I Got Mail!

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… from Stina in Sweden! The gift bag is so pretty and was just full of wonderful surprises.

For the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of talk in blogland about pincushions. I haven’t said a word about mine as it’s just a plain old tomato pincushion. I was thrilled to receive this pincushion made by Stina — it’s absolutely wonderful! So now I can display a pretty pincushion too. 😉


Do you see the feathers in the package in the top photo? Well, the package contains feathers and these little wooden figures — bunnies and chicks. They’re absolutely adorable and are now decorating our wall unit. These will be brought out every year for Easter!


And this egg — which is, so far, chock full of candies and chocolate. We’re being very good and saving it for Easter, but I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to resist as the week goes on! LOL

And just because it’s such a good photo, here’s another shot of Lester.

Yesterday we made a trip to the LQS where they had bundles of the most glorious Japanese taupes. I was oh, so tempted but resisted. Instead, I picked up some more of the black and white prints and a pattern for my Four Seasons Quilt Swap. I’m going to amend the pattern a bit to incorporate an element that really means spring to me — flying geese. When I see a V of Canada Geese flying north it’s a sure sign that spring is here. Haven’t seen that yet!

If the forecast is accurate, we’re in for a snowy Easter. Thankfully it was mild yesterday and a lot of the snow is starting to melt but we still have enormous snowbanks!

The Winners of the little Inklingo kits

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DH came home and drew names. The winners of the little Inklingo kits are:

Jeanne – an Oriental fabric kit
Kieny – a shabby chic kit

And, because I can’t seem to stop printing Inklingo shapes and had more little kits prepared, 3 more names were drawn! The next three winners are:

Miniature Quilter (no blog) – an Oriental kit
Christine – a shabby chic kit
Kipling the Cat – a shabby chic kit

Congratulations to the winners!! I will be e-mailing those of you for whom I have e-mail addresses to get your snail mail addresses.

Miniature Quilter — please leave me a message with your e-mail address or click on the e-mail line in my profile and send me your address!

This was fun — and I think I’ll have another Inklingo kit giveaway in a few weeks. Maybe some pieces for flying geese next time or diamonds and related bits for some stars as in this post. 🙂

I hope you have fun stitching your little kits.

Stars

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These fabrics have been in my stash for a while and I’ve been itching to make something with them.

In my seemingly endless fascination with stars of any size, I decided to make these:

Each star rectangle measures about 4 3/8 by 5 inches. I’m thinking I’ll set the star rectangles into 9-patch units with a large blank rectangle in between. That, of course, is totally subject to change when I get all the stars made. 🙂 They’re all printed now with the 1.5″ diamonds and related setting pieces from Inklingo collection 3 so it’s just a matter of stitching them.


The draw for the little Inklingo stitching kits giveaway is delayed for a few hours as my helpers (the ones I hoped would draw the winners’ names) are both sound asleep and I will have to wait for DH to get home to draw the names. 🙂 As soon as that is done, there will be another post!

My Quilted Diamonds Quilt

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We finally found the pictures taken of it when it was finished and before it was basted. (That’s me with the blonde hair on the right.) This will be the next quilt in the hoop. It has been basted by a long-arm quilter and I really can’t wait to get started on it! I’m still debating just exactly what I’ll quilt in the plain setting diamonds. All the diamond patterns from Quilted Diamonds 2 are in it along with a few from Quilted Diamonds 1. If you haven’t seen those two books, they’re absolutely fabulous books — amazingly well done and incredibly full of helpful tips and information. It was sheer joy making each and every one of those wonderful little diamonds. Here’s a close-up of a few of them.


I‘ll post a few more pictures of individual diamonds over the next few days. There are some that make me smile the second I look at them.


And A Few More Diamonds

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Wow — looking through old pictures really is fun! Even though I have the top here and can look at these little diamonds whenever I wish, looking at the pictures has been a treat! Which I seem determined to share. LOL

This is yet another of my favourites. It’s actually rather hard to pick out the favourites as I had so much fun and enjoyed making every one of them.


Then there’s this one, which was a real treat to make:


And the little bear with wings was just too cute to resist. 🙂

Finally, a picture of our Smudge when he was a little kitten. Funny how as they get bigger, one forgets what they were like as kittens. This was when he was about 3 months old and about 15 pounds less than he is now — Maine Coons are BIG cats!



A Few More Diamonds

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Getting closer to finding the shots of the completed diamond top. In the process of hunting for them, I found these photos of a few more of my favourite diamonds. Looking at these is making me want to do more! They truly are addictive!

The little duck makes me laugh every time I look at this diamond:

And this one makes me hope we might get some spring — sometime. Right now I’m about to give up hope!! They’re now forecasting yet another BIG storm — with 15 to 30 centimetres of snow, starting sometime tomorrow?? The forecaster on our weather channel just said this may be the biggest storm of the season. Yuck!

I remember making this diamond travelling on a commuter train to go to a Quilted Diamonds club meeting at Jillybeans (now Ginny’s Quilt Shoppe). Taking the commuter train out to those meetings was a great way to get a few diamonds done. 🙂

Yet More Diamonds

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I have a wonderful top made up of diamonds from Quilted Diamonds 1 and 2 but we cannot seem to get a decent picture of it. We’ll keep trying. It has been basted and will be the next in the hoop when I finish the bow ties.


In the meantime, I found some pictures of some of the diamonds. I did a lot of fussy cutting for the diamond quilt and had a fabulous time working on it!

I suppose the best way to show some of these diamonds will be by posting separate photos of them anyway, so will do that with a few more over the next couple of days. This one is, quite possibly, my favourite although I have to admit I love every single one of them!


There’s still a week to enter my little Inklingo-shape kit giveaway. Leave a comment on the post announcing the giveaway, and you’ll be entered.

We had yet another storm last night with more snow! I’m hoping we’re getting close to the end of this winter as we seem to have had way more snow than normal! Yesterday we could see the grass on the roof garden. Today? Today it’s buried under quite a blanket of snow!

More Diamonds

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I have been cleaning out binders and opening up baggies. I found all these wonderful diamonds from Quilted Diamonds 1 and 2 I made using shabby chic fabrics and am now deciding just what to do with them. At the moment, I’m leaning towards using the 50+ diamonds in the centre of a quilt, a first border of little stars made with the same sort of fabrics and then a final border utilizing hexagons of the same fabrics. I have a feeling this will get done rather quickly as I absolutely love these fabrics!

There are in excess of 200 diamonds that I found in a variety of fabrics/colourways. I’ve sorted them out and, unless I can make them play together nicely, have the makings of a few quilts there!

Dresden Plate

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This is one of my favourite quilts that sometimes is draped over the bed — I just love the old look of it. Hand appliqued and hand quilted — and it has that wonderful crumpled look of an old quilt now that it has been washed a couple of times.


I started this Dresden Plate design ages ago and have about 20 of the blocks done. It has been in a baggie. All the little spokes are prepared for enough blocks to make a king-size quilt, so it’s really just a matter of stitching 16 together for each block and then appliqueing them. The block finishes at 7″ square. Although the pattern calls for a heart in the centre, I’m undecided about that. I’d like to do something a little off the wall for the centre and may applique a small diamond or square in the centre of each block. Still thinking. This is a fun one to make — and will, I think, look fabulous when done. It has been “marinating” in the baggie for ages. I need to do a lot of these blocks to make it large enough for our bed, although I’m contemplating using plain blocks in between and then having some nice space for a feathered circle or something comparable. It may need to marinate a bit longer.

It has been bitterly cold here. When we get wind chill values of -25 Celsius or lower, I absolutely refuse to go outside! Thank goodness we live somewhere that’s connected to the great Toronto underground. Just about everything one could wish for can be found in the underground malls — everything but a quilt shop, that is.

Edited to add:
I forgot! I was tagged by Joan at My Quilt Life to do the 7 weird facts about yourself.

The rules are:
–Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
–Post THE RULES on your blog.
–Post 7 weird or random facts about yourself on your blog.
–Tag 7 people and link to them.
–Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

7 Weird Facts:

1. Dislike peanut butter — the smell and the taste
2. Love bacon but find the smell of it cooking nauseating
3. Love the hot and humid days of summer
4. Can re-read favourite books over and over
5. Love playing with and learning new-to-me technology
6. Prefer British-made TV series and movies to those made in North America
7. Although I loathe winter, I can’t sleep in a warm bedroom — has to be practically freezing for me to sleep.

This seems to have been going around the blogs for ages, so I am not going to tag anyone. However, if you read this and haven’t been tagged for it yet, please consider yourself tagged!

Next to Quilt

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This is the next quilt in the hoop. It’s an almost king-sized quilt composed of 3″ bow tie blocks. All hand pieced. I love this quilt as it’s totally scrappy and it will be fun to look at all the fabrics I used as I go through and quilt it. This was the first of the quilts I had basted by a long-arm quilter and I think you can see the basting in the photo.

I started working on it last night and have decided to do an “X” through each block. I initially thought that quilting through those seam allowances would be a nightmare but did a couple of test lines of quilting and found that it wasn’t so bad. I’m looking at this one as my warm-up quilt as there are two other large quilts basted and waiting to get in the hoop. My goal is to get them all quilted this year.

It’s snowing again as I write this. Sometimes I wonder if this winter will ever end! At the moment, the trees are starting to get that dipped in icing sugar look.