Enjoyed the Weekend

Looking at Gayle's Totally Demented quilt made me itch for some HST fun. So, I grabbed a container of triangles, set up the sewing machine outside and enjoyed the sun for awhile. 

It's a catch-all container where everything triangular ends up in. And it was overflowing so it did need some attention. 

The triangles are not all the same size, sometimes not even the same shape. 

There! Now I have a gazillions of HSTs. Next is to square them up. Give me a few minutes, please. Meanwhile, you may look at what I quilted.





Les paniers de Cécile also got some attention. I free-motion quilted some meanders. It is a practice piece. 

The binding is already attached. Come next Sunday, I will join Kathy for a Slow Sunday Stitching. 

I tried to make some free motion leafy something in the basket. Not that bad but more practice is needed for sure. 

Do you have a tip to share on how to stop and restart. Every time I stop to reposition the quilt (with the needle down on my DSM) I deviate from the trajectory. I appreciate any help you can give me. Thank you. 

There! All done. The HSTs (163 of them) are all separated by size (2.5 and 2") and nicely trimmed. No, no, no. I am not starting a Demented quilt, lol. It's a wonderful quilt but no, thank you. :^D I do have a plan for these HSTs, well at least some of them. 

I only grabbed SOME of the smallest size. Still plenty in that container... for another sunny day. 

Lots of these are from Shakespeare in the Park Quilt. 

I sat down and rewrote the cutting instructions for Dreaming in Dutch. Since the instructions are for the entire quilt with only two reds, the flying geese units are made with a big square and you need 9. Anywho, I find it easier to have all the cutting measurements for the pieces of one side and then the cutting measurements for the mirrored side. Having them by colour was confusing. But that's probably just me.


Today, I am back at work. I am very grateful for this wonderful weekend.

Have a great week everyone. 
Enjoy! 

;^)

Joining Angela at So Scrappy

I'm Getting There

It didn't go as planned ... as it usually does for me but I'm getting there regardless.

In my last post, this is what I had to assemble. The yellow fabric is an oldie from my mother's stash. It frays a lot. I mean A. Lot.

Anywho! During the week, I worked on the setting triangles. It was trials and errors but I got there. My plan was to have it finish for the weekend ... March 23!

On Tuesday evening, I had this done.

Last Saturday, I got this far. It was puckering from every triangle. Lots of un-stitching occurred. And more fraying too, of course!

On Wednesday, March 27th, I got it done. Okay, it's not perfect but done is better than perfect. It is less wavy than it was at first. Because of the fraying fabric, seam allowance on many places is only 1/8.  It looks good to me and I'm happy with it ... now that it's done, ha!
I wanted to pin it and quilt it but another one had all my pins and beat the basket quilt to the sewing machine.

Yes, I have finally started the quilting on the flannel quilt. It is so huge and heavy but I'll get there. (I saw my Doctor on Wednesday and he asked me to step on the scale. Ouch! I believe wrestling with this beast will do me good. :^D)

Also got all the greens for Good Fortune done. The bonus triangles aren't pressed as I know I won't use them for the border. I'll find something else to do with these. (The Joyful Quilter has a mini Supernova that is very tempting. Check it out here.)

And then ... sigh ... I did it. I finally got there! Got to the place where I can sew another blue. 😇

Jack's Delight is September 19 block. Don't know what's wrong with the lower left section of this picture but believe me it isn't crooked. It has 25 pieces and measures 3.5 inches. I love it.

Now that I'm there, I need to cut more little blue blocks and cut more blues for Good Fortune too. Oh! I'll me knee high in blues and I'll be as happy as a unicorn eating pink ice cream! lol.

;^)

Joining Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Wendy at Wendy's Quilts
Angela at So Scrappy
Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework

What's going on?

In case you are wondering what's going on with me, here's what I'm up to.

Since yellow was the color for February, I wanted to play with these baskets and finish this little quilt. So I played with it and changed the blocks around and tried to sew the sashing with the little cornerstones but I kept sewing them on the wrong side. Or I would decide to move the block to another place and then the sashing was on the wrong side of the block. In any way, I did very little progress on this project.

This is the final layout and I did manage to get the sashing and cornerstones on properly. Now I need to cut some setting triangles and sew the rows together. Notice that from the 16 baskets I've made for the original quilt, I am down to 13. The others will play on the back.

Then I got the flu! I thought I had missed it this year because we are now in March and flu season should be over. Well, just like our Winter isn't over (we got 3 inches of snow on March 13th), so is flu season. So many people are sick at this moment. Needless to say, not much sewing happened during this time. But I did some cutting. (I don't have a Go-cutter or Accuquilt for these pieces, yet.)

Cut some greens.

 Anyone remembers fabrics that were sewn together somewhere along the bolt?

This is very old fabric, maybe from the 50s? It comes from my mother's stash. (no, I'm not that old, lol.) I cut what pieces I could then cut out the stitches. This is what it looks like after the stitches are removed. It will go into the string bin as the edge isn't thicker than the fabric. I was able to use up a few older fabric and I'm happy about that. Good riddance.

So, like I said, 1 cut a lot of green. 100 pieces of them along with 200 pieces of neutral. (no pictures). Since these pieces are the same size as the pieces I'll use in another project, I cut some more for that kit project too.

It a little more than half full. Wonder if I have enough for a quilt yet?


As I was cursing sewing the sashing on the baskets, I spin these green through the machine.

Not once but twice. They are now all cut and ironed out, waiting for the third and fourth pass through the sewing machine.

I haven't worked on the 365 Challenge. What? You don't believe me? Well, okay, technically, I did work on the 365 Challenge. I cut some fabrics. Again.

I'm always edgy when I use my blue fabric because I want to have enough left to do the corners. I don't want to use a blue for the corners that isn't in the quilt as I want the quilt to look cohesive.

So, I got the third corner pieces all cut and tagged, sealed in plastic baggies.

This weekend I would like to cut the last corner in the same way. Then what's left of the blues will be up for grab with no worries. Yeah!

Now, you might ask what do we do when all the snow is frozen. We play cars. (the picture was snapped before March 13th and the new snow.)

They don't sink into the snow so it's a whole lot of fun. (The antenna of the remote is at an awkward position, but believe me, my son isn't peeing in this picture, lol.)


That's it. That's where I'm at. For now.

At work, I got news that is hard to swallow; I'm being transferred. 😭 But I love my gang and I love my job, but noooooo, I have to go! We are opening two new centres and I have been "promoted" (not) to one of them. The farthest one! Darn! My commute ride will be longer by 40 minutes daily. 😭 And I won't be driving through the lovely forest anymore either. 😭 Oh, I have to resign myself and accept this as there is no way around it. I am happy that I was chosen to look after the new centre but ... 😥


Anywho!! Let's get back to cutting. Seems like I'm in a chopping mood lately, lol.

;^)


Joining Angela at So Scrappy
Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework
Nicole at Needle and Thread Network

Guess which colour I'm working with?

😁

Of course it's blue! Because I'm not done with the 365 Challenge. 😒

September 11th's block is named Free Trade.

It was counted as a 3" block in my stats but it turned out to be a 6" block. Thank goodness because it was hard enough; I wouldn't have wanted to make it any smaller. It counts 58 pieces.

Sept 12 - Rob Peter to Pay Paul - 12 pieces

Sept 13 - Robbin Peter to Pay Paul - 45 pieces

Wouldn't it be time to Rob Paul to re-pay Peter. I mean, poor Peter. He always gets rob!


Sept 14 - Picket Fence - 10 pieces

 

Sept 15 - Four Baskets - another 6" block with 35 pieces. And look! it's the middle of September already. 😂

Sept 16 - Aunt Eliza's Star - 17 pieces

Sept 17 - Cats and Mice - 29 pieces

Sept 18 - Black and White - 28 pieces

Then I was really tired of playing with dark blue so, I worked on the second corner block. I got this far:

It will be a pretty block but, admit it, it's still dark blue!

My design wall is ... dark blue!

(Good Fortune is trying really hard to bomb this pic.) The total of pieces for making these 8 blocks is 234. I am not counting the corner block since it isn't finished.

Thinking about the color of the month, I decided to get a UFO out. I have named
Cécile's Basket!

It was sew-along from last year that was hosted by Cécile and Béa in France. I'll be working on it this weekend and we'll see next weekend how much progress I was able to accomplish.



See you all then!


;^)


Joining Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Wendy at Wendy's Quilts and More
Angela at So Scrappy
Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework

Les paniers de Cécile (Cecile's Baskets)

Back in January, I started to work on some basket blocks for a SAL with Cécile in France. I kind of knew what I wanted.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to sew it. 

This is the kind of setting triangle I want. Unfortunately, I am missing a corner stone on top of the blue basket. Duh! The yellow sashing has to be with the basket not with the setting triangle. 

This basket at the bottom has a corner stone on top. Unfortunately, it should have been sewn at the bottom. Now I have two corner stones together. Arghh! 

Some pieces have been ripped apart so often that I had to cut a new piece. The yellow fabric love to follow the seam ripper. (Darn!)

Today is the deadline for the Basket SAL and, unfortunately, this is all I have to show. (Just imagine it with yellow all around instead of the gray carpet, okay? Thanks.) I promise to send Cécile a picture of the finish project in a near future.  Just not today as I have said enough bad things for one day. 😖

You can see more basket quilts at Cécile's place in a day or two. Enjoy! 

;^)

Scrap Attack April Challenge

Oh! Bother! I am really not good at this game. My March Scrap Attack Challenge is incomplete. Surprised? Not at all. I seem to be stuck in another time zone, like a month behind time zone. Ha!

Let's look at this mess partial success closer.

It all started with this little piece of paper. It calls for a string project. Do I have enough strings to make a project?

Check. The supply is plentiful. 

What got done with the strings? A placemat.

Well, I did say it is a partial success. (It looks as if we are at the beginning of March instead of at the end of it. 😒)
Since I (usually) participate in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge with Angela  (which I seem to be also neglecting lately)) I used some purple, color of February, and some light green, color for this month and ... and ... well ... yep, that's all.


So what happened?

Well, this happened. The February Scrap Attack Challenge is done.

This is my lab coat that I use when I paint. It is NOT coming apart. Ever. But all the other shirts did.

The drawer once looked like this.

I now have all these lovely plaids to play with whenever I want. I am so happy.

There is a lot of shirts in this pile. Come to think of it, I should have count them. Rats!

I was surprised to find some weren't shirts but yardage. Yay! Bonus!

Two of them weren't plaid at all, hahaha. The one on the left was almost all done since it was used for my big hexagon quilt. You can see it here in the before last picture.

Ta-dah! This is the same drawer now full with usable plaid shirts. There's even some room left ... maybe enough for the shirts from the second drawer to fit in? We'll see when I get there.
Thank you Sarah for hosting the Scrap Attack Challenge. I might not be very good at it, but I am not giving up and will get better (I hope) before the end of the year. 😊

So what else happened in March?

I did do a little bit of sewing.

My design wall has Cécile's little baskets challenge. Very slowly, the sashing is added. The deadline is for April 15th. Well, since you know me, you know this won't happen. It will be done on May 15th. Ha!

Two little 3.5 inches block from the 365 Challenge Sampler were assembled.  On top is "Tangled Briars" a.k.a. "Barrister's Block" (with a beard). It has 44 pieces. Below is "Propeller" with 17 pieces. (I have seen this block somewhere before and I really liked it. Hmmm, I think I will do a little research in my Pinterest account.)

I have signed up for a "sewing-a-thon" or something like that. This lady has rented a hall, is setting it up for quilters and called anyone who is interested to line up. I did. It will happen on the first Wednesday of the month for the next three months. (We'll try it for 3 months and take it from there.) The doors open at 8 am until 8 pm. Since I still have a full-time job, I will be there around 1 pm until ... the bobbins run out. I am so excited about this as it is only 15 minutes drive from my place. Someone has answered my prayers.  😁

I will take my little basket blocks and try to get it all assembled. I need to take something that doesn't require much attention to detail as I know I'll be curious to see what the others are sewing and chat with them and ... hopefully, at one point I'll sit down and stitch for a bit. 😉

The Scrap Attack Challenge for April is ...

Cut up the fabric in the Big Pieces drawers. Well, that's not a portable project I could bring to the sewing-a-thon. Wish me luck.

That's all for now. I have a very long weekend off, so some sewing just might happen. Hope you have some fun with fabric too.

;^)