Tuesday 25 February 2014

Finally..

Finally close to finishing the Adirondack Autumn top. I haven’t felt like posting anything until I had progress that was worth reporting. Today I sewed all the  blocks together and just have to put on the borders to call it ready to quilt.
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 So far the only oopsie I’ve found is a pinwheel spinning the wrong way and it can just stay there.  It is so incredible how clean my work area looks with out all the pieces of this lying about.

This hasn’t been the only project coming to a close. I actually finished a quilt a week ago. This was a top I completed several years ago, Before Bonnie.  Easy tospringquilt tell, as I am trying to be coordinated with my fabric choices, and if you could see the back, oh the threads everywhere.  But is is done and the new mother-to-be (one of my daughter’s friends) is very happy with it.  This is her receiving it  at her baby shower.




And I have another in the middle of being quilted. This is Bonnie’s Strip Twist that I was making to use up the left-overs of the Scrappy Trips. My baby sister loved the pictures of it I posted on Facebook, so I decided to finish it for her birthday in two weeks. She is turning 50 so it seemed a good time to send her a special present.
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Once I decided this was her quilt, I threw in some fabrics reflecting her interests. And for the border I used a fabric with a sewing theme and actually says “Sewing Queen”. For the cornerstones I wanted some that I had with cats and yarn on cheddar background but could not find it anywhere. A whole day was spend going through every piece of fabric, sorting and folding and organizing. My fabric is in a better condition but still no cats.  All I found was a 2” strip less than 10” long. All I can thing is I sliced what was left into strips after I used it in a Trip Around the World last year.  So instead the cornerstones are headshots of dogs fussy cut. I’ve quilted diagonally through the quilt and just need to come up with a motif for the centre of the block.
She liked the pattern so much she is making one herself, LOL. When she posted that I had to message and tell her this one is coming her way. She was thrilled especially since the one she is making was intended for someone else. This making things for others seems to run in our family.

Monday 3 February 2014

Final Mystery Link-Up

The mystery linkys are coming to an end and here I am, bringing up the rear.  Very pleased to say I have made more progress. It is much easier to get pieces sew once they have been cut LOL. So a great deal of cutting going on to bring things up to speed. The only units still outstanding are of course chevrons but more than half are done so I put some blocks together.
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So far, sew good.
Hiding at the top are the Strip Twist blocks. At least the ones still on the wall. I found a great way to clear off a design wall. Get DH to service my Necchi. I asked him to oil her and of course he had to vacuum first. Next thing I know, blocks are flying everywhere.  On the plus side, I now have a truly random placement of blocks and a clean machine to sew them on.
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Strip Twist blocks sewn into groups of four, awaiting further sewing.






The cut off bits of Strip Twist that I had been considering for a 16 patch have been re-purposed. Bonnie posted a link this week that really caught my fancy. It is a 25 patch, sashed with  individual blocks floating on a background ( here is the link Film at Five ). It was love at first sight. No pesky light/dark separations, just random blocks sewn.  The strips of four that had been trimmed off the ends of the strip twists just needed a block sewn to make them 5’s and off we go. Got 5 blocks done already.
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And if that wasn’t enough, I un-earthed two more projects while cleaning up that can use up the extra 2.5” pieces. The shaded nine patch and Oklahoma Backroads both have around
20-30 blocks done. So I have them set out ready to go and am trying to do one or two every day I sew. May be by summer I will have enough to do something.
Now to link up with Bonnie and see what everyone else has been doing.