Do you ever find a fabric that you just fall in love with and really can’t bring yourself to cut up?
Well these two quilts are fun examples of what to do. Clare originally thought that she might like to make a quilted jacket with the fabrics however after living with the idea for awhile her mind changed.
Still loving the fabric she added borders and brought them to me with yardage for the backings.
I chose the pantograph Bayside, to add just a hint of movement but not distract from the fabric itself.
The backing fabric was a perfect choice for these quilts and as I do love a challenge I was able to piece the backs for both quilts with one piece of about 6”x18”’s left over! Many of my customer like to have me piece their backs as it’s a complementary add on.
The second quilt was a little busier so I chose the pantograph Star Swirl to add to the movement of the night sky that spoke to me in this fabric.
I have mentioned before that I have an almost lifelong love of fabric and sewing, as a child I loved nothing more than being given bits of fabric to play with add to that scissors and a needle and thread!
My early sewing years involved dolls and Barbie’s, later moving on to clothing for myself and a little later on for children. Discovering quilting changed my sewing world completely!
Being left handed, the rotary cutter made so much of a difference, as left handed scissors never really seemed to do the job well. My brain adjusted to the rulers designed for right hand people. Of course now there are rulers coming out for us lefties!
Could it be that a lot of lefties are quilters?
So having been a collector of quilting cotton for much of my life and having followed Bonnie Hunter from way back in her early blogging days….I recall her pointing out that we paid just as much per yard for scraps as full yardage. This is partially the reason that my studio holds a few special areas for storing scraps.
My LongtimeGone Quilt project is a scrappy quilt so one would expect the scrap pile would be shrinking…not so…it seems when the day is done and the lights are out the scraps get together and multiply!
Of course I still have some piecing to do to complete this project Longtime Gone and more scraps will be added to the top…still I keep anything that might fit into something else.
There are so many ideas online about how to deal with scraps, the one that’s pulling me in these days is Crumb Piecing and this morning a blog that I follow and have shared before on this blog posted a tutorial on her method.
Anne has many tutorials and shares so much information her site is well worth visiting.
I am sharing this picture of what I made one evening while listening to a zoom meeting…it started out as a small baggie of scraps that a dear friend shared with me. For someone who just loves playing with her sewing tools sometimes, crumb piecing really fits the bill.
Do you find piecing is a little like eating potato chips? once you start it’s hard to stop? I do and as a bonus it’s so much healthier. I rarely allow myself to have my ironing station beside my sewing machine. It’s so important to get up from your chair and move. In my opinion anyways.
So after finishing up the Square in a Square Star block I moved on to the Jacobs Ladder block. I have always enjoyed working with small pieces and this quilt certainly gives me joy.
It’s fun to play with the layout. Can you guess which one I chose?
I am really looking forward to seeing this quilt come together and am mulling over the quilting design as I work on it. Often I choose a quilt to make knowing beforehand how I will quilt it.
As I was falling asleep last night I was wondering what will become of this quilt. I think a child might have fun with it as there are many little surprises in it.
Currently on the design wall is the Plus a Star block…more on that soon.
This pretty baby quilt was quilted with the pantograph hearts and bloom and the only thing sweeter than the top of this quilt is the adorable and soft flannel backing.
Several years ago there was a wonderful quilt shop in Grand Marais Minnesota. It’s funny now that we all called it Crystals Shop (the owners name was Crystal) though I am sure that it had another name.
Crystal carried a lot of batiks and had developed a pattern and sold many many kits called The Perfect Ten, I recently had the pleasure of quilting one for a customer.
My customer has two daughters who also quilt and they had challenged each other to get their ufo’s complete. Mom won.
The backing was such a perfect choice.
Living in Thunder Bay, many quilters here have often enjoyed day trips across the border for a drive along Lake Superior for shop hops. We now have one in Lutsen to visit along with Quilters Corner in Beaver Bay.
With so much of my quilting time taken up with Longarm Quilting for others…which I love by the way, it is very easy to neglect piecing time which is a major passion of mine.
I began piecing my Longtime Gone quilt a year ago last March! Being a very scrappy quilt I have loved the challenge but it also involves many bins of my scraps that can wreak havoc in my sewing room which often overflows with customer quilts and is also Liam’s favourite place to sleep when he is here.
The Color Collective also took front and centre stage this year taking up my precious piecing hours.
Well my scrappy quilt has been calling so I began puttering with it again.
Sometimes spending too much time planning a scrappy block isn’t a great thing… I was almost finished this block when I noticed too much of the same thing in the upper left of the block. I also should have made the outside geese scrappy.
I decided to leave the outside geese as they are at least for now but did make a change that I much prefer.
This block is the most subtle of the blocks…
I have more than half of the blocks finished for this quilt, and might just work on kitting up the rest of the blocks so that I can just pick up one as time permits and tuck the scrap bins away for another time.
It was a hot day yesterday and Liam and I had made important plans for after school when I picked him up.
First thing was to head to Dairy Queen as he and Pappa had run out of ice cream cake in he freezer. Liam suggested that also have a small cone while there, his disappeared almost instantly and then he suggested that he finish mine…which he did.
Our special start to summer cake
As soon as we got to the house he raced in to get his swim suit on…he likes to be first one into the pool each year.
Such a happy day!
Followed with bison burgers for supper
And of course cake…
And more swimming!
He has 3 more days of school and then summer break.
It is officially summer! The days will gradually get shorter again daylight wise. Sunrise was 5:55am and Sunset today 10:03…summer days here are long. Of course we pay for that in December.
We were under a heat warning yesterday and it was extremely hot. At one point it was 33C and with the humidity much higher. The black flies and mosquitoes have been abundant so other that my gardening tasks I hid out in my studio quilting my day away.
The robins nest is looking very full
Last week while cutting the grass Erik discovered a bunny nest. It was such a treat to see especially because Liam was with us and was able to see it.
Unfortunately two mornings later the nest was empty, we found one lone bunny not far from the nest.
Bunnies are so well camouflaged!
Knowing that it’s best to leave them we let it be, however it didn’t move and after a huge thunderstorm it was soaked and still so we brought it in.
One of Eriks daughters is a true animal lover and encouraged us to rescue this bunny and she found someone to take over for us. We got word yesterday that the bunny is thriving.
The night before discovering the nest, there was a bunny looking in my Long-arm room window, when I brought Liam into the room to see, it hopped onto the window sill and stood up looking right at him. Later I noticed it was hopping erratically all over the yard. I wonder now if it was the mom and was aware of the predictor that took her baby’s.
The pool is almost set up again and yesterday when I went to check the water temperature there was a bunny resting beside the pool. They often hang out around the house.
Baby quilts are so sweet and this one was so nice to quilt. I used the pantograph popcorn giving the quilt a nice airy feeling…this design reminds me of clouds and I often choose it for that affect.
As a young busy single Mom I was blessed to have many friends who were ahead of me on this life journey we are all on.
Most of these women I met through the Quilt Guild and by quilting for them. When I first checked out our local guild, I only peeked in the door and didn’t stay…I wasn’t quite 30 then and it looked like most of the women there were a lot older than I was. I mistakenly thought to myself that they wouldn’t welcome me.
Oh how wrong I was, and when I ventured back I was so welcomed, and mentored. I loved sitting with these women and watching and listening to them at guild meetings.
When news got out that I was getting a Longarm they were truly excited for me and supportive! That’s when I started quilting for Leila. She at the time was the local Elna dealer and she was determined that I needed the Quilters Dream Pro sewing machine. She kept inviting me over to try it, I kept declining, knowing that I would most likely love the machine and also knowing that it was priced way out of my budget.
Still she persisted and one day when I dropped one of her quilts off to her she insisted that I sit down and try out the machine…so I did. Of course I loved it. Well she had a plan, she said that she knew it was beyond what I could afford but what if I just quilted her quilts for it!
She sent me home with that machine and I love it to this day! She also sat me down and taught me to service my own machines a gift that has served me well many times.
A couple of months ago Leila called me to let me know that she hadn’t been well and was moving to Southern Ontario to live closer to her family. We had such a nice visit.
Wendy’s Quilting and Life 