**non-quilting post**

These are our two cats, a tortie named Cricket and a long-haired grey called Oliver (Ollie). They sleep together in a laundry basket and are so darned cute, I just had to put their photo up.

Cricket (left) Ollie (right)

sleepyheads

Finally got the last border on my Holiday Sampler BOM. (see my previous post on this quilt)This was a really fun class and I think that we all enjoyed making one/two blocks per month. My favourite is the little penguinSanta is really cute too!I’ll now be bringing it to Jan for long arm quilting. I hope to have it all finished to bring it to my LQS June quilt show.

Here are a few more blocks:I also did some machine emboridery for the snowflake blocks:The borders are also special:

We had our monthly Friday Fun Nite class at my LQS,  The Country Quilter, last night, and we made these wonderful tote bagsThey make up lickety-split (after quilting your fabric). I’m not sure where the instructor got the pattern from, but it was very easy to make and I learned a new way to make handles - which I will use with other bags from now on. The diamond on the front is actually a little slanted pocket.

The fabric I used was from my stash - it is authentic Japanese fabric that I picked up at International Fabrics at a quilt show in Lancaster, PA several years ago.

Holiday Sampler BOM designed by Lynda Howell for The Stitch Connection

As I was making thirty six flying geese for the borders of my Holiday Sampler  BOM (designed by Lynda Howell for the Stitch Connection) last night, I decided to re-work the pattern so that I could use the “no waste” method for making flying geese rather than the directions on the pattern.

This got me thinking about some methods and various tools/notions that I use for quilting that I couldn’t do without.  It’s funny, when I first started quilting about five year ago, I really had no clue what I was doing. I took a bunch of classes to learn everything that I could. I went on shop hops and shopping trips. I remember the first year going to the Lancaster Quilt festival in Lancaster County, PA, and it was like a feeding frenzy - I bought so much stuff it was unreal! As the years pass, I am much more settled in my quilting domain. I now know the styles that I like: country inspired quilts, folk art motifs, stitchery, Thimbleberries, cottagey style, woodland motifs - and I now know the tools and methods that I love and swear by. This is a short list of my “needful things”:

1. Aurifil 50/2 cotton thread for piecing. I first bought Aurifil in a thicker weight to do redwork, but then found out they had a nice piecing thread. I love this thread for piecing! It is so thin that it sinks right into the fabric and makes nicer seams. I purchase mine at my lqs, The Country Quilter, or from my local long arm quilter, MariLyn at Bytowne Threads.

2. Clover pins - the thinnest, longest ones that I can find. I used to use the Dritz yellow ball-head pins,thinking these were quilting pins..NO WAY..you just have to try the fine, thin Clover pins to know they are in a class of their own. They are a little pricey, but I don’t bring them to classes, and they will last for years. They slide effortlessly into the fabric, and don’t damage the fabric. Even though I do not purposely sew over them, I have on occasion sewn over them, and they are so thin that it did not affect the sewing machine needle.

3. Bias square rulers. I have a 6″ and an 8″. They are from That Patchwork Place. I use these rulers for everything! I tend to make half square triangles a little oversize so that there is a little bit of fabric to trim off, and I don’t know what I would do without these bias square rulers.

4.Jeana Kimball’s Foxglove Cottage embroidery/redwork size 11 needles. These are the ONLY needles that I use for embroidery and redwork. They have a large eye, they are not too long, yet not too short, and they just slide through fabric beautifully. I buy a little tube of these whenever I see them.

5. Staedtler permanent Lumocolor waterproof markers with the “S” tip. I use these to trace on plastic to make templates. I have purchased “F” tips (which I thought meant “fine”), but the “S” tip is much finer. These don’t smear or wipe off…ever…

6. Sakura Pigma micron 01 (makes a .25 mm line width) archival ink. I use the red for tracing redwork, and other colours for tracing stitchery using multi-colours. These, in a size 01, make a nice fine line and runs along fabric very smoothly. I also use these to write on quilt labels.

7.No waste method for making flying geese. I was first given a copy of this method at a class, and it was from an older Quiltmaker magazine. I use this method whenever I can. It makes 4 flying geese and not a bit of fabric is wasted. The only exception to the rule is when I am making a Thimbleberries patterns -  they use another method (which is very wasteful), but I don’t like to deviate from Thimbleberries patterns.

Finally completed the Thimbleberries Bear Paw runner. It’s  fairly large  (24″ x 52″) - but our table is long and narrow, so it works out fine. The woodsy lodge colours, the pinecone applique, and the bear paw block coordinate quite well with our our log home living style (can you read “relaxed & casual”?).

Thimbleberries Bear Paw runner

This pattern is one of the four patterns that make up the 2008 Thimbleberries BOM Club “Lodge & Lakeside” queen size bed quilt. The bear paw centre of this runner –>

bear paw block

is actually one of the blocks in the bed size quilt.

Of course, I chose to make the “Lodge” colourway quilt (Queen size) - but, I’ve yet to get the borders on. They are all cut and ready to go, I just need to psyche myself up to sew a large bed quilt. Am I the only quilter with this problem? I can get all the blocks done for a bom or, a bed-size quilt, but then when it comes to putting on the borders, I freeze. Once they are sewn on, and I get it back from long arm quilting, I then freeze at the prospect of putting on the binding. I actually need to set aside an entire day to get the binding on a queen size quilt.  One more goal for 2009 : get over it!!

In 2007 I took a class at my lqs, The Country Quilter, called “Tracy’s Quilt” — not sure what the authentic name of this pattern is, but the instructor’s name was Tracy, hence “Tracey’s Quilt”.

Chopsticks

I made this lap quilt for my son, Chris, and I thought that the pattern looked liked chopsticks, so I call this quilt Chopsticks. It was given to him Christmas 2007, the Christmas that we spent on the Sunshine Coast of BC.

This is a really fun technique. Felt a little crazy chopping the blocks up. The initial block is 4 squares sewn together - then you slice them up and sew in the wedges (chopsticks).  The blocks are then trimmed square. Although there is sashing and cornerstones to deal with, I love that there are no borders to sew on.

A couple of years ago I joined a redwork club at my local quilt shop, The Country Quilter. It was a lot of fun. We incorporated baked goodies into our meetings — ymmmm….stitching and goodies (mostly chocolate). In the beginning, we mostly got our patterns off of freebie redwork sites online. Then, I discovered some Australian quilting magazines — one of these is Australian Homespun. A whole new exciting world of projects opened itself up to me, and I discovered stitchery designs from Bronwyn Hayes of Red Brolly. Living in Canada and trying to get my hands on her stitchery books was not an easy feat.  With a lot of web hunting and corresponding with some shop owners in Australia and New Zealand, I managed to get my hands on some Red Brolly books. Now, at this point, I’ve gotten my hands on quite a few — but, not all of them — but close to it.  I am still looking for the elusive “In the Red”.

In the Red (I AM LOOKING TO BUY THIS BOOK - CONTACT ME IF YOU HAVE ONE FOR SALE)

Aside from trying to find these books,  I subscribed to Australian Homespun, and another fav Australian Country Threads, and there, each month, wonderful stitcheries, some from Bronwyn Hayes, others from other fantabulous australian stitchery designers, plus some months are special stitchery issues.

This is the first redwork/stitchery quilt that I completed:

redwork quilt from Bronwyn Hayes' book "Cotton Country"

Red Brolly's Cotton Country

On a cuteness meter, the little chickens, pigs, kitties, sheep etc. go beyond the top of the scale. I just love this stuff!

From Bronwyn’s book “Sunshine Blue”, I made this little wall-hanging:

kitty from Sunshine Blue

closeup of kitty

The book from Red Brolly (Browwyn Hayes):

Sunshine Blue

Today, I have just started “The Wish Quilt” - again, by Bronwyn Hayes — not a book, but rather a series featured in Australian Homespun Magazine, over three issues (number 62, 63 and 64).

Australian Homespun magazine issue No. 62 (vol 9.7)

The first block is Santa

Block # 1 Santa Block

Isn’t he cute??

FYI, the North American distributor of these magazines is Stonehouse Publications, right here in Ontario, Canada. I am in no way affiliated with Stonehouse Pulications, nor the magazines, or Red Brolly, in any way — just a big fan of this style of redwork/stitchery.

Stitch on ladies! Stitch on….

The long week at work is finally over — now time to do what I truly love. After a nice long walk (well, how nice can it be with two bum knees, hobbling down the road in pain?), but I digress, what I love to do on a Saturday is to hunker down in my sewing room and get to business.  Right now, I’ve got to get a bunch of quilt tops done — even though every neuron in my body is crying out to start on a new piecing project — I really have designated 2009 as my “finishing” up year.

So, it’s back to hand quilting the Thimbleberries Vacation Houses:

vacation houses ALMOST finished hand quilting

And, switch to Thimbleberries Bear Paw runner…..mostly machine quilted in the ditch, but I’m hand quilting in those empty squares:

Bear Paw runner in progress

I’ve got this love-hate relationship with hand quilting. When I first started quilting about 4-5 years ago, I simply fell in love with hand quilting - the peace and tranquility of sitting there pushing and rocking in little stitches, trying to improve and get them smaller and smaller all the time — how you can stitch ANY pattern — not reliant on a machine — it was great, and the method just really spoke to me. At the time I stated that I would never, EVER, start machine quilting MY quilts, NOR, ever, ever, ever have them sent to a long arm machine quilter. Well, ahem….that’s great when you are just starting and learning how to quilt, and you’ve got like, ONE project on the go….Fast forward a year, and all of a sudden, you are taking numerous classes, started some block of the month programs, so-and-so is getting married, or a family member has a birthday coming up, and well, they just love your quilts, and quilt tops are piling up in the sewing room, no time in the world to get to them…..And, VOILA! off to the long arm quilter they go.

And, runners, oh my god, I love making runners — my ultimate goal is to have 52 runners made up some day - one for each week of the year! (FYI, I am no where near the 52 - but I’ve got “seasonals” done). So, I am not going to send runners and smallish quilts off to the long arm quilter. So, I decided (again, that was a few years back), to send out bed size and large laps off for machine quilting, but I’d keep hand quilting the small stuff.  Today, I am more realistic — for some special quilts, and to keep my hand quilting skills honed, I hand quilt - but mostly I machine quilt on my home sewing machine — I really can only do “in the ditch” sewing on my machine, so I will do some hand quilting on some of these to get away from the linear quilting.

Do I still love hand quilting? Yes, I love being able to do it - I love the look and feel of a hand quilted piece. I don’t like my mangled up finger from the needle — I don’t like the S L O W process of it…But, I want to keep up this skill.

Do I diss machine quilting and long arm quilting? No way. I’ve had some quilts machine quilted that are absolutely gorgeous and no amount of hand quilting could come near it.

So, for me, it’s a balance of both — probably more leaning to having quilts sent out to be done on a long arm — and my runners done by me on my machine.

FYI - the vacation houses are done by hand - and the bear paw runner is done half & half. Two methods living in harmony.

While in Nepal, my daughter decided to make handmade souvenirs constructed with materials from Nepal, and based on things she was seeing in Nepal, and had seen in India.

She gave me this fabulous crocodile:

Justine's Nepalese croc

The detail is wonderful:

closeup

And, these wonderful masks:

mask #1

mask #2

She also made an elephant and rhino, but gave those away before I remembered to take a photo. I love these!

March Block

The online Thimbleberries group I am a member of is doing a BOM for 2009 called Building Blocks, a free online bom from Nancy Rink Designs. For this year’s BOM we do not have to use Thimbleberries fabric - we can choose from our stash. I am using fabric from my stash — Belle Fleurs Noire from Connecting Threads.It’s so nice to be able to stash-bust!