Quilting and other Things

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...

One of my goals for a long time has been to cleanup my photos in Lightroom.  I mentioned several years ago  what I am doing to keep track of progress.  The method hasn't really changed that much. I don't use the colour labels at all so I went to Metadata, Color Label Sets and picked custom.  Then picked one with a number short cut to rename.  I renamed the green label as I couldn't bear to look at a screen with too much red or yellow.  I set the name to be the actions I want to take and a reminder of how to remove the label when I'm finished.  Labels are a toggle.  Press 8 adds the label and pressing it a second time removes it. Then I went to All Photographs under Catalog and clicked on a photo and pressed Ctrl-A to select every photo in my catalog.  Once they were all selected, I pressed the number 8 which assigned my review photo label to all my photos. If I need a reminder of what my label means, clicking on the little green ...

Yvonne is hosting a planning party again. Before I look at next year I want to look at this year.   Quilting: 1.  Clean and organize quilt room (and office since they are in the same area).  Its gotten so messy, I've no desire to go down there and work on my quilting or anything else for that matter.  This is a recurring theme.  I got part of it tidy up but if you looked today it would be hard to tell. 2.  I'm going to continue with the Motivation Monday ideas.  I'm still working on the list I created for 2017.  The goal at the time was to move things forward.  I think that will still be the goal for some things as they are quite large.  The list still includes Canada BOM from Guild 2015/16 no change.   Stainglass Manger - Quilt and bind. Started quilting ABC Applique. Centre done and ready for borders.  Need to look for an appropriate fabric.  One Block Wonder - Quilt and bind done Common Bride top co...

My December goal was to finish the embroidery for my quilt.  I finished the last 10 blocks and outlined the dove.  The lettering for the 4 blocks was also done and the blocks trimmed and assembled.  I auditioned some fabric for the borders but didn't like any of my choices. At some point in the new year, I'll go shopping with the top and find a proper border.  It will need to wait awhile as I slipped on an icy sidewalk and broke my right wrist.  That's going to slow things down for a bit. Linking up with Patty's OMG   I'll wish everyone a happy and healthy 2020 and be back with a future monthly goal as soon as I can.  I hope to only miss January but time will tell.

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...

This month the goal is to finish the embroidery on the remaining blocks of the Christmas quilt. Some blocks need very little — just a couple of French knots for eyes and some need a lot. O gets a long ever green branch to hang the ornament from. Linking up with Patty's OMG for De cember

My goal for November for Patty's One Monthly Goal was to finish the applique for T,U,V,XYZ and W would be a bonus.  Today I finished W as well and started doing some of the embroidery needed to complete the blocks.  Somehow there was one more stitching Monday that I expected so more got done.  This is the collection of blocks as of this evening.  Applique is completed.  This afternoon, I started adding the embroidery to the remaining blocks.  I had completed up to J so started with Kris Kringle.  Before After.  Not a lot on this one but I do like the little bits Add the electric cord as chain stitch rather than tiny bias This also got chain stitch rather than tiny bias There are 11 blocks left to add embroidery to.  W doesn't get any but I'm not happy with the contrast between the Dove and the background so I'll probably add a small outline stitch to the dove to help it.  The oldest reference I ...