Awful Weather Makes Beautiful Progress

Again, we are stuck in humid, hot weather with storms basically every night. Today, it's raining. That means the sewing projects are progressing. 

Let's see what I did this week beside watching TV. Yes, I've been binge-watching Project Runway with some needle work. I'm already at season 5. 

First, I did a label for my latest finish and attached it to the quilt. It was fun playing with the EPP hexagons again, so I continued. 

Don't know if these are labels or a new project. I was just sewing rosettes out of hexagons prepped a long time ago. Then I thought about my hexie project and started to work on it. 

Tried one diamond shape for the border of the Quilt of the Century. I'm not sure about this. So instead, I attached all the pieces for the last row at both ends. 

After, I started to attached the border. It's a very soft ivory fabric.  The progress is very slow as I am sewing it on my lap. I constantly have to make sure the border isn't waving. 

I'm thinking of moving my quilting frame around so I can use it to sew the borders and be able to watch the screen at the same time. At the moment, these two are facing each other, so my back is to the screen or to the quilting frame. Not convenient. Anywho! 

I managed to play with the crumb blocks too. Played the shuffling game with the blocks and invaded my son's project. Oops! He is building me an Adirondack chair. I am so spoiled. 

Two sections of the quilt are sewn. Not exactly quadrants but that's what I always call them.  This is the top left side ... 

and the top right side. It will be an 8 X 10 layout. 

And that's all. Hope you are all well. 

Joining 

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework

Kathy at Kathy's Quilts

Frédérique at Patchwork and Quilts. 

Enjoy! 

;^)

A finished & Hexies' Slow Stitching

Yes! Yes! Finally a finished. A small one but a finished nevertheless!

Cascadia, a quilt-along proposed by Lori from Humble Quilts is quilted, bind and all. Wwwelllll not quite!

 It still needs a label which is what I intend to slow stitch today.

It looks funny because the papers are still underneath the hexagons.



And then, some more hexies are waiting to be appliqued.  As I am slow stitching, I will pray for my friends in France and be thankful they are okay.

 (sideways pictures for some unknown reasons)

And then I will take a break with a cup of coffee and hop over to

Slow Sunday Stitches to see what others are working on.
Hope to catch you there.

Until next time ....

;^)

And what a surprise!!

Back in September, Angie from A Quilting Reader's Garden asked us a question with  "An envelope of goodies to who guesses right. What in the envelope?  That's a surprise." as an incentive.  Well I was the lucky winner and what a surprise it is!! Just a little envelope but she managed to stuff it with a lot of goodies. Like ...

An astronaut quilt kit. Very blue, very beautiful fabric, very much in love and so are the boys. (I will keep this one and bring it on the retreat in May 2015, since it is already cut and packed!)

A fat quarter of lovely yummy candy fabric and a stencil. As a hand quilter, I love these. But that's not all. 

I also got another kit to make a sunflower. Look at the lovely fabric. I am so happy. (You might see this one again as an embellishment on a bag I would like to make. I think it will go well with the fabric I've picked.)

Thank you, thank you, Angie. So generous. I love it all.

As for me, well, this week I finished machine quilting the charity quilt called "A speck of colours".  I am binding it today between loads of laundry and some pumpkin baking. I did the embroidery on the label for my son's flannel quilt. I know the first picture was the reader's favorite but I went with the last one. I wanted to see it with the embroidery and ... I like it.

It looks pretty good, wouldn't you say? For those of you who do hexies, no I didn't fussy cut this one. It just happened by chance. Isn't that fun? Only his name is missing and then to stitch it to the quilt. And that will be two quilts completely done! Yeah!

Hope you too find some time to whip stitch something together.

Until next time. ...
Enjoy!!

Slow Sunday Stitching

It is such a gorgeous day here, I almost feel too lazy to stitch!  :^)

"Where I come from" (a.k.a. Crumb quilt) is all done!! Except for the label which I will do today.

Stitched in the ditch on the quilt and some cross hatching on the last border. The blue border is not quilted.

Now it's time to choose a label.  How about this one?

This one ?

Some thing more masculine maybe, made of old shirts ?  I see that I need to flip a petal or two to make this flower look better.
I might do some embroidery on it because I like the last one I did that way.

I am joining Kathy and her friends for Slow Sunday Stitching.  Also joining Angie and the Hexie Weekend people. 

Enjoy!! ;^)

Monday's Options

I have none! I still have to do some mending. Yuck!! (paste big sigh here)    :-6   Can you see my tongue sticking out at the pile of jeans waiting to be mended ?

Anyway, I did find some time to have some fun.  I did the Apricot Chutney (smells good all over the place) and finished the label for Antique Inspiration.

 So that one is back on the wall. Checked.

And also the Marcus Designer Sew Along is done too. Here is block 4 which I haven't posted yet.

And here is block 5

Oh look! Rebel came to play in my sewing room again. :D  The designer (I believe it is Gloria Parsons from Olde Green Cupboard) planned this block to be made using light/background, black, cheddar and green fabric only.  Oops! I guess I didn't read it right.  But I so love it. Oh I'm gonna do this block again for sure. For a mug rug? Maybe bigger for a placemat? I don't know but I will do it again. Too much fun and it is so cute.

Maybe the background of block 5 is a little too light ? We'll see when the others surround it how it will look then.
So this is it for this Monday, like I've said I have no option. I HAVE to go back to mending (a.k.a. punishment) and cleaning.  I'm half way done with one pair of jean so I think I deserve another piece of chocolate cake. Yea that seems fair!   :D

Until next time ... sssSMiLE ... because it IS pleasant !!

The sewing room is open

I am finally in my sewing room ... for the right reason, and yet I don't have much to show. :(

We had a week of professional development at work. An entire week of just sitting in the conference room doing nothing but brain storming. Do you know how tiring just sitting is? Actually I did do something; I had to take the minutes and come Tuesday, I will put them all in order in a Word document so all my colleagues can read it so they don't forget. Who can forget a week like that? It was torture!! It is so hard for me to stay put for a long time. I need to burn my energy not hoard it. So in the evening, the last thing I wanted to do was to sit in front of the sewing machine. But today it is different.  

I did some clothes mending (so I was in my sewing room but it was boring) and some Plums and Orange Jam (yum).  I did NOT do the Marcus Designer Sew A Long new block ... yet. Will do this later today. I did finish the hand quilting on Antique Inspiration. 

It looks kind of warp-y now that it is done but that's okay with me. So now on to the label making. 

It is a hexie label, of course, like all my labels. Since it is a small decorative quilt, I decided to make a half flower.  I will sew it as close to the edge as I can. I am back stitching the name and my embroidery skill is very rusty. 

The thread is a very light pink just so it looks aged. 

Remember my adventure with sunflower seeds? This is the result! 

So NOT impressed!  Although the birds are already feeding from the puny flowers, I am putting up the bird feeders this weekend. I did learn a lot from this though. I should be able to do better next year. 

Too bad birds don't feed on Rudbeckia. It was a very good summer for them with all the rain we had. They are all over the place.  Around the clothesline post, (which is where I planted them years ago)

in the middle of the garden, 

in the flower bed (which is more weeds than flowers!)

and up to my sewing room window. I love those little suns :)  I let them grow where ever they want. 

Anyway, have to go and finish a few things (have to do Kiwi Jam and some Apricot Chutney too before the end of the weekend, not to mention cleaning) and some sewing too. 

Linking up with Kathy for a Slow Sunday Stitching and Angie at Hexie Weekend. 

Until next time ... sssSM :^)LE ... it brightens up like a little sun too. 

On Sunday

Today we are holding an open house. Needless to say, the house is clean which leaves me some stitching time. Yeah!

I will be working on these projects ... while waiting for visitors or between the visitors.

I have prepared some pieces for Rose Dream to do.  (Darn! I shouldn't have put the ironing board away so quickly. ) I also have marked some hexies but they are not for the Century quilt.

Like many of you, I too put labels on my quilts.  They usually are hexies flowers labels.  I use to do different labels for each quilt and one day I decided to make the same labels on every quilts.  Why that's boring you say.  Yes, maybe but it will be easier, in 50 years or so, to locate my quilts. They are the ones with the hexies flowers!  Smart?  I don't know about that but I know that it is FUN!!  I don't know why I chose hexies flowers but I like it a lot.  Each "petal" offers a lot of space to write the information of the quilt, date, name and so on. Sometimes, I have a LOT of fun decorating the flower. Hehee!

And for Rose Dream I think I finally have a plan, a layout for this quilt. I've always said it would be small but it is getting bigger than first planned so ... plan B is forming and it is looking good, if I might add.

So, yes, this will be a lovely Slow Sunday Stitching with Kathy.   Part of my favorite things to do now on Sundays  is to browse all the links on Kathy's blog and see what everyone else is working on. I so enjoy that.  I hope you will join us.

You might also want to hop to see  Marcia's from Crafty Sewing and Quilt for May for Me giveaway.  It is such a lovely giveaway just for answering a simple question.

Thanks Kathy and Marcia for making my Sunday so much fun.  Hope you all find some time to stitch a bit too.

For those of you who love English paper piecing, check out what they are working on at Quilting Readers Garden.  Some wonderful quilts on that blog too.

Until next time ... SM :^) LE ... because there is no point in keeping it for yourself.
Chantal