Happy New Year!

I celebrated the start of the New Year in several ways. These included:

• celebration with close friends and family (kids and dogs included!)
• long meditation on peace and energy, at least for today
• walk with Toby in the pouring and blowing rain (well, the first 10 minutes anyways)
• and...actually some sewing!

I've finally made headway on a kit that I've had since 2006. When I pulled this out a few months ago, I realized that I really wasn't that fond of the prints now. However, cut fabric is cut fabric, and there is always a space for another quilt, and it's always great to have something to practice machine quilting on. Started & finished the quilt top today, now I need to figure out a border (suggestions welcome!) in terms of colour and width, and the binding, and then put it all together,

Picture was taken with my iphone, and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the glare in the top corner. Photography is not a strong suit of mine. I'm if I had asked the DH (dear husband) to help me, it would have been better. However, he's down on the couch watching football with a full tissue box and a big pile of used tissues beside him. Better leave him be!

So, what to do now while I'm waiting to get to a store and work out the border? I can start on my christmas presents for next year!! The nice thing about not getting them done this year is that I now have a head start on next year's presents. Great planning, Liz!

What else - there's another baby on the way, due in May. Maybe I can get this baby quilt done by the time the baby arrives. This baby will sure have the advantage of all the lessons I've learned with the previous 4 quilts. And I'm looking at a pattern or tutorial online, and purchasing fabric online. These will be the new things for this quilt! There may be at least one more baby this year, so I will start keeping an eye out for ideas for that one too. And then, keep dreaming of my peace quilt. I got a Chapter's gift certificate for christmas, and I have a few quilting books earmarked - one particularly on spiral blocks. Very appropriate for the peace quilt! and something for Toby is brewing as well...some sort of Toby specific quilt for his bed(s)..

I'm not setting a resolution this year to post more regularly or frequently - rather the resolution is to not put too much pressure on myself to have to post!! Generally, as I'm sewing, I'm posting. If I'm not working in the sewing room...posts don't go up!!

Thanks for reading, all - comments are welcome & appreciated! If you are reading this as an email update, you can follow the link to the blog site. To leave a comment, you likely have to become a google member. To become a follower, you certainly do need to become a member of something!

And thanks to the 2 followers I do have!! it's nice to know someone is out there! It makes me realize that when I am following via a blog reader, that I need to mark myself as a follower on the sites still, so that the blogger knows that someone is out there.

Happy New Year, all!

really quick post

since I haven't posted anything for the last few weeks - you may be waiting with baited breath for an update on the peace quilt, or even just the Listen block...
Well, there are problems with one of the battery chargers, which is causing the camera batteries to whack out - so pictures are an issue right now. I wanted to post today about one of the reasons why there is no quilt update - I'm making Christmas cards! so just imagine the picture - my sewing desk cleared off (no sewing machine, rulers, cutting board, scissors or whatever) - and instead, covered with card stock, ink pads, stamps, embossing powder, embossing machine, more stamps and so forth. These have to get done! and it's fun. Most of it was done with DIL and her son, with Toby and DIL's dog CJ popping in to keep an eye on things (literally "popping in").

Also working on Christmas presents, so no pictures of the ironing board or of the fabric hanging on the quilt frame - that would give it away.

The Listen block - I ran out of my blue thread for my satin stitch, and haven't gotten back to it yet. But have ideas of how to do it differently next time! and thinking about my other squares.

There is a block quilt just waiting to be sewn (from a precut kit). I'm not terribly fond of the fabrics anymore, so am having a bit of a hard time just getting into piecing these blocks (8" blocks).

And I still owe 2 or 3 posts - one of the cottage quilt (my first big quilt), one of quilts & afghans from my Oma, and one of an afghan that DH's sister made for us, and it's history.

Anna in Switzerland finally received her quilt "Fast Asleep on Cloud Nine"...I hope she sleeps well on it!

Also spending a lot of time getting into a meditation practice - I think I'm on day 16. It takes about 21 days of repetition, I understand, to form and ingrain a new habit. Sleeping tons better and much less stressed about life in general.

Anyways, that's the update. Will try to get pix for next time!

Have a good weekend!

Listen Block

I'm so excited...I tried to get this up last night, but the batteries in the camera were shot so I had to let them charge overnight.

I've been planning a design for a peace quilt over the last few months, doodling here and there. It's based on concepts from a course I've taken called "Peace Building Conversations", which has turned into more of an ongoing journey than a course that you do and leave behind. I've met some great people, too.

This will not be a quick quilt - some of the blocks I'll need to practice first. Some blocks I need to buy a book for so that I can figure out how to do the piecing.

Last night, I was inspired to start the first one - this is the one that got me thinking about the whole concept of my peace quilt. It's the Chinese figure for listen. Another post, I will go through the various pieces of the figure...for now - it's started!

I'm trying reverse applique (my first time!). Last night I zipped up the pieces of material, and picked out the first piece of applique and satin stitched around it. If I couldn't finish it, I at least wanted to see if it was going to work!

The above picture is the backside. The white fabric is sewn with the good side to the underside of the blue fabric, and I pinned the paper to the top. In the pictures below, you can still see pieces of paper sticking to the top.

Once I sewed the design, I picked off the paper. I realized the blue thread I used for the piecing was too...blue...so I went over the stitching with a white quilt marker, and shaded in areas that need to be cut out.

This is the first cut out. So I trimmed out the material, really close to the stitching line, and then satin stitched, for an applique look, the blue material to the white, stitching over the straight stitch line and catching the raw side of the blue material.

Lot's of things to work out - the corners, the paper I used for the pattern (too thick), the fact that the blue thread I used to sew the material together was too dark - so I couldn't see where the stitching was, when it came time to start cutting out the material...so lots to learn. Stay posted.

NOTE: I've set up a list of people to get an email when I publish to my blog. If you do not want to be on this list, please let me know & I will remove you.

Blogger’s Quilt Festival - Fast Asleep on Cloud 9

It's exciting to be participating in Amy Ellis' Blogger's Quilt Festival (BQF)! Over the last 6 months or so, I've been happily drawn into a great net of quilters who blog about their work. It's so much fun, and I've learned a lot from all of these talented craftspeople who are also talented businesspeople.

As I mention in my profile blurb, I've been a quilter for a while - very sporadic from highschool until about 2001, when I started my first quilt in about 5 years. I don't have a post on this quilt yet, so I won't tell the whole story here. Since then, I've been getting more and more focused on quilting. Until 2009 - 2010. Let's call it the year of the babies. I'm not a mother, and have no intention of being one, and am now at the point (ok, age) where people no longer ask me why not. That's not to say I don't appreciate the wee ones...although I've been known, if there's a choice between a dog or a baby, to gravitate to the dog! Anyways, in the year of the babies, after years and decades of having friends with no little human critters crawling around - they all came in one year! So I made this the year of the baby quilts, the year to dive into my hobby. I have no intention of ever getting to 30 quilts a year, or even 20...and even 10 may be stretching it - but this last year has certainly put me firmly back into my hobby with great excitement.

The quilt I've chosen for BQF is "Fast Asleep on Cloud 9", from "the little box of Baby Quilts", by Jenny Wilding Cardon at Thewildcards blog. This quilt is for Anna, who lives in Switzerland with her parents Irene and Ambros. She'll be a year old in December. For the other 3 baby quilts (see earlier blogs from this year), the mothers' chose the design and picked the fabric. Since Irene lives in Switzerland, I made the executive decision on design and fabric. I wanted something soft and dreamy for this little girl!

I thought a meandering quilt pattern would give the impression of clouds all over...and I think it worked. There are a few hearts and clouds with echo quilting thrown in too. 

My exposure to the quilt blog world quickly showed me that I could be creative with the backing - so I searched for an idea that would follow with the cloud theme, and came up with a night sky - this lovely dark blue fabric with shooting stars. The Shooting Star Square is from Jennifer Chiaverini's Sylvia's Bridal Sampler from Elm Creek Quilts. If you love quilting, and you love mysteries, the Bridal Sampler quilt is a key component of the Elm Creek Quilts mystery novels.

Quilting is an ongoing learning process for me. I challenge myself to learn something new each time...well, I don't even have to challenge myself. It kinda happens organically. So as part of the process for me - what did I learn with this quilt?

1. backing can be fun! It doesn't have to be a plain piece of material.

2. fun backing translates into considerations for quilting...those seams, and those star points. I hadn't thought about how the piecing seams of the star blocks would affect the machine quilting.

3. border quilting needs to be planned in advance of actually quilting.

4. sometimes you can be creative if you run into issues with quilting that needs to be taken out...there was a section of the border that I couldn't get righ (even though it was most basic), so after I bound it, I took the quilting out again, and replaced with a handquilted cloud and heart.

5. labels can be creative too...I had my stepdaughter letter the labels on to the shooting pieces of the stars with fabric pen - she has lovely writing.

6. ummm....my machine quilting is improving. Stitch size is not yet consistent. I learned some lessons from Leah Day's videos that helped me with moving my material around and figuring out how to approach the quilting.

7. there's likely more..but that seems like a pretty comprehensive list!

8. I know - the thread I used - a Sulky 30 wt blendable blue/gold/green variegated thread (733). I thought it would be lovely on the night sky on the back - like the Milky Way or clouds of stars...and it was! But I only bought one spool, and when it came to the border, I ran out. So therefore the pretty plain border. Lesson learned - always buy 2 spools of a great thread.

9. Next time my meandering quilting should be less tightly spaced to make for a softer quilt. (it is pretty soft - with more spacing in the quilting, it would be even softer!)

Material: Blues- stonehenge #3952 and3953 by Sunshine Cottage from Northcott; the white was an extra wide piece, no idea of source, and the yellows in the star from my stash -  all from my LQS Creative Sisters' Studio. It's machine bound, using the light blue from the front for the binding. Dimensions are apprx 60"x60.

Now that I know about all the available fabric online, you can be sure that my next fabric purchases will be from some fabulous online store!

Thanks for reading and Happy Quilting!

consistent stitches

Have you ever wondered why it's necessary to have consistently sized stitches in quilting? Why it's a prized skill? Why would anyone need to make sure that there are 8-10 stitches / inch for handquilting, and a standard sized consistent stitch for machine quilting? Well, detail oriented artistic types might say because of aesthetics, because an even consistent stitch is lovely to behold. Quilt masters might say because it's indicative of skill set. I put forward another reason. Not that I disagree with either of these, at all. However, what I think quilt classes neglect to teach and online resources never mention...is that the more consistently sized the stitch is, the easier it is to rip it out. And I learned that lesson today. Got done quilting "asleep on a cloud" (otherwise known as "fast asleep on cloud nine"), on the main part of the quilt top. Why I did not spread the meander quilting all over the top - that means including the outside border - is beyond me. Now I'm short on thread, and was planning to do something funky on the border. Say, a heart in each corner, and hearts and clouds all along the border. No sooner do I do the first heart and I say...hmmm...not liking that  heart. Do I stop? No, I continue. I do the first cloud, with the thread breaking once, and realize that I'm going to have do some echo stitching around the cloud to get out of it where I need to to go to the next heart. Do I think it looks OK? hmm. not really. and I keep going...the next heart...hard time getting into it, couldn't get out of it to move on the to the next piece...and out it all comes. 10 inches of quilting...straight line between 1 heart to 1 cloud to 1 heart. I just finished. This took me oh, say about 5 minutes to quilt, and an hour to take out. And why was it so hard to take out? because my stitch length varied from very very very tiny, to a gapping half centimetre. omg. And now what am I going to do on the border? Really, am almost out of this lovely thread - variegated with blue, yellow and white - it looks just lovely on the clouds, and gorgeous on the deep blue sky backing. If I run out of thread, that means a trip to Guelph this week...for one spool of thread.

What else have I learned in quilting this quilt? well, that another machine would be great. Sewing machines have what is called a "throat", the distance between where the needle drops down to where the body of the machine in. My Janome sewquist has about a 5" throat, and it's awful hard to squeeze 30" of fabric into those 5 "...and then manuever the material in a manner that will keep the stitch length consistent. Other machines intended for machine quilting have a 10" or 12" throat. Where's my Christmas list??

OK, putting it down for the night to think about the border, and come back with a clear head. At least all the bad stitching is out. If I hadn't done that now, I would have left it for a very long while!

deep breath...and jump right in

Hookay, started the quilting on Anna's quilt this afternoon. Took a deep breath, watched several quilting videos - especially by Leah Day...and sunk the needle in. Exhilirating on one hand, and very scary on the other. Turned on some soothing music (I tell ya, when Toby's favourite Reiki CD comes in, that will be my quilting music!!), took a swig of a Coke..and started! Time now for Toby's much deserved walk, the patient boy. Will continue after the walk...who knows, by end of day tomorrow, I might even have it bound!!

Getting ready to quilt "Floating on a Cloud" for Anna...

I love this quilt. I don't want to post pictures yet...it is a gift and I picked out the pattern myself - unlike the last few, where the mother to be picked out the pattern. I'm very excited. The blocks were a great size to work with on the front, and on the back, I did something different that I've never done before...sticking to my M.O. to always do at least one new thing on every quilt. I'm even practicing the quilting motif (which is intended to be a fairly large meander) on paper with the machine in advance. I did manage some machine quilting risk by not getting the fabulous thread I really wanted...I got a quilting thread somewhat more muted that will be very forgiving of mistakes. The quilt itself is also larger than the other baby quilts I've made. For those of you who know me, you will understand when I saw that visualizing measurements is not my forte. so...60" VS 46", yeah, it's a different size, but would I actually catch that? nope, not me. So actually quilting it will be more of a challenge than the others - that's a lot of my material for my Janome sewquist and me to manage.

What else...I'm working on trying to instill some order into the list of projects around the place. I love lists and planning (why else would I be a project manager!), but somehow my tools from my workplace haven't really made it home with me. So, I've found this great low tech way to organize projects in various areas of the home: Personal Kanban...found it via The Simple Dollar, which is a great blog about simplifying your life, and managing your personal finances. So I'm in the process of setting up my personal kanban for our household projects...so far, the "To Do" side is the only side with something in it. I'm also going to set one up for my quilting projects. They are piling up in my head, and need to make it down on paper or a wall somewhere so I can start prioritizing and visualizing.

One of my next projects that I want to start on is a quilt based on a course I just finished on Peace Building Conversations, from Shirley Martin. I'm having a great time planning and designing blocks in my head. This quilt will be a challenge for me all over...being the first time I'm designing one, to the types of blocks I'm going to use, to the way it's going to be quilted...etc.

And the Sampler quilt? I've gotta get a name for it. It's coming off the quilting frame and coming with me on Thanksgiving - who knows, maybe the quilting will get finished over that weekend.

Other projects? Christmas is coming up...I've been saying for years I want to make a tree skirt...so maybe this is the year, and maybe placemats and napkins to match. Also, all the babies could use what, bibs? and maybe I can extend into simple coats, etc? I see so many beautiful designs online from the various blogging quilters out there. I am so inspired by their work and their fabrics and their creativity!!

No pictures this time!! maybe next time, when the Cloud quilt is done and flying on it's way to Switzerland...

Peace & Adventure, Liz