Vintage goodness

Mum was down for a visit.  She usually brings a few boxes of stuff or "junk" as Husband would say.  Mum has told us that when she finally comes with an empty vehicle, that will mean she is moving in.  In the shipment this time, were a whack of vintage sheets, including some in original packaging.  Super awesome!  Even better was that she found them during a bag sale and paid a whooping $5 for the lot of them.

Mum also brought a box of her fabric scraps.  The old ones.  We went through the box and there are fabrics dating back to the 40s with a whole lot of 50s and a bunch of 60s fabrics.  All cottons and all perfectly awesome.  I recognize a lot of the fabrics as scraps from clothes Mum made for us.  Many of the fabrics were from things she made for herself as a teen.  So fun!    Love the flying books.  I carefully pressed a bunch of them and will start to use some of them in projects.  Good junk!

What am I doing?

I have not been sewing much.  But I have been busy.  I am back to work.  That is one thing.  And then Mum came to visit.  Mum came bearing gifts.  Lots of fun vintage sheets which I have not yet taken pics of and a whole box of fabulous vintage fabric.  Real vintage fabric from the 40s and 50s.  Squeal!  She also brought tomatoes, peppers and grapes.  And her dehydrator.  We got chopping on Sunday.  Mostly Husband got chopping.  Mum took care of the grapes from her vines and they are now raisins.  I haven't bought raisins for years.  Thanks Mum!

Anyway.  Much chopping and stirring and simmering later, we had 53 pints of salsa and one part jar.  It took us all day but now our children and their significant others will be happy as cupcakes.  They like our salsa.  Daughter's special someone says that I have ruined him for store bought salsa.  What a sweetie.

My sewing machine is now equipped with a snazzy new automatic thread cutter.  Apparently, I am the first one to have worn out a thread cutter in all the Janome Horizon 7700s that my local Janome shop has sold.  What does that say?

Sewing this weekend.  For sure.

Just a bit of fabric for a Monday...

I was doing a little shopping at one of my sponsors the other day.  And today a lovely package of fabric goodness arrived from the Fabric Spot.    I was experiencing some buyer's regret after my Oregon trip to Sisters.  I did not get any of the Mustang Canvas when I was fabric shopping so I had to fix that and Fabric Spot has a whole lot of Cotton and Steel going on.  I love that Mustang print!  I also picked out a few other Cotton and Steel  fat quarters including Hatbox Tiger Stripes in Orange, and Homebody Button Jar in Aqua.  I selected some more Kona Parchment as it goes so nicely with linen.  I was surprised by the scale of the Button Jar.  Just so you know, the buttons are big and with lots of negative space.  I had this idea the buttons would be smaller.  It is lovely though.  I also had to get a metre of Fox Field Vintage Stars because it is beautiful.    There you have it.  Fabric happiness.

Scrap Busting: Project Number Two in Progress

I shared this picture the other day on our guild Facebook page.  I just took a quick iPad photo to show my buddies what I started  because I started something new.  This is my scrap buster quilt project number two.  I am seriously trying to get through the boxes of scraps that I carefully tuck away into "organized by colour" plastic shoe boxes.  Even the white is from the white scrap box.  I will eventually run out of suitable whites and have to resort to yardage but for now, I am scrap busting totally.

This is a pattern from the lovely book, Modern Bee:  13 Quilts to Make With Friends.  And while I am sure this would be lovely with fat quarters, the block lends itself to scrap busting.   One of my guild members asked if my colour choices were random but I would say focused random.  If that makes sense.  I decided that one of the scraps had enough of the colours going on that made me happy that as long as the scraps I pulled were colours found in that one fabric, then they would be allowed to play.  What that meant then, were scraps of orange, green, purple, blue, yellow and some magenta.  The colours needed to be intense and saturated for the most part.  I think it is awesome!  Just my kind of scrap happy!

I am more than a little bit determined to use up scraps and I even bagged up all my little bitty "sawdust" scraps and will pass those off to a friend.  I felt much lighter after that!

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday!

On The Design Wall: Lucky Stars Block of the Month

I continue to work away on Don't Call Me Betsy's Lucky Stars Blocks of the Month.  Here I have both July and August up on the barn wall.  I cannot remember if I have shared July but I think not.  Let me tell you, these have a lot of pieces but Elizabeth's instructions for cutting and piecing are pretty darn solid and the blocks have been going together smoothly.  I keep all the fabrics I use for the blocks in a plastic shoe box so I don't have to go hunting for them each month and I also don't have to look at them out in a pile all the time.  I am using an Anna Maria Horner fabric from her line Innocent Crush as the focal fabric for all the star.  I use the Stof basics text print in many of the stars as well.  Only a few more months of blocks and we will call this a quilt!  I have not done May's block yet.  I was super busy at school then.  And speaking of school, today marks the end of my summer vacation and I am back to work!  Eep!  The summer has flown by.  Linking up with Judy for Design Wall Monday.  Have a look down below for all the stars on my design wall.

The best night of the month!

The second Thursday of every month is our wonderful Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild meeting and part of the fun is deciding what to take as a door prize.  I was inspired to cover a journal after having so much fun making a cover for the wee composition books the day before.  So a little bit of linen and some bits and pieces of stitchy fabric and I had a journal cover.  But then I thought it needed a little one too.  So this is what happens when a covered journal has a baby.  Oh my goodness, so much fun.  And that beautiful turquiose Aurifil 50 wt is number 5005 and I used it to add some quilting to the baby journal cover.  I used Aurifil 50 wit in light grey for the quilting on the big one.

And my quilting buddy got to take these home with her and that was just awesome.  Linking up with Amand Jean for Finish it Up Friday.

Just a little thing...

I was at Staples this morning.  Wasting some time with Husband while waiting for the sewing machine store to open.  I was retrieving my machine because apparently I have worn out the automatic thread cutter on my Janome Horizon 7700.  Who knew?  Apparently I use it a lot.  Anyway.  The part is on order and until it comes in, I have to cut threads the old fashioned way. Such a problem.

Back to Staples.  I noticed these cute little Composition notebooks.  Oh my goodness.  So darn cute at only 4.5" by 3.25".  I bought some.  They were 2 for a dollar.  I bought 6 and think I will have to get more.  I wanted to make  little covers, of course!  The first attempt was an epic fail.  Too small and too bulky.  I regrouped and tried again and this time I figured out a good plan and my test cover was a success!

How cute is this?  Just some linen scraps and some scrap scraps.  Now that I have figured out the sizing, I can have some with fancy scraps!

Where I sew?

Mad About Patchwork is hosting a Canadian Where I Sew blog tour and has a Flickr page set up for us to post some pictures.  It is always fun to see where other people create such wonderful projects.  I thought I would join the party and give you a little tour of my sewing space.  I have a lot of space.  I am going to tell you that straight away.  I have a huge room downstairs that opens up to the back yard.  There is a lot of natural light which is lovely.  I share the space with a little kitchen area and this is where I do the summer canning and stuff like that.  My friend Sue's friend Sue called it my Italian kitchen.  I guess that is a thing.

My husband made the long harvest table from reclaimed cedar planks from the stall walls in our barn.  They are super thick planks and were logged right behind our house in the 30s or 40s.  The table is where we would hide under in an earthquake.  Just saying.  The table is super awesome for everything.  Cutting.  Hosting meetings.  Having ice tea on a hot summer day and spreading my junk without having to clean it up.  It also serves as a great place to have a quilt spread to when quilting.

My main machine is a Janome Horizon 7700.  I love it.  It sits in the table it came with and I totally recommend having your machine sunk into a table.  Makes a huge difference.  I also have a Featherweight, Daisy Marie, and my old Kenmore which is about 25 years old.  You can see that I have a handle on my ruler.  I cut my finger badly a few years ago with my rotary cutter.  The handle keeps your fingers away!  My iPad is also always with me when sewing.  I use it a lot for patterns, music and inspiration.  My "go to" tools live neatly in a wooden box which came from Starbucks with a bunch of little bags of coffee at Christmas.  It is the perfect box for tools!  It keeps me tidy!

My husband is also responsible for all the amazing storage and he made me 2 design walls.  A massive one and a smaller one.  Nice!

We have not updated the flooring. 1970s chic for sure!

You can see my scrap storage system in the shelving below.  Colour coded plastic shoe boxes all stacked up.  The drawers have notions, thread, and other sewing stuff.  The vintage tins have trims and buttons.

In the back hallway, my husband built more custom cabinetry for my fabric.  It is out of the light here and I call it "the store" or the great wall of fabric.  It is really fantastic to have the space to have my fabric organized.  I am able to see at a glance what is there and what I need to focus on when stash building.
I have a little stepladder to get up high.  A bolt of white, my batting storage and a roll of Ikea Britten number fabric is at the end of the hall. My mum wove the rag rug on the floor.  She makes wonderful rugs and we have them all over the house.

A Finish for a Friday: All About Scraps

   Name: Darlene

Design: Quilty, July/August 2014 issue

Size: 60" by 82"

Quilted: by me with Aurifil 50 wt in white, straight line grids

Fabric, Binding and Backing:  Scraps, Kona White, binding in pink and white stripe by Bonnie and Camille, Marmalade line, backing, pieced stash fabrics

I started this quilt on a whim last week.  It was really about trying to deal with my over flowing scrap boxes but scraps seem to magically multiply.  Despite my efforts and the presence of a quilt, there does not seem to be any appreciable difference in the levels of the scrap boxes.  But I do have a lovely quilt to show for it all.  I have named this quilt Darlene because it is scrappy and vintage and while my quilting buddy Darlene is neither scrappy or vintage, she does like that sort of  quilt.

I used a pattern in the July/August issue of Quilty to make this simple 9 patch on point.  The pattern was an inspiration from a vintage design.  I used lots of small scale prints from the scrap buckets and loads of Kona white.  The binding is a pink and white stripe from Bonnie and Camille's Marmalade line because I do like a stripey binding.  I quilted lots of interesting straight lines.  I used a ton of masking tape to mark the lines.  And tons of Aurifil 50 wt in white, of course (#Aurifil)!  What do you think?

closer...

in flight...

photo bombed by Webster...  look at that blue summer sky!

Linking up with Amanda Jean for Finish it up Friday!

Fabric Enabler...

I have to say that I have a thing for Suzuko Koseki fabric for Yuwa.  It is not something we see a lot of in Canada but thanks to Rita at Red Pepper Quilts, I have found Miss Matatabi fabrics on Etsy.  Frances has a lovely selection of Yuwa fabrics and her prices are very reasonable.  I thought I would share that little bit of fabric goodness as I just recently received a nice little package all the way from Japan.

And then take a look at this little piece of awesomeness.  My buddy Cynthia has a new fabric line with Robert Kaufman called Sewing Studio.  I love this and cannot wait to find it in a fabric store!!!  Take a look!
And Cynthia has giveaways all this week over at her blog.  Just saying!  And it involves fabric!!!!

More fabric news... one of my sponsors, the lovely Karen at Fabric Spot has all sorts of Cotton and Steel.  You have to go have a look.  Love it! Here and here and here... and here and here.  Did I get it all?

Scrap busting... a work in progress

The other day, I think it was Tuesday, I decided that I had to do something about my scrap situation.  It was getting out of control.  Don't get me wrong... my scraps are organized in plastic shoe boxes by colour.  All neat and tidy and organized but I was having trouble closing the lids on some of the boxes.  Yoiks.  So... armed with my rotary cutter and my snazzy new super sized cutting mat, I cut a bunch of strips from small scale print scraps.  And  before you could say, "Happy birthday, Olfa Rotary cutter!" I had a pile of 2.25" strips already to go.

Well, it took a bit longer than that.  I started making little 9 patch blocks on Wednesday and made a bunch more yesterday and then I had 70 of those little suckers.  It just sort of happened in between picking buckets of blueberries.

I used a vintage pattern featured in the July and August Quilty Magazine.  I just had to make it.  Today I sewed all the blocks together in rows.  It looks pretty good up there on the design wall.  I have a thing for blocks on point!  And my scrap boxes are still full! It is a problem!