How is everyone?

 Here we are...a week already into the new year. 

In Ontario, where I live, we are in a lockdown situation to try to curb the numbers of Covid cases. I think the next week should give us a bit of an idea of whether it is working or not, as we are now 2 weeks into lockdown...which is also 2 weeks after the pre-Christmas scramble. 

I'm going to try to continue to look on the bright side of things. I feel fortunate to be someone who has always been a homebody....and extremely fortunate to have a number of hobby's to keep me active...quilting, knitting, reading. 

I have to admit, this time of year is always difficult for me so I'm going to double my efforts to look on the bright side and keep somewhat active. Maybe a nice walk is in order today.

I've been enjoying my knitting...I had started this sweater early in 2020 but it got put aside so I could work on Christmas knitting. I knitted the sleeves since Christmas and it's now complete. It's also very comfortable and I'm so glad it fits!

Of course, I had to start on the next sweater right away!...

As for applique, on Saturday I worked on some of the blocks for my A Curious Journey BOM...

There are so many assorted 6.5" blocks that I still need to do for this BOM...but it's getting there!

This morning I worked on some of the applique blocks for my Spice Market quilt. This quilt is mostly machine-piecing, but there are 5 circle blocks to do. Here are the three that are done, so far...

See the little block in the above picture?...68 more are needed!...so I'll just do a few every once in a while and they'll get done.

The difficult part of these blocks is that I feel no forgiveness with the solid fabrics. It's hard to hide stitches!....I will just do my best and be happy with them. 

These blocks start with some reverse applique. Here is the block from this morning...

Here it is stitched, and cutting away a layer to start the next bit of reverse applique...

....and here is where I left things this morning....

I think next time I'll have to get pictures of the design wall showing my progress on Spice Market and on A Curious Journey. 

I've continued to "cull the herd" when it comes to my UFO's. It is such a relief to let go of some of them. I'm hoping this will free something in me to actually get some of them completed!

I did finish my Farm Girl Vintage quilt this week. This was a UFO that I never had doubts on finishing. I just need to do the hand-sewing on the binding....not my favourite thing, although I know many who enjoy it. 

That's all for now. I hope everyone is doing well...as well as possible...and keeping busy doing something you love doing. 

I  am linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching.

One Monthly Goal for September - Completed!

 There's just time for a quick post today as I have to get back to work on a custom quilt on the longarm. I only have about two hours work left to go on it, I think.

Here is a picture of when the quilting first started...

....I love when I get the opportunity to sew that motif!

And I love when a quilt calls for a bit of curved cross-hatching...

I've actually just popped in to say that I have completed my One Monthly Goal for September, which was to finish the top of my Farm Girl Vintage quilt.

It was started quite a while back, and I'm so glad to have it finished. I still love the look of the quilt. I'll enjoy quilting it, but that will have to wait until January.

A special shout-out goes to my friend, Karen Z, for designing the Canadian flag block to replace the American flag that was part of the original pattern.

Last year for Christmas I received the pattern book for Farm Girl Vintage 2....now I can look forward to starting that one! I think I'll make a goal of two blocks per month. I seem to do well with an agenda of some sort.

I was excited to learn last month that I won the prize for One Monthly Goal over at Elm Street Quilts blog. She hosts the OMG every month. If someone posts their goal at the beginning of the month, and then posts that they did indeed complete that goal, the person has a chance to win a gift certificate to Fat Quarter Shop.

Last month, that person was me! I ended up choosing a fat quarter bundle to use in an upcoming Snowflake quilt. You'll read more about that in an upcoming post!

Here is the fabric I chose, Polar Magic by Lemonni...

That's it for now....back to work for me!

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal Finishes - September. 

One Monthly Goal - September

 I've been writing a list of my UFO's....and there are soooo many.

I think I'll try knocking one off the list every month (or two months if that particular quilt needs a lot of work).

This month my goal is to complete the Farm Life Vintage quilt top.

I think it needs three borders, maybe four, one of them being a border of flying geese....like the ones to the left of the picture. 

This quilt has been taken way too long to be a real quilt, so I look forward to having it completed. 

Another thing I'd like done is three hats made of these balls of yarn...

I am just finishing some knitted socks. Normally socks don't take too long to finish, but this pair has been so uninspiring. I'm almost to the ribbing of the second sock, so finally almost done. They also happen to be the biggest pair of socks I've ever made, on a 2mm needle (small!), so that has helped in dragging these out so long. I'll be glad to see the end of them!

My goal this year is for everyone in the family to have a knitted item for Christmas. Luckily the hats will knit up quickly. Only a few more after these ones, and one to knit in secret, and perhaps one more pair of socks, and I'm good.

I wasn't going to show the pair of socks that I'm working, but oh well, why not. The colour is called Hamburger and the one good thing is that they are turning out to be almost identical twins...not bad! I like doing the toe-up method, but I'm not a fan of how this particular heel looks. It's the first time I've done a Fleegle heel and despite not liking the look of it, I did like the knitting of it. 

Edited to add: Now, after a bit more knitting, they are finally complete! Yay!!! On to the next pair...or one of the hats.

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal

One Monthly Goal - Finish

Well, it's the end of the month already and I almost forgot to post my One Monthly Goal Finish for March!

My goal was to get the main body of Farm Girl Vintage together....finally!!!....and I'm happy to say that I accomplished it!

I'm really happy with it. I think I will make a goal to have it done in time for the Fair this year. It still needs a pieced border, etc...but the end is in sight.

I've had some extra sewing time. The longarm is not very busy at the moment so I'm taking advantage of the lull.

Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts has been offering a mystery quilt....a new block every day for 15 days. Some days we make as few as 4 of the daily block....the other day we had to make 16.  There will be 100 blocks total, which will make a nice lap-sized quilt.

I decided to do mine in 30's prints as I have a lot of them, and I do still love them. 

Here is mine after Day 11...

There are some bits I'm not too sure about, but it's staying as it is.

I will name this quilt in some way to remember that it was made during this pandemic :(


And...wouldn't you know it...Bonnie Hunter has started a new mystery quilt to keep us busy during isolation. At first I thought, "no way"...I want to concentrate on my UFOs.  But I'm doing it....I haven't participated in her mystery quilts in quite a few years as they usually take place between American Thanksgiving and Christmas....a longarmer's absolute busiest time!

Well, I'm not so busy at the moment, so I'm jumping in on this one!

It's called the Unity Quilt-along and you can find Part One on her blog today, which you can see HERE.





You can have a look at her Intro post HERE to see Bonnie's suggestions about fabrics.

One of my goals during social distancing is to make some sense of the sewing room and get it tidied and organised.  I've been saying it for a few days now, and after I finish this post I will actually start. I think one of the things I will do is start a box for donation to the free table at the guilds...I'd like to part with 5 UFOs that I will never get back to doing. I'm sure I can come up with 5. 

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for the One Monthly Goal linky party.

Singing the blues....

Does anyone else get blue this time of year? 

Does anyone use one of the lamps to help you get a bit more "daylight" to help your mood? If so....do you find it helps???

This hits me every year in February...I almost thought I was getting away with not getting the blues this year, but last week it hit me hard. The only consolation...Spring will be here soon and the days are certainly getting a little longer.

Something cheerful?...I actually finished my One Monthly Goal for this month!

My goal was to have all the blocks completed for my Farm Girl Vintage....and here they are...

It's almost unbelievable to me that I have the blocks done...this has been an ongoing UFO for a couple of years now....not that that's too unusual, right?? lol

A note to myself...When I begin Farm Girl Vintage 2 I think I'll stick to muslin or a pale solid as a background. I'm wondering if the background in this version is a little busy????


Another "cheerful"...an impulse buy of this knitting book, which showcases the knitting style of  knitters from Newfoundland....

I'm determined that'll be the end of impulse-buying for a while! 

So sorry to be such a debby-downer....maybe a little extra stitching today will help :)

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal - February

A year of finishes???...off to a good start...

On this last day of January 2020, it looks like I already have two "finishes" under my belt.

Maybe I'll be making up for 2019, when I had very few quilts that were finished.

This week I'm putting the finishing touches on my Temperature Quilt for 2019.

It didn't take long to quilt as it isn't very big... 60"x60"...

I worked on the binding this morning...only a little bit to go. I even managed to put on a label. I learned this method of putting a label on from Bonnie Hunter's blog, Quiltville.

Here it is on the design wall, almost done....

Not a great picture, but I am glad to say it is actually nice and square. I'm happy with the result.

Now, on to my Temperature Quilt 2020!

In a previous post, which you can find HERE, I wrote about this year's temperature quilt...and about my doubts of how it was starting out.

 Well....later that same day I change things up! At this early stage, I knew that it was the time to change my mind if I was not enjoying the process already, only two weeks into the year.

This is the new start of my Temperature Quilt for 2020...

There will be a flying geese unit for each day, showing the forecast high temperature of each day. After each round of geese there will be a sashing of background before the next round of geese.

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Well, I have to admit that I didn't get a speck of sewing done to complete my "one monthly goal". 

My goal was to complete the rest of the blocks for my Farm Girl Vintage...

I am rolling that goal over to February...I really want to get these blocks done! It would be nice to have this quilt completed at some point this year.  

Today I am linking up with My Quilt Infatuation, and with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?. 

I am also linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal for February.

Happy New Year 2020

A whole new year, a whole new decade!

I'm sure you are the same as me, in that you think ahead to which quilts you'd like to complete, continue, or, dare I say, begin.

I have an actual finish this past week...my Temperature Quilt for 2019.

Well...the top is finished. I hope to have it quilted up very soon, though. We have visitors next week from Alberta, so quilting will have to be put hold for a bit.

I learned that I need to make sure there is a bit more contrast in my colours for a Temperature Quilt...way too many similar reds, I think. On the other hand, you can't really plan ahead too much, as the temperatures dictate how the quilt will play out, right?

I hope you will consider a Temperature Quilt....I thoroughly enjoyed doing mine. I had thought to put off doing another one until 2021, but didn't I come across a beautiful bundle of fabric, on sale, that would be perfect for a Temperature Quilt....and I came across a pattern that called out to me.

Here is my layout for 2020...

It's not a very big quilt and it done with English Paper Piecing. Each star represents one week of the year. I will only be using the high forecast for each day, but there is an option using highs and lows. If you google Fiona Sandwich I'm sure you can find the pattern if you want to play along.

Here are January 1 and 2...with my thimble so you can see the scale of the blocks...

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This year I am motivated to get back into participating in the One Monthly Challenge hosted by Patty at Elm Street Quilts.

For January I'd really like to have to blocks completed for my Farm Girl Vintage quilt. This has been a UFO for much too long now and I still love it, so would like to see it graduate into becoming an actual quilt!

Here are the blocks I have done so far...

I have to give a shout-out to Karen Z for designing the Canada flag block to use instead of the American flag....awesome!

They aren't in their proper layout yet. I think I have 8 more to go, so it's definitely an achievable goal. There are a couple of blocks that I was going to replace...

....they are the ones with the red "cheerio's" in the background fabric. I thought it would be nice to introduce a second background (maybe 2 years ago, lol) and it wasn't until I put them with the others that I noticed that it isn't a white fabric like the original background fabric. They look dirty to me. Actually, today they don't look as bad as I'd thought....but I think I still have to replace them :(

I did manage to do a block on Tuesday morning...to get the ball rolling. Well, I'll have to call this my "humility" block, if you get my meaning...

I do like it though...it uses a few of the new fat quarters I've picked up lately. 

One of the "pushes" to get this one done is that Santa brought me a new book for Christmas, Farm Girl Vintage 2...

....and I really shouldn't start this one until the original Farm Girl is done!!!

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Now I'll confess to the new quilt that I will start this year. It's a Jen Kingwell pattern called Halo. I've had the pattern now for a couple of years and I think I've put it off as it's a bit intimidating to me.

I don't have a picture to share yet as I've just started a bit of cutting and don't have any blocks done yet.

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Another finish this week is my first pair of knitted socks in a very long time....

I am very happy with how they turned out and happy to get back to knitting, especially socks. I learned three techniques on this pair, one of them being knitting them from the toe up, which I really liked.

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I usually have a two-week break from longarming at the end of each year, but I'm extending it a bit this year as we have house guests arriving next week for 5 days. 

I'm taking advantage of this time off to get one of my own quilts quilted, my Queen's Garden quilt.

As always, I started with doing the Stitch in the Ditch work...especially so since I wasn't sure what I'd do in the borders. All I knew is that it would be some sort of feathering, reason being...I just really feel like doing some feathers, lol.

I looked back at notes from some longarm classes I've taken in the past years. I did a bit of doodling the other day to try to get some creative juices going. 

I'm always so nervous to get started, but then I start and it becomes lots of fun.

I'm liking the first bit of stitching...

I only did a bit more before the lighting started to make it difficult to go on. For this picture, I actually shut the light off hoping to see the effect of the quilting a bit better...

I like it, and it's turned out to be a lot of fun to execute. I will try to fill the space more as I progress. It would really "pop" with some pebbling in the negative space, but this quilt will not be so heavily quilted.

I wish I had time to do more today, but I'll be going out soon to a friend's house to do a bit of "wet felting"...we'll be making cat caves! 

Today I am linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?, Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal, and with Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Fridays.

One Monthly Goal - January finish

I'm just popping in today for a short post since it's the time of the month to report on One Monthly Goal

I wasn't sure I would accomplish my goal of getting eight blocks done on my Farm Girl Vintage quilt, but I have...

I think there may be just 8 or so blocks to do to complete the blocks needed for this quilt, and I need to re-do two of the blocks from a while ago. I'll show you why in a future post! 

I'm liking that I'm moving this UFO along. I just might make this my goal again for February's One Monthly Goal, but I'll think about it over the next few days.

That's all for today....hopefully you have met your goals January, too.

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal, and with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?.

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

We finally have a bit of winter this weekend.

Yesterday was blustery and by the look of it outside, I plan on staying in again today!

I plan on having a bit of sewing time today and will work on a couple of things.

Here is the design wall this morning....

Along the top of the picture is the beginnings of my temperature quilt....I can tell already that I am going to love this quilt! I'm sure that today's block will include a dark purple for this extremely cold day.

The bottom block with the yellow in it is my first block for the #52blocks52weeks that CQA is hosting. My blocks will be made of 30's fabrics.

Just peeking into the bottom left corner of the pic is a bit of my I Am Enough quilt....which I thought would be the main focus of my sewing session today.....but, nope, I will be determined to do a couple of blocks of my One Monthly Goal, which is my Farm Girl Vintage blocks....three of which are done (in the middle of the picture).

So many choices, so little time!

The design wall got a major tidying up the other day as we needed to move it to the living room for a photo shoot. 

I needed to get a full-on shot of a quilt and finally had the brilliant idea of using the design wall. This meant taking everything down off the design wall and moving it to the living room....which meant moving all the furniture....which meant a chance at getting at all the dust bunnies that have been lurking under the couches....this was quite the process! 

We managed to get a nice shot...

If the quilt had been a couple of inches bigger I don't know what we would have done!

My slow stitching this morning consisted of some English Paper Piecing. This project is one I intend on working on when I need something for "on the go".....but I don't have anything else prepped at the moment so it got some attention today. This is for my Tula Nova quilt.

I think this quilt will probably progress quickly, for some reason. I haven't done EPP for a while and I do enjoy it. I'm thinking there should always be an ongoing EPP project!

I am linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching, and with Anina at Twiddletails for updates on Temperature Quilts.

My husband just commented on how it looks cold outside. Can it "look" cold????.....yes, I think it can.

A good day to stay indoors and get some sewing and reading done!

Happy New Year !

I had a difficult time figuring out what my goal will be for January.

I've chosen to work on my Farm Girl Vintage quilt...

I have completed a couple more blocks lately. This will be a UFO that definitely needs moving along this year!

This will be a completed quilt in 2019!!!!

So, my goal this month will be to get eight more blocks done. I was going to say six, but nope, eight it will be!


I finished my little bit of colour that I started on the weekend. I needed a quick colour "fix" and this was quick and easy. Love it!

It's back to work for me today after a nice two weeks off. 

I had intended on doing some organising and straightening-up in the sewing room. What got accomplished?....nothing :(

It will actually just be a half-day on the longarm as I'll be on an outing to Niagara Falls this afternoon to run an errand. 



I did get my run in on Sunday....wasn't sure how it would be with the bit of snow we'd gotten overnight, but it just made for a beautiful run on the trail. 

Here is my running buddy, enjoying the moment ....

That's it for now....Happy New Year everyone!

I am linking up with Lorna for Let's Bee Social (I'm looking forward to her Harry Potter Quiltalong!), Susan at Quilt Fabrication for Midweek Makers, and with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal - January.