Happy New Year

     Happy New Year to all my quilting buddies.  Here's wishing you many hours at your sewing machines or with your needle and thread in 2015.  As I write this, these little babies are slowly making their way to Australia where they will be joined with other blocks to be made into quilts for the  families of the victims of the hostage taking in the Lindt cafe in Sydney Australia.  Thanks to Mollie Sparkles for organizing this.  You can read more about this here.  

     These two little blocks are the only things I managed to complete in December.  Yes this means I did not complete my December goal....but I did make progress so that's a positive.  I'm setting my December project aside for now as I  really want to work on my free motion quilting.   It seems to work out better for me if I concentrate on the fmq for stretches, rather than trying to fit it in around other things.  So my January goal is the finish the Giant Chevron Quilt.

     I have to say that I've loved working on this quilt since I joined the Giant Chevron fmq along with Jess at Elven Garden Quilts.  The quilt along wraps up at the end of the month so I would really love to have my quilt finished.

     In this picture you can see some of the spiral quilting I worked on yesterday.  I had a lot of fun quilting these spirals which sort of look like cinnamon buns in my case.  The next pattern is another straight line pattern.  I find those harder to do but I'm up for it.  Linking up with Shana at Fibre of All Sorts.  Good luck with your January goals everyone.

     

Swooning Along

     I've made some progress on my Swoon Quilt and I'm really happy that I picked this project for my December finish.

     You can see that I've got the short sashing done between the blocks and one long sashing strip attached to the bottom of the top row.  This of course was the easy part.  Now I have to mark the seams on the back of the sashing to match them up with row two.  I'm waiting till I have time during the day later in the week for this.  I don't like having to think too hard when I sew in the evenings.  I was reading an article about the Pantone colour for 2015 and the article mentioned the colours for the last three years.  You can see by the tangerine in my blocks that I started this quilt in 2012.

     For evening sewing I've got this little project.  My larger traditional guild is having a show this Spring, and the small Modern Group which is a part of this guild is putting in a collection.  We are each making a "modern"  mini or wall hanging .  To have the collection fit together we decided to have everyone use a grey solid somewhere in their quilt.  I've been playing around with these improv pentagon blocks.

        I got the idea from a pillow top Susan posted on the Canadian Abroad blog.  Then I found the general directions in 15 minutes of play by Victoria Findley Wolfe. The blocks measure up at 6 1/2 inches and I've only got the two done so far. Not sure if I'll use them both in the quilt but I'm having lots of fun playing with my grey scraps!  I'm linking up with Lets Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, to W.I.P. Wednesday at Freshly Pieced, and one day late to Scraptastic Tuesday at She Can Quilt where Leanne is working on similar blocks.

Seeing hers I can see how I can make mine better.  I think mine are a bit too square.

Giant Chevron Free Motion Quilt Along Progress

     I've fallen hopelessly behind in the Giant Chevron FMQ Along over with Jess at Elven Garden Qults but  she's holding the final link up party at the end of January so I'm thinking positive thoughts about my abilities to catch up and finish the quilt by then..  Here's my attempt at the second pattern.  I'm not sure how well you can see this.

     I found the straight lines of the maze quilting difficult to do....but that's why I joined the quilt along in the first place...to encourage myself to try these kind of patterns.   

     When I got to the edge of my quilt sewing this pattern ,I discovered a mistake I made in the first row.   I managed to fold the edge of the backing underneath the quilt and sew it down with my quilting.  Yikes!  So now I get to unpick a lot of quilting and practise fixing it.

December Goal for a Year of Lovely Finishes

     I had great success with November's goal so I decided to go big in December and list finishing my Swoon Quilt as my goal.  It is the oldest unfinished project on my current list (definitely not my oldest unfinished project).  This may be crazy, given how busy December can be but I might squeeze in some sewing time just to keep myself sane.

     Here are two of the blocks.  All of the blocks have been finished for probably close to a year so I think it's time I figure out how to do the sashing.  I always balk when I have to learn something new.

     I'm looking forward to having this one done .  Done is better than perfect!

     I'm joining the goal setting party at  fibre of all sorts and as it's December 1st and I'm remembering it I'll link up at the small blog meet at lilysquilts.

I've got a Sunday Finish

          I am delighted to share that I have a Sunday Finish.  It was actually finished on Friday night but by the time it was done it was in the midst of winter dark and difficult to photograph.  So instead I'm sharing it with my Slow Stitching Sunday Friends.

     It's hanging on the clothesline in my backyard.  I'm pleased with the photo because it shows how luminous the Japanese fabrics are.  I love the fabrics in this quilt.  

     There were several challenges with making this quilt.  The first one was finding a backing fabric.  Japanese fabric is very expensive so I didn't want to back it with that but it was very hard to find a fabric that would blend well with it.  We finally found this fabric in the sale section of Sew Jax....bonus.  I'm not crazy about it as a fabric but it works really well to back this quilt.  The binding fabric was hanging around in my stash.   You can see some of the quilting in the photo below.  

     I'm not sure if I'll get any hand work done today maybe I'll put a few stitches in a shawl I am knitting, very slowly.  I did put in a lot of hand stitches this last week on the binding. 

This is my second finish for the 3rd quarter finish along over at the Littlest Thistle.  You can see my wish list here.  I'll be lucky if I manage to finish another.  It's also my November goalfor a Year of Lovely finishes, so I'm joining the linky party over at Fiber of all Sorts and I'm also posting with the Slow Sunday Stitchers over at Kathy's blog.

Hand Stitching Binding, Not

     Today I was hoping to share with you that I was hand stitching the binding on my large hexagon quilt.  However the quilting is taking me longer than I anticipated so instead I will be working on the sewing machine completing the quilting.

     I'm doing straight line stitching down both sides of the seams at about 3/8 s of an inch.  I may get to the hand stitching of the binding at some point today as I'm about 7/8 s finished  quilting.  I have to cut and sew the binding still.  It's a very wet and grey day here so working on this will be just the perfect activity.    I'm linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathy's Quilts.

     

Toronto Modern Guild Projects

     I'm going through a period this fall where I have very little energy.  This is making it hard for me to sew, even harder to blog but I just finished a  couple of little projects so I thought I would share them.

     In September I decided to check out the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild.  I live more or less in between Toronto and London which both have Modern Guilds but I go to Toronto more as my daughter, my niece and my aunt all live there.  It was a fun meeting and they handed out fabrics and asked  each of us to complete a star block which would all be combined to make a quilt.   You can read more about this here.   I made this block.

     It's based on an Amish pattern which I found in a library book and I'm sorry I've forgotten which book it was.  I had fun playing with the negative space.  I'm thinking of making a mini quilt of this block .  It's 16" square.

      Of course I had to go back to the next meeting to hand in my block so I joined the guild.

     The next project which is due at the November meeting is to make a pouch which will be traded with members of the Victoria Modern Quilt Guild.  This is a bit of a stretch for me because I don't tend to make things with zippers and shape and such.   I found a free pattern on Craftsy called the No Guts Box Pouch by So Chick.  I decided that I better make a prototype first so I made this version which I will give to one of my friends.

     This was a fairly tricky project but it worked out pretty well.  I had some issues with the tabs but I'm confident I can improve that .  I'm going to make two more out of oriental fabrics and then a more modern one to send across the country.  I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social  at Sew Fresh Quilts.