Ode to Saturday & my quilty week

Another rainy Saturday morning; but I will take it.  A great chance to stay in and putter around the house.  But I must admit that the temperature outside has warmed up and although the back yard is very soggy I do have a bit of the 'gardening bug'.  I can see my herb garden come back to life along with many weeds that need to be pulled..... ah another weekend.

This week was another quilty week:

This bunting draped on our bookcase was designed by Cynthia Frenette, a member of our Modern Quilt Guild. Our guild will have a booth this March 23 - 24 for the Creative Stitches show at Tradex in Abbotsford. Love that font! These will decorate the booth. Plus we will be displaying many quilts, handing out buttons, business cards and keychains!  The show will be a wonderland for the modern sewist.  Come check it out!

Here are some of the lovely fabrics that showed up in my mailbox this week!  Do you notice a trend? Seasonal influences perhaps?  Dreaming of summer? Yes, yes, yes!  But I am in love with the line of fabric by Choe's Closet "Fruit Cocktail".  (bottom bolt)  very vintage vibe - the colors are lovely.

And I wanted to include a picture of my lovely magnets that I won as a doorprize at our Thursday night guild meeting.  These are handmade by another talented member of our Modern quilt guild, the fabulous Amy Dame.
Today, on this rainy Saturday I plan to work on 'rug mug' designs for an upcoming 'rug mug' swap with the Vancouver Modern quilt guild.  I have a few ideas.  One is based on this lovely photo:

I love scrappy quilts. I made a smaller version of this quilt last year and I have always wanted to make individual blocks.  Check out the link to Freida's Hive for the tutorial.  I love the block!
Other rug mug ideas.....

This lovely was featured on Pleasant Home.  Love whirligigs!

This beauty from Flossy Bossy (on Flickr)

Basically, any block from this fab book.  Every project is a 'keeper' in this one!  Really good.

Happy Sewing All !!

Design Wall

Oh what a difference a 'design wall' makes!  

If you are wondering....'design wall?', what I refer to is that I finally pinned up some quilt batting (bamboo) onto the wall of my tiny sewing room - a large piece, approximately 70 x 96 inches.  So pretty big!  I imagined that it would be tucked behind the door, but it is much bigger than that.

I am working on my Dead Simple quilt', a la Lily's Quilts.... I picked my palette, which was a bowl of fruit!  Apples, oranges, bananas in a basket... chose my fabrics from my stash and cut up 300+ charm squares.  Then I began to put my charms on the design wall.... surprisingly, I edited out all of the yellows (banana) and added more reds, oranges and neutral linen squares.... It is very different experience, planning out my blocks on the wall instead of in my mind.   I am still playing with the size, but I am beginning to like what I see. These Dead Simple quilts are so fun.

And of course since I have changed up my palette, there will be many cute yellow charms ready for a future project!

HAPPY SEWING ALL !!

Mini Bolts

See the bolts of fabric, to the left of the wicker basket?  There is a clever idea circulating around the blogosphere lately.... a way to display and sort  quilt fabrics.  This method is called 'mini bolts', whereby a piece of sturdy cardstock/cardboard (approx 7" x 11") is wrapped with half a yard or more of quilting cotton. It is folded/wrapped and then I use one of my crazy quilt pins to secure it.  The result .... a mini bolt of quilt fabric that is much easier to display than having everything in baskets!  You know, a mini version of a bolt of fabric from a quilt shop. This reminds of playing 'house' when I was a kid, except now I can pretend my sewing room is my own fabric store.  I will have to come up with a name for my store!  Also, I have re-discovered fabric purchases from a year or so ago... wow I have lots of fabrics.

Scrap Happy WIP (Works in Progress)

I was 'surfing' the blogosphere one morning while drinking my coffee and came across a wonderful blog, Freda's Hive.  Really great.  The whole blog is awesome but it was the tutorial she created for scrappy 'Spool' blocks really inspired me! I made twenty of these lovely scrappy spool blocks that very afternoon, very satisfying. I have always loved the simplicity of a 'spool' block and was thrilled to try it in a 'scrap happy' way. So I have twenty of these beauties to arrange in rows, so now what I need is coffee, then I will piece these lovelies together this morning. Have a wonderful day & stay tuned for photos of a finished quilt top; this project is destined to become a wall hanging in my sewing room, fitting.

What I did on the holiday Monday,,,,

OK there are lots of things I could do on a holiday Monday...I did bake a cake, I cleaned our BBQ (argh - that was gruesome!), and did a bit of weeding in the garden.  But what I enjoyed most were the hours spent in my sewing room all afternoon.

I made up six or seven little quilt blocks with some of my cherry fabrics that I have been stashing.  I do intend to make an entire full size quilt but for now I just wanted to sew stuff together. Most of the fabrics in this little 'to be quilted' wall hanging are "Oh Cherry Oh" from Moda, and a bit of Mary Engelbreit as well.

I just love my ric rac!

Fresh Modern Quilters...what a fine notion

There is a movement in the quilting world towards less traditional, more colorful (?), more improv-style quilting. At least that is how I would describe it. And I love it! 

If you want to see what I am referring to, take a look at the link below. Beautiful pictures of quilts in progress posted for all to see.  Wonderful.

 Fresh Modern Quilt Guild - flicker pictures - lots of inspiration!  

And here is more local link: The Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild - how cool is that!?

It seems to fit in with my desire to build a 'fabric stash' and outfit my tiny sewing room full of ric rac, cottons and wicker baskets filled with colorful inspiration!And often, start projects that aren't completed for months!  but truthfully, I always do end up completing what I have started, just not immediately.  Other inspirations just call me away.....

 I simply let the fabrics be my inspiration - it is so fun. I have this lovely collection of 'cherry-print' fabrics and haven't really come up with a pattern that makes me want to start cutting. But I love the 'squares' that I see in the Modern quilts, not quite log cabin but they really do showcase the prints.  So that is what I have chosen for this project.  I love the bright happy colours.

And yes, I do have a sewing room of my own to work in, but as I get up 'ridiculously' early (5am usually..... hey I am middle-aged!)  I was worried that the noise would disturb Hub - you see my sewing room is upstairs across from our bedroom.  So I thought I would bring down all of these colorful fabrics and spread them out all over the kitchen island.  Besides the coffee is closer this way!

Cherry Fabric Pillowcase

Here is nice sampling of fabric by Moda from the series called "Oh Cherry Oh!" which I used to whip up this pillowcase.  And yes, it is very cute. Let's face it, red & white is a great combination.

 I bought my Mom a new pillow, one of those memory-foam ones with a heavy-duty hygienic cover. But of course it needed a bright new pillowcase to go with it. So I quickly pulled out these samples from my sewing stash ( it is thrilling to be able to casually write about my fabric stash!) ,these are very pretty & were fun to sew up.

I am dedicating this short post to my friend Eileen; she was the 'queen' of the quick, fun sewing projects. there was always something that she had on-the-go, and she always had something to show me whenever I popped by for a visit. I am referring to the days when hers & mine children were school-aged. She talked me into buying then taught me how to use my serger sewing machine. She did this by first teaching me how to use hers! I admit, I was hooked.After that, there was no end to the amount of 'jogging' pants & hoodies my children wore.

Her sewing room was crammed into the family laundry-room downstairs in their house when she lived down the street from me. It was fun to walk by her place as I came home from the local elementary school. If she saw me, she would call out an invitation to see what was going on 'in her lab', as she called it. Sigh! She made sewing exciting. Actually sewing was exciting then as it seemed any little thing I did mattered.

So Eileen, my friend, if you are reading this - this post is dedicated to you.

Sewing Pursuits

This is a small vignette of my sewing room. But really it is a snapshot of the 'space' that I now enjoy in our home since our children are grown.

The space this room occupies is both actual ( our daughter's old nursery, the back corner bedroom upstairs) and it is also a mental space, that I now my own\.  It is a space that I can retreat to when I get home from work or escape to on weekends whenever I have finished what needs to be done in the kitchen or garden.... In this private workroom, whatever I start working on, will be as I left it when I return.... amazing. 

For so many years I really haven't had a space of my own and really didn't care. When our family was young, we spent all of our time together in almost every room of the house.  I laid in bed with my children to read them bedtime stories; really never enjoyed 'privacy' in the bathroom (sigh!); and the TV was always on & within earshot while I worked in the kitchen.  I never minded, well maybe the TV, but I loved having the kids around.

But, I really could get used to having a room of my own.

Cherry Fabrics....soon to become another summer quilt project

Moda fabrics has a great line of fabrics named 'Oh Cherry Oh'. How cute is that? But in fact there are many varieties of cherry print fabrics available! They all have cute names, but I have noticed that many use the word 'vintage' in their titles. Ah yes, these prints really recall a 20th century sensibility. I can't help but think about aprons, tablecloths and kitchen curtains! They are all so pretty, and cheery too!  just love the simplicity, it really speaks to me. But I really would like to make a quilt with a simple pattern, like this.

I made a new knitting needle-holder & knitting accessory carrier with a nice selection of cherry fabrics. It was a fresh way to organize a big mess of knitting accessories & needles that I was sorting out.
I don't simply want to stash these beautiful fabrics on a shelf in my sewing room, but instead would like to find fun & practical uses for them.  I truly believe that craft, handiwork & hobbies improve our daily lives. Sewing makes me happy.