Sunday 24 January 2016

Colour Pop - A Work in Progress

A cold has sapped my energy this week so not much is happening on the quilting front. Except that I've started quilting Colour Pop. I put in two layers of batting on this one so the quilting will really pop.

The triangular spiral quilting is simple in look but tricky to do. If you use a walking foot to get nice straight lines, there is a lot of turning of the quilt. Free motion quilting goes quicker, but is hard to get nice straight lines, which is what I want in this case.

I am trying rulers for the first time. Bernina came out with a ruler foot for their new long arm machine and it is compatible with the domestic machines (NB: check your machine warranty before you go out and get one). I've been wanting to try ruler quilting since I took the Quilting With Rulers on a Home Machine class on Craftsy.

I'm learning a lot and some areas are not very pretty, but I've got it about 1/3 of Colour Pop quilted. It's going faster than the walking foot, but slower than free motion quilting.


A couple of sponsor news items for you! Sew Sisters Quilt Shop is having an online sale today only. 20% of yardage! Sweet! See their sale notice for details.

Image 2016-01-24 at 8.03 AM



Canadian National Fabrics always has some great treasures in their Sale section! Remember, there's free shipping on order over $50 in Canada.

Canadian National Fabric

Mad About Patchwork has some gorgeous Cotton + Steel on sale right now!

Mad About Patchwork
Hope you have a great weekend! 

Wednesday 20 January 2016

Weight of Love/Weight of 70s Love - A Work in Progress

Hi all, back in crazy November, I took a class with Libs Elliott. I'm so intrigued by her Processing work! The Ottawa Modern Quilt Guild invited her to come and give her Weight of Love workshop. Very cool.

Pre-work to the workshop included figuring out our colour palette. I wanted something with these colours.


I first coloured the numbered version, which would have allowed me to use the measurements that Libs had mapped out:


I also tried out the Colour Your Own version and posted them on Instagram to help me decide which one to do. 


The Colour Your Own version won hands down. Even Libs weighed in. :D

During the class, I cut out the pieces and put together the first two columns. While I was really happy with my Y-seams, the colours felt very 70s.


The class with Libs -- great variety of fabric choices, eh? 


When I got home, I laid out all of the pieces on the design wall. Meh. Not working for me. 


I replaced some of the yellows and oranges with some lighter purples. A bit better.


Then I replaced all of the yellows and oranges with more values of purples and magentas.


 Definitely better, but not quite there. Any recommendations?

Friday 15 January 2016

Q1 2016 Finish-Along Goals

Yay, it's Finish-Along time again! In case you missed it, I'm a pretty goal-oriented person. I find it motivating and would probably not getting anything done if I didn't make a game of things. I like my gold stars, thank you very much. ;)

Like last quarter, my list this quarter is going to be more ambitious than realistic, but it will give me the flexibility to finish whatever I feel like finishing. Remember, we like flexibility this year.

1) Rainbow House quilt - the top is done. Will blog about that soon when I can get a good picture of it because it's huge!


2) Colour Pop - it's being quilted right now. This one has the best chance of getting finished, I think. 


3) Heart Strings - some hand stitching and quilting to go. I would really like to finish this one too. 


4) If A Tree Falls - top is assembled! 


5) Leggings Light - Haven't shared this yet, but I want to turn these fabulous bee blocks from my Canadians Quilt Bee into a quilt. 

6) Going Fractal - needs to be sandwiched and quilted. 



Linking up with the fabulous peeps for the 2016 Finish-Along. What are you hoping to finish this quarter?

Saturday 9 January 2016

If A Tree Falls - A Work in Progress

Happy Saturday all! For my Canadian peeps, Sew Sisters Quilt Shop is having a Free Shipping event this weekend. They have such great goodies in stock too. Woo hoo!

JANUARY 8 - 10

***

For my month of the Canadians Quilt bee back in 2014, I asked for modern Christmas trees a.k.a. triangles in red, aqua or grey on a solid white background. They could be improv, pieced or paper pieced.

Here are a couple of test ones that I made. I made these with a paper-pieced pattern I designed. If you'd like to do one too, use this PDF Pattern for Modern Christmas Tree Block 1. It makes an 8.5" unfinished block. I then added 4.5" strips on two sides, making it 12.5" unfinished.


This is another paper-pieced block. PDF Pattern for Modern Christmas Tree Block 2 also has 4.5" strips added to two sides, making a 12.5" unfinished block.


Back in February, I shared the blocks I'd received from my bee mates all up on the design wall. Aren't they great?


I played around with the layout a bit and thought I'd add one fallen one. And then the weather became beautiful outside. 



And really, who's thinking snow in April? We want to be done with snow around here in April. So these blocks got packed up for a bit. 

But then Christmas came and there was no snow here. And it was 17 C. My kids were wearing shorts. On Christmas. 

It was such a mellow Christmas that I pulled out those blocks, did some rearranging, replaced the fallen block with a less prominent fallen tree, and finished my winter landscape top.


I used different white solids and a white on white chevron print for the background with an aqua, red and white stripe that will also be the binding. 


Can you spot my fallen tree now?



The outside looks a little more like my winter landscape now. Now to mull over the quilting. Ideas always welcome!

Thursday 7 January 2016

TGIFF! - Art Theory Pencil Case

Welcome to TGIFF -- Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday! My first finish of 2016 - woo hoo! When I'm playing around with colour schemes on a block or quilt design, I pull out the pencil crayons. I used one of my kids's old pencil cases, but rooting around for the right colour was annoying and I wanted a case that would show them all laid out and be easy to pick up and go (you know, when that hockey practice is done).

While out shopping with my sister over the holidays, I explained to her what I was looking for. She looked at me a little oddly and said, "Can't you make that yourself?" DUH! Of course I can! Okay, well not 'of course', but more ' yeah, I think I can figure it out.'

As soon as the house cleared of holiday guests, I got to work. And I knew the perfect fabric for it too. ExLibris by Alison Glass. I rarely get all "I must have that fabric or I will die" about fabrics or fabric lines, but this one was the exception. I didn't buy a lot, but I bought some. :D I knew it would be perfect for this project too.

So here it is, my two row, foldable or rollable pencil case holder.



I used the Art Theory panel in charcoal for the cover and Geometry in Sunset, with a bit of Kona Charcoal, for the interior. Love.



I was too impatient to do a prototype so there are a few things I'd do a little differently next time:
  • Not add any batting -- makes it too bulky
  • I'm still debating whether it would have been better to make one long roll or the two rows. The two rows keep it compact when it's laid out, but bulky to roll up. One row would make it really long for laying out, but maybe a little less bulky. The reality is it will be bulky regardless when there are that many pencil crayons. 
  • Also debating whether I should have done ties rather than a button. 
And now I get to use them with my Quilter's Planner and my adult colouring book. :)


I suspect that whenever I take this out, my kidlets will be commandeering it. Hmm, maybe some new rollups are in order...




Saturday 2 January 2016

Simple, Fun and Flexible

Happy New Year, everyone! Woo hoo, it's 2016! I, for one, am not sorry to see 2015 go. Not at all. Good in several areas, but very rough and stressful in a few others. I think 2016 will be better.

I already know it's going to rock on the quilting front because I'm going to QuiltCon in February! And I'm taking classes with Gwen Marston and Melissa Averinos! So excited. I'm looking forward to meeting people from this fabulous online quilt world so if you are going, let me know.

Before we get to plans for 2016, I'll just finish up my Q4 goals for the Finish-Along with Adrienne on the Windy Side. Not really thinking I'd get them all done, I put seven projects on my list to give me flexibility to count whichever ones got done. Only one got done in the end, but after the crazy Fall we had, I'm so happy that even one got done. Moreover, Carsick had been languishing in the works in progress (WIP) pile for a couple of years so I'm pretty satisfied.

Carsick

Carsick front


I made some progress on some of the others though. I finished the tops for If A Tree Falls and Rainbow House, as well as the hand stitching for Heart Strings. Will share more about those soon.

2015 FAL at On the Windy Side

As for planning for the year ahead, I'm going to be keep things simple for 2016. Simple, flexible and fun are going to be my key words, I think. As the things that were very stressful in 2015 are unlikely to get better for the foreseeable future and will probably get worse, it's going to mean that I will need to change how I deal with it.

I started to reduce my volunteer commitments this past year and turned down some quilting opportunities. I'll continue that for 2016. Also, no deadline stress allowed this year. It's important that my de-stressor doesn't become another stressor. I'll still host some of TGIFF!, but even there we've brought in Leanne and Fiona to help.

I don't know what this means for the blog other than I'll post when I have projects and fun quilty stuff to talk about. I still have lots of ideas and fun things I'd like to do with it so maybe they'll happen this year or maybe next. We'll see.

What are you hoping to do for 2016?
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...