Side Note

I just revamped my blog a bit, in case you're looking for a familiar feature:

My blog list is now at the bottom, since I'm probably the primary user.

I've deleted the label section, way too big - instead...

... I've added a list of my completed, planned and in-progress quilts.

Probably best of all, I'm working on a How To list with tutorials by me and you, as I found I constantly had to go back to find the link to the ladder stitch for example, this way it's right there and handy!

Enjoy!

I Think I'm Caught Up?

I just spent my lunch hour browsing through my blog list - which is again waaaaay too long. Not humanly possible for me to do them all justice. Fellow blogger Crispy has a policy of commenting every blog she visits, I wish I'd have time to do that or the discipline to only look at a few blogs, sigh.

Anyway, I have a headache now because I've seen so many beautiful projects and have about 5 patterns I want to make.

Which brings me back to my WIPs - I'm actually kind of tired of them. I wish they were all done so that I can start a new project with a clean slate.

Hah, like that's ever going to happen!

Here's a little update of the bird quilt I made for my friend.


She loved loved loved it :) First there was a scream of delight about the quilt, then a little shriek - she does great shrieks! - as she looked at each diamond and spotted the birds, haha - it was hillarious :)

It took 3 days of travel and camping before we had a dry, well-lit spot to get started. I showed her the running stitch and off she went. I couldn't believe her first seam (outlining the blue diamonds) - the stitches were straight, even and small. Incredible. She actually got a bit more lax later, probably tired :) But what a natural she is and she really seemed to like it!

On the last evening of our vacation, I finally had a chance to show her the binding stitch, Mal's hidden ladder binding stitch (See new HOW TO's tutorial list on the right).

I'd forgotten to take a picture of the backing before, didn't I? Here it is, a nice soft and happy flanelette:

Oh, and last but not least, a cute story: My friend slept a lot in the car and on the day after we had the first quilting lesson, I caught her like this:



Think she's attached to the quilt??? :)

I'm Back!

A long hiatus, I know!

I've been on vacation and now my mother is visiting, plus I've started teaching a quilting course at community school (volunteer-based, in the evenings, 12$/class, a super deal for people. It runs for 11 weeks).

We're doing a disappearing-9-patch since it's a great pattern for beginners. I'm working on a sample quilt for the class in red and white - very Canadian :)

I promise there'll be more quilting stuff here again in the future, stay tuned!

Finally, A Label!

I bet you forgot about this quilt! The pink quilt :) It was basically finished, except for threads hanging loose along the seams and a missing label.

Well, I remedied the threads, mostly snipping them, unless I hadn't backstitched.

Then came the search for a label. The quilt is for a friend of mine in Germany, and luckily she's one of those persons you wish had more than one birthday because she's so vocal and clear about what she likes, it's always easy to find something for her.

Anyway, she really likes elephants and I just had some cute elephant fabric arrive in the mail.

So I cut a small patch of the fabric and used that as a label.



I have to say that I really like using printed fabric as label as opposed to plain muslin - might be a good way to use up some of my scraps, too!

Helping Out A Friend

A dear friend of mine is going through a difficult time - too much worrying, and extreme amount of worrying, so much, that it's affecting her life enjoyment and her daily functioning. She's going on vacation with me soon, but I also thought, what better form of therapy (besides counselors and pills :) than quilting. She's never quilted before, but I asked her if she's interested in handywork and sewing, and she gave me the thumbs up.
So first I thought I'd have her piece a little quilt, but the layout I had in mind would have been tricky, with bias lines and triangles:


So instead, I whipped it together in less than an hour and will sandwich it for her - she can handquilt it on her own time, and I'll give her basic lessons on handquilting and binding on our vacation.

She loves birds, so I went through my stash and found all the fabrics I could with bird themes. It turned out cute, I think :)


The diamonds are 6"x6" with light blue background and blue-purple-yellow batik as the framing triangles (cut from 6" squares, except the 4 smaller corner triangles which I cut off 6.5" squares).

I really hope this will work for my friend, it's worth a try anyway, maybe we'll have a novice quilter soon!!!

I Guess They're Actually WIPs...

Seeing that I never put a quilt down intending not to work on it any more, they're more works in progress than anything else... I haven't studies this quilting language enough yet, it seems :)

1) Cutlery Baby Quilt - FINISHED!
2) Apple-Owl Quilt - left to do: baste, quilt, bind, label
3) Character Quilt - left to do: finish pebble-quilting, bind, label
4) Disaster Quilt (Triple Irish Chain) - left to do: decide on borders/binding/backing; baste, quilt, bind, label
5) Oriental Quilt - FINISHED!
6) Spring Quilt - left to do: decide on borders/backing/binding; baste, quilt, bind, label
7) MODA Northern Solitude Baby Quilt - left to do: quilt, bind, label
8) Burgundy Floating Coins Baby Quilt - left to do: quilt (need to buy thread!), bind, label
9) Apple-Worm Baby Quilt - left to do: add some more applique, baste, quilt, bind, label

Pebbles

Decision made on the character quilt quilting design...


It covers all the bases:

• masculine enough for a guy (somehow stippling feels girly to me ;)
• quick (quicker than marking grids and I'm about half way done since starting on Sunday)
• doesn't involved turning the massive quilt, yay!!!
• therapeutic

It is true though what everyones says - pebbles use a lot of thread... 7 bobbins so far.

I'm using red-black verigated thread for the top. black for the bottom.