Saturday, November 29, 2014

My son's mystery quilt is morphing

Well I have been talking and showing you a few WIP pictures of my son' Christmas quilt.... Well just as a good mystery takes the reader through a series of clues to tease and misguide you, I am not sure  I will be ablle to complete this story until I actually have something bound and under the tree!  The newest clues to the final outcome are...1) I am running out of time and 2) the improperly cut star material has worked out fine for the star itself but not for the background pieces...I see a trip to the LQS in my future...but in the meantime I don't have enough material to replace the background. 

But, I have enough of another material for a chevron... 

Mmmmmmm... 

So here is what I have come up with as it is laid out on my design floor. There was more than enough material and it's all cut correctly ( so much better than the earlier fiasco! ) I see at least one piece that is out of place but that will be fixed soon enough.  I've got my fingers crossed. 

So this weekend it's all about Kathleen's quilt which I won't show you just in case she is peeking :-)  and putting this chevron together.  Despite the small frustrations I am loving every minute of "my son's quilt from ...." struggle.  The star quilt will still get done and I already have a taker or two for it, so all is not lost. 

Stay tuned for more highlights in my journey to uncover my son's real quilt !  

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

My son's quilt from ......

I designed his quilt, bought the material, and then cut all 600 pieces.  Everything good you say? That's what I thought but then two things went wrong. First I didn't buy enough material of one colour and so after I started cutting I decided to make the quilt pattern smaller. I was going to just take out a row and a column because the original was quite large. Some how I switched the size of the block as well, changing how everything fit together. Second error, I started putting it together but soon realized that half of the pieces that required the most material (same colour) was supposed to be cut on the reverse side of the fabric (similar to stars). Ahhhhhhhhh. 

So I changed the quilt to a LeMoyne star and am using what material I can and adding to it. It will be a similar size and similar colours. So then, I have never done a Lemoyne star before....you see where this is going?  I cut parallelograms rather than breaking the shapes into squares and triangles and had a terrible time with the first five stars until I watched a Craftsy class and figured it out. So now I have nice neat and clean points (not all perfect but getting there) and they even lie flat!  

So lessons started but obviously not learned...did I tell you I was trying to use as much of the cut pieces from the original start?  

Well here's what I have so far. I need 30 stars of three colour combos.  


On the plus side I am getting better at bringing the points together and ending up with flat stars...now I have to see if I can piece in the dark green background from the original or if I have to change it to another colour...white?  But that doesn't suit his life style. So it might be off to the fabric store..a 200km drive.  Black?  Mmmmm...I have enough white, black, or burgundy brown. 


What do you think?

Monday, November 10, 2014

QUILTY weekend


Well I started out he weekend with two things on my list.  One was a quilt for my son and the other is a custom quilt for a friend of my daughter.  Although I don't want to post pictures of them yet they are going well.  But in between working on them I needed the odd break and so I cut and pieced together two little quilts...one is all stitched and ready for quilting, the other is still on my horizontal design wall... The floor :-)  I quite like the look of both of them.  The pink one has lots of room to add some quilting detail.






On the topic of my son's quilt... My son's quilt has been the quilt from......well, you know!  That's another post.....


 


Saturday, November 1, 2014

Saturday at home

My work is taking me away from home at least two days a week these days.  The one thing I hate is to come home after a 200km drive and then have to think about whats for supper.  So I thought I would get in front of things and prepare some freezer meals.  I made chili, Spanish chicken (omg so good!) ,

  
 
chicken soup, apple crisp with loads of cinnamon on top (can't you imagine whipped cream or vanilla ice cream melting in pools on the top),  

 

bumble berry pie,


 and corn and bacon quiche (a personal favourite), 

 

to go with the veggie soup already frozen.  So now we are set with about 11 single meals and 14 or more double meals. And dessert to boot!  



And between dishes I fooled around with some tumbler shapes, cutting them up and stitching them together in different ways (so much for the size of my baby quilt - not sure what it will turn into. ) but it has been fun.