Just Another Manic Monday - NOT!

A very peaceful one instead.............

Our Picnic spot......

Holiday Reading......

Blue skies and sunshine............

DInner at our favourite Chinese restaurant............

Then home for a nice G & T, Canadian Gin of course! 

What's New?

It's been a good week here, catching up with friends, visiting a few of our favourite places and enjoying the slower pace of life in general.  As we sat at the side of Ghost Lake yesterday we enjoyed the scenery, and watched the water sport activities taking place on the lake.  Folks were out and about enjoying the sunny Saturday afternoon.  Life in the fast lane with jet skis and motorboats but also some taking it much slower paddling along in their kayaks and canoes.  Fun to watch but I am one who prefers to have my feet on solid ground.  The storm clouds were brewing as you can see and by the time we returned home the raining was pouring down and the thunder and lightning was rumbling in the mountains.

I've had my first quilt shop visit - Addies in Cochrane, a lovely shop selling lots of beautiful fabrics.........yes I did buy some.  Black background, rainbow fabrics, downloaded pattern, ready to go!  

I set up my sewing machine on Wednesday night and decided to use up some scraps which have been accumulating here. Not quite sure how they will end up though, I have managed to produce 6 x 10.5 in blocks, then another 4 slab blocks with the red, yellow, blue and green scrappy strips so far.

All in all a very good week here I hope you have had a good one too.

That Way........

I missed a post at the weekend and there was good reason.  We were travelling all day Sunday and have now arrived on the other side.  It's holiday time!  A long awaited and needed few weeks of rest and relaxation in our favourite place in the Rockies.  Yesterday was spent stocking up on the groceries and unpacking and dozing on and off throughout the afternoon.  It was a grey and drizzly day just like home, but we are hoping for some improvement during the week.  We are both awake early this morning par for the course and looking forward to a lazy day, hopefully with a little sunshine to allow us to sit on the deck.

This Way quit top is complete, although I might just put another border on, and yes - it's artistic license  its not the same as the pattern - for those who don't know me I never do things the way I'm told!

   

The HSTs from the leftovers have been pieced together and will become a small lap quilt called 'That way'. 

And I still have scraps and strips left for perhaps a little linus quilt.  

  

A great value quilt kit indeed.

I've just finished my early morning coffee so ready for a new day.  No plans, no deadlines, take it as it comes kind of day.  Reading, sewing, chatting, cooking, dozing, and repeat.  I might even unpack my sewing stuff and take a look in the boxes to see what I left behind last time.

So you may get fewer posts over the next few weeks, you may get more, you may get none!  You might get just a photograph of somewhere we've been or what I've been doing.  The posts may look funny as I am doing everything from my iPad so apologies if the font or formatting looks weird. Whatever you are up to this week enjoy!

Which Way?

I am pleased to say I have had a more productive week.  Sewing wise at least and I suppose I have managed to keep up to date with my washing and ironing and all the other chores that need done occasionally around the house.

I am delighted to report that K has been successful in having one of her beautiful quilts accepted for the Quilt Championships at Ingliston this year.  We are all hoping she does well but to just have a quilt accepted is a huge achievement and we are all looking forward to seeing it being exhibited and hung up beside all the other quilts at the show with  K’s name beside it.  We can all now say we know someone personally who is exhibiting at the show.  Good Luck K.  We all know your work is stunning, lets hope the judges do too.

Baby Arthur’s quilt has been finished and has its label on, if it had not been so blustery today I might have managed a photo.  Tomorrow is another day!  after which all I need to do is parcel it up and ship it off to him - I hope over the years he will have hours of pleasure using it.

My Challenge quilt is finished too.  I am really pleased with it.  It has been a journey of different techniques and challenges which I have thoroughly enjoyed.  It is sometimes good to sit at your machine and put the pedal to the metal as they say but sometimes its good to take things slowly and carefully and take time to savour the moment when all the pieces come together and what your vision was on paper finally comes to fruition.  This is only a small piece as a wallhanging which in the end comes out at 17 x 24 inches, and I am happy with it!  Look out for it in my Gallery after Tuesday 6th September (This being the date we have to Show and Tell our ‘Illusions” quilts at class).  I will post it there - or I may even do a separate post about the journey.

Im sorry I'm being a bit of a tease - not able to show you pictures of my finishes just yet.  So here are a few pictures of whats been going on in my sewing space in the last few days.

This is another of the Connecting Threads Kits which was on sale and I bought for $27.  

The Pattern

A bargain I thought at the time, however it was even more of a bargain than I thought.  As I may have mentioned before these kits I have found have a generous amount of fabrics.  

Large Flying Geese

Having cut out the required pieces I realised I could make HSTs with the trimmings, 

5 inch HST's

so instead of just one quilt I am heading to make a second and maybe another with these scraps I still have 

7 x 2.5” strips and 7 5 x 6” pieces to play with and that doesn't include the sashing pieces

The progress so far

I hope your progress has been good this week and you have some time this coming week to do some stitching.

An Unexpected Surprise

A very blustery day here although it's not been too cold.  Techie arrived home from his holidays and has spent the day in bed catching up on the jet lag.  I had nothing planned for this weekend, the washing and ironing was all up to date so the washing machine was left free for all the holiday washing!  

We had a nice surprise when we had a text to say we were having a little visitor with his Daddy.  Mummy was having a girly cake and craft afternoon out with some of her friends.  Our little grandson is growing, the vocabulary he has acquired already I think is quite extraordinary.  The bird in the garden wasn't just a bird it was a pigeon.  He loves been outdoors and we had fun exploring in the garden, we picked some lavender for his Mummy and we tied it up with a ribbon not just any ribbon but it had to be a purple one!.  Then of course we had great fun playing with all the other ribbons in the bag, waving them around and making snakes on the floor lots of giggles and good fun...........the simple things are always the best.  So that's enough to Grannie talk, what about quilting.

Not so much done this week, I managed to complete another new hexagon at class on Tuesday we've still a long way to go though.

Another blue one

My 'illusion' challenge is sandwiched and quilted and is hanging on the design wall - my maths teacher son was well impressed!  Obviously he saw what it was meant to portray. So I guess that's a bonus.

Baby boy quilt is cut out, HST done and pieced together I now just need to put the borders on.  This one is similar to the pink and grey one I did for Freya, using a different colour way.

My fabrics I bought at kaleidoscope last week have all been, scanned and documented and folded on to the magazine boards and stacked in the bookcase, ready for the next project.

I hope to continue with my challenge quilt tonight, doing a little hand stitching.  Then I might manage to sew on the borders of the baby quilt.  I hope you have all had a good weekend and are looking forward to a new week.

Deliveries All Made

I managed all the deliveries last week, little Oliver's big sister took delivery of her Purple and Pink quilt with an added bonus of a little quilt for her favourite bunny made up from some of the leftovers.

The musical quilt went off to Phew.

LIttle Freya now has her quilts too, I am never sure how people will react to my quilts, especially when I'm asked to just make a quilt.  Everyone has different ideas of colours, shapes and styles so I usually make two or even three for them to choose which one they would like.  This time I made a small 25x25in car/pram quilt.  I was pleased with it but was it really what was wanted?  

Number two came into being, candy floss pink with sweet elephants, giraffes, crocodiles and lions roam this very girly playmat which was around 40ins square.  Too pale perhaps?  

I was on a roll and having great fun.  If anyone follows me here you will probably know I'm not a girly person, pinks do not normally feature in my quilts but for some reason just recently I've made a few pinks ones.  Moda Hi De Ho fabric sat on my shelf and shouted use me! So I cut up the daisies and dragonflies into squares and a few other strips of bright pastels from my stash and this cute stripey cot sized quilt materialised.  

Freya's Gran was delighted - so much so she wanted all three!!

I even managed the Linus delivery although it was a quick drop off on my way to do some shopping for Dad. Four quilts and a few knitted blankets will hopefully wing there way off to some children needing a little extra hug.  Here's just two of them

So my shelves are looking a bit bare now but no doubt it won't be too long until they fill up again.  My challenge quilt is coming along nicely and I have started yet another baby quilt tonight for a little boy this time.  

Our annual class outing was yesterday - a great day was had by those who were able to be there.  Lots of fabric, books, notions, were purchased, ideas found and stashed away in our heads for another day, cards were very flexible and purses all a lot lighter but I know, at least I hope,  I will see some lovely projects appearing over the next few weeks and months at class.  I look forward to seeing them all, I hope everyone will bring along their purchases on Tuesday to Show and Tell!

I hope you have had a productive week too.

A Challenging Challenge

Our quilt group challenge for this summer is entitled "Illusions".  The brief is a small quilt measuring not more than 24 X 24 inches.  Any colour, any shape, any technique. At least that is my understanding.  We were given this brief at the beginning of the year or. Indeed it may have been last September at the start of our session, and it's to be ready to show and tell this September.  Now, in the beginning I thought this was an interesting subject and all sorts of ideas buzzed around in my head.  As the weeks and months have gone past I have discarded each of my ideas in turn but I always return to the same one idea.  Well this week I have finally made a start.  I have had the fabric In my stash for a while and I have looked at it this way, that way, played with it and put it back on the shelf.  I've watched videos, read books, and instructions, made notes, read them again, changed the notes and eventually threw them in the bin and decided I could use my own method and make it up as I go along.........this may be dangerous!  So watch this space.

At class I have always encouraged everyone to think outside the box and do something a little different.  You can get bogged down when you do the same pattern time after time, or only make square blocks, or do applique, or don't do stars or triangles because you might cut off the points.  Sometimes you just need to give yourself a wee push and just do it.  Do something that tasks the brain and makes you think.  Well this project is certainly doing that for me and do you know what - I'm loving every minute of it.  Sadly I can't even give you a hint of what I'm doing, no one is supposed to know what each other is making, it will be fun to find out when September comes.  So if you are up for a challenge - why don't you try something different this week?  Learn something new, it doesn't even have to be sewing, try out a new recipe, bake a cake or just make time for reading a book.

I have finished all the baby quilts and just in time too.  Little Freya arrived earlier than expected and her quilt will be delivered this week.  I'll post photos in the gallery later.  I mentioned there were three quilts still to be donated to PHEW I've finished the musical one and it will be heading off to them later this week. We have reports that they are being well received and have even had a lovely note of thanks from one of the recipients.

Photo Bombing!!
Do you see the little blackbird which popped into the photo - they just love apples!

I hope to make one other delivery this week this will be a little bundle of Linus Quilts.  I have had a few sitting on my shelf for some time and my MIL has knitted some baby blankets so I will try and make the trip to deliver them to the regional coordinator on Tuesday.

It seems to be a sewing day today - it's tipping it down as I write this so after lunch I will be sitting at my sewing machine working on 'Illusions'.  Have a good week whatever you have planned.