Quilting and other Things

I'm still working on the 365 Quilt Challenge blocks. For the current round of dark blocks I had marked that I wanted the 4 baskets for the corner flower blocks to each be one of the colour combinations. It makes the math work out if I add them in.  I put all the blocks from the 2nd dark border on the design wall on the weekend.  I also looked at how many I had made of some of the colours and thought I'd better figure out which ones I need to save a block for baskets. Without double checking the layout on the website I started to sketch out where the colours from the last round are and where the current round should go.  The sketch got messy so I found my graph paper and did it more neatly.  Some how in doing this I changed it from one row of 6" blocks that the pattern shows to two rows of 6" blocks for both the dark and light round. That messed up the math that I had done earlier but I persevered and figure out how many of each colour I should...

I finally finished my Red, White, Black and Grey Mystery quilt.  Its Debbie Caffery mystery quilt Chip Off the Old Block.  The mystery has a copyright of 2000 but I think I took pieces to trim on a trip to Calgary in 2004/5ish shortly after we had the mystery class out at Hobby Horse.  Elaine led the class.  Unfortunately my spreadsheet doesnt have an start date and there's no other dates on the mystery pattern pages. We went through all the steps of the mystery over the course of a late night mystery.  Shortly afterwards I went out to Calgary for work.  As I recall since there were tons of triangles to be trimmed, I put them in a little bag with a small mat, ruler and cutter and spent some evening time in the hotel room trimming squares. This was quilt out at Whirls and Swirls in April.  Its taken a while to get the binding, sleeve and label stitched down.  In the heat, I didnt want it on my lap but I did want to get it finished so draped ...

I finally finished stitching the pieces I had prepared and glued in place and am ready to start adding the zig zag border.  The problem is I've cut out all the zig zag pieces but don't remember how I planned to lay them out! :(  I looked back on previous posts and all I said is I knew what I wanted to do but didn't record any details.  I think I was planning to to repeat the colour wheel pieces in light and dark but I don't have even numbers of light and dark.  I'll have to spread the pieces out more and see if I can see the pattern.  More notes next time! Once I figure those out, I can start picking vase and flowers for the four corners. I think I'll be stopping once the vases and zigzag are finished. Linking up with Esther's WOW

For a long time Karen and I have been talking about making t-shirt quilts. Last month we decided it was time and I took my box of t-shirts to her house and we spent the weekend working on preparing our t-shirts. We were going to use my house but the forecast was for very warm weather that weekend and she has central air :) Over the course of the weekend we rough cut all the t-shirts and got at least half the fusing done. Today I finished trimming all my t-shirts. Now I need to figure out what size to bring them all up to so I can fit them together. They are all carefully cut out on the same multiple so I should be able to built things up and then assemble the quilt. First I need to get the one block wonder to a point were it can come off the design wall. This morning I worked on the 365 quilt and the last of the one block wonder blocks. As I was trimming the quarter square triangles, I realized that I check more than the centre marking as described in th...

In December, I wrote about some goals for this year in this post . I wrote about some progress in February here . Yvonne at Quilting JetGirl, who organized the 2016 Planning Party, has a mid year check-in which was a reminder to write a new post. Quilting: 1. Finishing Quilts. In March, I quilted Mom's Patchwork Sampler quilt then went back in April and quilted the black, white, red and grey quilt and a photo transfer quilt. The Patchwork sampler quilt is the from the same class with Elaine that mine quilted in January was from. The Black, White, Red and Grey was a mystery quilt Chip of the old block. I'm still stitching the binding down on this one. The photo transfer quilt was a top I'd done years ago at the old Streetsville store about 1996. This was a small quilt but I wanted to play with some free motion quilting on the long arm. I've now completed finished 3 of my quilts, almost finished a fourth one and finished two of Mom's. The second one o...

On Saturday Karen and I went for our first hike this year.  I had done a short hike in the spring out at Silvercreek but not much walking this year.  We were originally going to just go as far as Rattlesnake Point which was about 10.5km but decided to go to the Bell School parking lot instead which was about 13.5km according to the maps.  The map distances don't seem to take into account the extra distance the ups and downs add and this section had a very steep down and then back up the other side of the escarpment near Crawford Lake.  I knew it was there and had done the steep bit a few years ago.  By the end of the day, my fitbit was claiming closer to 20km.  My legs still haven't forgiven me although they are somewhat happier two days later.  The morning started out with a short climb up some rocks where Karen posed for me.  About 2 km into the hike, we came across a small section of what would normally be a crossing over a wet area and decid...

Earlier this month Melissa of Daily Life posted some of the photos she had taken for a scavenger hunt hosted by Rinda .  I'd seen Melissa's scavenger hunt photos last year but forgotten about it.  Since we are early in the summer, I thought I'd start working through the list myself.  I was originally going to use some photos taken since June 1st when the list was published but decided that for the moment I'd use photos I've taken since I saw the list.  I may go back and change that later in the summer if I'm missing pictures that I did take in that time period. 1. A "wild heart" - a naturally occurring heart. This is the knot hole shadow cast by the fence on the sidewalk into the complex I live in. 2. A footprint or paw print. The zoo uses painted paw prints on the pathways to indicate different pathways through the zoo. If you follow the large blue foot prints you get an overview of the zoo. This photo generated a conversation with two o...