Thursday 26 January 2012

Good Afternoon!!

Pin It Now! Well hello blogland. Hope everyone is doing well!

I am going to be extremely busy this coming week! Working 6 evenings in a row starting tomorrow and I have a quilting pot luck to bake for on tuesday for my LQS group.


Still trucking along on dear jane and completed my blocks for this week in my Dear Jane Quilt Along at the Quilting Board. Here are blocks C1 and C3 respectively. Started using a mix of hand and machine piecing depending on what I have time to do.


I am hoping to get a head start on next weeks, working on them before I leave for work in the evenings.


I am also starting a quilt called Omigosh by Sue Garman which you can purchase from here http://www.quakertownquilts.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=omigosh+quilt+pattern

One of the ladies in my quilting group is working on it and I seem to be falling in love with itty bitty piecing. My nine patches in the quilt are going to be 2" unfinished!! Crazy right??

Update: 2300 hrs- Well I made huge progress on Omigosh! I decided to reverse the colours and use white print where the dark colours were and dark where the light was. I am also making it bigger to be a queen size. Needless to say, I was required to do a lot of quilt math!! But I now have all of my white fabric cut (all 5 meters of it!) into 1", 2" and 2 3/8" strips or squares. I also started cutting my 1/4 meter fabrics and I have 6 out of 45 cut out!. I am using dark blues, pinks, and a couple greens thrown in. I will take a picture in a few days of the fabrics once they are all cut out.
I also pieced together some strips for my teeny weeny nine patches!
Super excited about this project and can't wait to see if I can keep up the enthusiasm for it.

(hmmm. it seems like I have a lot of projects on the go......at least I don't get bored!!! )


Updates on other projects:
Still working away at my Japanese Flower Garden but no new pictures yet. 

My Winter Twitterings quilt top I think I may rip off the borders and put the black print in to frame it instead of the pointsetta pink print. It will make it pop better. However I need to find more of the fabric so hopefully next payday I can find it on ebay or something! I only need about a meter! Figures eh? So for now it sits off to the side awaiting a seam ripper!

I wonder if anyone is actually reading this! But at least it is a good way to me to document my journey in quilting and help me remember how I have progressed!

Happy Stitching!
Kallie




Friday 20 January 2012

Tea Cup Purse!

Pin It Now! Today I decided to have an adventure and learn something new! Have you seen the amzing, gorgeous Tea Cup Purses by Patchwork Pottery?  If not you are truly missing out. Head over to her blog here:
http://patchworkpottery.blogspot.com/  check out her Gallery on the left hand side of the page and you will see tons of her awesome creations.


Her pattern for the tea cup purse is in the book Pretty Little Purses and Pouches. So if you want the pattern go grab the book!


This was certainly a whole new set of skills for me. I have never sewn a zipper (I have somehow managed to avoid it!!) I quilted it myself using a darning foot, which I have also never used, on my lovely Janome 4100QDC which I love and whose name is Winter


I also played around with printable fabric to make the lovely Tea Time strip across it.


Now it is definitely not perfect, but I like it. I would definitely try this again although I might change a couple things to make it work better for me. I think I will hand sew the zipper in next time as it was just too thick! Might add some more embelishments and will add more pockets ( I added one to this, there was no part in the pattern about it though).


All in all it was fun!




Off to work on Dear Jane, have a cuppa tea and maybe make something else on my machine Winter tonight!

Happy Stitching!
Kallie

Thursday 19 January 2012

Two More Dear Janes!

Pin It Now!
Well, the temperature here is now a balmy -20! much warmer than the last few days at least. But still cold enough to spend my day off stitching! I just completed 2 more Dear Jane blocks like my title says :P Here are my completed A13 and B4 blocks

The points on my A13 were very tricky! It was definitely a challenging one to piece and it has a couple puckers which I think will come out well after the freezer paper is off and if pressed really well.

B4 I machine pieced the little strips and then hand pieced them onto the large centre square, as well as hand hieced the outer border.


Up next is C1 in a lovely red stripe print which I hope to complete tonight.


Jennifer Bosworth is having a free BOM program over at www.ShabbyFabrics.com 


The January one is super cute! And I hope to get around to making it this month but we shall see. Working lots in the next 2 weeks.

Does anyone out there know of any other fun and free BOM programs? Applique, embroidery or quilting ones? I am thinking of compiling a list of them so that they are in one spot. So please, if you know of one give me a shout and I can start putting them together.

Happy Stitching!
Kallie

Wednesday 18 January 2012

Trucking Along

Pin It Now! Good Morning!

While it is still fridgid here in Calgary I have been busy working on Dear Jane. I was able to complete 2 more blocks on monday and mostly completed one more block yesterday/today before work.

Meet blocks B1 and B13. B1 was my first attempt at applique in any form and I used a reverse applique process on it. I love. love, love, the polka dots. Someone had asked in the forum on Quilting Board that I am in about the lines you can see behind the white and it is just my freezer paper. I am leaving it on so that when I start sewing together the seam line is the exact as can be.

I have picked up the rest of my colours for fabric and have printed out my templates up to block D11.

There is a lovely cyber quilt along for Dear Jane at this thread on the Quilting Board http://www.quiltingboard.com/blocks-month-week-f9/2012-2013-dear-jane-stickle-2d-cyber-party-pictures-discussion-t175669.html

You can see all the cute blocks as people post them and there is a wonderful calendar showing which blocks to do when how easy or hard they are and there are even breaks built into the schedule. Of course you can work at your own pace and I have jumped ahead a bit to work with the fabric colours I had oon hand. Definitely go and check it out!


As for me I am going to go have a cuppa tea, watch sunday's episode of Once Upon a Time and stitch a little before I head off to work!

Happy Stitching!
Kallie

Monday 16 January 2012

Hexagons and the start of Dear Jane!

Pin It Now! Good morning to you from the absolute frigidness of Calgary! We are currently at -27 with a feels like of -33. And our `high`for today? -22. Needless to say, its a quilting day. So I figured I would take some pictures last night to show my progress on my Japanese Flower Garden as I have been trucking along on it.












I have also started on my Dear Jane Quilt!
Here are my fabrics so far:
I plan on doing a muted rainbow jane quilt. My husband did not want super bright colours and my LQS has tons of gorgeous fat 8th bundles. So I am going to use those bundles for the quilt as there is 1 meter in each bundle. I still need to get purple, red and teal (sounds horrid but its going to look amazing!) and some more white bundles -they have white on white prints.

Here is my first block. Started with an easy one!
A6


The second one I did up last night was
A8
I have been hand piecing them using a Stem Stitch as the running stitch was just not working for me! Plus I do not have to worry about back stitching as much in the middle of the seam as I am basically doing that already. It has definitely given me fantastic seams with absolutely no puckering though!! Today I think I will be attempting to complete B13, A1 and B1.
Wish me luck!!

Happy Stitching!


Tuesday 10 January 2012

Finished!!

Pin It Now! Just finished my Winter Twittering's quilt top!!

The pictures are at the bottom of this post. I started this quilt in mid September 2011 and the top is finished jan 10,2012. Not too shabby considering all the embroidery, redoing 2 panels and moving across Canada!

I think I should have used a black border to frame everything instead of the pointsetta print but oh well. What's done is done!

Sunday 8 January 2012

Final Panel

Pin It Now! Well I am 1/3 of the through my last embroidery panel for Winter Twitterings. See the picture below for a peak. Sorry the lighting is so bad, and do try to ignore the cat hair please! Super excited that it should be finished tomorrow which gives me some time to start stitching blocks together!

I have really enjoyed this foray into embroidery/ redwork and think I am going to have to find a new embroidery project. For now though I will content myself with browsing online trying to find the perfect pattern to do! There is ever so many to choose from.

Found an amazing website with super cute tea cup pouches. The website is called Patchwork Pottery and she has tons I pictures of them on her flicker page.

Well back to my stitching and watching the second episode, season 2 of Sherlock Holmes on BBC.

Happy Stitching!

Wednesday 4 January 2012

Stitch, Stitch, Sitching!

Pin It Now! Today I am finally getting into my groove! I got a ton of blocks pinned for the quilt top and I am halfway through my second to last embroidery panel on my Winter Twitterings Quilt. I am hoping to have that one completed tomorrow and then my final panel by end of next week due to working lots in the next few days. During the days I am working I plan on spending a few minutes before or after sewing those blocks I have pinned so that I can continue my 15 minutes of quilting every day!

I am super excited that my local quilt shop is opening back up tomorrow and that my quilting group starts meeting again on the 10th! I do so enjoy meeting up with these lovely creative ladies and learning new things.


No pictures of current projects today as I was lazy and didn't get to it, sorry! However I will post a picture of a super sweet baby blanket I did for a friend and work. I plan on making another for my girlfriends little boy and soon to be born little girl (as soon as she decides on a nursery theme of course!!) The little boy's will be with a frog instead of a dinosaur since those are his favourite.

Isn't he cute! I just love the dinosaurs and my fist attempt at applique went very well, if I do say so myself!!

Happy Stitching!

Tuesday 3 January 2012

Getting Back in the Quilting Groove

Pin It Now! Well I think that after 3 weeks of almost no quilting I must get back into my quilting groove.

I had been trying to get at least 15 minutes minimum of quilting done each day and was doing very well! I brought hand piecing and embroidery with me to work to do during breaks and would stitch while watching tv or listening to music. The funny thing is that I feel so much better each day when I get some stitching done even if it's only a tiny bit. All those tiny bits do add up!

Hmm maybe I should actually mention some of what I am working on!

I do have several projects on the go (like any good quilter!!), my two main ones being a redwork lap quilt from the book Redwork *Winter Twitterings* by Pearl Louise Krush. This is my first attempt at redwork and I am loving it!! I am done 10 out of 12 red work panels and almost all of the block piecing. Just need to start putting it together!! The picture below is from the pattern. I am doing mine in black with gold stars,white on white, and a cute pointsetta print fabric with red floss for the embroidery. Will post pictures of my work in a couple days.

My second large project on the go is a hand pieced Grandmothers Flower Garden using english paper piecing with 1 1/2" hexagon templates. I am using all japanese inspired fabrics all of which have gold accenting with gold/cream background fabric. The pictures below are 2 of my 25 flowers.I currently have 3 fully pieced flowers with the outer gold/cream border, and 4 pieced flowers without the border. Each flower will have black with gold star print connectors which I will post pictures of in afew days. Sorry for the bad pictures they were taken in a hotel room on my husband and my's drive from Ontario to Calgary.

Goodness this is getting to be a long post!! I do believe I shall call it a night here, throw on a movie and get some work done on my 11th embroidery panel for my winter twitterings quilt.

I will try and take some more photos tomorrow of the fabric and my embroidery to post for winter twitterings and some more of my gorgeous hexies (which are entirely too addicting!!)

Happy Stitching!
Kallie

Sunday 1 January 2012

Welcome & Happy New Year!!

Pin It Now! Hello, and welcome to my little corner of the world wide web. I will be using this site as a quilting and crafting journal of sorts and hope to be able to follow through with it!!


I hope that you find my work interesting if you do happen to swing by here, and would love to hear what you think.


Hopefully I will be able to add some tutorials at some point with projects I have done.


Hope you have a Happy New Year full of love, laughter and quilting!

Kallie