Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day

I love these giveaway days at Sew Mama Sew that are usually hosted twice a year; I've been a participant from both sides, giveaway and trying to win!  There's like this frenzy similar to that of Christmas morning excitement in QBL!

I have three lovely giveaways for you today, but first I hope you stay a bit and snoop around, have a look at the tabs at the top of the page and see that yup the main priority here is quilting, in all stages of the process, with tips, several tutorials, delicious favourite recipes or books from time to time, and once a month, a Yin yoga pose that can help ease aching muscles and promote good health.  Basically it's a bit about my life.

I started this blog just over three years ago as mainly a way to record my work, my thoughts, and to keep in touch with friends and family.  Little did I know the wealth of friends it would bring me, friends who I consider friends of the heart, some of whom I've met and some yet TO meet...  I love and always have loved writing, and it gives me that outlet as well.  So without further ado, let's get on with it, shall we?  (Not only my mum's English voice is often in my head, but of late it is the Queen's, since I am happily immersed in "The Crown" on Netflix at the moment - and I'm choosing it over Season 1 episodes of "Gilmore Girls" - gasp! - when I do sit down, which isn't often, to watch TV.)  But I digress.

The first giveaway is something I've planned for a couple of months.  It actually is one of my goals on my Q4FAL list, to make a second small giveaway prize with Windfall fabric.  I'd hoped to have it as a my second freebie in the Autumn Abundance blog hop I was a part of in October, but the making of the big quilt, Windfall

Here is Bella, classy cat that she is, lolling about on some of the gorgeous Windfall fabric from Paintbrush Studio used in this mini mini.  Beside the fabric is a pair of my husband's shorts waiting to have a button sewn on...mending or creating? I know what I'd choose, and she does too!😽

and some life drama (selling and moving house, wait, no house to go to, so make that moving into storage) meant I had no time to make that second freebie.  It evolved from original plan, and you will understand why, given that it is now December:

I love it posing in the branches of our friend John's Christmas tree, now freed from the pot!  Here's a sunny shot so you can see it better:

This mini finished at 4 1/4" square and is quilted with Sulky threads: a red, gold and green metallic and a white rayon.  The squares finish at 1/2".

Several times over the course of making this micro-mini or mini mini, I had a heart-grabbing, 'No! I want to KEEP it!' feeling.  Stay strong Sandra.  Those are the best gifts to give, those you want to keep for yourself, right?

Here is the back:

In the hibiscus plant!  Wait, you thought I was Canadian? I am! But we are fortunate enough to spend  a few months in warm, sunny southwest Florida.  This mini can be used as a coaster, a mini mini to go with your collection of them right, or as a Christmas tree ornament by simply putting a hanging thread on it.

The second giveaway is a $10 gift certificate to Pile o' Fabric.  Alyssa ships fast and has excellent customer service.  I have followed Alyssa for quite some time; hers was one of the first blogs I was attracted to when I first found QBL about 4 years ago.  Just last week I decided to check out her sale (getting updates by email is great but also dangerous...) and I was very pleased to find some Avant Garde by Katarina Roccella! 

Several other hunks (and I mean that in the "gorgeous" way as well as in the "piece of" way LOL) found their way into keeping company with Avant Garde.  She saved me a little moola on postage (so sweet) and so I'd like to give back by sending her perhaps a new customer or three, wink!  Supporting the smaller shops is very important.

None of these were more than $6/yard!  Art Gallery, Windham Fabrics, oh and did I mention she has a wonderful selection of Kona solids?  Although $10 isn't much, it should easily get you a couple yards of fabric.  Alyssa mentioned that she just might throw in a fat quarter or two into the lucky winner's cart!

The third prize is a copy of my pattern in my Craftsy shop, (affiliate link), Blue Skies & Sunny Days.

Ahh, hanging in the branches of my friend's Japanese Weeping Cherry tree, mmm!  Both quilts are for sale in my Etsy shop.

All right, all that to say you have a chance to win three items.  You don't get to pick, sorry.  ;-) I will ship internationally so anyone on this blue and green planet can enter.  How do you enter?

Leave me a comment telling me your favourite Christmas ornament on your tree. Note, you must answer the question in order to qualify!

Followers of mine can get a second entry; just tell me how you follow me.

**If you are a no-reply blogger, please leave your email in your comment box (not a separate box, that's cheating!) so I can find you; otherwise I will draw another name.

The giveaway is open until Sunday, Dec. 11 and I will announce the winners on Monday, Dec. 12.  I always reply to every comment but during a giveaway I will not be able to  due to volume.

Good luck and happy hopping to all the blogs!  How do you find all the blogs with giveaways? Click this link, or the button at the top of the post or the Sew Mama Sew link in the first sentence. 😀

It's a wonderful day today too because Angela Walters' first episode of the Midnight Quilt Show was uploaded about an hour ago!!  I watched it already and downloaded the pattern, which is terrific, but even more TERRIFIC is her quilting on the quilt (like of course, duh) and also terrific is just HER.  Love that girl.  But you knew that if you've read this blog any amount of time!

Linking up with
Sew Fresh Quilts
She Can Quilt (for the Q4FAL when that linkup opens)

I Work Well Under Pressure

One day to go to get the Q1 FAL list done.  This is another of my goals completed.  I had so much fun with these!

I stitched them up last April

April 2015

when I designed a set of six placemats (that post is here) to take to Angela Walters' Dot to Dot class in Sarasota.  You can read about that highlight of my quilting life here.  I made three pairs: two in blues and two in greens.  The pinks are not really in my décor, so I concentrated on getting the blues and greens done.

May 1, 2015

Here was the first one quilted but without binding:

No clue what the names of the Kona solids are, sorry

I did that Dot to Dot design in the fuchsia triangles on both mats.  In this second one after I quilted the centre one, I thought, "Hey, these are equilateral triangles; what if I rotated each one so they radiate around that central pale pink triangle?"  Yep, quilt talked to me again.  I made up the dot to dot design in the fuchsia HRTs.  I don't think I've done the fern design before, which is basically a feather-design, and I love how easy it was and its effect.  I rotated them too!

Unlike the first four, these had to have binding. Not sure why I didn't cut the backing bigger all the way around as I did for the blues and greens mats.  I've suddenly, as I viewed this post in "Preview" realized why...doh!  I believe I'd had the thought to make these up into a bag...ah well, that's what I get for being menopausally scatterbrained, and for nearly 1-year-old UFOs.  (Ya, 'cuz I never have any UFOs older than that, nope...)  Yay for me because I found some Kona black strips (I think) in my black scraps bag.  Have I said yet how very glad I am I brought all my smaller scraps with me?!

All bound. I added in the white straight line quilting after I bound them and confirmed what I had suspected, that I'd done this in the first four.

Here is the other one:

Fabulous texture, n'est-ce pas?  The Spirograph-esque design is Angela Walters' from her book, Shape by Shape, but I did it in a triangle as opposed to a square. You can see it drawn and then stitched out by The Quilt Journal here. Thanks to Judy at Quilt Paradigm for showing me that take on this easy and effective FMQ design.  I did it with my walking foot, since I don't have a ruler foot for my Bernina. I drew two lines ahead of my stitching with a Hera marker, since you can't draw the entire design ahead of time.

I had to incorporate feathers, you know me...imagine my surprise when I checked the photos of the first four and found I'd done that on one of those too!

The backs.

Throwing finished quilts around on the ground again...

No clue why but one turned out about 1/3" narrower.  Looks more in the photo for some weird reason.
It was super hot and humid the day I finished these, so, unlike her usual close scrutiny of my projects, Bella chose not to be as involved.

Hot Himalayan puddy-tat

You know I often snap photos of gorgeous flowers.  Here are two more delicate spring flowers, one is a black-eyed Susan I believe and the other, no clue.  The flowers are orchid or iris-like in appearance but not size, they are very small.  On one corner they were so prolific it made me smile.

This post might end up as part of Soma's Wandering Camera linky next month.  I told her that I'll be sure to snap photos as we go what always feels like "back in time," heading back home to Kingsville, Ontario, and share those on the first Thursday in April.

Great spot for early morning coffee or afternoon tea; I will miss it.

Linking up with
Let's Bee Social
and later with Leanne at She Can Quilt for the Q1 FAL

Angela Walters Rocks My World--Final Day of the Hop

By now, if you've read a few posts, you will know that I have a MAJOR CRUSH on Angela Walters.

  

Adoration.  Admiration. Awe.

Wonder.  Wizard. Wicked talent.

AW, yeah!!

April 21, 2015

I do hope you've managed to keep up over the past 5 days with all the bloggers' posts on this Craftsy Sweetens Up My Quilting Life blog hop.  I hope you've seen that yes, there is a wealth of excellent educational classes to be had (remember those reviewed in this hop are on for 50% off through the particular blogger's blog until next Sunday), but I hope maybe you've been shown that there is more to Craftsy than you may have thought.  I myself learned about sewing tools like that nifty iron that Jayne reviewed.  I may also have bought some floral fabric (thanks Preeti!) in a 6" strip, a precut that I had never heard of before.

Coming Down...

off the high that was my Dot to Dot class with Angela Walters. 

All right, LOOK what my computer took me to when I went to get the URL to paste for her name!!

February 25.  I met Anna, my neighbour who lived across the street from us in Florida, a day or two after I wrote this.  I knew she was a quilter, a young one, but little did I know that I already had met her, on two other occasions last year! She worked part time at Alma Sue's and was a member of the Sarasota Guild.  She is the one who told me that the guild was bringing in Angela; had I not finally gone over to introduce myself, I might not have found out about Angela being here, certainly not in enough time to be able to get into the only one of her four classes that still had space. Sadly for me, Anna moved back to her hometown in northern Florida February 28.  Happily, however, for me, I was able to get into the Dot to Dot class a few days later!  Incidentally, Angela's post where I wrote this comment is well worth a read/watch.  More than once.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...er trunk show and class...

Not only did I have to remind myself to close my slack jaw in class when viewing her slide show, but I also had to make a supreme effort to swallow frequently; otherwise the drool would drip onto her beautiful quilts that we were allowed to touch, handle, hold, photograph, all to our heart's content.

Recognize the fabric? "Textures" -- look at the header of my blog! And yep, those are my legs, my fingers, holding (and before and after petting) her quilt.

And THEN, there was meeting Angela, on Monday night at the guild meeting for the first time, eyes brimming with emotion as I tried (inadequately) to find words to tell her how much all her free videos and demos online, how much every single Craftsy class of hers has helped me, beyond measure, on my Avanté, but also has helped me grow in machine quilting on my Bernina.  Going back Tuesday morning for another 3 hours with this warm, funny, ("My husband says I'm not funny.  But I think I'm frickin' hilarious. Sarcasm is my love language!" ) humble, genuine, inspiring, creative, and so-very-talented quilter was such a treat.

The chocolate says "Quilting is My Therapy", and yep I saved it, knowing I wanted a picture for my blog--I ate it after the pic, dark chocolate! But of course, she has taste.

She is very wise.  To fully round out my dorking out over her, geek that I am and always have been where school and education are concerned, I took notes, furiously scribbling to try to get it all down, even videoed segments of her instruction.

"There is no such thing as imperfection in FMQ.  You just need to know how to fix them. " (the mistakes) She talked about the eye needing to see symmetry, and that symmetry is basically all it looks for, so "if you make a mistake, do it twice and then it's a design element!"

I planned to rip this out as I messed up one of the "dots" to hit.

Now, however, I'm thinking if I do something symmetrical on either side of this "mountain" it could look kind of cool.  I need to get crackin' as these are my ALYOF April goal.

Kinda cool here too, no?

Although I didn't get nearly as much accomplished as I thought I would, my brain was totally full of information and inspiration.  She talked, gave you theory and practical tips and answered questions, then showed you slides and her quilts and gave further clarification and ways to use particular designs, and then gave you 15 or so minutes out of each hour to practice the technique on your sample.  Each hour was broken down in a similar fashion to the Craftsy class: squares, triangles and then borders in the final hour.

Rest assured there will be more Angela wisdom forthcoming.

The trip home was uneventful.  The dogwoods didn't disappoint, although there seemed less of them in Kentucky and Ohio than I saw last year through the Carolinas and West Virginia.

Ohio

On the trip, I actually got a fair bit done on the last border of my runner.  I have about 10 more double-rows of the serpentine shape left to quilt.

The little bag I made back in January came in so handy for my handquilting tools!  Below you can see my favourite plastic open-backed thimble that allows your nail to be free.  The condom-looking thing is a finger from a latex glove which I use to grab the needle to pull it through when 3-4 stitches are loaded onto it.

I'm using Gutermann quilting thread, and the Clover chalk pencil Angela uses (learned about these in one of her Craftsy classes).  That pencil is better on the Old World Santa fabric than the Bohin one.  There is too much white in the fabric; the streaks wreak havoc with my eyes, so I need a thicker line.  The plastic serpentine shape is my template for marking the woven curves border design.

And so there you have it, the first post back on good old Canadian soil.  Mmmm.  Even though said soil is a little darn cold for this time of year!  Still, I think Spring is about to surpass Summer in my favourite season list.  I was musing this morning (didn't get this finished last night, TOO tired after a 5 am start to the day--Mysore yoga!) that no matter whether one is living in 90F steamy tropical heat (Gulf, beaches, cicadas, palm trees), the tundra (pure white snow, frozen lakes, polar bears), or the desert (sand dunes, endless blue skies, meerkats(!!)) Mother Nature gives us something upon which our senses can feast, and our creative juices can start to burble.

These swans literally took my breath away last night on the way to teaching yoga.  I pulled over, got out of the car, crossed the road, tiptoed into the grass, but not before this pair had pulled apart...oh my GOD, but they were in the necks intertwined, facing each other, classic swan pose.  That vision will stay with me forever.

A group of about 25 more were just past these two lovebirds

Rocco is happy; he has made a new friend.  This is Charlie, an 8-month-old Scottie.  He is adorable, although a bit rambunctious.  Good thing Rocco is so tolerant.  Charlie's 'mum' wants me to knock on her door and walk with them sometimes so Rocco can help teach Charlie some manners! They've recently retired here from Vancouver, and live just up the street.

Meet and greet

Quilting Summer Breeze

After much doodling and agonizing and searching through Angela Walters' book, Free Motion Quilting, I decided on the designs I want to use in Summer Breeze.  A tip from Angela on a similar quilt in her book was to choose 2 designs and repeat them.  I thought that was excellent advice, so that is what I've done.

Here is what I did this afternoon:

One row done, 7 blocks with the connecting sections.  4 more rows of 7 to go.

 

As per Angela's suggestion, visible in the green rectangle, I'm doing one of her designs, well half of it, from Dot to Dot Quilting (the half-diamond motif), with simple lines weaving back and forth along the sides.  Because these are rectangles, not squares, the diamond motif would have looked skewed, so I am doing it only at the short sides.  In the centre of these rectangles is a straight line and on either side of that line is a wavy line with a loop in it.  I'm making myself use (and already feeling more confident) the blue ruler I asked her about on the chat feature of the class.  I bought it, as well as the extended surface for the machine, to quilt straight lines.  It's tricky, but, as with any new tool, it takes practice to get used to it and to get better at using it!

In the alternate rectangles, the grey in the pic above, I am doing another design of Angela's, just weaving back and forth.  This rectangle has 2 simple wavy lines, no loops running through it.  For the connecting strips, I'm quilting straight-ish lines back and forth vertically, curving the tops, so I'm weaving back and forth in those too, I guess.

Then there is the white.

After much deliberation, I AM going to do the swirls I had planned from the get-go.  I am using an Aurifil variegated grey and white thread, so I was a little concerned (still am) that the grey would be too dark.  Let me know, yay or nay, what you think, because I can rip it out.  I just don't want the eye to jump around, like, "eww, what's that dark line there?  and there?" as one looks at the quilt.

Stitching the first swirls

May I say how very much I love my Avanté?  Without losing one blip of my undying love for my Bernina, of course.  The last thread in her was Isacord 100% polyester with The Bottom Line pre-wound bobbin thread.  Loaded the Aurifil, white The Bottom Line in the bobbin, and did not have to adjust a thing.  Beautiful tension.  :-)  Wish I knew how to make emoticons.  I'd make a big fat smiley one!!

The swirls have to "bleed" over into the white area of the connecting print sections, so it's a little tricky.

Here's another angle.  I don't think the grey bits are distracting, but I do have doubts. . .

Question about an annoying occurrence:
One thing I have always found annoying on the longarm, and even more so with the extended base, happens when I'm quilting along the sides of the quilt.  The base runs into the clamp that holds the quilt sides, and I have to stop (usually with a little bobble in the quilting line) and manually lift the clamp a little to clear the edge of the base.  Of course, if I'm doing a circular or flowing design, I will flow off the clamp and then circle back around to butt up against it again.  Most annoying.  Do any other longarmers have this issue and is there a fix?  I've taken the clamp off sometimes and just held the edge taut with one hand while guiding the machine with the other, but that is not ideal.

Here is a slightly better angle I hope:

The orange clamp gets in the way of the Plexiglas edge of the extended base.  This is bad, bad, bad, I know, not to have much batting on the sides, but it was all I had for white batting and it just fit with 1.5-2" to spare on either side.

I am linking up with Lee of Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday!

Happy Birthday to Me!

My birthday was actually April 3, but I have been a little remiss in writing my blog.  This year I treated myself to a few prezzies, as they say in England.  Ha!  Great opener!  I love it when my brain is ahead of myself.  Look!

I'm Still Here

I don't have anything finished yet, but I thought I drop a few pics of what I've been up to:

I'm still plugging away at the handquilting on my runner.  I'm really, really enjoying it, despite my poor up-close eyesight these days (yep, wearing two pairs of glasses at the same time, sigh), and my sore pointer from the finger underneath the quilt that gets stabbed with each stitch.

I'm also planning the last of the charm square quilts (and I had a waking dream about the design for this last charm quilt, which excites me to no end!)  Unfortunately, the ivory fabric I want to use is in Kingsville, so this will get started here, and then finished back home.  It's a challenge as there are only 32 squares, 30 in the pack, and I had two leftover from the first one I did.

My self round robin you see peeking at the bottom of that pic is no further than when Dayna was here, but I have narrowed the appliqué pattern down to two ideas.  Am I procrastinating?  Uh, a little.  It's that "I hope I make the right decision, gee, I don't know, ew, I don't want to trace all those shapes onto Steam-a-Seam, will it be wrong to machine-appliqué if the centre is so beautifully hand-appliquéd?" stage.

I also have been really enjoying machine-quilting "Hidden in Plaid Sight".

Yesterday and today I did some more lessons online in Angela Walters' "Dot to Dot Quilting" class on Craftsy and I am just LOVING this class every bit as much as her Free Motion Feathers one.  Worth every cent.  I also have her Machine Quilting Negative Space class too, and can't wait to get started on that.

I must confess that I have spent more than the usual amount of time over the past couple of days, reverse-sewing, sigh.  Unpicking machine-quilted stitches is no picnic.  Neither is getting the window fixed in my sewing room so that it opens without having to be propped open with the can of QBS (who knew that can would have a dual purpose of 'holding'? LOL), only to discover, after I happily opened it, those 4-patches of charm squares mostly blown off!!!  One of the few times I hadn't taken a picture of the arrangement...BIG sigh.  I even unpicked hand-quilted stitches in the red zinger.  I'd quilted a couple of feet about 1/8" away from the seam, but decided it looked weird, so unpicked it all (easy, just heartbreaking to think of the lost time that it took to stitch) and re-quilted in the ditch.  I like it much better, so it was worth it.

Yesterday we spent a few hours kayaking in the Robinson Preserve, along the canals and into Perico Bay.  Just heavenly, so serene and calm.

I'm also reading a new author, Jo Nesbø.  It's The Redbreast, and is very good so far, intriguing, has me thinking on it as I sew.  Hope to have some finishes shortly!