Chilhowie

Chilhowie was Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt for 2022.  I essentially used a lighter version of her fabrics, with a dark background.  Some of the fabrics are scrappy, but so similar in tone that they look like a single fabric - I decided I didn't want another really scrappy quilt this year.

The backing was made from one super-sized block and I added borders to extend the feeling of the pattern to make it big enough.

 

Complete with label - which I stitched right into the backing.  No way that one's going missing.

 

2023 Quilt Along

For the past several years, I have designed a quilt - either a mystery quilt, or a quilt along/block of the month - for a couple of guilds I belong to.  This year's quilt-along was a bit challenging. Usually I use EQ8 for designing, but it doesn't play nicely with non-standard settings, and this one was definitely non-standard. So I reverted to the trust pencil and graph paper to sketch it out.   And I enlisted the help of a pattern tester to make sure it was correct, and achievable.

This one is called "A Wing and a Prayer", because I mentioned to a quilting friend that I pulled fabric from my stash that "looked like enough" to make my version as I designed it. So, before I knew the fabric requirements.  I got lucky for the most part.  I ran out of background twice, but my fill-in matches pretty well, so you can hardly tell. And the binding is not what I would have chosen, but it was what I had enough of to make it. So it has a little flange of my 3rd background fabric, and the main binding is the blue.

The center section is made as a square, then turned on point, and the corners with the 9-patches were added, and finally the top/bottom border. The quilt ended up 66x90" - a bit bigger than I planned, so I also offered instructions & fabric requirements for smaller versions - a baby quilt that ends with the triple border around the center square, and a lap quilt without the top & bottom borders.

There are 2 months left in the quilt along, and I can't wait to see what everyone has done with it.

Down on the Corner

 I participated in a virtual mystery quilt in January, with Quilt-agious quilt shop.  They do one every year, and this is my second time.  The pattern was a lot of fun to put together, and the weekend was great fun.  The finished quilt had 12 blocks and was sized for a double (queen?) bed.  I decided to split the blocks in half to make two donation quilts for Victoria's Quilts Canada. I added borders to bring the half quilts up to size, and substitutes a couple of blocks on the second one to make up for the missing bits, so that I didn't have to remake any blocks.

I do wish I had used a different background for the stars, but that is the risk with a mystery quilt.

Goats in Pyjamas

 I was inspired by a pattern the other day, and decided to make myself a little baby goat in pyjamas. The pattern is from Art East, and it is just the cutest thing!  She was just the right size for a laptop bag, so I used some faux-suede I had sitting around for the background/body of the bag, and a few bits and pieces from my scraps for the goat herself.

My new laptop fits perfectly, and Chloe is an adorable addition.

Frolic leftovers

Back in 2020, after I finished Bonnie Hunter's Frolic mystery, and her Unity quilt along, I had a lot of bits and pieces left over. I'd used the same fabrics in both those quilts, so I took all the odds and ends, and made several new blocks - most a variation on Frolic's blocks, and then some random playing with Unity leftovers.  I played around with the bits, added in some additional fabric, and came up with this quilt.

I quilted it some time ago, but was avoiding binding it, because I went with a flange binding - it was the only way to stretch the fabric to finish it.  But that's such a job, to sew 280" of 2 binding strips side-by-side to make the binding. But I finally did it, got it bound, and it's off to Victoria's Quilts next month (as soon as I make a bag and get it into the wash).
 

Block of the Week

My poor little block of the week is DONE!  This started way back in 2014, as a weekly block from a local quilt shop. If you finished your block and took it in, the next week was free. If not, it was $5.  It was a lot of fun, and the shop did a TON of work - they actually let everyone pick their own border fabric, and worked out the colours for the blocks from that - so almost every one was different. Like I said, a ton of work.

I managed to keep up and get all the blocks done, then the alternate blocks were finished fairly quickly, and that's where the wheels came off. I had let the owner talk me out of buying enough of my border print to use the edge pattern for the border - it was one-sided, so would have needed over 8 meters of fabric for borders.

I searched 5 times over the next 5 years, looking for more of that print - Robert Kaufmann Effervescence. I found every colourway except mine (and no, I don't want to know that you have 4 yards sitting around your sewing room, thank you very much).  I could not let it go, and changing the border fabric never crossed my mind. Eventually, I gave up my search, made a 2-part border for the other 2 sides, and called it "good enough".

And then I thought I'd custom quit this baby. Lots of opportunity in those little blocks to do some nice work - so it sat. And stared at me every time I went into my closet. And sat some more.

This year, I joined a 100 day UFO challenge, and when asked about our oldest UFO, this baby came out, with her story.  What I didn't mention above is the falling out with the quilt shop that happened about a year later, and when I wrote the story of this quilt for that UFO group, my resentment was clear, apparently.  Everyone said, just let it go.  Release the quilt, and release the old feelings with it.

So I decided to do just that. No more custom quilting plan. Out it came from the closet, I found a nice design that fit the blocks and played about with my automation software to make it look like each block was quilted with this design individually, when in fact it was a pantograph.

Not perfect, and if you look closely you can tell, but I love the overall look, and most importantly, IT IS DONE!

 

Paris One Block Wonder

 This poor little quilt has been finished for years, but apparently I never took an actual photo of it. It is one of my favourite one-block wonder quilts.  I bought the panel during my OBW buying phase back in 2017 or so. It took a long time to sort out the arrangement - all those straight lines from the tower were hard to deal with, but I love the way it ended up.

Singing in the Rain

 Back in the Summer of 2015, I went on a trip to Michigan during the Row by Row which happened every summer.  I stopped at every quilt shop I could find - and even took a different route home so I could hit more shops.  I picked up a lot of the row patterns from the various shops, and had a lovely stack when I got back. And then they sat there :)

Eventually I realized that I would never make all of them, so I picked my favourite 8, and put the rest of the kits into my stash.  I made the 8 rows and created this quilt sometime around 2019.  And it sat again :)  The size was wrong for a donation quilt, and I couldn't see a use for this one.

But I finally pulled it out and quilted it in 2023 during my UFO blitz that year.  And now, I found the binding fabric and the poor little project is officially complete (albeit without a label).

Another January finish

 I have an itty bitty finish to close off this month.  This little bear first started as a guild challenge. I missed the hand-in date for that one, so into the orphan bit it went.  Then, it revived as the center for a "Roosting Round Robin" with one of my guilds.  I loved the idea - for those who don't know, a round robin is a  quilt that gets passed among a group of friends, each adding a part to it of their own design.  Because it was during covid, this was a roosting round robin - it roosted at home and we made our own quilt, using prompts provided each month by the guild.

I thought I'd love it, because one of my favourite projects was a block of the month from a local shop, where they just told us what to make, but not how many or the sizes.  So, for example, "make flying geese this month". Then at the end, we put our bits together into a quilt.  But unfortunately I lost interest in this one pretty quickly, because the prompts didn't really speak to me.  So, it sat.

Sometime last year, I added a couple of asymmetrical borders to make it into a quiltie, and now it is (finally) done and ready to donate.  The eyes and nose are fabric, not buttons, so it will be safe for a little one.

Merry Mayhem

Every year, I have a look at Merry Mayhem's New Year's Day mystery. Some years I jump in, other years not so much. This one was tough. It's very scrappy, with 3 unifying fabrics, and I find those a big challenge to deal with. But I had a box of precuts, that fit the cutting sizes for this quilt very nicely, so I decided to jump in with both feet.

As always, I wanted a charity quilt out of this, so I had to play around with her sizing. And I was working blind, because I wanted to know how many units to make up front, rather than going back and making more later.  This is were her method - cut *everything* up front - works out really well.  I decided that 48 was my number, and jumped into the cutting process before the holidays.

On New Year's Day, I worked through a lot of it, but got way behind pretty quickly due to the size of my quilt.  But, that's was group sew days are for :)  When I finished Bonnie Hunter, I took advantage of my Bonnie Sew Days to work on Merry Mayhem. And last weekend I finished it!  

A little advice from some friends and I swapped the original plan for sashing and borders, and it all came together.

Indigo Way

 Phew!  All the sewing on Bonnie Hunter's Indigo Way quilt is done!  I decided that my full-size version would be going to charity, so I split up the blocks into 2 quilts, each 50x70". 

The first one has Bonnie's border and is just a small version of hers, finishing at 48x"x72".

The second one, I took most of the remaining blocks, set them straight instead of on-point, and added borders, to make it 50x70".

And then I still had 4 blocks left, so I made a small quiltie for the children's hospital.

These are at the top of my "to be quilted" list, because I want to keep up with my finishes this year (prioritizing new finishes over my ancient UFOs, so I can see if I'm treading water here).

The final two blocks will be pockets for the bags that go with the Victoria's quilts donations. And then the final odds and sods are tucked into my scrap bins, to be used for future VQC pockets or other projects.

Mystery Weekend

I spent the weekend on a virtual quilt retreat with Quilt-agious quilt shop in Wisconsin. I love the creative patterns they come up with, and last year's retreat was so much fun I jumped in again.

Part of the retreat package was a new-to-me ruler - the Folded Corner Clipper by Creative Grids.  The pattern was designed around that, so we got lots of practice cutting and sewing clipped corners.

Short ones,

and tall ones,

Blocks were created.

And eventually, after 4 days, enough blocks for a start on a new quilt.  I kept up with the "minimum" recommendations, which allowed this sample to be viewed. I have more work to do to finish up the rest of the 12 blocks that make up the pattern.

As always, colour choice is tough for a mystery quilt. Plus, working from my stash is getting harder and harder, as I deplete my larger pieces of fabric.  I think the background is a bit busy here, but it'll have to do.

Let's see if I can avoid turning this into a multi-year UFO.

Indigo Way Progress

 I love Bonnie Hunter season! Every November she runs a free mystery, one clue a week until early January. The reveal came last week, so now the finishing begins.  I've been doing two this year - one with my in-person group and one with an online group. I did my first Bonnie Hunter Mystery (Orca Bay) back in 2011. But everything is better with friends, so I have been slowly converting various friends and guilds to build these groups 😄 

So my online mystery is a mini Indigo Way - each unit made 1/2 size, finishing at 1 1/2".  It is done, all the way to the borders. I considered adding a plain border, because I hate trying to bind where there are points I don't want to lose. But this quilt really doesn't want another border - I think that would somehow feel constrained.  So, here it is, ready for quilting. I think I'll bind it in one of the light greens.

This is one of my quilts from my large version of Indigo Way. I made all the blocks, in full size, in Bonnie's colours. But the results with be donated to Victoria's Quilts, so they need to be about 50x70". I have 1 done, 1 ready for borders, and some block pieces left over that I'll have to look at and see if there's a number 3 in there.  This is #2 - set square instead of on-point, because I don't feel like making more setting triangles 😂

One Block Wonder - Geese

 I love One Block Wonder quilts.  I made my first back in 2015, and I haven't looked back since.  At the end of this post is a list of the 10 I've made so far.  We won't talk about how many piles of fabric are in my cupboard, purchased for one block wonders.

However, I saw this goose panel on sale at a quilt shop, and thought it might make an interesting one block wonder.  It sat around for some time, and then my guild asked me to run a workshop on panel one block wonders.  This was a perfect sample to make for that class, so I pulled it out and started cutting.

Animals (and people) are tough. I don't like disembodied eyes and other body parts lying around my quilt.  But this one worked out fairly nicely. However, when I started laying it out, all the dark hexies from the geese themselves gave me trouble. They didn't blend around the edges at all.  Since I knew this would be a donation quilt, I ended up tossing those hexies aside, and working with the ones I liked better.  Unfortunately, I started cutting from the bottom right. Which mean that I lost almost all of the bright blue area of the panel - my final row was 1/2" short, and my triangles on the last full row were oriented such that I cut off most of the blue in the waste at the end of the row.  Poor planning on my part, I see now.  But also a good lesson to talk about in class :)

To deal with that, I dug some matching blue out of my stash, and the entire upper left of this quilt is strips cut from yardage, rather than hexies.  Two tone binding, to differentiate sky and grass, finished it off.  The quilt is about 48x70", and will be donated to Victoria's Quilts.

The leftover blocks could not go to waste.  So I put them up on the design wall, and came up with this design. It too is about 48x870" and will be heading off to Victoria's quilts.

I also made bags for each of them, since that's part of our donation process in the group I belong to.  I had a fat quarter of loon fabric which I thought was somewhat appropriate for the pockets on the bags for these two quilts.

1. Shells from Kaffe Fasset - 2014
2. Kaffe Fasset - Aug 2017
3. Mini one block wonder - 2018
4. Guild challenge OBW - 2019 
5. Butterfly Forest - 2019
   
6. Flower panel - 2019
7. Floral part 2 - 2019 
8. Paris - 2020?
   
9. Florence - 2021?
   
10. Canada Geese - 2024
11. Geese Remainders - 2024
    

Spinning Star

 My first real finish for 2024 (finishing 3 feet of binding, while productive, feels like a cheat to call it an actual UFO finish).  I started this project early on in the COVID lockdown, based on a pattern a friend showed me during a Skype session. The pattern was Hook by Schnibbles, and I merrily set about making a pile of hexies from a charm pack, with great intentions.  And then into the bin it went, to be steadfastly ignored whenever I was looking for a new project to work on.  Too many hexagons (I was in a One Block Wonder phase at the time).  

But, when we opened back up and started meeting in person again, I dragged it along to a few retreats. At the first couple, it was my fallback "if I run out of absolutely everything else, I might work on this".  Then at one retreat I actually did.  Not ran out, but ran out of interest for everything else I packed, so this one came out. Once I had all the hexies made, I actually enjoyed the process of figuring out a layout. The original one from the pattern was too much, I think because all of my hexies were pink.  It needed more colour variety. 

So I spread them out a bit, added some negative space, and created this project.  Used up the last of the fabric in the border and binding - and then realized that I had extra hexies set aside for a second quilt. Will have to finish that one up without any more of the pink, I guess.

I found some nice pink flannel for the back, but there wasn't quite enough.  After playing with options, I decided to go with the grey flannel, with a pop of pink instead.

This will head off to Victoria's Quilts this week.
 

Some charity projects from the past

Early on in the pandemic, Bonnie Hunter offered a quilt-along medallion quilt.  I jumped in, even thought I'm not 100% sold on medallion quilts. But I had all this leftover fabric from Frolic, that I needed to use somewhere. So I played along, and made some adjustments to come up with a donation sized quilt.

 

 And in the spirit of catching up my blog and quilt journal, this is a quilt that was made pre-pandemic in a block party.  Everyone made 1 block from fabric provided by me.  12 blocks, 1 charity quilt.  This pattern was found in a magazine that contained a number of different scrappy quilt patterns. The name of which has faded into the mists of time.

 

Indigo Way

Bonnie Hunter mystery season is always a good time.  This time, her quilt is Indigo Way.

I have 2 groups that I've pulled into the chaos.  One meets in person - that's my original group, running since 2016, when Bonnie presented en Provence.  Members have varied a bit, but the core group is back and raring to go post-covid.  So we've been meeting every Friday night to sew together.

But then I have a spin-off group. A few of the originals who live a bit farther away and found out how wonderful zoom sewing is, during covid.  We now have a regular Saturday zoom sew day, which morphed into a Bonnie Hunter day for the mystery season. And in the process picked up a few new converts (or looky-loos, who aren't quite ready to dive in but enjoy laughing at us as we make our mounds of blocks).

But, having 2 groups, and being a fast sewer in general, I could not see one Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt lasting me for two back-to-back sew days.  So what do I do?  I make 2 mystery quilts, of course!  A full size, in Bonnie's colours (which is chugging along but has not made it past my camera yet) and a mini - all the blocks, in half the size.  This green & yellow version is ready for assembly.

I decided I didn't want a square quilt, so I switched it up a bit and turned it into a rectangle. One spare block of each type is left over, so I'll find a home for those somewhere.  This should finish at about 36x46" I think - unless I add another border outside the pieced one.

And another project that I started recently - a little (ha ha) bit of hand sewing to pass the time.  Passacaglia should take me, oh, 5 or 10 years I figure.  But for now, with a bit of encouragement and company from a friend who suckered me into this, I'm working away at it as a slow-stitching project.

 

First Finish

I finished 2023 by doing a major cleanup in my sewing room. Still some work to do, but there is serious improvement in there, and I can actually find things now. Things like... a quilt that I "finished" in 2017, but I just discovered the binding was only half done :(  So, my first finish for 2024 is the 3 feet of binding on "All Squared Up" from 2017.

 

And while I had my photo backdrop in place, I took a picture of Storybook Rainbow from 2019. It's been done for a while, but I can't find any photos of the complete quilt, so now I have that taken care of too.

After my UFO count from the 1st, I realized that I need some serious focus on getting things done rather than starting new things.  So I joined a 100 day challenge.  Work on as many UFOs from a list of 16, during the first 100 days of 2024.  Hopefully a jump start to finishing some off, and clearing some space for fun new stuff in the last 266 days of the year.  Because that seemed a bit too loose for me, and 16 was just too many to tackle all at once, I also decided to do the old "draw a number" and pick one UFO to finish each month this year.  So I sorted my list into my top 12, and a bonus 12 that might get swapped in.  This month is Number 3, so my Pink Spinning Star should get on the longarm before the end of the month.

Of course, trying to clear out UFOs did not deter me from joining a Virtual Mystery Quilt Retreat with Quilt-agious, or starting Merry Mayhem on New Years Day.  Here's to hoping I can at least finish as many as I start this time around.

2024 UFO status

Happy New Year, everyone! With 2024 upon us, it's time to track down all those UFOs, and see where I stand relative to last year.  So, with great trepidation, here it is. You can find the detailed list of quilts down below (it's long!) but here is the summary.  I finished only 4 of the quilts that were on my UFO list last year :(  Not a very stellar record.  Four did progress from in progress to ready for quilting, so that's something.  The good news is, I started AND finished an additional 3 (photos are below).  So, 7 finishes for the year.  There were however, more than 13 new starts.  So, net negative on quilts out the door, last year.

Of course, I also took up weaving in 2023.  First project - 5 placemats (of a set of 6 plus table runner) are done, and got used for Christmas dinner!  No specific plans for this year's weaving, but I do plan to continue with it (first I guess, to finish that last placemat and the runner).

UFO details.  At the start of last year I had:

Ready for quilting:

1. Block of the Week - started 2014
2. Winding Ways - 2015 KQG Crayola challenge
3. Edge of 17 shop hop - 2015
   
4. Tell it to the Stars - 2014 Judy Laquidara quilt along - DONE
   
5. Reflections of the North - 2015
   
6. Paper pieced houses (Downtown) - 2013
   
7. 3-D cubes (Paul Leger class) - 2017
   
8. Improve - Krista Hennebury 2017
   
9. Row by row - Water theme - 2015 - ready for binding
   
10. Symmetry in Stars fractal - 2019
    
11. Slow and Steady (2022 mystery, twin)
12. Rainbow Cats - 2019
    
13. Butterfly OBW - 2022
    
14. Starburst - 2018
    
15. OBW stripes - 2019
    
16. Jelly roll quilt - 2022
17. Spinning star table runner 2020 - ready for quilting
18. French braid placemats - 2012? 

(Ugh, that doesn't look good. )

And a few in progress:

1. Chillhowie [at Midnight] - Bonnie Hunter - DONE, 2 of them
   
2. 2022 BOM - DONE
   
3. blue/white One Block Wonder
4. Jacob's ladder leader/ender
5. CQA mystery ($3.31) - ready for quilting
   
6. Star is Born virtual retreat quilt - ready for quilting
   
7. Snowman BOM (2014)
8. Gardener's Alphabet (2013?) 
9. Cathedral Window
10. Apple core
11. mini checkerboard
12. Ombre geese
13. Owl embroidery
14. little bear
15. Fall Foliage
16. Hexi stars
17. Canada Geese
18. Northern Animals
19. Pink spinning star - two quilts - 2023 - one ready for quilting

Well, that can't be right. I know I finished a few this year! I did some digging and rounded up the missing participants from 2023.

So, these were all started in 2023:

1. Pojagi maple leaf - 2023 - DONE
2. Elephant abstractions - April 2023 - DONE
3. Alaska Rainbow wedding quilt April 2023 - DONE
4. Wing and a Prayer - Guild quilt along - DONE
   
5. Canada goose OBW x 2 - ready for quilting
6. Passacaglia - 2023
7. Falling leaves (big) 
8. Heart, shamrock, wreath window quilts - 2023 ready for quilting
9. Wing & a Prayer #2 - 2023 quilt along - lap - 2023 - ready for quilting
10. Bonnie hunter Indigo Way 2023 - big and miniature
11. Diamonds - 2 - 1 ready for quilting
12. Pojagi duvet cover - 2023
13. My Blue Heaven (Bonnie Hunter) - 2023
    

And started this year (already!)

1. Merry Mayhem - 2024
2. 1" squares (leader/ender project) - 2024