A Couple of Flimsies

Just a quick post today to update you on the latest project. Here is the flimsy for my Bookish quilt.

I am so pleased! I got this picture first thing this morning before any real wind came up, often a problem around here. It took me quite a while to shuffle the blocks around to try to evenly distribute colours and patterns!

New Quilt Update

If you follow me on Instagram, which is increasingly difficult, not to say most aggravating, these days, then you may have seen a few posts of the new quilt request I am working on. Since I like to track my quilting and bit of life journey here, I’ll show you what I’ve been preoccupied with of late! It started with a screenshot Dayna sent me, a post of cozy room décor that happened to have what looks like a quilt or maybe a printed microfleece blanket artfully draped over the back of a couch.

“Can you make me this quilt?” she texted.

I zoomed in on the photo, seeing that it was basically an Evening Star surrounded by… a TON of HSTs. Gulp.

“Sure!”

The Making of a Lion Quilt

Brady turns 18 this summer (how is that remotely possible?) and so I’m making him a lion quilt as he is a Leo.

This is Lion, a paper-pieced pattern by Tartan Kiwi Designs. I bought it ten(!) years ago, knowing I’d make it one day for Brady. Well, that ‘one day’ has arrived. It is a huge block, the biggest one I’ve ever paper-pieced, at 24” finished. The cows quilt blocks were 12”.

What I’ve Been Up To Lately

I’ve been mainly focusing on the quilt along, but I have been doing a little work on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project, the second version of Circadian Rhythm, and putting together a fabric pull for another yoga student who has requested a Positive Flow bag! Here’s a quick look through these projects. I finished up enough snowball blocks in March’s colour which was red.

These are not the same block as January and February, which were dark blue and dark green nine-patches. What am I doing?

SMGO

So. Much. Going. On.

And it's all wonderful with lots of blue! I've joined in once again with the SAHRR. Here is my post about the centre I'm starting with.

I'm once again participating in the RSC: Rainbow Scrap Challenge with Angela of soscrappy. This month's colour is blue. She didn't specify light or dark so I did light, bright and dark! 

Gratitude and Glimmers #102

Welcome to my post of glimmers (of joy and wonder) and gratitude for the month of December. You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color. Thanks for hosting these once again all year, LeeAnna.

From my mindfulness calendar for today:

It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.

--David Steindl-Rast

1. I love sunrises and sunsets, but in winter with silhouetted trees, they’re something else. 

Sunrise

Leftovers Get New Lives

Although I find the 'stitch and flip' method for adding squares to rectangles to make corner triangles quick, it produces leftover triangles. If the squares are less than 2 ½", I toss them. When the squares are 5", as were those in Suburbia, it means leftover HSTs that, when sewn back together, are 4", finishing at  3½", much too big to waste, and, get this: there were 65 of them!! What to do? Make a matching cushion, for starters!

When Brady was here in August, I had just finished making Suburbia. It is going to Jordan, Brianne's boyfriend, for Christmas. Brady always like to sew something when he's here, so I asked him what he thought of sewing the HSTs, which I'd sewn back together and squared up as I made the quilt, into a coordinating cushion cover. He thought that was a great idea, and started playing around with them to make his own design. I'd shown him several ideas that one can do with versatile light/dark HSTs, but he said, "No, Nana, I want to do my own thing."

I'm Screaming!

I actually dropped my phone on Monday morning when I saw who ordered a mug cosy from me on Sunday night. An author. A Canadian author who is "renowned as one of the trailblazers of the modern fantasy genre" (from his site). One of my absolute favourite fantasy authors whose books I've read and loved and owned since 1995. None other than Charles de Lint!!

So ya, I was screaming, and I still am. He ordered this mug cosy:

Made in February

My first thought was, Maybe there's another Charles de Lint. Checked the address. Ottawa. Nope. Second thought, He cannot pay; I'll refund him, but then I thought well, I do have to mail it, and my time is worth something, and I have bought his books because I believe in supporting artists of all mediums. So I had the idea to make him a matching coaster! Did I still have any of the butterfly fabric left? It had only been a fat quarter... I did: a 5" square coaster would work!

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Update: Green

Green is the colour for May and oh, how I do love green: the feel of green, the smell of green, how lovely it looks with blue😊, how it is the colour of magic, and how it fills my sewing room windows that look east. My Project #1 is a churn dash block made with crumbs and strips. Each block has a centre 'feature' block, either one image or a special fabric in that month's colour.

I love that green owl fabric. I won it, along with a few other scraps in that line, from Michelle at From Bolt to Beauty in a giveaway she had a couple of years ago. Speaking of Michelle, have you seen that she is now a published author? She’s just released her first book and it sure looks like a good one, Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts. 

Blues and Backs

In this between PQ challenge week I’ve been plugging away at a few must-be-done projects. I haven’t sold any mug cosies for a little while and then in short order, I sold two, so I needed to replenish my stock of three lol.

I use mine every single day, twice a day: once in the morning over my cup of coffee, and then in the afternoon over my cup of tea! It really does help keep the drink warmer a little longer. The hats and teacups one that just sold had turquoise lining and trim; I always thought it was a perfect fabric for a mug cosy. This one has a hot pink and red checked lining and a piece of Hello Tokyo Robert Kaufmann fabric for binding that was a perfect match. The soft coral butterflies on blue is also the second one I've made in this pretty fabric and when it sells that's it, because you can only get two from a FQ. The link for these is here.

Mod Bear Paw Quilt - A WIP on the Design Wall

I've been posting some of my progress on this quilt on Instagram, but I thought it might be good to document it here too. This is a quilt much like the SAHRR (Stay At Home Round Robin) where I'm creating it on the design wall as I go, letting it evolve. It is such a satisfying and rewarding and yes, surprising process! 

Here’s where I’d got to on November 19 following Lorna’s pattern. 

I was so pleased! After I’d made the head section, I had a chat with Ann of @laughinggasquilts on Instagram who made this quilt about five years ago. I decided to take inspiration from her and add in some partial bear paw blocks behind and beneath my bear to enhance the layered effect.

Rainbow Connection: RSC 2023 and 2024 Progress

This is my original Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt of 2023. I had three ongoing projects, and just have one left to get into a flimsy and quilted up for a donation quilt. This one will be donated somewhere too.

The original dark blue blocks were in this post. It is a quilt from Quick & Easy Quilts August/September 2022. Mine is a scrappy version of the Saskatchewan designer's quilt.

Full Yet Also Aching Heart

I thought I'd do a little update on WIPs in my sewing studio and life. We had a quiet Thanksgiving, a nice dinner, and a nice fourth win for the Lions. It makes my heart swell to hear from Dayna how packed Ford Field is, with everyone in their seats at kickoff, and the noise level is incredible. Even the announcers keep commenting on it. Fans want this very badly, and I'm especially glad for Dayna and Tyler who bought season tickets again last year (they had them pre-Covid but let them go) and then got transferred to Tennessee, so are now flying or driving up here eight or more times this season! I'm also grateful and my heart is full (as well as my belly lol) for good food over the weekend.

Not only have I been busy in my sewing studio; I've also been a busy bee in the kitchen, making homemade beet hummus from my homegrown beets (yass!), chocolate chip and chunk cookies, pumpkin raisin muffins, and then the main dishes we had (nope I did not make the pumpkin pie, bought it from the in-store bakery). I've been working away at my #wipsbgone list for October; the hearts is all I can show for now of the Grace (#3) quilt top that got finished yesterday.

Yes, sadly, I'm making a third broken heart Grace quilt. I do know that this quilt is such a healing comfort quilt, and as I've sewed the top, my love and compassion have flowed from my heart and soul through my fingertips into this quilt. More when she's done and gifted.

So Much to Say!

There is a lot in the post today, but I'll keep it short so I can get back to work. I've been busy, though not crazy busy. I have a few irons in the fire as they say, and I'm here to tell you all about each one. First of all, the Villa Rosa Designs blog hop begins this week; my day to post is Sunday, January 22. My top is done, and it has marinated on the design wall overnight while I contemplate taking off the extra row I did, which is sort of but not quite, a border. My gut is leaning, though only slightly leaning, towards taking it off. It does add that bit of unexpected, wait, let me look again, idea. Here is the block you may have seen on Instagram.

There are a ton of prizes to be won during this hop which begins tomorrow, January 19! The schedule is below.

Good Grief!

Good grief: how can it be 2.5 weeks since my last post? I've been sewing and reading as per usual, maybe a bit more reading than sewing to be honest. Let me fill you in on what's been happening around here. If you follow me on Instagram you'll have a bit of an idea. I've joined in with Leanne at Devoted Quilter on Instagram for her WIPS challenge once again this year. This year it's just two months, 61 days, so during this second quarter, I set my sights a bit lower, looking to complete two goals. One I met Sunday morning.

This is my knitted selvages rug, the second one I've made over the years. It's bigger than the first one.

Thursday Thoughts and WIP

I thought I'd pop into your inbox this week with a little update. It seems I don't feel the urge to write nearly as often these days, and I don't want to only write when I have a finish, so here's what is going on in my world since I got back from Alberta.

Fall is gently making itself present here. As I look out my sewing room windows I see the Norway maple about 50% yellow, and the red oak maybe 10% gold and red. I love the enflamed look it gets, as it turns in small 'chunks', not a gentle all-over that creeps, nor an outside-in turning as do the softwood (I think?) maples. I see deep forest green with 'hits' of flames, just breathtaking every single time I see it, which is all day long. The English oak on the far right, and the Linden just to the left of it haven't started to change. If I look way up, à la The Friendly Giant, which clearly dates me to a Canadian child of the 60s, I see the black walnuts have just started to fade to a paler green.

Charm Squares Makeup Pouch and a Flimsy

I'm pretty pleased with myself because not only do I have a finish for Friday, but I also have a quilt top together and all four of my goals for this Q2 of #wipsbegone2021 complete with lots of time to spare!

I've made several of these over the years, most recently three to sell in my Etsy shop, SandraJaneQuilts. I sold the aqua one in short order. In early September I had one of those days when you just feel like going off-topic and playing a bit, I grabbed what was left of a Gooseberry by Bonnie and Camille mini charm pack, and made the two sides. I'd used half of it in a little pouch I made for my friend Tish. And there it sat. Why?

What's Up

What have I been up to besides working on my 94 Quilt? Well, a few things, though none of them have given me any finishes for a while.

You know that I've decided to hop on Leanne's @devotedquilter Instagram bandwagon of finishing WIPs during the final 100 days of 2021.

I started with the biggest most time-consuming goal of the three, but tbh, all three are pretty big, time-consuming goals. In for a penny...

Projects

I have three, no four, wait, five new projects either underway, or soon to be underway. I had planned to mostly take July off blogging and Instagramming, and I still plan to do that. Lots has been happening, however. This post should catch everyone up.

The main reason for this post is that I have switched to https://follow.it for advising my followers when I publish a new blog post. It was an easy migration: putting the subscribe button on my sidebar a few weeks ago was a breeze, and then moving my subscribers over was a snap, because they did it! I just sent them the downloaded CSV of my list, they weeded out ALL the spam/fake/bot emails, and poof! New list, much smaller since they filter out those spammers, yay. Thanks so much to Cindy at Stitchin' at Home who told me that they did the subscribers list. If you haven't made the switch yet because it's just too overwhelming, it really isn't. Go to https://follow.it to sign up and then follow the steps. They have a chat feature so you can type in any queries and they respond right away. You can control how you want to get your notifications of new posts from bloggers you read too. Easy. If you aren't following me, and you'd like to, the sign-up widget is on my sidebar.

I have three big deadlines this month. The first one is a quilt for issue #42 of Make Modern (affiliate link). You've seen sneak peeks of the Fossil Fern Benartex fabric, and a few in-progress shots on my Instagram, but in case you've forgotten...

They are gorgeous fabrics, and I just love how my design turned out!

OMG and PHD Update...With a Dash of Squirrel

The squirrel is all Nancy's (Grace and Peace Quilting) fault. I've been taken with her gingham quilts over the past couple of months, and knew I wouldn't be able to resist for much longer. Well, as soon as Whimsies was done and blogged, into the blues I went. And didn't stop (yeah, it's a DrEAMi) until I had a top.

This is going to a young boy whose colour preferences and interests I do not know. I thought the planes fabric adds a bit of woven effect to the quilt. There are six different medium blues, a blueish/white Island Batik, and four navy blues. I can definitely see more of these in my future. More on the story of this quilt when it is finished. It will be my OMG for June, and in keeping with its DrEAMi nature, I'm not stopping until it's a done and useable quilt!