Goodbye June!

What a crazy month this has been!   It's seen it's share of celebrations (2 birthdays and one wedding anniversary), 2 sets of night duty, and a whole lot of gardening!  In between, there have been random bursts of quilting, a bit of knitting, LOTS of garden "stuff", and a new-to-me stitching project.  Seeing as this is primarily a quilting blog, maybe we should start there.  I've managed to keep up with most of my monthly challenges (just don't ask about my temperature quilt...)  First up, I'll share my "Patterns by Jen" monthly colour challenge.  This month, the fruit / vegetable was the pumpkin - and I chose the most obvious colours to make it (dark orange for the skin, lighter orange for the inside flesh).  I'll admit, I wasn't careful enough putting it together, and managed to sew one half-square triangle unit on backward...  (I caught and corrected it!)    

The colour for June's Rainbow Scrap Challenge was purple, and, once again, I made 16 half square triangle units with low volume fabrics, and (4) 9-patch blocks (2 with dark corners, 2 with light).

                                                              

I also finally finished up 2 quilt tops from Bonnie Hunter's 2020 leader-ender challenge (Easy Breezy).  One top is a generous throw size, and the 2nd is a smaller square throw (I'm considering making it a bit larger...).                

I'm still working on my temperature quilt, but had to wait for more fabric - and just haven't had time to get back to it.  Tomorrow is a holiday, so maybe then?

And finally, a quick peek of my blackwork project - more news on that in my next post.  Each block will eventually be bordered - lots more to do!

Thanks for reading !

May "doings"

This post is only a few weeks late - working nights for the past 4 weeks has messed with my head and my timing (and anything else that I find convenient...😉) .  In that time, I've sewn 2 sets of blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and 2 blocks for the Monthly Colour Challenge.  I also made (or finished) 3 quilts for Victoria Quilts through Hands2Help.

First, my blocks for RSC - the colour for April was blue and May was red.  

Red (cherry) was the challenge colour  for April   and brown (potato) for May.

I have pictures of two of the quilt tops that I made for Victoria Quilts.  I'm thankful that there was a Canadian charity to donate to this year again.  First is this "Twist" quilt - the Pattern is from KatyQuilts

This second one is a Warm Wishes quilt - I was aiming for something a little "masculine" - hoping that this navy, cream and rust will fit the bill.  Both of these tops measure approx. 50" x70".

Apparently I didn't get a picture of the 3rd quilt and the package has been sent off.

Going forward, I have a stack of "Off the Quilt Path" blocks ready to assemble into a top; a purple and white jelly roll project started - and my temperature quilt is getting bigger every day.   I also have 2 leader-ender projects underway....  Masks are still getting made as needed - hoping that we'll be able to do without them before Thanksgiving? Christmas?  Hubby and I have both had our first shots and 2nd ones are booked!

Thank you for stopping by!

And this was March!

I can't believe that we're almost through the 3rd month of 2021 - and yet, there's been lot of stuff happening here, so I guess we really are.  Between knitting, quilting, keeping a bit of order in the house and even making a few birthday cards, it's been a busy time.  It seems like forever since I made / had time to make cards, but with 3 birthdays in the family in 4 days, I didn't have a reason to NOT make a few!

Maybe I'll start with one of the cards - made for my sister.  She's a gardener - hope she doesn't mind the dandelion fluff!

A week or two ago, we had an announcement in church that a member was recently diagnosed with cancer - so they needed a prayer shawl.  Our craft group hasn't been able to meet for more than a year, so it's up to me to supply a shawl.  Good thing that the yarn is at my house until we can get back into church.  I have it just over halfway done: 

I've also got a bunch of different quilt-y things going on.  There's the Monthly Colour Challenge from PBJ - this month's food / colour inspiration is yams - deep red-orange and lighter orange - and this is my block: 

I'm also participating in  Angela's So Scrappy challenge - this month's colour was green.  Once again, I made 4 9-patch blocks and 16 Half Square Triangles.

And finally, one of my bigger scrappy challenges right now is "Off the Brick Path" - it alternates 4.5" windmill blocks with 4.5" low volume squares.  One block ends up with 5 windmill blocks and the alternate block has 5 lv squares.  This quilt will probably be part of my donation for Sarah's annual Hands2Help campaign.

My March temperature quilt row will be up next week

Linking up to Quilting is more fun than housework.

More finishes!

 

I thought that i"d take a few minutes to share a recent finish and a special project.  

I bought the fabric for this first quilt about 12 - 15 years ago at Fabricland.  It was great quality and I knew that it would become a quilt, just not sure what or how.  Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and I saw a quick and easy quilt picture on Jo's Country Junction - and I knew what to do!  The main fabric is "zoo" animals.  I added sashing in Kona Blueberry and cornerstones in Kona Peach and bound it with the same Konas.

I've enjoyed seeing quilt pictures in the snow, so I took that quilt, and my Trip Around the World quilt from a few weeks ago, and headed out to my back yard.  Hubby told me in the morning that we'd received about 8" of fresh snow overnight, so I grabbed my coat and boots and my 2 quilts and set out - into approx. 14" of snow and drifts...  There's no way I could plod through that, so back to the house - there was a leaf rake - that would work wouldn't it?  Haha - not really...  I did knock down some of the deepest drift and soldiered on - hope it was worth the journey!

And finally, I got a request for a prayer shawl - a young woman recently diagnosed with cancer was starting chemo and a friend thought that she'd appreciate a prayer shawl.  I found the perfect yarns and spent the next week knitting a "Dot Stitch" (pattern on Ravelry) prayer shawl for her, and it's been delivered!  Each cancer has it's own coloured ribbon assigned to it (we all know the pink ribbon for breast cancer) - and the yarn that I used had the colour for her cancer as one of the main colours!  I'll continue to pray for her until her chemo is finished. 

Thanks for stopping by!  I'll be linking up to Sarah's post.

Keeping busy...

I've been busy with several different projects.  Let's start with the blocks for Kat's January / February block drive for blocks for Covered in Love.  It's an organization that provides quilts to comfort palliative patients in hospital - the families can take them home after the patient passes.  This block was different - it's foundation pieced right onto the batting!  We were asked to choose a colour with 1-2 contrasting strips.  I chose teal and just cut strips - and ended up with enough to make 3 blocks.

Then there was Jen's Feb. block and colour - yellow.  The block is comprised of 4 small spool blocks sewn together after being rotated.  

Angela's SoScrappy colour for February is also yellow.  In January, I chose 2 different blocks to work with each month = Half Square Triangles and classic 9-patches.  The HSTs will be combined with low volume fabrics; the 9-patches will use differing shades of the colour of the month (2 each of dark corners and 2 with light corners).

All of these blocks were sewn with fabrics from my scraps - and I'll be linking up with Cynthia on the weekend for Oh Scrap!

I'm hoping to post more projects in a day or two...  Thanks for stopping by!

January wrap-up

 The first month of this new year is (thankfully!) behind us - and we are one month closer to spring.  I just wanted to quickly share what I worked on and finished this month:

Canuck Quilter (Joanne Kerton) designed a temperature quilt last year - and I decided that this is the year that I am going to make one.  I bought all the fabrics, and have the first month done!

It's not very colourful - our temperatures have been very mild so far this year.

I've also decided to join 2 challenges - the first one is Patterns By Jen's Monthly Colour challenge.  She chooses the block; the colour is inspired by fruits and vegetables.  January's block was based on the eggplant - and this is my block: 

The second challenge is Angela's So Scrappy challenge - she chooses a colour and we're free to choose a block (or more!) and use the colours to construct those blocks.  January's colour was pink - and I chose half-square triangles for one set of blocks, and nine-patches for the other.  I'll be making 4 nine-patch blocks - two will have 5 dark squares and 4 lighter squares, while the other 2 blocks will be reversed.  These are the blocks I've made: 

And finally, I quilted 2 quilts that I had pieced in the fall - along with a bit of a typo in one of the fabrics!  The first quilt is a (planned) scrappy Trip Around the World, and the second is made of leftover jelly roll strips from another project.  

Did you find the mistake?  

Thanks for sticking around - this post ended up being a little longer that I expected!

It's been FAR too long...

 I see that it's been almost a year since I last posted, and it was tempting to just pull the plug, but I'm going to give it another chance.  Part of the problem is that I haven't been able to upload pictures from my phone to the desktop (and typing a blog post on my phone is NOT going to happen!).  I'm not sure why I tried it one more time just after Christmas, but, voila!  I was able to get my pictures downloaded!  I promise to not overwhelm you with pictures and posts of all the things I've been working on since Feb. 2020.    Maybe I'll just pick a picture and start there - okay?

At the beginning of the pandemic, it seemed like everyone and their brother (sister?) was sewing masks.  I had a long to-do list and I assumed that the people who were already sewing masks had the situation under control, and I didn't need to sew any.  But, I could donate fabric to the cause - and because tightly woven cotton had been requested, I went to my stash of batiks.  I saved out a few really special ones and decided that I was going to use them up while I had them out.  I had 2 or 3 Bright Hopes blocks on my design wall, but they only measured 6.5" - and, while I wanted to use that pattern, those blocks would be far too small.  I had to fiddle with the block pieces to get the parts the right size - but it seemed like I had enough blocks in no time.  I tried to create a secondary pattern with the layout, and ended up having to alter a few blocks to make it happen - but I finally got the top done, and then quilted and bound it right away.  It's been put aside until I can donate it.

These are also donation quilts - the first one was started in 2019 and put away as I didn't have enough blocks.  It was started as a project for National Sew a Jelly Roll day - but I only had a part jelly roll, and I needed two more strips to finish the quilt.  I finally decided to just order some coordinating yardage - I ended up making 3 blocks with that colour, and used it for the border too.  The second one was for a donation quilt drive organized by Suzyquilts, and was a quick make.  The fabrics are all Kona cottons and were all in my stash!  I used my BlocLoc rulers to square up ALL those half-square triangles, and then just grabbed blocks and sewed them together.  Both of these quilts went to Project Linus. 

And now, I'm heading back into my sewing room to finish my scrappy Trip Around the World quilt.  I'm hoping to have it finished this week!