Tic Tac Hoot!

Tic Tac Hoot was the last Tic Tac Who? quilt I designed.  I had the other two finished when my daughter suggested an owl version.  I love owls!  I think it dates back to being a Brownie leader in Halifax in university.  My leader name was Sleepy Owl. It's a long story, but I promise I was wide awake and enthusiastic!

Tic Tac Hoot

Tic Tac Hoot turned out very well in the end, after a very slow start!  My first attempt at designing an owl yielded something that looked more like a bat, and definitely wasn't baby-cute.

Imagine this guy in black and you've got a bat!

I tweaked a little and came up with something I thought would work so I stitched him up in fabric.

Oh, that beak! This looked more like an owl but something was off, so I tried again.

I was getting closer to a finish!  I popped him into the quilt layout on the design wall...

I really thought the green background and the darker sashing would work, but once it was on the wall, I couldn't bring myself to start sewing everything together. It stayed up on the wall a few days, and still I didn't want to sew it up, which was a pretty good sign that I wouldn't be happy with it this way.

I decided that the green background behind the owl was the problem. It didn't "float" the owl on the quilt and it interrupted the diagonal of floating blocks created by the X blocks.  Also, it doesn't seem so in the photo above, but the X blocks disappeared a bit on that darker background.  Back to the shop I went, to buy the fabric I had briefly considered for the sashing and discarded as too bland.  I also chose slightly lighter browns for the owl.

Final version of owl block

Much better!  The lighter sashing/background softened up the look.

Tic Tac Hoot quilting 

Again, I quilted with my walking foot.  The owl is stitched in the ditch. For the rest of the quilt I started an all-over design, but didn't like how it played with the quilt as a whole.  Next I tried circles, then decided to do squares instead, then picked out the 7 squares I had finished and went back to circles!  Oh, and I found a spot where I had picked out a seam to fix some alignment then somehow missed re-sewing part of it.  Really?  I practiced a little bit of hand stitching to fix that little oops.

I think you get the idea that this quilt made me work a little harder than the other two!  It isn't a harder design.  I guess I was just due for a few quilting hiccups.

I was very happy to finally get the binding on.  That part went smoothly at least!  I love these little green dots, and the brown and leaf print for the backing.

Now all that's left to do is to finish the pattern!  Almost done. If all goes well, I'll be sending out to testers by the end of the week.

Tic Tac Quack!

It's Tic Tac Quack's turn today.  This one has the easiest focus block of the three Tic Tac Who? quilts.

Tic Tac Quack

You might remember my first rubber duck block attempt yielded a rather chubby duck. I'm glad I went back to the drawing board.  This one fits the space just as I hoped.

 

I tried to quilt random wavy lines for the waves.  I've seen lovely quilting like that, but whatever I was doing didn't do the trick.  It looked like one big mess.  I ended up ripping out the quilting (I quit after finishing about a quarter of the quilt, so it didn't take to long to rip out) and starting over after marking lines.  I used a flexible curve, the kind used in drafting I think, to copy the curve.  This, like most of my quilts, was quilted with a walking foot.

I don't know if you can make out the detail in the binding.  I used the same bubble print as in the square right below the duck. It reminds me of bubble bath.  When my kids were little, rubber ducks and bubble bath were a great bath time team.

Have a great weekend!  I hope you'll drop in to see Tic Tac Hoot! in more detail tomorrow.

Tic Tac Woof!

Where did the week go?  I had planned to share individual posts of my Tic Tac Who? quilts during the week but here we are, Friday, and I'm just now getting around to it!  So without further ado...

Tic Tac Woof! by Canuck Quilter Designs

  I really wanted something simple that wouldn't compete or overpower the very simple design.  The fabrics and the puppy are the stars here.  My trusty walking foot came out to play again.  I'm sure if you've followed my blog for a while, you're not surprised!  This time I quilted concentric circles, centered on the puppy block, and kept echoing until the whole quilt was quilted.

Concentric circle quilting

A closer look at the puppy block

The pawprint fabric, in red, was just hanging around the sale room waiting for this quilt to come along, and my coworker Amy suggested the red striped binding.  I think it was the perfect finishing touch!

Tic Tac Woof! backing and striped binding

Happy Quilting!

Tic Tac Who?

Last winter several customers at the shop where I work were looking for baby quilt patterns with something cute but not applique.  Quick and easy but not just squares.  Oh, and small enough to be able to use a single length of regular width (42"-ish) fabric for the back.  The wheels in my head started turning.  With other projects in the works, it took a while for these ideas to become finished quilts, but here they are at last, each 38" x 47".  I love how they turned out

Tic Tac Quack, Tic Tac Hoot and Tic Tac Woof

The pieced focus block is the only slightly challenging part of each quilt.  The duck is the easiest, followed by the puppy, then by the owl.  I quilted them with my walking foot on my domestic machine, and kept the quilting simple to continue the "simple" theme.

I think I'll give each quilt its own post over the next few days to share lots of pictures.

All three block designs will be included in one pattern Tic Tac Who? The pattern is about 3/4 finished, then I'll be looking for volunteers to test the blocks and/or quilt.  Let me know if you're interested!

Linking up with

Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River

Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts
Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Baby Steps (AKA Star Steps) in Bloggers’ Quilt Festival

My second entry in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival is Baby Steps, which I am entering in the small quilts category.  It measures 50 1/2” x 64”.



Until I made Quilter’s Scrapbook (my other BQF entry) I always bought fabric for specific projects and didn’t feel I had enough left of anything that went together to make anything else. I certainly didn’t consider the leftovers a stash. With the success of Quilter’s Scrapbook I was inspired to use up my strings for Sparkling Strings.  That went well, so I was encouraged to head to the bins of leftovers instead of the quilt shop when I needed to make a baby quilt last spring.  Surprise!  I had enough brights and novelty prints to pull this quilt together AND  there was  fabric left over.  I guess I do have a stash after all!  It’s just in mostly smaller pieces.



This quilt just went together effortlessly. Besides the fabric jumping out of my bins and saving me a trip to the shop, the quilting cooperated beautifully.  As I wrote in April, a cardboard circle saved from some packaging was exactly the right size to fit evenly along both the width and length of the border and wrap around the corners with absolutely no fudging required!  How often does that happen?  I used my walking foot to quilt straight lines in the steps and to quilt the half-circles in the borders.  The swirls in the star are free-motion quilted.



I made this as a baby quilt (generously sized for tummy time and big enough for when the baby grows into a toddler) and I love how it turned out. My blogging friend Sandra recently tested the pattern I wrote for this quilt, using “all grown up” fabrics.  You can see her version here.  It got me thinking about alternate colorways and I decided to rename the pattern Star Steps, since it obviously works as a more grown-up quilt too.

Since it was so quick and easy to piece, I’m tempted to make it again in a totally different style.  I’m plotting…if I can get the list of other things to do down to a manageable size, can I try one of these versions? Which one would tempt you, or would you choose another colorway entirely?

Starlight Starbright Finish

I’ve been absent from blog land more often than not for most of June as I was busy enjoying real life.  We enjoyed my parent’s visit for a week, the start of summer and puttering in the garden.

There was a bit of sewing/quilting happening.  I made a few small purses, which I forgot to photograph before giving away.  I also quilted Starlight Starbright. I tried to have a creative photo shoot before it left for its new home, but as you can see, not only was the wind having fun playing with the quilt, I am still working on mastering artful draping of quilts.
 


The two pictures below at least show off the quilting detail.  In the border I just echoed the prairie points using my walking foot.  I used the walking foot for the outline quilting inside and outside all the stars as well.  In an earlier post I pondered quilting the alphabet in the stars, but in the end I decided that the colors provided enough variety and I needed something common in all the stars to calm things down, so I went with a simple free-motion swirl in each star.


Finally here we have the classic quilt with legs photo op (my thanks to my hubby)!


My quilting goals for the next few weeks are to:

1. Layer, baste and quilt my red and green, non-string version of Sparkling strings so I can add a finished photo to the pattern cover and release that pattern.  Otherwise the pattern is all ready to go.  My tester did a fabulous job and I’ll be posting a photo of her quilt top soon too.

 2. Layer, baste and quilt Seeing Stars.  I think I have a quilting plan for it finally so I need to get to it before I change my mind again.

 3. Hand quilt a teeny tiny bit on the kaleidoscope quilt (and maybe come up with a name for it?) though it is a bit warm these days to have that massive thing draped over my lap…

 4. Finish writing patterns for Baby Steps and Starlight Starbright.  I’ll be needing pattern testers again. Let me know if you’re interested.  Both quilts were super easy and quick to make.

 5. Prepare a beginning EQ7 class to teach at my LQS at the end of July.  I’m excited about this one, but as I plan I’m discovering new features and I really need to start narrowing down the class focus, not expanding it!

 OK, maybe these will take more than a few weeks, especially if I plan to enjoy sitting in the garden that we just spent so much tome making pretty!

Starlight Star Bright

On my design wall today:  my Starlight Star Bright baby quilt.  I loved playing with these bright fabrics.  I think I could have chosen a slightly lighter color for the blue stars, but overall I’m happy with how this turned out.

Figuring out what size prairie point to insert after the inner border took a bit of trial and error.  The original size I planned was way too large and floppy.  The next size was too small.  What you see here was something in between and think adds just enough dimension and color.

This needs to be quilted this week.  The finished top has been waiting on the design wall for over a week as I waited for the quilt to speak up and tell me what to quilt on it. In the end I think it will be simple outline quilting inside and outside the stars, and a simple cable in the outer border.  The prairie points will remain unquilted so they stay dimensional.  Perhaps some alphabet in the stars, if I don’t run out of time and patience!

 

 

 

I’m linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.