Cats and More Cats

   On Saturday my local guild held a workshop with Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts.  It was a lot of fun. Lorna ran the workshop by letting us all choose one of her patterns. We all worked on our own pattern and Lorna walked around the room and helped us out as needed.  Lorna is a lot of fun she has a great casual style and fun sense of humour.
     
      I know you would love to see lots of pictures from the workshop but of course I forgot to bring my camera.  There is just so much you have to get ready for a workshop it's hard to remember everything.   You can check out Kathy's blog Kathy's Quilts as she remembered her camera and I'm sure there will be lots of photos there.  There might even be a group photo.  If you see me in that photo and I'm holding a block you may notice that I sewed the wrong tail on my animal as I was hurrying to finish a block for the photo.

    I chose to work on the pattern Cat Treats. This is what I managed to accomplish at the workshop.  Two nice chocolate kitties made of brown stamped batiks and grey dots.  My friend Wendy also worked on the Cat Treat pattern. She altered the pattern slightly to incorporate the fabrics from the cat bodies to their heads.  I liked this alteration so I copied it of course.

      And I did these since the workshop.  I love the stripes and the men's wear light bits on these two.

     And these two as well.  The one on the right is representative of my cat Benni.

     Here's a photo of Benni.  Can you see the resemblance?  I included the orange triangle to differentiate the head from the body, although Benni does have some orange spots on the back of his neck.

      I bring my older, smaller machine with me to workshops, and also when I get together with friends to sew.  I think I'll keep this project to work on when we next get together.  There are 6 more cats to sew and 12 fishbones each with a lot of little pieces.  I wonder how long it will take me to finish it.  I'm linking up late to Main Crush Monday held at Beth's Blog and on Wednesday to  Let's Bee Social at Lorna's Blog.

Progress

     I've continued to be busy in October with Canadian Thanksgiving and other commitments but I did manage to piece the backing for the Disappearing Nine Patch and I have started on the quilting.   Proof positive that I'm on my way.

     I've gotten the quilt about half way quilted This is my first time quilting all over boxy squares and I have to say that straight  lines are not my forte.  Which is of course why I am practicing them.  Every time I quilt with my home sewing machine I long for a table where I can drop the machine down into it because things get very weird at times when the quilt gets caught.

     I don't think I will manage to finish this goal this month but I'm happy I set it as my goal because at least I've started and I'm moving it closer to completion. I think I'll get it done about a week late.
     
     The reason I won't get it quite finished in time is that I will be going to a workshop on Saturday with Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts. Yay! That will use up one full day and there is also all the cutting to be done in advance.  I'll be making her Cat Treats Pattern and I'm looking forward to a fun day of sewing with friends.

     My original plan was to start my cutting on Sunday but when I pulled the material out to start I hated it.  Has that ever happened to you?   I bought the material a while ago and I've seen it together and thought it was fine but when I went to cut it I decided it wasn't going to work.   I even took the background fabric to my living room to assess things and I still didn't like it.  

     This made a trip to the local quilt shop necessary to replace the background fabric.   I settled on a lighter green that I thought would work better and of course while I was there I kept seeing fat quarters that I liked with it that I thought would look great as cats so  I've pretty much revamped the whole quilt and here's what I ended up with.  Two of these fabrics were in my original pile.

     Dark cat fabrics in the top row and light cat fabrics on the bottom row.  I'm happy with this arrangement and think the quilt will look great in my living room. The plan is to have lots of quilts in the living room to keep the actual cat from further destroying the furniture.

     I'm linking this post to all the others at Let's Bee Social.  I'll see you on Saturday Lorna.  Looking forward to it.

Catching Up

     Life seems to have settled down somewhat since the busyness of September and I have found a bit more time to catch up on my quilting.  I have finished the September work for the Meadow Mystery Quilt Along.  This gives me almost three weeks to get the October piecing done before Cheryl gives us the November instructions on November 3rd.  As far as I'm concerned that means I'm caught up.  Note the other hsts are done as well, I just didn't put them in the photo.

     See those little brown and cream 1/2 square triangles in the middle of the block? Those are 1/2 square triangles for the Mod Bear Paw quilt along.  I will likely never catch up with that quilt along but I'm happily piecing along at my own pace.  Maybe I'll have my top together by the final linkup and if I'm lucky maybe Lorna will let us link up our completed tops.
    
      I would like to give a shout out to Raewyn of Stitching Farm Girl  who shared a link to making 8 hsts at a time which I am now using.  I've very happy for this.  Thank you Raewyn.

     I also finished my October block for Stash Bee Hive 8.  This one is going to the other Lisa in my Hive.

     It's a really pretty block.  It was very easy to sew together but tricky to find just the right fabrics to put into it and to arrange them in a pleasing manner.  I've really enjoyed being in the bee.  It was sometimes challenging, but lots of fun trying out the different blocks my fellow members asked for.  It was also so exciting to have my blocks all arrive at my house over one month!

     If you are interested in joining Stash Bee for 2017 the sign up is on November 1st. 

I'm linking this post up to Main Crush Monday hosted by Beth of Cooking Up Quilts.
     

     

Part Two Of the Summer of Luck

     When I posted here about my summer of luck I promised to share the rest of my goodies when I received them. Well that time is now.  Oodles of fabric goodness arrived in my house during September.  Here it is October and I've taken until now to post about it.

     I received a gift card for Sew Sisters for a ThrowBack Thursday blog post.  I wasted no time at all choosing these beautiful low volume prints to add to my stash.

     The one on the right is Anna Maria Horner and the two on the left are Carolyn Freidlander.  Here's a closeup so you can see the design on the middle fabric.

     Isn't it divine!  I love Carolyn Friedlander's graphic prints and Anna Maria Horner has always been one of my favourites.

    I also won a Gift Certificate for Canadian National Fabric during Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts Week of Giveaways.  It was a pretty big gift certificate so I picked up lots here.

First up is  2 1/2 yards of a Colorworks solid which I'll use for a background for a community outreach donation quilt.  The beautiful  fabric on the top is a 1/2 yard of Crystalia in Opal.  It's a pretty amazing fabric and I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun figuring out what to do with it.  It should get my creative juices going.

     

     Then  I picked  a 1/2 yard each of these two beauties.  They are On the Wing Wildflowers in Robins Egg and Suncatcher. Won't they look smashing together in a quilt.

      I'll also have fun playing around with these two Royal Retro fabrics.  That's green and blue grid on the left and Tear Drops multi on the right.

     And last but not least I picked up some more 1/2 yards to add to the low volume stash.  These two are from the Modern Background Paper collection by  Zen Chic.

     But wait that's not all.  I also won one of the link ups with 

for the Snowflake Shimmer quilt along held by Yvonne of Quilting Jetgirl  I won a pack of Aurifil Thread.  I love Aurifil thread so I was pretty excited to win this prize.

     The Color Story collection curated by Sharon Holland.  This is a really pretty and fun collection with  5 small spools of 50 weight on the top row and 5 small spools of 12 weight on the bottom.  I guess I'll be hand quilting eventually.

     We'll that's the haul from the Summer of Luck.  I feel really really lucky winning so many prizes this summer...may you be just as lucky.  I'm linking this post up to Molly Sparkles  Sunday Stash.  

Go Big or Go Home

     It's time to list the 4th Quarter Finish Along Goals and even though I only got 2 finishes done last quarter I am continuing with my usual list of too many things.  I like keeping my options open.  So the projects I'm dragging along from last quarter are:

1.  Charlotte's quilt

 2.  My Washi Tunic made of Knits.  All I have to do on this is hem it .

3. The disappearing Nine Patch

4. The Clamshell.

    New projects I'm adding to the list are:

5.  Broken Frames.

 6.  Snowflake Shimmer

    

      My friend Helen who blogs at Midget Gem Quilts is also hoping to finish her Snowflake Shimmer Quilt and she has challenged me to get mine done in December.  We'll be quilting along together so that should be fun.  Go Helen!

I'm joining the link up on Leanne's blog She Can Quilt.

What's on your list?

October Goal

     For my OMG for October I'm planning to quilt this quilt.

     If it looks familiar it's because it's been on the list before.  It's a comfort quilt for my guild and it's been waiting for me to quilt it for so long that I'm starting to sag under the weight of obligation.  So having successfully quilted the Rainbow Rose with an all over triangle design  I'm game to try this one with an all over boxy square design.  I'm linking up to the OMG link up with Heidi at Red Letter Quilts.

October is for Catching Up!

     We'll September whizzed by really quickly.  I was away from home on three of the four weekends.  I also joined a gym and have started going to Aquafit again.  The pace in the classes is pretty rigorous and I'm finding myself tired as I adjust to the new level of activity. Cyndy and Wendy have told me that's normal at the beginning.  I certainly hope so.

     What all this means of course is that I have fallen behind on my quilting and blogging goals, but it's a new month and October promises to be a little less busy.  I've been using these first early days of October to catch up.

     On Wednesday Wendy and I will be delivering this group of  colourful quilts to the sexual assault unit.  You can read a bit more about this program in the tab comfort quilts at the top of the post.

     I took advantage of the clear skies to take photos of each individual quilt for our records, and I will be ironing labels on to each quilt later today.  These quilts were made by members of The Royal City Quilters Guild.  I did not make any of these quilts but will have two quilts in the next batch, including my Rainbow Rose quilt.

     On Saturday Wendy, Cyndy and I got together for a day of sewing and I worked on some blocks for a group quilt for the small modern group. Yesterday I spent some time playing catch up on the Meadow Mystery by cutting the fabric.  The Meadow Mystery is a Quilt Along run by Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs.  She is a wonderful pattern designer and if you would like to have a chance to win two of her newest patterns you can go here.

     I felt so happy as I cut this fabric which I suppose is because I love the fabric so much, but it could also be because I made it to Ken's meditation group in the morning where the focus was on being observant of the simple good things that we experience in our lives. 

     My goals for this week are to catch up with the Meadow Mystery and to figure out 8 at a time 1/2 square triangles so I can make some progress on the Mod Bear Paw that Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts is holding.  I'm linking this post to Main Crush Monday hosted by Beth of Cooking Up Quilts.