Tag Archives: cats

More Pickled Ladies Are Gathering

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Over the holiday, I had a good look at the size of the Pickled Ladies top and decided to add a few more rows. These are the first three ladies that will be joining the group.

The arcs are in the process of being made and I hope to have them all done by the end of the week. Then it’s nothing but easy stitching, attaching them to the clamshells which are already prepared and waiting.

Having been through the process of grading the seams on the other Pickled Ladies all at once, this time I’m grading them as I go. It only takes a minute and makes a huge difference to the drape and weight of the quilt.

When each arc is finished I grade the seams of the two sides of each black triangle that are attached to the white triangles. I like to wait until the seam is stitched before grading it, mostly because having even seam allowances makes it easier to line up and stitch the pieces together. It also gives me the option of not grading a seam if a fabric seems to be of a slightly looser weave than others.

Once the arc is attached to the clamshell, I then grade the black seam that’s attached to the clamshell. A quick press and it’s done.

The window templates for the half clamshells for the edges are made and I’ve been auditioning fabrics with them. The arcs and partial arcs for the edge pieces are also ready to be stitched.

Baxter has lounging on the sofa down to an art form. Mr. Q.O. captioned this one, “Dinner ready yet, lady?”

Beginnings of New Projects

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These three fabrics, along with two layer cakes of Fresh Squeezed, are the inspiration for a couple of new projects. They were a Christmas gift from a good friend and have, ever since I opened the package, been out where I can see them and start planning the first of the new quilts that will be made with them. These bright cheerful fabrics are the perfect antidote to winter’s grey skies and cold temperatures.

The yardage and one of the layer cakes are washed, a neutral has been chosen so all that’s left is to decide which design to make first.

Baxter on the windowsill. Yesterday was a very windy and cold day and was snowing on and off but nothing that stayed on the ground. So far he doesn’t seem interested in the snow at all.

Pattern Sale

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As Boxing Day is typically a day of sales here in Canada, I decided to have a Boxing Day sale of my patterns, which can be found here. The patterns contain detailed instructions on piecing with lots of photographs and diagrams, cheat sheets with printing sizes, pressing instructions and quilting suggestions.

Each pattern is marked down from $9 to $5 for this one-day event.  The patterns included are:

Chintz Circles

Pink Ice

Twinklingo Stars

The sale is on until 11:59 p.m. EST tonight and are available on the patterns page of my website.

Baxter, of course, isn’t all that interested in patterns. He’s having much more fun watching things out on the roof garden.

I’ve Got The Blues

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Blue fabrics, that is. All I think I need to add to this group is some white and I may have the beginnings of a new project in mind.

What will it be? Perhaps a Dresden Plate variation? Something using some of the shapes in one of the Storm at Sea collections? Winding Ways? A two-tone Jane Austen quilt? The possibilities seem endless, but I know that doing something with these blues is definitely on the top of the list for a new project.

A grouping of blues or pinks always seems to motivate me to start something new and I do love two-tone quilts.

Baxter was very interested in something on the quilt rack. Mr. Q.O.’s caption?  “Let me just straighten out this seam here.”

Squaring up the Scrappy Star

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Two corners of the scrappy star are now squared up. Two more to go and then I can start working on the borders. Some of the pieces for one of the borders are ready and there are boxes containing the other pieces. If I don’t get too distracted by the red and white quilt, this might be finished before the end of January.

As I don’t want this to end up as a square quilt, I’m going to add one border to the top and bottom and then add another border or borders to all 4 sides of it.

Baxter was particularly interested in the quilt rack last night.

One More Star Done

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This star almost put itself together. It has been months since I made one of these, but this seemed to stitch up much faster than I remember. I started it Friday evening and finished it last night.

Since there are 201 pieces in each block, I decided to grade the seams as I go this time. I will have to go back and grade the seams on the blocks that are already done but at least I’ll have the new ones done, rather than having to do all of them at once.

The pieces for the next block are cut and ready to stitch.

Mr. Q.O. has captioned this one, “Studying Art Can Be Tiring.” It doesn’t look very comfortable for Baxter with his head on a hard book, but it must have been all right as he slept like that for quite a while.

The Red & White Quilt is Back!

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Remember these blocks? They’ve been sitting for a long time.

Why? Because earlier this year I decided I wanted to make the quilt I had started with these blocks bigger. Of course, I was out of both the white and the red fabrics. I was able to get more of the red, which is from an old Laurel Burch line, fairly quickly. But the white? That proved to be harder to find. Thanks to Judy at Sew Sisters, who scoured the distributors for it, more of the white was finally found and we picked it up at the end of last week.

So over the past couple of days, between doctors’ appointments and tests, I figured out what I needed to print and got my fabrics ready and ironed to freezer paper.

Last night, in under 2 hours, I had the fabrics all printed and now have everything I need to finish my red and white Sunflower/Feathered Star quilt, including the pieced border treatment I’ve got planned for it.

In this close-up, if you click on it to enlarge it, you can see the lines on a couple of the pieces I printed. Because I’m hand piecing the blocks, I’ve printed all the HSTs. If I were going to machine piece, I’d have only printed on the white fabric. I wouldn’t even think of making this quilt without Inklingo. With Inklingo’s precision cutting and stitching lines and matching points, a quilt like the one I have planned is easy as can be.

Baxter has had lots of squirrel activity to watch out on the roof garden over the past few days. Mr. Q.O. calls this photo “Sheer Kitty”.  I call it “Kitty Under Lace”.

A Long-Forgotten Project

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It has been a very long time since I last worked on this. I made the long strips of hexagons months and months ago and had joined about 5 of them and then it sat. And sat and sat some more. Over the past week or so I have spent some time on it and have joined a couple more of the strips to what was already joined. It’s nice easy stitching, which is just perfect for some evenings.

I press as I add each strip. When I made the king-sized 1″ hexagon and elongated hexagon quilt, I left all the pressing to the end. It took next to forever to press that top and my back was practically breaking from the hours I spent at the ironing board. Lesson well and truly learned!

Mr. Q.O. was playing around with photo editing software and turned a Baxter photo into a black and white photo.

Scrappy Star Round 7

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It’s now at 36 inches. I’ve decided to square it up now as I have a couple of borders planned that will take it to a good-sized lap quilt. The last round of diamonds took 2 evenings of stitching to add.

The back. I am so glad I pressed as I went on this. Pressing the last round took only a few minutes as I had finger-pressed as I stitched, but I can’t imagine how long it would have taken to press the whole thing at one time.

Last week I was put on a medication that initially has made me very groggy and I’m sleeping close to 12 hours at a time. That’s not the point of mentioning this, though. The silver lining has been the dreams! I’ve had many dreams of quilt designs and the dreams have stayed with me long enough that I’ve been able to write them down when I woke up. I’m thinking this is a definite bonus.

Mr. Q.O. captioned this photo, “Well, are you going to just sit there or finish it?”