Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Fallen Sky

If I were a James Bond aficionado, I guess I would have changed the name of my quilt to Skyfall. But I'm not, and he doesn't put me in mind of a piece of sky, which this quilt, along with the gemstone turquoise, both do. Funnily enough, when searching the gemstone for quilt name ideas, I came across a few references to a piece of the sky fallen to earth, but this one, "carved from an azure heaven and slipped to earth," I particularly love, as it's so eloquent.


This is the October challenge for us ambassadors for Island Batik. We were to make a quilt using a paper-piecing technique, either English paper-piecing or foundation paper-piecing. This one is made using the latter. All the fabrics (except the backing) were supplied by Island Batik. All of the threads except the purple was supplied by Aurifil, and the batting is Hobbs Batting, though I purchased it myself!

Saturday, October 27, 2018

DrEAMi! #21

I know it sounds cliché but where did this month go? And do not, I repeat, do NOT tell me how many, or should I type few, days there are before Christmas! While I should be focusing on my Island Batik project of the month (super excited to reveal this) and various Christmas gifts, I of course got waylaid by a pesky idea that scrabbled around, and kept popping up, nut in its mouth, willing me to come play. Yep, I got sucked in by a squirrel this month.
Actually a few...

Thursday, October 25, 2018

I Like/Love #21

This month's I Like/Love post kind of sneaked up on me. October doesn't end until next week, but next Thursday is November 1, so here we are, and here are my 10+ likes for the month.

1. I got to see this in the piecing stage and it was breathtaking then. I got to see it in the finished stage, and she quilted it to life! No surprise; Judy is an incredibly talented quilter.
She entered this into the quilt show in Payson, AZ, and won an Honourable Mention ribbon.🙌 Well-done my friend!

Saturday, October 20, 2018

It's Easy Being Green!

Forest or sage green is the RSC colour of the month for Angela's soscrappy challenge. I do love forest green, such an intense colour with depths of mystery and beauty both. I have quite a bit of scraps of it too; didn't have to cut any 2.5" squares to get 32 for my two blocks. I did have to cut 3" squares for the HSTs.

Both forest and sage feature in these. It's looking like that around me now, the grass is an incredible emerald green, the English oak and another mystery tree, maybe a beech, a rich forest green, the original mystery tree I asked about turning a yellow-green and yellow, and the black walnuts a medium green. Lots of green shades for sure! I laid all 20 blocks out on the design wall and played around a little to see if I need to add more or how to set them...

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Q4FAL - My List

It never ceases to amaze me how fast a quarter goes by... (and don't tell me, although someone did but I've forgotten; menopause foggy brain can be good at times) how many or rather, how few, weeks there are until Christmas.

How did I do from Q3? Like a quilt retreat, I never get as much done as I plan to! Here's the collage of projects on the list that were completed; note that the Twinkle Sprinkles, the stars quilt, got finished a few days after the Q3 deadline, drat, but I'm including it in the collage because it's kind of in no-man's-land, between the two quarters.


Not bad. 70% if you count the stars one that was a few days past the deadline.
So a few of the Q3 projects are being moved to Q4 list and I'm adding in a couple more. I'm trying to leave room to play as well, to allow myself to chase a few squirrels, especially the green and red ones of the Christmas kind!

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Twinkle Sprinkles September Starstruck Challenge

Nearly two weeks late, my quilt for the Island Batik Starstruck Challenge is finally done! Island Batik provided me with these luscious fabrics, Aurifil provided the white thread, and Hobbs Batting the cotton/wool batting. I am a lucky girl indeed.

The September challenge asked us to make a quilt using stars of any kind. My favourite block! The hard part of the challenge for me was narrowing it down to which star block, and what setting, and then, of course, which fabrics to use. Oh the woes of being an Island Batik ambassador.
Isn't that monthly logo just so perfect? I could have happily made a quilt exactly like that. But no, I had bought Cindy's pattern (Stitchin' at Home) which is a wonderful stars pattern, so off I went.

Saturday, October 13, 2018

UFO Busting #33.5

Welcome to Tish's UFO Busting party! While she is busting up UFOs and stompin' all over them, eating pie, and doing some shopping with blogger friends in Ohio, I am hosting the party for her this week.

Welcome!  Tish and I go a ways back... to a certain New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop 2015, during which we further bonded over books and pibbles. We've gotten up to all kinds of quilty fun over the past 3.5 years, some of it finished, some not. One of our sew-together projects that we both have not finished is the Sewcial Bee Sampler Quilt Along, though she is further along now than I am. Anja joined us, and since she has been in India, I haven't bothered to even try to catch up with Tish...Anja's my excuse ha! Let's take a look at what has been occupying 99% of my quilting time this week...

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Free Motion Motif Tutorial

As promised, here is a quick tutorial for a fast, fun and easy all-over meander. It's easy to do on either a domestic or a longarm. I first saw it in a long-ago issue of American Patchwork & Quilting on a quilt, back when "Quilt as desired" was all you'd get for quilting suggestions, and maybe, just maybe, you could figure out some of the motif from photos.

As Angela says, "Let's get started!" (btw did you see her new QAL, 'Glorious Dawn'? So pretty in any one of the three colourways... on bluprint? (affiliate link) You can watch for free during their 'Get Started With Bluprint' Event, on now through Oct. 12. I'm finding I watch more because I signed up for the year subscription, and I'm not worrying so much if I'm sewing while 'watching', something I never do because I can't do both of those things well at the same time. However, now I listen and look up once in awhile, and if it's something I'm really interested in, right within the app it remembers where you'd left off, just like Netflix, so, when I am not sewing, I can go back, rewind a bit and pay proper attention!

Okay, tutorial for this FMQ meander which I used on my Throwback Thursday quilt post, Sunny Days:

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Throwback Thursday #10 Sunny Days

Since I am feeling a little down with the departure of sweet Brady and his mom, (ya she spells it that way) yesterday afternoon, I thought this would be an Ă  propos post. First of all, please note that AndrĂ©e has graciously offered to host a couple of TBT's this last half of the year, and so October and December, the linky will be on her blog, Quilting & Learning - what a combo. Thanks so much, AndrĂ©e! If you are at all into the Fab Four, aka The Beatles, you might want to hop over and check out her post today. 😁

Here's my Sunny Days quilt, a quilt that was originally intended for Baby Brady, before we knew he'd be a he!
A couple of firsts happened with this quilt.