All posts by Sherry

Celtic Crystals

Quilting

I was going through some files on my computer and realized I had never featured my Celtic Crystals quilt. This surprises me as it is probably my most ambitious quilt to date (and it may not ever be topped).

Centre Medallion (Click to enlarge)

 

This was a block of the month that I purchased from one of our local quilt shops (no longer in business). Of course I didn’t keep up with those blocks. A quick look through previous posts says that I finished Block 1 in September of 2013 – it was pretty much downhill from there! I remember that the block didn’t finish to the right size and it had to be taken apart and redone – no wonder I was put off the whole thing.

 

The quilt is done entirely in batiks; I love the colours in batiks but it isn’t my favourite fabric to work with. I pre-washed all the fabric but I did it all in one batch so I worried for most of the piecing that I had enough of the right colours to finish all the blocks, and that I was using the right colours in each block. I needn’t have worried as I had lots of fabric left.

Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge

 

I was able to find some post from Superior Threads that showed how they quilted each block. Although I wasn’t able to follow their exact plan it certainly gave me some inspiration and courage to attempt a few new designs.

 

 

 

The quilt hung in the 2017 Quilt Show and now has a permanent place in my stitching room on Texada. And it wasn’t until our Christmas trip that I noticed I had put something together wrong. Too late to change it – do you see the problem?

 

Home day

Journal

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Although there were errands I could have done today I chose to leave them all and spend the entire day at home.

I spent all morning going through some files on my computer. That led to some updates to my website, as well as getting pages ready for my Project Book. I’m so glad Stacia got me started doing those pages. I don’t have a colour printer anymore so I create pages as PDFs and have them printed at Staples. I hadn’t done a printing update since March last year so I decided to send my order in rather than go to the store and print the pages myself. They were ready earlier this afternoon but, as I said, I decided I wasn’t going out.

I thought I might get everything set up out on the deck and sandwich a quilt but when I stuck my nose out the door it felt cold so I decided that task could wait for a nicer day. I planned to spray baste the sandwich (before adding the pins) and I wasn’t sure how things would stick in the colder (and damp) weather. It is raining now so perhaps it was just as well I didn’t get started.

There were no shortage of other things to do. I have a miniature meeting at the Guild on Tuesday and my project was barely started. I’m using a different technique in order to get a certain look that I want – with one row finished I’m not sure the look is going to be right but there is no way I’m going to start over. Think miniature – half inch squares in some spots!

Beach Blanket Bingo

Quilting
Finished Size (50″ x 60″)

The idea for this originated with a Guild Christmas Party. We were all handed 25-patch blocks and we proceeded to play a game of Bingo with them. The calls were “birds in red fabric”, “snowflakes on blue fabric”, etc. I didn’t win any games, but I came home with an idea of making a Bingo quilt. I thought it would be fun to play at the beach using seashells as our Bingo markers.

I decided on columns of red, blue, green, yellow and orange for my 25-patch blocks, all from my scraps. It was taking a long time and I was running out of scraps of the right colour but with different patterns. When I had grandkids here over the summer I had enough blocks that we were able to play a “trial game”. The trial failed miserably and I set it all aside.

When an opportunity arose to try my hand with a long-arm quilting machine I quickly put together enough blocks, in no particular order or colour, for a fast finish. It took about three hours to quilt on the long-arm and setting up the machine took at least an hour of that time. Although it was fast to complete the quilting, the long-arm will take as much practice as free-motion quilting on my own machine to get anything that looks good enough to use as either a donation or gift.

This is my first finish of 2018! I’ll throw it in the car for sunny days at the beach but until summer I’ll use it to keep myself warm when we watch TV. It is small enough that I can wrap my legs in it and still be able to knit.

And who knows – it looks to me like it would make an awesome “I Spy” game.

Where has the day gone?

Journal

Friday, January 5, 2018

I knew I had a busy day planned but I didn’t think the day would be completely gone before I was finished all my tasks!

Before heading out for my cleaning gig at the Hall I loaded up my cans and bottles, as well as my recycling for the depot. The trunk of my car was full of bottles and the back seat was full of cardboard, styrofoam and plastics, as well as a big bag of shredded paper.

The Hall cleaning came first. I’ve only done it once before so I don’t have the routine down as well as our regular cleaner – she takes two hours but I took closer to three. There is so much debris tracked in at this time of year and neither the broom, the mop or the vacuum seem to be able to rein in the pine needles. There was still a bit of snow on the deck so I shovelled it off; it was raining out but I thought it would disappear faster if it was thrown out onto the driveway.

I stopped at the bank and Canadian Tire on my way to the recycling depot. I am donating our Tassimo to the Guild and I wanted to purchase some pods for it so I could make sure the machine was still working. I had to pick up something else at Canadian Tire so I decided to get the pods there rather than make another stop. After the recycling depot I was off to the bottle depot – it seemed like a lot of cans and bottles for only $5! Just as I was leaving the bottle depot the gas light on my car came on – I had planned to make that stop next anyway.

It was almost two before I was home. I had a nice long chat with Stacia and then did a bit of cleaning in my own house. My wrists are sore from all the mopping, wringing and overall use – hopefully they will still allow me to do some knitting this evening.