A FINISH AND A BLESSING

About an hour after I hit publish on my last post, I heard my mother very weakly call me from downstairs. She was having a stroke. Thankfully, I knew what was happening and called 911.  Fast forward to today, and Mom is home and doing amazingly well.  She has no lasting effects from the stroke except fatigue. For this I am eternally grateful.  She will slowly build up her strength until she is back to normal. My mother is nearly 83 and very active. She plans to be back to her bowling league sooner than later : )

Sunday afternoon while the house was quiet, I decided to tackle the borders on Metro Area.  I hadn't touched my machine in two weeks and it felt so good to be sewing again. I find it very relaxing.

Borders are on !  Yay!

This quilt is a big one. 90" square. Now I hope to put it in the capable hands of my long arm quilter so she can work her magic on it.

More about that later.
Happy stitching and thanks for reading.

Carla

A GIRLIE QUILT

With the nice long hours of daylight now here, my evenings can involve some constructive play time : )   The other night, I did a fabric pull to see if I could get together enough 'girlie' fabrics to make a quilt for my oldest grand daughter.  Her first quilt is a bit tattered (which I'm happy about)

I started with these

I pulled a couple of fat quarters from a bundle I had never touched, but the rest came from my scraps

I cut the squares 3 1/2" and rectangles 9 1/2" x 3 1/2"

A couple of evenings playing around and this is what I have.  I tried to keep it quite girlie and found things that I know she likes

Horses, frogs, butterflies and pink!  While I was cutting, I made sure to cut extra blocks because I have a feeling her little sister is going to need one too  : )

It feels good to be playing around in my sewing room just for fun. Here's hoping I can stick with it and get it done this week -- the top anyway

Happy stitching!
Carla

METRO AREA MONTH 11

I can hardly believe it but another month has blown by. These were fun blocks to sew mainly I think because of the fabrics : )

It's fitting that on Canada day I was sewing with red and white (sort of)

I really like the fresh look of this block

With our pending postal strike, I hope the blocks get to those of you who are receiving them via snail mail
Fingers crossed  : )

Happy Canada Day !!!!

METRO AREA MONTH 7

So, how is your quilt coming?  This month involves three colour ways and lots of sharp angles : )

I love this block, except I did it wrong. I had the bottom 'roast' section cut out wrong and pieced together before I realized if I flipped it, that would make it upside down. I left it alone........

the points on this one.  Just sew carefully

Done for another month.  I've been cutting the blocks for the next few months and oooh the fabrics are all so fun.

Happy Sewing!

PATCHWORK CITY -- MONTH 6

First off I have to say thank you to all of you who took the time to comment and e-mail me after my last post.  I tried to reply to every one that I could. Some of you have no e-mail address on your profile, so I couldn't reply, but thank you so much! It's been a roller coaster of emotions this week : /

This month marks the half way point of our block of the month.  Time sure flies when you're having fun !

This pinky red was nice to work with during the dark month of January : )

......and these orange blocks sewed up quick as there were no templates to fiddle with

Here they are all sashed and tidied up.  For those of you quilting along with me, your blocks will be popped into the mail this afternoon.   Enjoy!

A GOOD SWIFT KICK

A new year has such potential doesn't it?  I'm excited for another year of quilting, but am feeling weighed down by all my unfinished projects. So........I have declared this the 'year of the finish'.
I'm hoping to clear my slate so to speak to make way for new things : )

These blocks are from a group I was involved in but it no longer exists.  Three lovely readers were gracious enough to send me blocks to make up the slack, and now I have enough to make a quilt.  My original plan was to do alternate blocks with these and I may still do that but it would end up quite big.  We shall see.  Thank you Jeannine, Paulette, and Nicole for the blocks  : )

This poor quilt.  It has been hanging in the closet for about 4 years.  One of my son's friends has been waiting for it for about a year.  Ooops

and then there's my Millie. I do hope to keep puttering along on this.  I'm nearly a year behind,  but it's not a race. Apparently.

My basket quilt from the ladies in the Mid Century Modern group. I want this finished and on my couch : )

and lastly, this poor old thing.  I love hexies, so why isn't it done???

Perhaps now that I have a decent machine I will be able to quilt these.
I've given myself a stern talking to, and a swift kick, so we will see if I stay motivated or not.

That's probably enough of a list for this first quarter of the finish along.
Linking up with Leanne of She can quilt

METRO AREA MONTH 5

The first of the month has come and gone so I better get these blocks posted.  For those of you who are quilting along, we are on month 5 already!

This month we had a nice mix of templates and straight forward piecing.  The blocks didn't take long at all.

Because I'm a bit impatient, I started sewing some sashing between the blocks just to see how it's going to look.  I gotta say, I do like it.

We are in the middle of inventory at the shoppe, so tomorrow will be a busy day. We re-open on Thursday and will be sporting a new paint job : )  I'm excited for the change and the new fabric that will be arriving too !

BASKET BLISS

Happy Sunday morning!  I don't usually post on a Sunday, but I got these baskets sewn together yesterday and wanted to show you : )
These came to me last May from two groups that I'm in. The mid century Modern group, and the great Canadian scrap busting group.  I asked for bright funky baskets and that's what I got !

I layed them out on my floor and trimmed them to all the same size. I had to add a strip to a few of them, but that just adds to the fun !

there's even a basket from selvedges

Not quite sure if I will do a border or not, but I do have some signature blocks that I want to include
I'm happy these are together and not still getting buried in my sewing room : )

Enjoy your day

Carla

SCRAPTASTIC TUESDAY

I'm still busy scrap busting over here. If it's laying around on my cutting table, I figure it's fair game for my scrap quilt. Bit by bit I'm getting things cleaned up -- one 2 1/2" square at a time.

Block A

Block B

and my blocks so far.  This quilt is affectionately (?) known as Scrap Vomit by I'm a Ginger Monkey. She's made several of these and I can see why. They are addictive !!

I'm still not sure how big I will make this, but I certainly won't run short of scraps!  With working on two wedding quilts I'm making more scraps all the time  : )

linking up with She Can Quilt for scraptastic Tuesday

A SCRAPPY BABY FINISH

A bit of time in my sewing room this week allowed me to get this little quilt finished up.  It started with a charm pack of low volume prints to which I added very small scraps.

The inspiration was from the book 'Imagine Quilts'. I just resized the block

For the quilting I did wavy lines in a light grey thread

The backing is a flannel I bought about 4 years ago. The colours were right for this  : )

 It's not a big quilt at all, but I figure some baby will like it eventually

One more so you can see what I woke up to yesterday---10" of snow!!!

quilt stats:

pieced and quilted by me
A charm pack and scraps
27 1/2" x 34 1/2"

linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday
Finish It Up Friday

SCRAPS FOR BABY

Not sure if you remember these little blocks.

It started with a quilt I saw in this book 'Imagine Quilts'

I played around with the size of block so I could use a charm pack of low volume prints that I had.

Also, the smallest of scraps were put to use here

Now I need to decide on some sashing. Well would you look at that! There is a blazing oops in one of the rows. Good thing they aren't sewn together yet   : )

Have yourself a lovely week end

A LITTLE FINISH

That big pile of scraps has gone down a bit with the making of this little quilt.

Working from this basket of scraps, I cut squares 5" and paired them up in a light/dark or dark/medium combination. To make the half square triangles I used the diagonal line method.
I then trimmed to 4 1/2".  Easy.

I arranged them on my design wall.......

.......and then re-arranged them. I liked the random layout better, although it's hard on the brain  : )

For the quilting, I did wiggly lines diagonally just to emphasize the triangles.

I used the same piece of fabric for the back as the previous little quilt and the binding is wordplay.

This fabric has been used in countless projects and I'm nearly out

Another little quilt that will be off to Guatemala shortly   : )

Oh! and this months Modern Stash Builder

These could have easily worked into this quilt,  but I was trying to use scraps.  Next time.

quilt stats:

scrappy half square triangles

32 x 36

pieced and quilted by me

linking up with Quilt Story