Work In Progress Wednesday

1) Well!  Among other things, I did get all my letters together into words.  Now I have to figure out how far apart the lines need to be and of course, attach the words together into phrases.  This is total progress!

2)  I also finished my Scrappy Stash QAL quilt but I haven't blogged about that yet.  Trust me.  It is finished!

3)  I finished the hand quilting on my Scrappy Swap handmade item journal cover and just have to do a little machine sewing so that the flaps are constructed on the journal cover.

4)  And I made more blocks for the another star quilt.  Oh yes, I did!

5)  I also made these....  Jane Market Bags.  They go together so fast!

Linking up with the Needle and Thread Network and Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday!

Close Encounters of a Bird Kind...

This is Wendy.  Or at least that is what we will call her or him.  Wendy is a Northern Pygmy Owl who had a little crash into our living room window this afternoon.  Husband went into bird rescue action and got Wendy back into form and managed to take a few pictures before letting Wendy fly off.  Of course, this wee owl, all 6 or 7" of crankiness,  was cursing at him in owl language.  Check out those talons and fuzzy legs!  We are happy to say that Wendy flew off across the field in what Husband described as a pure Harry Potter moment.  Who knew these little fellows lived in our woods!?

Of course we have had other close encounters is birds.  Who could forget the duck in the fireplace?

Scrappy Swap!

I have joined a new scrappy swap and I have lurked and spied on my secret partner.  I had some fun pulling some scraps on the weekend for her.  Then I had to go through the mental turmoil of making a decision about what to make for that one handmade item to send along with all the scrap fun.  I finally settled on a covered journal.  And that is what you see in the picture.  What do you think?  I did some hand quilting on it last night.  Almost finished!  I just need to do the final construction on the flaps so that the journal can stay nice and snug inside the cover. 

Here are the scraps that I have pulled so far!  Fun, fun, fun!

Working away...

I made several more "another star" blocks today.  I have to say that this quilt in the works is making me very happy.  All the bright florals just work for me.  I haven't thought of how many blocks I need, I'll just keep making them until it feels right.  I do think this needs to be a big one though.

I also had to decide on a binding for my scrappy stash quilt for the scrappy stash quilt along.  I must have pulled a dozen or more fabrics before deciding on this blue stripe.  It is a moda from a way back.  I really wanted a black and white strip like Rita of Red Pepper Quilts uses often for bindings but the right black and white stripe is hard to find.  It is my current quest.  When I find it, I am going to buy a lot of it!

Linking up with Judy's design wall Monday.  Lot's of sewing happened this weekend so lots of things to show this week!  Stay tuned!

Does it get any better?

Cheezies.  My downfall.  I love these super crunchy, cheesy snacks so much that I cannot be trusted with them.  Husband bought them for me today as a treat.  Mmmm.  These are Canadian Cheezies.  They are the best.  The even have a little maple leaf on the package and the quote... "vrai fromage."  It just doesn't get any better.  14 wee bags of them.  Be still my beating heart.

Oh!  More good stuff!  A new iron!  Cheezies and a new iron.  How can I stand it?  Life is just too good.  I fried my first Rowenta.  I think it had slowly been dying but I didn't quite realize it until yesterday when the  light came on but no heat happened.  Not quite two years of Rowenta bliss and then the heating element went.  Drat.  I bought another one.  Because it is just such a beauty.  I bought the extended warranty though.  I am good for 3 years of replacement protection in case it goes.  Husband told me it will burn out in 3 years and 1 day.  Such negative thinking!  Check out this picture.  Cheezies and a new Rowenta in the same picture.

Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Quilt stats:

Name:  Gemstones for a Friend

Block:  Gemstones from Rachel, Stitched in Color

Quilted by Me

Size:  70" x 84"
Best Category:  Favourite Bed Quilt, Favourite Home Machine Quilted Quilt, Favourite two colour quilt

I decided to enter Gemstones for a Friend in the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  I love this quilt!  I finished it this past July and made it for a special friend.  She is kind, generous, warm, funny, special, loyal and most certainly colourful and so is this quilt.  That is what made it just right for her.  I had wanted to make her a quilt for awhile but had not settled on a design.  I think I always knew it would be with these colours.  I found this block on Rachel's blog, Stitched in Color and the rest just fell into place.  Rachel calls the block "gemstones."  And this is "Gemstones for a Friend."

I used a variety of fabrics.  Scraps and bits and pieces from my stash.  The solid purple used in the setting triangles is Kona Berry and the dots are from Stof.  The binding is a strip from the Prospect Park line that I had stashed just for bindings!  Perfect!  I quilted it densely in straight lines with Aurifil 50 wt.  I used a lot of thread!  I have to say that it was my husband who had the idea to use the 2 different fabrics for the setting triangles.  It totally works and is just the quirky touch it needed to make it just the right quilt for my buddy.

The backing is pieced with colourful fabric from my stash and can you see the label?  I free-motion quilted some handwriting.  It even looks like my handwriting!

I have to say the gift was a success.  And it is just the quilt I wanted to share for the festival.  I hope you like it too.

Squirrelling away fabric goodness

I went to a quilt show on the weekend.  It was a bit of a drive.  Husband was my quilt show buddy.  He is such a trooper.  He even went in with me.  Plugged into his iPod but he was there!  The quilts were quite lovely but much more traditional than my quilt happy place.  The vendors were fun.  How much happier can a quilter be to be told that if you pick out 10 fat quarters, you will get 2 free.  How could I resist?  And at only $1.99 a fat quarter, what a deal!

I also picked up a bundle of Kaffe Fasset fat quarters because I just seem to love those right now.  They were on sale and shouted, "Pick me, pick me."  So I did.  Husband said, "More fabric?"  Without a doubt. 

This particular quilt show had a lovely tea room set up in the middle school library where the show was located.  It was delightful.  An old fashioned tea party with lovely bone china cups and plates of dainty yummies on the table.  Husband and I had planned to have tea but when he noticed how girly the room was, he hesitated but I convinced him that we should have tea.  He was most afraid of losing his "man card".  The tea was awesome.  The lemon squares were the best.  Nothing like a tea party on a chilly fall day!

How do you spell gray? or grey?

It's official.  I have made all the letters for Proverbial Sunshine.  Through the wonders of digital photography, we can imagine it all together...

What is next?  I have to trim all the letters and join the letters together to words and words into phrases.  And phrases into the layout.  It is definitely progress!  This is a Denyse Schmidt pattern and a QAL hosted by Krista at Poppyprint.  

I had a great quandary about how to spell gray.  Or grey?  I did some research and it really seems to be an either or.  I tried to find the original lyrics for the song to see how it was spelled but that seems pretty loose too.  I went with an "a".

I have also made significant progress on my Scrappy Stash quilt.  All ready for quilting it is!

And no progress on my Another Star quilt because I was so focused on these 2 things.  Nonetheless, it was a really great sewing week.  Linking up with Lee's Work in Progress Wednesday!

Rainbow Flimsy

We have a Scrappy Stash  flimsy!  This was yesterday and you can see that there was official and possibly measurable snowfall.  Webster thought it was quite the thing.  Not only did this emerge as a flimsy but I also got the back made and the whole rainbow explosion of scrappy goodness spray basted.  It is resting on the floor, ready to quilt.  

The Blogger's Festival of Quilts is coming up this Friday.  I have already decided which quilt I am going to enter.  It's a secret.  What about you?  Have you entered before?  It is a lot of fun to see all the quilts!

Progress!

I made a bunch more scrappy wonky log cabins for the Scrappy Stash Quilt Along.    I laid them out on the floor in a random fashion.  I tried to have no colours touching diagonally.  It looked okay, but I thought I might have fun with a rainbow.  I needed to make a few more blocks to fill in the holes so I am up to 56 blocks in a 7 block by 8 block layout.  What do you think?  Not bad for 100% scraps!?

While I was working on rainbows, we had our first snow!  Or shall we say slush.  The ground was covered. The trees were hanging with the weight of all that wet snow.  Happily it has all melted away.

Linking up with Judy's Design Wall Monday!

I signed up for another scrappy swap!  This one is the Scrappy Swap hosted by Kat who blogs at Diary of a Flutter.Kat.  Sign ups are still open if you are interested in a fun wee swap.  One of the stipulations was that you had to hurry up and post an inspiration mosaic.  EEk!  Such pressure.  I used Big Huge Labs and then uploaded it to Flikr.  EEk!  It worked.  It was tricky to decide what to include in my inspiration mosaic.  I think it shows that I like colour.

and for some most exciting news, I won a pattern for a market square tote on Felicity's blog.  The tote is designed by Nikki, The girl who quilts.  I have already downloaded the pdf pattern and it is very, very thorough and easy to follow so I will have to get cracking!  Thank you, Felicity!!!

Back to sewing.  Actually, not true.  Down to the exercise bike.  But I will be able to ponder my wonky log cabin scrap quilt layout while I cycle from my perch on the bike seat!!!

Rainforest Crackers

FRIDAY!!!!

I came home to the smell of these absolutely glorious crackers.  Lovely with cheese or cream cheese or just plain with tea.  They also make a lovely hostess gift.

Rainforest Crackers:

2 cups flour   

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 cups buttermilk

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup honey

1 cup raisins or cranberries or currants or combination

1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts or almond

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

1/4 cup sunflower seeds or sesame seeds

1/4 cup flaxseed ground

1 T fresh rosemary chopped

Mix all ingredients together & pour into two large or four small loaf pans that have been sprayed with non stick spray.....Bake at 350 for 25 min for small pans/45 minutes for large pans, until golden & springy.  Cool

Freeze the loaves & when you want to bake, thaw slightly then slice as thin as possible. Lay out on baking sheet and bake at 300 for 15 min, then flip over and bake another 15 min.  Should be crisp and deep golden.

Use your imagination per ingredients above, use some or all of nuts, rosemary, etc or substitute.  Enjoy!

Random Thursday

Some fabric followed me home from Jasper.    I do love the paperweight print.  Kaffe Fasset just has such a way with colour.  And there is a Martha Negley green on white print hiding under the dots on the left.  Yum!

161st anniversary of Moby Dick.  Who knew?  Google did.  Just saying.

Sew Sisters Quilt Shop in Toronto and with a big on line presence, have invited me to be a host blogger during their blog event in November.  (Imagine me now doing a happy dance!)  Of course I said, yes!  Actually I think I squealed, "Yes!"

I noticed a really snazzy quilt pattern in Quilt Magazine.   The December/January issue just arrived in the mail and while the magazine tends to have more traditional quilts, this one is MODERN!   It is called Make it Modern and was designed by Corey Yoder and quilted by the amazing Angela Walters.  It is really awesome in its simplicity.  I think it is on my must do list.

Who invented Magic Bags?  I would like to give them a hug.

So there.  Random.  Linking with Cindy for Random Thursday.  I love this link up!

Work in Progress Wednesday!

I have several works in progress on the go!  Disneyland was fantastic!  Yawn!  I am so tired!  23 hours without sleep!  Fabulous memories for all my little Disneyland buddies!  We even did back to back Space Mountain!

1)  I have made a bit more progress on my another star quilt.  I do really like this!  I threw a white sheet over the guest bed to play with these blocks and you can see my Swoon quilt peeking through.  Oops!  I am using a bunch of Kaffe Fassett and Martha Negley scraps and fat quarters.  It is a lot of fun to put together these vibrant colours!

2)  My proverbial quilt is "humming along!"  I am joining Krista at Poppyprint for this quilt along using Denyse Schmidt's Proverbial quilt pattern.  I am so excited about this quilt!  Swoon is peeking out here too!

3)  And 25 scrappy delights for the Scrappy Stash quilt along just need me to get busy with some blue and green blocks.  I am surprised how quickly I had 25 blocks and how little difference this made to my scrap boxes!

So that is it!  Works in progress and a perma-smile on my face after spending an incredible day at Disneyland.

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday and the Needle and Thread Network too!

Off to see Mickey...

I am off  to Disneyland with Dreams Take Flight for a trip of a lifetime for 5 of my students and many other children!  It will be a 24 hour whirlwind!  Thank you Air Canada and all the other fabulous sponsors!!!!

You are my sunshine!

I am getting there!  I only have one more line to go and then I can start putting all the letters together.  Then the fun part comes with trying to figure out the layout of the words.  I have been pretty scrappy with this.  The letters are made with a variety of grays and each letter has scrappy yellows.  I will need to make sure that the same grays do not line up in the layout.  I can see an "E" that I will need to switch out because the "I" above it is the same fabric.  Yoiks!  That just will not do.

Up next... "When skies are gray."  The letters are easy to sew together.  The time consuming part is the cutting out of each piece of the letters, prior to sewing.  I found it worked well for me to do a word at a time.  That is cutting out all the bits of each letter needed for the word and then sewing all the letters together for that word before moving on.  I found the "H" to be really wide so on the last one that I made I narrowed it.  I may go back and narrow the others.  I did that by cutting a chunk off the middle portion of the "H".

Some scrappy goodness!

I have had a little bit of fun with this yesterday.  Red, purple, yellow, pink and orange wonky scrappy log cabins!  25 blocks so far with green and blue yet to make appearances!  And my scrap boxes do not look any different, people!  I have to confess that I did not press any seams until the block was together.  I just flattened them with my trusty finger.  The blocks are a happy 8.5" square!  Eek!  I love it!

This is all part of the Scrappy Stash Quilt Along over at Ellison Lane Quilts.

Have scraps!  It isn't too late to join in the fun!



Linking up with Amy Lou Who for the Not at the Sewing Summit linky party and Judy's Design Wall Monday.

How about a little bit of flea market finds?

How could I resist?  Simply lovely and a bargain at a $1 each so they came home with me.  Other than that, I did pick up some fabric that will make fabulous Jane Market bags.  Not this weekend though because I was spending quality time with my sewing machine all day whipping up monochromatic scrappy log cabins.  I will show those off tomorrow because I had one heck of a lot of fun churning those out.

Off to visit with my card ladies tonight.  On the agenda... whist, good eats and lots of laughing guaranteed!

Random Thursday

Oh my goodness!  I love using these hair elastics for button loops but I can usually only find a small bundle of them at the dollar store and I had used up all my favourite colours.  I have been looking in every dollar store I am near for more and nothing!  Until the other day when I hit the mother lode.  Will you look at that!?  200 hair elastics in assorted colours and the correct thickness to offer happy button looping.  $2.25 each.  Woo hoo!  This will keep me in button loops for a long long time.

And look at the versatility in these fabulous packets of sewing happiness!  If bored I can play ball!  Life cannot get any better.

But wait... quilt guild is tonight and yes, life can get better than finding packets of hair elastics! 

Happy 10-11-12 day!

Linking up with Cindy for Random Thursday.

Squeal!

In September I entered one of my wee Mendocino needlebooks in the My Precious Quilt Along.  I won a yard of Heather Ross Yellow Dogs fabric donated by Katie at Swim Bike Quilt!!!!!  Seriously yummy fabric.  It has the beautiful silky hand that you find with other Heather Ross fabrics.  Just so lovely!

I am off to write a thank you note!!!

Work in Progress Wednesday on a Tuesday

1)  Officially a work in progress.  "Another Star" is coming along just fine and I am using a variety of Kaffe Fassett and Martha Negley florals with a few little other pretties.  I seem to be making the stars in pairs so as I have more blocks, the variety of florals will increase and be less matchy matchy looking.  This is fun and I think would lend very nicely to scraps too.

2)  I finished this little needlebook last Friday so that is off the list and ready to be a door prize at quilt guild.

 3)  Being away all weekend, I was separated from my sewing machine.  This trauma was made up for by being able to spend all that lovely time with Daughter and her Special Someone.  I did however make dishcloths like a crazy old knitting lady.

4)  And I have been putting together a Halloween goodie bag for a quilt guild swap on Thursday.   Seriously fun.  What do we have there besides chocolate?  Hmmm.  Some Halloween buttons.  So wonderful black and white twine on a wooden spool.  2 Ghastlies fat quarters and a pack of napkins that say "broom rides 50 cents."  I added a chunk of Kona Kumquat as an extra just a minute ago and then I have to stuff it all into the Halloween bucket.  Too much fun!

5)  My Proverbial quilt has not had any attention this week.  It must be getting lonely.

Linking up with Lee for Work in Progress Wednesday! and the Needle and Thread Network for Canadian bloggers.