Mystery Quilt 2009

I've got the top all done! It is a pretty basic pattern because the focus is going to be on the machine quilting that we do tomorrow. Here are the fabric choices I made. Being a mystery we were only told the different values and amount that we needed. I joined the group the day before it started so I just used what fabric I had in my stash. I wouldn't necessarily choose these fabrics to go together normally but for this fun, learning quilt they will work just fine.

I took a number of breaks during the day including one to finish quilting the charity quilt  that was already on the frame so I didn't finish up the top until around 3:30 this afternoon. Only a couple of mistakes, including putting the setting corners onto all the flying geese instead just half of them like the directions said to. My only excuse is my sons gave me all (all) the Beatles CD's for Christmas and I had them cranked up and was probably just having a little too much fun be-bopping along :) 

Anyways , I did get it done and here it is. Lots and lots of open spaces to to some fancy quilting in!

What a year!

It has been so long since I've caught up with my blog I can't believe it. We've been extremely busy moving into our house and doing all the reno's. My sweetheart of a husband started work on my quilting studio the first day taking down a wall to expand the room enough for the quilting frame to be set up. To make a very hectic, busy and exhausting story short we're all moved in, reno's are 90% done, I absolutely love my new quilting studio and house. Yep - in that order - a quilters gotta have her priorities!

I did finish the Irish chain before we started the reno's. It's all ready for quilting but I'm going to be doing a number of charity quilts to get back into the swing of things. I'm on my second on now - wow, it was almost like starting over but I'm kind of back into it already. I'll post some pictures of the Irish Chain before and after quilting as well as my studio.

I've started an on-line mystery quilt today. It's made for stand-up machine quilters. We received the piecing instructions this morning and I've just finished cutting. Today we piece and load the quilt on the frame and tomorrow - New Year's day - we quilt! There's on-line videos that we'll be receiving an lots of instructional stuff. It's put on by LongArm University www.LongarmUniversity.com and so far it's been pretty fun. Never done anything like this before but I figured it would be a good way to get back into free-hand quilting and learn some techniques.

So - I'll end the year quilting and start off the new year quilting - what more could one ask for!

The luck of the Irish

It's done!!  OK, well sort of ;)  

I believe that we should try and learn something new all the time, learning is a good thing.   I not only learned something new while making this quilt top I re-learned a few as well.

1.  Re-learned - always double check your math when you've manipulated a pattern.  I thought I was done last week and was proudly showing it off when I realized it was going to be too short to fit the clients bed.  I needed to add another row to give her the pillow tuck she wanted.

2.  Re-learned - when I shut my sewing machine off the settings for the needle adjustment are lost.  Oh yah - right.  Rippit, rippit...

3.  Learned - Starch. Plain and simple.  I'd read and read how so many quilters use starch when they are piecing and how it helps keep things aligned, sews better and on and on.  Well - I'm a firm believer now.  I had sometimes lightly starched curved pieces before but I inherited a can of  'double strength' starch from cleaning out my in-law's place and decided to try that.  It was amazing.  It helped lining up the fabric for cutting so my strips were more accurate.  Once the strips where sewn together I starched again and the sub-cutting went like a dream.  The finished blocks were much more square.  The best was that once you've starched the seams they will lay flat when you're sewing the sub-cuts together and you don't have the underside seam flipping over on you when it goes under the presser foot.  I'll definitely be buying and using starch much more.

I decided on the border fabric yesterday and worked out my cut lengths and got started.  Took a break after I got one of the borders on and when I went back I had no power to the machine or the computer.  The radio was still on so I figured a breaker had blown.  I went to find my DH to flip the breaker as it's in an rather awkward location and when we entered the room where the panel was we could smell an awful burning smell of hot plastic or oil.  He checked the electrical stuff and I went around trying to locate the smell.  Turns out that the old florescent light had fried and the oil, PCB"s or tar or whatever it is in the ballast had leaked out and was hotter than heck.  My DH quickly unhooked the light and we called the rental manager and she got an electrician out.  He's checked everything out and had to re-wire a few things that were definitely not only not to code but extremely unsafe.  Turns out here was no ground on the light and we could easily of had a fire.  The fact that my sewing machine lost power was just a coincidence.  Those wires were loose in the panel and had come off.  If they hadn't we might not have caught the  problem with the light until it was too late.  Anyway - once the smell had cleared out I finished up the borders late last night and proudly spread it out on the bed. 

OK - this morning I spread it out on the floor to get a good picture to post.  Looked at the picture and something didn't look right.  Looked at the top on the floor and it looked fine.  Looked at it through the camera again and something definitely was wrong with one of the 'x's.  Looked the quilt over again and sure enough I've got one of the 'x' blocks wrong.  Good thing is it is in the last row so not too much froging required.  Sigh.

I'm not sure when I'll be finishing it now. We got the keys to our new place last evening so it's off to the paint store today and the reno begins! Hopefully I will be able to do a little bit in the evenings if I'm not too tired and I can pack it away for the move.

Back in the Saddle

I have been asked to make a Double Irish Chain for a friend in a bedspread size for a twin bed. Between our move, helping my in-laws settle into the extended care home and waiting for possession of the house we bought (2 weeks and counting before we start with painting, flooring and designing my new quilting studio!!) I haven’t done much of any quilting at all. I decided it was time to get off my butt and get busy.

I was to match an old satin wall paper in soft blue stripped roses with just a touch of pink. She wanted to match the blues - no pink at all. The problem was these blues were from 10 years ago or more and it was tricky trying to find the same blue in fabric today. I lucked out and came up with these three.

This is the third Double Irish Chain that I’ve made. I use Eleanor Burn’s strip piecing method, or maybe it’s just my version of hers :) I find it so much quicker sewing the strip sets together and then sub-cutting them. Truth is I’ve never made one cutting all the squares out first and sewing them together - it just seemed too much trouble!

I’ve got almost half of the blocks made now. The finished quilt will be 90” x 106” or there abouts. Another couple days worth of sewing and I should be ready to add the borders. I’m really hoping to get this top completed or at least ready for the borders before I start the painting at the new house October 1.

Life is what happens

Isn't that what they say?  Life is what happens while we're busy making plans?  Something like that anyways.

I was so looking forward to our local Blackberry Festival - a week long celebration of this tasty little berry - and  planned out a few things to go see.  A quick trip to the island on Thursday, back on Friday no problem.  Wednesday morning we got the call we had been waiting on for many months.  My in-laws were accepted into an extended care facility and we finally had the date - August 22.  Wow - we really had to move fast.  Our trip lasted a few days longer while we started to sort through their apartment.  Over 60 years together and almost nothing thrown away.  My mother in-law had even kept a receipt for a dress she had bought in 1994!  So far the oldest we've found is the paperwork for a house sale in 1973.  We're back over next weekend to help settle them in to their new home and sort some more, and probably back a few times over the next month to clean out the apartment.  I can only imagine how hard it is on them to have to part with so many treasures.  They spent 16 years in Inuvik back in the 60's and have many, many wonderful carvings and artifacts made for them by their native friends.  Amazing.  Although a little apprehensive they are both looking forward to the move which is good.

I have been updating my store as well so I've been kept pretty busy with things other than quilting.  I am going to set aside a couple hours today to sew just to get life back into perspective!

Thanks for the welcome :)

Hi Alice and Nina, thank you for your welcome to Powell River :)

We are settling in quite nicely - and looking forward to the upcoming blackberry festival, at least I am! My sewing room is set up but the HQ16, table and frame are not. Once we have some of the reno's done on the new (to us) home we'll be setting up the whole system but that probably won't be until late fall.

Anyone interested in learning more about the HQ16 are welcome to email me at baileysquiltinghq@shaw.ca and I'd be happy to answer what questions I can. It's a great machine even though I've nick-named him Harry due to the many harried moments on the learning curve!

We've moved

After almost 12 years of living in the bustling, hectic, crazy busy lower mainland of BC we had the chance to move to to a much smaller town and we jumped at the chance. It's been in the works for a couple of months and now we're here in beautiful Powell River and loving the much slower pace, gorgeous scenery and friendly people. We've bought a house and will have possession of it in a few weeks so although my sewing room is up my quilting machine is not and won't be until renovations are done to build the quilting studio in our new home. We're renting a home on the beach for the summer and even though I do have some work I must (bad word) get busy doing learning to relax, walk on the beach and enjoy the sunsets has been our priority!


these are taken right from our front yard - that's Vancouver Island in the distance.

More quilty things to come. I have been feeling the urge to quilt these past few days and I want to share something called 'Kilometer Krazy' or 'Mile o' Minute' for those of us State side. It's a way to reduce your scraps - honest!!

What I've been up to

As you can see I'm a bit behind in my posting :) I've been kept rather busy over the last few months though. My machine quilting is coming along nicely and I even give lessons and rent out time on the machine. I have almost as much fun watching others quilting up a storm and seeing their "wow - I did that" look on their face when they take their quilts of the frame :)

Our guild also had their quilt show the first part of May and I had a few entries to put in. We always have a challenge and this years was the best in my opinion. They gathered up paint chip samples from the paint store and divided them into groups of three - primary, black-white, monochromatic etc. and put them into envelopes. Anyone that was interested in doing the challenge picked an envelope and then had to make a quilt, maximum 100" total circumference, using only those 3 colours. You could add embellishments of any colour but the fabric could only be of those three colours. Quite a challenge. My envelope contained the three primaries - red, yellow and blue. As usual, I first went way overboard. "What is primary" I asked myself. Hmmm - basic, something that can't be broken down any further...ahaa! DNA. What could be more primary than DNA? I googled like crazy and started designing a wall hanging of DNA. I must be getting better because it only took a couple of weeks before I realized that was just silly - I'd never get anything like that done in time and what the heck would I do with something like that when I was done, it wouldn't exactly fit into my decor! I settled on the colour wheel. I've never done any thread painting before so I tried my hand with that and added the secondary colours as embellishment. A little machine embroidery and I was done in a matter of a couple days. A couple weeks before the project was due I might add :) Pretty basic but it works.

Click on the link if you'd like to check out the Langley Quilter's Guild and you can also see an album of the quilts put together by the presidents husband (thanks once again Dave) that were displayed at the show. The beginning of the album shows some of the challenges that were done - absolutely amazing. Maybe I should have tried for the DNA thing!

1..2..3.. JUMP!

Well, I took a deep breath and (after some more practice muslins and a few charity quilts) a loaded up the 4Q Round Robin and went to town. I've discovered that I''m not too fond of pantographs. I really enjoy free-hand work. It let's me be more creative. Of course it also lets me make a lot of mistakes too :) I wanted feathers and pebbles and line dancing and all of the nifty things I'd been reading about and seeing on the different forums.

I had started taking my own advice, namely accepting that it's not going to look like I've been machine quilting for 20 years. And you know - I'm darn proud of the finished product mistakes and all. I feel more relaxed now about machine quilting.

Here is the finished quilt. Thank you Leslie, Lynda and Linda for such a beautiful quilt top. This will always hang in a prominent spot in my home. Every time I look at it I am reminded that we should not let our fears or insecurities get in the way.




My first attempts at line dancing