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The Ultimate Travel Bag

The October 2022 Island Batik Challenge is "Its in the Bag", sponsored by Patterns by Annie.

Soft & Stable - For Bags that Stand Tall

Pattern and the Hardware

I chose fabrics from the Spring 2022 Sunset Plains Collection. It is a beautiful collection with bright greens, reds and maroons designed by Kathy Engle. I love the Cactus print.

Flowers on my morning walk - Collection Inspiration?

Fabrics

For the past few years, I have participated in Quilting Jetgirl's QALs and I have to say, they've never disappointed. This year, the quilt pattern is Planview and it is awesome!

The pattern comes in 6 different sizes, from wall hanging to King. I chose to make the baby size because I thought it would be easier to manage given everything else I had going on over the last few months. But Yvonne's QALs are broken-down in easy to complete steps and she provide more than enough time to get each step done before publishing the next ...

I made a few more batik blocks this week for my Quilt for a Residential School Survivor.  I only have two more blocks to make.  I am contemplating ideas...  Finn likes to "help" while I am sewing, or should I say, trying to sew... 

I am going to make 12 blocks for this quilt--3 of each type.  Here are my three log cabin variation blocks.  I made the bottom one today and the one on the right with the green border earlier in the week. 

Finn is here!  Our daughter is quite busy at work for the next few weeks so we have Finn here to keep us company.  He loves to sit on the back of the couch and keep an eye on the comings and goings outside, as well as watch my husband and I.  Finn likes to keep track of his people.  He's staring at me as I type this blogpost on the computer...obviously, I need supervision!

Finn is not allowed in my sewing room so I have a baby gate up at the doorway so he can still see ...

Rhythm & Repetition. This is one of those challenge themes that is so easy... but also quite difficult. So many things would work. Three of anything really. Three 4-patch blocks. Three chickens. Three triangles. The possibilities are endless! On my first challenge quilt this season I made a wholecloth quilt and toyed with making wholecloth quilts for each challenge. But then I used two fabrics for challenge 2. So here is my every other wholecloth quilt. I decided to take inspiration from Jacquie Gering and feature my repetition in the way of walking foot quilting. On a small scale. My initial ...

I have finished and submitted to my first SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) exhibition. The Northern California/Northern Nevada region issued a call last summer for a juried regional exhibition entitled Prism Play. From the start I loved the vision for this exhibition. The quilts are all required to be 15" wide by 45" long and monochromatic, following one of the color cards from Joen Wolfrom's Ultimate 3-in-1 Color Tool. The selected quilts will hang in multiple full color spectrum groupings during the exhibition.

In phase one we each signed up for a color (or colors) and were assigned ...

My hubby and I decided to buy some new living room furniture for Christmas. A new beautiful dark grey couch and chair as well as new end tables. Now we have seven grand-children and I would like the new furniture to stay new-looking for a while so we protected the new couch and chair with a stain-resistant treatment and I decided to make two table toppers for the tables.

The pattern I used to make these is One-Eyed Monsters from Cheryl Brickey's book "Just One Charm Pack Quilts". I got the book for free because I was a tester ...

My boss, who's also a dear friend, is going to be a grand-mother this month. I waited to find out the sex of the baby and the nursery colours before I started planning the quilt. And once I had that information, I started pulling fabric and looking for a pattern to showcase the beautiful prints.

The pattern I used is Pretty in Pluses by Michelle Cain (From Bolt to Beauty). The pattern comes in three sizes: baby, throw and twin. I made the baby quilt and it finished at 40.5" x 48.5".

The instructions are really clear ...

I have a new finish to share but would you, could you wait till I share some news? Pretty, please.

I am in a magazine...well, my work is.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Diptee Raut of Quilt Stories, asking if I'd consider contributing to India's first quilting magazine.  I was so slammed at that time that I told Diptee - Take a look at my blog and use whatever you like. Diptee chose the tutorial for the Picket Star Quilt Block and here is the link to the magazine. 

Courage uses the Picket ...

Welcome to Day One of the Island Batik's November 2021 Blog Hop - Storm at Sea.

The November Challenge for Island Batik required that we make a Storm at Sea quilt, lap size or larger, using the Summer 2021 Fabric bundle. I received the collection Bellingham Bay - designed by Deb Tucker’s Studio 180 Design.

Bellingham Bay

Those of you who know me know that these are not my favorite colors. I find them dark and depressing.  Guess this was an added dimension to the challenge.  

I turned to EQ8 to mock-up the color combinations to come up with a ...

A is for Abacus.

Abacus is a bonus quilt made from leftover triangles while making the RSC blocks this year.  I made a total of 30 Sister's Choice blocks, resulting in 60 bonus blocks. In the pictures below you can see how the herd grew.

In the beginning

Red ones

Purple Ones

It grows!

Almost there

Finished Flimsy

Baste, shall we?

Finished!!!

A few weeks ago I shared my new daily project, WIPs Be Gone with Leanne of Devoted Quilter. Here's a wrap up of all the works in progress I worked on during the first 25 days (of the last 100 days of 2021).

My commitment to myself is to spend at least 15 minutes (though often it's longer) making progress on a WIP. My goal is to finish 4 larger quilts before the end of the year as many of my finishes in the last year and a half have been mini quilts. You'll see that I ...

 It's been a busy week!  My husband and I went on a three day, two night get-away this week--a much needed break from the usual routine.  There was some quilting action in the sewing room before we left, and some knitting progress while we were away.  My daughter and Finn are here visiting this weekend for Thanksgiving so there was a long walk at the park today followed by ice cream--Finn had a little bit of my husband's Country Pumpkin ice cream. I will share some pictures of our week below. 

First up, my Charm Square quilt--I pin ...

Four years ago this week, I took an improv piecing workshop with Karen Foster of Capitola Quilter. She taught Improv Abstraction, using two methods of improv curves, for the workshop with Bay Area Modern. In my #99DaysofWIPs this summer I focused on projects that had been started in quilt workshops such as this one.

I used the remaining solids in these two colors, Kona Pewter and Nautical, to fill in and add to the blocks I'd created in the workshop.

I added smooth curve walking foot quilting, inspired by my recent walking foot class with Jacquie Gering. I started ...

I have named him Varun, after the Hindu deity of sea and sky and rain. By now Varun has traveled the width of the country and reached Bernie on the west coast.

Varun  - 60" by 80"

Varun - Green Backing

Each plus block finished at 10" square. 48 blocks were arranged 6 by 8 for a finished quilt measuring 60" by 80". Varun is my contribution to the Positivity QAL and is a Mercyful Quilt. 

Thank you from Mercy Hospital

Mercyful Quilts Update

Wrapped with Kindness (may need tissues)

A Note from Mercy Hospital

Here are the pictures showing the progression ...

I'm not a huge fan of the colour orange and yet, this is my fourth or fifth orange quilt now. Turns out my stash had quite a few orange fat quarters in it and I do like it with a black background, so when I made the decision to work on the Pulsar quilt and make a crib size quilt from it, I pulled four orange fat quarters and Kona Black.

I cannot tell you how much I love this pattern! It was super fun to make and I just love the results. This design is so versatile, I ...