UFO Mid month report

One of the reasons that some of my quilts live in the UFO closet for a long time is because I am stalled on the borders. Sometimes I purchase specific border fabrics when beginning a quilt, and when the quilt top is almost finished, I discover that I don't like my original choices.  And sometimes the quilt decides it doesn't even want a border.
This is my July UFO for the 'Lovely Year of Finishes' project. It was a mystery quilt that I started a couple of years ago.
I still love the large print that I originally purchased for a border, but I didn't like the inner green border fabric that I bought (which I disliked so much I don't even have a photo of it to show you!) I debated about whether this quilt didn't want any borders, but it convinced me that it did need to be a bit bigger.  I decided the green could maybe become the binding, and then auditioned a ton of stash fabrics for an inner border. 
 
The final two choices are here...black or gold. 
I decided on the gold because it really brightened up the whole quilt and flowed nicely into the border.
The black was dramatic, but drew too much attention to itself.

Now the borders are finally on and I like it! It's not a great photo, but you get the idea...it's a summery and fresh looking scrappy quilt.

Here is the pile of the quilt top, the batting, and the red backing...all ready to move on to the basting stage. I have two more weeks to do the basting, machine quilting and binding to meet my Lovely Year of Finishes goal for July. 

July's UFO project

2013 is already half over and I have been able to finish 4 UFO's so far this year (UFO wish list is on the right side bar of my blog). The focus for July's effort is my "tone-on-tone plus Kaffe Fassett fabrics mystery quilt". Obviously it needs a new name!
I haven't looked at it in over a year, but my sister has finished her quilt, so I am a little sheepish that mine is still unfinished!
I had purchased two fabrics for the borders, but am not sure if the "hold up" on this project is because the quilt does not want those borders!?!? I will wait for the quilt to give me some advice about that while I fix up a backing.
To see more UFO goals, hop over to a Lovely Year of Finishes.

Design Wall Monday #13

Last November I attended a mystery class at Reichard's - click here to read about it and to see the teacher's quilt. In January the blocks were on my 3rd design wall post for 2012 and I have no idea what happened to them after that! They just evaporated into the UFO ether. Well, they finally re-emerged and are now sewn together into a quilt top.

I think what took so long is that it was quite challenging to get the layout of the blocks decided. I didn't want to have any of the tone on tone fabrics touching each other, which was tricky because one fabric can touch 7 others. Eventually I just had to say "that's long enough on the design wall" and sew it!

Here is my sister working on her mystery quilt layout. She changed a few of the colours in her version. She took out a blue, a green and the purple, and put in a pink, another yellow and a darker green. It's fun to make two quilts that are similar and yet a little different.
Now I am wondering about a border, or no border? I don't think it needs one, but I would like the quilt to be a little bit bigger. To see other design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday #3

I've been working away on my blocks from the mystery class I took last November (click here if you want to read about the class and project). 
I have been trying to arrange the blocks so that there is no seam matching to worry about in the middle of the blocks, and also so that none of the same fabrics are touching each other. And now I seem to be missing 2 blocks! I'll have to look around (aka clean up the studio!) and find the missing pieces.
Hop over the Patchwork Times blog and start off your week feeling inspired!

Hunter's Star Finished

On Friday I attended my favorite "Ladies of the Evening" class - click here if you missed reading about it. One of the things we did at the class was to show some of our finished projects from previous classes. I was able to finish my spring project with about 15 minutes to spare! Okay, I will admit that I even enlisted the help of my friend Louise to finish hand stitching the binding down...we both worked on it over a cup of tea before the class. It's good to have a deadline to motivate a finish!

I stitched in the ditch and then wanted to add some texture with hand quilting using perle cotton thread. But I didn't enjoy the process of that stitching and found it very hard on my hands. I was only able to pull the thread through by using a needle grabber...it was tough going! 

I finished quilting the cream coloured diamonds, and it is highly unlikely that the green ones will ever be stitched!

Here are 3 of us from the spring class with our Hunter Star quilts in various stages of completeness!

I love my quilt and am proudly displaying it on my dining room table for the Christmas season.

Ladies of the Evening Mystery Class

I had a great evening on Friday night with 7 quilting friends at Reichard's quilt store. Our teacher Deb Beirnes has been running her "ladies of the evening" mystery classes for many, many years, and I have been attending for the last few years. We started with a show and tell of some of our previous projects, mostly finished of course!
We enjoyed a yummy potluck supper while we visited and set up our sewing stations. And then came the big reveal of our mystery project...here is the fabric kit we received. The squares are Kaffe Fassett fabrics, which will be framed with the jelly roll of tone on tone strips.  

This is the sample quilt being modeled by our beautiful teacher Deb! The pattern we used is called "Slash a stash" by Susan Fuquay. The blocks are constructed like log cabin blocks, which are then sliced up and sewn back together with scrappy fabric combinations. 
We had lots of fun auditioning many different border fabrics when we needed a break from sewing. It was a great evening of playing with fabric and making memories with dear friends, plus we'll each have a great quilt someday!

Design Wall Monday #15

On Friday night I attended the "Ladies of the Evening" class at Reichard's. I just love this class...you enjoy a potluck supper and conversation with other quilters, and then our teacher Deb Beirnes gives you a wonderful project to sew. She does all the work - she picks the project and the fabrics, she does all the math and gets any tools you need, AND she cuts and organizes all your pieces!
Here is my package of goodies waiting for me!
What more could a quilter ask for at the end of a long week...all you have to do is sit down and sew and enjoy yourself!

So this is on my design wall today. Just have to add the borders, then quilt and bind. It is a tabletopper size and the blocks are 6" finished.
Deb taught us a new method to make the Hunter Star blocks using the Rapid Fire Hunter's Star ruler by Deb Tucker...it was a quick and fun method.
To see other design walls click here to hop over to Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday #44

My weekend was an interesting balance of two types of quilting - large blocks, easy to construct quilt that will be used and loved to death vs. small complex blocks,  challenging to sew, artsy type of wall hanging that will never be used. I love both types of quilting and although most people seem to have a strong preference for one or the other, I love them both.
I already wrote about Saturday's challenging artsy project (click here to read it) and today I am writing about Friday's class which had a quick and relaxing project. The "Ladies of the Evening" is a biannual class at Reichards and is a wonderful night out with quilting friends. We enjoyed a potluck supper, lots of socializing, and sewing until we drop (which for me was much earlier than usual since I had to get up early to travel to the class on Saturday).

Here is the fabric kit for this mystery project...all lovely Christmas fabrics.

Cutting and sewing the 64 half rectangle blocks was quick...it was the trimming up that took the most time. And of course I saved the little dog ears for my collection.



And here are the blocks as they look on my design wall this morning...
Christmas Diamonds!

There are two borders - one green and one red, and then I'll have another Christmas quilt, which will make a perfect gift if I get it finished in time. Thanks to Deb Beirnes for another memorable evening and a lovely quilting project!
Want to see what other quilters are working on this week? Check out Judy's blog for a long list of quilters showing their design wall today - click here. And Judy will be on Pat Sloan's radio show today - you can download the podcast to listen to as you sew - click here.

UFO progress

Were you wondering if I was motivated to finish my UFO from this post? I was highly motivated, but didn't have much extra time for quilting this week. However, every spare minute I did have was spent machine quilting my UFO. I finished the stitch-in-the-ditch of all the horizontal and vertical seams.


Then I decided that I should quilt leaf shapes on the garden trellis and that took some time, but that is done too. This is one block...isn't this fairy fabric adorable??




This quilting is hard to photograph since I used a light yellow thread and the fabrics are fairly light/medium.
Hope you can see some of the quilting in this block.

This is the fabric on the back of the quilt...more yellow.



Now I am thinking about whether I can leave those white diamonds alone or if I have to quilt something there?
And then I need to think of what to quilt in the 2 borders...probably some kind of leaf variation.
But first, I'll finish stitching in the ditch between the borders...

Another Quilt Finished!

With the deadline of the guild meeting looming, I pushed myself to finish my buzzsaw quilt.
This was a project started at a "Ladies of the Evening" class in March - to read about it click here. I had it pieced together by the end of May and then it sat waiting for the entire summer!

I pin basted the quilt last week and had a great time selecting threads.  The white blocks were quilted with white Aurofil (wouldn't I love to have this case?!?!) thread, and each "blade" was quilted in a swirly feather design with a different coloured thread to match the fabrics. I had a challenge with my Presencia threads for the first time, but consistently had thread breaks whenever I had a Presencia in the needle.





I quilted the border with my favorite swirly feathers (using my favorite pink Aurofil thread) with pointy curls, and added the occasional hanging heart...just for fun!
This is my all time favorite quilting design! (I am teaching how to quilt a variety of feather designs on domestic sewing machines at Triangle Sewing on  October 15th if you want to learn my tricks to make it fun and easy!)

I already had the binding made, in an attempt to entice myself to finish this quilt earlier in the summer. I had used up the strips leftover from the quilt top and made a scrappy binding.



Apparently setting a deadline is a great idea for me, because I finished this quilt with minutes to spare before guild meeting!
Here is the finished quilt....
My sister had taken the class with me and she sent along her finished quilt top for guild show and share. Jake, who also had taken the class brought her quilt. AND Susan, a dedicated blog reader, decided to also make this quilt, and so we had FOUR buzzsaw quilts to show at guild meeting! Here we are...I am on the left, then Jake, and Susan, and Sandy is holding up my sister's quilt top. It was a very exciting show and share and I'm so glad I pushed myself to finish this quilt!

Design Wall Monday #22

What's on my design wall?

A finished quilt top (some people call these "flimsies")!
This was from the Ladies of the Evening class I attended in March. I added in 8 extra blocks using fabric from my stash. It didn't take long to finish it up since I had pieced the borders in April.

In spite of the warm weather and DH's pnuemonia (which was much better yesterday), it seems I have been accomplishing a lot lately. I finished this quilt  last week and have also finished the hand quilting on this quilt (after 18 years)!   And this weekend, I even sewed the binding on it! I don't know if you can see how similar the border fabric (with a blue background) and the binding fabric (with a peach background) are, but I cannot believe I found this fabric!
I was sewing some BOM kits for guild meeting in April and realized how similar one of the fabrics was to my border fabric. I emailed the BOM coordinator and she had some extra fabric that I could trade. I had looked for binding fabric for about 15 years and there it was right in the guild stash!
Binding is one of my favorite parts of quiltmaking, so I will enjoy working on it during the cooler evenings this week.
Hop on over to Judy's blog and see what other quilters have on their design wall today.

Design Wall Monday #13

This week I have a brand new project to show!

I signed myself and my sister up for a mystery quilt class on Friday night at Reichards. This was her first quilting class ever and she was very excited. This is the fabric kit we each received...everything all pre-cut and organized for us, which is a real treat for all students, but especially for my sister who is new to quilting.
Here is our wonderful teacher Deb Beirnes, just back from a teaching engagement in British Columbia! And beside her is the quilt that we could make from the kit. The pattern is called Buzz Saw and there was enough fabric in our kits to make 12 blocks, plus the border and a scrappy binding. But of course I want to make mine bigger, so I am digging through my stash to find fabrics to add.

Here is my design wall today.
Aren't the pastel colours springy and perfect for playing with the week before Easter?!?!
I am thinking about making each buzz saw block from the same colour and am now auditioning fabrics. The blocks that are already sewn were the ones I made at the class, and the hunks of fabric pinned on the wall are "maybes" - fabrics to complete some of the partial blocks and to make new blocks. I can see on the computer screen that the purple is way too dark and I'll take that one out. I think I can happily add in the peach, the light purple and the blue. Any other suggestions?
I made this same design last year at retreat (you can see that one by clicking here) and it is a really fun block to sew. Annie's quilt was the first Buzz Saw I found and admired in Blogland. Then I saw Julie's - click here and she gave photo instruction and the link to the pattern in this blog post. And here is another one that Suze made - click here to see hers.
 Why don't you make one too?
If you want to see what other quilters are working on this week, go to Judy's blog and surf the great quilt blogs on her list.

Triangulation

I am bragging again today...another quilt is finished...woohoo! We have a quilt show coming up so I'm pulling out all the stops to finish up some UFO's, and have absolutely promised myself to not start anything new until after the show. This was a quilt I started at a mystery quilt class in June - you can read about it here .  It was challenging to get the triangles sewn together in rows and get the seams to match up, but I was happy with the outcome.
I quilted it very simply...all stitch in the ditch - horizontal, vertical and diagonal, and then I free motion outlined the yellow triangles in the centre of the blocks.
Here is a photo of the back of the quilt. I hope you can see the quilting. Some of my photos enlarge when you click on them, which seems to be a random process that I don't understand, so maybe you can click on these to see them in a larger window for more detail.


After I had finished all the quilting, I looked back at the pattern by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr in the American Patchwork & Quilting magazine (April 2009 Issue 97) to find that I had sewn it together incorrectly! The design is called "Balancing Act" and they lined up the triangles differently than I did. (You can see more about the pattern and order a kit here.) This is a bad photo of the magazine page, but hopefully you can see where I went wrong, or where I creatively made my own version of the design...yes, let's go with that story! My "balancing act" is a little different from how it "should" be done (in many ways...lol).
And here is a photo of one of my favorite parts of quilting...putting on the binding. Some relaxing hand stitching, the satisfaction of finishing another quilt, and loving that striped fabric I chose for the binding!

Design Wall Monday

It's Monday already?!? The weekend just flew by!  

I might have a little time to sew today (and recover from hemming those trousers for my Dad!) and this is what I plan to work on...my triangle quilt. You can read about the beginning of this quilt here. I have the top two rows sewn together and most of the blocks made. I think I can squeeze a few more blocks out of the remaining scraps, maybe just enough for one more row and then half blocks on the sides. I'll be working with the scraps today and seeing how far they will go. The quilt size will be determined by the amount of fabric I have left...I'm not buying anymore (no, really, I am NOT buying anymore!).

To check out the design walls of other quilters, hop over to Judy's site and enjoy surfing the quilting blogs.

What's on my design wall?

This week I am working on a new project! Way back in the winter I signed up for a "Ladies of the Evening" class at Reichards and the day finally arrived last friday night. It was also my daughter's prom night, so I had to take some photos and then race over to the class.  I only missed the first part of the class, but worked hard to catch up.  This is a mystery class where you don't know what you are making, until you are given a stack of fabric strips and some instructions...lots of fun!

The project we started is called "Balancing Act" from the April American Patchwork and Quilting magazine (p.58). Cutting out the pieces to strip piece around the triangles has been challenging. This is my favorite ruler to use for this cutting job.

These are the blocks I have sewn so far that are on my design

 wall. I still have about 30 more blocks to sew because the rows are supposed to be 12 triangles across and there are supposed to be 9 rows I think. I'm really liking the quilt but am wondering if all these triangles are going to fit together okay!!

If you want some fun surfing quilt blogs, go to Judy's site (click here) and see what is on the design wall of 25+ other quilters...enjoy!

Criss Cross Finished!

I am so happy to announce that I have finished my Criss Cross quilt - including the binding and label! That must be a record for me - to make a quilt (not a mini!) from start to finish within 5 months! I easily finished quilting the border feathers, but when I was working on the binding, I just wasn't happy with how the quilt was laying. Some of the blocks were really lumpy and I just kept looking at the puffy finished quilt and not liking it.

I kept asking myself "what would make me like this quilt more"? And unfortunately my answer was always "more quilting". But I didn't want to do more quilting because:

a) I have a thousand other projects waiting for attention,

b) I had already put the binding on, and taking it off was not negotiable and

c) I wasn't sure if I had enough thread left! Eventually I just decided that I would keep on quilting until I liked it!

I don't think I have ever done additional quilting after I have finished a binding, but I did with this quilt! I just did more feathery looking loops inside the blocks, adding additional loops if it was still puffy, like this block on the left. I was threatening the blocks to lay flat or be quilted into submission!

And here is the finished quilt, which is laying marvelously flat!

And here is the leftover thread - hardly enough to quilt another puffy block! What great luck!

And my other great luck story is that I met one of my favorite theatre actors on the weekend. And even better than that, is in real life he is warm, friendly and generous with his fans. And EVEN better than that, I got my picture taken with him. Here I am - a very excited fan (don't mind my glow sticks - you need these fashion accessories to see the show!) with Sterling Jarvis, who was previously in the "Lion King", and is now playing Hilary Duff (don't ask!) in "We Will Rock You" at the Panasonic Theatre in Toronto.

If my life gets any better, I won't be able to stand it!!

Happy Mother's Day

I hope all you mothers out there in quilt blog land are enjoying a relaxing day! I have had a very busy week as we are cleaning out my mother-in-law's house after almost 50 years of her living there. That is a lot of time to collect a lot of junk! It has been a huge task, which has been completed 99% by my hard working husband. He deserves a relaxing day, but he will have to wait until father's day!!!

On Friday night I went to a mystery quilt class called "Ladies of the Evening" at one of my favorite quilt stores (Reichards). Two of my quilting friends had signed up, and when one couldn't go, I agreed to take her place. Then the other one was ill and I ended up there by myself. That's okay, I enjoyed an evening of meeting new quilting friends, sewing, and I especially enjoyed starting this new project! On the right is the sample quilt and the pattern is called "Criss Cross" by Deb Beirnes. One of the things I love about this class is that they have pre-cut kits for you. This is my kit on the left - all ready for me to start sewing! I decided to make my quilt completely scrappy and did not match the fabrics on both sides of the block. Here is the photo of my blocks on the design wall before I left the class. I decided I would like to make it one row longer and one row wider, which I think would complete the dark diamonds on the right and bottom sides. So I will have to dig around in my stash and find some more squares to make more 13 blocks. But it will have to go to the bottom of my "to do" list since the next step of the Orange Crush mystery has been posted!