Artless Fabrications

Losing seventeen days out of one month can be quite devastating and I’m not sure how I’m going to ever catch up on all I need to do. My annual trip to Red Deer was wonderful until halfway through when I began to feel unwell, and by the time I arrived back home on Sunday evening I was full-blown feverish and horribly ill. By Wednesday of that same week I ended up in emergency where I was diagnosed with a lung infection and bronchitis, prescribed an antibiotic and an inhaler to help me breath, and ordered to bed rest for at least the next three days. After three days of bed rest I ventured out to do some regular house chores, as things were well underway to falling apart right before my eyes, and laundry was piling up like Mount Vesuvius. In my weakened state, I bent over to pick up a heavy basket of freshly washed laundry to hang on the clothesline, which resulted in me pulling my back out and was sent

Pineapple Blossom Wedding Quilt

hobbling back to bed where I’ve had no relief from the pain for the past ten days… but at least I’m not coughing up rainbows anymore. My antibiotic is finished and I’m attempting to come to terms with all that lost time. You know you’re really sick when you can’t even stitch in bed! I don’t remember the last time I went two entire weeks without sewing something! I’m not even sure it’s ever happened before.

The one thing that I did accomplish little by little, was the binding on the wedding quilt, with the final stitch going in last Wednesday. Now all I have to do is design and attach the label to the back and I’ll be ready for the presentation in July. Even though it started out as completely not my style of quilt, I am thrilled with how this project turned out and truly hope my son and new daughter in law will love it just as much as I do. The border fabric added a cool graffiti style edgey-ness, enhancing the piecing and bringing all the prints/colours together, and the yellow and black ‘pedestrian’ stripe binding is the perfect final touch for the quilt top… and that backing.

Quilt backing is perfect!

I’m showing a photo of the back of the quilt in the hopes you can see the quilting design more clearly. I used a freeform paisley pattern in a variegated gray thread for the quilt center and a variation on a freeform feather and swirl pattern stitched with black thread in the border, giving the quilt a lovely curvy texture to balance out the hard pointy lines in the pieced pineapple blocks. And is that not the cutest binding you ever did see? I love it!

I’ll be back here again really soon with more updates, but in the meantime ‘Happy Stitching’ from carol xxx

Close up on the quilting

It was down to the crunch but I’m happy to say that the Pineapple Blossom wedding quilt is folded neatly away and tucked in my luggage ready for late night hotel room binding sessions. With any luck I’ll be able to complete the binding before returning home on Sunday, but if not I’m quite sure I’ll at least get a good start on the almost 400 inches of hand stitching.

Backing fabric!

I thought you might like to see a shot of the wild backing fabric I ordered online from Sew Sisters in Ontario. It’s a Kaffe Fassett wide back, which was lovely not having to piece a backing for once, but it has a very slippery texture almost like a cotton sateen and it was giving me all sorts of tension issues on the longarm. At first I was truly discouraged but decided to persevere, taking my time with adjustments and trials until I reached a nice ‘middle road’ tension. A fact that probably didn’t help the whole matter was that I was using a different colour thread for the top stitching than what was in the bobbin, which shows every sin that you make in quilting, of course. In the end, I love the texture of the quilting and the wild back is a wonderful surprise.

Happy Spring Daffys!

In this photo you can see a bit of the border fabric that I chose but the best part is the great black and yellow ‘pedestrian’ stripe that I used for the binding. What a lucky find! I hope it doesn’t make me dizzy while I’m stitching it on :o)

This will more than likely be the final post this month but I promise to take a proper full quilt photo of this one when it’s finally finished. I hope that by the time I get back home next Monday, the weather will be pleasant enough to do a clothesline photograph, as this one is too large to hang anywhere else. I will be taking my camera to Red Deer so expect a variety of travel/quilt/ process pictures coming up, as I’m started a brand new project that I want to share. Tammy and I will be exchanging our mini quilts that we’ve been secretly working on this past winter which amounts to even more photos. And last but not least, I’ve already selected my P.H.D. (project half done) for the month of April and managed to get the blocks up on the design wall in the studio, but more on that when I return next week. In the meantime, happy spring stitching! I am now officially on retreat!!!

as always, carol

I realize that I should be posting about the pineapple wedding quilt and that truly was my intention, but after setting all seventy two blocks up on the large design wall in the studio the other day, I discovered that my battery was dead in my camera. I plan to return to take progress photos but got a little distracted in the meantime. So I’m going to show you some fun stitching that I’ve been doing in between all the other work, just a block here and there, presented as a small reward for staying on task most of the time.

Since last fall I’ve been working on Jen Kingwell’s “Green Tea and Sweet Beans” pattern and loving it. I really want to join in on the new quilt along, “Long Time Gone”, that’s taking the web by storm but can’t justify even purchasing the pattern until I’ve got the other one well on its way to being finished. “Green Tea and Sweet Beans” has been an absolute delight to work on and I think it’s one of those quilts that needs to be stretched out over time.

Igloos #1

There’s a nice balance between pieced blocks and appliqued blocks, with even a little English paper pieced hexagons thrown in for good measure. Some of the blocks have been perfect portable projects once they are kitted up in a zippy bag and tossed into my purse.

Drunkard's Path block

Double Drunkard's Path block

Some of the blocks have proven to be quite challenging for me and I’ve had to improvise or substitute sometimes. Once or twice I even redesigned a block to make the construction a bit easier, and that has also been a fun process. I have temporarily set it aside once more in order to focus on the wedding quilt but I look forward to picking it up again soon. I’ve gotten to the stage where I can begin sewing sections together and see some true progress. The big job will come near the end, when the entire border gets appliqued with a vine and flowers. That might be the perfect project for relaxed summertime stitching under the umbrella with a glass of iced green tea! Just what dreams are made of :o)

as always, happy stitching, carol

Birds of a feather...

Just when I thought we were nearing the end… it’s baaack! The cold, the wind, the snow, and the blues/grays of winter have all returned full force on the Canadian prairies, presenting us with the season we all thought had eased up on us this year. “Hah! fooled you!”, says Mother Nature with a little Mona Lisa smile on her lips. In all honesty, until now we had gotten off easy this winter but talk about going out with a bang.

Snuggle together!

We’ve almost run out of bird seed for the feeders once again, but look at how grateful they are, all gathered together for warmth and sustenance. Even the littlest winter birds were fooled into thinking that spring was just around the corner, as they had begun checking out various birdhouses around the yard for nesting possibilities. Now they’ve hunkered down waiting for it to pass. Me, too!

I’ve been utilizing a few strategies to combat those Winter Blues, with some more successful than others. I thought I’d share some with you today, in the hopes of brightening your winter days.

Bake some banana bread

Tip #1 – Spending the morning baking something delicious always cheers me up (it makes everyone in the household happy too) and so I’ve been experimenting with new and old recipes. This week I added fresh blueberries to my old standby banana bread recipe and it turned out extra moist and tasty, with an entire loaf disappearing the very first day! I’ve also gotten into the habit of making my own bread at least once/twice a week and have gotten to the point where I have developed a lovely multigrain loaf that is no fat, low sugar, and absolutely yummy with a thick and crunchy crust.

A bouquet from a friend

Tip #2 – Buy some fresh flowers or a small flowering houseplant as a treat to yourself. It’s amazing how much joy this small act does to chase those midwinter doldrums away. My favourite springtime flowering plant is the hyacinth bulb you can purchase at most grocery stores. As soon as they begin blooming they smell heavenly, and if you save them for after the frost is gone, you can plant them in the garden and they’ll pop up every spring. I have a little collection of them in one flower bed, and I keep adding a few new bulbs to it each year.

Hawaii Pineapple Blossom Wedding Quilt

Tip #3 – Keep on quilting! Work with bright, beautiful, and colourful fabrics that make your heart sing. There’s definitely something extra special about sewing a wedding quilt that is difficult to put into words, but it’s even more wonderful when that quilt is for your eldest son’s upcoming marriage. My firstborn (and the last to get married) turned 38 this year and has been with his beautiful partner for over ten years. At Christmastime they announced their decision to finally tie the knot this summer and I’ve been working on their wedding quilt ever since. I did agonize for a while over what style of quilt to make for them and finally chose Bonnie Hunter’s Pineapple Blossom pattern in a palette of happy yellows, gray, and black for a modern, slightly masculine quilt, reflecting both personalities and their mutual love of Hawaii. Since my son’s birthday is this month, I decided to make this quilt my monthly piecing priority and I’ve been going at it pretty hard and steady to complete 72 blocks by mid month, in the hopes of having the entire top complete by the end of March. I started the month with just 35 blocks done, and as of today, I have only ten blocks left to do and envision myself sewing rows together by next week. I plan to sew a classic border to the quilt, bringing it up to a generous queen size, and I found the perfect fabric for border and binding at my closest local shop, Veronica’s Sewing in Kindersley.  Living a fairly remote, rural life, I tend not to get out to shop many local quilt stores but usually go online to dependable favourite shops for backings and stash building. My biggest ‘in person’ shopping adventures happen at the annual Red Deer quilt show where there are vendors that I have come to rely on and just cannot resist. There is something magical about getting up close and personal with new fabrics and notions that online shopping will never replace :o)

The weather predictions look promising for early next week and I have my fingers crossed that it will warm up enough for me to walk over to the studio, and perhaps get some longarming done (finally). There are deadlines to meet before this month is over and for some odd reason, time seems to be speeding ahead of me more than it usually does. But staying busy truly helps to beat back those winter blues.

Keep watching next week for updates on the wedding quilt and some other special projects I’ve been working on.

As always, happy stitching, carol

Well, it looks as though my special quilt, Whisper Sweet Nothings, will not quite be finished in time to put a bow on it for my birthday, but I truly gave it my all and I’m so close to being finished that I’m calling it done. As of yesterday afternoon, the label was on and I had just over half of the binding hand sewn down, and if today wasn’t so jam-packed I’d probably be able to complete that binding. As it stands, I’m travelling tomorrow and need to get things in order before I leave, and perhaps pack an overnight bag with at least some pj’s, so more than likely today will not be a sewing day. The best part about that – I will have some binding to do in the hotel room! hooray! that’s my favourite!

Today, I’m also sending out a progress report on my February piecing project, with step-out photos of the various stages the quilt has gone through. The first two photos you’ve already seen in a previous post and I should stress that when I picked up this project again on February 1st, only the center medallion portion was complete, and since then I’ve created the other borders. After adding the four patches on point I thought the quilt looked good enough to be called finished, but the background I used to set those four patches had such a calming effect on the quilt that I felt it needed to be boosted up with more colour. At first I was just going to add a brightly coloured floral fabric but realized I’d be very disappointed in myself (and the results) and therefore chose to do a pieced border instead. This would give me the opportunity to bring in more pattern and colour, create a larger quilt (which I think this one deserves to be), and not get bored with the piecing process.

My initial concept was to create a checkerboard pattern using scrappy two inch squares from all the leftover fabrics but it kept morphing into something much more interesting, so I’m just going to ‘go with the flow’. I’m incorporating some of the leftover flying geese and four patch units from the previous borders, creating rhythm and unity within the quilt, while bringing in some new fabrics to introduce additional textures in similar colours. This final border will take a lot more time to piece but I think it will be much more satisfying in the end. Thinking ahead for finishing, I’ve already set aside some of that yummy, red and amber spotty fabric for the binding. Considering that I’m making it up as I go along, I’m totally pumped about how visually cohesive the overall design of this project appears. Happy Stitching!

as always, carol