Project Quilting 17.6 A Happy Handful

What a fun way to end this year’s challenge: with a small joy-inducing project. This week Trish asked us to make something that we could hold in one hand, "small in stature, but full of joy." I've had this image in my head for the past several weeks, wanting to work it somehow into a quilt.

I made a mug rug with the symbol for female on it.

Project Quilting 17.5 Circadian Rhythm

This week's PQ challenge was 'My Complements' where we were asked to make a project using two complementary colours. Here is my quilt, which I named Circadian Rhythm.

I just love it! Read on for the story of how it came to be.

Project Quilting 17.4 Of Another Era

Well, I did not get the original quilt project finished, so on Saturday evening, I turned to Plan B, which was using some Debbie Mumm fabric from about 25 years ago. I'd recently used one of the three squares from the panel on the back of my Happy Christmas quilt. I had thought that the backup plan would be to make a table runner using these two with a star block in the centre. However, with limited time, I knew I'd have to do something even quicker, and suddenly I thought I could make a tea cosy! Heaven knows I'd made four mug cosies this week, so one more large one shouldn't be a problem.

A little less than two hours later, on Saturday evening, like 10 pm, I had it done. Incidentally, that teapot is circa 38 years old, and the table topper is made (in 2005) from the same fabric line that I was using in the Plan A quilt!

Project Quilting 17.3 Bees

Here is my quilt for Project Quilting 17.3 Year of the Horse. This was a quilt that got finished and then linked up with 11 minutes to spare. I work well under pressure, but I don't like cutting it that fine! I'd like to say that I rushed home after teaching yoga Sunday morning and got straight to work making the binding and applying it, as that was all that was left when I had to stop at 10:30 Saturday evening. However, I had to make a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up some necessary items, and then take Rufus for a walk, and then finally, I got to work. Could I have waited for the groceries and Rufus's walk? Probably, but in this never-ending cold, I didn't want to go out more than once, and dogs do like their routines.

Thank goodness for sun at 12:39 EST which is the time stamp on the first of the three photos I uploaded to my Instagram post! It really shows the quilting. Don't mind the quilt waving happily; it's currently drying after being blocked on my design wall!

Project Quilting 17.2 Scads of Plaid

I wanted to make the Plaid-ish quilt by Erica Jackman Kitchen Table Quilting for a very long time. So when I saw Trish's prompt for this week’s PQ challenge at Kim Lapacek, I knew right away that’s what I was going to do. And I think I accomplished it, though with not as much success as I had hoped, yet I'm reminding myself it is Plaid-ish, much like Erica’s original which also uses mostly prints with a fair amount of tone-on-tone ones, though brighter. The most successful part of this was that: A. I got a finished comfort quilt and B. I used up a ton of 5" squares, several 4" squares, along with strips and various other scraps.

I missed the sunshine we had for three quarters of the day, so we have a blueish tinge to photos.

Project Quilting 17.1 A Clean Slate

The first challenge for this year‘s project quilting challenge was 'A Clean Slate'. Trisha always includes within the first prompt the Pantone colour of the year, which is not even a colour: white aka Cloud Dancer. We were in Cuba up until late Thursday, so, because many American sites are blocked due to the American embargo on Cuba, I did not know what the prompt was until I got back. That left me two days to figure something out. I knew it would have to be a smaller project so I chose to make a couple of placemats.

I’ve made many placemats over the years using this stitch and flip, quilt as you go method that I first saw on Janine‘s blog, Quilts From the Little House. It’s a great way to use up those proverbial ever present strings, batting scraps, and make a useful item.

Project Quilting 16.6 Harvest Apron

I love starting off the year with the Project Quilting Challenge, and I love the pace: six challenges over the course of 12 weeks. Yet each year I've participated, the final challenge always is bittersweet. Yes, now I can get on with my own agenda, but I'm sad to let the burst of creativity and, to some degree, ha, the intense focus on a project go.

Without further ado, here is project 16.6, 'Button it Up' where we were to incorporate the meaning, literal or figurative, of "button it up"  into our project. I went literal.

All those beautiful florals..and one maple leaf fabric from Northcott for Canada's sesquicentennial 🍁

This is my Harvest apron, a free tutorial by Inflorescence Designs. You can see a button in the centre of the waistband, and a toggle button at the bottom edge. Read on to find out what nifty trick the two perform to transform this apron into a little bowl or basket!

Heart Centre Project Quilting 16.5

Quilt designs come to me sometimes by doodling on graph paper, at other times by playing in EQ8, or, as with this one, fully formed into my head.

The quilt is now for sale in my Etsy shop. 

It was Tuesday, our last night in Cuba. I was well into my third book of the week, a gripping biological warfare murder mystery, The Chosen Dead by M. R. Hall. Quite chillingly, may I say, exploring the world of pandemics and modifying DNA and creating smart vaccines...published in 2013! Anyhow, I’d stayed up a bit later than usual, voraciously gobbling up the story, and, although I still had a hundred pages or so left, finally, reluctantly, turned out the light. And… my mind would not wind down. I’m the type of person who, once the light goes out and my head hits the pillow, is off to sleep within less than a minute. Not so that night. It was sometime after midnight before I finally drifted off. One of the things I was doing in an attempt to slow my mind down was figuring out what I would make for the ‘Follow Your Arrow’ challenge. Well that worked out fine as you can see!

Project Quilting 16.3 Seacliff Beach

I think this is my favourite Project Quilting make ever and I’ve had several favourites, Winter Blues just last time! Here is Seacliff Beach, my lake quilt that holds my love of my favourite beach and marina, Seacliff, on Lake Erie.

I’ve had these fabrics for a few years, just before Covid to be more or less exact. Most were bought on one fun quilt shop trip. A couple were added, then subtracted, then substituted to become the final rendition you see here.

Winter Blues PQ 16.2

My quilt for the second challenge of Project Quilting is done. We were to make something that shows the visual effect of ombré, which is a colour shift in value or hue. As you know, my favourite colour is blue, and a couple of things came nicely together - a set of fat quarters sitting on a shelf and a random test block from a few years ago I'd pulled out as a possible candidate for the SAHRR. This is the result!

I first thought of calling it Twilight Hearts but as the design came together in fabric, and with talk of Blue Monday last week on the CBC Music programme I listen to, the name came to me: Winter Blues. January is a hard month for many of us in the northern hemisphere and I am no exception. Blue Monday, the third Monday in January, was actually designated by a UK travel company as the most depressing day of the year back in 2005, and the moniker has stuck. A couple of serendipitous connections made the name stick.

PQ 16.1 - Cradled

I always look forward to the start of Project Quilting. It helps make January less unbearable. January has long been a hard month for me: spring and summer seem so far away and it is dark and cold. Letting my creativity bloom is a balm for my winter-weary soul. And let's just pause for a moment because seriously, winter in this furthest south part of Canada, Sandra, is pretty mild really. For example, I was looking for a photo last week and came across one of a wild crocus I'd taken on February 26 last year, so that's only six weeks away. I told the trees that same week on Lake Erie's shore at the end of the common path for lake access in my cul-de-sac to hold on, just six more weeks.

When Tricia of @quiltchicken put out the first prompt, Mythical Creatures, I was immediately excited. I have loved magic and witches my entire life, and fantasy is a genre I still love. I let that prompt percolate in my brain for Sunday and Monday, since I was deep into mountains and aurora borealis on my cousin's quilt, and found it difficult to just drop that train of thought/stitching.

Project Quilting 15.6 Irish Chain

For whatever reason, maybe a lot going on this past week, this last challenge for Project Quilting gave me pause. We were to work with the Irish Chain quilt block.

I first played around in my graph paper design book, originally planning a quilt for myself, baby size, as another of my take-to-yoga-class quilts, or else a placemat for my good friend John. I knew I would do a triangle in a square in the alternating squares. I made a quilt with this design in a 9-patch exchange about 20 years ago and I just love the effect. It was a busy week and although I plan to do that yoga class quilt or 'Baby Boomer Blankie', a placemat, hopefully two, it had to be. (Baby Boomer Blankie is a term coined by my friend Rose, and since I am born in the last year of the Boomers, I guess it can apply to moi as well), 

I finally got to my sewing machine on Friday and by Saturday around 10 pm (gulp) I had one complete. 

Of course I had to make delicious soft ginger cookies, a recipe Brady shared with me. Brady also gave me that mug. The cream and sugar pottery is now 45+ years old, a pre-marriage gift from Pat, my SIL. It’s all about the photo shoot right?!

Project Quilting 15.5 Wearables

I actually was excited about this prompt because I felt it would be the impetus to get me doing a little garment sewing again. I still have kept a few pieces of yardage in the thought (hope) I’d sew some clothes again one day. 

Here is the top I made!

A couple of years ago I made myself a pair of pajama shorts using the same pattern as we’d used when Brady was here visiting to make his. I originally had a dress in mind for this fabric but, since I had scads of yardage and I really liked the print, I decided to make the shorts. They turned out great and I thought why not make a top to go with them? A top would be a faster make since I only had from Thursday on to get something together before the deadline.

Project Quilting 15.4 Hourglass

I had told myself to make a little less involved of a project this round of Project Quilting at Persimon Dreams. When I saw the final graphic that Trish had posted, the idea to make a placemat, and thus have a rectangular based hourglass was born.

I have tons of green and tons of blue strips so I at first figured I’d do the side triangles in blue strips. It didn’t take long to realize that that would be a whole lot of seams regardless of whether they met or not, and on the bias. Not such a great plan. A little thinking ensued.

Project Quilting 15.3 Inside Out

For this third challenge we were to create something that thematically or literally shows the aspect of being inside out. I think of expressions like Wear your heart on your sleeve, or My eyeballs fell out of their sockets. You could have exposed seams, which made me think of the old jeans and flannel-backed quilt I made years ago with raggedy edges from sewing the layers wrong sides together. A bag would work, Trish said, because it gets sewn with right sides together and then, as she said, 'birthed', pulling the outside of the bag through the inside-out lining. That bag idea was it, and I knew right away what one I would make. After last challenge's challenges (ha) and missing the deadline by a few hours, this one was going to be Simple Simon, no getting all fancy.

As soon as I read the directive for this challenge, I knew I would make my Positive Flow bag pattern. I sold the one remaining in my shop a little while ago, so with the intention of making one to replace it, I was off. Well, as much as one can be off with a dog recovering from ACL surgery and tag-teaming with one’s husband so that one of us is with her 24/7.

This ensures her safety and keeping her as quiet and immobile as possible for the first 3-4 weeks. Still, I got it done on Friday in time for an outside photo or two in the (are you sitting down?) sunshine!

Project Quilting 15.2 Sky Color

I got SO excited at this week's prompt for Project Quilting because I am a bit of a nut when it comes to watching the skies. I have a lot of it to see from my sewing room windows which face south, east and west. Yep tons and tons of light. Our house is pretty much like that, one of the main reasons I agreed to buy it is that it is filled with light thanks to lots of windows.

Here is where the challenge ended:

It had some definite growing pains along the way and missed the deadline by a couple of hours.

One of the things I love most about PQ challenges is getting to paw through my glorious stash. This challenge was no different. So we were to make a project that evokes sky colour (I use Canadian aka English spelling) with only 10% cerulean. Love that word, a beautiful name for the colour sky-blue. Blue is my favourite colour, so making a quilt about the sky without it at first seems strange, but not when I think of the sunset I saw Sunday night, hours after the challenge was posted. Look at those fiery pinks and oranges and the reflection in the clouds overhead. This is pure Mother Nature, no filters or enhancement.

or the sunrise on Monday, again no filters or special touchups:

Project Quilting 15.1 Bird House

I am always excited to kick off the year with challenges to my creative spirit. Project Quilting, along with the Stay At Home Round Robin, aka SAHRR, which starts this coming weekend, do just that!

Our first challenge is to make something that evokes "the myriad places a bird calls 'home,'" as explained by Trish at kimlapacek.com Here is my finished piece. Read on to see how it evolved.

Project Quilting 14.6 Conquer a Fear

After quilting for some 25 years, there isn't anything in quilting that I fear. Avoid/hesitate? Yes. As in life, there are certain things we love to do, and certain things we ... do not! Over the course of the first couple of days following the release of the challenge, an idea was forming, to symbolize fear in a mini quilt, from the debilitating 'darkness' of feeling fear to the release, the blossoming and lightness that happens when you work through it and have such a sense of accomplishment. I wish I'd had more time. I had another deadline, the SAHRR, and so I devoted the majority of my week to that, since Cuba had 'robbed me' 😉 of a week's work on it. In the end, I pulled this together in a few hours. I do love it, and have used it every day since Sunday!

This is my new favourite mug rug.

PQ 14.4 A Novel Project

The past week's challenge was to make a quilt inspired by a book. Those of you who are regular followers know that I am an avid and a lifelong reader; I was an English as well as French teacher as well for 30 years. So it was too hard to choose one book; like Trish I could ream off 50 favourites, some of those favourites read within the past year, like The Dictionary of Lost Words, or Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, or The Golem and the Jinni finished just three days ago. So I based my project on a series, the Outlander books, though as you'll see, it's really so much more than these beloved books by Diana Gabaldon, every one of which I have, including The Outlandish Companion!

The Calanais Standing Stones are in the Outer Hebrides on the Isle of Lewis. My mini is based on a photograph from Historic Environment Scotland. Calanais Standing Stones is another very informative site with more photos of these magical 5000-year-old stones.

Project Quilting 14.3 54-40 or Fight

I liked this third challenge, and, true to form this year (so weird), I knew right away that I would make the block fairly large, maybe even just one giant one, to make a baby quilt. I've called it 'Las Flores' thanks to the name of the green floral.

Thanks to Trish @quiltchicken for dreaming up the challenges, and to Kim of kimlapacek.com for hosting and organizing etc. This has been such a good jumpstart to my creativity each year!