As soon as I finished pressing it, we took this photo of the finished Summer Picnic Dish quilt top. The last stitch was taken at approximately 10:30 on Friday night and the pressing was done yesterday. This is the first … Continue reading
While I definitely want to get back to working on the Stormy Seas quilt top, I think after the POTC top is finished I’m going to need some curved piecing. That is, after all, my favourite. So the Summer Picnic … Continue reading
The main body of the tumbling blocks mug rug for one of the Grow Your Blog giveaway prizes is done. Now all I need to do is to print the shapes for the outer edges and stitch them on, which … Continue reading
What’s that? It’s the stack of fabrics I printed over the weekend for the Scrappy Star, Twinkling Stars, Summer Picnic Dish, Harpsichord and Joseph’s Coat quilts. The last couple of weeks I’ve been identifying the size I want certain projects to finish at. WIth the size of each determined, it took only a few minutes to figure out what I needed to print to reach that goal. Sometimes I print only a few of each shape for a couple of blocks until I’m sure I want to make it into a quilt. Once that decision is made, I prefer to get everything printed at once and get the shapes cut and into a box ready to stitch such as I’ve done for the Stormy Seas quilt.
This gives you a glimpse of the some of the shapes I printed for the Harpsichord, Joseph’s Coat and Summer Picnic Dish quilts. Using the various Inklingo collections to prepare my templates makes it so easy to print on any number of fabrics, even black fabrics as most are markedly lighter on the back than the front and the templates will show up perfectly with one of the many choices of ink colours.
Almost all the shapes are now cut and ready to be put in a box, along with the matching threads, for the Twinkling Stars quilt, which I plan on trying to finish between now and the end of the World Series.
Because it was such a beautiful day on Monday, we took Scrappy Star out to the roof garden to photograph. It’s growing and is now 24″ across. It will be at least twice that width before I’ll stop adding rounds. I needed more of the squares, which was another reason for all the printing that was done on the weekend.
The back after pressing.
Baxter is starting to look like a grown-up kitty in some photos, although his antics are still pure kitten antics. I think he was trying out his hypnotic kitty look in this photo.
There’s still a little hand piecing to do on the pink and cream quilt, but I am thinking now about what projects jump to the head of the queue once it and the baby quilt are finished. Along with the Stormy Seas and Pickled Ladies quilts, the Summer Picnic Dish is definitely moving up the list. A little more has been done since this photo was taken, but not a lot.
The POTC blocks definitely have to move up the list to be finished and the top put together.
I want to get this piece, which I’ve dubbed star of stars, basted and quilted. I know why it has languished this long — because I kept thinking I need to add to it and make it square or rectangular. But I’ve decided to leave it in a star shape.
I’m going to arrange these applique blocks and get the top put together.
Of the above projects, the one that will take the longest is likely the Patchwork of the Crosses blocks. On top of this I’m still working on getting to the point I feel confident using EQ6.
My plan for the weekend is to get the fabrics ready and printed for the Summer Picnic Dish as well as finally select the fabric for the 2″ squares used when connecting the POTC blocks and get it printed.
Smudge has a new habit. When we empty the dishwasher in the morning, he likes to sit on the door. I may have been a bit premature in thinking we were over the worst of this eating thing with him. Wednesday he wasn’t interested in food again at all so we immediately went back to the syringe feeding. I am very grateful he’s so accommodating about that process as I can only imagine how difficult it would be with many kitties.
We caught Lester in the midst of a huge yawn. This photo makes me laugh.
Summer Picnic Dish is one of the quilts, along with Farmer’s Delight, that I want to finish the piecing of this summer. Hmm, am I setting my sights too high with all these things I want to finish? Probably, but this one does grow quickly — the blocks are 12″ which is, for me, huge. I love putting this together as it’s so easy to get perfect arcs and points with the Inklingo Pickle Dish collection. At the moment, I’m debating whether to make it a lap quilt or a bed-sized quilt.
On Barbara Brackman’s blog yesterday I saw an absolutely fabulous pattern — a marriage of clamshells and pickle dish! If you go here, scroll down a bit in the post and see the design in different fabrics. What a great design that would be to put together. Wonderful curved piecing and triangles. What more could one want?
Another quilt I definitely want to finish this summer is the Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses. I’m going to try stitching the cream hexagons that surround each block by machine as that might make the goal a bit more attainable. I’ll still be joining them to each block by hand, but that goes quite quickly. Then all I’ve got to do is figure out what I want to use for the centre squares in between the blocks and add the outer edging pieces. This picture only shows a few of the blocks — there are quite a few more.
The Drunkard’s Path baskets are something else I want to finish fairly quickly. It will be a large wallhanging. I just need to sort out the centre block for it, which is different from the one in the picture. It won’t take long to do the printing and piecing.
Also on the list to, at the very least, spend some time stitching: blue and white Seven Sisters blocks, pink and white Pink Ice snow crystal blocks, the Harpsichord Quilt, more klosjes, the hexagon stripe quilt — oh, the list is endless!! I wonder which will be finished first!
Thursday was another lovely warm day. We wandered up to a fruit and vegetable store and picked up some fabulous Ontario wild blueberries and Ontario raspberries. The flavour of both is just incredible — nothing comes close. I’m going to try freezing some of our raspberries to use in smoothies in the winter.
Lester had windowsill time on Thursday.
As did Smudge.
Half the arcs for the next Summer Picnic Dish block have been done and the pieces are printed, cut out and ready to stitch for the rest of that block and for a few more.
The change in plans? My aunt’s birthday is coming up in August, at which time she will be 90. There will be a party for her and I’ve decided to make her a lap quilt. She’s an amazing lady, sharp as can be and funny. I have some absolutely marvelous memories of playing double solitaire with her in the summers at a cottage. The two of us would end up in fits of laughter as we tried to be the first to go out and win those games.
Now the decision is whether to make the summer picnic dish into a lap quilt for her, which is Mr. Q.O.’s choice. He thinks that something bright and cheerful is the best idea.
The other idea? Doing something with Winding Ways blocks using fabrics like these:
I have to decide and get started on it this weekend as I want lots of time to make this the best lap quilt I possibly can. She’s my only aunt and is someone who really does appreciate items made by hand. I gave her a lace tablecloth which I had crocheted when I was in my early 20s. She still talks about it. The same with an afghan I knit for her when I was a teenager. She’s a small lady, so it will not be a huge quilt. I’m thinking something in the range of 48 by 54 inches or thereabouts.
The fabrics I’m thinking about for the winding ways idea in the picture above remind me, to a degree, of a chintz couch she has but they are more subdued than the floral and green in the pickle dish blocks. Any thoughts on this are more than welcome.
We did a little shopping on Thursday, which included a stop at Staples. Mr. Q.O. bought one of the Bamboo tablets for my computer. Getting used to it as a mouse took no time at all. I haven’t even scratched the surface of its capabilities which include, I think, the ability to add written captions to photos. I’m looking forward to playing with it this weekend.
Watching Smudge the last couple of days has been an absolute joy. I still can’t get over how lucky we were. This was taken shortly after he had his nightly yogourt treat on Wednesday night.
Lester was incredibly lively Wednesday night. One of the medications for his heart condition is only given every 3 days and on the days he gets that one, he acts like a kitten. Wednesday night was one of those nights. It’s wonderful to see him like that.
One tiny flower got done on Wednesday for the border of the small quilt, made with .50″ hexagons. But only one. Hopefully next week I can actually make more than 1 or 2 of these little flowers. The list of gardeners making flowers on Wednesdays is growing. Karen’s post here has a list with links to all the gardeners.
On Wednesday, Mr. Q.O. went to a documentary film festival. The screening to which he went was at a theatre that is part of the University of Toronto, which is within walking distance. On his walk, he saw these little flowers.
Along with doing the one small hexagon flower, I finished the second Summer Picnic Dish. As I have learned from doing Spring Circles that joining the blocks as I go makes a big difference for me, I added the half centre edge piece to join the two blocks on point. My plan is to use the green fabric that’s in the blocks for the binding.
I finally got caught up on replying to comments and hope to start reading and commenting on blogs over the next couple of days. I should have been working on Wednesday, but I think the tension of the past few days really caught up with me as I just could not concentrate! I finally gave up on working for the day and played with fabric, patted Smudge a lot and tried to relax. Thank you to all who commented on yesterday’s post — it helped rather a lot!
It was a sunny, windy day at first on Wednesday and then it clouded over and we had our first thunderstorm of the season. Not much of a thunderstorm, but a thunderstorm. Earlier in the day, while it was still sunny, we got this shot of Lester. It really shows his whiskers.
Smudge was relaxing on the chair.
Putting these blocks on point gives them a different look. As I was making the second block, I decided that I’m going to use the on point setting for these. I’ll use half centres along the outer edges of the top so that I have a straight edge. The second block isn’t quite finished and will actually be the third block. Placing the corner pieces is something I’ll need to be careful about for the second block so that I don’t have 2 green or 2 floral corner pieces joined.
On Friday we had some errands to run within walking distance. Walking along one of the streets, we came across this crab apple tree.
There are many street planters in the area.
A close-up of some of the flowers in that planter:
Things are still a bit hectic for us but everything should be settled down after today. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’s so and that I can get back to reading and leaving comments on blogs as well as replying to comments.
Lester seems to be contemplating something.
Smudge curled up with a teddy bear.
The Pickle Dish collections were released on the weekend and I couldn’t resist making this instead of the classic red and white pickle dish I had planned to do. Something about a summer picnic dish wall hanging just seemed like the right idea for now. I had cut and pressed fabric to freezer paper, printed my shapes and cut them out and was stitching within a few minutes of downloading the collection. While I’m hand-piecing, I’m sure this could be easily machine pieced as the curves are very gentle. To that end, Linda even included a template for paper piecers to print out and use for that method. It is an amazingly simple block to stitch with the matching points and stitching lines that Inklingo prints. I really can’t imagine making this block with any other method!
There’s an absolutely fabulous Design Book as well, which is free to download. There are lots of great tips in it for stitching both Pickle Dish and Double Wedding Ring quilts.
More greenery from the roof garden. After the weekend, during which we did have some rain, I think it’s probably even greener out there now. Maybe some flowers will start to show up soon too.
It was a rather hectic weekend and I haven’t really looked at blogs or even replied to some comments yet. I hope to get back on track after Tuesday. In the meantime, if I haven’t responded to a comment, please know that I really do appreciate getting comments and always do respond — eventually. This is one of those “eventually” times, it seems.
Lester loves to sleep in the pink chair.
While Smudge finds the couch more to his liking most of the time.
Quilt Obsession 
