Busy as a Bee

Pin It Now! Good Evening!

My goodness have I been busy!

I went to my LQS on friday for the free demos they do then and brought my Winter Twitterings quilt with me. I decided I did not like the pink pointsetta print as a border since it seemed to make the whole thing look washed out, and I didn't have enough of the black and gold snowflake print as I am using it for the Japanese Flower Garden. So I needed to find something that would work, and play nicely with the other fabrics. Oh my did I ever find something, and it was 50% off, plus it was not something that I would have chosen originally.

Ready?? Here is the before:

Here is the After!

The black, red and gold print just seems to work better I think. The picture doesn't really do it justice, unfortunately I can only do so much with my current camera. Believe me in that the colours are better in person :)



Next big thing is that I have finished cutting out all my fabric for Omigosh!!!! All 45 different fabrics plus my white on white background fabric!! 

This is one of my fur babies Nox. He loves to "help" me by watching my scraps and sleeping on them to ensure they don't fly away. 

And finally 2 more Dear Jane blocks!!
A1 and I were not friends. We are on speaking terms now but only after making the block 3 times essentially. The first time I did it I measured it out but silly me only added 1/4" instead of 1/2" for seam allowance and it was much too small. It will become something else. Then I freezer paper pieced it. and forgot to reverse the template so it was very very wrong. I then had to unpiece all the blocks, refer to my "miniature block" for placement of everything and then sew it all together again. Needless to say, frustrating. However I certainly learned to pay more attention!!

Next up is A5 which was easy compared to this. My flying geese were paper pieced!

Well I am going to go back to piecing my Omigosh quilt again so that I can start cutting it up into 1" squares and sew those together again!!

(I think we quilters may be a smidge on the crazy side :)

Happy Stitching!

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!

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!

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