Shattered Angles Workshop

Here's what I'm up to next Saturday:

My friend Susan Purney Mark is teaching a Shattered Angles class at our Victoria Quilters' Guild workshop.  I'm pretty excited to learn this technique with a bunch of other quilters. Of course in advance of the class is the fun part of choosing fabrics.  I'm always a bit tentative about my choices.

I am thinking of these fabrics:

 with this black Kona as the 'grout':

but am wondering if it will be too bland with one colour in varied tones.  What do you think?

Are these ones better?

Choices, choices, decisions, decisions.  Help me out people.  What would you do?

Until next time,
Mavis

Super Bowl Sew-in

We quilted....and then we wilted!

Pam arrived just after 9:30 a.m. and after we got all of her bags and machine in place we headed for the kitchen to put together with brunch treat which my DH had heard about on the radio on a recent road trip.  Ever heard of a baked french toast with ham and bananas?  No?  Me either...until today.  I found a recipe from Paula Deen on the Internet and decided to try it despite the fact that it only had 2 stars.  The guy on the radio insisted it was worth trying so we thought 'what the heck'.  Let's give it a whirl!

Here's a picture of our brunch (we needed our strength for our playtime!):

bread on the bottom, then ham, then sliced banana, bacon, eggs,  mozza cheese, nutmeg, salt and pepper.

 

We decided it was a fun adventure but the bananas were a bit weird.  Now pineapple would have been interesting.  hmmm.  Maybe next time.  But now to our sewing adventure!!

So here's my work space looking out to my back garden (LOVE this view!) which provides serenity and inspiration all at the same time.  And yes, those are Orca Bay pieces on my work table.  More on that later.  Mr. Sun joined us all day which was a wonderful addition.

And here is Pam's task for the day:  stitching in the ditch on her cat quilt (a UFO):

Notice her border.  It works great on this quilt and I must remember it for future use:

Leftovers put to good use don't you think??

And my mammoth task for this superbowl sewing day was to work on my triangle string units (to start with anyway) of my Orca Bay quilt from quiltville.com. There are my first two Orca Bay units up on the design wall.  I'm doing my 'frames' differently than Bonnie Hunter's and I'm adding blue to the centre of the light block instead of red in every one....just cuz I can!

 Now the production line...

 They went together fairly well and most of my points were bang on and 

we'll just forgive the ones that were a tad off.

Me so happy !

Phew!  All done... next...

Now to work on the Ohio Stars.  I have to say that I love my little swirls on these hourglass blocks.  They all cooperated so well!!

...and she wilted!  But look at all I got done today!!  All the string triangle units + all the light Ohio stars + all the centres of the dark Ohio stars.  What I didn't photograph was all the border units that I also got done (minus 6 - I must have miscounted).  Next time I will finish the dark Ohio stars and then start constructing the rest of the blocks.

I am hoping to hang this quilt in our quilt show in May.  I may actually get it done in time and that would be awesome!

But for now...I need some rest cuz it's back to work in the morning.  Pam got her quilting done with her kitties and when she left at around 4:30 pm was looking forward to starting to hand quilt the rest of it tonight in front of a cozy fire with her DH.  It will be fun to see her quilt finished.

Hope your Superbowl Sunday was as fun as ours!

Until next time,

Mavis

Quilt Marathon Weekend - Day one!

Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday and it will be day long quilting marathon for Pam and I.  Last year we did a Super Bowl Mystery Quilt (here) and tomorrow, while we won't be working on mystery quilts, we will be working on PIGS and UFOs (projects in grocery sacks and unfinished objects).  And no, we won't be watching the Super Bowl but it's a great excuse for a day long sewing marathon. 

But first...let me tell you about today's adventures.

My church quilting group met today for a day of quilting and crafting (crochet).  We are behind on our production of baby quilts for our newest members and we had some new talented ladies joining us today.  We sure know how to have fun.  Check it out:

Our dear Susannah is working on a gorgeous Teddy Bear quilt for a new little man in our congregation.  Too adorable for words don't you think?

Susannah working on quilting her quilt.

Denise's "tablecloth" quilt.  She shared a funny story about a near disaster with this quilt and told us that it almost ended up in the trash bin but managed to be salvaged.  Looks pretty good to me!

Nice warm fall colours.  Beautiful job Denise!

This block and others like it were originally destined for this quilt but will be finding another forever home.

Kara, one of our new members with Shirley working on Kara's first quilt.

Shirley and the fine art of hand applique.

The quilt that love built.  This is our group project/teaching project.  Many hands make light work and we almost had this done by the end of the day.  A true group project.  Susannah took the remaining applique blocks home to work on.  Then a nice border and it will be a quilt top.

Mary showing Trysta the fine art of crochet.

Denise busily working away on 9 patches for The Quilt that Love Built.

And me?  I'm behind the camera trying to capture all the fun and progress.  It was so great to have new friends added to our little sewing group.  After our last presentation to the babies at Church a few weeks ago, all of a sudden there was all this flurry of interest.

Until tomorrow!  (when the fun resumes and more pictures of progress on PIGS and UFOs are displayed here).

Mavis

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