Category Archives: miscellaneous

What Is Inklingo?

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Watching this little video made me laugh out loud — it’s the perfect antidote for a grey November day and maybe it helps explain the stacks of freezer paper I have cut in so many sizes.  Do turn your speakers on as the music absolutely makes the video a laugh-out-loud delight!

Watch at the end — there’s a shot of a beautiful feathered star, which makes me think new collections with the shapes for the feathered star block are coming. That has me redesigning the setting for the pink and cream quilt, incorporating more borders and fewer blocks, as a feathered star is definitely on my list of quilts to make and I know I won’t be able to resist starting a feathered star quilt — maybe even in red and white!

The Making of Big Pink Stars

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Two of the nine pink and cream stars are made and I’ve sorted out a stitching sequence that makes them very quick to construct.  The first part is to make the centre 8-pointed star.

Once that’s done then I stitch all the pieces that need to be stitched into pairs or triplets together.  It’s then just a matter of adding rounds to the centre — a great opportunity for lots of continuous stitching which makes the star go together quite quickly.

This picture shows the centre after I added the first round of cream pairs and started adding the next round of pink diamonds.  Everything is ready now to just keep stitching until the star is done.  I’ve found that pressing after I get the third round of pink diamonds added is the most efficient.  All that’s left after that is to add the final star points made up of the 2 cream and 1 pink diamonds, a final press and the star is finished.  This will actually be a quick quilt to make as the setting is planned and won’t require a lot more work.  As of now, I plan to use the sewing machine to join the blocks and sashing.

Monday night some time was spent sorting the stack of freezer paper sheets that were lying about that I use to print shapes on my fabric.  As I use the custom sizes suggested in the various Inklingo collections, I have quite the variety of sizes of freezer paper cut  ranging from 3.25″ x 5″ all the way up to 8.5″ x 14″ and, as freezer paper can be reused many times, I keep it.  Over the past few months the stack of freezer paper sheets on my printer was becoming unruly, to say the least.  So a few hours of organization, and I can now see at a glance if I have the size I need and find it easily.  What started me organizing it was sorting out what I need to print for a couple of the projects I’m working on. After a few frustrating minutes of trying to figure out if I had the right sizes of freezer paper already cut, I realized it was time to just sit down and organize it all. Now the trick will be to keep it organized and file the sheets away after I’ve used them.

The gardeners have been and have taken out the flowers and cut down the hosta on the roof garden.  The trees have lost most of their leaves now and it looks very stark.  At least we haven’t yet had snow although there apparently was some snow to the north of us on the weekend.  The cats are finding cozy spots to curl up and nap.  First Lester.

Smudge:

Do you recognize this fabric?

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I’m playing with a design idea and this fabric is absolutely perfect for one part of the design.  I have part of a FQ left of this but have no idea who the manufacturer or designer is, so I’m wondering if anyone out there knows.  One day I’ll finally learn to buy more than a FQ when I see a fabric like this as it’s so versatile!  I tried doing some searches for it on the Internet but really do need a little more information to enable me to find it.

It’s a small print, as can be seen in this shot with the yardstick.  Any help will be appreciated!

Wednesday was a beautiful sunny day, although still rather windy and still quite incredibly warm for this time of year.  We had a high that was close to 65 degrees Wednesday afternoon.

Lester is much better.  However, we didn’t manage to  get a good shot of him on Wednesday.  He spent a lot of time investigating the toy basket.   I had this shot taken almost exactly one month ago when there were still green leaves on the trees.

Smudge, on the other hand, we caught at the beginning of a yawn.

New Pressing Board

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Friday night, we went to the Creativ Festival and I was thrilled.  I managed to get exactly what I was looking for — a new Quilter’s Cut ‘n Press.  My old one had finally got to the point of no return and it was time.  I use the Cut ‘n Press constantly as it’s the perfect size for pressing a block or two or pressing fabric to freezer paper and doesn’t necessitate dragging out the ironing board and then putting it away.

I also stocked up on the heirloom cotton thread I love to use for hand piecing and found 2 more florals for the Pickled Ladies as well as a pink FQ that just had to come home with me because it was — well, pink!  I don’t think I could ever have too much pink.

There was a white on white fabric that also came home with me but didn’t get photographed, as it’s rather hard to show the design in a white on white.  It’s one I’ve used before that has a lovely soft feel to it and is not hard to needle.  All in all, I’m thrilled with what I found at the show although I wouldn’t have minded a few more florals.  There were lots of quilting booths with lots of fabrics and bundles but they seemed, for the most part, to be more of the earth tones and the like with very few florals to be seen.  I wonder if that’s a product of the time of year and if at the spring show there will be more light-coloured and floral fabrics.

Lester continues to do well.  Today is his last day on the antibiotics so I guess the next few days will tell the tale as to whether the infection is gone.

Smudge has been busy chasing leaves as they go by the window.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Autumn leaves in Gekū

Image via Wikipedia

Today’s the beginning of an extra long weekend as it’s our Thanksgiving.  We shall all be enjoying what promises to be some fabulous weather this Thanksgiving weekend and the kitties will undoubtedly get some of the turkey.  Whether we’ll be able to stand the meowing that will probably go on while the turkey is cooking is another story!  One of our plans is to go for a drive to enjoy the colourful leaves and hopefully get some good pictures of the best of them.

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends! See you all on Tuesday.

Time Lost and Time Found

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During the week, Mr. Q.O. came home rather sadly said it seemed he had lost his watch which was a “Paw’s Day” gift from the kitties (yes, we’re quite silly sometimes). He called the gym, thinking he may have left it near his locker.  Not there. He went down to the car and looked all around it in the garage.  Not there. Talked to security and the concierge to see if anyone had turned it in.  No.   Went back over his steps checking to see if he could find it, asking in the shops where he had been if they had seen it.

This afternoon, he went downstairs to the grocery store and one of the cashiers said they thought they’d found it — and they had!  What luck!

Fabrics for Pickled Ladies

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On Saturday we went up to Sew Sisters as I wanted to look for more florals for the Pickled Ladies blocks.  I found these and then, on Sunday, went through the final container of shabby chic fabrics here and found another great grouping.  So now I think I’m getting close to the halfway mark with florals for the clamshells.  I’m thinking of adding some Oriental florals into the mix as there are some that play quite nicely with the shabby chic.

As well as the florals, I found some great blacks that will work perfectly for the spiky triangles in the arcs.  There are some super black fabrics around now and they’re light enough on the back that printing the shapes with Inklingo is no problem.  I find that now I look at the back of fabrics when choosing them and am surprised at just how many dark fabrics are quite light on the back.  This photo doesn’t really show the black fabrics that well — they’re much darker than they appear in this.  I think I had the flash on when I took the photo.

Sunday afternoon I got out my window template and fussy cut and printed enough of the clamshells to keep me stitching for a couple of weeks.  Using a window template makes it so easy and quick that I had close to 30 blocks ready in next to no time.

Friday we had temperatures in the 90s.  Saturday?  Saturday it was maybe in the low 60s but very breezy and it felt unbelievably chilly after that heat the day before. The sky on Saturday looked so stormy, although we had nothing but a few sprinkles of rain.  We got this shot just down the street from Sew Sisters.

This one of some of the trees in the area looks very much like fall to me.  I kept saying to Mr. Q.O. that the clouds looked like snow clouds.  Hopefully we don’t see any of that white stuff until January or February.

Last week I went to visit one of the blogs I read, Ann Champion‘s, and got a warning about malicious content.  On Sunday, Ann posted about what had happened — all as a result of links left in comments to pages that no longer exist.  It seems Google has a bot that crawls through links on blogs and if a link doesn’t work, the warning goes up about that blog.  Rather than repeat what Ann wrote, I’d suggest you go to Ann’s blog and read about her experience.  What it has made me realize is that links in comments are something I’m going to go through and delete.  It’s going to take a couple of weeks to do so but, after reading about Ann’s experience, I’m thinking I’d rather be pro-active on this issue.  I think I’ll also test any links I had in older posts and, if they no longer work, then I’ll delete them as well.  Ann wrote, “As you have time..go through your blog and check your links.  Active links of any kind are considered dangerous by the Google ‘bot’ when they reside in your comments,” so I think it’s worth the effort.

We had the heat on, on and off, during the weekend.  At one point, Lester was sitting on the windowsill and the warm air blowing up from the heating unit was making his ruff look rather  — well, interesting.

Smudge we caught in mid-yawn.

Repurposing Fabric

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been looking at a couple of BOMs I had put away.   One I will make as Mr. Q.O. really likes it, it will be quick to piece and, as it has flannel fabric, will be a perfect lap quilt for the winter.  The second one?  The more I looked at the patterns, the more I realized they just weren’t appealing to me.  So I had a long hard look at the fabrics contained in the kits for it and was pleasantly surprised when I realized there are some very pretty and quite useable fabrics, most in half yard or long quarter cuts.

There are some pretty pink and brown fabrics:

Some brown, gold, green and red fabrics:

Some lovely blue fabrics:

Some smaller rectangular pieces in a variety of colours:

All this fabric from kits to make 9 small doll quilts.  Lots and lots of ideas are swimming about in my mind regarding what I might make with these.  I’m really looking forward to playing with these now that they’re all washed, as they’re quite different from those which I normally use.

Wednesday was a rather overcast day but Lester was on the windowsill.  Here he was resting his eyes after watching to see just what the gardener was doing on the roof garden:

Smudge  was busy with the toy basket.

Tools for Piecing

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A couple of weeks ago, Crispy wrote about her favourite scissors.  I thought I’d do the same.

Those numbered 1 are a pair of Gingher stork scissors that I love for cutting embroidery threads.  I remember my mother had a pair of stork scissors, although I have no idea what happened to them.

The ones numbered 2 are a pair of Omnigrid scissors that are my favourites.  I use them constantly.  They have super fine blades, super sharp tips and cut through fabric beautifully.  Because they are so sharp right to the tips, it’s wonderfully easy to make perfectly accurate cuts.

Number 3 — a tiny pair of scissors given to me by a wonderful friend and always kept in my kit for stitching on the go, whether on the roof garden or elsewhere. They are the perfect addition to a stitching kit.

Numbers 4 and 5 are a set of Dovo scissors.  They’re pretty and they feel good in the hand, but they do not cut anywhere near as well as the Omnigrid pair.  I find they actually don’t cut through fabric cleanly at all.  They’ve hardly been used because of that.  I keep thinking they must be a lemon set as so many people seem to love Dovo scissors.  I’ve frequently thought I should take them somewhere to be sharpened and see if that makes a difference.  Has anyone had any experience with having scissors sharpened?  Is it worth pursuing that idea?

Number 6 are fine for clipping threads and are bright so I generally can find them easily.  I picked them up at the Creativ Festival for next to nothing along with the thread snips referred to below.

The three items above the six pairs of scissors are my absolute must-haves when hand piecing.  I’m totally lost without the finger pincushion.  At first, I didn’t think I would get used to it but within an hour after first starting to use it, I was sold.  Now I don’t start stitching until it’s on my finger.  The grey blob is the thimble I use for hand piecing. The thread snips are another tool I always reach for.  While I will use scissors if necessary to cut thread when hand piecing, the snips are the better solution for me.

Monday was a wonderful summery day and today promises to be more of the same, with a humidex reading in the low 30s Celsius.  It appears most of the week will be warm, although rather rainy.  Lester was enjoying the warmth on the windowsill Monday.

Smudge, on the other hand, was snoozing on the couch.

Pickled Ladies Block 7

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Another block with another favourite fabric.  There are all sorts of different elements in this fabric, so I may well fussy cut another part of it for another one of the looped lasses aka pickled ladies.

The back:

Window replacements, where necessary, are done every fall.  Over the past few days, we’ve seen the ropes from the swing stage the workers use.  The other day it was obvious that they’d be going by our window so we thought they might get a laugh out of three little teddy bears lined up watching them.   We’re used to the window cleaners doing double takes when they see one of the cats.  I remember one of the window washers saying to his partner on the swing stage something along the lines of, “Look, there’s a lion in there!” when he caught sight of Lester who sat staring out at him, completely unperturbed.  Smudge, on the other hand, will hide under the bed the minute he sees the ropes.

Ideas for the fall quilt are flying through my mind.  This weekend I’m going to spend some time working with EQ again and see if I can sort out the design idea that is forming in my mind that way.  If not, paper and coloured pencils are my next choice.

Wednesday was a lovely mild day.  Lester spent some time on the windowsill.

While Smudge was working on his fall sleeping poses — this one almost qualifies as a headless cat pose, but not quite.