I spent a few evenings this past week working on my Sunflowers cross stitch.  Finn likes to lie beside me on the couch while I am stitching.  When I got up to get a glass of water, he moved over to my spot... very helpful! On Thursday evening, I added the last few stitches and gave it a good press.  TaDa!   I love how all of the bees and sunflowers look on the blue background.  I will take this in to be framed sometime in May.  The stitched part is about 11.5" by 11.5". Last Summer, my husband and I went to Newfoundland for our vacation and saw lots of lup ..read more

I started making blocks for this modern sampler quilt in October 2020. I had to buy some of the gray background fabric for the blocks but the rest of the fabrics were in my stash--the white fabric has glasses on it and appears in every block.  All of the other fabrics have dots or lines on them in orange or blue and white. It took a year to make all of the blocks as it was a block of the month program.  I made one extra block so that I could set them as shown in the picture below. The blocks sat in a drawer for quite a while--I could not decide what colour of background fabric to use ..read more

Easter Greetings from Finn!  We had our family Easter Dinner on Friday afternoon and Finn dressed up for the occasion!   Snack time featured a chick cheese ball surrounded by a cracker nest.   I spend some time doing cross stitch this week and just about finished the lower left flower in this last quadrant.  I have a couple of new projects waiting in the wings when this is done.  I picked up my modern sampler quilt from the long armer's house this week and trimmed it up so I could sew on the binding.  I don't usually measure the quilt before I cut the bin ..read more

Warm, sunny weather was with us most of this past week.  (We won't discuss the snow that we had last weekend!)  I have put away all of our winter decorations and have pulled out the Spring things!  I want to sew with Spring colours too.  My MIL likes to have her room decorated for the season so I am working on a Spring wall hanging for her.  The rabbit and flowers are attached to the background with fusible appliqué and I used a narrow zigzag stitch around the shapes to hold everything down.  I plan on getting this quilted this weekend so I can take it to her nex ..read more

Last weekend, I sewed for three days straight at the semi-annual Oxford Quilter's Guild retreat.  Early in the pandemic, I cut up many of my scraps into 2.5" squares and put them into piles by colour into a plastic shoebox.  I challenged myself to make quilts using these squares to use them up.  I have made several quilts with these squares but still had lots left.  I brought them and some gray and white print yardage with me to the retreat.  I had designed this quilt in my head and put all the nine patches together at the retreat. It measures 44.5 by 44.5"--a great ..read more

I am home from QuiltCon!  My friend, Christine, and I had a wonderful time meeting quilters from all over the world, attending lectures, looking at all of the quilts and shopping!  I have participated in the #makeaminimakeafriend swap at QuiltCon twice in the past and signed up again this year.  This past fall, I was told my swap partner was Katie in Oregon.  I asked her to make something that told me about where she lived and she told me she likes fall colours. I did not pick out fabrics or do any sewing until January but I was spending time before that mulling over a des ..read more

 Almost all of my sewing time this week was spent making a wall hanging for a swap which will take place next week.  I have spent months ruminating over a design and colours and fabrics.  I am really pleased with the end result and am in the process of adding the hand stitches to the binding and hanging sleeve.  I will show my finished quilt and the quilt that I receive from my swap partner in my next blog post.  I did a bit of cross stitching this week, adding lots of the variegated purple borders as well as starting the bird motif.  It doesn't look like much ..read more

You may have noticed I was missing in action last weekend...I was visiting my daughter and Finn for the weekend!  Finn and I hung out together while my daughter participated in a curling bonspiel. He didn't mind snuggling up to me as I did some cross stitching.  We went for a walk every day too.  I have added three more motifs to my winter cross stitch project.  You can see the cardinal and the pinecone above and this week I finished off the evergreen tree.  There were very nice sunbeams in the afternoons while I was visiting.  Finn took full advantag ..read more

I'm doing really well working on some sort of knitting, stitching or sewing every day in January.  So far, I have only missed one day! I finished piecing my crumby star blocks this week and put all the blocks together.  The blocks are 12" square so at this stage, the quilt top was 36 by 28".  I want it to be a wee bit bigger so I will add 3.5" borders all around using the background material.  I am not sure of what I will use for backing yet...maybe some flannel.  I will be quilting this one myself with my walking foot.  I'm contemplating how I will do this now ..read more

I managed to do some knitting or sewing or cross stitching every day this week!  My Gross Morne scarf is now 1 foot (31 cm) long.  I have decided to include the measurement each time I show it as it is hard to tell from the photo alone if I have made any progress.  I still have a ways to go on this project!   I made my husband and my daughter pillowcases for Christmas but ran out of time to make one for myself so I did that this week.  The two main fabrics were purchased in the East Coast Quilting Company store in St. John's, Newfoundland.  The berries in the ..read more