Pyramids

Here it is .... my "Pyramids".   All done and ready for hanging come August/September when the autumn quilts come out for display.  This was done using EPP method.

Quilt Details:

Source:   Inspired after seeing Canadian Needle Nana making pyramids to make some too.  EQ7 came to the rescue and viola .... here is my version all done by using EPP (English Paper Piecing) method.

Started:  August 2022

Top Finished:  November 2022

Quilt Finished:  February 2023

Size:  50-1/4" x 68-1/2" (top size before quilting:  51-1/2" x 70")

Batting:  Hobbs poly

Machine quilted by:  Kathy Wareham using "Maidenhair Fern" quilting pattern.

There is no sleeve (temporary strips for hanging pinned in place on the back of quilt) on this quilt yet .... so it may be hung the other way.  

Looking at this quilt reminds me that I purchased "Sugar Top" pattern from Bonnie Hunter.  It is similar, but different.  That pattern is on my 'to do' list using plaids and stripes and solids.

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

Dilly Flower surfacing again

This month, my Dilly Flower will be worked on again.

I was going with the applique on the layout shown below, but that got scrapped.

This will be the new applique that will be sewn.   The look is daintier and I'm much happier now and can finally move on with this project. 

Once I was happy with the layout .... with a few changes ..... I got right into doing prep work for the applique.

Before I knew it, one half of the applique has been done.  Now onto the last half and then time for borders!

Edit 23/03/2023:  the vine design is not mine .... I got the image from Shutterstock.com .... just changed it up a bit to my liking by adding in different leaves and dots.

Lots of green for St. Patrick's Day!  

Our area is due for some kind of storm .... will it be rain or snow?  Right now, we are on the cusp of snow to the north and rain to the south.  It will be interesting to see what happens as the day goes on. 

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

Circles is a top!

Yeah me!  I'm so pleased to have this top done.  Do you like my ombre look border?  I love it,  but it was a bit of a pain to do.  Those strips of fabrics were moved around again and again and sewn, ripped undone and resewn countless times.  It was so worth it in the end .... but ..... and I will leave it at that!  LOL

A line of stitching was done around the perimeter of the border to prevent seams popping open while at the LAer.

Notice that all my seams (except for the outer border seam) have been pressed open?  I'm starting to do this more and more.  If I do, my stitch length is reduced (that is why it was more difficult to rip out) to prevent any threads popping many years from now.  This top will need a real good pressing before going for machine quilting.  

So, why do I prefer to press open the seams?   For my quilts that I keep, I actually prefer the look once it has been machine quilted.  Also, with all the white background fabrics, there is an even look on all the seams because those white fabrics are sort of see-through and it would be noticeable to see some seams and no seams (because of being pressed to the darker fabric).   I'm just fussy .... and we can leave it at that too.  LOL

Onto the next project!

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

Rounding up the circles!

I still am not done appliqueing the circles onto some of the neutral square fabrics ..... but couldn't wait and just had to start sewing some of the nine patch blocks together to test out my border idea.   This project is coming together quite nicely!

Before I knew it, all the circles were done!  Time to finish sewing the sections together!

Jack the Ripper had to come out ..... somehow I goofed and switched one half row and sewed it together.  It was only when I started to pin the entire row for sewing that I noticed the issue.  At first, I thought that a lot of ripping had to be done, but after looking closer, I realised that all that was needed was to rip out a row of six circles and turn the block 180 degrees and the issue would be fixed.  Whew, that was easier that first thought.  Fixed and time to carry on!

Now, for the border .... I decided that an ombre effect would be quite nice and different and that is what I'm doing.  There are a lot of red fabrics in my stash and to achieve this ombre effect will be quite easy to pull fabrics.

Life has been busy here lately ..... Dr. appointments for hubby, volleyball games and girl hockey games .... yep, busy, busy, busy!

To my Mother, wherever you are .... happy 105th birthday!  You are truly missed each and every day and we can't believe it has been 15 yrs. since you passed!

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

Circles coming around!

Much progress has been made on my red/neutral circles wall hanging!

Not all the circles have been appliqued onto the neutral squares .... only about 1/4 left to do.

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

February and March Binding Challenge

The end of February cheated us of a few days when we are used to either 30 or 31 days in a month .... but I got my quilt finished just in the nick of time!

No-blog Mary was ahead of me this month.  My quilt didn't have it's binding on yet and with only two days to go ..... whew got there in the end.

This is Mary's quilt for February:

and this is my quilt (another post to follow on this quilt):

Now, for March, Mary put her hand in the garbage bag and out came this quilt.  She never knows what she will pull out .... always a surprise.  I had to ask her about this quilt.  She thinks it was a Super Bowl mystery but can't remember when she made it; but she had to concentrate a lot while doing it.  The size is a queen.  Yikes, that will keep her busy!

My March quilts to bind will, hopefully, be these two.  I want to get them done and to the lady that is organizing a May drop-off to the women's shelter.  At least one will get done and the second quilt will be a BONUS!

You know how some birthdays just come and go without much fuss?  Well, I just had my 16th blog birthday on the 22nd of this month!  Sixteen years of blogging!!!  OMG.  The thing is, I forgot all about it!  What a time this has been.  Oh my, I remember my first post and wondered if anyone would be interested to even read my blog and, yes,  you are still reading me.  Thank you for your support!  Sixteen years ago, there were so many quilting blogs and I do miss quite a few of my favourite blogs that are no more.  How many more years will this blog be still running?  As long as there is something up on my design wall and my fingers can still work their magic, then there is something to write about.  Time will tell.  

It is snowing here again this morning.  We have at least 2' of packed snow in our backyard.  It will take a while before that snow melts once the warmer weather arrives.  Will March come in like a lion or a lamb?  It is supposed to be nice and sunny tomorrow with temp around zero.  If so, then end of March will see a blizzard or another snowstorm.

As far as snow goes, we haven't had as much this year.  It has been a crazy winter so far.  We've had a good share of snow, but also days of rain which has packed down the snow a lot.  There has also been balmy days resulting in a good melt of snow during those days.  Spring is around the corner .... just what corner?  LOL

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

Going round in circles

My circles top has made much progress.  It will be a wall hanging, so .... it shouldn't take too long to complete this ..... so says the woman who gets distracted by squirrels!  LOL

What I'm doing is a nine-patch block of circles (no sashing).  The dark red fabric with the lighter circle is the center of the nine-patch.  My layout will be 4 blocks wide x 6 blocks long.  On the wall right now, the far right column is almost complete.

Yesterday, we got another dumping of snow, but didn't get the freezing rain that southern Ontario received.  Lucky for us!  I did have to go out for babysitting .... but once home, it was nice to sit by the fire and have a nice cup of tea and browse the computer for a bit.

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

Quilts for Kids

Another Winding Trails top using the pattern by Karen Griska Quilts.  I'm on a roll making kids quilts.  This will be a donation quilt for a women's shelter in a neighbouring town.  Personally, I think it is ugly .... but a child will love it.  I'm anxious to see this quilted up because a quilt changes once quilted.  My LAer has just finished quilting it and it just needs to be picked up.

Now, this top I love.  Berry Smoothie by Villa Rosa Designs and it also will be going to the same place.  This top used up a chunk of fabric for each block and I will be using this pattern again and again.

While making this top, a second set of blocks were made and all that needs to be done is sew those blocks together to make another top ... and that is what will be done to get those blocks into a top and to the LAer and then to the shelter.

Both of these tops were squirrels ...... LOL.  It's a good thing when those squirrels get completed.

Love it when I'm on a roll ....

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

... and another squirrel!

Yes, I did it ..... started another project.  You would think that squirrels hibernate during winter ..... but no, they do not and they stopped by and had a few chats with me!  LOL

It all started with cleaning out some piles of fabrics and papers and that is when I saw this pattern and knew that it just had to be made.

What got me started on this squirrel was a need for a couple more small wall quilts to go with my February red/neutral quilts.  My bins of red fabrics and my neutral/red fabrics were a tad overflowing and viola .... this project got started.  This is my project so far.  If one block a day gets done, then this project should be ready for sashings and borders by the end of this month.  Only nine blocks to go.  So, we shall see ....

In the meantime, this quilt .... which I really love .... has been bugging me.  Why?  I want to make another circle quilt and why not do the same quilt but in red and neutrals?  So, that is what is being done.

This is my progress so far.  Not much to see, but in time there will be more blocks.

There have been two more squirrels that got made into tops this month.  They will be shown on another post.  It has been a productive month so far!

There may be another new squirrel or two, but nothing has been done with those yet!

Oh squirrels .... just go and stay away and leave me alone!  LOL  Can't really complain as it does help with clearing out stash and helps to keep the creative juices flowing!

Our winter has been up and down lately.  Bitter, bitter cold and warm balmy days around 0C.  Our winter has been too warm lately because bears have been coming out of hibernation.  This week, there was a report of a bear around a few schools in the east end of our city and the schools had to go into lockdown.  There is no food for bears right now and a child would be just a tad too tempting to pass up for a meal.

This week, we had freezing rain followed by snow and it left our backyard looking like a wonderland.  For those of you enduring very hot temps ..... here is some ice and snow for you to drool over!

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

Gingham Swirls

Oh my, how I enjoyed designing and making this quilt.  After doodling around on EQ7, that wavy border just had to be made and something EPP would make this a perfect take-along project.

So, the project got started and slowly but surely, this quilt came to be.

This project was supposed to be for our day guild celebration of Canada's 150th birthday.  The stipulation was that only red and white fabrics could be used.  We could use tone-on-tone reds, red with white and white tone-on-tone and white with red fabrics.  Well, try and find all fabrics with just red and white in them .... no cream, no off-white.  I had lots of red fabrics but very little with red/white prints and I wanted a variety of those fabrics in the blades.  So, the quest to get this quilt done in 2017 got shelved and this quilt was completed years later.  

Here are a few of my blocks with my selection of fabrics:

Quilt Details:

Pattern Source:  This information will only be helpful to those that have EQ and Blockbase software.

#3342 for the blocks (blades).  Make four of this unit to form a block.   

Block size:  6" x 6" finished quarter blocks that resulted in a 12" x 12" finished block.

For the borders, I used "Curved Path Border" and "Curved Path Corner"

Border size:  6" x 8" finished blocks

A tutorial was done to show how the borders were made here.  At the bottom of this post is the label "Gingham Swirl" and you can read all the posts showing my progress.

Started:  September 2016

Top Finished:  November 2021

Finished:  January 2022

Batting:  Hobbs cotton/poly (80/20)

Machine quilted by:  Kathy Wareham using "Maidenhair Fern" quilting design by Urban Elementz.

This quilt is now on display along with my other red/neutral quilts for February.

It has been very cold here lately (-37C with a windchill of -47C) and now it is hovering close to 0C, but I'm keeping warm by the fire!   The snow is starting to pile up and I'm keeping a close watch on our roof in case we need to bring in people to shovel the snow off of it.  

Oh, look ..... a squirrel!  LOL

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

January & February Binding Challenge

Well, no-blog Mary and I got 2023 off to a good start ..... but I had to do a bit of prodding to get Mary working on finishing her binding.  Our weather was dull and dreary last month and Mary was affected by the lack of sunshine ..... but she got there in the end and we can close out the month of January with a finished quilt.  Yeah us!

This is Mary's January quilt:

This is my January quilt and there will be more about this quilt on another post:

For February, Mary is doing a basket quilt:

and this will be my quilt to bind.  

It is very cold here today .... -27C and even colder with the windchill .... a good day to stay inside and sew.  All I can say is thank heavens for heated car seats and a garage to park our car in!  Our gas fireplaces are on and keeping us toasty warm.

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

Deer and Quilty Stuff

One morning last week, I looked outside the kitchen patio door and saw something dark at the top of our hill.  Did someone throw out a Xmas tree or a garbage bag or was it a person?  What was it?

Upstairs to my bedroom and looking out the window, I got a better look .... but I still couldn't make out what it was.

Zoomed in for a closer look.  Nope, still can't see what it is.  Lordy, it is big .... was it a bear?  No, wrong colour as the bears here are black and this is kind of brownish.

Suddenly, the thing had ears ..... it was a deer and it had been sleeping!  To the left in the bushes, there was a bit of movement and it was another deer but you can't see it in the photos.

Later, the two deer got up and moved off into the bushes.  They came back a few days later and munched on our shrubs and leftover titbits of leaves that were not clipped off in the fall.  We've had a bit more snow since taking the photo and the temps are a bit cooler (-7C).  Still, this is not our normal winter as we should be around -30C now with lots more snow.  

Now, onto quilty stuff.  There were a number of quilts that needed to be stored away.  A few sleeves were made for the foam pool noodles and quilts were rolled up and stored.  A shelf in my studio was cleared off and taken out.  It has now become the perfect place for quilt storage.  This area will be shown later as there is some painting that needs to happen first.

The sleeves on the back of my quilts are made larger and the roller fits perfectly into the sleeve and then the rolling of the quilt starts.  

Here it is ..... all rolled up, tied and ready for vertical storage.

I've been busy ordering more books of my blog.  Depending on the number of posts per year, some books have just one year of posts, while other books have two years of posts.  I use Blog2Print and take advantage of their sales.  The best sale is one that offers 50% off which happens a couple times a year.

I'm happy to see the years in book form.  So is my husband and my family.  These are things that they won't have to worry about when I'm gone or unable to function.  Instructions have been left so that if there are more books to be made, they can replicate the format of what was done in the past.

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

School House

Well, this quilt has been long in coming!  It has quite the story behind it too.  So, let's begin.

There are a few posts about this quilt and it is best to start at the beginning and you can click onto them here to read about the start and the progress along the way:

Mar. 2, 2011 .... May 23, 2011 .... June 16, 2011 .... June 25, 2011 .... Jan. 19, 2013 ....  Jan. 30, 2013 .... Mar. 30, 2013

There could be others, but I couldn't find them at the time of writing up this post.

After this top was finished, it sat for many years.  Why?  Hand quilt or machine quilt?  That was my hang up.  In the end, it was sent to my lovely LAer and she did her magic very quickly and then it sat waiting for binding.  Enter no-blog Mary and our monthly binding challenge and ..... viola ..... this quilt is finally done and hanging in our dinning room.  Oh, such joy to finally have this gorgeous quilt finished.

Now, after reading all those posts, there is a titbit that was never written about, but it is time to talk about it.

I've given credit to Andrea Blackhurst as the designer of this quilt pattern.  She may be the designer as per the quilt in the quilt magazine, but I based my quilt on that raffle quilt at the Kingston, Ontario, Canada quilt show and they based their quilt on an antique quilt. So, IMHO, I do think the original designer is the person who made that antique quilt.

When Andrea contacted me and claimed she was the designer .... fine .... I'm happy for her and she designed a gorgeous quilt and I've since amended a few of my posts to give her credit.  She also mentioned to me that if ever I wrote a pattern for sale, she would sue me.  Oh my .... 

If you have been a reader of my blog for many years now ..... never, ever have I offered any of my designs or drafts of quilts for sale.  I think I was tested not too long ago if there was a pattern for this quilt.  Was she a friend of Andrea's?  I was suspicious at the time.  Anyway, there is not a pattern for sale and there will never be from me.  Instead, I did a tutorial and it is on the link for June 25, 2011.

If you are interested in a pattern, Sentimental Stitches has a pattern for the houses and you can purchase it here.  Gay did this quilt as a free BOM and then retired it and then brought it back for purchase.  I knew that Gay would have her pattern for sale at some point and gave her a head's up about potentially being sued by Andrea.  Gay wrote back and said that she had a team of lawyers to work out any copyright issues.  After she looked at my posts, Gay thought that my quilt was different from Andrea's and I could claim it as my design.  Thank you and that was a surprise comment!

So, I will leave it up to you who is the designer .... but .... I think I will just enjoy my efforts and the struggles and simply enjoy my quilt .... as a quilt.

Quilt Details:

Started:  Feb. 2011

Finished:  Dec. 2022

Block size:  12" finished and 6" finished

Quilt size: 81-1/2" x 83-1/4" (top size before quilting, washing and drying: 85" x 86")

Batting:  Hobbs cotton/poly 80/20

Machine quilted by:  Kathy Wareham using Clam shell Feather by Christy Dillon of My Creative Stitches.  

I enjoy designing quilts and also making quilts from a pattern (usually with some kind of twist) and credit is given to the designer of those patterns.   That's it ..... I just love making quilts.  Not selling them, not going into pattern writing, etc.  That is way too much work.  Writing a tutorial takes a lot of time and effort and I no longer write those anymore.

I have seen some of my designs or part of my designs published by others.  Intentional?  Who knows.  I'm not going to send those folks threatening emails.   A few bloggers have approached me and asked permission to make and publish a pattern from one of my designs.  They were given permission and I have received a finished pattern as a 'thank you'.  I was happy for them.   As you probably have guessed, I'm a giving sort of person and not spiteful.  Life is too short.

Cherish your day, cherish your life!

First UFO off the list!

I'm so happy that this UFO is done!  It nearly got finished at the begging of the new year ..... but I got sick again with another cold and then ..... gasp ..... I broke a front tooth!  Not a good beginning to the new year at all.  So, nothing was done to finish this UFO off until a few days ago as my comfy chair and TV called to me instead.

Not only do I have this top done, but there is a second one almost done too.  Just need to add borders.  That top is laying on the bench (at bottom of photo) and it is the same block but mostly different fabrics.  No photos yet.  These will be donation quilts.

So, a good and not so good beginning to the new year.

Cherish your day, cherish your life!