La Mer

I have finished the second of my hopefully twelve UFOs for the year. I bought the pattern, 'Sea Glass' off Craftsy several years ago (details below), collected a few turquoise, aqua, sea-green, and lime fabrics for options, got started on it within a year or so of purchase, and then it sat for a few more years. I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to have it finished, and how much in love with it I am.

These are MY COLOURS! And yes I sort of yelled/sang that. Oh, they speak to my soul. So does the fuchsia of the crabapple tree. Makes me want to make a quilt in pink and turquoise, mmm.

Night Watch

I am on a roll! Two challenge pieces done well ahead of time! This month the challenge came from Aurifil, "to use any fabric art/non-traditional quilting/sewing/thread-painting technique using three Aurifil thread weights." We were to include three photos of how weights were used. Photos is never a problem for me! 

All of the fabrics, threads, and batting were provided to me by Island Batik, Aurifil and Hobbs, respectively. Allow me to walk you through the process that ended with this not-square, not round, not oval quilt.

Postcard Swap Blog Hop

Welcome to my stop on Patty's (Elm Street Quilts) Postcard Swap Blog Hop! There are 14 of us in the hop, so I hope you will make a little time this weekend to sit back with maybe an extra cup of coffee or tea and visit some of the fanTABulous postcards that were created.

The postcards were to be 4X6" and were to be mailed by March 17, no extras in them, keep it simple. What I didn't realize was that we weren't partnered up. I was given a name to make for, but she made for someone else, and my postcard came from a third person in the swap! Kind of like a Secret Santa exchange.  We got one word as a jumping-off point.  I gave 'water' as mine. It seems kind of odd, me being a Fire sign, Aries, but I have loved water, being in it, on it, by it, listening to it, gazing at it, my entire life, be it a river, a pond, a northern crystal lake, or the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, or the almost terrifying infinity of the Pacific or Atlantic. I know all those bodies of water well. Jen @hwksgirl who lives in Chicago, (just 4 hours' drive from me!) got my name. She made me this!

Once In A Blue Moon

I am often late. There, I said it. However, work-wise, I am on time, and I am also known for keeping to deadlines, the very important ones, that is. Thus, it is with a red face and downward cast of eye that I admit that I missed the important deadline for posting my mini quilt challenge which should have been done in February.

Note that I was provided the fabric by Island Batik, the batting by Hobbs, and one of the navy threads by Aurifil. Without further ado, here is my mini, 'Once In A Blue Moon'!

I Like/Love...

This is a (mostly) photos post.  Good luck with that, Sandra, I can hear you thinking! Here are about 10 items for which I am grateful.

I've stashed some of these photos for a while..

A few weeks ago we went to the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers.  It is a place I've wanted to visit for ages.  It did not disappoint.  Clockwise from top left: Mysore Fig Tree in the distance on the left and a stately row of palms leading to the Caloosahatchee River on Ford's estate.  Next is a closeup of another massive Mysore Fig in front of Edison's home. I wanted to do a headstand in front of Ford's tree. Too many people around but that would've been so cool! Mysore is the style of Ashtanga I practise, which originated in Mysore, India.  (yes I'M-sore LOL after some days of practice!)  Close-up of one of my all-time favourite Florida plants, Bougainvillea, and then a row of a few colours of these "paper flower" bushes on the estates.

Some Blocks and A Quiche

I've been doing a little pattern-testing for a couple of friends and here is another of Stitchin At Home Cindy's appliqué blocks for her Canada Quilt for her guild's BOM.

Isn't it a fabulous design?  And how about the Moda Grunge as a fabulous ice fabric?? Who knew...

I used Lara's (Buzzin Bumble) Crafted Appliqué method and it works like a damn!  (Sorry, but it really does, especially on fine details like those trees, gulp.)  Sidenote: check out that link to Lara's blog where she is having a giveaway of her book, and also is offering a beautiful free pattern she designed for a Christmassy tabletopper.

This hasn't been stitched down yet, but there's no lifting going on.  I thought the embossed flowers white fabric that has the palest of mauves mottled here and there on it would effectively replicate the blue-whites and mauve/pinky-whites of real snow as well as provide a contrast to the white of the ice.  I'd like to say I planned that white 'blob' area to land there to evoke the glare of the sun on ice, but nope, a happy accident!  This is an example of what Lara calls the need to back-coat some fabrics; see how the snow fabric became sort of opaque or see-through where it overlapped the mountain fabric?  I was really pleased with how well the brown fabric did work for the mountain.  I had chosen another grey/black denim-look fabric but then thought, hmm, I wonder if the white blotches here and there might evoke thoughts of snow... Yep!  Goes to show to try fabrics you would think would not work when doing appliqué.  This fabric has sketched-in-black flower shapes with bleached-out-looking areas and even has glitter on it!

I've also started a quilt along called 150 Canadian Women...150 blocks to be made which finish at 6".  Hope I can do better than I have been doing with Tula Pink's City Sampler blocks (gulp).  I need to do blocks 1-3 yet, but here are blocks 4-6:

From left to right: Major Margaret C. MacDonald, (first woman to attain the rank of Major in the Britsh Empire), Nellie McClung, (one of the Famous Five, one of Canada's greatest women's rights activists) and Alice Wilson (Geologist who was not granted a car to do her field work, but a bicycle, because women 'shouldn't drive' -- she went out and bought her own Model T!)

I get overwhelmed with emotion when I read about the accomplishments of these women in the face of incredible chauvinism, racism, and a multitude of other obstacles.  This is a BOM from The Next Step, a quilt shop in Calgary, Alberta.  I first saw it on a blog belonging to another Sandra, Quilting at the Cro's Nest and was intrigued by the symbolism and educational component (shocker, I know).

Tip Time!
I've mentioned this method before, but when I showed Beth and David at our retreat at Julie's in October, they hadn't seen it, and thought it a cool method for cutting your HST squaring up time in half.  So here it is again.  Two at a time!  Note that this method means you're going 'to the dark side' as Angela Walters does... one more day until her show, squeal!  In other words it requires pressing your seams to one side, the darker of the two.

1.  Lie two HSTs atop each other, nudging the seams together so they nest.  Peel back the top HST if you want to check, but you will soon develop a feel for the nesting with your fingetips.  You don't have to, but in order to not touch the nested pair, set them on a small rotary cutting mat which is on top of your larger one, or on a revolving rotary mat too if you have one.

2. Lay the 45-degree line along the seam, leaving a little wiggle room to eventually cut all the way around the HSTs.  I'm going for 2.5" squares, but you can see I have my left and bottom marks at about 2 3/8". Cut the first two sides, as I have done if you are right-handed.  It will be the opposite two if you are left-handed.  Rotate the mat.

3.  Now line the 2.5" marks on the ruler with the just-cut two sides, and the 45-degree line again along the seam. Trim both sides as before.

4.  Lift off the top HST and voilà!  (not viola, that'a a flower, or a musical instrument) you have two 2.5" HSTs.

The other day I had a hankering for quiche and decided to use a tried and true recipe that I've had and used for decades.  It was a hit, and I am very glad I doubled the recipe and made two!

Yum!  Enjoying another year's use out of my Snowman placemats. ⛄

Below is the recipe in case you'd like to make one! Now I cheat and just buy a pie crust (sorry Mum!) as I can't be bothered to make that part from scratch.  I omitted the bacon, making mine with cauliflower and broccoli.  We had a Caesar salad on the side.

Linking up with
Freemotion by the River
and woo hoo! Beth still has Main Crush Monday open at Cooking Up Quilts
Quilting Jet Girl for Tips and Tutorials Tuesday

Quiche Lorraine
May be frozen.  Line 36 muffin cups with pie pastry or a 9x9“ pie plate.

6 slices cooked (crisp) bacon

2 oz natural Swiss or cheddar cheese

2 eggs

1 c whipping cream or Half & Half

½ tsp salt

pinch of pepper

pinch of nutmeg

1 tsp sugar

Heat oven to 400°.  Shred cheese.  Combine eggs, cream, salt, sugar, nutmeg and pepper.  Beat to blend well.  Sprinkle bottom of pie plate with chunks of bacon and then cheese.  Pour filling over.  Sprinkle with nutmeg.  Bake 30-40 min at 400° or until egg mixture has solidified.

Walter 2

Always a favourite fish to eat when we were in our camping/fishing days as a family, a favourite to catch (they fight hard!) and a favourite to look at, marvel over...those EYES, this fish ranks #1 in my MacGyver's mind.  This was another goal on my Q3 FAL list.

So of course I had to make him one.  We have Walter #1, who measures just over 25" long, weighed between 8-9 pounds, and whom we got mounted many years ago.  He lived in Jackson Lake in northern central Alberta when my husband caught him.  He is a big fish for an Alberta lake.

I made this mainly using Henry Glass fabrics from the Desire to Inspire Challenge I did in June.

This was another idea I'd had to do using the fabrics, make a hotpad/potholder but I ran out of time.  The backing which you see above is one of the squares in the panel I received.

I used a double layer of Warm 'n Natural batting because I didn't have any Insul-Bright left.  The water fabric is an old one out of my stash that I do not know whose it is; only a "Y" and the colour circles are left on the selvage.  That fabulous black I used for binding (of which I had a 3" strip left, that's all) is a Michael Miller.

I cannot for the life of me recall where I used this fabric, something that is not like me; I can usually place every piece!

Walter 2 is not exactly true to colour, but pretty darn close. That dark green Henry Glass fabric for his main body is really perfect for walleye skin/scales.  Love the random placement of a gold star near his tail.  Speaking of his tail, MacGyver it was who told me I had to make that white 'chunk' on the lower fin.  I didn't know they had that!  The gold Henry Glass fabric worked well for his fins.  For the fish shape/outline, I used a line drawing I got off a free online colouring book.

You know me with my quilts in trees pics so just had to do one, trying to get the lake in the far background.  It blends into the sky though.  I see our clematis is trying to climb up the Nootka Cypress! Better get it back on track on its trellis.

This potholder that could actually double as a mini, was all done with Lara's Crafted Appliqué method.  Love it for no fraying crisp edges.  For those that like to zoom in on photos, you may notice a teensy bit of fraying on one of the brown reeds I freehand cut.  Guess I missed getting the fabric treated right up to the edge, doh!

For quilting I just followed random lines in the water fabric and outlined all the fish parts as well as stitched in some gills detail.  Most of it was stitched with Exquisite thread in green with the white and grey stitched in Madeira Polyneon in silver.  Both of these threads have a lovely glint to them when the light catches them.

Speaking of getting back on track, the quarterly Finish Alongs really do help me, cough, try to stay focussed.  I have Dayna's quilt to blog about yet this week for another from that list!

Quilt Stats:
Pattern:  Original Design
Size: 10.25" square
Fabric: scraps and stash
Batting: Warm 'n Natural 100% cotton
Quilted: on my Bernina 180 Artista
Threads: appliquéd with Exquisite 100% polyester in olive green, and Madeira Polyneon in silver.

Linking up with
Connie at Free Motion by the River
Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts
Leanne at She Can Quilt for the Q3FAL
Nicky at Mrs. Sew & Sow for Scraptastic Tuesday