Christmas Quilt revisit

Sew Cal Gal is hosting a Christmas Quilt Show!  I had hoped to crank out another Christmas quilt but haven't got there yet so here is this one!  I love it!  And of course,  I have already blogged about this quilt. Sorry!  I don't want to be boring!  I love that the colours are not traditional.  The fabric is 12 Days of Christmas by Kate Spain for Moda and the pattern is Trees for Sale by Sandy Gervais and what a great pattern!  I used some other fabrics for the borders and binding.  I stippled it all over.  All set for Christmas snuggles!

As for yesterday's baking... Husband made a Cranberry Orange Pound Cake that was to die for and I took it to work and made my staff totally happy.  The cookies are Spritz and are shaped in a cookie press to look like wreaths and the round cookies are basically a shortbread with currants, rolled in icing sugar.  The recipe calls for pecans but because of some family nut allergies we started using currants.  Now the kids think it is messed up if they are made with nuts.  So funny!

Today he made buns and butter tarts.  He told me that I need to lock up the flour because he cannot stop baking.  Silly!

What do you do when a grade 2 flushes a pencil down the boy's loo?  Yep, all in a day's work!  Have a lovely rest of your day, I am off to an Elementary School Carol Festival and will be listening to our school's choir singing away as well as many other little darlings.

Christmas baking and a wonky little star work in progress...

While I am off at the coal mine (aka my wonderful elementary school), Husband has been busy Christmas baking.   Look at all the wonderful goodness he is churning out!

Last evening, I put together my wonky little stars for a pillow top.  I love them so much!  I think I could easily do a whole quilt of these little wonkies.  I might make them just a wee bit bigger and I would have to have a design wall for sure.  They have a stained glass window impact.  Husband thinks so.  I just love their happiness.  I have 3 of the 4 pillow tops on my list done. Phew!

And yesterday we celebrated something VERY special!  It was "First Egg Day" for our current flock of young chickens.  Suzy was the lovely chickie who gave us this little lovely.  Clever girl, she is!

I hope to have a bit more time for sewing this evening but apparently I have to put little icing diapers on the gingerbread babies.  Happy Tuesday!

Design Wall Monday

On the design wall today...  Wonky little stars!  I am making another pillow top and was inspired by this picture over at Fresh Lemons.  I didn't have a tutorial so I cut up 2.5 " blocks and went for it.  I found the most complicated part of the whole thing was building the layout.  This is one of those times where you need to actually build the thing in order to get it all in the right places.  So it is all laid out and I just need to sew it together. Fun or what?

And other than that... I have also been playing with the 250 plus stitches on my new sewing machine.  This is just so much fun.  Even little maple leaves for us Canadians!!!!

And don't forget that on December 12, it's the big gigantic Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day.  They are doing a giant linky party for those that wish to have a giveaway.  Don't forget to check out the amazing giveaways that day.  I am going to join in the fun with another giveaway.  Mark your calendars!


I am going to link up with Judy's Design Wall Monday today too.  Some very clever people are making some really wonderful things!

Happy Dance!!!!

Yesterday, Santa Claus came early!  I have been dreaming of the Janome Memory Craft 7700 QCP since it was introduced last fall.  I have had the flyer leaning on the shelf in the sewing room.  Just sitting there teasing me with its wonderfulness.  I had a really nice sewing machine.  A Janome too, with lots of quilting features but I found I was maxing out its capabilities.  I really wanted a longer arm.  When I was quilting the yellow vintage sheet quilt, I really struggled.  Then I whined.  Nicely though.  I whined to both Husband and Mum.  They both seemed to agree with me.  This was a good thing.  The time was right and I pounced!  The local sewing machine shop had a sale.  This was looking good.  I did all my research.  Read every review.  Read the writing off the flyer.  Found out all the specs.  I even called the shop to verify the price and if they took trade ins. Saturday was sewing machine day!  By 10 am, she was mine!  Happy dance!  Even Husband was excited!  The sewing machine table even came with the machine as part of the sale!  I never dreamed of having the table.  Husband put it together really quickly and I had everything set up before you could say "quarter inch foot!"

She is just so pretty.  This is before Husband put the pressure foot knee lifter into the socket.  That goes in those nice little holes in the table.  The sewing machine table fit very nicely at the end of the long harvest table where I do all my cutting and mess making in the downstairs kitchen/sewing room.

I think I was in shock with delight!  This is one totally sweet machine!  Oh My Goodness!  That is all I can say.  It makes my old machine seem like a toy.  Yep.  I am a happy quilter!  I spent yesterday figuring it all out.  I played and made all sorts of free motion samples.  Today I made my Farmer's Wife blocks for the week.  Complete glee!  I am all set to play some more.

Husband is watching the Grey Cup game.  We managed to find a spot between rain and wind storms to put the outside Christmas lights up.  We didn't require an ambulance or a divorce lawyer!

Happiness!

Saturday's Flea Market Finds...

I found a lovely jar of buttons today.  I haven't found a jar for such a long time and as I shook the jar around, I could see some treasures.  Some very nice large shell buttons and lots of oldies but goodies.  There was even a pile of pink shell beads.  See them?  They look like rings.  I guess they were strung with a bead in the centre of each.  Pretty!

Some favourites!

And a lavender sachet, still in the package with the label..." Lavande de Provence... La broderie à la main."  Of course, Husband wanted to know what the awful smell was.  Lavender is just lost on him. 

Some beautiful soft yarn.  It was partially knitted into something odd and round which I undid.  I also found a great bundt pan but it was not that interesting and didn't seem to lend itself to an artsy bundt pan photo.

Actually, I was so focused on the next stop of the day that I did not spend too much time in the thrift store.  Here is just a wee sneak peak...more to follow tomorrow!!

And I will be linking up with Sophie's flea market finds later this evening.  Don't forget to check out all the fabulous finds!

GIVEAWAY WINNER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr. Random Number picked #30!!!!!

Congratulations, Jessika!  I will send you an email and get the fabrics out to you right away!  YEAH!!!

 #30   Jessika said...

I'm a follower now too! Thanks :)

November 18, 2011 10:28 PM 

Another pillow start and Happy Thanksgiving to our neighbours south

Another pillow on the go. I was inspired by a photo on another blog.  So interesting! I used random neutrals and prints in the brown/beige families and then popped in some Meadowsweet.    I think it looks kind of zowie.  I was so quick to take a picture last evening that I did not even trim the edges.  I sewed last night because Survivor was not really a new one.  I am such a Survivor addict!

I will be drawing for my giveaway in just a little while!!!  Stay tuned folks!  Happy American Thanksgiving to all!

Farmer's Wife Check In Week 26 and the dreaded "y" seam

Block # 37  Flower Pot

Block # 42 Fruit Basket

Here they are for this week!  I was dreading the flower pot block because it does have the "dreaded" y seams. Once I wrapped my brain around how to handle such little tiny pieces with a y seam, it really was just fine. I have sewn my fair share of doll clothes and you often have to do similar seams with those.

And Fruit basket was fiddly with all the little triangles but it was just fine!  I am noticing how tall my wee pile of blocks is getting!  Seriously impressive.

On another topic, for those Canadians out there, Fabricland is getting much nicer quality fabric. I noticed lately, some really special stuff including some of the Annie's Seed Catalogue fabric from Lake House Dry Goods. Oh my goodness! Who knew?


Please don't forget to enter my giveaway.  You have until Thursday evening and as I said yesterday, I did find some more samples from this Christmas line from Basic Grey to throw in so it is an even better prize!!! 

Just Ducky! Vintage sheet quilt finish

Here is my yellow vintage sheet finish!  It was so dark today so this is not the best photo!  We had a terrific wind and rain storm overnight that melted all the snow and blew leaves and branches all over the place.  I was still at work and noticed how dark it was getting at 3 in the afternoon so called home and grovelled a bit.  I convinced Husband to throw the quilt on the clothesline and take a picture, pretty please!  And he did.  So there it is!  It measures approximately 76" x 82".  Pretty big to quilt diagonally!  A lovely bit of sunshine on a cloudy, dark November day.

The back is pretty simple with a white/yellow floral vintage sheet back.  I did get a couple of crinkles on the back but when I throw it in the wash, I don't think they will be noticed.  Crossing fingers!

And why did I say, Just Ducky?  Husband was having some fun with the crazy lawn ornament in front of his wood shop (a.k.a. troll house).   

So silly!


Please don't forget to enter my giveaway.  You have until Thursday evening and as I said yesterday, I did find some more samples from this Christmas line from Basic Grey to throw in so it is an even better prize!!! 


I am going to link up with Fabric Tuesday!

Time for some pillow action...

First of all!  I have to say, "oh my gosh!"  I have over 100 followers!  How most exciting and I welcome each one of you!!!!

I finished 2 things yesterday.  Mum's chair pad and the yellow vintage sheet quilt.  Then I started the pillow project.  I have this idea to make a pillow for several of my dear friends for Christmas.  Each pillow will have to reflect that person in some way.  First up is the Sunflower Pillow because this friend is a sunflower nut and she drooled a lot over Daughter's sunflower quilt.  Here is a link to  the quilt I made for Daughter last May.  In a word, this pattern is Kitchen Window from Elizabeth Fransson's book Practical Guide to Patchwork.  I had bits and pieces from Daughter's quilt so this was pretty easy to put together.  I added an extra row of sunflower squares to make it more pillow sized.  Looking snazzy!!!  The squares are bordered with Kona Black sashing.  Now it needs quilting and a back.  I am now debating the thread colour for the quilting.  What do you think?  Yellow or black?

Please don't forget to enter my giveaway.  You have until Thursday evening and as I said yesterday, I did find some more samples from this Christmas line from Basic Grey to throw in so it is an even better prize!!!

I am going to link up with Judy's Design Wall Monday because it is just so much fun to see what people are up to!


And I have said this before and I will say it again now!  I am always so amazed at how much quicker a pillow goes together than a quilt!  Have a lovely Monday!!!!

PS.  Stray Stitches has a great giveaway and she is always so good about talking about my giveaways and has sent lots of people my way so check it out!!!

Work In Progress Sunday

First of all, I have to say thank you to all of you have entered my giveaway and I found some more of the Basic Grey Christmas fabric to toss in the prize so it is even better!  You have until Thursday to enter!!!! So exciting!  But to my amazement, I have several 'no reply' bloggers entering so if you win, I cannot contact you.  Please check my post from yesterday so that you can make sure you are not a no reply blogger.

What have I been up to?

Yesterday, I went to sandwich the yellow vintage sheet quilt only to find the chunk of batting I had to use was not quite big enough.  Fiddlesticks!  Rather than cut into a new bunch of batting, I decided to add a piece to the batting to make it big enough.  I have this towering stack of batting bits that are either too small or not quite big enough.  I cut the edges with my rotary cutter to make them even and used that snazzy little stitch that looks like giant zigzags made up of little tiny stitches.  I don't know what it is called.  I put the 2 cut edges together and stitched the sides together.  It worked swimmingly.  And then the batting was the right size.  It made me feel clever and thrifty all at once.

Then I had this crazy idea to quilt the yellow vintage sheet quilt on the diagonal.  What was I thinking?  First of all the quilt is big.  I used the stitching guide thing that attaches to my walking foot but the bulk of the quilt once I got further into the quilting kept shifting the guide.  Curses.  Erg.  Drat.  Anyway.  I gave up on the guide and used copious quantities of masking tape to mark the lines.  It is not perfect but it still looks pretty cool.  I was able to use this as yet another piece of evidence that I may need to get a sewing machine with a longer arm.  He he he.  Tonight I will hand sew the binding.

And I worked on Mum's chair pad.  Four layers of batting and I am set to finish it up with some hand sewing too.  So much fun!

Husband has a chicken in the barbeque for dinner and strangely all of our chickens are lined up in the corner of their run glaring at the barbeque in the distance.  Silly chickens.  Don't worry, we never eat our chickens.

Have a lovely rest of your day!

Frosty Snow Covered Flea Market Finds and no reply blogger hints...

Sewing and Knitting bits

Such a pretty hanky!

Vintage tea towel!!!!!

Oh, how I love thrift store quilting cotton!!!

It was -5 degrees Celsius this morning and that is apparently about 23 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale.  BRRRR!  Fabric was still 50% off at the thrift store and I did find some lovely stuff.  The purple is over 4 metres of something called Japanese Stencil from RJR fabrics.  The green is a damask cotton.  Really nice.  I think it would be great quilt binding.  The fruit print is just awesome vintage-y cotton.  I love it!  And a nice little chunk of white eyelet because I can never resist it.

I also found a few little sewing odds and knitting bits, a lovely hanky and a gorgeous vintage linen tea towel.  Happiness on a cold day.

I wanted to mention that I love getting comments.  I think all bloggy people love getting comments!  Here is the thing though people, some of you are "no reply bloggers" and you may not realize it.  What this means is that I cannot say "thank you" or "how clever" or "I never thought of that" when you leave a comment if you are a no reply blogger.  But wait!  There is a simple fix and many bloggers have offered up this suggestion.

Here goes...



Lee from freshly pieced offers instructions on her blog post after she could not contact the winner of her giveaway.  YOIKS!  Imagine that.  So what do you need to do? Basically all comments arrive in my email inbox.  If you are a no reply blogger, your email is blocked when I try to reply.  I noticed that several people who entered my giveaway are set up as no reply bloggers!  You need to select "show email address" in order to fix it.  Otherwise, you may just be thinking that your comments are falling on deaf ears when I really do read them all and like to say something back to show you that your comments are important.  So here goes...

1. In blogger.com, click on Dashboard.
2. Select Edit Profile.
3. Check the box for "Show my Email Address."
4. Save changes.
   
   Here is another link with pictures in case you need a bit more detail!
   
   And that is all folks.  I will be linking up  with Sophie's Flea Market Finds and Apron Girl's Thrift Share Monday if her link is up.  Have a lovely rest of your day!   Don't forget to enter my wee giveaway if you have not already!
   
        

SNOW!!!!

Well!  It really happened.  The weather man was right (for once) and we really did get a good dump of snow.   Our farm is at a higher elevation than town so we tend to get snow even if town is just getting rain.  Husband even shoveled the driveway for the first time this winter.  He was checking on some of the drainage ditches and the creeks on the edge of the property and found significant beaver damage on many trees!!!!!  Oh my goodness those little critters are being totally naughty!!!!!

My students had a blast today making giant snow blobs by rolling snow all around the playing field.  I had to give my "no snowball throwing even at imaginary people" talk as well as my "respect other people's snow blobs" talk.  It was just lovely to see them all rolling around like happy snow puppies.

On the sewing front, I have been putting together a chair cushion for Mum in her favourite yellow and blue.  And the Vintage Sheet blog has a new caretaker and has a linky party going on for vintage sheet projects.  I am going to have to have to get organized and post some links.!

And don't forget that I have a little giveaway going on until next Thursday evening!

Celebrate the snow with a little giveaway!

How about a little Christmas Giveaway? These are some samples of Basic Grey's line Fruitcake.  It amounts to about 2 fat quarters worth but you get lots of variety in the fabric from this colour way!  I thought it might be fun to celebrate that it is snowing a blizzard and the ground is white!

How to enter????  Leave a comment!  Followers get an extra chance when you leave another comment saying you follow Blueberry Patch.  You can always become a follower too, if you are not already and that will give you a second chance too! I will mail this anywhere so International entries are just fine and more than welcome.  And I will leave this give away open until next Thursday, November 24, 2011 and will pick the winner around 6 pm pst!  Good luck!!!!

Happy snow day!!!

Farmer's Wife Check in Week 25

Block #27 Darting Birds

Block #111 Wrench

I put these blocks together on the weekend and took advantage of the break in the weather Sunday morning to take some quick pictures outside.  I hoped that I would catch some of the chickadees flying to and away from the bird feeder in the background but they were just too fast for me.  I thought it would be funny since one of the blocks is called "Darting birds!"  I have to say the stack of wee blocks is getting substantial!!!

Super busy this week but I took the time to celebrate with so many children at school today.   Yep!  Snow was falling.  Ever so briefly, wet and slushy, but it qualified as snow.  You could hear the excitement up and down the hallways of the school as the children noticed what was happening outside their classroom windows.  It was fabulous.  And it is always like that when snow falls-especially the first snow of the year.  It is magic!

Happy first glimmer of snow day!

Trees for Sale!

I finished this quilt on Friday!  Wahoo!  I love it.  It is a happy hug of Christmas all wrapped up in a quilt.  The fabric is 12 Days of Christmas by Kate Spain for Moda from last season and the pattern is called "Trees for Sale."  I used some bits and pieces for the borders including the green snowflakes which is a Michael Miller print.  So there it is.  Trees for Sale.  I backed it with some dots from my stash with a bit of the green snowflakes.  It looks a little like a present from the back.  I stippled it loosely in white.  The quilt measures about 65" by  65".

I will link up with Sew Modern Monday and tomorrow with Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday.

Sunday Work In Progress

Yesterday and today, I turned this stack of vintage sheet-ness and also 2 sheets found yesterday morning, into...

this!  Here it is on the downstairs design floor.

I cut 4" x 8" rectangles, along with 4" x 2.5" and 12" x 2.5" strips to frame up the rectangles.  I stuck with yellows but used a fair quantity of solid yellows from my vintage sheet stash for the frames.  The solids often can be found on the sheet or pillowcase borders.  These borders come in mighty handy for sashings etc.  This quilt has 7 blocks across and 10 down.  Vintage sheet sunshine!  I will link up with Judy's Design Wall Monday tomorrow!  Have a lovely rest of your day!