Category Archives: Uncategorized

Basket Block

Posted on by

6

I’ve shown this block before but now that I finally got around to pressing it — yet another good reason to hand piece, I think, being able to leave the pressing — I had to take another shot of it. I have a plan for another set of these baskets but I’ll use a third fabric for the interior where I’ve used white fabrics in this one — so that the basket will appear to have flowers, leaves or whatever in it.

The back of it looks almost as good as the front, I think!

Lester in his favourite spot. Today we had two robins singing, sparrows and grackles and a lot of activity as the gardener is getting the flower beds ready for planting.

Smudge did check out the roof garden activity for a few minutes today but I couldn’t grab the camera fast enough.


Charm Packs!

Posted on by

9

What is it about charm packs? I absolutely love them! A friend, whose husband comes to Toronto every quarter, and I send little gift bags back and forth to one another — thus earning her husband the nickname of the “fabric mule”! We did the gift bag pick-up and drop-off on Tuesday. In my gift bag I found these two wonderful charm packs! I am thrilled! I had a lot of fun putting her gift bag together this time as she’s in the midst of a move. Once I know she has received it, I’ll talk about what all was in it!

The second drunkard’s path basket block is well on the way to being finished. I’d like to finish the blocks within a week or so and work on the setting.

Spring is definitely here. Tuesday there were two robins singing on the roof garden and lots of sparrows and grackles. No squirrel sightings but Lester is now a very happy kitty with his entertainment having finally shown up.


Smudge doesn’t seem to have quite yet discovered the summer show is back. When he does, he’ll be sitting on the windowsill chattering at them.

A Basket Block

Posted on by

14

I’ve had the fabrics printed and cut out for a few weeks and have been periodically picking up one or two pieces to stitch whenever I’ve needed my curved piecing fix. There will be 4 of these blocks that I need in total. The first one is done and I absolutely love the effect! The pattern for this is in an old issue of Australian Patchwork & Quilting. I’m going to amend the setting a bit but absolutely love the block design.

I’ve written before about the kitties and their toy basket. About 5 minutes before this picture was taken, all the toys were in the basket. Lester came along and, with one big swipe of his paw, had about 6 or 7 of those toys out on the floor. Smudge came along and took over. He played for a moment but then was guarding the toys from his brother.
Lester took a break and will, now that I’ve put them all back in the basket, get them out again. We were watching them and, at one point, the two of them were trying to get their favourites out at the same time. That resulted in a few minutes of paw waving play fight and then Lester wandered off for a snooze.


Pattern Hunting

Posted on by

7

I’ve had this fabric for ages. It’s a gorgeous Northcott fabric that I love, but have yet to make anything with it. There’s lots of it — more than enough to make a two-fabric quilt, which is what I think I want to do, but I can’t seem to come up with the right pattern to use. Any thoughts?

Then there are these wonderful flannels. There’s a half-yard cut of each. Again, I cannot think of what to make with them. A nice cozy lap quilt for next winter is what I want to make with them, but coming up with a pattern? I keep thinking stars of some sort but never having worked with flannel other than for a backing, I have no idea how hard it’s going to be to get nice sharp points. Whatever I make, I think I’ll save the green and cream striped fabric for the binding. I love using a stripe for bindings.

There’s a fair bit of business-related stress going on in my life right now. I’m finding it really hard to relax while this mess sorts itself out, and even found it rather hard to stitch Monday night which is why there’s no progress on the rainbow shot. Hopefully, the situation resolves within the next few days. I know it’s affecting me rather completely, can feel the tension in my shoulders and neck.

Thank goodness for the kitties. Just looking at them can lower one’s stress levels. Smudge in yet another of his advanced paw poses.


Lester, looking like the wise kitty.


Bloggers Quilt Festival

Posted on by

21

Amy at Park City Girl is hosting a Bloggers‘ Quilt Festival. You can join this quilt festival by selecting your favorite quilt, post about it on your blog, link back to Amy’s blog, and leave a comment that you posted the festival on your blog. I know I’m rather late in joining in on this but it’s well worth going to take a look as the sheer number of gorgeous quilts to go and look at is fantastic!

This is one of my favourite quilts. It’s hand pieced and is the first of a series of one-colour quilts I hope to make. This was an amazingly easy pattern to make and one that I’d like to repeat using a different colour fabric for each star. I may make a small one as a baby quilt. It goes together very very quickly and, because of the hand piecing, is perfect for lots of lovely continuous stitching.

What a great idea this is. This is like going to a major international quilt show somewhere but without the expense of travelling to get there. It’s a very green way to attend a great quilt show!

Rainbow Beginnings

Posted on by

16

The rainbow for the Sky Quilt is starting with greens. The first 3 greens are together now. Next come the yellows. This is wonderful fun– lots and lots of lovely continuous stitching. I’m using the diamonds from the Inklingo 6″ LeMoyne Star collection and have a feeling my rainbow is going to end up rather large. It will be the centre of the quilt with the 4 corners taken up by the various sun blocks (see below).

The other fabrics that will be added to the rainbow are shown in the order they will appear.

These are the four blocks that will be in the corners of the Sky Quilt. Some of the fabrics in the various sun blocks will also be in the rainbow.


While I was printing all sorts of shapes, I decided to print about 600 more of the .25″ hexagons. There are approximately 180 of the little hexagons in this tin now. To give you an idea of size, the tin measures around 3.75″ by 2.25″. I will be making hexagon diamonds with these and when there are enough will put together a doll’s quilt.


This is one of my favourite photos of Lester, perched on the loveseat.

I’ve told the story before about Smudge’s rather odd drinking habits. This picture tells the story. It was snapped just seconds after he had lifted his face out of the water bowl. If you click on it to see the large size photo, you will see he’s soaking wet. This is Smudge’s preferred way to drink water. Makes for rather a lot of paper towel mop-ups, but is endlessly entertaining.

One more day of rather cool temperatures and then we hit the warmth. The forecast is for temperatures in the mid 20’s Celsius on Friday and Saturday. I can’t wait!!

A True Hint of Spring

Posted on by

12

The past two days have been wonderful with temperatures in the 60s and even low 70s. We have another drop coming, but this is a sure sign to me that winter is over.

I’ve made a little progress on my piece with the .50″ Inklingo hexagons. These go together so easily that the centre is growing relatively quickly. I’m still not sure how large this will be but it’s a lot of fun making the little 4-unit flowers and then adding them in a haphazard way to the centre.

Having learned the hard way, I now press after every few flowers. I finger press as I add each unit so when I do press it with the iron, it’s a very quick process.

So far, I’ve got a lot accomplished that was on my list of quilt-related items I wanted to get ready for stitching. All that’s left now to do is decide on the setting for Tropical Punch and get the diamonds for the rainbow of the sky quilt printed. The fabric is all cut and ready to iron to freezer paper.

Every year we have a pair of woodpeckers arrive in the spring. I thought I heard them the other day but couldn’t see them. Today I saw both of them. I’m always amazed at the amount of noise these little birds can make. I was fascinated watching them. Although the picture’s not great, the woodpecker has a red head.

It seems the woodpeckers aren’t what Lester is waiting for. He wasn’t the least bit interested in watching them.


Baby Quilt Finished

Posted on by

18

The baby for whom this quilt has been made was born last night. I’ve had it ready since the weekend, but for the label. This morning I will wash and dry it and wrap it, ready to give.

After reading comments to the question I posed on my blog a while back and a post on Bunny Tales not too long ago about how to handle this, I decided to quilt over the embroidery and am quite pleased with how it turned out.

I found a wonderful flannel for the backing and, once we heard the baby had been born and her name, Emma Victoria, I got the label ready and affixed. I had made a couple of extra butterfly embroidery blocks and used one of them for the label.

Smudge keeping watch over the kitty toy basket. I pick up all the kitty toys periodically and put them all back in the basket. It’s always funny watching them work at getting their favourites out. When this shot was taken, the basket was rather empty.

Lester curled up in his kitty bed.


Flower Garden Beginning

Posted on by

12

The .50″ hexagons I had printed for Insanity are being put together in 3 different types of hexagon flowers — ones consisting of 4, 7 and 9 hexagons. The 4-hexagon units will be at the centre of whatever this turns out to be and I’ve now started joining them. I’m purposely keeping them not lined up at this point.

Never wanting to have to press all the little seams at the end of a large quilt again — been there, done that — I’m pressing as I add every two or three flowers. I finger press as I go and that makes the pressing with an iron a lot faster. This is the back with all the little seam intersections pressed. Sometimes I think the back of blocks are as interesting as the front!

Smudge, awake and alert on the windowsill.

Lester, definitely posing for the camera.


Tuesday Tidbits

Posted on by

8

This is the beginning of the centre of the quilt I’m going to make using some of the .50″ hexagons I have printed. I’m purposely not setting the 4-hexagon units in line or in specific spots. There may be areas where there will be a 3 or 4 green hexagons between the little florets. I know this project will get put away and taken out again over and over, but it will be my main hexagon project for the next while. It seems I always have to have a hexagon project of some sort or another on the go.

This is half of a melon/arc unit done for the DWR quilt. The hand dyes I’m using in the arcs are rather like a batik and, as my hands are still quite painful, I’m going to forego stitching these by hand this time. I’ll turn this into a hybrid project and will do the arc piecing by machine and then I can have the fun of stitching the arcs to the melons and centres by hand, thus enjoying all that wonderful curved piecing.


This is one of the reasons I love this new Inklingo DWR collection, although there are a whole host of reasons to be thrilled with it. This worksheet, along with others that come as part of the collection, are absolutely fantastic tools and make planning a DWR a breeze!

The weather on Monday was dreadful. Windy, cold, raining, snowing, you name it! We had less than a centimetre of snow all of March, so seeing snow falling on the 6th of April seemed rather cruel! I know it won’t last but still — snow?? This was the roof garden Monday evening. The snow wasn’t melting as soon as it hit.


Although the snow was falling outside, thankfully we have the dome and the roof was closed Monday night for the opening game of the baseball season, which was fabulous and our Jays won! Although, if some of the fans had continued on with their silly antics, the game could have been forfeited. It was really a shame to see fans throwing paper airplanes and baseballs and who knows what else out on to the field. Aside from being silly and childish and distracting from what was an absolutely fabulous inning for the Jays, they could have caused real harm to the players in the outfield. I can’t believe they would do that and put their home team in peril of forfeiting a game that they were winning. The looks on the faces of the umpires and managers told the whole story — I think they were utterly appalled. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The game was delayed for approximately 10 minutes while the groundskeepers removed the debris from the field and the crowd settled down after being told by the announcer that anyone caught doing that would be required to leave the dome and could face criminal charges. Why does the opening game of the season bring out the worst in fans?

The wind was quite fierce Monday night and Smudge seemed a bit unsettled by it. However, that didn’t stop him from posing for pictures. Nothing stops him from posing for pictures!

Lester wasn’t going to hang out on the windowsill Monday. It was much too cold. He found a nice spot to curl up and have a nap.