Tag Archives: cats

Stormy Seas

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Putting together the second block was irresistible.. The third block is almost finished as well, but not quite.  Each block has been a learning experience as I sort out a piecing sequence that works the best for me.  My plan for the quilt requires 110 of these blocks, so I’ve got a long way to go.  My goal for this week is to get all the shapes printed on the various fabrics and then get the pieces for each block put into an envelope, ready to stitch.

We apparently have a big low pressure system coming in with lots of rain starting today.  Yesterday I got a migraine that put paid to doing much of anything, including replying to blog comments.  I’m hoping that as today wears on and the rain starts, the headache will lift and I can do a few things including responding to comments.

The cats were pretty laid back on Monday, except at treats time.  We found a kitty treat that’s made with ingredients that aren’t kitty junk food.  Late last week Smudge began behaving like a finicky cat and had been turning his nose up at their food, so we hit the pet store on the weekend to buy a few different types and flavours.  So far we’ve found a couple that he likes and the kitty treats. They learned the sound of the treats bag incredibly quickly — and now as soon as one of us picks it up, they’re right there.  They can appear to be sound asleep, but the sound of that little bag being opened works better than any alarm clock could.

We didn’t get any pictures of them on Monday, so these are a couple of my favourites.  First Smudge:

And Lester:

Very Little Stitching

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That’s what has been going on around here lately — very little stitching.  Lots of printing and cutting, though.  And one pickled lady to add to the mix, but that’s about all there is to show.  It seems like November is prep month.   Made myself laugh thinking about it, but it’s as though I’m getting ready to hibernate for the winter and want all the preparation work done so that I have lots and lots of pieces printed, cut and ready to stitch.

One of the things I’ve been working on  is printing the Storm at Sea shapes.  It’s a good thing that the initial idea of going with the 4 batiks got changed to using 11 fabrics as I found one of the original four has a flaw that runs the entire length of the piece.  There’s an area that’s about half an inch wide that has less than half the thread count of the rest of the batik.  I’ve had the batik now for months and wouldn’t even contemplate taking it back, so I’ve cut the fabric to get rid of the flaw, but it’s possibly going to make it tricky to get the number of shapes I want from that particular fabric.  Seems like my Storm at Sea quilt is undergoing some changes yet again.

There’s a group of florals that need to be fussy cut/printed for more Pickled Ladies. Two more of the large pink stars are done for a total of five finished, so there’s only one left to piece and then printing the shapes for the small pieced cornerstone blocks. More preparation work.

The weekend paper comes with lots of catalogues from various stores, particularly at this time of year.  I had been looking at them while Smudge was curled up at the other end of the couch when Lester decided to join us.  He wanted attention so made sure that the catalogues weren’t accessible.

I’m not sure that Smudge was all that thrilled about having Lester’s tail draped over his.

Fabric Challenge

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These hand-dyed fabrics have been in my stash for ages.  I cut each one of them in half, gave half to a friend, kept half for myself and we’re both going to work on a quilt using just them and perhaps one other fabric as a neutral.  I’ve wanted to make something special with these for ages and am hoping that having this challenge will be just the thing I need to come up with the right design to showcase them.  The hard part of this for me will be that it has to be a machine-pieced design.  The fabrics are gorgeous but they’re very tightly woven, even more so than a batik, so I know that hand piecing would be too much for my hands.  I’ve been pouring over some of the encyclopedia of blocks books and think this may be what finally gets me to absolutely force myself through EQ and play with some design ideas that way.

Do you ever feel like you should limit how many blogs you visit because of the sheer overload of inspiration?  On Thursday, I saw a quilt at Nonnies Cedar Chest that really intrigues me.  I can see it done in pinks and greens and creams or with a beautiful Christmas red and green.  I love the ribbon effect Charlsey got with her design.  I think it’s a very good thing I have no Christmas fabric as I have a feeling I’d be itching to start this one.  But it may be hard to resist doing it in some lovely soft pinks and greens.

We had another amazingly mild day on Thursday with the promise of at least a couple more days like that to come.  The longer we can put off the bitter cold and true winter weather, the better.

The cats are showing how well they can curl up into kitty circles.  Lester in a kitty bed:

And Smudge on the couch:

Stormy Seas

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Working with the batiks proved to be irresistible so shapes were printed on two of the fabrics.   I actually have the individual units for a block stitched but not yet pressed or stitched together into the block.

This little pile of pieces is all I need for the next block.

The Stormy Seas quilt will be a long-term project as I plan to make it large enough for a king-size bed  and will be using 9″ blocks.  There’s a lot of stitching ahead of me on this one, but I have no deadline so can just enjoy the making of the blocks over the next year or so.

One of the other projects that is likely to get started on sometime in the next month or so will be made with these charm packs and the one larger piece of fabric from that line.  I have  a few ideas in mind for this one.

It has been amazingly mild this week.  The mornings are a bit chilly, but as the day wears on we are hitting temperatures in the 50s.  The other day, Mr. Q.O. got this photo of one of the trees at the front of our building.

Each week new floral arrangements are placed on pedestals in the lobby.

Smudge and Lester look so sweet in this shot — but don’t be fooled.  Lester was wanting to curl up in the pink chair and was hoping Smudge would move.

Stormy Seas

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Back in March, when the Inklingo Storm at Sea collections came out, I made this block and had a plan for a quilt using these 4 fabrics.

Why I’ll never know, but I didn’t sketch out my idea or make any notes about it. But, wanting to get the fabric cut and ready to print on the weekend, I sat down Saturday afternoon and tried to remember what I had in mind when I purchased the initial 4 fabrics.  I spent ages trying to sort out just what that plan was but finally realized that, whatever that initial idea was, it’s not going to happen.  Whatever it was I had in mind, I certainly didn’t buy enough of 2 of the batiks.  So I spent hours working on two different ideas, sorting out just how much of each fabric was needed for both those design ideas.  By Saturday evening, it was down to the point of calculating if I had enough square yardage of each fabric — and it went on and on. So instead of playing with needle and thread, I was working out fabric requirements with the calculator.

The pieces of paper headed “Monkey’s Inklingo Cheat Sheet” are invaluable when working out a quilt design and come with each collection as well as are available to download at the Inklingo Web site.  Once I get my design sorted out, I can make a note of exactly what size of fabric/freezer paper I need for each shape/each colour and am off to the races.  I use the cheat sheets all the time and keep them filed in an accordion folder with my freezer paper.  The four cheat sheets seen here, however, are destined for the recycling bin as neither idea is going to fly.

When I finally realized that neither idea would work with the initial 4 fabrics alone, I gave up for the evening.  On Sunday afternoon, I started going through batiks and pulled out some other blues and a green.  Now I know exactly what I’m going to do with these 11 fabrics and, with any luck, will have all the shapes I need for the stormy seas blocks printed sometime this week.  The only decision left to be made now is just how large I want to make the Storm at Sea quilt.  Once that’s decided I can have my cheat sheet filled out in no time.

We were about to go out somewhere on the weekend, and I had left my purse on the couch for a minute.  I think this look says Smudge was hoping we were off to the pet store for kitty food and toys.

Lester was having some quiet time on the windowsill, although there isn’t much activity now for him to watch other than flying leaves.

Dots of Colour

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The baby quilt I was working on back in August and early September will finally be basted, hopefully this weekend.  I was lucky enough to win a gift certificate, so used it to buy the fabric above for the backing.  I couldn’t find an appropriate flannel but when I saw this fabric I couldn’t resist it.  Perfect for a baby quilt, I think.

These 3 fabrics were also purchased with the gift certificate — what a treat!  Initially I had thought the stripe on the far left would be perfect for the binding, but it’s too pink.  I love using stripes to get different effects in pieced blocks and for bias binding, so this is a welcome addition to the stash even if it’s not used for this particular quilt.  Lately I find I want to use a bit of black in almost every quilt I make, which explains the middle choice.  The one on the far right intrigues me.  I think I’ll have fun with it and already have an idea.

Thursday night I got out the completed blocks for the Harpsichord Quilt.  I have a long way to go, but was pleasantly surprised when I realized I already had 2 of the vertical rows complete.  The centres of the last three pink and cream big stars are done.  If the weekend weather is as rainy and cold as they’re predicting, I think I may have at least 2 of the stars completed by Monday.  Now I’m seeing the benefit of a large block as I may well have this top together by month end.

Smudge was chasing leaves on the windowsill for a while on Thursday morning and then peeked out from under the lace.  We couldn’t resist this photo, even though it is a bit blurry.

Later on, Lester was on the windowsill.

The Making of Big Pink Stars

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Two of the nine pink and cream stars are made and I’ve sorted out a stitching sequence that makes them very quick to construct.  The first part is to make the centre 8-pointed star.

Once that’s done then I stitch all the pieces that need to be stitched into pairs or triplets together.  It’s then just a matter of adding rounds to the centre — a great opportunity for lots of continuous stitching which makes the star go together quite quickly.

This picture shows the centre after I added the first round of cream pairs and started adding the next round of pink diamonds.  Everything is ready now to just keep stitching until the star is done.  I’ve found that pressing after I get the third round of pink diamonds added is the most efficient.  All that’s left after that is to add the final star points made up of the 2 cream and 1 pink diamonds, a final press and the star is finished.  This will actually be a quick quilt to make as the setting is planned and won’t require a lot more work.  As of now, I plan to use the sewing machine to join the blocks and sashing.

Monday night some time was spent sorting the stack of freezer paper sheets that were lying about that I use to print shapes on my fabric.  As I use the custom sizes suggested in the various Inklingo collections, I have quite the variety of sizes of freezer paper cut  ranging from 3.25″ x 5″ all the way up to 8.5″ x 14″ and, as freezer paper can be reused many times, I keep it.  Over the past few months the stack of freezer paper sheets on my printer was becoming unruly, to say the least.  So a few hours of organization, and I can now see at a glance if I have the size I need and find it easily.  What started me organizing it was sorting out what I need to print for a couple of the projects I’m working on. After a few frustrating minutes of trying to figure out if I had the right sizes of freezer paper already cut, I realized it was time to just sit down and organize it all. Now the trick will be to keep it organized and file the sheets away after I’ve used them.

The gardeners have been and have taken out the flowers and cut down the hosta on the roof garden.  The trees have lost most of their leaves now and it looks very stark.  At least we haven’t yet had snow although there apparently was some snow to the north of us on the weekend.  The cats are finding cozy spots to curl up and nap.  First Lester.

Smudge:

October Clamshell Report

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Time for another Clamshell Club report.  The months seem to be flying past!!  This month I made some progress on two clamshell projects — Clam Balloons and the Pickled Ladies.

In October I was actually able to tear myself away from the Pickled Ladies and add another clamshell diamond block, so now there are three.  Two of the three are quite similar in that there’s a lot of the same fabrics in them, but once there are more blocks done and they are separated from one another I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.   Mr. Q.O. says they remind him of hot air balloons which led me to a name for the quilt, Clam Balloons.

I have been so focussed on stitching the Pickled Ladies that I forgot just how much fun it is to put the clamshell diamonds together, and how quick.  Two evenings of stitching and the diamond was done.  Getting enough of the clamshell diamonds done to be able to sort out placement is a goal I have now for the end of the year. Then I can start adding the black sashing where necessary as well as the setting pieces and hopefully have this done rather quickly.  The Clam Balloons won’t be a large bed quilt, but rather a good-sized lap quilt.  I think it will be a great one to have in the winter as all those lovely bright colours that will make me think of summer.

There are now 43 Pickled Ladies, with another 35 or 40 waiting to be stitched. Some exotic Asian florals have been added to the mix.  There are lots of little pieces waiting for me to stitch to make the arcs, and I plan to work on those this evening. This will be a long-term project as I’m pretty sure that I will keep going on this until it’s a bed-sized quilt.

One thing I really do need to do is sit down and figure out how many I’ll need for a bed-sized quilt and make some window templates for the setting pieces that I’ll use to square it off.  Having the window templates will mean that I can print and cut those setting pieces as I’m printing and cutting the clamshells.  And I know myself — if I leave that all to the end, I’ll keep putting it off and putting it off but if I have all the pieces ready to stitch, then the quilt top will get finished as soon as there are enough of the Pickled Ladies.  I have a feeling I have less than a quarter of the blocks I’ll need for the quilt, so I’d best get back to work on them!

The cats have had a very relaxing weekend.  Smudge:

Lester:

Twinkling Stars

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This isn’t a new project.  It’s something I’ve been playing with for ages using some of the shapes in the Tumbler collection.  Stitching arcs for the Pickled Ladies quilt didn’t really appeal last night as I was battling a migraine, so I started organizing some of the things I have in varying stages of progress.  That long skinny triangle from the Tumbler collection is something I love working with.  I’ve made about a dozen of these blocks that finish at 5″ and am now pondering some setting ideas.  I think I’ll probably make another dozen or so of them and then come up with a setting for a little quilt.

The back:

While I was going through some of the projects, I was able to identify a couple that require only another block or two or a setting plan in order to finish them.  I may spend a little time on one of them this weekend and see if I can come up with a plan and finish it off rather quickly.  Then again, I may just put it away and concentrate on more arcs for the Pickled Ladies.  I also want to get another of the clamshell diamonds done and have picked out the clamshells for that.

Lester is continuing to improve.  We’re thrilled with how quickly the antibiotics have started to do their job.  He was playing with toys today, up on the windowsill for a while and, of course, resting.

Smudge was sleeping on the couch with one paw on the little “Quilts, A Beautiful History” book I like to look through frequently.

Another 7 Pickled Ladies

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Now that the first of the big pink star blocks is done, I had to get back to the Pickled Ladies.  I’ve now used all the arcs I had prepared, so for the next few evenings I’ll be stitching more arcs.  There are 35 more clamshells I had fussy cut/printed that are all cut out and waiting for arcs.  Once I get those done, I’ll have to have a good look through my stash for some more florals to add to the mix.

While I haven’t counted them as yet, I think there are about 45 or so completed Pickled Ladies.  If I’m correct, another 35 will take me up close to 80.  If I’m going to make this a bed quilt, which is what I’m leaning towards, finding more floral fabrics that will work for this will be my primary focus for quite a while.

Lester is continuing to improve.  We are very grateful for that and I am particularly grateful that he’s an easy cat to pill.  He even got in a little windowsill time on Wednesday.

Smudge was exhausted from running back and forth along the windowsill chasing leaves as they went by the window.