Tag Archives: Quilt

Getting Ready to Stitch and Hugo’s Roof Garden Adventure

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Thursday I spent some time prepping all the pieces I need for the remaining Feathered Star blocks for my red and white Sunflower/Feathered Star quilt.   This photo shows the pieces I need for one block.  By the time I finished stitching Thursday night, I had half of the HSTs, diamonds and squares put together that border the kites in the block.  That takes the longest stitching time of any of the elements of the block.  Once that is put together, adding it to the kites and then surrounding the centre Sunflower goes very quickly and then all that’s left is to add the outer setting squares and triangles.  By the time the weekend is over, I hope to have at least one more block completed and a third one started.

Finally, after days of rainy and/or windy and chilly days, Thursday was sunny and Hugo had an adventure on the roof garden.  Here he is walking down the pathway to the garden.

Then he thought the shrubs surrounding the walkway needed investigating.

Inspecting the few lonely flowers that are blooming seemed like a good idea.

The daffodils looked rather interesting, so Hugo decided to get a bit closer.

The tour of the roof garden continued, but suddenly we couldn’t see Hugo.  We looked up to see he had decided to climb a tree.

Why on earth would a hippopotamus climb a tree?  To see the CN Tower, it seems.  It’s hard to see in this photo, but Hugo could see it.

We have a couple of other little adventures planned for Hugo and then it will be time for him to travel on to his next destination.

I pretty much avoided the computer Thursday as my back was still a bit sore.  It’s better as I write this late Thursday night so hopefully I can finally get caught up on replies to comments and blog visiting today.

A close-up of Smudge, which Mr. Q.O. took Thursday  night.

Cake Stand Block and Hugo Goes to the Castle

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What possessed me, I have no idea but on the weekend I decided it would be fun to make a 2.5″ cake stand block.  It was actually a lot of fun to stitch.  I printed .50″ and 1.5″ HSTs, a couple of .5 x 1.5″ rectangles and two .50″ squares and the little block practically put itself together.  I used two different Inklingo collections to do so, the HST collection and the .50″ Log Cabin collection.  That’s a penny in the photo, to give an idea of scale.

Then for fun I decided to make a 5″ block using the same fabrics.  Again, it practically put itself together.  The only difference in this one was that I used shapes from the 1″ Log Cabin collection with the larger HSTs.

The two blocks, side by side.

The back of the larger of the two blocks.

After watching so much coverage of the Royal Wedding on Friday, Hugo needed to see a castle so off we went to take him to see Casa Loma.

First he saw part of the stone wall.

Then the castle started to appear.

We rounded the corner and Hugo got his first good glimpse of the castle.

We saw the castle stables.

And then we were right across the street from the castle.  Hugo jumped up on the dashboard and had a good long look!

This is going to be a busy week as I’m acting as registrar at a tribunal hearing all week.  Oh, how I wish I had a smart phone or iPad!  With one, the inevitable long drawn-out recesses would be much more bearable.   I think the next technology buy for me will be one of those two things.

We seem to have found food that Smudge definitely likes and is eating.   That is a huge relief for us and he seems much happier.  Here he was relaxing.  I love the crossed paws pose.

Pickled Ladies Update

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It’s time for the monthly Clamshell Club report.  To see what other members of the Clamshell Club have posted, the links can be found here.

While the projects I’ve been working on lately have, for the most part, taken over, I have been making a few of the Pickled Ladies blocks bit by bit.  Friday I put them all up on the temporary design wall to get a sense of how many more I need to make. With 69 of the blocks done, I’m looking at something that will be approximately 46 x 34.  I want to make this a larger quilt than that, so I’m contemplating doing another 45 or 50 of the blocks and then will start working on the layout as well as making the half pickled clams for the edges and then will think about a border or borders.

When talking to a friend about the Pickled Ladies and why I had not done more, I realized that I had got out of the rhythm of stitching these.  While there is another large project that’s seemingly taken over my stitching time, I’m going to try to get at least half of what I need to finish the main part of the top done by the end of May.  I have a number of the clamshells fussy cut already, so need to make more of the arcs and then put them together.

We found two foods that Smudge seemingly loves.  Friday he ate more on his own than he has in weeks.   Here he was resting after eating.

Fans and Smarties

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The brown for the quarter circle on the fan blocks I showed yesterday wasn’t dark enough.  Wednesday I replaced it with a black fabric on the two I had already done and then went on and stitched two more blocks.  These are addictive to stitch, very quick to stitch and just plain fun.  I think it will be a small quilt and set with plain alternate squares.  I’ll probably make another dozen or so of the blocks and then start playing with the layout.

Karen at Journey of a Quilter has, over the past while, showed a little quilt she made which she calls Confetti.  I was so taken with it that I couldn’t resist making one, which I’m calling Smarties.  I’m using 1″ squares and 1″ 60-degree diamonds.  I only needed to print the 1″ diamonds as there’s a little box full of 1″ squares.  Sometimes when I’m printing fabric for some project or another, I will cut a small piece of that fabric on which to print a few 1″ squares.  Those squares then go into the little box and are there, ready to use, when I get an idea that incorporates 1″ squares.  Up until starting Smarties, I was slowly making 9-patch squares when the mood struck. Eventually I do hope to have a good-sized 9-patch quilt, but it’s my easy stitching project that I turn to when I want to stitch something super simple and so there’s no deadline.

The plan is to make Smarties large enough for a teddy bear quilt, although it’s such fun to stitch that I can imagine making a lap quilt for us.  Smarties presses like a dream.  The back:

It seems that Comcast is blocking e-mails I send.  I’ve contacted our ISP to try to resolve this and a friend who has Comcast as her ISP has contacted Comcast.  Both our ISP and Comcast are saying it’s the other’s problem.  How and when this will get resolved is anyone’s guess.  But in the meantime, replies to comments I’ve sent to those who are on Comcast are probably floating around somewhere never to be seen again.   I’ve figured out a work-around and, as the bounced replies come back, am using it to send out replies.  It’s frustrating trying to deal with something like this, particularly when the providers are doing nothing other than pointing fingers at one another.

Smudge has been playing with his favourite kitty toy, Cappy, a fair bit the past few days.  Wednesday night he was holding on to it while he had a snooze.

Fan Blocks and Here’s Hugo

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Years ago I had cut 3 x 5 inch rectangles of all sorts of Asian prints.  Looking at them now I have no idea what I had in mind when I cut them and, up until a few days ago, really didn’t know quite what to do with them.  Over the past few days an idea kept coming to mind and I finally gave in Tuesday  night.  The rectangles were large enough to get 3 Dresden Plate blades printed on each.  Once that was done, it was no contest — I had to make a couple of test blocks.

I used one of the many blades in the Inklingo Dresden Plate Fancy Pieced collection, the same collection I used to make the Ferris Wheel top.  The blocks went together in next to no time, pressed like a dream and were fun to make.  They finish at 4.5″.  I have no idea how many of these I’ll make but I do know that it will be at least enough for a large wall hanging.

I might change out the quarter circle as I’m thinking that it may need to be a darker fabric, perhaps a black, rather than the brown I’ve used.  I’ll decide that today when I can see the blocks in natural light.

The back of a block:

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We’ve known for a while that Hugo was on his way here.  Tuesday afternoon Harry, our house hippo, was looking out the window wondering, “Where, oh where is Hugo? Will he ever get here?”

And finally, after a long trek from Florida and crossing the border, Hugo arrived late Tuesday afternoon. Harry was thrilled to see another hippo!

We have some fun plans for Hugo’s stay with us and are hoping the rain will stop so that he can have an adventure out on the roof garden.

Hugo was last at Life at LeeHaven, where he was seen in the scrap bin and wearing a fabric hat and had fun.  You can read more about Hugo at House of Cats as well.

Smudge was very, very interested in Hugo.  We were trying hard not to laugh out loud at him sniffing and sniffing Hugo.  Then they settled and Smudge looked like he was ready to have a nap with our little visitor.

Batik Ovals

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On the weekend I was going through projects.  This one has come out to be finished. It’s going to take a while as it’s all applique and I can only do a little applique at a time.  Found that out again on Saturday when I tried to do a bit too much, appliqueing about 6 of the ovals, and paid for it with hand pain the next day.  Now my plan is to applique a few each week and slowly finish them off.  What’s shown in the top photo is about a third of the total there will be when finished.

They finish at 3.75 by 5 inches and are all batiks and hand dyed fabrics.   The ones that are yet to be appliqued have been sitting in a box, already back-basted, for at least 2 or 3 years which will make the applique quick and easy.

Smudge was posing for the camera Monday night.

Shabby Chic Cabin

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On the weekend I not only did some machine piecing, I was actually doing chain piecing by machine.  That was a big step for me.  I was amazed that, in the space of a few hours, I had 10 log cabin blocks done.   There are 12 blocks finished so far and another 20 or so to make.  So two more afternoons at the sewing machine and I’ll have the blocks finished.  The little blocks finish at 5″ so it won’t be a large quilt but rather a fun small one with a couple of borders.

I’m not sure if this is how I’ll set the blocks or what I’ll do for the borders yet, but this will be a fun little quilt top to finish.  It  has become my learning path on machine piecing.  Not that I think I’ll be doing a ton of machine piecing, but for something like these blocks it’s perfect.  That said, hand piecing is still what I prefer.

Spring is definitely here.  We saw our first robin on the weekend and the temperatures were wonderful.  Saturday and Sunday were both mild and sunny days.

Smudge was relaxing Sunday evening after being syringe fed.  I think we’ve tried pretty well every food on the market and he just doesn’t seem to like any of them, yet  is quite content to be syringe fed.

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Shabby Chic Cabin and HSTs

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Wednesday I decided to try machine stitching one of the little 5″ shabby chic log cabin blocks and was pleasantly surprised at just how well it turned out.  In fact, I think it looks better than the one I had previously hand-pieced.

The back looks wonderful too.  The one thing that I can’t get used to is the amount of pressing that machine piecing entails.  When I hand piece, I usually leave the pressing until the end but with this I found I was jumping up to press after each little log was added.

When I was cleaning up my stitching area I found these 2.5″ half-square triangles I had made quite a while ago using Inklingo.  For these, I had printed the triangles on the back of the cream fabric and then stitched on the lines.  When cut apart, I had perfect HSTs but that was as far as I went.  I decided to try joining them into a couple of rows using the machine and was again pleasantly surprised.  This time I decided to try stitching without all the pinning and, while a few of my joins aren’t perfect, it’s good enough for a small doll’s quilt — and a great learning tool for me.  I’ll keep making the rows and joining them until I’ve used up all the HSTs and then will decide what, if any, border to add.

One of the things I found at the Creativ Festival was the Grace Company TrueCut My Comfort Cutter.  I’m really impressed with this cutter — it’s very comfortable to hold and use and doesn’t set up any pain in my wrist or hand.  The ruler is interesting as it has a slight lip on which part of the cutter rests and rides along as you cut and makes it easy to get perfect cuts.  The best part to me is that the rotary cutter takes any blades on the market.  I hadn’t even heard of this cutter before seeing it at the Festival.

Smudge loves to lie at Mr. Q.O.’s feet.  Wednesday night he was having quite a dream and was growling in his sleep.  That’s the first time we’ve ever heard him growl while dreaming.  Normally he only growls if he sees a dog at the vet’s office.

Snuggly Stars

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The baby quilt which I named Snuggly Stars, thanks to a suggestion from Karen Dianne, was finished Friday night.  After cross-hatch quilting the two stitching books, I decided I’d cross-hatch quilt the baby quilt as well.   I started quilting it around noon on Friday and by the time the evening was over, I had finished the quilting, put the binding on and tacked it down. All that was left was to add the label, which I did Saturday morning before I left to go to the Creativ Festival.  The little quilt finished at 24 x 36 and was totally machine pieced and quilted.

Sunday morning we threw it in the wash, which was a bit of an adventure.  Mr. Q.O. took it up to the laundry room to put it in to wash and, when I went up to transfer it to the dryer, the machine had seemingly malfunctioned.  Rather than draining the soap suds, it seemed to be making more and more.  We think someone had put detergent in the machine previously and then not used it so that, when we used it, it had much more than recommended amount of detergent.  When it finished the final spin, I couldn’t even see the little quilt for all the soap suds.  I was holding my breath when I opened the door.  As soon as I did, there was an avalanche of suds on the floor.  I finally fished out the little quilt and put it in another washing machine with no soap to let it run through an entire cycle with just water as I figured that was the only way to get all the soap out of it.

We made a decision on Friday that, as we don’t want to leave Smudge alone for too long,  Mr. Q.O. would stay home on Saturday while I went to the Creativ Festival on Saturday and I’d stay home while he went to the baby shower on Sunday.  By the time it finished its second run through a wash and then dried, there was just enough time to put it in the gift bag before Mr. Q.O. had to leave.

Saturday the rain poured down for most of the day.  Sunday we had snow.  It didn’t stay on the ground, but there were a few times I looked out the window and couldn’t believe how heavily the snow was coming down.  Smudge decided the best thing to do was have a snooze.

Red and White Again

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One more of the red and white blocks was finished late last week for a grand total of four so far.  I was going to set them with plain white 6″ squares in between, but now that I see them side by side I rather like the effect.  A lot more blocks need to be made before I make that decision.

I couldn’t resist making a red and white 6″ sunflower block.  This is definitely a favourite block to make for me.  Putting the ring of diamonds and triangles together takes no time thanks to continuous stitching.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll end up with sunflowers as the alternate block for the other blocks.

The back of the little sunflower.

A close-up of Smudge relaxing on the couch Wednesday evening.

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