WIP Wednesday - June 25

It's alllllmost the weekend for me - I am taking Friday off and then my employer very graciously gave our entire organization Monday off so that we can have a super long weekend heading into Canada Day on July 1, so that means, tomorrow is my actually my Friday and that would make today Thurs...never mind.

It's WIP Wednesday and I actually have something to show. A friend of mine has asked me to make a baby quilt for a very-soon-to-be-arriving grandbaby. I am so honoured as she asked me to make one when her granddaughter, a little girl, arrived a couple years ago:

Critters are the theme this time as well, but it is woodland animals in general, not just owls. Without further ado, here is my show and tell for today's WIP Wednesday:

Linking up with WIP Wednesday. Thank you for dropping by.

e.

Busy as a Bee - June block completed

It is exciting (to me, anyway) to be at the 11th of June and able to say I have completed my bee block commitment for the month. I suppose it helps a little (a lot!) that the Happiness circle of Do Good Stitches is taking the month of June off.

Last year, I participated in the Plum and June New Blogger Hop and it was a great experience. Afterward, some of the participants wanted to remain in touch and decided to start a bee with other new blog hop bloggers. There was sufficient interest to start a Canadian circle with a few spaces left over for friends from around the globe. We named ourselves the Global Scrap Bee and have been going strong since September.

This month, our queen bee is Barb and she chose the Liberated Wedding Ring block made with this tutorial from Little Miss Shabby. This block was simple and fun to make.

I look forward to seeing her finished quilt!

The New Blogger Blog Hop is going on right now, in fact it just got started last week. You should definitely check out Plum and June to see the gorgeous Oakshott projects featured in today's post, but you should also visit the new bloggers and give them some love - this week's list can be found here.

Thanks for stopping by.

e.

Another Brick in the Wall

Today I am excited to share with you a recent finish of mine. This quilt was a gift to my daughter in honour of her university graduation last week.

The fabric is Hope Valley by Denyse Schmidt and is one of my favourite fabric lines ever. The pattern calls for a jelly roll plus a whole lot of backing fabric; in this case, 4 yards of something that looks a lot like Kona PFD.

The pattern is Another Brick in the Wall by Emily Cier of Carolina Patchworks. The quilt top consists of 12 smaller blocks which in turn consist of lots of strippy rows, all pieced together.

Hope Valley was my first introduction to Denyse Schmidt and her lovely fabrics; it remains one of my favourite lines of all time. A lovely lady who lives not too far from me quilted it with a nice, open all-over pattern. I both backed and bound it in more Hope Valley prints and, thankfully, I still have a few scraps left over.

My daughter loves her new quilt and is taking it with her as she works out of town on her first "grown up" job this summer. I'm glad to know it will get lots of use and love!

Thank you for visiting!

e.

Welcome, June

I am definitely a summer girl. I like autumn a lot and certainly don't hate the other season (although winter was a bit long for my liking, this year) but I much prefer sunshine and hot weather, so June is always a most welcome month. Apart from the warmer season, I always look forward to June because that means April and May are finished with. I have an awesome job that supports my quilting habit but April and May each year are always frantically busy and this year was no exception. They are exciting, there is great energy, and lots of things get done, but wow, tiring! This weekend I finally had an opportunity to dust off my sewing machine and get back to sewing and I quite enjoyed it and look forward to opportunities to be at the machine more frequently going forward. My first order of business was getting my May bee blocks looked after. So, without further ado, here they are:

 Global Stitches Bee - this month, Ruth asked for scrappy star blocks based on this tutorial over at Clover & Violet. The block was simple and quick to make (thank goodness!).

Then there were improv blocks requested by Laura over at the Happiness circle of Do Good Stitches.
 

There was a university graduation last week so there is actually a quilt finish to show as well, but I need daughter dear to bring her quilt over so I can snap a few photos.

Mmm....the sun on my face, light lasting late into the evening...my batteries are recharging like crazy. See you soon!

e.

Random

This weekend was glorious...blue sky, sunshine...I think winter is backing down a bit and spring looks to be on the way, hooray! I came on intending to do a wrap-up post for the Q1 Finish Along that started with the list back here. Except, I was too late to get in on the linky party which is my own darn fault because I'd remember, get distracted (SQUIRREL!!!) and then not get my post written. My list had consisted of four projects and in the end, I got two of them finished:

That original list was written nearly three months ago and it makes me laugh at myself, a little, when I think about how my priorities have changed. At the time I wrote the list I was consumed with one of the projects but I think that may have been the last time I worked on it; I finally gathered up all the blocks and put them away in a bag, knowing I will come back to them at some point in the future but right now, I'm just not feeling it.

I have, however, been blessed with time to work on quite a few things. I have some bee blocks. some small projects for around the house, and some swap goodies:

One of the projects I love best is the one it took me the most attempts to get "right". I was honoured and humbled to be invited to join The Traveling Quilts Canada and this is what I came up with for my starter blocks:

I've been enjoying the photos of all the lovely triangle quilts popping up all over the Internet of late and decided it was time to try it for myself. It didn't seem like quite enough for a starter block, so I came up with the idea of making a block that was somehow significant to who I am or where I'm from. I found a paper piecing pattern for the iris (because we do love irises in our prairie gardens) and it was just the right contrast to my triangles. These blocks are in the hands of the next quilter now I am look forward to what will become of them as this next months transpire.

If you are interested in joining in for the Q2 Finish Along you'll need to visit The Littlest Thistle starting tomorrow (which might still be today, depending what time zone you are in). I'll be making a list, maybe even a realistic one.

Yay for spring, yay for weekends!

e.

The Flip Side

One of my FAL projects for the first quarter of 2014 was a table runner made of Lizzy House's latest fabric line, Catnap. I like Lizzy's designs. They are graphically simple and fun and I love the colours she puts together.

I was inspired to make a reversible runner - after all, you have to put fabric on the back anyway, right? I used this runner as inspiration and I am really happy with how it turned out.

This runner is for my daughter and as it happened, she kept coming into the sewing room to ogle the scraps left over from this project. It wasn't what I thought I might do for the reverse side but it's what she likes, so who am I to argue?

 I auditioned several fabrics for the binding but in the end, the gold Catnap print with the coral accents looked great with both sides of the runner and I am really happy with how it turned out.

Dear daughter likes it too!

e.

HAPPINESS Remixed Geese

It is very exciting to be able to show our groups latest finish. This weekend, I had the honour of completing the Happiness circle's January quilt.

In January, I asked the members of our circle to send me flying geese units inspired by the free quilt pattern available here. Erica of Kitchen Table Quilting designed this quilt and I think she did a beautiful job. I am so grateful for the collaboration between talented designer and generous fabric manufacturer - thank you both for sharing!

The quilting design is something I kind of made up on the fly but I'm so glad I decided to try it. It is just straight rows of loop-de-loops. I decided to start by quilting every other row I had marked and in the end, I felt that was enough. The back looks really neat (too bad I didn't think to get a photo of it!).

Besides the Happiness hanging in the tree above there is the happiness that comes from having no more snow on the ground! On Friday, it was bitterly, horribly cold and there was lots of snow outside but we had a fierce chinook on the weekend and now the snow is gone! Yay for that and thank goodness for pretty quilts to distract from the uninspiring and drab browns of winter. I was thinking this quilt looks like a bit of spring, hanging in the tree.

Please, snow, stay away. I'm ready for some colour outside!

e.