Away From Home Quilt

AWAY FROM HOME is a book by Nancy Rink Designs.  Link HERE.  If you went to the quilt show in Ingersoll last weekend you would have seen this quilt hanging in the show.

I really love the combination of pieced blocks, multiple borders, and applique.

There was a great deal of s.i.d. on this quilt.

Cross-hatching behind applique is a very time consuming endeavour.

Such a pretty back.

I didn't make it to the show in Ingersoll, but I did get to the Quilter's Tea in Hagersville.  It was hosted by the Haldimand Quilters' Guild.  They had a guest quilter present a trunk show - Ruth Kennedy from Fergus.  I know Ruth through longarm quilting, and she put on an excellent show.  The event consists of lunch, door prizes, gift basket draws, a penny-sale, and grab bag draws.  There were eight people at my table - six of them won a bunch of stuff but I was not among the lucky ones.  Well, it's not like I need anything.  Although it was a bit of a bummer going home empty-handed, at least I don't have MORE stuff to think about getting rid of.  A blessing in disguise.

Sensational Solids and Wonderful Winnings

This beauty went home yesterday.

The slightly paler yellow in the wide outer borders is linen.  Very soft, and makes for a beautiful quilt.  On the down side, I found it a bit 'shifty' - think flannel or homespuns.  I suspect it would have been more challenging to piece with too, because of the loose weave.

The maker is giving this to her brother, so she didn't want "girly" quilting, and since music is his hobby that's what went in the wide borders.

Because the cross-hatching was interrupted by the squares, I chose to mark the quilting lines.  And I'm a big scaredy-cat when it comes to worrying about permanent stains.  I used tailor's chalk.  No muss, no fuss, brush or vacuum away.

An added service I offer is binding.  See the "PRICING" page for options.

WONDERFUL WINNINGS

The Caledonia Guild finished out the season on Wednesday with a pot luck supper.  All year the members have been bringing fat quarters for the year-end draw.  Each f.q. = 1 ballot.  The collection totalled 100 f.q.'s, so the pile was split in half and two winners were chosen.  Guess who won a pile of 50 f.q.'s?

GARDEN UPDATE

The asparagus is slowing down, but the strawberries are ready.

Trees 'n Stars #2 and Bitchin' About the Season

What a difference a change in colour makes.  This is the same quilt as two posts ago.

I swear (a lot, but that's beside the point) that ribbon border is one of my all time favorites.

Everything was s.i.d.  The background was cross-hatched, inside the stars got a circle & bowknot motif, the trees were quilted with a continuous loopy-thing, and the ribbon border was inside 1/4 inched.

Much easier to see the quilting on the back.  I love the Celtic Braid in the outer border.

BITCHIN'
Today is the SPRING FORWARD time change.  You have no idea how much I hate this coming week.  I will be dragging my ass every day trying to acclimate myself to an earlier wake-up.  I mean, it's 1:00 in the afternoon already.

The other unpleasant event this week is the impending STORM arriving tomorrow and continuing through Tuesday.  I don't have to go anywhere except the sweat shop in my basement, but it's the middle of March for Pete's sake!  When the temperature dropped from +10 c. to -5 c my poor little crocuses pulled their heads back into themselves like turtles.  I treated myself to a pot of tulips on the way home from retreat last Sunday, and they FROZE on the front porch, dammitall.  We are anticipating up to 30 cm. of snow (translation:  12 inches).

Today I plan to get a little feel-good into my schedule.  Seed Starting!

Tackling a Sampler Quilt

Usually, the first thing I do with a sampler quilt is take a photo of it.  Looking at the quilt on a computer screen gives me the opportunity to see the distribution of colours and shapes.  And sparing no expense (OMG, seriously!!  Do you know how expensive INK is for the printer???), I will also print this out so I can doodle some quilting ideas.  It is always a good idea to take a GOOD LOOK at the piecing here - you may find that some of the patches have been stitched in the wrong orientation.  You still have time to fix that - it is much easier before you load the quilt.  Trust me on that.  See HERE.

Step one will be s.i.d. the borders, the setting triangles, and the black chain.  I'm using black thread for that.  And my favorite ruler Janet Lee's Favorite.  This is actually my second of these rulers and I think I'll be buying a third.  It seems they are 'consumables', especially when you zig when you are supposed to zag and take a large chunk out of the edge.  Thankfully said chunks have never come flying at my eyes.

Then, I fire up the IQ and stitch the motifs in the setting triangles.  Pretty, eh?

The IQ is also used for the border.  As you can clearly see (ha ha, pfftt) this border design matches the above motif.

Okey dokey - we are finished with the black thread.  Changing over to olive green... I just love that little border design - Bluebells by My Creative Stitches.

And now we move on to the blocks, with olive thread.  More s.i.d. and some, I dunno, emphasis quilting.  Through the whole quilt, in every bit of that red print I am doing 1/4" inside quilting.

The centers of the blocks are all getting an IQ motif. That is an interesting process because the block centers come in four different sizes and the motif should FIT the area, while leaving a bit of negative space around the edges.

Once the olive green quilting is finished I move on to the cream thread.  For hours and hours of cross-hatching.  Can you say "hello, massage therapist"?

If you click on the pics to look at a large version, you may notice that I have NOT quilted the side borders.  Usually, I quilt the sides as I progress down the quilt.  In this case it would have been done when I was using the black thread.  Then again when I had the olive thread loaded.  This definitely leaves tiny spots on the back where you can see the stops & starts of the stitching as the thread is anchored.  On this particular quilt, the motif was too long to fit in the available space.  When I am ALL THROUGH with this x-hatching I will take the quilt off and reload it with the short sides attached to the leaders and do those other borders.  At that point the whole quilt will get a once-over.  I will likely find a couple of spots where I have missed a motif, or missed some s.i.d. (I have already found some, actually), or neglected to clip some thread tails.  Hopefully I won't find any tiny pleats on the back - they can be a nightmare to fix.

IN THE MEANTIME, here is my salute to spring.  A plastic bag.  Ha ha ha - yes.  But it is covering up my geranium cuttings.