Floral Galaxy

It took me a little longer to get this quilted than originally anticipated but she is done and I am so very happy that these incredibly gorgeous, floaty fabrics have grown up into this quilt.

Part of the reason for the slower finish is that I elected, or rather the quilt requested, some custom quilting. The other reason was in part Zora and in part some unplanned sewing.

Leo the Lion

Brady’s Leo the Lion quilt is a very happy finish. As I stated in the progress post, this is a pattern I bought from Tartan Kiwi Designs ten years ago, knowing I would one day make it for him. I intended it to be the centre of a quilt, and even when I first started making it, that was the plan. However, as I often say, quilts talk, and this one decided it wanted to be THE star, and so it has become a wallhanging.

I think he was right: he is the star.

With An Open Heart

Well, I don’t make my plan A in time for the Project Quilting deadline but plan B did get done. However I was not going to let plan A sit idle! I’m so very happy I pulled this too-long-on-the-shelf bundle out and went for it, despite knowing it was a bit of a reach. I am even more happy that I finished it!

The warm sunshine made for a beautiful outdoor shot today.

Silent Sentinels

Although I managed to get my trees quilt finished on Sunday by 5:30 pm, I didn't get it done in time to take advantage of a couple hours of beautiful sunshine we had in the mid-afternoon. Luckily the clouds cleared this morning and I was able to do a photo shoot in fresh snow that we got overnight.

As I mentioned when I wrote about the flimsy, I bought Amanda Jean's Trees! pattern quite some time ago, before buying the main fabrics, and even when I did buy those three, I did not plan for them to be in this particular quilt. However... I am really pleased that the pattern and fabrics came together as they have! Simmering is a good thing, right?

Kindred Spirits

Kindred spirits, the name of my Sewcial Bee Sampler is done! This is a Quilt Along designed and hosted by Sharon Holland and Maureen Cracknell that started in the summer of 2017. I started the blocks about six months later when my friend Tish @tishnwonderland asked if I'd like to make them with her and her husband We made the first blocks on January 1, 2018.

I never realized until after I was cropping this photo, how perfect the bed of orange leaves are under the quilt!

 

We made a few over the next few months, sewing 'together' sometimes texting as we sewed, sometimes FaceTiming. Tish lives in West Virginia, and I am in Ontario. We first met in a New Quilt Bloggers group back in 2015, but we have met up in real life a few times. She's most definitely a kindred spirit: love of quilting, love of free-motion quilting especially, love of pibbles (at the time she had two pitties, brothers, and I had one, Rocco), a love of nature, and reading, and more.

I took these two photos in a favourite place near my house, Kennedy Woods. This first area by the parking lot is called The Sugar Bush because of these massive sugar maples throughout it.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Quilt Finish

I am happy to present my first RSC quilt, now finished and ready for a new home. Every year since 2015 I’ve participated in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge with Angela at So Scrappy. I’ve made one, two or sometimes even three projects with scraps, a few I’ve kept, but most I’ve given away as comfort quilts. This one will be donated somewhere I think. 

Rainbow Scrappy Churn Dash

This quilt, you may recall, is another where I built small slabs with crumbs and then cut them into HSTs or rectangles. 

Suburbia

I am pleased to present another finish, one that's been on the stack of USOs for quite some time! USOs are what I call Un-Started Objects, those kits or chunks or bundles of fabrics one gathers with pattern for a quilt you intend to make almost right away...except that 'right away' doesn't happen because other projects, be they must-do's or squirrels or quilt alongs or guild activities, or quilt courses and so on and so forth, get in the way. I have rather a few USOs, ahem. This, however, is no longer one of them!

This was a bundle of fat quarters with accompanying pattern from I believe bluprint, who took over from Craftsy. 

TGIFF! Postcard from Sweden Finish

Welcome to TGIFF! This is a celebration of finishes, and I'm happy to be back hosting the second one of 2024. I am also very pleased to show off my second finish of 2024, my third Postcard from Sweden quilt.

Like the first two, this one is not going to live with me, and that is just fine. Like the first two, it is on its way to a good home where I know it will be cherished. If you are interested in hosting TGIFF go here to pick a date to sign up. It's super-easy.

X’s and O’s For A

How's that for a cool title! Also I hope I didn’t give you an earworm…great song by that same name, Ex’s and Oh’s” by Elle King (great artist btw).

This is a remake of a quilt I made in 2019 for Island Batik when I was an ambassador. I wrote out the pattern by hand (does anyone else find handwriting to be quite a chore these days?) And then typed it out as I made this one. Yes it’s going to be released in early December. Can’t wait until you see what the testers are doing and have done!

From Dawn to Dusk

It is with great pleasure that I present to you, not one but two finished quilts! These qualify for my PHD, Projects Half Done challenge, and this means that every one of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts I have made since joining in 2015 are complete! 

I made these blocks during the RSC2016 year, using a pattern in Kim Schaefer's Cozy Modern Quilts. It's a great book, and I need to make some more quilts from it!

Soar

I think it was when I made the Postcard from Sweden makeup pouch for my niece that I realized I needed to make a quilt for her niece and nephew (my great-niece and great-nephew!). Both quilts percolated throughout this year.

The wind was a factor today, but I think the billowing effect is a-okay with this airy quilt! Keen eyes will notice Xena sunbathing on the deck behind the quilt.

Fleurs

When I signed up for Gail's Quilting Gail PHD programme, I didn't know just how gratifying it would be. Finishing (finally! seven years later) Fleurs is the pinnacle of 2021 so far for me. I avoided it all year, and probably had it not been for joining in with Leanne @devotedquilter #wipsbegone2021 , I may not have got this huge quilt done. But done she is!

A quick refresh: this was a 'self' round robin. We sewed on our own quilts, and each month for seven months, the guild executive told us what that month's round would involve. I liked the challenge, and I liked sewing on my own quilt. I've been in two round robins: the first I was bitterly disappointed and the second, well, let's just say that not all contributors put in the same amount of care, thought and work, though in the second experience it was just one person, not several as in the first experience. 

Fleurs took me a lot longer to quilt than I'd anticipated! I loaded it September 11 and took it off October 17! I need to finish another UFO this month (gulp) or two in November to get back on track for 12 UFO finishes this year.

Whimsies

This quilt ticks two boxes: my OMG for May and my PHD finish for May. I love how it turned out, and I love the motivation I got TO finish it by making it both of those!

This was one of the RSC challenge projects that Angela at so scrappy came up with in 2019. I was quite late to the party, but in actuality I was behaving, focussing on Island Batik challenges and other projects I was supposed to be doing. But then that little turquoise pinwheel in the second from the bottom row grabbed me (thanks Mari) and I just had to make it...along with three others, and I was smitten. Here is the post. We were deep in the throes of the major renovation so it was a welcome and fun little diversion to make a little 4.5" finished block each month. However, although I'd pretty much decided on using the Kona Ice Frappé as the background, I never did put any of them onto the background because I had no clue how I'd arrange them all. Enter PHD and OMG!

Blossoms Every Which Way

I have finished my third version of FYOP, aka Follow Your Own Path, before my second! I am in love with it.

I got a lovely surprise seeing the new weigela bushes in bloom!

I'll be linking this post up on June 15 when the final parade of finishes opens. I decided to make the throw size blocks but less of them to end up with a baby quilt. It went super-fast!

Heading North in Make Modern Issue 39 and TGIFF

The hardest part of having designs published in magazines is the waiting. The quilt has to be done months ahead of the issue's publication date, and it is so hard not to show the quilt when you've finished it. However, the day is now here, and, because the editors couldn't decide which quilt should be on the cover, they asked for readers' help, and so you've seen a little glimpse of it. Well, allow me to give you a much larger look!

Apparently it was down to the final day for voting when the winning cover quilt (and I quote), 'just squeezed by yours'. Sigh. Ah well, the one that squeezed by is beautiful, and 'in the wild' too! Knowing that my quilt came so close makes me happy, and having heard from so many of you that you'd voted for it warms my heart. I worked my heart out on the quilting of this baby.

And, a warm welcome to TGIFF, where we celebrate fully finally finished quilts! This isn't for UFOs or in-process quilts; it's a finish party, so let's par-tay and I'll show you mine if you show me yours. 😉

Champs et Lacs

In other words, Fields (or Meadows) and Lakes. This quilt needs a French name because it is going to a dear friend who is French. It is the Meadow Mystery designed by Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs. It was a QAL back in 2016/17 in which I participated, but I hadn't quilted it until now.

It was done on Friday, but I knew we were going into the city, Windsor, on Saturday, so I wanted to get a glamour shot of it on the Detroit River, downtown Detroit in the background. The day was beautiful for a photo shoot, but as per usual, there was a bit of a wind by the water. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and how well the Warm n Natural 100% cotton batting shows off the quilting. Can I say just how much I love these fabrics and these colours? No, they are not batiks but they sure have the hand-dyed painterly look to them don't they?

Summer Stars

Last summer I participated in a QAL called Sweet Star QAL. It was a sort of DrEAMi, in that I started in almost at the halfway point, and I had no business taking on another project, but it sort of consumed me, as those squirrels do. The best part was that I finally had found a pattern for my Blueberry Park stack of fat quarters that I'd bought a few years ago at Craftsy (who are back, which I'm sure you know, and as Craftsy, and it's "watch whatever you want for the next 45 days" event to celebrate their return). We made four blocks a week, and I had such fun combining various fabrics to make the blocks. I love the blues and greens with a bit of yellow and gold thrown in. Once the top was done, I behaved and got myself back on track with deadlines and commitments.

Couldn't you just snuggle up with a good book in that oasis? Well maybe not; it was rather hot and humid! Still, it evokes the idea, and one could sit on top of the quilt there and read...  Our Sweet Autumn clematis is absolutely stunning and its heavenly scent pervades that entire area, reminds me of jasmine in Florida in looks and scent. It cascades down either side of the fence. There's another small one, but we think it hasn't gotten enough sun since the cannas, mandevilla vine, barberry and elephant ears have filled in all around and above it. Note for next year!

Q1FAL Results and Q2FAL Projections

This year the format is different for the Finish Along; it's all on Instagram. For the first quarter, I linked up the following projects at #2020falq1list:

Well, I didn't do so well. At all. Out of eight projects, I finished (clockwise from top left) three. And, I didn't even know about the rules for @finishalong on my finishes, so ha, no prizes for me.

La Vie En Rose

I am pleased to have yet another item finished, a large one, and checked off the Q4FAL List, which is here. I've had it done for a couple of days, but the sun did not cooperate for photos until today. This quilt is for my daughter, Brianne, the one who doesn't like quilts, same daughter who got me started in quilting when she, at the age of 8, basically forced me to make a quilt block to enter in a draw for all the blocks turned in, and yeah, I won. So I had to learn how to make a quilt. That first quilt went to her. Since then I've made her one other, again in pinks with oranges, and now a third, again pinks. Yes, she's a pink-loving girl, always has been.

I collected the fabrics over the course of about a year. That was oh, three years ago... thinking it would be for her then new home. Now she's in her new house (for over a year, oops) so this is like a happy new forever home quilt.
Yeah we got snow...set a record for amount, earliest, and coldest overnight temperature that fateful day. And it's been cold all week.

Nana's Closet

I have another item checked off my Q4FAL list! This is now the last of four quilts I have made for each of my niece and three nephews. This last one came about after my mum passed away last year. Some time after the funeral, I was gathering up the quilts that I'd made her, and my nephew Dray wanted to keep some stuff I'd made. A conversation ensued and an idea was born: for his quilt he could choose some of Nana's clothes and I'd make his quilt with them. One of her favourite plush throws was draped over the back of the loveseat, and I said I could use it as the backing if he liked. He thought that was a good idea. So last summer, he and my sister Linda, his mum, went through Mum's stuff and chose several pieces. Here is what they became.