Tag Archives: cats

Economy-Size Spools

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Saturday, after making some of the small spool blocks, I decided I would try some larger ones so printed out the shapes for and pieced a few of them while we watched the Academy Awards last night.

When I looked at the size of these ones I immediately thought they were the economy-size spools!  They seem enormous compared to the little ones I was making Saturday.  These big ones finish at 5″ while the little ones finish at 2 3/8″.  Mr. Q.O. likes the big ones as well as the small ones.  I prefer the smaller ones, although that may be a result of the fabrics I’ve used to try out the large ones.

Here you can see the difference in size.

And here, as usual, is the back — this time of one of the large blocks.

We have had the most glorious weather the past few days.  Sunny, mild with temperatures around 10 or 11 Celsius and no wind.  They say today may be even a touch milder.  Our long-range forecast makes it sound as though spring is really here.  We may have some cooler days but I think winter is, for all intents and purposes, finished.  And there’s another sure sign of spring — the window washers have started so hopefully we’ll have nice clean windows within a week or two.

Lester is ready for spring.  He was stretched out on the windowsill, although there’s not much to watch out on the roof garden yet.

Smudge patiently waiting until time for his yogourt treat.

Spools

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After reading about Klosjes day, I decided to devote stitching time on Saturdays to these little blocks!  Each finishes at 2 3/8″.  They’re tiny.  But addictive.  Seriously addictive.  Perfect use for a charm pack or two.

While there are other methods of making them I’m hand piecing them, as I love to hand piece and love Y-seams for the continuous stitching that they make possible.  I’m using 1″ squares and half hexagons  from the 90-degree 1-inch hexagons in the Patchwork of the Crosses Inklingo collection.  I was able to print three of  the half  hexagons on each charm and have a plan for the border for this quilt, however large it ends up, using that third half-hexagon from each charm.

I have no idea how many of these little beauties I’m going to make, but as Mr. Q.O. is quite taken by them, I have a feeling it may be as many as is needed to make a lap quilt for him.

An alternative plan is to make a doll’s quilt using these tiny blocks and then start another set using the shapes using the long half hexagon from the 1.5″ 90-degree hexagon collection and the 3″ squares from the Drunkard’s Path collection to make somewhat larger blocks.

The other night Lester decided to “help” when I was working on the Quaker Patchwork cross-stitch.  Great huge kitty paws on the chart make it rather difficult to keep one’s place!

Smudge was, as usual, perfecting his lounging.

Hexagon Blossoms

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I haven’t worked on this little top for ages so decided to add another blossom to it with the surrounding green path last night.  That’s a dime on top of one of the little hexagons to give an idea of size.  Each side of the hexagons finishes at half an inch.

I initially printed a few thousand of these small hexagons, almost all on 5″ charms, thinking I’d make the Insanity quilt seen here.  I quickly decided I didn’t want to make that quilt and now have all these tiny hexagons.  While I’ve started the little top shown above, I know that is going to end up as a small doll’s quilt.  I’ll use half and quarter hexagons around the outer edges so that I have straight outer edges to the little quilt.

As long as I finger press these as I go, it’s very simple to press the top.  I do press after I add each blossom.

More of the blossoms are ready and I have enough of the green surrounding hexagons printed to surround these plus a few more.  Once that’s done I’ll assess if I want to make the little top any larger.

Our forecast for the weekend is fabulous — sunny and highs of 7 Celsius both days.  The whole week has been wonderful with sunny days that have been relatively mild, considering it’s early March.

Lester looks like he’s thinking about spring and watching the birds and squirrels from the window.

Smudge, on the other hand, is showing off his sprawling capabilities.

Getting Ready to Print on Fabric

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I want to make the Drunkard’s Path quilt a good-sized lap quilt, so I need to prep some more of the Rouenneries charms for printing.  I already know that I can print both pieces of a Drunkard’s Path unit on a 5″ charm, so it’s a matter of ironing them on to the freezer paper that I have already cut to size and then feeding them through my printer.  Here you can see that I’ve separated them by colour as I will use different ink colours for printing, depending on the fabric colour.  Some of those pieces of freezer paper have been used 10 or 15 times already and are still fine for another few uses.

One thing I have learned is that even 5″ charms shrink when washed and not evenly.  There’s almost a full quarter inch shrinkage in width or length, depending on how you look at it, when these little charms are washed and pressed.

I received the Clothworks e-mail yesterday with news of their upcoming collections and immediately fell in love with the Hungarian Blues collection that you can see here.  Blue and white quilts are among my absolute favourites and these fabrics are  stunning.  I know I’m going to want yardage of every one of those when the fabric is available.  I’m already dreaming of a blue and white Winding Ways quilt or perhaps a Dresden Plate in blue and white.

Smudge has the funniest look on his face in this photo.

Lester, on the other hand, is looking somewhat majestic.

Quaker Patchwork Sampler, Part 2

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Although it has been a couple of months since I picked this up, it was easy to continue on from where I had left off.  The motifs in this sampler are giving me quilt ideas and most of them do have a patchwork block look to them, which is probably what makes it easy to pick up no matter where I’ve left off.   It’s a rather large sampler and I’m only about a tenth of the way through, if that.

It still feels like spring to me.  I’m convinced the leaf buds on the tree limbs are starting to swell a tiny bit.  Overly optimistic?  Possibly.  But maybe, just maybe, after last year which was the year of no summer and this year which has been the year of almost no winter, we’re going to have a true spring, which would be a novelty.  Normally we go from having the heat on to having to turn on the air conditioning.  It would be wonderful to have a month or two of not having to turn on either.

Both cats have been exhibiting a bit of spring fever.  Lester has been extremely busy playing with toys which he has fished out of the basket.

Smudge has been playing more than normal as well.  Here he’s guarding two toys.  We didn’t pose this picture at all.  Somehow or other he managed to get the toys sitting on his paws like this.

Olympic Stitching

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… didn’t seem to equal much getting finished.  One Farmer’s Delight block.  So much for hoping to get them all done during the Olympics but at least I managed to get all the fabrics cut and ready to print for the last 7 blocks.

And a few more of the first block that will be in the Jewels at Night table runner.  But that’s about it.  The ideas were flying fast and furious though and my notebook has a lot of notes for the future, including a setting for the Tropical Punch blocks.

Am I complaining?  No!  It was an absolutely magical 17 days watching all the events and, in particular, the Canadian athletes.  Wow — 14 gold medals for Canada!!  Although I am not a hockey fan, even I watched some of the gold medal game.  When the audience joined in the singing of the Canadian anthem after the hockey medals presentation, I had goosebumps.  The noise in downtown Toronto carried on well into the night as those celebrating the hockey win congregated and part of one of the main streets was closed to vehicular traffic to accommodate them.

Congratulations to Vancouver and the Vancouver Olympics Organizing Committee — I thought it was absolutely fantastic.  So did our little Olympic team.  The beaver and moose are thrilled to have been represented in the closing ceremonies.  This little moose even has his own version of a gold medal!

Smudge and Lester did their very best to win lounging awards.  I think they did a very good job.  First Smudge:

And then Lester:

I’ve got all the posts from my old blog moved over and am going to work on getting the categorization and tags done so that they’re actually helpful.  The way they are now is pretty hit and miss as I wasn’t too conscientious about categorizing them.  I’m really glad you’ve come over to visit here and hope you come back!

Revisiting an Unfinished Project

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While I got the bands of triangles put together for the next of the Farmer’s Delight blocks finished last night, I didn’t get them pressed or even begin attaching them to the centre.  However, one of the other things I did do was take stock of unfinished projects.  Tropical Punch is one of them.

I’m rather glad I didn’t finish it as I now have an idea that is quite a bit different than I initially had for finishing it.  Since I made those blocks a number of new collections have been released and one of them will, I think, be perfect for the new setting I have in mind.  I think I’ll have a 3-day weekend this weekend, so will first print out the shapes I think I’m going to use on paper and then, once I’m sure that it will work, I will print the shapes I need on the back of the batik along with some more on the purple batik used as background for these blocks.  


That is one of the other benefits of Inklingo for me.  I can print the shapes without seam allowances and play with ideas to make sure they’re going to work the way I think they will before I print on my fabric.  It’s a fabulous design tool.

We’re in for a big storm by the sounds of it.  The first truly big snowstorm of the winter for us.  I’ve had a migraine since mid-day Wednesday, which I usually get when there’s a storm.  Snow all day today, they say, and then turning to rain on Friday.

I am slowly making the changes necessary to move to a blog at WordPress.  I plan on moving all the Blogger blog posts over eventually but until I’m ready to do that will be posting on both blogs.  Hopefully I get that sorted out this weekend.  I do hope that those who read this blog will follow me over to Quilt Obsession at WordPress.

The kitties are still enjoying their new beds.  While they’re quite content to use either one of the two beds, Wednesday they seemed to be taking turns in the one nearest the toy basket.  First Lester, showing that he really does like to curl up in there:

 
And then Smudge, sprawling out a bid:
 


Jewels at Night

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… is the working name for this, which will no doubt be changed.  I’ve done a few of these blocks so far, each of which finish at 5″.  There’s another block that goes in the design.  I have the fabric cut and ironed to freezer paper so I can print my shapes on the back of the fabrics tomorrow for the other block.

This is the back of one of the blocks:
It seems winter isn’t done with us.  They’re forecasting more snow Thursday, Friday and into the weekend.  

The kitties have been taking turns guarding the toy basket, it seems.  First Lester who, as he’s a very big cat, sometimes spills out of the bed:

 
Then Smudge, who was practising his sprawl.  Interestingly, none of the toys have been taken out of the toy basket yet.  

 

New Project Beginnings

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On the weekend I kept getting an idea for a new project and pulled some pieces of fabric for it.  Trying to resist this idea proved to be impossible — when I fell asleep I was thinking about it, I woke up thinking about it and finally had to give in and start it!  I had these 7″ batik squares which are perfect for it — particularly with the black and white fabric as the background.  Some of the batiks are too dark and won’t get used in this piece, and others will be added but this is a start.  Over the weekend and on Monday I used a couple of the Inklingo collections to print some of the shapes on to the fabric I’m using.  Not much stitching has been done though I can’t pay attention to anything but watching the skaters when the ice dance competition is on.

 
Sunday night a migraine hit.  I had no idea we were going to wake up to this on Monday but it explains the headache which was finally starting to ease off Monday night.

This is the first time this winter that we’ve had snow on the roof garden.  Thankfully we’re almost at the end of February, so know that it can’t last long.  
I am so excited about our win in the ice dancing competition.  I thought Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir were absolutely fantastic, as were the U.S. team who won the silver.  Just watching both teams gave me goosebumps.  When Virtue and Moir won and the medals were presented, I had tears in my eyes.  I have always loved figure skating, and the dance competition in particular.  

We got new kitty beds for Smudge and Lester.  Within seconds of putting them out, they were both curled up and working on their lounging form.  Smudge hasn’t had a chance yet to work on this one to turn it into a kitty oval.


 
Lester was not only checking out the new kitty bed but also keeping his eye on the toy basket.
 

Spools Continued

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While the skating had me glued to the television Thursday night, I did manage to stitch these little spool blocks.  There are a number still left to do and I’m quickly revising my goal of stitching to finish while watching the Olympics.  The new goal?  Whatever I manage to stitch during the Olympics will be more than good enough. 

My favourite figure skating competition starts tonight — the dance pairs.  I doubt any stitching will be done during tonight’s short program or the final on Sunday.  I do have a new idea for a block that I absolutely have to stitch.  I’ll get some fabric printed this afternoon and hopefully get at least one block of it done sometime this weekend. 

Lester was curled up with a teddy bear after watching some of the skating while draped over my knees.

While Smudge was relaxing in his kitty bed: