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. 

Sunday ... Aaaaahhhh!

A little quiet time is what I am enjoying this Sunday morning. What a week! And to finish it off beautifully, I had two training sessions on Friday on two different computer programs. You know I will forget it during the weekend and will probably remember only half of it comes Monday. Ha! ha! ha! Anyway! That's tomorrow's funny headache.

Right now, all my men are still sleeping so I have the dining room all to myself, with a coffee and some hand sewing. My favorite sewing place, the deck, is all wet from the dew at this time of the year, so I'll settle for the dining table, next to the patio doors. I am working on my Antique Inspiration.

It is doesn't take very long to do one block. The part that is most frustrating is the hoop. Because the quilt is already bind, the hoop doesn't "grip" properly and it keeps slipping off. I try to quilt without it sometimes, especially for the square in the corner of the quilt but, after awhile, I put the hoop back on. 

I have three more blocks to do. Then I will remove the machine quilting around the blocks and redo it by hand. It will look better I think. 

Oops! This one is not completely finished. :)

Hope that you too find some time to stitch a bit. I am linking up with Kathy for a Slow Sunday Stitching. 

Until next time ... ssssSMiLE ... it is stressless. 

EDITING: to link up with Angie from A Quilting Reader's Garden for some eye candy. Hope you will come and pay us a visit. 

Blame the French Accent

I had nice comments on my last post. (I am not implying that usually I have bad comments, I just mean ... oh brother!!) Misunderstanding is what I mean.  Uh! Um! Let's start again.

I had comments on my last post and, as I was reading them, it dawn on me that I had mislead my readers. I apologize for that.  :- (

In my post, I said that I will add a white sashing and my sweet commentators were agreeing that it look good with the white sashing but, to me, the sashing was not on yet. So what were the nice people talking about? Then, the light came on in my head. Oh brother! I've mislead my readers with my blocks. True, the blocks do have a white sashing but, for me, that one is part of the block and not a "true" sashing. (Am I making sense?)

Blame it on my French accent please. I should have wrote; I will add a second white sashing because this is what I meant.

and add some corner blocks too ... or should I say corner stones? Funny how differently we can interpret one's writing. I've read my post again and again and now that I see it, I don't understand how come I couldn't see it before. I'll try to be more explicit from now on. I can be such a blabbermouth that I try to keep my posting short (not to bore you to tears).  But I left out an important little word; second. Thanks for all the nice comments, hope there is no hard feelings for my lack of ability at translating my ideas. Sorry to whom my reply was confusing. I had another vision of my quilt in my head then you did and I guess my reply didn't always made a lot of sense. (No, I was not drunk).  
BTW, yes, the blocks are crooked. I didn't pay much attention when sewing these little bits together and now, I am regretting it.

Hope you find some time to put some fabric to a needle.  Ha! ha! ha! (It does make sense in French!)

Until next time ... SMiLE ... it's international language.

Monday's Options

I finally have a few minutes to sit at my sewing machine. Yeah!!

Yesterday, I've pulled out the finished blocks of my on again/off again leader /ender project. I've been sewing little 1.5 squares together for so long I think I've started this in 2012 but not sure. And now I am tired of this project so... I will finish it.

I have 8 blocks done. I will do 4 more and add white sashing to calm it down a notch. The inner square has 100 pieces of almost every cotton I have. Not paying much attention to how I am sewing this so it is very colourful and ♫ ssscrappy ♪ . It will go to charity when done.

So this will be my work for this week (and the next). What about you? Hope you find some time to put some stitches on a fabric.

Linking up with Patchwork Times, for even more fun check out what some quilters are stitching together. 

Until next time ... SMiLE ... show your colours. 

The rebel got the blues

I have worked on the Marcus Designer Sew Along.  I redid the first block which now looks like this:

My first try at this block is now a mug rug:

I am happy with my decision of redoing it. I much prefer the green in the first picture. The blues just leave me cold in both pictures. I hope it will look better when put together in a quilt. 

After finishing these, I sew the second block which is this one:

This one was easier to do. The background is a very soft beige but look too white in the picture. It is better in real life. The green is a nice celery green that I like a lot. 

Since all was going so well with the blocks, when they (wonderful ladies doing this sew-along) posted block #3 last night, I went for it. 

And I went for the blues!! Hush! Hush! Please don't tell anyone but sometimes I'm a little rebel and don't follow instruction to the letter.  Giggles! Not that it looks better in blue or in green, I just thought there was enough green in the last block for the two of them. Here they are: 

 

This is fun. I love it!! 

Did you join? You can find all the information here in case you wish to sew along too. I'm sure you will see these blocks popping all over blogland, they're so cute. The wonderful ladies who are responsible for this are Pam Buda, Paula Barnes, Sarah Maxwell, and  Pati Violick will give us the next block on Friday. Is it Friday yet??? 

Until next time ... SMiLE ... it won't rebel against you.