Baby Ships – A Finished Flimsy!

I’ve completed Baby Ships for my new nephew!  I started to lag toward the end, typical for me near the end of every project, but I pushed through it and got the top done.  Now I have to decide how to quilt it.  I. love. it.  It is so scrappy, my favourite kind of quilt.  And it looks almost exactly how my head told me it was going to look, which is not even close to typical when I design patterns.

My favourite patterns are the one where you get something unexpected or extra when you put the blocks together, and this one gives you subtle stars. So pretty.

And the lovely shapes you get when the coloured corners come together.

I don’t know yet when I’ll see my nephew again to deliver this quilt, but I want to have it totally done by then. Whenever that is.

I love the sunlight shining through a flimsy, when you can see all the seams and it looks liked stained glass. It makes all that work worth it, to see a project come together like this.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network.

My prize came! And a small WIP

This morning, someone rang my doorbell and dropped off something wonderful.

This thread is so vibrant. What an amazing prize for the MSBHQAL! Thanks so much Molli, for hosting and sending me this. I can’t wait to get playing!

I’ve been working on Christmas gifts lately, and this is the most recent one. I need to get this quilted and finished ASAP so that I can ship it to someone overseas. I can’t say who, since it’s a secret exchange, but I feel confident that they will like this. I have seen some Dr. Who, and I’m glad that the 50th anniversary was recently, because there were lots of amazing free patterns out there because of it. This one is from Sew Hooked and I downloaded it from Craftsy.

Other than that, I haven’t done a lot of sewing lately.  I’m linking up with the Needle and Thread Network for WIP Wednesday.  Off to see what everyone else has been up to!  Probably a whole lot more than me. 😉

Bee blocks and many various WIPs

I’ve been linking up with WIP Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network these last few weeks, but I’ve only been showing the good stuff.  The dirty laundry, projects much farther from completion, those I’ve been keeping under wraps.  So I’ll start with the older stuff and work my way forward.

This has been in progress for a long, long time. These little blocks finish at 7.5″ and I had been working on the little 1.5″ HSTs for a couple of months, on and off, when I felt like it. I needed 768 of them for the 48 blocks I planned. All of the HSTs are done now, and now I’m on to block assembly. I have these 8 done, and only 40 more to go!

I recently joined the Molli Sparkles Broken Herringbone Quilt Along (MSBHQAL) because I apparently think that I have nothing to do. The tutorial is by Anne from Play Crafts. Most of the participants of this QAL are doing rainbow blocks, but Anne had sketched this chevron pattern that I fell in love with and decided to do that instead.

I’m was in one of the Canadian versions of the Simply Solids Bee, but the second Canadian group had someone drop out, so offered to fill that spot. So far I’ve done 3 blocks for that group.

And in my original group in the Simply Solids Bee, I haven’t shared the blocks I’ve made in quite a few months. So prepare for more picture overload!

Funny story with that last set of blocks. I’m the angel in September, making an extra block for the Queen Bee. I first made the block with the blue background, and when I was done, I realized the pinwheel was spinning the wrong way. Oops. And since I really, really hate unpicking seams, I made another one instead of taking it apart and re-sewing it. Except I didn’t have enough of the blue scrap, so I had to rearrange the colours. I sent her all 3 of them; I hope she can find a use for the extra one.

So that’s what I’ve been up to!  Well, I’ve sewn more stuff, but I don’t always take pictures of all my in-progress stuff.  So I guess that’s just the interesting stuff that I’ve been up to.  🙂

Magic Disappearing 9-patch

Many months ago, probably even more than a year actually, I did a demo for my local guild using a variation on the popular Disappearing 9-patch (D9P) block.  The Magic 9-patch (M9P) was a pattern I found online after searching blocks that would match the ‘slashed blocks’ theme of our meeting.  The pattern is by Lyn Brown, and can be found here.

For the demo I had blocks in various stages of completion to show the technique and then also a little flimsy of I think 6 blocks sewn together to give an idea of what the completed project would look like. Everything was cut out already at that point. I had enough cut for 25 blocks, which is what I used in this top. It was very quick at the time, I think I did it in an evening or two before the meeting. Of course I promised to complete it quickly after and bring it back so that everyone could see a whole quilt. Hmm. Does more than a year count as ‘quickly’?

I’m glad that at least the top is done now. It can be added to my growing stack of completed tops waiting to be quilted.

A new photo spot in my yard! It is getting harder to effectively use the fence behind the corn, as you’ll see shortly, and I don’t typically take pictures in the ash tree until they are completely done, so I had to search for an alternative. This is the wall beside my back deck. The mottled sunshine seems to work with this top.

Now you see it, and now you don’t! It’s great that the corn is doing so well, but my quilt hanging fence is a little obscured. It really is a Magic Disappearing 9-patch!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network.

Falling for Stripes

At the end of July, M-R of Quilt Matters put out a call for pattern testers for her new pattern, Falling for Stripes.  I really like the pattern, so I volunteered, and was one of a chosen few.  Yay!  It went together very quickly, actually.  I worked on it mostly in the evenings, and I think it took about 4 nights from cutting to having the top done.

It is not huge, about 46″ x 55″, I think. There is the option in this pattern to have a multi-coloured background, but with the stripe I chose to focus on, the wavy, wonky blocks needed some calming down, so I went with the one-colour background, and chose white.

I think Thing 1 was actually holding it up upside-down here, but it looks good that way too!

Here it is, right side up. I like the wonky-ness of it. I like structure and perfectly matching seams, so it was a little difficult for me to let go of that well ordered way of quilting. But I really like the result.

I don’t know if you can tell here, but I accidentally ended up using two different whites. There is a slightly warmer white around the smaller block, to the right and to the bottom. Oh well. That’s what happens when you sew at night under poor lighting conditions, I guess. I’ve decided it adds to the wonky-ness of the quilt and will not be changing it. I came to this decision because I don’t like unpicking seams. 🙂

I’m linking up to the Needle and Thread Network, as it’s Wednesday today.

I bought some fabric, and also sewed a little

The title of this post pretty much sums up what’s been going on around here lately.  Mr. Apple Pie is home right now (his job is three weeks away, two weeks home) and I’ve noticed that when he is done, I don’t sew or blog as much.  It’s almost like I like spending time with him or something!

I have been sewing a little.  I got all the blocks done for this year’s community quilt, I’ve made more rainbow log cabins and I only have to make about 14 more in various colours to be done that project, and (shhh, don’t tell anyone) I started a new project.

Around Christmas time, I received a mini charm pack of Ticklish. It was so cute, but I didn’t know what to do with it. A couple of days ago, I finally just decided to make HSTs out of them, so I paired them with some solid white and got to work. I sewed a narrower than usual seam allowance so that my HSTs would be 2″ unfinished. I trimmed them all up, and now I just have to decide what to do with them! I have a plan, so stayed tuned.

It’s my birthday later this week (last time I’m turning twenty-something) so I indulged in a little retail therapy. I bought some Tula Pink (Salt Water and Prince Charming), a whole bunch of FQs (no pic, sorry), and some of that Stay Calm fabric that I’ve wanted for ages. I also unpacked some of Heather Ross’s Crafty Chloe that I ordered and had shipped to my sister, who has access to a US shipping address.

And I played hide-and-seek with the Things the other day. Thing 3 has the most adorable way of finding the best hiding places, don’t you think?

And there’s an actual project in progress in this post, so I’ll link up to the Needle and Thread Network.  It is Wednesday, after all.

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WIP Wednesday

It’s been a long time since I linked up a WIP Wednesday post.  It’s not that I haven’t been sewing, it’s that Wednesdays seems to have become non-blogging days for some reason.  I am still working through the list of UFOs that I posted last year.  Two of them are finished: Deco Shimmer and the community quilt.  I’m nearly finished another one.

I basted the Mod Pop top that I finished last year. Leanne of She Can Quilt, who is hosting this QAL, has set a the final completion date: February 17. So I moved this quilt to the top of the list so that I would finish it next. I found some fabrics in my stash, quickly pieced a backing, and got it basted. Then I started quilting it. I’m stippling just in the plum-coloured areas and then doing something else (yet to be determined) in the white sections. It was going great, and then I turned it over.

Some of the excess batting around the edge had somehow gotten caught under the needle, so I had to do some picking and then re-quilt that area. It took less time than I thought, and I’m about halfway done the stippling now. I’ve had meetings and guests the last few nights, so hopefully I can finish it off tonight, since my schedule is clear.

I’m linking up to WIP Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network.  It’s been awhile, so I have to go catch up on what everyone else has been up to.