265 Blues.

Done!

Yep! I have 265 blue blocks done. Only 100 little blue blocks to go. Whoop!

Road to Oklahoma - 14 pieces

Buttercup - 12 pieces  I should learn how to pin my blocks so they don't always look so crocked in the pictures. :^}  These two blocks are 3.5 inches unfinished. The cream piece is half an inch finished.

I'll try to finish September this week. Fingers crossed because as you probably know, when I plan something, it fails.



I'll join Kathy for some slow Sunday stitch while I stitch down the binding on the placemat. It comes from the stash of strings I showed you in yesterday's post.

I'll also sit at the frame and quilt Ohio Star Shadow for a bit.

By the time I am done with this quilt, it will be old enough to get its driver's licence! Shameful! lol.

Have a great Easter all of you who celebrate and a happy Sunday with plenty to stitch for the rest of you.

;^)

Joining Kathy at Kathy's Quilts.

Life's Surprises

Not all of life's surprises are nice. I have my share of hard time like we all do, but I did get a few nice one since I last blogged.

My brother came over to visit the family. He lives in Alberta, Canada. We don't see each other much. It was SOOOOOOOOO nice to see him again.

At work, the girl who works with me is on maternity leave since the end of January. They have finally found a replacement. Whoop! I might get home less tired now and have some energy left to sew something. :^D

Another surprise I got was this huge bag full of scraps! Goodness gracious! How generous some people are! It was mostly from Anne, but Lucie and Carole also pitched in. I was so thrilled, I was giddy, like a little child.

It came from the ladies I used to sew with on Wednesday. I was so touched that they still collect their scraps for me. Wait! Did I say scraps? These are huge scraps. Check it out.

Stacks of two inches tall. The white triangles are 6 inches on the short end! Anne has the most beautiful cotton. Don't know where she gets it from but it's really top quality. And she even gave me her rejects from her New York Beauty quilt. One of them is hanging on the bag in the first picture.

These are all strings ready to be used. Talking about strings, while I was puttering around, trying to find room to store the goodies, I found a placemat I'd started a long time ago when Julie from Texas had sent me a box full of strings.

I finished the right hand side of it and I'm sure I can find something in those strings to make a binder out of. (Thanks, Julie, for all the lovely strings!)

Some of Anne's work. 

I found a baggy of green and gold triangles. At the bottom of the shoe box, there was more green and gold triangles. 

Then, I spotted this. Oh ! 

Is Anne making Bonnie's Good Fortune too? I'll have to ask her. Mine is very slowly coming along.

Some blue, some green, some blue-green.
There was also lots of beautiful dark blue in the gift bag. Guess where these will end up? Yes, in my 365 challenge. Whoop!

Like I said, some aren't scraps but yardage, like this bird fabric and the beautiful lime and brown fabric in the third picture that was given by Carole.
Thank you so much ladies. You are such wonderful people. ♥

Needless to say that I spent a lot of time just admiring and petting and trying to store all these goodies somewhere.

There was this little bit of Aqua with a cute little fox on it. I just had to make something out of it right away. It became a little bookmark and it is with me everyday.

Talking about wild life, I had another nice surprise this morning.

On the other side of the racing track behind my yard, I spotted a calf. I thought who has a calf on the loose, has there is no livestock farms near by. I kept looking at it and then it hit me. It has no tail!

It's a calf alright but of the MOOSE kind. And it has a white spot on its back and on its butt. So cute! Sorry for the grainy pictures, but it was raining hard and I'm about 300 feet from it. It was happily chewing on the bark. I'm happy to see it has survived the winter.

Bye, bye baby moose. You can come back anytime you want. Take care! ♥

Okay! Back to quilting. Still quilting the flannel monster. I do one or two passes every other night. My shoulders appreciate the break.

I also used the dark blues from Anne's gift to make Mother's Fancy, September 20th. 

It has 65 pieces and measures 6.5 inches. The 9-Patch blocks are 2 inches unfinished. I love this one. 

And that's it for now. Sorry, it turned out to be a much longer post than I intended. 

Since it will rain all weekend long, I'll be in my sewing room if you are looking for me. 

;^)

Joining Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework

Wendy at Wendy's Quilts and More

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

Finally a "Ta-Dah" Moment

My first finish of 2019 is my first I Spy quilt. I'm sure I will make more like this because it was fun.

I got up early this morning to take pictures in the sunlight. :^D

It's a pattern that I took from Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. You can find the original inspirational quilt along with the tutorial Sarah gives so generously for free right here. Thank you, Sarah. You are my inspiration. 😊

I did a very simple quilting because I didn't want to cover the lovely prints too much.

Some of the prints are cotton, others are flannel. In this picture, you can see that our beautiful snow is actually ice. 😞

There's Taz, the M&M guy, stars, cardinals, buttons, flying saucers ... 

It measures 54" X 54" ; big enough to play find and seek with the 136 different prints. I see from the pictures that I am not quite done with sewing the threads' ends in. Oops!

... worms, Batman, dinosaurs, pumpkin, trains and Chinese ladies. Even Santa is included.  

I'm joining Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for "Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?"

Have a great weekend everyone.

;^)

Also joining Angela at So Scrappy.
Wendy at Wendy's Quilts
Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework
Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation
Michelle at From Bolt to Beauty