Resetting

Why is it August already?  Did time steal a few days (weeks)?  I guess I've been too busy enjoying summer and family to notice the time go by.  But it is in fact August.  The profusion of blooming Black-eyed Susans in my gardens proves it.

Black-eyed Susans:  my reliable August bloomers

We made a lovely road trip back to Canada, swinging through southern Ontario, then through Québec on our way to family in New Brunswick, and since we were up there we thought we might as well go on up to Prince Edward Island since the kids had never been there.  DS got to visit the Stanley Cup in Toronto, DD enjoyed Green Gables and the Anne of Green Gables musical in Charlottetown and DH and I enjoyed the unplugged family time.  I won't give you a stop-by-stop review of our trip.  I'll just say it was fabulous.

Back in the sewing room, I have been uninspired so I worked on clearing my small pile of UFOs.  To start, I finally sewed the binding onto my very yellow quilt and it is now on my bed. I added pillow cases to match.

I like it and DH likes it, but now I have a "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" situation.  (That's a great kids's book, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure!)  The quilt looks great, but the blue walls don't go as well as I thought they would, so I need to repaint.  The blue wall hanging won't look great against the new paint, so maybe I'm thinking about a new quilt for that wall.  Then of course the blue runner on the dresser will be the only touch of blue so maybe that will need to be replaced too... I'll keep the pooch though!

I made a quick little purse to replace my previous one, which had a frayed strap and holes in the corners. It was time!  I'm a fan of small purses, just big enough to carry my wallet, phone and keys, and I like them to have a cross-body strap so I don't set the purse down somewhere and walk away without it.

New purse

I also finished up a variation of Sew Kind of Wonderful's  "Chic Sisters" pattern.  Last spring I offered to make shop samples using the Quick Curve Ruler for the shop where I work. I finished the runner and table topper a couple of months ago, but this Chic Sisters one stalled at the block stage.  My boss didn't want the full quilt, just something to show the curved blocks.  The original plan was to make a runner, but the blocks didn't pop in that so they just sat for months. We finally decided to turn them into a baby quilt, I played around with a couple of layouts, and I finally have a finish. Looking at my pictures I see that most didn't turn out very well, so I'll leave you with a small taste and go take more pictures to share tomorrow.

 

Blooms finished and gifted

Now that the blooms quilt has safely arrived at its destination (and 3 days earlier than I expected...how often does that happen?)  I can share the finished quilt.  Ta da!

I bet you didn't see the elephant coming! Apparently, when you administer CPR and you do it right, you leave the lucky person feeling like an elephant ran over their chest (which is good even though it sounds awful, because it means the person is still alive to feel).  That is why the person who performed CPR last January gets an elephant on her quilt.

 

 

Most of this quilt was quilted with my trusty walking foot.  I considered trying freemotion in the sashing, but in the end I preferred crisp straight lines that remind me of a trellis.  Next I considered freemotion in the petals.  That was the part I picked out several time before settling on straight lines radiating from the flower centers.  I'm sure in some other hands FMQ could have worked out beautifully, but it just wasn't soaring in my hands!  Have I mentioned I love my walking foot?

The only part of the quilt that has free-motion on it is the elephant, and I forgot to take pictures of that.  Ooops!  Trust me, the paisley pattern is gorgeous and flawless...

Now I'm off to do something with this little guy:

Gotta have backyard security to chase the rabbits away from the blooms!

Still working on blooms

I'm still working on the flower quilt.  Let's just say that this quilt did not have any strong suggestions about how it wanted to be quilted so I spent a lot of time staring at it, thinking and drawing a blank.  The quilt didn't start talking until after I had quilted a few blooms.  Then it had very strong opinions about what it didn't like.

I didn't quilt all the blooms before listening to the quilt's protests, otherwise I might have just pitched this whole thing out the window.  I did try about 4 designs on various blooms that ended up being picked out.  I really hate picking out quilting stitches, especially the really tiny tight ones I get when  my foot on the foot pedal and my hands moving the quilt around aren't working together very well for even freemotion quilting

In the end I decided less was more and that the walking foot is my friend, despite the quilt wrestling involved to change directions.  Lots of walking foot quilting happening over here!  The sashing is all done and I think about 1/4 of the blooms are quilted as well.  Now that I have a plan that I can live with I think it will go more quickly.  I hope so!  I am ready for this one to be done!