Thursday, April 15, 2021

This started out as a calendar block from my Block-A-Day collection. I liked the block so much that I put four similar blocks together for a huge 16″ block.

It was intended to be a donation quilt but it was so much work that very early on Stacia and Deloise convinced me (not a hard sell) to keep it for myself. Pat’s birthday was coming up and I didn’t have a gift (or an idea of a gift) so I made the blocks into a long bed runner. Pat’s feet get cold at night so this might help to keep them warm.

It took a long time to finish and the quilting seemed to go on forever. It is probably the longest thing I have ever made but it is a nice size and hangs over both edges of our king-sized bed.

UPDATE: This went to Kathryn

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

It was challenging but after a day and a half I finally have my April postcard finished – flower baskets. I’m not happy with the contrast between the background and the baskets but I wasn’t about to spend another day on the project.

The quilting is a very simple straight line cross hatch; I eyeballed it rather than marked it.

By the time I got to the binding I was more than ready to be done so I used my machine to stitch down the binding. It is a technique I’ve wanted to use but I’ve never felt I did a very good job on it. Since this piece isn’t going to win any ribbons it seemed like a good spot to try it.

In hindsight I think a double-fold binding would have been easier to work with, not to mention a space that wasn’t so short from corner to corner.

Saturday, April 10, 2021

I built a castle today for That Fairy Quilt project. I’m having a little trouble with the pattern. In some cases my templates have the seam allowance added but some don’t. And sometimes I think the instructions are just wrong; after cutting a particular piece out two times (with seam allowance and without) it still wasn’t the right size. So I ended up figuring out what the rest of the pieces of the puzzle were and then reverse engineered what size the problem piece should be. If ever I needed a magic wand it is today.

My next step is turning a pumpkin into a carriage!

I finished the first row of this in June, 2015. It was a Guild project where we got a new row once a month. Needless to say I fell behind very quickly.

Five years later I picked up the project again and got both the quilt and the miniature to the sandwiched stage.

The project came up again as my March UFO Challenge and I very much enjoyed working on it again. The bright colours certainly cheered me up on gloomy days and on brighter days it made me want to be outside.

When the Guild called for additional entries into the 2025 quilt show I decided to enter this one.

Karen, a Guild member, started us on a row-a-month using Seminole patchwork techniques. I very quickly fell behind but I managed to finish it several years later. The bright colours cheered me up on gloomy days and, on brighter days, it made me want to be outside. Quilted on my domestic Janome.

I think I used every quilting stitch in my quilting repertoire. The star, the diagonal boxes, and my new favourites – the mattress stitch and one-quarter from the ditch.

The miniature will be used for a Hands Across the Water Challenge; it is made using scraps from the larger quilt. When we planned for the event in March last year the theme for the challenge was Escape Into Colour. I’m hoping that when we are again able to host the event the theme won’t have changed.