Summer Picnic Dish Again

After finishing the Colourful Crosspatch quilt, I wasn’t sure what I was going to work on next. The Summer Picnic Dish quilt won as it will grow quickly and I would love to see it finished before it’s too late … Continue reading

Will This Be The Next Top To Finish?

While I definitely want to get back to working on the Stormy Seas quilt top, I think after the POTC top is finished I’m going to need some curved piecing. That is, after all, my favourite. So the Summer Picnic … Continue reading

A Variety of Blocks

The main body of the tumbling blocks mug rug for one of the Grow Your Blog giveaway prizes is done. Now all I need to do is to print the shapes for the outer edges and stitch them on, which … Continue reading

Some Shabby Piecing

… is definitely in my future. Remember the Joseph’s Coat shabby chic project? It feels like forever since I’ve worked with my favourite shabby chic fabrics, so once the red and white top is done it will be the shabby … Continue reading

Curved Piecing and a Bit of a Curveball

As those who have read my blog for a while probably know, I love curved piecing more than just about anything (although hand quilting is quickly climbing back up the favourites list). There is something about it that I find absolutely irresistible. So once the flannel top was finished, I was thinking about my Summer Picnic Dish a.k.a. pickle dish quilt top and, as I had done a lot of printing of the various pieces for it a few weeks back, I started making the melon/arc combos so I can get this one to the lap quilt size sometime within the next few months. I’ve also been adding a bit to the Joseph’s Coat top.  A couple more of the Pickled Ladies have joined the others as well.

Even pressing the melon/arc combos is fun.

I couldn’t resist taking this picture. It’s not the best, but it made me laugh. It was raining here last night and a leaf blew up against our window and stuck there for the longest time. Baxter was on the windowsill countless times while it was there and completely ignored it. I was convinced he’d be trying to paw at it, but obviously it just wasn’t interesting as it wasn’t moving.

Almost all the leaves are off the trees on the roof garden now and Baxter is spending an enormous amount of time on the windowsill watching them. I love this photo of him as it shows off his white eyeliner so well!

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I’ve had a bit of a curveball thrown my way. Over the past few months, I’ve been dealing with a health condition and the resultant tests, specialist appointments, et cetera. I’ve now been given the diagnosis of remitting-relapsing MS. There are more tests to come, treatments to begin and more specialist’s visits, so there will undoubtedly be days when I may not have a new post on the blog and/or be visiting and commenting on other’s blogs.

It appears I have had this for at least 20 years and have clearly done quite well, up until this summer. According to my neurologist, there are many, many people who walk around with MS and don’t know it. I am in very good hands. I have had invaluable support from friends who have MS and have given me lots of good information as I’ve travelled down this path and, of course, have had enormous support from Mr. Q.O.

Baxter is providing his very own type of kitty support – laughter is the best thing and watching kitten antics like this, when he was trying to “help” Mr. Q.O. with his cryptic crossword, are guaranteed to bring about laughter and smiles.

Going forward, my intention is not to turn this into a blog about MS, although it may periodically be mentioned as it is part of my life and my blog is about things in my life as well as quilting.

Printing and More Printing for Quilts

What’s that?  It’s the stack of fabrics I printed over the weekend for the Scrappy Star, Twinkling Stars, Summer Picnic Dish, Harpsichord and Joseph’s Coat quilts. The last couple of weeks I’ve been identifying the size I want certain projects to finish at. WIth the size of each determined, it took only a few minutes to figure out what I needed to print to reach that goal. Sometimes I print only a few of each shape for a couple of blocks until I’m sure I want to make it into a quilt. Once that decision is made, I prefer to get everything printed at once and get the shapes cut and into a box ready to stitch such as I’ve done for the Stormy Seas quilt.

This gives you a glimpse of the some of the shapes I printed for the Harpsichord, Joseph’s Coat and Summer Picnic Dish quilts.  Using the various Inklingo collections to prepare my templates makes it so easy to print on any number of fabrics, even black fabrics as most are markedly lighter on the back than the front and the templates will show up perfectly with one of the many choices of ink colours.

Almost all the shapes are now cut and ready to be put in a box, along with the matching threads, for the Twinkling Stars quilt, which I plan on trying to finish between now and the end of the World Series.

Because it was such a beautiful day on Monday, we took Scrappy Star out to the roof garden to photograph. It’s growing and is now 24″ across.  It will be at least twice that width before I’ll stop adding rounds. I needed more of the squares, which was another reason for all the printing that was done on the weekend.

The back after pressing.

Baxter is starting to look like a grown-up kitty in some photos, although his antics are still pure kitten antics. I think he was trying out his hypnotic kitty look in this photo.

Preparing for Next Week’s Piecing

The last of the Farmer’s Delight blocks will be finished this weekend so I decided it was time to get some shapes for other quilts ready.  First up were some more of the shapes I need for the Summer Picnic Dish quilt.  It took only a few minutes to print enough for another 4 blocks.

While I was at it, I decided to print some more shapes for the Pastry Shop quilt. Again, it took only a few minutes and now I have quite a few ready to stitch.  There are, of course, other shapes that are already printed and ready to piece for a few other quilts but this way I have lots of choices.

It was cold again on Thursday and was even snowing a bit.  I keep telling myself it’s March and it can’t last, but it would be nice to see the end of this cold weather.

Smudge didn’t care.  He found a cozy spot to curl up.

As did Lester.