A few years ago, I stitched "Let it Bee".  I was cleaning up the top of my cutting table and found it in a pile, waiting to be framed.  I went to Stitch It Central this past week to buy some backing for the secret gift quilt that I have been working on and purchased a 5" hoop for my bee while I was there.  It was well overdue for being framed!   I went to the weekly guild sewing day earlier this week and spent my time hand quilting the four HST blocks in my Arizona quilt.  The centre part of the quilt is done now and I just have the outer row of squares to do. I b ..read more

I started these blocks at a recent guild retreat after mulling over the design for a couple of months.  I made two at the retreat and one more today.  I have more colours pulled to make nine blocks for this wall hanging. Here is the pink block.  And here are the three blocks I have made so far.  The centres are a cute print that I have had in my stash for a few years.  I have the green and blue blocks in line to do next.  I have been knitting most days this past week and my scarf is now 41.5" long.  I finished off the first ball of wool and have s ..read more

It's been a busy week and I have not had much time to sew but I did manage to hand sew the bindings on the two quilts I showed in my last post.  The shadow box quilt has gray binding, the same as the shadows on the quilt.  Finn approves of the potato chip baby quilt.   Here is a close up of the backing fabric--I love the paper boats print! My daughter's book blanket is coming along with nine new squares added in February.  These squares represent two books read in March so far.  Here are the books she read in February along with the ratings out of 5 ..read more

Three days and two nights of quilting!  I always bring more with me than I can possibly do while I am at a retreat but I like to have options in case I feel like changing projects.  However, by the time I left today, I only had one project that I did not touch.  Much was accomplished!  I started out slowly with a warm up projects.  I am making nine patch blocks for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project this year.  March's colour is yellow.  They are a bit brighter than they appear in this picture.  The lighting in the room washed them out a bit.  &nb ..read more

This afternoon, I added the final stitches to my Winter Woods cross stitch!  There were lots of little stars to add in the sky of several pictures and a bit of backstitching, but not very much. I love this picture and look forward to getting it framed to hang up somewhere in my house next winter.  We have lots of snow right now, although not as much as many places north of us where roads have been closed for days on end as the snowplows try to clear the snow away.  I spent some time at the sewing machine this week, quilting my shadowbox quilt with a waffle cross hatch pattern ..read more

My scarf that I am making with the yarn I purchased in Cow Head, Newfoundland in 2023 is getting longer-- 32" or 82cm long now.  It takes a long time to make a scarf! I will keep knitting...it would be nice to be able to wear it this winter! Just a little bit more to do on the Winter Woods cross stitch.  There are some clouds in the sky above the mountains to add and some stars in the sky in several places on the entire picture.  The deer got its tail this week too--I forgot to do it when I was working on that section! This should be done very soon! I made some fabric pos ..read more

I finished off the second diamond hand quilting this week and then started on the squares at the top of the Arizona quilt. I'm working on quilting a quarter inch along the gray background. As I quilt, I am thinking about what I am going to do next. I'm still undecided about whether to quilt a circle in the middle of each square...we will see.  I have finished the tree section now on my Winter Woods cross stitch.  This picture was taken before I was quite done.  The next section is started now.  Who knows?  Can I finish the last section this week??? I have my hea ..read more

Today was the annual Vice President's day at the Oxford Guild.  Many quilters were working on Anita's Arrowhead blocks, a pattern chosen by our VP, but I decided to bring along some hand stitching to work on instead.  Earlier in the week, I thread basted my Arizona quilt so that I could hand quilt it.  I am using 28 wt grey Aurifil thread for big stitching.  So far, so good! I had several opportunities this week to add stitches to my Winter Woods cross stitch project.  The deer is done and I also did the snowflake.  I am working on the part below the deer whi ..read more

 I put my Arizona quilt blocks together and it is now a completed top--36"square.  Before assembly, I remade a couple of the four patches. If you look closely, you can see that the cacti are now mirror images of the adjacent block in the next quadrant.  Anal, I know, but I didn't like how it looked before.  I also worked on the walking foot quilting on the second potato chip baby quilt.  It is about 3/4 done and I hope to finish it this week and get the binding on.  One more of these tops to quilt...  The raindrop fabric is the backing.  I had to add ..read more

Last weekend, I showed you some fabrics I purchased when we were in Phoenix, Arizona in the fall.  I had pulled out some co-ordinating solids to go with them.  This week, at the guild sewing day, I started to make some blocks.  I am making four of each block.  Each quadrant of the quilt will be a mirror image of the quadrant beside and below/above it.  I am using one solid and one print in each block.  The blocks are 6.5" square.  Here are the blocks I made early in the week, in a possible layout.  I was trying to show the others at the sewing day wha ..read more