fair weather walker when I have a choice.  Its rained the last few mornings and cleared in the afternoon.  My goals for March's OMG was to quilt Milkweed 1 and 2.  Both of those got quilted at the beginning of the month and I was able to take them to the show at the Monday sewing group before that got cancelled.  The biggest problem was how to quilt the background of piece 1 but I ignored that until the flowers and pods were all quilted and suddenly thought quilting the flower shapes in the background would work well.  So I grabbed a spare flower shape and traced around it and that was the quilting for Milkweed 1. For milkweed 2, I had written words I ...

Last summer I started working on an old collection of courthouse step blocks from an exchange.   I made a mistake while assembling the second half of the top so I was going to have a square quilt with very large triangles in two corners instead of a rectangular quilt.    I wrote about it here  This past weekend was the annual guild retreat.  The courthouse step quilt was one project I took with me.  I spent Friday taking the rows apart, removing the two setting triangles and moving one block to the other end of the row — undoing what I did last July.   It took all day as I had to do the ripping slowly but I’m pleased that the wrist is healed enough to allow me to do the ripping with breaks.    The previous day I worked on a Caddy Bag by Sisters Common Thread.  I had done all the cutting and marking at home.   I didn’t have the needed buttons but went on an outing Friday morning with  another guild member to Fabricl...

I had the pleasure of taking Jane Sassaman's Abstracting from Nature workshop at the Hudson River Valley Art workshops this past week with 12 other ladies.  The weather man welcomed us to Greenville with a snow storm that began at noon on Sunday just as I parked my car in the Inn parking lot.  By Tuesday morning about 30 cms of snow had fallen and my car was buried This lump is my car.  By lunch time, the snow removal man had it cleared off and the area around it shoveled. The week started with us picking a flower and looking at its parts and sketching.  From there we did a number of exercises to abstract the shapes and come up with possible design elements.  On Tuesday we started to make shapes for our designs And on Wednesday we started to figure out how to put the different pieces together.  It took all day and some significant help from Jane to get to this.  There were a lot of pictures taken along the way and my 5 flower...