English Paper Piecing.

     Here is a quick update on my progress with my hexagons. I've worked on hexy projects before but never finished them, so I decided to keep this one simple and small.  I decided to make a  EPP travel sewing kit that I found in the book, "Quiltopedia" by Laura Jane Taylor which I took out of my local library.

     The sewing kit is 10" by 13".  As my hexies were a different size than hers I lined them up on the cutting mat to see if I had enough.  I'm pleased to say I do.  Now I get to figure out how I'd like them arranged  (this is definitely not it )and I can start sewing them together.  Linking up to the Monday Morning Star Count at Life Under Quilts

Where did September Go?

     Hello everyone.  I have been missing in blog land for a while.  It's been an interesting month but not one for getting a lot of quilting done.  At the beginning of the month I got sick.  Nothing serious just a combination of allergies and a lingering virus that have zapped my energy.  By the time I get through the work day I don't have a lot of energy left....but the energy is coming back, along with the beautiful fall weather we have been having.  This truly is my favourite time of year.  Even with ragweed!
   
     The weekends have been pretty busy as well.  Last weekend was my birthday and I had lots of fun family time....a walk in Elora, a visit to a local quilt shop to use my 20% off birthday card and dinner with my husband, our daughter and our son and his  wife in the town that they live in.
     We have been looking for a large table for the sewing room that we could work on dropping the sewing machine down into.  Dwight found one at the local St. Vincent de Paul store for $35.
It's deeper than my old table so I had to refigure the furniture and move the bookshelf that holds the stash.  This of course meant taking everything out of it and resorting the stash.   It takes hours but it is so satisfying.  Since this picture was taken we've added a little home audio system.  I can listen to my C.D.s or the radio when I'm sewing.  You can also hook up a phone, an ipod or an ipad to this gizmo but I've not caught up to the current era and don't own these things.   Yet!!!

     I did manage to start and catch up with the letters sew along at the Temecula Quilt Company.  Thanks Tanya for sharing this.  It's  a fun little project to fit into the day.

     I also finished my Mod Blocks Runner.  Just like the pattern I used straight line quilting an inch apart,  I threw in the odd extra line at a half inch.  My nod to originality.   I backed it with some Indian? African? fabric I've had in the stash for about 10years.  I'm really happy to have used it and I think it complements the front quite well. It's three different fabrics pieced together.   The binding fabric had been in the stash for ever as well.  Today for Slow Stitching Sunday I'll be hand stitching the binding to the back.

     And if I get lonely I'm sure a certain somebody will be on hand to keep me company.

     Later today we are going in to the big city to join friends for dinner and before hand I'm checking out the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild's monthly meeting. It should be an interesting afternoon.

     

A Little Focus Needed

     I am one of those quilters who works on a whole bunch of projects at once.  For the most part I'm fine with this but sometimes the amount of unfinished work feels overwhelming.  This is the last month for the 3rd quarter finish along and my attention has gone all over the place but not rested much on my goals.  So on the weekend I decided I better focus on at least one of my goals.   I  chose to focus on the Mod Blocks table runner ( Pattern by Lynne Goldsworthy from lilysquilts.blogspot.com  ) and I gave myself the goal of finishing all the blocks and squaring them up.

So this is the amount I had done before this weekend 

 which  became this

which then became this

So all that's left of this project is to quilt it and add the binding.  I think I can get it done. Yay!  I'm linking up to Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Qults and at WIP Wednesdays at The Needle and Thread Network.  and because so many people were asking , it's a fat eights pack of Oakshott cottons.

Some FMQ Practice

     I haven't had a lot of time to quilt over the last two weeks but what little time I had I spent doodling around with free motion quilting.  Last week Chantal asked me to share pictures of the FMQ so here they are.

      In the spring I picked up the book "First Steps to Free-Motion Quilting "by Christina Cameli.  What I like about this book is that she has simple projects that you can start practicing on.  One of the beginner projects is a bowl that you start by tracing an outline of a circle and then fmq a spiral starting in the middle. Although it is listed as a beginner project I had my doubts that a free motion spiral would be easy, although to her credit she says you can use any pattern you are comfortable with.    Here is a picture of one of the two spirals I worked on.  It started out o.k. in the middle but definitely got more difficult as the spiral got larger.

     Although I wasn't totally satisfied with this spiral I was having a lot of fun so pulled out a practice sandwich and started playing around.  Here is a sampling of the results.

    My practicing seemed to be going pretty well.  My comfort level has gone up quite a bit.  I'm very happy with the pebbles.   Christina includes a pattern for a pillow using a pebble design so I will most likely work on that in future .  There are quite a few projects in her book that I think would be great little projects to practice on.

      I moved on to something functional but simple.  I work in a store and we often put out samples for customers on wooden t.v. trays.  Over time the trays have gotten scratched so I decided to make mats to cover the scratches.  My boss asked for a food theme and I happened to have some apple fabric  in the stash bought for a project I never got around to. Here's a close up of the quilting on one of them.  It's a simple edge to edge pattern included in the book.

    These were not the most exciting projects but definitely   low investment so good for practice.  I just might get to  putting the binding on these little mats today in which case I will be hand stitching some binding, or I may hand baste a few more hexies. Here are the latest additions to my growing hexie pile.

     These bring the count up to 25.  Once again linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathysquilts and the Monday Morning Star Count at Life Under Quilts