Borders are on

I'm so happy with these borders!  How the navy frames the white fabric so well.  There are still more borders to come for this top, but they will be shown to you later.

These snowflakes are going in those white borders and they are being appliqued on.  The corners are still undecided, but it will come to me soon enough.

These are the other colours of snowflakes.  Each colour is being pulled from the center and helps to ground the whole look.

During the assembly process, there were a few hiccups along the way.  For instance, sewing the wrong size kite which is where you see the big black X.  Wrong!  Ugh!  That is what happens when I watch t.v. and sew the pieces together.  Ah well, I can laugh now, but at the time, I was pretty ticked off with myself.

The longer size kite is what should have been sewn instead and after a bit of unsewing, the star finally got done .... correctly.  LOL   Aren't those little trees delightful!  A lot of fussy cutting happened in this top.

Ah well, fun and games along the way!  🐱🐱

Have a great day!

Linking to:  https://estheraliu.blogspot.com/ and http://needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com/

Humble Pie

Another quilt is being worked on.  First is the applique border.  Even though this quilt has been machine quilted, I do like to stitch-in-the-ditch (SITD) by hand all around the pieces of applique.  This helps to anchor the applique and I think it looks better.   The arrow shows one side of the vine done and the other side has not been done.  Do you see the difference?  The other thing that I like to do is machine SITD the borders.  This also helps to define the overall look.

The LAer mentioned that she could custom quilt the applique, but this is something that I actually prefer to do myself. 

Isn't this stripe fabric devine?   There is enough left over to do a lap size quilt.  I should have bought more of it.  This fabric goes so well with my scrappy quilts.  Darn, darn, darn.

The binding is on and one side has been sewn down.

It will take me a few weeks to do the hand quilting SITD.  Don't worry, you will see the whole quilt later.  🐱🐱

Have a great day!

Playful Stripes

Another finish ..... another quilt off my list!  Doing the happy, happy dance over here!

Playful Stripes ..... a delightful name, don't you think?

I just love this backing fabric.  Weather vanes.  This quilt is for my husband and since he is a meteorologist, perfect for him.  He always has to know which way the wind is blowing.

 A full on photo to get the whole effect.

The thing with this quilt is, that on the wall (here it is just pinned onto a styroam design wall), it looks wonderful.  On the bed, it is too much for my husband.  Too much movement and after his bout with vertigo, a tad too much for his eyes to look at.  So, on the bed the quilt has been flipped around and the weather vanes are showing instead of the stripes.   See, there is a reason why I used that fabric! Right now there is no sleeve as it was intended just for the bed, but a sleeve will be added so that we will enjoy this quilt on the wall where the movement will be tamed as it will just be hanging.

I have tried to tell everyone how much work went into making all those rail fence blocks.  NOT.    I used striped fabric and cut the fabric into blocks and turned them around to look like rail fence blocks.  Easy peasy and so effective. 

Quilt details:
Top started:  Mar. 23, 2015
Top finished:  Feb. 25, 2018 (I was waiting to find the perfect match of the navy blue but ended up using what I had in my stash.  The two navy blues don't match, but it doesn't matter.)
Quilt finished:  June 13, 2018
Size:  88-3/4" x 89"
Batting:  Polyester
Machine Quilted by Tella in Scarborough, Ontario.

What else am I working on?  These EPP snowflakes.  Only a few more to make before I can start showing you something.  Exciting times!

Have a great day!
Linking to:  https://estheraliu.blogspot.com/ and http://needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com/

Roses top

After I got back from my Grenada vacation, I actually was at a loss of what to do in my studio.  It seemed that my mojo was still in Grenada.  LOL

The centre of this top was done and three of the borders.  It was on my design wall and I kept looking and looking and looking at it.  My brain kept saying to me "it won't get done if you just keep looking at it".  That did it.  My mojo was back!  This project needed to get finished!  I needed to make one more strip block (because of an oopsie by me) and just get that LAST strip border on.  So, it got done.  Then the assembly started and finally, this top is now a flimsy.

My goal this month is to get this top quilted and hand it over to our QOV representative.  A lady veteran will be the recipient.

What started as a cast off from a guild lady, turned out to be a lovely top.  Amazing what we can accomplish when we set our mind and hands to it.

Have a great day!

Back at it!

My blog has been quiet lately as I've been away on vacation in Grenada (lovely island).

Vacation on the beach didn't see much hand work done.  Only two snowflakes were made.  Only 22 more to make for my borders.  More on this later.

The highlight of my vacation was taking a night time excursion to see turtles laying eggs.  Due to the darkness and only red lights could be used, it is hard to see, but the centre of this photo shows eggs.  This Leatherback sea turtle was huge.  It's shell measured 4'9" in length and it's head was massive.  A magical experience.  Other photos were taken, but none of them turned out .... it was just too dark and we could not use a flash to take photos.  No problem as that experience will live with me forever.

Now that I'm home, my studio has seen a flurry of activity.  I'm back to working on this abandoned project that was donated to me.  The strip border blocks are almost done with just one more to make (I did an oopsie).  LOL  This is where I hit a snag.  The strip blocks should measure 5-1/2" square but the blocks that were already made measured 5-1/4" square. This is where creativity stepped in and my side seams on those blocks are 1/8" not the usual 1/4".  After all the blocks were sewn together, each border side strip had to be trimmed down as well.  Is this why the lady gave up on this project?

The other thing that is being done right now is the binding being sewn down on this quilt.  Do you notice anything odd with the border?  That dark blue stripe is not the same navy as in the rail fence blocks.  This quilt sat and sat and sat on a shelf waiting for me to find fabric that matched.  Cream coloured fabric could have been used, but it didn't do anything for the look.   Finally, I just decided to use any solid navy that I could find just to get this quilt done.  There was not enough of the striped fabric to use in the border, so this is how my quilt has gotten to this point.  It will never be in a quilt show, so ...... it is what it is.  I'm sure that my LAer was probably wondering why I did this because I'm so fussy with my tops.  Family descendants will be wondering about this too.  I will leave them guessing!  🐱🐱

Have a great day!

Linking to:  https://estheraliu.blogspot.com/ and http://needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com/