Slow Stitching in the County

     Dwight and I are visiting my sister in Prince Edward County this weekend.  It's the Maple Syrup festival weekend with lots to do  visiting local farms that tap for maple syrup.   This afternoon we are going to hear a talk from an arborist and go for a guided hike through the bush.  Should be fun.  Last night we went to Jackson Falls Inn for dinner and a concert with the Rockabilly Band Whoa Nellie.  If you ever get a chance to hear this band they are really a lot of fun.  They play a lot of Country Music from the 40's with a fast beat.

     There's plenty of quiet time here as well.  My sister lives out in the country side and there is no noise at all.  Here is the view out her back window.

     That's Lake Ontario just beyond the field.  

     I brought my E.P.P. with me to work on in the quiet times.  Today I'll be working on the background diamonds .  I've decided t go with Kona Snow.  Here's my latest star with the snowy diamonds ready to go.

     I'm joining the other Slow Stitchers at Kathy's blog.

Getting organized with Yellow

     You know when I joined the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last month I envisioned a life where I would work through my piles of scraps and get multiple little scrap blocks made.  I should have known better.  

      I am one of those people who spread my self very thin with lots of projects going on at the same time.  I work in a creative chaos which gets really out of hand some times.  When I looked at my sewing room last week it looked like a messy hoarder lives in there. Come to think of it maybe a messy hoarder does live there.  I'm not going to tell you about how my creative chaos spills into other parts of the house.  As I was to the point of tripping over things I decided to tidy and organize before moving onto my yellow scraps.  It always takes so  long but worth the effort as I have a nice room to work in now.

     So after organizing this:

     I managed to make this:

And this:

   Sorry the light was really bad when I took these two pictures.  The bottom points on the white maverick star are pretty tiny and get lost in the busy fabric, but I've decided it's part of the charm.  I was inspired to make the patchy maverick star by looking at other peoples posts.  

     I'm loving checking out everybody's posts and getting ideas for how to use up the scraps.  I'm  thinking the key to successful scrap busting is organization (not my strong point).  I've set myself some goals.  I'm going to try to make one medallion block, one large maverick star and one of those patchy blocks with the maverick stars that many of you are doing ......anything else will be bonus.  We'll see how I do.   You can share any wisdom you have regarding organization if you want.  But I can't promise I'll follow it.

     Today I'm getting together to sew with two of my friends.  I'm working on a comfort quilt for my guild.  I'll be working on this disappearing nine patch quilt.  I'll include a picture because there is some yellow in this quilt and the yellow in this quilt came from my scraps.

          I hope you all enjoy your quilting today.  I'm planning to.

   

My Challenge Quilt is finished.

     My March goal for A Year of Lovely Finishes was to spin these two fabrics into gold.

     These were the fabrics for our Guild Show challenge.  This is for the Royal City Quilters Guild.  The challenge was to make a quilt illustrating the theme of Nightscape  using these two fabrics and any other fabrics of our choosing.    The challenge fabrics had to be recognizable.  This was the second challenge I have completed for the Guild.  I like to add an additional challenge by trying out a technique that is new to me.

     I decided to make a circular motif along the lines of the dresden block.  I like piecing and I don't like to add a lot of bling.  When I was at the Toronto Modern Guild I saw  a sawblade star block made by Andrea and I knew it was what I wanted to make.  You can check her's out here.  It's very pretty.

    The pattern is from Fat Quarterly's Shape Workshop for quilters.  First I had to enlarge patterns and make plastic templates .  This was the first time I've used templates.  I sewed the individual blades together and then sewed half a circle.  This is what things looked like at this point.

     I was a little concerned as things were on a definite angle but I pressed ahead and soon I had two angled pieces. Whew.

     Here's the finished quilt.  It's 15 inches square.

     Here's a close up of the free motion quilting in the centre.  The rest is quilted with the walking foot (but not until after I tried more fmq which I spent hours ripping out!)

     Here's a picture of the back.

 

     I named it Cosmic Nightscape.  It's the third finish for the 1st Quarter Finish along.  I'm linking up to Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday over at Quilt Matters  and later in the month to a Year of Lovely Finishes at Fibre of All Sorts and to the 2015  1st Quarter Finish Along at On the Windy Side.  The original post for that is here.  And for those of you keeping track I was number 31 in the goal setting linky.

Yellow is the Colour

     When I typed the title of todays post an old Donovan (I think it's Donovan) song turned up in my head which I suppose really dates me , but it's such a pretty song.  "Yellow is the colour of my true loves hair, in the morning......etc.  Yellow is such a pretty colour.  
    
      I have not had a lot of time for sewing yellow scrappy blocks because my Guild challenge is due on Tuesday and I have been spending my time sewing it ,  figuring out how to quilt it and  practicing ,practicing,practicing. First on paper and then on a quilt sandwich as I am a fairly novice free motion quilter.  Here's a picture of a practice quilt motif for part of the quilt.  I should have practiced on yellow.

    

      Getting back to yellow.  Yellow is one of the colours of the challenge fabric and as my challenge piece is pretty small I will have lot's of leftovers to use in scraps later in the month. Yay!

     I do have one yellow block to share with you.  Last night when my brain was tired of all the fmq drawing and practice I decided to make a medallion block using Tanya's excellent tutorial.  Many of you have probably seen this already. I was pretty tired but I managed to  cut out all the fabric  for each of the 4 sub blocks that make up the big block, and to sew one sub block.  This morning I decided to quickly chain piece the other three.  Whoops!

     The block on the top left is pieced correctly and the other two are not. I can hear my mother whispering in my ear "haste makes waste"   The mistake happened back on log two.  So after some unsewing and resewing I finished the medallion block.

     I'm linking up to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge at So Scrappy, then I'm back to the Challenge.

Surrounded by Grey

     Well winter is dragging on and I'm sitting at home with what I hope is the last cold/flu of the season. 

         I'm linking up to Let's Bee Social with Lorna Sew Fresh Quilts. and to W.I.P. Wednesday at Freshly Pieced  with this winter like project I'd like some feed back on.  

     I've been exploring improvisational quilting and I put together this quilt.  The blocks finish at 6" so the quilt is 12 inches by 18 inches.  I'm not entirely happy with it.  I find it very busy and I'm thinking I might need to frame it with solid fabric.  I flipped it on to it's side.

     When I did that I really liked the way the four blocks on the left worked together so now I'm thinking of  keeping those blocks together but moving the two blocks on the right  over with solid fabric in between.  I'm also thinking of adding uneven borders of the same solid to offset  the improv blocks.  It's on the wall now with these greys but I'm wondering if I should add some more colour.  

     What do you think? 

     

     

March Goal

     Alas I did not manage to complete my February goal  for  "A Year of Lovely Finishes"  There is just something about this quilt that keeps it hanging on.  I did make some progress on it.  The sashing is done and I have purchased batting ....so I could possibly make my deadline for the "1st quarter finish along"....

     But on to this months goal.  My goal for this month is to spin this into gold.

     Well maybe not gold , but at least something worthy of entering into a guild challenge.  I've made some progress.  Here is a little pile on shapes sewn together.  The finished quilt has to be handed in on March 10th.

     I'm linking up to the March Goal setting linky party hosted jointly at Fibre of All Sorts and at Sew Bitter Sweet Designs.

More on the Star Front

     Well it's still cold and snowy so just the perfect weather for continuing on with the e.p.p. scrappy stars.   I've got these diamonds prepped and lined up ...

     They are ready to join these two stars .

     One day they'll link up and make a pretty quilt.  I need to decide on a background colour soon.  Any thoughts?  I'm linking up to Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts and to the Fresh Sewing Day and Small Blog meet ups at Lily's Quilts. Then I'll link up to the Monday Morning Star Count at Life Under Quilts.