Merry Grinchmas!

Late last fall my cousin Susan sent me a photo of a Grinch quilt she had seen online somewhere and asked if I could make this for her and she would pay me. She watches my Etsy shop and has bought a makeup bag from me, and I sent her a mug cosy as a surprise a while back. I said I believed I could but it would take a bit of time… Christmas was coming and all that that involves.

Well, I’m very happy to have finally fulfilled this request!

About as Christmassy a picture I can get in front of our cedar tree!

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!

Patchy Pumpkin Farm Quilt

It's been a little while since I had a finished quilt to share, but I have one today! Some of you may already have seen it yesterday on Instagram, since I needed to post it there to qualify for the prizes for the second quarter of Leanne's #wipsbgone2022. It's an adorable design from Brittany of White Plains Quilts that I first saw on Instagram.

As soon as I saw this quilt, I thought of Brianne, my eldest. She loves the old farm truck image, and she loves fall. So I sent her the Instagram post. She loved it. As in loved it so much she asked me to please make it for her, "and Mom? (she insists on the 'o', though I am and always have been 'Mum') I never ask for a quilt, but I am asking for this one, so that should tell you how much I want it."

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.

Captiva Meadow for Just One Charm Pack Blog Hop

Welcome to my stop on Cheryl's second book release blog hop! I am so happy to be a part of her book release hop once again. This new book is just the ticket for those of us who have a charm pack (or ten) hanging around. All you need is what the title says, "just one", and a little bit of yardage to make any of the wonderful quilts in the book. I chose to make Blossom Chains.

I love designs that make your eye fly over a quilt. I also immediately saw the large plus-shape negative space between the diagonals and zip! knew I would do a little fancy quilting in there. You can hop over to Cheryl's blog, Meadow Mist Designs, to get links to all the stops on the hop. Links to purchase her book are at the end of this post.

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. 😉

Rainbow Way

I am so pleased to present my Rainbow Way quilt which was one of my 2019 RSC projects. This quilt pattern was in McCall's Quick Quilts August/September 2018, though the original was done all in greens.

I am also glad we had another beautiful sunny day, albeit with the coldest to date overnight low of -10C. One good thing about that is that I got to use a new colour in my temperature quilt! Time is running out for me to run fresh new quilts down to this lake lot for photographing: it has been sold, as I mentioned a while ago, and they've been doing a lot of work to fortify the shoreline at the bottom of the cliff, which you can see from the above photo.

Spill the tea! and OMG

When I was teaching, I was right on top of pop culture thanks to my students. Nowadays, my daughters and grandson keep me informed, along with social media, music, and TV to some extent. It was on Molli Sparkles' blog where I first heard the expression 'truth tea' several years ago. Then my daughter Brianne was using the expression, 'I've got tea' to mean I've got some juicy news/gossip, and 'Spill the tea' which means, tell me all. She it was who asked me to make her a tea cosy. Remember this is my non-quilting-loving daughter. Over the past year or so, she has been requesting quilts-(but not quilty, mind you) related items, or giving me suggestions for Etsy shop items. With the Alberta frigid temperatures of a week ago (and today they're balmy out there; welcome to life on the prairies) she was drinking more tea. Instead of making it in a cup, she was using her teapot, and requested a cosy to keep the tea warm. She had the idea to put these tea sayings on it and sell some in my shop. So of course, instead of continuing, wait, going back to, working on my magazine quilt (remember Pumpkin Season interrupted it) I chased this very tempting squirrel over this past weekend. And caught it.

Avril Has a Jacket

Long overdue is a proper cover for Avril, my longarm, but she will wait no more.

This is my project for October's challenge, thread painting.

All of the fabrics except for the lining fabric were supplied by Island Batik. The gorgeous threads were supplied by Aurifil, except for the grey which is my own purchase, the batting by Hobbs Batting, and the machine needles by Schmetz Needles. Our challenge was to enhance our quilting or shade areas of quilt for effect, add shapes or dimension. Several months ago we had to pick six spools of thread to coordinate with the line we'd been given for this challenge. Mine was Nouveau Soul by Kathy Engle, some of which you saw last month in my Back at Ya backpack. We'd been given the same line to make our bag.

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!

Fly High!

I am so pleased to have this long-awaited UFO done and checked off the FAL List. It's been on that list for over two years!

The block is one by Deb Tucker, called Migrating Geese. I followed this tutorial, making it as one of my RSC 2017 projects, but doing my own layout. Each month I made one row of the geese.

Nancy's Quilt

This is Nancy's quilt, my first quilt customer. Nancy is yet another yoga student, former teacher, speaks French, sews, and is a newer quilter. She wanted to make a quilt for her new nephew who lives in England. She showed me the fabrics she'd collected, beautiful blues and greens, from several quilt shops. She said that was her favourite part, was gathering the fabrics! She's smitten for sure.

TGIFF! and My Mother's Lilacs

Welcome to my blog and my turn to host TGIFF! If you would like to be a host it is easy-peasy: you can sign up here! If you're new to my blog, I hope you'll poke around a bit, maybe even investigate my current ongoing QAL, Beothuk Star.
For those of you who read this post and it wasn't then the TGIFF post, don't be confused. My originally planned finish did not quite get finished due to a bunch of real life happenings, but this post was only published hours before, so with the approval of the monthly manager, Anja of Anja Quilts, I am using this post to host. Did you follow all that?!😜 With any luck I'll link up the originally planned one with my own linky party!

My finish was actually a finish back in February, but I couldn't tell anyone...

However, I can now, so it is finally time to show you my latest publication in all her glory and intricate detail. There will be lots of pictures, but then you know me, that's how I usually roll! And, in keeping with how I roll, there's a pretty amazing story to go with the making of this quilt.

I named this quilt 'My Mother's Lilacs', as it is a tribute to my mother in design and in fabric. I designed it back in September 2018 when we Island Batik ambassadors got a call for submissions for the May/June issue of McCall's Quilting with the theme of mothers in mind. I submitted it. And.

It didn't get accepted. I was disappointed as I thought it a perfect tribute: block, fabric and issue, being one year to the very month since my mum had died. A year later I still can't say that without tearing up, can barely write it. Just doesn't seem real. I think being so far away exacerbates that 'can't be real; she's still there, in her house' feeling.

But then! Round about the beginning of December I got an email out of the blue saying they'd like to use my quilt for the July/August issue and could I get it made by mid-February? Yikes! .......  Yup!

Pasque Star Finish

You may wonder why I call this Pasque Star. I wanted a reference to the pink, and yeah, I know pasque flowers are more of a soft purple, but pasque is a reference to Pâques, which is Easter in French, I made this quilt around Easter, it's Spring, and it just reminds me of those soft, early prairie crocus, as they are also called. (photo from Canadian Wildlife Federation)

I used to grow them in my garden in Alberta. Sadly I am too far south now in Canada for them to grow here, though here we have wild violets galore and snowdrops in early spring!

Here it is on that perfect fence for hanging small quilts, in front of our barberry that's leafing out so nicely!
Note that Island Batik supplied all the fabric for this quilt, Hobbs Batting supplied the batting, and Aurifil supplied the thread. And! The quilt was made with the AccuQuilt Go! Cube 8" dies and 2.5" strip die, both supplied by AccuQuilt!

Oh! The Places You'll Go! Finish!

My first finish for 2019 is a wrap! This is also a goal on my Q1FAL. My list is here.

It's not the greatest of photos, but let's just say my trusty quilt-holder was a little exasperated that a quilt put us behind schedule...
This is the quilt I made as my final challenge for being a 2018 Island Batik Ambassador, a position that has really helped me grow as a designer. I am so grateful for being accepted as an ambassador, I'm honoured to have been able to showcase these rich beautiful fabrics, I'm happy to have made new friends, and excited to have been offered new opportunities. Most of all, I am still in awe of receiving such beautiful fabrics from Island Batik, gorgeous threads from Aurifil, and wonderful batting from Hobbs Batting. All shine in this quilt. I'm also super-excited to start my second year as an ambassador in February!

Throwback Thursday #10 Sunny Days

Since I am feeling a little down with the departure of sweet Brady and his mom, (ya she spells it that way) yesterday afternoon, I thought this would be an à propos post. First of all, please note that Andrée has graciously offered to host a couple of TBT's this last half of the year, and so October and December, the linky will be on her blog, Quilting & Learning - what a combo. Thanks so much, Andrée! If you are at all into the Fab Four, aka The Beatles, you might want to hop over and check out her post today. 😁

Here's my Sunny Days quilt, a quilt that was originally intended for Baby Brady, before we knew he'd be a he!

A couple of firsts happened with this quilt.

Lift Up

This is finally my finish for the June Challenge for us Island Batik ambassadors, and I believe it's my favourite quilt this year that I've made for them!

We were to create a modern quilt, using one or more elements as defined by the MQG:
The Modern Quilt Guild states, “Modern quilts are primarily functional and inspired by modern design. Modern quilters work in different styles and define modern quilting in different ways, but several characteristics often appear which may help identify a modern quilt. These include, but are not limited to: the use of bold colors and prints, high contrast and graphic areas of solid color, improvisational piecing, minimalism, expansive negative space, and alternate grid work. "Modern traditionalism" or the updating of classic quilt designs is also often seen in modern quilting.”

This is one of my designs I created while in the #30quiltdesignschallenge2018 hosted by moi in the spring. It is truly a rush to have something you drew on paper, or on a computer come to life in fabric.

Shoot For the Moon

Well this has been a LONG time coming.  Three, maybe four times on goals -alongs, both OMG and the 2016 Finish Along.  She's finally done!  This is the first goal on my Q3FAL List.

It was a hot 80-degree day here in Ohio (yes you read that right)  when I took these photos.

Tish took a bunch too.  Yep you read that right too!

What is going on?

We are here:

At the very first Quilt Bloggers International Retreat in Gnadenhutten Ohio!  It was a wonderful first day. :-)  But that's another post or two.  This one is to show you Dayna's quilt.  Hold onto your Olfa rotary cutters, there's several pics coming up:

Judy at Quilt Paradigm gave me the idea for most of the centres of the stars, a Spirograph type design with such movement! Swoops in the star points, swirls and pebbles and then some dot to dot in the star shadows completed the lightest blocks.

These got a Judi Madsen design in the stars, Matrix by Leah Day and the dot to dot.

More of the spirograph (Angela Walters does a similar one), and dot to dot.  So glad I used Quilter's Dream Wool batting!

The quilt surprised me when I was drawing it out on clear vinyl (at full size), trying out various designs.  It was no surprise to see how much negative space there was to fill; the surprise was realizing the centre was not a square, and it was offset.

It's rectangular! A checkerboard design and dot to dot and feathers designs both of Kathleen Riggins' (Kathleen Quilts) filled in this area

There is quite the story to go with this quilt, but I will write it all another time, when I can devote my all to the telling.  I want to post this by the deadline (tomorrow) for the Q3FAL, and as I will be cruising around Amish country, shopping and lunching and wining and dining and soaking up every fabulous minutes with blogger girlfriends like Tish, Julie, Beth, Jennifer, and don't forget Dave the Quilt Engineer, I won't have time...

I hope to get some better photos (Tish has some with her good camera I'm sure) for that post.  Here are a few more from this afternoon:

The lower left corner so you can see the designs I did in the chevron border and the final two borders, which I treated as one, doing a fancy feather design of Angela's she teaches in her borders class on Craftsy. The brackets border highlighted with matchstick quilting is also Angela's as is the "windy" (my term) swirls border between the star blocks.

The block is designed by Judy Martin but the quilt is my own design.  I may be writing up the pattern...

I got the white wide backing, as well as the medium purple in the second last border, last summer at Zinck's when I was here visiting Julie! You can read about that trip here and here.  Because Dayna said, "You are going to make it bigger right?" when I gave it to her as a flimsy, on her grad in May 2015 from Wayne State University, (and I did make it bigger), I didn't have enough of the backing.  Inspiration struck when I had various pieces left from making the stars, and a strip insert was concocted and inserted.  I love the effect.

Stylized moon in the upper left corner, kind of a henna swirls design - more on that in the full story post

Julie and I held onto the quilt while Tish snapped a few pics from below.  Julie has a great hillside bungalow with a perfect wall from which to hang large quilts such as this one which measures somewhere around 94" square!

We'd stood on a bench in order to reach up and hang onto the quilt, and when Tish joined us up there, she saw a perfect setup for a final shot or two:

I am so happy with how this turned out!

Linking up with:

She Can Quilt

Crazy Mom Quilts

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

TGIFF at Georgia Girl Quilts

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