Sewing Saturday!!

Yay!  I finally had some unction and time to spend a few hours in my sewing room last night.  I decided to work on my Orca Bay quilt from here.  Here's my EQ7 image thanks to Laura who shared her EQ7 file with me.

I got bogged down just before Christmas and then we had some open houses and some bookkeeping.  But I'm back at it.  I cut all the remaining pieces for the quilt in one evening so that now all I have to do is power sew.  I'm on step 5 which is the little 'orca' units.  Teeny tiny pieces!  They look bigger online but let me tell you, they are small!  Don't be fooled by the pictures.  And speaking of pictures, here are a few from last night's effort:

Triangle string units

I love string piecing!  Now to keep them from tangling!

All pressed and ready for the second triangle.

I love Ohio Stars.  And I decided to add the second centre colour.

But reversed the blue and the red centres.

Ohhhhh!  Loving this...

By changing the direction of the little aqua string blocks you can change the whole look of the quilt.  See what I mean here.  I am doing the second version which gives a stronger "X" diagonal pattern.

Anyway, I hope to get more done today.  I still have some of the units in the blocks to construct but just couldn't resist seeing what it was looking like so far.

Off to Church now.  Catcha later!

Mavis

Blah...

It's the weekend...finally...and I'm so done!  It's been a very stressful week at my office with computer network being down and having to accomplish work with this handicap and ... suffice it say that 4:30 couldn't have come soon enough.

So I see here that it's The Friday Night Sew-In...and I have no air left in my balloon...no creativity, no desire to sew, no desire to even touch fabric tonight.  We have 2 realtor open houses this weekend and I must get our house ready for 2 pm tomorrow. I don't have the energy tonight.  Not sure what I do feel like doing but for now, I feel like blogging!

So all of my fellow quilters in blogland are going to have to have an extra burst of creativity in my place. Happy sewing friends!

Maybe tomorrow night will be brighter in my world.

Until next time,
Mavis

Snow Day!!!

It wasn't a blizzard but it was a pretty severe snowfall for our neighbourhood.  We live in a rural area with a bus service that is hit and miss in weather like this and the buses are always late due to road conditions.  Add that to the fact that I am fighting a sore throat and tummy bug and I decided to stay put in my warm house.

I wish I was using this today:

but instead I'm using this:

but enjoying a picture of this outside my window:

This little one was obviously hungry and searching for food and had to come right up to the edge of our house below our window to grab a bite of something green left visible because of the eaves.

Perhaps there will be some sewing for me this evening but for now it's time to get back to the books!  If you too are enjoying a snow day I hope it is a joyful one!

Until next time,
Mavis

Manhattan Condo quilt ... cutting now underway!

So...I had a great trip to Calico Cupboard today to find some fabrics to match something I pulled from my stash for my niece's wedding quilt.  I then came home and cut what I thought I would do for the block.  Here are some variations:

 I loved the fabric on the bottom right but not loving it with the other fabrics. 

 Here is the same fabric cut smaller in the block on the left.  Still not liking it with the other fabric.

 Um...not bad but not signing at me yet.

 Top left block doesn't work as there's not enough contrast between the two fabrics.  Next...!

 Getting closer but not sure about the white centre on the bottom left block.  One more...

and the winner is...double blue!

I like the way the blue is repeated.  It seems more balanced to my eye now.  So we're going with the double blue!

I had a marathon cutting session tonight so it is now a 'kit' all ready for my sewing day next Saturday with my satellite group.   I should be able to power sew and get a lot done next weekend.  I don't think I'll have any problem getting this done before the wedding in April.  It should be a fairly easy quilt to construct.  But until next Saturday, I've got some bookkeeping and tax stuff to get ready.  Saturday's sewing will be my reward!

Until then,
Mavis

Next new start...

is a wedding quilt for my niece Anna and her fiance Braeden. Their wedding is April 28th.  They wanted something modern and geometric in grey, white, black and blue.  This is my mockup in EQ7:

I bought the "Manhattan" block off the new EQBoutique, pulled it into EQ7 and started playing.  Now I will visit my stash and see what I have and if anything needs to be added. 

I know that 2012 is my UFO year but it is totally within the rules to start a new quilt if it's a wedding quilt, right?  If the quilt police should ask, that's my story!

I've also decided not to do anymore mystery quilts for the time being.  I absolutely love Bonnie Hunter's mysteries and I'm a sucker for every new one that she offers.  However, because they are intense designs (usually), I end up not starting anything else.  I think 2012 will be the year of UFOs and SIMPLE quilt starts.

I have both of Bonnie's books and haven't ever made a quilt out of them that didn't start as a mystery (ie Carolina Christmas is in one of the books and still at UFO at my house).  I also have LOTS of other quilt pattern books which aren't being cracked that appealed enough to me to buy them. 

So, that's my resolve this year...finish UFOs, more baby quilts for our church babies and maybe a couple of easy quilts from one of these books. And no more quilt patterns to be bought this year, or quilt books, and definitely NO quilting magazines.  EXCEPT of course that I'm going to Sisters in July for the quilt show and all bets are off for the 'no buy' on this trip.  That would just be wrong!

It will be interesting at the end of the year to see how I've done with this 'no buy, simple quilt, UFO completion' resolution.  Wish me well!

Now...up to visit the stash to see what I can find for the Manhattan condo wedding quilt!

Until next time,

Mavis

Baby quilt finish...

I don't quite remember when I started this quilt but I know it was 2011 fall sometime.  I saw something similar hanging in a quilt shop, snapped a picture and then tried drawing a simple baby quilt with a feature/focus fabric in EQ7.  This is the result:

Now that I have a b-line quilting frame, I had this baby quilted in no time!  I think it seriously just took me about an hour, if that.  I wanted something not too swirly, or girly because this quilt is for "Gideon".  I decided on some nice wavy horizontal lines.  I loved how easy it was to get this quilt quilted.  That followed with some hand-sewn binding in front of the TV.  Here's a closeup of the quilting:

Now I just have to sew on the label and it will be presented to the little man tomorrow, along with this one for Miss Olivia which has been done for awhile:

This one has been ready for awhile.  We just needed to pick a presentation date at church and we have been tardy!! 

I hope these babies will feel the love!

Until next time,
Mavis

New Years Day - Tradition and What a Cut up!!

We have a tradition in our family that we visit my sister who makes Porzelky (pronounced por-cel-cha), a Mennonite traditional New Years cookie.  It's really a fritter with raisins and they are yummy hot out of the deep fryer dusted with icing sugar.  My sister is the one who carried on the tradition of making them.  I just enjoy them with my family at her house!  They are truly amazing and I wish I had taken a picture of them. My Dad grew up in a Mennonite family so my Mom learned to make them from my Grandmother.  I've never made them.  I've always been content to let that be my sister's thing.  Anyway, today we spent the majority of the day at her house enjoying a nice visit with some old friends and eating Porzelky and other goodies.

When I came home I thought I would attack the rest of the cutting out of the fabric for steps 5 through to the finale of the Orca Bay mystery quilt.  The big reveal was published on the quiltville.blogspot.com blog just a hair over midnight eastern standard time. I got a beep on my blackberry indicating a new email.  The email indicated that Step 8, The Reveal was now posted.  I was expecting that if I stayed up until midnight last night that I might have a peek before bed.  I certainly was surprised to see it before 10 pm our time!  Thank you Bonnie.  What a nice way to spend the last few hours of 2011, admiring your beautiful Orca Bay quilt and dreaming about my own!

So...tonight I finished trimming the strings of Step 5; cut 700 triangles for Step 6, cut the dark, neutral and red squares and the larger triangles and finally the last two hourglass units.  All the cutting is now done except for the lighter inside border.  I am now ready for some power sewing to get this quilt finished.  The muscles are sore tonight after all that rotary cutting, but what an accomplishment!

Oh yeah...and I published the list of the 12 UFOs I want to finish in 2012.  You will see it on my sidebar to the right.

Hope you all had an enjoyable first day of 2012.

Blessings!
Mavis