I'm late, I'm late...for Tuesday's Date!

There's the monthly quilt workshop exhibition coming up in a couple of weeks time so I've been trying to get some projects finished to contribute to the show.
One item I have completed is a  "Quilter's Go and Sew" zippered notions case - pattern by Pat-e-Patterns   Here are some pictures of it:

I made a bit of a change to the pattern since I added the felt mini design wall on the left and made the vinyl zipped pockets flip-able, they were fixed in the original pattern.  Working with the vinyl was a huge learning curve as was putting in that outer zipper.   Am I likely to make another.... maybe but not for a while ;))

Do you see the pattern in the right hand pocket?  It is called "Pumpkin Patches" and is designed by Emily Breclaw of The Caffeinated Quilter .  I fell in love with as soon as I saw it.   Here's a closer look at Dottie, Squatty, Lottie and Slim the Pumpkin family:

Pumpkin Patches - photo used with Emily's permission

Emily's very cute and quirky pattern is well written.   For those who haven't done English Paper Piecing, she gives a very good tutorial on how to do it with clear diagrams.  Oh! and I have just found out that she now has a pattern shop on Craftsy so you can download her patterns in an instant!
I made a start on it a few weeks ago and showed you the first pumpkin in this post.   I had some very interesting guesses as to what it may be :))  I'm very sorry to say, however, that was as far as I got as life happenings and other project deadlines got in the way.  So it's not finished for this fall but I hope to have it done by next fall.

The little hexagons  laying on the little 'design board' are for  Kathleen Tracy's quilt of the month challenge for October which I started way back in ?? July was it.  So far I have made 7 little flowers, when I've completed 12 I can then start appliqueing them to their background squares.


Lastly, I have completed another Dear Jane block this weekend just past.

M-3 Fireweed Flower

Thank you to Anina of That Quilt blog for her excellent tutorials!!  I doubt I would have managed this otherwise.

This week I am attempting the Bottom Left Corner Goshen.  If you don't hear from me in a while then know I've been taken away by the men in white coats! ;)

I'm linking up to Connie's Tuesday Linky Party here.

Happy Quilting!
Hugs

Rainbow Scrappy Saturday

This is the last Saturday in June for the colour purple and I’ve only just managed to squeeze in my challenges for the month.

Firstly, my D4P in purple:

Here is how the project is progressing so far up  on my large design wall:

I managed to make a purple house too:

I also made good progress on the neutral and yellow houses but they aren’t finished just yet…soon ;) There are some old favourites in these.

Finally, I have completed two hexagons for Kathleen Tracy’s  Quilt a Month challenge, ready for October’s quilt. Here they are:

A blue and a purple.  I have adjusted the size of the hexagon a tad to .5 instead of the pattern size of .6, so that I could print them out using Inklingo .5 Hexagon collection and hand piece them rather than doing them the English Paper Piecing method.

I wonder what the new colour will be for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge in July :)) 

If you’d like to see what everyone else has done this past month for this challenge, hop on over to Soscrappy’s blog here.   

Have a good weekend!

Ellyx

Rainbow Scrappy sort of and a day late

We’ve been back from holiday/vacation for a week now and I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do.

This month’s Rainbow Scrappy colour is purple.  Yummy :)  yet I’ve still to play with my purples and I still have a yellow house block to make from last month, not to mention several BOMs to catch up on, LOL…   Anyway, here are a few finishes I managed before I went off.

First up, I finished the crochet edging on DD’s doll’s quilt.  I learned quite a lot during this process and if I try it again I will certainly know better.  If anyone would like to have a go at this, Heidi of Speckless blog shows you here. (part 1, 2 follows on from that)

While visiting mum, I finished off her crochet cover for her foot stool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was a “make it up as you go along” project.  First I did a granny square for the top and then using SC (DC UK) I proceeded to turn it into a cube shape.   However, I got a bit fed up with the SC so near the bottom I changed the pattern and did what I thought I remembered from the lacy pattern on the doll quilt. The yarn from this was from a very old poncho that had seen better days.  It was at least 40years old ;)

Another project that bites the dust is an apron made from an old dress which belonged to mum.  Here is a picture of the old dress and the new apron.   Another “make it up as you go along” project for me as I am not a dress maker and hadn’t much of a clue of how to do most of this.  There was a lot of frog stitching in this apron, but, I learned a lot during the process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is more of this dress left to use but I don’t think I’ll be doing anything just yet.

Okay, so I’m behind on a number of BOMs and in particular on Kathleen Tracy’s Quilt a Month challenges.  I still have to finish March’s baskets and to start April’s and May’s challenges.   And yet, I’ve made a start on October’s challenge which hasn’t yet begun.   Can you make any sense of that?  But I am enjoying the process.   The challenge for October will be the little hexagon flower quilt in Kathy’s book “The Civil War Sewing Circle”.  The size of the hexagon is .6 of an inch and I did start to make the templates from card stock with the aid of a hexagonal graph paper pdf generator from Incompetech.com  here.   However, as I was cutting out the templates I got to thinking about the fabric and how I was going to cut those.  I thought about printing out the Inklingo .5 hexagon shape onto the fabric and perhaps using those to squeeze around the template.   Then I wondered what on earth I was thinking!

To cut a long story short, I’ve printed out a heap of .5 hexagons with the Inklingo collection and will be hand piecing those, minus the card templates and making the blocks to fit them.  After all what’s in 1/8th of an inch?  Not a lot at the end of the day.  My quilt will be a tad smaller that’s all and the prep time cut in more than half.

Anyway, here is a mock up of the pieces I’ve printed and cut so far, placed over the background fabric I plan to use… unless DD manages to change my mind since she doesn’t like the brown background.  But the quilt is not for her.  There won’t be as much background as it appears here.  Oh and the picture doesn’t show the true colours on my screen but there are a few purples in this ;)

To end my post, here is a picture of Biscuit cuddling up to Penny.  They finally bonded!  I missed the moment Penny gave Biscuit a thorough grooming of his back end (which he can’t manage for himself because of his lameness).

He’s becoming quite frail now but still has a lot of spirit in him and can some how manage to get down 3 steps and up another to go onto the lawn to munch the grass and weeds very quickly.  He’s on pain meds for arthritis.

I hope you are all having a great weekend.  If you’d like to see what all the other Rainbow Scrappers have been up to, go take a look here on Angela of Soscrappy’s blog.

Happy Stitching!

Hugs

Ellyx

Rainbow Scrappy Saturday on Easter Sunday :)

Happy Easter to everyone and everybun!!

This month’s colour for the Rainbow Scrappy is Neutrals.   This is quite a challenge but I’m hoping to meet it.   I’ve collected together all my neutral scraps smaller than 1/8th yard (plus a couple of rough 1/8ths I had to steal from a couple of bigger pieces) and cut them into 5inch squares and strips and also 2and half inch pieces…. leftovers were cut to 2” if possible and the remainder lumped together in a plastic box.

I selected 8 different 5” squares to make my D4Ps to go with the others.  Then I selected 12 5” squares to make another project with.  This project will be amalgamating two different challenges.  One challenge is to make a quilt to the theme of a song, the other to try out a new ruler, and of course to meet with the Neutral Challenge for April.

Here is a picture of the 5” squares.A mix of beige, tan, taupe and greys.  

With some of the scrappier pieces, those smaller than 2” pieces, I will be making my neutral house to go with the others.

Here is a small quilt I finished in the last couple of weeks but haven’t posted a picture of yet.  It’s the Quilt of the Month for Kathleen Tracy’s yahoo group Small Quilt Talk.  The challenges are also posted on her blog.   This one is from the February challenge.

It is currently hanging just above my sewing table.   Now if I could just make some decisions about border fabrics I could complete the one for March before embarking on the challenge for April which is pretty cute too.

Well I had better go and get another Dear Jane block made before the day has gone.   Now which bunny shall I leave you with this week. hmmm…

Here is Chichi, taken a while ago, sitting on my windowsill thinking she’s a cat not a rabbit.  Clearly her mother didn’t tell her that bunnies don’t like heights!  She jumped up there from a footstool, just below the window, out of shot.  

Enjoy these next few weeks of Easter!!

Ellyx

Rainbow Scrappy 2012 update

I have loooads of green scraps left and I think I could make a large quilt from them but not just yet ;) 

However, this past week… okay Friday night and yesterday…. I completed another Building House in green and started a green mug rug. 

Here is the beginnings of my mug rug…. can you guess what they are supposed to be?    I made  designed a pattern in EQ7 so I’ll share the pattern for anyone who’d like it… when I’m done ;)

And here is my green house number 1.  I’m hoping to make a second in green and have picked out fabrics already for it.  I only have one red so at some point I’ll make a second red… we’ll see ;)

 

This coming week I hope to finish the February small quilt by Kathleen Tracy .   It is not far off, I have the borders to add and so on..

Today, though, I must get myself disciplined into sewing up a Dear Jane block…..

Happy Stitching!

Ellyx

Mourning Crosses QOM and some views of northern Scotland

 

Firsty, here is my finish of Kathleen Tracy’s QOM for January.

Made for my daughter’s male ball jointed doll Rayven.  Here’s a small picture of him.  I also made the crochet scarf he’s wearing.  

I know he does look a bit like a girl but trust me he’s male ;)) 

Now for something completely different…. some pictures I’ve taken of northern Scotland where I live.

Taken yesterday on my way home from Inverness heading north.  Here is a view just south of the Cromarty A9 bridge.  Of course my photography abilities doesn’t do it justice.

Left a view of the harbour from around the corner to where I live.  Below a view of the harbour a bit further out with a cruise ship sitting there.   Taken last summer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a picture of the lighthouse up on Dunnet Head. The most northly point of the British mainland.

Here is the Old Mill at Ham.  Taken on a garden hop of the area last summer.   And lastly, here are a family of swans that were swimming in that lake you can see over on the right.

 

More another time ;)

 

 

 

 

Happy Stitching..

Ellyx

RED SCRAPS Update

I’d been thinking about what I should do with Angela’s (of Soscrappy ) Rainbow Challenge this year.  January’s colour is Red.  So I thought about it, and thought about it, and then I finally decided I would make a rainbow disappearing 4 patch with my various coloured scraps throughout the year.

I had made a couple of D4Ps last year in the green month… shown in this post here.

Well I had forgotten to make a note of the size of the squares I started with … not a problem I’ll measure the current blocks.   Meanwhile I found another tutorial on line here (which was different to the first one I saw I’m sure;)) and it suggested cutting 5 inch squares.   But I wanted to make the same size as my green ones so after I did the maths I realized I had to cut 6 inch squares.  So I found my red scraps large enough to cut this size of square and proceeded.   Sewed them into 4 patch and then thought.. oh oh something’s not right.  I had cut my squares 5”!!  What to do? I set the red 4 patches aside while I thought about it a few days.. to a week.  Then yesterday morning as I was sitting up in bed having my morning cuppa from my new Teasmade/alarm clock..  The solution hit me.  Make the green ones the same size as the red… yes that was possible.. so that’s what I did.

Here are both green and red blocks together (but not sewn together).  I think I may make a couple more blocks of both colours.  Then wait to see what next month’s colour is… and so on.

They look a bit crooked up on the wall but that’s just the way I’ve placed them.

Also, this past week I finally sorted through a bag of little crumb size squares from 1.5 to 2” approx.   I sorted them into their colours.  Here’s the pile of reds:-

The point of this exercise, apart from sorting them, was to find some little 1.5 inch squares for Kathleen Tracy’s Crosses Mourning Quilt from her book “Prairie Children and Their Quilts” 

On her blog and on her yahoo group she is hosting a year long challenge to make a small quilt each month.

Do you see those 4 red squares on the right in the picture of the red scraps.    Well I used those plus another 4 matching red squares I found in my crosses mourning blocks.  I also found the teal blue ones in the top right block, see picture below.

I’ve decided my sashing and border fabrics for this little quilt so I need to get to that this week.

Lastly, I completed all the Temecula 12 Days of Christmas mini challenge blocks, but have yet to decide sashing and border fabrics. 

I’ll leave you with a picture of my blocks and go get started on my Dear Jane block of the week.

Have a great weekend,

Happy Stitching,

Ellyx