I Got More Mail!

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I received a wonderful package from a friend that included these.

This apron applique pattern looks like it will be a lot of fun to stitch. It came as a kit (fabrics shown below) along with the tiniest little clothespins I’ve ever seen. For some reason, I cannot get a decent picture of the clothespins but they’re unbelievably cute. Make me grin every time I look at them!

These are the fabrics for the various aprons. Instead of embroidering a clothesline, I’m thinking of using some very narrow rick-rack when I make this.


Look at this bundle! Those Serenity III prints are so gorgeous. I took a couple of shots of different ones. Now to figure out just what I want to make using them. I don’t think they’ll work with anything else in my stash, so whatever I do will be limited to using these fabrics only.


Up until now, I’ve kept my stash in large Rubbermaid-type containers. They’re too big for me to handle so this weekend is going to include some reorganizing. If I can cull enough out of one of our bookcases, then it will be converted to fabric storage. It will be wonderful to have the fabric where I can see and reach it easily. That’s the plan at the moment.

Somehow I don’t think Smudge will be the least bit impressed with this reorganizing and moving around of furniture this weekend.


The weather doesn’t sound great for our Victoria Day weekend, so it will be a good time to get this done before the summer heat starts. Of course, I’m assuming summer is going to eventually get here — although one can’t help but wonder. I can’t believe we still need heat on at night!

A Small Quilt Top

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The teddy bear quilt top for is now finished! I’m thrilled with how it turned out. The 9-patch blocks are 3″ each. It’s hand pieced, other than adding the borders, and will finish at 23 x 26 inches.


Edited to add: Thanks to this tutorial on Peg’s Happy in Quilting blog, adding the peeper was a piece of cake!

Now to quilt it. Given all the little seams in it, this will be machine quilted. Only simple quilting, mind you, as my machine quilting skills do not include free motion quilting. I’d love to be able to, but just cannot get the hang of it. My plan is to get the quilting done sometime during the weekend and hopefully I’ll have the binding on by the end of the weekend.

I had to fight myself not to keep adding more 9-patch blocks and making the little quilt grow. My goal is to try to make small quilts for a while. That way I’ll be able to try patterns, design elements, colour combinations that are dancing around in my head without committing to a large project. I’m reassessing some of the larger projects I have started and deciding how to cut them back to small quilts.

The New York Beauty and Square in a Square blocks and, of course, Insanity are the only large projects on my list. I’m still undecided on Insanity — whether to do it in shabby chic or Orientals. I think the effect in Orientals could be stunning but also love the softness of the shabby chic prints.

This is another of the flowering trees on the roof garden. The blooms don’t last long, but they are SO pretty!


The close-up shows the colour of the blooms a bit better.


Now if it would only warm up!! This is miserable weather for late May. We’re going to be lucky to see 65 over the weekend and it gets so cool at night that one needs heat on! After the winter we had, I want the hot humid weather for a few months!!

Gifts — of all sorts

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Gifts from Friends

Along with those wonderful blocks I showed in the last post, there was this book. I have had more fun looking through it and have some great ideas for some small quilts made with some of the blocks. This is a fabulous reference book.

Today I received this book as a gift from a friend and am thrilled to bits! I have one of Kumiko Sudo’s other books and love it as well.


There are some absolutely fabulous little patterns in it for needle and pin books, pin cushions, you name it. A lot of the patterns call for little seed beads, so I can tell I’ll be heading to the bead places this weekend. There is one needle book pattern that I cannot wait to try. I have some scraps of Oriental fabrics that will work perfectly for this! I can see some great gifts for stitching friends coming out of this book!

Gifts from Nature

Every spring, we have the wonderful scent of the crab apple blossoms. The tree on the roof garden started to bloom on the weekend and it’s wonderful.


Here’s a close-up of the blossoms. I wish they lasted a wee bit longer, but am grateful we have them at all.


Smudge — awake for a change. 🙂 He is the most interesting cat to watch when the camera is turned on. He hears that little click and immediately starts striking a pose.

I have two little 9-patch blocks left to attach to the main body of the teddy bear quilt and then 2 small borders. It will be done this week! I’m half tempted to do the borders by hand, as I know they’d get done sooner if I did. Sitting down and doing them on the machine just seems too much like work! Hmmm — I wonder if this is why I shy away from borders.

A Surprise in the Mail

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I received the most wonderful surprise yesterday. Tracy sent me a package that contained, among other things, the most glorious blocks! There are 48 of these beauties. She says she got sick of working with these and decided they needed a new home.


These aren’t colours I normally work with but wow! I absolutely love the effect. Now I’m fiddling around trying to figure out a setting that will work for them. There are 24 of each type of block and they finish at 8″ each. I’m wondering about sashing.

These are the extra fabrics that came with the blocks. There’s lots and lots there — but I am not sure if there’s enough of one for sashing. I’m playing with the idea of sashing that’s a different colour on each side. There’s definitely enough of this extra fabric that I think I’ll be able to do something interesting for a border as well as probably enough for a small quilt!

Look at this print!! It’s one of the fabrics and I absolutely love it. Those birds are marvelous. There’s also a blue print like this one.

I have the gold fabric I used for the setting diamonds in this that has almost the feel of a brocade to it — and have lots of it.


I’m playing with the idea of using it for the sashing. Or do these blocks even need sashing, I wonder. I love the effect of them side by side. I know I’ll be spending a lot of time this weekend staring at these blocks — they are just so incredible.

What about sashing with the gold brocade and a small cornerstone of one of the fabrics for each block?

What an amazing thing to be given! I feel very, very, very humbled to have been given these and love the fact that I’m going to be working with these gorgeous blocks!

Any ideas out there on settings?

An update on Sammy the Squirrel. He has been taken to a wildlife sanctuary where he will have a much safer environment than he had here. We noticed yesterday that a few slightly older squirrels were getting a bit aggressive with him — and worried that, as he has become so used to humans, he might run into trouble if someone who disliked squirrels was the object of his attention! We will miss him out there on the roof garden.

A Tail of Sammy the Squirrel

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Yesterday, one of the gardeners saw this little guy fall about 25 feet from the roof garden on to the walkway at the front of the building. He survived the fall, thankfully, and the gardener brought him back out to the roof garden . A number of the residents of the building have been watching over him and making sure he has food since it appears that he’s a bit too young to be on his own but his mother seems to be nowhere to be seen.

He’s incredibly friendly. The gardener has been out to visit him during the day and the window washers, who are now here doing the spring clean, are as fascinated by this little squirrel as the rest of us! I looked out at one point today and there were the two window washers — one of them with Sammy on his arm and the other watching over him.

Every time DH goes anywhere near the roof garden, Sammy (as we have dubbed him) runs to see him and climb up his legs!

He spent hours out on the roof garden today with Sammy — at one point Sammy had crawled up his sleeve and was curled up having a nap.

A little nest was made for him in a cardboard box with a facecloth and Sammy seems to be quite happy with that accommodation.

As we were supposed to have a fairly heavy rainstorm today/tonight and as raccoons have been known to be on the roof garden, one of our neighbours took him in for the night and made him a cozy little spot indoors. We would have brought him in to our apartment, but were somewhat afraid the kitties would think he was an appetizer!

We’re hoping to find an animal wrangler in the film business who will take Sammy and let him lead a cushy life as a squirrel star!

To keep this somewhat quilt related, the little 9-patch blocks for the teddy bear quilt are now all complete and I have started putting the rows together. My goal is to have it finished by the end of the weekend.

A Paw Thimble

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A while back, lots of quilters were showing their thimbles on their blogs. At the time, I could not get a decent picture of my favourite thimble. I don’t know what possessed me, but when Smudge was sitting quietly on the couch yesterday afternoon, I put my thimble on his paw. He didn’t even look at it, just sat there posing!

So here’s a picture of my favourite thimble. It’s a TJ Lane thimble and I love it! I have one of the Thimblelady cone thimbles as well, which is super for quilting. But the TJ Lane thimble is the thimble I wear when appliqueing and piecing.

It’s still rather cool here at night and during the morning hours, so we often have the heat on for a bit. The cats both love lying above the heating unit with the warm air blowing up on them. Yesterday, though, we got pictures of both of them in almost the identical position just a few hours apart.

First Lester had the spot. You can see his fur blowing in the “breeze”.


A couple of hours later, there was Smudge — enjoying the same warm air!


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Beginnings of a Small Quilt

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This weekend I started hand-piecing these little 3″ 9-patch blocks. I’m only going to make 56 of them right now and then turn them into a small quilt for a very special vintage teddy bear. I think I may be making a few of these small quilts for teddy bears over the next few months. Once it gets really warm, when summer finally arrives (it is going to arrive sooner or later, right?), I won’t want to be working on anything large so these will be perfect.

I love the almost immediate satisfaction one gets when working on a small quilt. It’s such a great way to try out pattern ideas, fabric combinations, design elements and all without a large investment of time or material!

Look at this rose I received last week. It is the most glorious shade of red and has opened beautifully!


What’s a post without a kitty picture! Here is yet another of Smudge sleeping. That kitty bed was round when we got it but he has worked on it and worked on it and it is now an oval.


Festival Report – Part 2

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I meant to post this sooner than this — it’s now a week since I was at the Festival!

There’s a vendor who is always at the Creativ Festival called Len’s Mills Stores. I hardly ever go into their area as it is usually mobbed. One could get hit on the head by the flying bolts of fabric! Well, okay — not quite but you get the idea.

On Saturday, I found an aisle in the Len’s Mills area with next to no people in it and decided to take a good look. I am SO glad that I did. I found two batiks that are absolutely perfect background for the two-fabric applique patterns! Although this fabric didn’t photograph well it will, I think, be just right for the Seahorse background.


This next one is rather interesting. It has got a gold metallic coating on it — rather a lot of it, actually. I’m thinking a fair bit of the metallic will wash out so am undecided right now which side of it I will use. This is the side with the gold dust. This is for another of the two-fabric applique patterns. My choice is between this (and it is much darker in person than this photo shows — I think the metallic is affecting how the camera reads it):


and this, the side with no metallic:


For some reason, the camera will not take a good picture of the batiks. The first one has much more of a blue cast to it than the photo is showing.

The second appears much much lighter in the photograph, even though the flash was turned off, than it actually is. I’ve now washed it once and the amount of gold metallic that came off was incredible — and there is still a lot of it left on the fabric. I think I’ll let it soak for a few hours tomorrow and see how much more of the gold comes off. I have a feeling that it will be substantial. I love the fabric no matter what happens as far as the metallic bits go, so this is more a matter of getting it off the fabric now rather than having it coming off on my fingers when I’m working with it.

I have read about these Bohin mechanical chalk pencils, but wasn’t expecting to find one! When I did, I immediately grabbed it. I tried it out on a bit of fabric and I’m impressed. The chalk definitely comes off the fabric without a problem.


It was a very rainy, dark day Friday. What do the kitties do on rainy dark days? Sleep. I couldn’t resist getting this shot of Lester.

Spring Iris

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I got mail today. Look what arrived!!! It’s my quilt from the Four Seasons Swap — made by Anne Ida. It is absolutely fabulous — and irises, to us, so definitely mean spring! It’s gorgeous — and the quilting on it is just super!

Not only was the Spring Iris in the envelope — but this wonderful card, chocolate from Norway, a beautiful piece of fabric and a little blue bag that contained?


It contained this thimble! Our camera doesn’t seem to care for photographing things like thimbles, but I hope you can get the idea from this. It’s very pretty and has “Norway” written on it.


Thank you so much Anne Ida! I will treasure this and think of you every spring when the Spring Iris is put up on the wall!

Spring Flowers & Ribbons

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The little flower bed surrounded by ribbons of flowers is now ready to go off to its new home. It’s washed and all I need to do now is a quick rollover of it with the kitty hair remover and off it goes in the mail tomorrow morning. I hope its new owner likes it!


A picture of the label on the back. I love the 2″ hexagons as labels — they give just enough room!


It’s quite a bit cooler here again and the cats are curled up in cozy spots sleeping. Smudge, as usual, was quite aware the camera was focused on him! 🙂