Marilyn’s quilts are always so inspiring! Her use of colour and design in her quilts make my heart sing! I do love scrap quilts!
Tying all of the colours together with a darker slashing and final border seems to both pop the colours and tame them at the same time. To my eye anyhow.
How fun is her addition of squares on the top and bottom of the quilt.
I chose the quilting design A Little Bit of This with its soft lovely flowing density it added a perfect additional layer to her fantastic quilt!
Her quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up…
The pattern is by Tara Faughnan. She is an excellent teacher even from afar! My friend Louisa is an excellent mentor from afar and increasingly inspiring with her quilting projects!!
I chose the pattern along with her video course last summer she included a way to contact her if need be and I did have questions initially. When I sent my question she responded with a zoom meeting to figure my question out with me!
I do love the paper piecing technique that she teaches.
I find with a project like this one it needed my full attention for a bit and with my customer quilts and life keeping me busy…small world was put to the wayside for a bit.
This was not one of those quilts that can be done in a weekend…not for me anyways. I slowly plugged away at it as time permitted and at one point I put it away.
It really was exciting to finally sew the final seam joining the two halves of this top together just as it was time to turn off the lights for the day…I left the trimming for the morning.
Hmmm what to do with the left overs…
A quilt with so many seams ending at the edges like this one is fairly vulnerable to seam pops. The victory lap of sewing the edges with a seam securing the piecing is essential in my opinion!
I am so in love with the finished quilt top! I am on the look out for a backing and am mulling over quilting ideas.
One of the things that really appeals to me that Tara Faughnan offers in her courses and patterns are her colour palettes. I find it fun and challenging to be given colours that I may never have chosen to work with…
My next several projects are chosen, though I also have block studies that will be tucked into my piecing time…
I do for the most part use my work days working on customer quilts and often continued on during the evenings as I do enjoy longarm quilting a lot!
Truth be told, I pretty much love every aspect of quilting and have from the time I first discovered quilting as a child.
Quilting is definitely a passion of mine. So as I was finding myself feeling a little frustrated that my personal projects were often left to the wayside and after mentioning that to a very prolific quilting friend of mine. I made a change.
She initially suggested carving out an hour a day just for my own piecing. I followed her advice and once I started allowing myself me time, my frustration disappeared and I began to see progress!
Not only was I able to reach the victory lap stage on my postage stamp quilt. (I always like to stitch a 1/8” stay stitch around the perimeter of my quilt tops that have piecing on the edges)
I was also able to make headway on my Small World quilt.
The biggest change that I made was to allow myself to piece in the evenings, not all evenings but enough.
Every evening for the last week or so I have worked on this project.
And last night I put the final seam in the piecing of the top. Once I trim it I will be ready to add the victory lap and photograph the top.
There is an additional reason that I wanted to reach this point in my piecing…I was a little generous with myself with birthday gifts to myself and I am itching to start these new projects along with a couple more projects…
June seems to have flown by! It’s my most favourite month of the year, I love all of the extra daylight we northern people are gifted with.
Speaking of being northern people I have another quilter that I love following. Her blog is definitely worth visiting if you enjoy quilting, learning about quilting and scrap quilting! She lives in Finland.
There are often posts on social media about the quilt police and while I agree that we should encourage and cheer each other on in our quilting journeys, I also think that we should kindly share information about techniques and reasons behind them that help new quilters find success in their projects.
On the life side of things, I continue to work on what I called project Wendy. I have shifted some of my time on the treadmill to outside walks again and my bike is back on the road!
The maker of this quilt is a prolific piecer she is also what I would call an advanced piecer! She loves a challenge and often chooses patterns that many would run from!
This quilt however was one she decided that she wanted to use up a couple of layer cakes that were in her stash. She chose to make hour glass blocks or half square triangle blocks depending on how you look at the quilt.
When her husband initially saw the blocks that she was making he said they were ugly and it would never be on his bed!
Thankfully his comments did not detour her plans!
When she brought the quilt to me she told me that she had named it the Ugly Duckling Quilt. She also asked me to quilt a duck somewhere one the quilt…so I did.
Can you see it?
The we chose the quilting design Finesse. This design added a layer of elegance to this stunning quilt.
The backing in its rich purple colour couldn’t be a more perfect match!
Her quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up.
Also, her husband changed his tune regarding it being ugly.
Well today, after many relaxing hours working on it over the last couple of years or so…I sewed the victory lap around the 6,480 1” (finished) squares!
One of my Granddaughters (she was 5 at the time) told me when it was about halfway pieced that I didn’t need to worry, that when I finished this quilt that she would have it for me 🥰. Last week her younger sister offered to help me finish the quilt…she is 4 yrs.
I still have a lot of scraps along with some finished blocks left over and block parts ready for piecing so this postage stamp journey won’t end but will continue. I have plans to make several more over the years!
This quilt isn’t in the queue yet…I do plan to eventually add it in though.
Spring has felt long in coming this year with many extra snow falls since our return and what felt like days on end of cold grey weather.
This quilt was pieced as a birthday gift for my customers daughter. The colours were requested by her daughter for her new house that they will be moving into.
This quilt was also my customers first large quilt and in my opinion she certainly did herself proud!!
When she picked it up she was really excited to see how it turned out and that she would have it finished in time to gift it!
We looked a several options for the quilting design and decided to use Bayside.
Often with angular piecing a curvy design works really well. Bayside also loosely mimicked the flow of the printed squares.
The solid backing fabric really show cases the quilting!
Her quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up!
This recent quilt was a treat to work on! It was pieced using a pattern by Donna Jordon of Jordon Fabrics in Batik fabrics. She was a fantastic teacher with so many wonderful online tutorials.
Most of my customers ask me to choose the quilting design, which is something that I really enjoy and often know almost immediately what will work well on a quilt.
In this case I had a few ideas so I sent the three ideas to the quilts maker and she chose Nocturne Feathers a design by Bethanne Nemesh. (The third picture below)
Her quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up!
Last year on our way home from our Winter adventure we discovered Winterset Iowa due to it being the birthplace of John Wayne. To my complete delight it is also the home of the Iowa State Quilt Museum and a wonderful quilt shop. https://wendys-quilting.ca/2025/04/
So I was more than happy when we found ourselves back in Winterset this year!
The display at the Quilt Museum was wonderfully captivating and of course inspiring and there was a quilt displayed that was quilted by Bethanne Nemesh whose work I have followed from the beginning of my long arm journey! (22 years!) I also love following the work of Victoria Findlay Wolfe.
This quilt was absolutely mesmerizing
When I first began quilting, I was always drawn to the texture that quilting adds to a pieced top. What a treat to have time to really enjoy the amazing work of these two quilters!!
It made me a little sad to see the bikes loaded back up onto the motorhome! I truly see the appeal of cycling not only is it a great way to get and stay fit it’s FUN! It reminds me of the freedom as a child riding my bike!
Our first overnight on our way home was in Las Cruces New Mexico…the forecasted temperatures for Tucson were for 40C for right after we left, I happen to enjoy the heat more than Erik. Thankfully it wasn’t as hot in La Cruces but hot enough that we really enjoyed the pool!
And the Sunset on our after supper walk!
We spent a couple of nights at the Santa Rosa Lake State park, we stayed there last year as well and really enjoyed hiking around the lake along with our after supper hikes.
Our daytime hikes were a little too hot for Erik 35C but for some reason those temp sure felt great to me!
We finally checked out Buc-eyes… https://buc-ees.com in Amarillo Texas. The brisket and pulled pork sandwiches were really tasty! The candied pecans were also a yummy treat!
We stopped to visit the Kansas Welcome Center and when I saw this display I just had to get a picture!! I also made Erik pose with them as well!!
Driving through the burning of the Flint Hills felt eerie with the more yellow Smokey sky and smell.
Visiting Winterset Iowa again was such a treat and I will write a separate post about both the Museum and the fantastic quilt shop there!
Aside from visiting the quilt shop and museum in Winterset we were treated to one last day of summer weather! We made great use of that with a fun hike in their city park!
The drive north included Minneapolis which we normally side skirt around by visiting Hastings and Stillwater MN and we both agree that we will do that in the future.
Our last overnight stay was in Hinkley MN where I needed my fleece lined leggings,Winter Coat and wool headband and gloves again in order to take our evening walk…it was not an easy transition back to the cold again!!
You can tell that we were North again parked beside an ice fishing trailer in Hinkley!!
The last cold travel days did make being back in the house welcome! The rest of March and April was very chilly and snowy, however our days were also filled with a lot of wonderful family time and of course Quilting for me!
So we did take a trip with winter…leaving the snow behind and journeyed back to Tucson with the motorhome at the end of February.
It’s was a fun filled active vacation! I made a point to scope out places to walk where ever we camped! The campground in Topeka was close to a wonderful bike/walking path that took us along the Reser’s Food plants. They were interesting to check out, however I have all but eliminated ultra processed foods from our diet…
I am really looking forward to having Costco open here as it was easy to continue my eating plan while travelling!
With that said…we did enjoy some pistachios and pistachio ice cream in Alamogordo!!!
The drive and rv parks along the way were great and I won’t lie having the warmth and sunshine was more than welcome!
We stayed at the same KOA in Tucson as last year. It is right along the Tucson Bike Loop and I could hardly wait to ride again! Having the same amazing grapefruit tree on our site of course was an additional benefit!
We rode almost every day each day adding additional miles to our ride each day after almost three weeks we were at 27 miles. We did come across a snake on the path happily it wasn’t interested in us!
One day when we were riding we came upon a group of women at what I call the watering station. They had birthday hat’s attached to their helmets and wore wings and birthday sashes! The gal that I spoke with said that they get together for birthdays and ride the miles of their birthday…she is 78! How fun is that! There were more than a dozen of them.
Tumamoc Hill was a great adventure, it was a 1.5 mile almost straight up walk the views were fantastic!
We also visited Kartchner Caverns, the tour and seeing the inside of the cave was absolutely amazing and breathtaking! There were no cameras allowed, but if you are interested in caves it is well worth looking into!
Afterwards we went on a hike in the same park, no one would ever guess that underground is such an incredible natural marvel!
We also walked a few miles every evening making it a very active for us vacation! We also spent many of the afternoons relaxing by the pool! The cool water was very welcome.
Wendy’s Quilting and Life 