Getting ready for Christmas

Not long ago I came across my brother's teddy bear that my mother had carefully tucked away in a box many years ago.   Pal has been well-loved -- most early pictures of my brother show the bear tagging along whatever the activity.  I believe Pal was once golden and fluffy (there are traces of curly mohair in some of his seams).  But now he is worn smooth and his brown skin shows many broken areas where excelsior stuffing peeks through.

Poor Pal --  he was definitely in need of some loving attention!  My friend Ellen took him home and brought him back with a fresh new outfit -- overalls and jaunty cap!

Bear is pleased to be out of storage and taking his part in the family again.

As the weather grew colder, though, Pal didn't really seem to be dressed for season.  I made him a sweater.

And last time I looked I noticed that Pal was getting into the spirit of Christmas.  

Pal has decided he likes the little zigzag quilt and he is busy
sorting through the Christmas decorations.

Making some progress

Perhaps another one of this year's started projects will make it to the finish line by the end of the year!  (Is is sensible to take this on when Christmas is right around the corner and there are still holiday preparations to be done, you ask? Hey --  I'm sure I read somewhere that the only place housework comes before quilting is in the dictionary!)

Some time ago I began making blocks with plaid strips.  I blogged about it here.  I am happy to report that those blocks have been completed and assembled into a quilt top.

Seven blocks by nine did not lend itself to a traditional symmetrical layout.
 Instead the diagonals zigzag across the quilt. 

It is time for borders.  Auditions are taking place.

Slab pieces of various medium plaids would do the trick. 

I like this idea, especially because it uses up a few more odd pieces.  That medium green seems to help the transition between the centre and the border.  (And if that particular piece isn't large enough for the job my "mature stash" probably has something else similar to augment it.  Sigh.)

In the Pink

Some of the scraps in my sewing room are sorted by colour.  This is what the Pink and Purple drawer looks like:

Drawer of odd pieces of pink and purple that don't have homes anywhere else.

This is a collection of odd bits.  Anything larger than a FQ, or anything that has been cut into one of my favourite useful sizes is not in this drawer.  And this is how full the drawer is now, AFTER a couple of projects that were done specifically to use some of this!

I spent a happy afternoon picking out squares (and cutting out more squares from some of the bigger pieces) to make this pink and green quilt.

Lap-sized quilt will be used as a Prayer Quilt by my church group.

And I've just finished a quilt  top that will be a gift for a new baby girl. (Since the picture was taken quilting has been done.  Pink binding has been added and is being stitched down as we speak!)

Baby quilt from 2" squares and triangles.

I can't imagine how many more quilt tops could be lurking in just this one drawer of scraps.  Isn't it a wonderful thing that we have such riches of fabric resources that we never need to worry about running out!

Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks #14

A new edition of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks comes out this week! It looks like this:

Volume 14 -- on newsstands about November 15

So, why am I so excited about this, you ask?  Because I have a block in this issue, that's why!  And not only that, my block is on the cover!  Right there, first block at the very top!  

Let me know when you see this magazine out there!  (And if you buy the magazine, you get directions for not only my block (see page 38), but 99 other blocks that are nearly as wonderful as this one.)

Pondering the scraps

Lots of things I SHOULD be doing in the sewing room, but this week the overflowing box of plaids caught my eye again.  I decided to work on "just the small bits" and try to get rid of the messy part of the collection.

I cut strips 6 1/2" long and assembled strips of "piano keys".

I made a pile of strips like this -- and most of the plaid pieces were cut a little straighter than this lot!

.

Then I cut triangles from the strips until I had a good pile. 

I added light coloured triangles to pieced triangles to make blocks.  

There are lots of possibilities for these blocks, and I'm still playing with them to see what they might become.  But I know I don't have quite enough of that gold fabric for all my blocks.  What to do? -- make a smaller quilt?  choose another background and make some blocks with each?  or pull out all the possibilities and go scrappy?  The last choice is what I'm inclined to do, but I need fairly large pieces.  Around here, 8" strips count as yardage, not scrap!

Here are a few of the fabrics that came to light on the first look through the stash.  (These are all a bit darker than the photo would suggest -- the fabric I've used in the blocks already is third from the right.)

One great thing about quilting is that there are really no "wrong answers" -- at the end of the process I'll have a quilt and it will be fine.  I just don't know yet what it might look like!

Meanwhile, here is a project that actually did get finished!

Tiny zigzags.  Blocks are 2" finished.  It didn't use up much fabric, but it is done!!

Worth making again

Quilters know that there are so many wonderful quilts out there that we will not be able in one lifetime to make them all.  But even so, some quilts really are worth making a second time.

Bonnie Hunter's Star Struck (find it among the free patterns at Quiltville.com) is one pattern I keep returning to.  This summer I realized it was time to bring out the plaids once again and cut the pieces for more of those stars.

This uses assorted plaids for the stars, assorted lights for the background stars, a constant red for the little hourglass units.

I love the gentle look of the plaids, many of them from recycled shirts.  I enjoy letting my eyes wander around the quilt to see how the various fabrics interact in the different combinations.  A motley variety of background fabrics was used here, but even the busy ones seem to settle down and blend in with the others once it is all put together.

This quilt will be donated to one of my favourite Good Causes.

A Quilter's Dozen

Every summer a group of quilting friends meets for a day of show-and-tell, visiting, and lunching out. We have an annual challenge and enjoy seeing how each person has dealt with the theme.

This year's theme was A Quilter's Dozen.  My interpretation of the challenge used a dozen Wildflower blocks (my block that is included in the current issue of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks magazine.)  I made my blocks (twelve inch blocks, of course!) with a dozen fabrics which I carefully rotated through the various fabric placement positions in the block.  This resulted in some block colorations that I would NEVER have selected by any other method.

I was really pleased with the red and the orange in this block.

My original idea had been to make a quilt that was predominantly blue and gray, but along the way it seems that a lot of orange and red had slipped in. So when the twelve blocks were finished I chose elements from the block for the borders and the centre motif, and I used more of the cooler hues there to push the quilt back into the blue range.

Then I put the quilt on my longarm and quilted feathers and pebbles and spirals until I had filled the surface.

The most difficult part of the project was getting a decent picture!  Finally a day arrived when the sun shone and the wind did not blow too wildly.