Project Quilting 11.4 Birds in the Air and 11.5 Give it Away

I think this has been the longest gap in blog posts for a long time, perhaps in my blog's history. I've been very busy head down, sewing. Some of what I've been doing is on Instagram, albeit sneak peeks as two projects were secret sewing. I've also been busy hauling sewing stuff from storage in the basement and garage upstairs to my new space that is not entirely done (trim needed, but we are waiting for a warmer day to paint baseboards, and for a sale to buy window trim). MacGyver suggested I get everything up there except for Avril, the longarm, who still resides in the basement bedroom, to see what I have and what kind of storage I need. Oh man, it's rather a hot mess right now! I've already drawn a to-scale room arrangement that I think I will need, and I still think for the most part it's what I will end up doing.

Freshly pressed Kona cottons!

As you can see, we've, well he has, put together two Kallax for an IKEA hack cutting/pressing table on castors. I am working with it over the next couple of weeks to see how big of a countertop I want on it, and where I want the inserts (drawers and cabinet doors). So far I LOVE it. Being able to get around all four sides is wonderful. I did buy an Alex as well, just the small one, to see how that goes and whether I would need another. The jury's still out on that! Bella loves being back up there, and is busy helping in her own cat way.



Persimon Dreams PQ 11.4 was Birds in the Air, using the classic block in some way that it is recognizable in your finished piece.

I waited until the last minute (a theme for PQ for most of the challenges) and created this micro-mini quilt that finished at just 3 3/4" square. There are 40 pieces in it.

I named it Hummer

I originally was going to paper-piece it, thinking that would give the best precision, but then figured it was faster (haha) to just piece as needed.

So I made my HSTs about 1 1/4" unfinished and then cut them down to 1" so they'd finished at 1/2". Fun! I was surprised at how precise this ended up, and once again, I am mystified as to why when I make a 12" block I still miss some intersections or points!

Narrow single-fold binding, stitched down with Sulky metallic Holoshimmer

Actually it first reminded me of a 150 Canadian Women block...#4 to be exact, which I made three years ago. That first idea was to make a 6" block, maybe make it into a potholder...

Well it ended up being a tad smaller!

It was pretty windy that day, February 23. A bunch of ice had blown to our side of the lake. It made me think of croutons floating in soup! The very next day -- gone, as the wind switched directions. The power of the wind, and of the sun is pretty amazing.

I like the see-through effect here.

I smiled when I spied this piece in my stash for the backing.

It's a fabric by... well once I find it, which could be a while, sigh, I'll add it to this post.

This 'fly away' shot shows the slight trapunto effect from the matchstick quilting.

It also makes me grin. Birds in the Air, aka Hummer, literally flying in the wind.

Perched on a fencepost

Give it Away
This is the most recent PQ challenge. Well, I'd already made a lap size quilt, Smooches, for 11.3, to be given to the Windsor Sexual Assault Centre for Hands2Help later this year.

With the secret sewing deadlines fast approaching, I wasn't sure I'd be able to do anything, but then when I read Roseanne's post at Home Sewn by Us, where they were going to make small quilts for A Doll Like Me, I thought smaller. And came up with placemats to be given to Meals on Wheels.

We did this as a guild project one Christmas when I was a part of the guild here in town. I missed the 12 noon CST deadline by a little over an hour, so even with losing an hour, I'd still have been a few minutes past. It's okay; the interruptions were all okay and I'd rather have those kind of family interruptions than not! Prizes are not needed, and I still put this on #projectquilting, and Kim saw it.

I finished up my secret sewing, and instead of turning to the Island Batik challenge, which has been percolating for over a month now in the back of my brain, and instead of doing my OMG, I made the second placemat, a DrEAMi moment striking again!

Here's the back of the first one:

This same fabric but with a mango background, is on the front, for the star points. It is in one of my upcoming secret sewing project reveals. 😎 I'll be writing up a small tutorial for these placemats, which will also have the tutorial for using the backing as the binding.

Island Batik is calling so I will now focus on what I need to!


Linking up
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
My Quilt Infatuation
TGIFF at Faith and Fabric
Quilty Girl


I want to share two good resources that have helped me in the past two days to understand this new virus, and to understand the gravity of the situation. I hope you will listen to the five-minute YouTube talk from the Toronto doctor, sent to me by my dear friend Linda, and read the entire article from a statistics guy, sent to me by Dayna's SIL. Both contain quantitative, analytical, and educational information, no opinion or emotional bias.

And the lengthy article, that is well worth the time to read and understand:

Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now