The Beauty Around Us

I had a great vacation at my oldest son's place in Killarney, Ontario. Tyson Lake which my son's place is on is 9 1/2 miles long.

beauty surrounded us out on Tyson lake one evening

A view of his place from the lake side.

you can see a couple of the cabins on his resort peeking out to the left of his house and gazebo

While there our son usually has a project or two that he needs his Dad's help for. This is one of them, we helped him put this out on the lake for his guests to enjoy.

water fun! A trampoline with a slide 

The weather was beautiful! I enjoyed the time we spent with this little cutie.

grandma may have given her a treat or two

Some of my roses were blooming when we got back home.

the white spots on the leaves are a milk and water mix for black spot and fungus

I have played in my sewing room or maybe I really should say I got hit with a squirrel. So instead of working on other projects that need to be done. I did this, I have been wanting to do a collage of one of my flowers that I took a photo of for a while now.  This is just the start, I see many hours in my future working on this.

a very long way to go before a finish happens

Take a little time to see what nature has given us. I hope you get to enjoy the beauty around you.

Stash Additions

I'm working on a couple projects that I can't show you. But that didn't stop me from adding to my stash, this after I was going to try and use more of my stash. Temptation. All I can say is I caved.

First up from Quilt Junction in Waterford. They were having a 40% off sale of batiks.

Northcott batiks, the back piece is 3 meters

Next up four one yard pieces at $9 a yard. I just couldn't resist. These are from Caroline Quilts, she was a vendor at my guild's quilt show last weekend. 

from left to right a Northcott 'Simply Neutral', 'Sandscapes' also from Northcott, 'Modern Love also a Northcott and last is 'Fusions Garden by Robert Kaufman
 

These last ones are also from Caroline Quilts. She calls these 'candy' They are end cuts in various sizes, they were $1 each.

love the owls

The owl piece sorry no info on the selvedge is 16'' x 21''. The green and purple piece is 12'' x 22'' and is Hamilton Grove by Sue Beevers. The multi colour drops is Songbird and is 11'' x 21''. The pink print is 8'' x 42'' and is Bloom Crazy. The two neutrals are both 11'' x 21''. 

After these additions I'm now back to my self imposed ( we all see how well that's going so far) NO new fabric purchases unless it's for secret sewing.

My Guild's Challenge

This year the challenge for my guild's quilt show was 'Home'. It is described as "What home means to you. Whether it is a place: your house, a place you have fond memories of, maybe flowers or family."  I decided to make mine based on family.

After a few ideas tossed around in the middle of the night. I know that I am not alone in the late night designing department. I finally settled on a brilliant idea, all my ideas are brilliant at least I think they are. I wanted a heart and family.

A red heart that said home, maybe some flowers as I love flowers and maybe a picture of my family. Everything spiraled from there. The challenge had a mind of it's own. 

First the red fabric. I couldn't find anything I liked and I wanted something that said home. I could have appliqued it, or stitched it or even used fabric markers all would have been fine. But I choose to go another direction I had fabric printed from Spoonflower, that I designed with 'Home where family is sewn into the fabric of my Life' printed on it.

fabric from Spooflower minus a heart shape

Once the fabric arrived I quickly cut into as you can see in the above photo. Next up the flowers, for which I first applied Steam a Seam 2 Lite to the back of the flower fabrics, before cutting the flowers out. I had and still have a lot of flowers cut out.

flowers, flowers and more flowers and this was after finishing the piece

I printed out pictures of my family, sorry no in-laws. I asked my family if they all wanted to be included and my daughter in-laws said no so I decided my son in-law wasn't going to make the cut either. My hubby doesn't want his picture front and center so I coloured him out of the photos.

first layout

One nice thing about the Steam a Seam it allows you to easily move the pieces around as long as they are not pressed down. I put them on a piece of pattern ease (Pattern Ease is a polyester non woven tracing material that can be used to create pattern pieces or sewn into projects as a light weight interfacing or stabilizer.), as the fabric pieces would be fused down to it. I cut the fused piece from the pattern ease along the outer edges, then appliqued the whole piece onto the background fabric latter. I wasn't happy with the first layout and moved the family around a lot until I settled on the final layout. 

I was right into the piece and forgot to take pictures along the way.

thread work

 I used Superiors monopoly for appliqueing the piece to the background. Then I cut loose using my favourite threads, Aurifil for the thread work, there where a lot of colour changes and burying of thread tails. 

a selection of Aurifil threads where used

I should have done more thread work before I started quilting it, but as I said earlier this project had a mind of it's own and decided I should add more thread work.

the back of the piece showing some of the thread work

And now for the big reveal in amongst my hostas.

my home, my happy place

These are the people who hold my love and will always come first. They are the 'Fabric of my Life'.

If you are in the area come and see what our show has to offer. We have quilts aplenty, a boutique and vendors. Some of the vendors are Sue Patten, K&A Quilts, Caroline Quilts. Even if you're not close by come on down. The show is at the Norwich Historical Museum, 89 Stover St. Norwich Ontario. 

Friday June 7th  12PM to 5PM

Saturday June 8th 10AM to 4PM

 

I'm Here

I know I haven't posted in a while just dealing with some real life stuff and haven't felt like blogging. Sorry.  I have been sewing and designing, nothing I can show at this time.

I participated in the 30 Quilt Design Challenge hosted by Sandra of mmmquilts. I completed the challenge and won one of the prizes. I won an aluminum back yard quilt by Brenda, of Quilt Designs in the Yard, of one of my designs. Now to decide which design to have made up. Which ever one it is I know I'm going to love seeing it made into a backyard quilt.

My guild is having their quilt show next week. I've been stacking my entries up, wanna see?

one bunch ready to go

I've been crazily working on my challenge piece.

some of these have become part of my challenge

A sneak peak, I'll show more when I have it all finished up.

I promise to show you the rest of it  next week

I am quilt show committee chair and have been doing a few little things behind the scenes to get ready for the show. 

That sums up what has been keeping me busy.

Diamonds are The Best

Welcome to my day to participate in the Be a Diamond Blog Hop, hosted by Carol at Just Let Me Quilt. The goal in this hop was to create a "diamond" project.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend, as my birthstone is diamond I totally agree with that statement. Whether diamonds are a member of the precious stone family, a song or made from fabric they are the best IMHO. My project may not officially be a "diamond",  however the squares on point do give the impression of diamonds.

a fun novelty print

I used an animal print that I had in my stash and thought it would make a lovely baby quilt. I paired it with Kona white, a fat quarter of green that I have no idea who makes it and a solid by Micheal Miller. The pattern is one that I designed and haven't written up yet. It's on my lengthy to do list.

I quilted some feathers and swirls in the background

For the quilting I did some dot to dot in the diamonds and curves in the triangles and on the print. I love feathers and quilted some free flowing feathers in the background.

a fun tetris print for the backing and square in a square corners.

The sun cooperated fully for the quilts photo shoot. I sure am happy to see more of the sun, winter was way too long.

soon those tree branches that are shadows on the quilt will be full of leaves

The quilt is 42'' by 42''. It is the second quilt for H2H2019.

Take a little time to visit the rest of those participating in today's lineup.

April 26

Creatin' in the Sticks

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Days Filled With Joy

For The Love Of Geese

Quilt Fabrication

Stitchin At Home you are here

Seams to be Sew

Just Let Me Quilt

Hearted Beauties Release

I have always wanted to make a New York Beauty Quilt. Whenever I spy one whether it's at a quilt show or on the net, they catch my eye.

'Hearted Beauties' is what happened after I played with designing my own New York Beauty blocks in a heart shape. Why a heart shape? Because I thought it might be neat to see what they looked like. Of course those hearts needed a setting and a quilt pattern was born.

Hearted Beauties

The Heart blocks are paper pieced, the rest of the quilt uses traditional piecing.

The quilt back shows how I quilted it. I quilted this with all Aurifil threads. It's a good thing I have a nice stash of them.

Those large open spaces left plenty of room for some custom quilting. You can do as much or as little as you want.

A big thanks goes out to my testers.  Wendy of  Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life, you can find her on @piecefulwendy and Lauren who posts on IG @letospassion.

Wendy's version

Lauren's version I like how she has turned the hearts so they point into the centre

You can purchase a copy from my Etsy shop. Hearted Beauties is on sale for the rest of April.

More Bits of Goings On

It's amazing how fast April seemed to come along this year. The months just continue to roll on, if I'm not careful I may get rolled right over.
April started out busy as the 1st is my anniversary, no sewing got done. We spent the day just doing little fun things that we enjoy, like a walk. Then a nice meal out at one of our favourite restaurants.

Sewing has been happening including more secret sewing this time for the 'Be A Diamond' blog hop hosted by Just Let Me Quilt.

A sneak peak at my project. 

a fun novelty print

This is as far as I am, I need to get moving on this project as my day is April 26th.

Some easy sewing also happened I saw these cute little bunny bags on pinterest. The tutorial is here. They were a quick make. My grandchildren will like these, especially filled with chocolates.

I made six in a couple hours

I have also been slowly working on my challenge project for my guild show. I have been using Steam a Seam 2 Lite on the back of the flowers and cutting them out. I need a whole lot more. 

I need to continue cutting more as this is only a small sample of what I'm going to be using

Now I just hope my idea for the guild challenge works out the way I have in my mind. That's the funny thing about these visions they don't always go the way we think they will. But I'm pushing forward as I'm sure it's going to look like I envision, fingers and toes crossed.

 

If you are looking for a great QAL hop on over to mmm!quilts. She has a lovely design, that makes 42 1/2'' square quilt a very manageable size and time schedule. I am sponsoring one of the prizes.

Now I better get busy and start putting thread to fabric.