Giddy at the Thought of Spring

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I completely got off track this weekend as far as stitching goes. Friday night I worked on Red Delicious apple cores, Saturday I did some stitching on the machine (!), the results of which I’ll show later in the week, but yesterday? Yesterday I played with the new Inklingo Lite collection of the shapes for a 12-inch Drunkard’s Path block.

Drunkard’s Path is one of my favourite blocks. More curved piecing!! I love playing with all the variations. I decided to use these fabrics in honour of spring and am going to call this quilt “Giddy at the Thought of Spring”. I’m undecided whether I will do all the blocks the same or use a variety. Here’s the first 12-inch block done, Whirling Arches. It will be another lap quilt.


What a glorious Sunday we had with temperatures near 4!! I know it was a teaser but we needed that after all those days on end of -20 wind chills. We go back to the -20 wind chills mid-week but at least we had that one day. I had windows open for a while and was even outside with a fall jacket rather than heavy winter one on. I have purposely avoided finding out what the groundhog results were today as it’s very sunny, so I suppose he saw his shadow. I don’t want to know!!

Lester and Smudge are sitting together more and more often. We got this shot of them last night. They don’t stay together very long, and they don’t really fit too well in the chair at once, but we get a huge kick out of them being together like this!


Quilting Over Stitchery??

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As I work on this little baby quilt I’m thinking about how to quilt it. Not having done a quilt with stitcheries in it before, I have no idea what’s the best thing to do. Does one quilt over the stitcheries, just do in the ditch stitching around the block? The hexagons with the butterflies are 4″ from tip to tip, top to bottom and 2″ to each side. As it is a baby quilt which will, I hope, get lots of use, I’d like to quilt it fairly heavily, most likely by machine, to ensure it stands up.

I cropped one of the pictures to show the stitchery hexagons a little bit better. There’s not much room to do any quilting in those blocks unless I do quilt over the stitching. Any advice is more than welcome on this!!


This is another piece I started ages ago using 1″ hexagons and equilateral triangles. As I find a new coloured fabric that I like with it, I add more rows of hexagons and triangles. Currently it’s about 22″. I’m not sure, but I think I may finish off the second blue with enough rounds to make stars in that fabric and then perhaps end it off with a soft yellow. It’s really wonderfully enjoyable mindless stitching, lots and lots of lovely continuous stitching that makes it go together incredibly fast.

I’m going to look through and see if I have a soft yellow that will work with this. I’m not sure about this yet, but I’m thinking this might be an appropriate baby quilt to have done and tucked away for next time.

We had a lot of snow on Wednesday, it snowed a bit more on Thursday and now they’re saying there’s another big storm on the way for Monday/Tuesday?? I cannot believe the amount of snow we’ve had this year already. All I can hope is that as it started early, it will end early and we’ll have spring starting sometime in March. I wonder what the groundhog is going to predict next week.

Yet another picture of the boys together. We see them do this so rarely that we practically fall over ourselves grabbing the camera!

Butterfly Stars Update

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Suddenly, the rows seem to be going together much quicker than the first one did. This is good news as I’d love to have this little top ready to quilt by the middle of February. I still need to make quite a few more stars, so will do that over the next couple of nights and then it will just be a matter of lovely continuous stitching as I add stars and then butterfly hexagons till it’s done. The six butterfly hexagons in the last row were joined within a couple of hours.


We’re having a charm swap on the Inklingo list of apple cores. More apple cores!! I can’t wait. More lovely curved piecing and what will hopefully be a true charm quilt.

Tuesday night it began to snow. And it snowed. And then it snowed some more. Lots and lots of snow. It was still snowing Wednesday afternoon, when I took these shots.



Lester doesn’t care — he’s cozy and comfy in his kitty bed.

Smudge is also quite unconcerned. Look at this extended paw!!


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Butterfly Stars

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This is the baby quilt at the beginning of the week. My goal is to have all of row 3 of the butterfly stitchery hexagons and the stars surrounding the bottom of them added by the end of this week. Then I’m right on track for having the piecing completed by mid-February.


It was bitterly cold here on Monday. It appears, from the forecast, that we’ve got 3 or 4 more days of this cold snap and then it starts to warm up. I’m hoping that this is it and that the rest of the winter will be a bit more temperate. I always think once we get through January that we’re through the worst of it. February is a short month and then we’re into March, which means warmer weather can’t be too far off. I hope.

Lester is happy in his favourite spot on the windowsill.

As is Smudge, curled up. Smudge got a very shaggy winter coat this year. Much more so than previous years, I think. I hope that’s not a sign that I’m way off in my hopes that this is the last cold snap of the winter.


Apple Cores and More

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As I had made some progress on Butterfly Stars during the week last week, I got to play with apple cores this weekend. Row 2 is now complete and I’ve started Row 3. I love how they’re turning out — but wish we could get better pictures. This time of year is hopeless!! There’s never good enough light!

The back of the section where row 3 has started. It is so easy to press these like this and it makes the whole thing lie wonderfully flat.

I was very, very glad I was a quilter this weekend. In the middle of the night Friday night/Saturday morning, the power went out. It was a bitterly cold night and very windy and it got quite cool in here pretty quickly. I piled some quilts on top of the duvet and it was toasty warm. However, the cats were quite upset. Smudge’s eyes were the size of saucers and he couldn’t settle. Lester just paced.

Thankfully, the power outage only lasted about two and a half hours. I didn’t sleep until the power came back on. I was really quite stunned at how quickly it got very cold in here. I suppose facing north on a very windy night when the wind chill is around -25 had something to do with it.

Edited to add: There was nothing on the news about the power outage, no information on the power provider’s Web site — nothing to be found anywhere! So I have e-mailed the service provider to find out what happened.

Lester, getting a warmed-up tummy from the heat:


Smudge, in one of his poses. And they are poses — he knows he’s being photographed.


See? Same pose, same time, different angle for photograph. He has an eye open watching us to make sure we’re admiring/taking photos/whatever.


Mail

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I got mail on Thursday from Uberstitch. I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but it’s wrapped in a clothing pattern — a Vogue one, to be precise — and tied with a lovely black and white fabric bow.

Thank you so, so much — this is the fabric I needed for my Red Delicious apple core quilt, which I will be working on this weekend!!


It’s going to be slightly warmer today. I think we’re supposed to have a high of around 3. That will feel quite mild after what we’ve had and what we are, unfortunately, going right back into. Another 4 or 5 days of -25 or so wind chills. The long-range forecast for our winter sure was wrong — they had said milder and little precipitation. We’ve already had a ton of snow and it’s only January!

The kitties don’t care. They find comfy spots to snooze. Smudge in one of his crazy poses.

And, because I couldn’t resist, a close-up of him.

Lester, curled up in his kitty bed. I think it’s so cute that he’s holding his hind paw with his front one, all curled up like that.

Butterfly Stars

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I’m slowly making progress on the baby quilt. I realized that I need to make more pink and blue stars so progress on the top itself will be stalled for a few days while I stitch some more of those together. The rows actually go together rather quickly if I have all the pieces ready, so I’m hopeful I’ll have the little top done by sometime mid-February.


Lester looking very thoughtful.

Smudge has developed a new habit during this cold, cold winter. He’ll disappear and we’ll be looking all over for him, only to find that he has burrowed under the duvet on the bed. He’ll stay in there for hours!

Batts and Cats and Trees

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There were a few questions about the silk batt I mentioned on Monday. This is what I’m using. It is very easy to work with and, while it is more expensive than a cotton batt, for someone with limited hand strength it is pure joy to quilt through. I had no hand fatigue at all while with cotton I run into that problem very quickly.


The other thing I love about the silk batts is that even with heavy heavy machine quilting, they retain their lovely soft drape. Next time I have a quilt done by a long-arm quilter, I will definitely use one of these!

We had sun on Tuesday. I’m sure I’m wrong, but it feels like it has been weeks since we’ve had sun. I love the look of the roof garden with the snow when the sun is out.

I’m not sure if the boys were admiring the tree shadows on the snow or just posing.


Monday Morning Chatter

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Remember this?


I started quilting it on the weekend, using a silk batt that is absolutely wonderful to work with. It’s incredibly easy to needle, and I’m getting lovely tiny stitches. That said, I’m taking out what I’ve done so far as I decided I want to quilt it differently than I originally had planned. I’m totally sold on using the silk batt now.

After a week of extreme cold, what did we get? Snow, snow and more snow. It began snowing around 3:00 p.m. Saturday and continued snowing until Sunday afternoon. This picture was taken during the daytime and it really shows what gets to me about winter — the total lack of colour.

Smudge keeps us entertained, no matter what the weather. He curled up with the teddy bear, his head on the teddy bear’s legs.

Lester, looking very alert.


Butterfly Stars and Apple Cores

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I didn’t quite make my goal of having row 2 done by the end of the week but I do have all the little butterfly embroidery blocks done for row 2 and a good start on those for row 3.


I just cannot seem to stop myself from working with those apple cores! If I’m not piecing them, I’m cutting them out. Even cutting them out is fun and looking at the little stack of apple cores growing is quite satisfying.


It is bitterly cold here. We have wind chill values in the range of -25 or so. I think we’re supposed to start seeing something more bearable sometime tomorrow night or Sunday. There has been a power outage in part of the city and there are something like 5,000 homes right now without electricity and heat. The city has set up warming shelters and is getting people to them. The subway system has been affected quite a bit as well. Apparently the morning rush hour was a nightmare with shuttle buses being utilized along the route of the subway to get people through the city. Makes me very glad I work from home!

I have my computer set up by the window. Normally, this is perfect. In weather like this? Not so wonderful. We face north, which is great in the summer, but not so great when the wind is blowing and the temperatures are this low. I can actually feel a difference in the temperature between sitting here and further away from the window. Guess I’ll wrap a quilt around my legs while working this afternoon.

Lester doesn’t care how cold it is. He perches on the windowsill above the hot air and is quite comfortable.


Smudge, on the other hand, just treats us to yet another of his crazy poses and sleeps.