Tag Archives: quilts

Pickled Ladies Again

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After having stitched a number of the arcs together, it felt like time to add a few to the clamshells.  Putting the arcs together is a bit more challenging than adding the completed arcs to the clamshells.  As the curve is so gentle, it’s really quite easy piecing to add an arc.  Some evenings are meant for the easier stitching — and it’s easier to do when watching baseball.

Another 35 of the clamshells have been fussy cut/printed.  I’m amazed at just how fast the process is using a window template.  I had the 35 fabrics cut in next to no time and the printing took only minutes.   I think if you click on this photo to enlarge it you can see the clamshell printed on the back of the fabric with the flower in the centre.

Lester likes to drape his paws over the arm of the chair.  This is a typical Lester pose during the day sometimes.  We’re off to the vet with him this afternoon as it appears he has a cold.  He had this last year and a course of antibiotics cleared it right up, so I’m hoping that’s all it will take this time.

Smudge curled up and had a snooze on the couch.

Beginning of a New Project

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Last week’s list of priority projects clearly went out the window this weekend with this new project! The above is the beginning of a block that I can’t resist. It’s fairly quick to stitch, so I have some hope that I may have this first block done sometime tonight. I was going to use a muslin as the neutral but then remembered I had some Kona Bay cream, which is my favourite solid to use.  I still haven’t decided on a name for this one.

The back:

These blocks will grow quickly as they’re made using the 6-inch LeMoyne Star Inklingo collection.  Once I got the idea, I had  six pink and the cream fabrics printed within minutes with the diamonds needed.  A little while later, they were all cut out:

What is it about making these stars I find so irresistible?  No matter what else I’ve got going on, it seems I always need a star project of some sort on which to work. I have the centres of three more of the stars ready and waiting as well.

When I wrote the post on Friday about the making of Chintz Circles, it made me realize that it’s rather fun to have a post like that about a quilt.  Which, of course, meant I had to figure out a way to store my photos a bit differently.  So I am, as of now, starting to store photos about each specific project in their own folder as I think I’d like to do recap posts like the one on Chintz Circles every time I finish a project.  Although at the rate I’ve been starting and not finishing, the next one may be far off!

We’re definitely into fall weather.  Lots of leaves have fallen and, as it was a bit breezy on the weekend, they’ve been drifting past the window.  This is Smudge’s favourite time for watching out the window.  We got this shot of him on the weekend.

Lester seemed to be trying to make sure we didn’t change the channel when we had the baseball games on — notice the paw firmly planted on the remote control!

Chintz Circles — Please Vote!

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I entered Chintz Circles at Quilt Gallery’s weekly contest as this week the theme is scrappy.  There are some beautiful quilts in this week’s contest which you can view here — the same post where you can vote for your favourite.

The photo we took on the roof garden the day I finished Chintz Circles is found here and the post about it being given to my aunt on her 90th birthday is found here.

Smudge isn’t too interested.  He’d rather have a snooze as the grey chilly days of fall seem to be upon us.

Lester also seems to have found himself a nice cozy spot for a nap.

Arcs for the Pickled Ladies

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This is what I’ve been doing on and off for the past few days, stitching the arcs together to make more of the Pickled Ladies blocks.  Thanks to continuous stitching, it is actually quite quick to put one of these together as I’m only knotting off and starting a new length of thread twice when making each one — once at the beginning and once about halfway through.  I’ve seemingly settled into a routine of getting 10 or 15 of these arcs stitched and pressed.  Then in a few hours I can have them stitched on to some of the fussy cut clamshells.  It’s sort of fun to see 10 or 15 completed blocks at once before I start on the next batch of arcs.

Over the long weekend I came to the conclusion that I’ve got too many things on the go and out where I can see them.  My plan is to settle on 5 or 6 projects and keep them out but the others are going to be put away for now.  Orphan blocks may get turned into stitching books or perhaps pillows or perhaps they’ll just remain orphan blocks for a while longer.  While I’ve not completely decided, I think the ones that are going to the top of the to-do list are, in no particular order:

  1. setting the Pink Ice blocks into and putting the quilt top together
  2. finishing the Lucy Boston blocks and getting that top set together
  3. working on the Pickled Ladies and sunshine star clamshell pickles
  4. making more of the Harpsichord quilt blocks
  5. working on the Stormy Seas blocks
  6. quilt the baby quilt

I may add one more to that list but this weekend I plan to move things around, put things away and then reassess.  Knowing me, I’m sure some idea or another will come up and I’ll start something else but for now that’s at least my basic plan.

We got this shot late Monday night of the two cats clearly sleeping off their turkey treat.

A Butterfly Block or a Dragonfly or?

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When I saw Karen Dianne’s Alabama Beauty blocks, I saw butterflies.  I had to try playing with a bright print for the wings and a black for the body.  Mr. Q.O. thinks this looks more like a dragonfly while I’m thinking it’s a butterfly.  It was one of those blocks I had to make just to see how it would turn out.

The back:

I’m not sure how many more butterflies/dragonflies I’ll make, but I think probably at least enough to make a table topper.  It makes me laugh as I had decided earlier on the long weekend that I was going to limit myself to working on 4 or 5 projects for a few weeks and not start anything else.  Clearly I have limited no self-control when it comes to trying out ideas.

Our Thanksgiving weekend was wonderful with great weather, good food and lots of time to just relax.  We didn’t go for the standard Thanksgiving weekend drive to look at the foliage and, as very little has turned yet around here, have only a picture of one of the roses from the front garden to show.  Much as I do admire the fall colours, I rather like the idea that we still have roses blooming at this time of the year.

Smudge spent most of the time the turkey was cooking on Monday in the kitchen. The meowing wasn’t constant, thankfully.   But any time either of us walked into the kitchen he was right there, looking up ever so hopefully that there might be something forthcoming.  Once the turkey was finished, both he and Lester were in the kitchen waiting for their portions.  This was Smudge after his turkey treat.

Earlier in the weekend I was rummaging about in the stationery cupboard looking for something.  I left the door open for a moment, turned my back and the next thing I knew Lester was in there.  We captured this shot as he started to come out after causing a small avalanche of equipment and paper.

A Little Applique

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This is clearly a work in progress, but it’s one I’m thrilled about.  I haven’t really done much applique at all in the past few years, partially because tracing lines with any sort of precision is … well, difficult.  My hand cramps up after a minute or two and it becomes such a chore that I give up.  But now?  Now I’ll be doing a little applique again because there are a couple of Inklingo applique collections with the promise of more to come.  At the moment, there’s a free collection found here and a Celtic applique found here.  The Celtic applique is by designer Scarlett Rose and is called San Kamon.  I’ve always been fascinated by Celtic applique and, as soon as I can settle on a fabric for the applique, intend to make one of the San Kamon designs.

My favourite method of applique is backbasting as it makes it so easy to get perfect placement with no overlay or pins or freezer paper.  Just needle, thread and fabric.  With Inklingo printing the lines on the back of the fabric, it makes backbasting a breeze.  You could also print your lines on the front of the background fabric, and use that for placement if desired.  Or print the shapes only on the applique fabric with or without turn-under allowance.  All the options are there.  I chose what size my block would be.  The picture I showed is one-quarter of a block that will finish at 16″.   My plan is to add a small border, and have a small table topper.  With a wide-format printer, one could print larger backgrounds.   I love the idea of having the choice regarding what size my finished blocks will be.

The other benefit for me is that by being able to make a larger block by using smaller quarters of that block, my left hand won’t cramp up when holding it to do the applique.  I know that’s not an issue for everyone, but it has been a real stumbling block for me.  Holding a 16″ block while doing the applique is not something I can handle.  But a quarter of that?  No problem!  This week is looking rather overwhelming again with work, but I’m hoping to stitch the four quarters together — by machine, no less — and have it ready to show sometime this week.

It got very cold here on the weekend.  They’re saying there may be frost all around us overnight tonight.  I suppose the only good thing about that is that we may well have a real colour show on Thanksgiving weekend, which is the traditional weekend for people to go for drives north of the city to see the leaves.  I still can’t quite believe that Thanksgiving weekend is this coming weekend for us.  It seems like yesterday it was still warm and  felt like summer.  It always surprises me just how quickly the temperatures go from hot to cold in the fall.

Lester was relaxing on the pink loveseat.

Smudge spent some time on the windowsill.  The fall seems to be his time for the window as he loves to watch the leaves swirling around on a windy day.   There are still lots of green leaves on the trees, but a fair number have turned colour and fallen.

September Clamshell Report

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Over the past month I have been working on these 6″ pickled clamshell blocks almost exclusively.  So far, there are 25 of  them done.  I first saw the block on Barbara Brackman’s blog back in June and fell in love with it.  When the Inklingo collections for the clamshell pickles came out, I got an idea almost immediately about the florals for the clamshells and black and white for the arcs surrounding each.  I’m calling this the Pickled Ladies quilt as I have visions of some very elegant, almost Audrey Hepburn-like, ladies in an upscale Art Deco bar.  Once I got the idea, I immediately started going through my stash for florals that I could fussy cut/print for the clamshells.  With the aid of a window template, which was easy to prepare by just printing one shape on a piece of paper that was 5.25″ x 6.5″, I was able to quickly cut my fabrics and print the clamshell templates on the back of each.

Stitching the blocks is much simpler than they may appear.  Putting each arc together is just lots of quick continuous stitching.  Adding an arc to each clamshell is a very quick stitch.  Stitching the pickled ladies together hasn’t begun yet as this will be at least a lap-sized quilt, if not larger, and I know I’ll want to play with the placement of them once the piecing is finished.

With the 11″ clamshell pickle collection, I have started this sunshiny quilt but I’m using an alternate setting and various colours for the end pieces of the arcs so that a little star-type shape appears at the intersection.  While I haven’t added to this in a week or so, it won’t take long to get this to a good size for a lap quilt.  Maybe in October I can tear myself away from the Pickled Ladies to add a few more blocks to this so there’s some progress.

That said, I have lots of clamshells printed and ready to stitch more Pickled Ladies.

As well as the pieces needed for a number of the arcs.

To see more clamshell quilts, go to Cybele’s Patch here and you’ll see the list of those participants in the clamshell club who have posted their progress this month.

Wednesday evening we were cooking some chicken for dinner.  Almost the entire time it was cooking, Smudge was sitting in the kitchen staring at the oven and meowing.  He seemed a bit impatient to get the bit of chicken we always give them when we cook it.

Lester was somewhat more restrained and just sat on the back of the pink loveseat staring into the kitchen.

Fabrics for Pickled Ladies

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On Saturday we went up to Sew Sisters as I wanted to look for more florals for the Pickled Ladies blocks.  I found these and then, on Sunday, went through the final container of shabby chic fabrics here and found another great grouping.  So now I think I’m getting close to the halfway mark with florals for the clamshells.  I’m thinking of adding some Oriental florals into the mix as there are some that play quite nicely with the shabby chic.

As well as the florals, I found some great blacks that will work perfectly for the spiky triangles in the arcs.  There are some super black fabrics around now and they’re light enough on the back that printing the shapes with Inklingo is no problem.  I find that now I look at the back of fabrics when choosing them and am surprised at just how many dark fabrics are quite light on the back.  This photo doesn’t really show the black fabrics that well — they’re much darker than they appear in this.  I think I had the flash on when I took the photo.

Sunday afternoon I got out my window template and fussy cut and printed enough of the clamshells to keep me stitching for a couple of weeks.  Using a window template makes it so easy and quick that I had close to 30 blocks ready in next to no time.

Friday we had temperatures in the 90s.  Saturday?  Saturday it was maybe in the low 60s but very breezy and it felt unbelievably chilly after that heat the day before. The sky on Saturday looked so stormy, although we had nothing but a few sprinkles of rain.  We got this shot just down the street from Sew Sisters.

This one of some of the trees in the area looks very much like fall to me.  I kept saying to Mr. Q.O. that the clouds looked like snow clouds.  Hopefully we don’t see any of that white stuff until January or February.

Last week I went to visit one of the blogs I read, Ann Champion‘s, and got a warning about malicious content.  On Sunday, Ann posted about what had happened — all as a result of links left in comments to pages that no longer exist.  It seems Google has a bot that crawls through links on blogs and if a link doesn’t work, the warning goes up about that blog.  Rather than repeat what Ann wrote, I’d suggest you go to Ann’s blog and read about her experience.  What it has made me realize is that links in comments are something I’m going to go through and delete.  It’s going to take a couple of weeks to do so but, after reading about Ann’s experience, I’m thinking I’d rather be pro-active on this issue.  I think I’ll also test any links I had in older posts and, if they no longer work, then I’ll delete them as well.  Ann wrote, “As you have time..go through your blog and check your links.  Active links of any kind are considered dangerous by the Google ‘bot’ when they reside in your comments,” so I think it’s worth the effort.

We had the heat on, on and off, during the weekend.  At one point, Lester was sitting on the windowsill and the warm air blowing up from the heating unit was making his ruff look rather  — well, interesting.

Smudge we caught in mid-yawn.

Pickled Ladies 13 & 14 and Progress to Date

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Two more pickled ladies were completed this week.

And here’s the group of pickled ladies so far.

They were laid out on the floor and, while I was picking them up after the photograph was taken, Lester was very interested!  I was racing to pick them up before he came to inspect as he has a tendency to want to lick and/or bite things like quilt blocks.

Smudge was curled up in a kitty bed with his favourite toy, Cappy, well and truly anchored beneath him and a couple of other toys within paw’s reach.  You can just see the tip of Cappy peeking up.

Pickled Ladies Block 7

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Another block with another favourite fabric.  There are all sorts of different elements in this fabric, so I may well fussy cut another part of it for another one of the looped lasses aka pickled ladies.

The back:

Window replacements, where necessary, are done every fall.  Over the past few days, we’ve seen the ropes from the swing stage the workers use.  The other day it was obvious that they’d be going by our window so we thought they might get a laugh out of three little teddy bears lined up watching them.   We’re used to the window cleaners doing double takes when they see one of the cats.  I remember one of the window washers saying to his partner on the swing stage something along the lines of, “Look, there’s a lion in there!” when he caught sight of Lester who sat staring out at him, completely unperturbed.  Smudge, on the other hand, will hide under the bed the minute he sees the ropes.

Ideas for the fall quilt are flying through my mind.  This weekend I’m going to spend some time working with EQ again and see if I can sort out the design idea that is forming in my mind that way.  If not, paper and coloured pencils are my next choice.

Wednesday was a lovely mild day.  Lester spent some time on the windowsill.

While Smudge was working on his fall sleeping poses — this one almost qualifies as a headless cat pose, but not quite.