Sunday Stitching

I'm pretty well caught up with my daily appliqued hearts and have had no opportunity to prep some more applique.

Luckily there is always my Life is Beautiful for my "in-between" times...

....so that is what I am working on today.

It's always good to have many projects just waiting for a bit of attention, isn't it!?...haha!

I never feel that this embroidery is pushing for attention....it's purpose in my life is to just be there when I need something a bit different to work on. I'm sure one day it will become a beautiful quilt.

My stitches on these blocks are not always the prettiest, but they are always the best I can do on a given day....and that's ok.


Like I've said, my Quilty365/Year in My Life will be soon done and the question of borders for this quilt will come up.

I came across two fabrics the other day that I'm sure I bought over ten years ago, thinking they would make a nice border....some day.

I've auditioned them in this picture....

I'm not sure if they are perfect or if they look dated. Opinions are most welcome!


I've switched up my "leaders-and-enders" for the time-being. I have almost 400 of my  5" Nature's Neutrals blocks waiting to be transformed into a quilt...

 ...so I am going to sew them together into "fours" to make them more manageable on the design wall. (An idea that I remember from a friend, thanks!)

I'm sure by making these neutral blocks my leaders-and-enders they will go together in no time! To find out about what leaders-and-enders are all about, you can read about it here at Quiltville.com.

We're in the middle of a baby boom around here lately. Our fifth grandchild, and second this year, was born this weekend! 

Meet Rennick...

....and now we wait patiently for the New Year, when we will welcome the twins into the family!

I am linking up with Kathy over at Kathy's Quilts to see what others are working on for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Time to slow down

What a beautiful Sunday morning. I haven't stepped outside yet to know if it's warm or cool, but the view out the window is great.

I feel well-rested this morning as I sit with my coffee and applique. It would be nice to take the whole morning but there's things that need doing!

I did get a few of my daily hearts sewn for my Quilty365/A Year in My Life...

I feel excited that this quilt will soon be complete. I think my ending date is November 11th, so not long now. I'll probably have to do a bit more to make up the quilt...each row of my quilt is 15 hearts, so it'll take a few more to complete the final row....unless I think of a better ending!

Here is a recent picture of this quilt...

I was thinking this quilt would stand alone with no borders, but now I'm not sure. I do like a nice red border....or maybe I should go with something different for me and do blue???

I find with a scrappy quilt like this that whatever I put on the border, that's the colour that will "pop" in the quilt. I imagine I will do some auditioning of fabrics if I choose to do a border.

Yesterday I went to a Tea/Quilt Show in Port Dover. The tea was very well-done with lovely sandwiches, elegant setting and good company. 

I whizzed thru' the quilt show part of it because I was, for some reason, starting to feel exhausted. I know it's been a busy time lately but this was overwhelming.

I was in bed by 8:30 last night and slept for ten hours....quite unusual for me, but I must have needed it. I feel much better this morning.

I did manage to take a couple of pictures at the quilt show...

I really must get back to appliqueing my Auntie Green's Garden....another two quilts have recently caught my attention! 

One of these quilts happens to be a pattern Kathy talks about today on her blog. Have a visit with her to have a look, and also to see what others are poking at for Slow Sunday Stitching.

I am also linking up with Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework for Oh, Scrap!.

Today on my Design Wall...

Yesterday I had a bit of sewing time so I thought I'd get this month's block done for one of my guild's Mystery BOM.

Here is the first block from last month...

...very nice, worked up great! 

I have a collection of Cotton&Steel fabrics that I am going to use for this quilt.

I pulled out the directions for this month's block. Oh, great, who wants to ever work in 16th's of an inch!!!!

Are you kidding me!!!???

My brain seemed to wrap itself around this kind of thing a little easier fifteen years ago :(

I forged ahead. The block definitely isn't perfect but it'll do.

I already messed up and had to re-cut some of my precious horse fabric (wish I'd bought more than a fat-quarter), so this one is a keeper.

I am liking the fresh, fun fabrics!

Visit Patchwork Times to see what is on other quilters' design walls today!

I'm also linking with Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday.

Sunday Stitching

It's been a nice slow start to the day. 

As usual, I started my day with a bit of applique. I completed this block from my Happy Day quilt. I think it's one of the prettiest blocks I've ever done...

I'm a little at odds with my applique at the moment. So many projects, so little time. Since I've finished my FlowerGarden quilt, I'm not sure which quilt will be my main focus.

I know it should be my AuntieGreen's, but I just don't feel like it at the moment...

I do still love this quilt and I know I could just put it aside for a couple of months and come back to it. The thing is, once this quilt is done I am sure I'll be thinning out the stash and I am so looking forward to that.

Hmmm, maybe I'll do the prep work for the next border and that will get me going. I think that's what stalls things sometimes....the darn prep work! 


Yesterday was packing-day for my trunk show that I'm doing Monday evening. 

Every time I do a trunk show I say it's to be my last...but here I go again! 

I've never considered myself a person who speaks in public. When I do, I try to imagine myself putting on an imaginary jacket of one who is a public speaker. Funny enough, now that I've done this a number of times, I guess I have become a person who speaks in public. If you'd have told me five years ago that I would be doing this, I'd have bet quite a bit of money saying you were wrong.

This is definitely the last time!


My family has been growing by leaps and bounds lately. We've gone from having one grandson to having seven grandchildren by the end of February 2017!

My eldest son and his wife have a two-year old and now are expecting twins! 

There is something that the expectant parents do now to find out the gender of their baby....it's called a Reveal Party.

A lot of times a friend of the pregnant couple will have results from the ultrasound and get a pink or blue cake made up. Then, in a gathering of family and friends the cake is cut open to reveal to all, including the expectant parents, the gender of the baby.

For our Reveal Party, the friend of my DIL had two large balloons hanging from the ceiling...

They popped the first balloon and had blue confetti sprinkle down....

....at this point I started bawling my eyes out and didn't get a picture of the second one which contained lots of pink confetti!

So, a boy and a girl!

I must admit, I'm kind of old school and think the ultimate surprise in life is when a baby is born and the doctor says, "it's a boy/girl!", but this was so exciting and fun, I can see why its a "thing".

I am linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching and with Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework for Oh, Scrap!.

Have a great day and hope you can enjoy some downtime with your needle and thread!

Is it time to dump the stash???

For the past month or so I've had the idea that after I finish the applique on my Auntie Green's Garden quilt I would consider donating my old stash to the "free tables" at the two guilds I belong to.

I think I've mentioned it before....I think I've gone thru' the "fabric change of life"....all of my old favourites are not of interest to me at all anymore. I'm loving newer, fresher looking fabrics. I'm even finding it difficult to get back to my Auntie Green's even though I still love the look of it. 

The quilt still needs a upper and lower border, then comes a final "not so intense" applique border. I guess I could leave off the final border and just find a nice print for a simpler outer border...we'll see.

So.......how timely is it that at guild yesterday we had Sandy Lindal as our guest speaker! 

Sandy told of her journey as a quilter. Many of her quilts were foundation-pieced onto flannel, which sounds intriguing to me. She had many beautiful quilts that were completely scrappy, which I love!

The cool thing was, that at this time of me wanting to clean out my stash she showed scrappy quilts using old stash that were paired with white and grey fabrics....which basically brought them into a more modern feel. Brilliant!!!

One of her quilts was a spiderweb quilt....wish I had asked to take a picture. This is a quilt I've wanted to do for years. Sandy's was stunning, set with both white and grey in the "kite" background pieces.

You can visit Sandy at her blog, Scrappy Gal Quilt Company.



As I sat with my morning coffee I stitched away at one of my blocks for the Happy Day BOM offered by Sarah Fielke...

I am loving this block. I'm so glad to be part of this online BOM. Each month we get two or three blocks to finish along with a great video tutorial showing some of Sarah's methods, which may be new and different to what one is used to.

I'm not one to be caught up in the hexie craze...but I love how Sarah showed how to do it her way!  There may be hope for me yet!

Sarah will be offering a new BOM starting in the New Year and I recommend it for those of you who enjoy doing BOM's that are also a bit of a mystery.


On a personal note, I am in Week 5 of my Learn to Run class. If you had told me two months ago that I would be out running the streets of Port Dover I would have thought you were bonkers! The surprise is not only am I doing it, but that I'm enjoying it!!!....as well as the new friends I am making in the class.

Every morning after a class my knees are asking me, "What the heck???", but I just tell them that they are going to be painful if I stay at home and do nothing, so they may as well be painful trying to be a healthier person.

It's still hard for me to believe that at the end of the class in three weeks we will be running a 5K. How surreal!!!


I am linking up with Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social.

P.S.
I've just been reading Cynthia's post today at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework and I think she has the perfect solution to bust my stash!!! Woohoo!

Drystane Dyke

Happy Thanksgiving!

The weather is beautiful this weekend so we decided to take a leisurely drive down along the scenic route in Niagara and through Niagara-on-the-Lake. 

The colours haven't changed much yet, but it was still such a lovely afternoon. One of my favourite sights to see are the many Drystane Dykes, which are fences made of just stone and no mortar. I don't know why they fascinate me but for once I thought to take a picture...

I just think they are so beautiful. I googled the meaning of Drystane Dyke and the first thing to pop up was the Scottish Wikipedia definition which you can see here.....check it out and see what you make of it!!!

It's been a nice slow start to the day. I sat with my coffee this morning and started a new block for my Happy Day quilt...

Here's what the block will look like when it's done...

This block gives me another opportunity to try my "new to me" method for making circles...

You can read about the circle method here.

I finished a block this week for this quilt.  This was a block was challenging as reverse applique doesn't always come easy to me!

....and here are the previous blocks I have done...still some catching up to do....

I am using scraps of TulaPink fabrics for this quilt so I'm linking up with Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!.

I'm also linking up with Kathy at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

A pretty Flower Garden!

So many quilt-hopefuls fall by the wayside...hopefully to be brought back to the needle at some point.

Some quilts hold my attention until they are finally complete, and my Flower Garden quilt has been one of them.

I'm pretty sure it's been at least a two-year project and, as I'm sure I've said before, I've loved every bit of the journey of this quilt.

I knew a long time ago that I wanted to quilt this in a way inspired by Judi Madsen of Green Fairy Quilting. I had the opportunity to take classes from her in June 2015. She is a very precise quilter and her work is fabulous. It was great to see her in action and to see her quilts up close.

This is probably the most difficult quilting I've ever done, but so much fun at the same time. There are quite a few oopsies in the quilting, but with invisible thread and such dense quilting there was no way they were being picked out. For this reason, this is not going to be a "show-quality" quilt, but it will always make me smile to look at it! 

Like I always say, it's all about the journey and this one was a good one!

The sashing is made of 1.5" squares and was worth the effort!

I wish I could get a better picture of the texture on the back but here's the best I could do....

Again, I love the use of striped fabric for the binding...

Each block was fun and whimsical to applique and it was nice to re-visit each one as it was quilted....

I know that this kind of quilting will take a lot of practice to really get it right. I'll definitely do it again, probably not on a client's quilt but on my own quilts.

In my applique group there are many of my friends that are working on the same quilt, but in different fabric choices.

One is done in Fassett fabrics, also, but with a beautiful white background fabric that really makes the bright colours sparkle. Another is in batik fabrics, another in William Morris and yet another in her "stash" fabrics. So much fun to see them all done a little differently.

I've entered this quilt and my Moonlight Through the Trees quilt into the Norfolk County Fair and Horse Show. I'm on my way there today and am hoping the FlowerGarden quilt is hung so I can get a good picture of the whole thing. If not, I'll get it on my design wall when it comes home and take a picture.

I'm so happy I changed a few of the fabrics at the last minute...such as the cat...I like him so much better now!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later this same day....

So I've been to the Fair and it was so nice to see my quilt hanging so I could take it all in. I had ended up hearing in advance that my quilt had won a lovely ribbon....so nice to be recognised for what you love to do!....also secretly nice to stand back and eavesdrop on what the people say about one's quilt, lol.

To make it even more special was the fact that a long-time quilty friend of mine also won  for her quilt! Way to go Karen!!!

Now onto the next quilt! I wonder if I'll ever do another Kim McLean design. I've done two now and loved both of them! Maybe, we'll see....I'm kinda into Jen Kingwell lately. I do seem to like the Australian designers!

I came home to catch up on mowing the lawn....all of a sudden it's growing so fast after the rain we've had. A sure sign of lawn mowing is seen when a person has a white dog...

I am linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social.

One Monthly Goal - October

A couple of you may know my guilty secret....not being able to resist Block of the Month projects.

In fact, lately I've been so discouraged by my fabric stash that I've thought I could completely get rid of it and still have lots to do for the next twenty years with my BOM's I have started and abandoned.

One of these will be the focus of my One Monthly Goal this month. 

For the last few years Quilt Junction in Waterford has hosted the mystery BOM produced by Border Creek Station. I have signed up for the last two.....neither are completed :(

I have joined this year's mystery, Quilter's Joy, but have decided that I will not start until last year's is done. It's pretty close if I remember correctly.

Here is how it looks as of today....

....I know, not a very interesting picture!

As you can see, all the components are kept organized in baggies. These patterns are very well done and the baggies keep everything ready for each step.

I think I'll start at it today. It's been a very busy time lately and I think I need some sewing time for a couple of hours.

Hopefully I'll check back in at the end of the month with a completed quilt top!!

I am linking up with Red Letter Quilts for OMG, One Monthly Goal.

Have a great day!

Just in time...

I wasn't sure that I would enter my FlowerGarden quilt into the Fair this year or not. As I got closer to finishing it I felt the urge to push and get it done in time. 

It's been such a busy time the last few weeks that it is nice to have a reason to just sit back and relax while I bind my quilt. I have a couple of sappy movies saved on the PVR which are perfect for this task. 

I know that many people enjoy the binding....I just find it something that needs doing. Somehow this morning as I poke away I'm finding it a nice calming "chore". I've truly enjoyed this quilt from beginning to end and it's nice to sit today and reflect on it. 

It really is being completed just in time. Entries to the Fair have to be submitted either this afternoon or tomorrow morning! I was going to take it in Monday, but find myself with a reason to go to town this afternoon.....so as soon as I finish this post I'll get back at it. Hopefully, finished by noon and then given a final going over.

I joked the other day about possibly binding it in the car on the way to the fairgrounds.....and I wasn't too far off the mark!

I am linking up with Kathy's Quilts for some Slow Sunday Stitching. Hopefully you can sit back and enjoy some time to take a break today with some stitching, reading or whatever brings you peace.