Scrap Happy Quilt…

Just look at what is waiting patiently to go onto my quilting frame this week!  A Scrap Happy beauty…made by one of the many talented Heritage Quilt Guild members!  This quilt is a charity quilt made entirely from scraps!  I just wish my photos did it justice…

The colours in real life are richer and deeper…and well, simply wonderful!

I recognized the block pattern right away…it’s called ‘Glory Be’ from the Connecting Threads FREE patterns…you can find it HERE.

This quilter REALLY knows how to piece together blocks…sheer perfection!

Hope you liked the eye candy this morning…

At least this candy isn’t fattening…unlike the Halloween Bowl full of treats downstairs!!  Correction…the Halloween Bowl HALF full of treats!  Is it just me or are those chocolate bars getting smaller and smaller every year?!  Why it takes at least 8 to 10 of those little babies to satisfy a sweet tooth…errrr ummm…not that I would know this from experience or anything… :o}}}

I have to leave you with something at least a little remotely Halloweeny…

I made this one ages ago…and it comes out at this time of the year for the back of the couch.

My two dogs like to sit on the back of the couch and look out the window, guarding the house from ‘the enemy’ ie. birds, bunnies, other dogs, the neighbours’ cat, simply put…any moving object!…Life is never boring with Guard Dogs…and they DO have fun..but they can be hard on the couch…hence the couch quilts…one for each season!

My first attempt at pieced pumpkins and the Dresden plate.

The FREE pattern is still available....but you can see that I changed it up a lot!

 

Have a WONDERFUL and SAFE Halloween (with no tricks and lots of treats) and Happy Quilting!~P

UFO Busting Report~

Progress on the UFO Busting noted!! 

The Bow Tie Table Topper is finally together…and look VERY sweet!  Where to go from here??  Borders…no borders?  Decisions to be made!

  This was from a Challenge with Bonnie Hunter…you can see her monster Bow Tie Quilt HERE!  How in the world does this quilter do it all?  If you read Bonnie’s Blog then you know how she travels the countryside giving workshops…sometimes around the world!  She writes books and then in the meantime bangs off these magnificent scrap quilts!  Right now her and her hubby are renovating her basement sewing room while she keeps on sewing and giving podcast sewing evenings!  She makes me tired just reading her blog…but it’s a good tired! :o)))

Thank goodness because my evenings have been spent hand quilting this Wee Basket Quilt…and I’m happy to report that ALL 162 Basket Blocks are DONE!! 

I just have to quilt the borders and put the binding on and another UFO will be busted!  (Insert a happy dance here!)

This quilt is backed by the softest Moda flannel and is super cuddly…so I think I’m actually going to miss stitching on this one! :o)

Have a terrific Tuesday and Happy Quilt Busting! ~ P

Eureka!!

There’s GOLD in them-there bags!!

As Sandy and I were leaving the Garage Sale on Saturday, we noticed this HUGE box, beside the outside door, full of FREE scrap bags!  Sandy, being a new quilter and always on the search for fabric to add to her growing stash, grabbed a couple…but did I REALLY NEED scraps?  Ahhh what the heck..it’s FREE and I did see some Homespuns in one of the bags!  The rest I can give to Sandy!

Yes, there were some Homespuns in the bag but they were quickly forgotten when I came upon these babies!!…EUREKA…come to Mama!

Are they not the sweetest 4” blocks…

All hand pieced and stitched!

Apparently this quilter didn’t own a sewing machine and stitched EVERYTHING by hand!  I can’t imagine…BUT I can appreciate!!

So what to do with these three blocks?…any suggestions?

Mug rugs are OUT!!  No one is slopping coffee on these puppies!

Maybe a runner…?…or a narrow wall hanging?

Straight or on point?    

What colour background?

Yuck!!  This brown showed up pink!

I keep going back to the black and brown…

Maybe throw in a wee border…

Whatever colour the background, I envision BIG stitch quilting…oh yeah!!  FREE is good!  Have you grabbed a Free Scrap Bag lately…you just might be pleasantly surprised?! 

Have a Magical Monday and Happy Quilting!~P

“SCORE!!!”

Ok, Ok…I confess!!  I was up to NO GOOD yesterday…The plan was to take Sandy with me so that she would keep me on the straight and narrow…but danged if that didn’t backfired on me!!! 

So where did we go yesterday? 

We went to a Quilter’s Garage Sale!  As soon as we entered the room, Sandy’s eyes glazed over and her brain turned to mush and she couldn’t reel me in…in fact she was so busy shopping for herself that she FORGOT all about me!  I was left to my own devices…:o( 

  …hence…the LOOT!

All  I could say was “SCORE!!!” as I helped Sandy carry OUR loot out to the car! 

WE were bad…very, very bad!

Have a SUNNY Sunday and Happy Quilting!~P

Practice…Practice…Practice!

My ‘new’ mid-arm has been humming right along…with two more charity quilts DONE for a total of four quilts completed!  So fast and getting easier…and more importantly, with each quilt I have learned something new about the quilting process!  It now takes me about 15 minutes to load a quilt onto the frame…instead of the two plus hours that it took me the first time! :o)

Let’s zoom in for a close-up…More loops and stars…

Not perfect by any means…but improvements noted! Baby steps for sure…   In between these quilts I also did a ‘practice muslin sandwich quilt’ so that I could practice stippling and meandering.  I’m not quite ready to do that on a baby quilt yet!  A few more sandwiches to go…?

Love the fourth quilt…a scrappy baby quilt!  Remember these quilts were made by volunteers from the Cowichan Heritage Guild.  My job is to quilt them and hopefully, not screw them up TOO badly!…And in doing that I get to practice…practice…practice!

Loops and hearts this time.

   

On this quilt I discovered that when your machine skips a stitch it’s time to put in a new needle!  So many things to watch out for while free motion quilting!  With a new needle in, all was right with the quilting world!   

AND it’s on to baby quilt number five!  With number five I am going to experiment with my Cruise Control and stitch length and I am going to quilt in sections rather than rows.  Wish me luck!

I hope all is right in your little quilting world!  Thanks for popping in to peek over my shoulder!

Have a super sewing Saturday and Happy Quilting!!

Blogger’s Quilt Festival 2012…Starts TODAY!

Let the Quilt SHOW begin!!  Amy’s Bloggers’ Quilt Festival that is!  This is such a fun time of the year…the designers and buyers are all in Houston at Quilt Market making plans and purchases for our future quilts…and we are stuck at home!  Amy to the rescue!  It’s Quilt Show time…it’s the time where we get to show off a favourite quilt that we made this year!  Let the good times roll!

                            

This was a no-brainer for me this year!  Of course I’m going to choose my newest favourite…‘The Autumn Quilt’ by Heart to Hand!  I finished this quilt this summer just in the nick of time to go into our local County Fairs.

I was really surprised at how fast this quilt stitched up!  It took NINE months from the time I dyed my first piece of wool…

…until I put the last hand quilting stitch into the project!

YIKES!  There were tons of wee appliqué pieces to trace and get ready to be ironed on and cut out…It was daunting at first…but you stitch one block at a time.

The background fabric was mostly Japanese Daiwabo fabric and the applique was all 100% wool. 

  The quilt is all hand stitched…hand appliqued and hand quilted but as I said it was a fast quilt to make… about nine months…guess that makes this my newest baby!;o)

Some close-ups of the hand quilting… 

Showing you these pictures, it’s dawned on me that I have never taken a photo of the finished quilt…except for the one at the Fair! I guess I figured everyone was sick of looking at it…hmmm…I REALLY need to do that!!!   I can see this quilt hanging from a bright Fall maple tree…think I’m going to go find me one…today!

Hope you enjoy this years Bloggers’ Quilt Festival!  Please go HERE to see all the other entries…and believe me…there will be hundreds of them!   You might want to take a coffee with you…Just sayin’… there’s tons to see and you will want to be wide eyed and bushy tailed!:o)))  In other words, you won’t want to miss a thing!

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures : 55″x 70″

Special techniques used : hand appliqué, hand quilting, wool dyeing

Quilted by : Sweet P

Best Category : Appliqué Quilt, Hand Quilting

Have a Fun Friday and Happy Quilting!~P

Bonjour from Montreal…

Today I thought I would share a few pictures of Montreal.  Hayley and I decided to spend the last day of my little visit in Montreal as it was only a two hour bus ride to this lovely Quebec city!  Plus it was a great way to see the surrounding countryside away from the city.  (Flat with lots of birch trees.)

This church was in the heart of the city…old mixed with new.

This is main street in the heart of Montreal.  Just seemed wrong to mix the two, old with new, but how else are you going to do it?

On main street (Saint Catherine’s Street) you would go into a shop and find yourself in another world!!  UNDERGROUND SHOPPING!! 

Yikes!!  Doesn’t this remind you of a hamster cage with all the tunnels and wheels?!  Montreal has SEVERAL of these underground malls…but we didn’t see a single Quilt Shop…much to Hayley’s relief!! :o)) 

Outside it was a lovely sunny day…and some of the leaves were still on the trees. 

Gorgeous architecture!

And I LOVED all the old brick buildings!

Rows and rows of quaint little shops and restaurants…

I LOVED old Montreal best!  Hayley said that in the summer this huge square is a market place full of vendors.  How fun would that be!

And I also loved the brick houses…something that you don’t see back home!

We walked for MILES and MILES…until the dogs were barking so loudly, that I was FORCED to buy a new pair of shoes!  (Hey, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! :)

It was ALL good!!  Including eating MY FIRST Beaver’s Tail!  We shared this one…but next time we are having our own…It was THAT good!  Think of a huge, flat doughnut covered with maple icing and drizzled with chocolate…delish!   Diet-smiet, fat-smat… man, it was GOOD!

So I am leaving you now with thoughts of Beaver’s Tails dancing in your head…ENJOY! 

Oh…and Au Revoir!

Have a thrilling Thursday and Happy Quilting!~P