Online Class

I attended my second online quilting class this week.

The class was called "Traditional Variations" taught be Cheryl Arkinson. It was a wonderful day exploring creative ways to make traditional blocks. I played with friendship star variations and these are the blocks I sewed during the class.

Cheryl gave us so many ideas to run with and it was a day of cutting and sewing and trying new things. For example these are friendship stars made with curves instead of HST blocks. 

I'm going to make a few more blocks and turn this collection into a backing for my 21 Stars quilt.

What I discovered when playing was that one idea sparks another idea (and more scraps) and it was so FUN! Remember when we used to play as children just for the sake of having fun? As adults we think everything has to be purposeful and goal focused. Especially during covid there have been so few opportunities to play and have fun with our  friends. This class was a great reminder to enjoy the benefits of play - it's good for your health and we all need to be as healthy as we can during this pandemic. Hence... we need to play more!! I'm so grateful for this reminder!

You can read more about Cheryl and the workshops she offers here and can read her blog here.

New Project - Step #3

The friendship stars made earlier in the week gave me an energetic boost for this scrap challenge. I really like them. Then I took a good look at the fabric pile and found these 2 fun pieces that look a bit like fireworks.

I fussy cut the circles in different sizes and bordered them on 3 sizes with the background fabric strips.

Okay, now what should I do with those?

I just kept on sewing the small scraps to a piece of background fabric and accumulated a pile of these 2 piece units.

And I learned how hard it is to photograph this growing quilt with accurate colour since there is so much bright blue.

 Thinking of the next step...thinking...thinking!

Finally I decided to join the fireworks with a pile of the crumb pieced units and got these fun strips. Oh yah... this is going well.

Now, what next?

Stay tuned for an update on Monday!

New Project - Step #2

As I'm working on an improv quilt, I keep asking myself the question "what could I add to make me like this quilt more"? The answer that came to me working on my scrap challenge quilt was...  throw in a few friendship stars. Perfect for a "sister's scrap challenge" project since we are all quilting sisters!

I picked my favourite piece from the scrap pile which was a batik binding and I made it into 6" friendship star blocks. I was 1 HST short, so I used that opportunity to add one of the three selvages that I was given. See it on the bottom right?

I decided to sew the stars together with the improv crumb pieced blocks and it looked good in a 12" block. 

So that's another decision made as this will be the design unit.

What next?

Scrap Chat

Before I start talking about scraps today, I should  announce the winner of the Slow Sunday Stitching anniversary prize
... drum roll...
link up #6 is the winner which is Sandra from Cro's Nest!
Congratulations Sandra ... email me your address and I'll pop your little gifts in the mail.

And now on to scrap chat...

Tula scraps from Debby

from time to time I receive a pile of scraps that someone knows they shouldn't throw in the garbage, but they really don't want them. Did you see the donation quilt I recently made with leftover HSTs from a quilter in my guild? Wonderful treasures can be made with little scraps!

piles of similar pieces

Aren't these so pretty? How could you possibly throw them in the trash?!?
I mean seriously....

I start by spreading out the scraps and looking for similar pieces to pile up together. I study the shapes (lots of triangles in this collection) and contrasting colours and wonder to myself "what could I make with these"?

triangles in squares

As soon as I get an idea, I start sewing. I remind myself of 2 things:
1) there is no "right" answer to the above question. 
Anything could happen!
AND...
2) Nothing could happen! 

I have learned that the longer I wait to start sewing, the higher the probability that nothing will happen and the bag will go in the UFO closet.

Blocks are sewn and pressed, now it's time to step back and look at what has been created so far. 

Well now... that's a little bit frenetic!
These blocks could become part of the scrappy backing for the Tula Pineapple quilt. 
Or do they want to be their own little quilt?

The moral of this blogpost is, if you have scraps that you are tempted to throw out, I guarantee there is someone out there that will sew them up. So find your nearest scrap lover and save the pieces for them!

June OMG

My June UFO goal is to finish the improv "Dots and Dashes" quilt top. It's been in time out for about a year and it really wants to become a quilt top.

The reason why this quilt became a problem and went to the UFO closet was due to decision fatigue. When you are not following a pattern, and you are making an improv quilt that requires constant decision making, and your brain is too full of all the other real life things you need to make decisions about, it sometimes becomes too much. I need to be in a clear brain space to work on improv quilts. 
I really do enjoy the process and love the finished projects, but need the right head space to pull it off. Hopefully that will happen in June!
So now the pieces are out again, the project has a time limited goal and the pressure is on the fun can begin!
Linking up to June goal setting party over at OMG.

Improv update

Happy July 4th to readers from the USA! I hope you are enjoying celebrations with family and friends today!
Here's the update for my improv "dots and dashes" quilt. You can read more about the start of it here if you missed that.  
This is how it was last week.
I stared at it good and hard, and decided I really like the combination of the orderly uniform squares in various combinations, with the occasional strip of different sizes of small scraps sewn in columns. 

Then I picked 3 things that I didn't like and want to change:

1)  I don't like the horizontal lines which were just auditioned on the design wall, so no unsewing was needed.

2) I don't like the little squares touching the vertical lines and wanted white space on both sides of the lines. That did involve some unsewing.

3) I don't like that one of the white on white backgrounds looks yellowish at times. Oh well... definitely can't change that!

I decided it needed to be 5 rows instead of 4 to become a rectangular quilt. I rummaged around in the scraps to figure out if I have enough scraps to stretch it to 5 rows? I think I do and am still working on filling in the spaces.
I had to add in another white on white fabric since the solid white was done.

I auditioned adding chunks of fabric to the ends of the rows to even up the lengths. I'm not sure if those are staying yet.

One of my friends saw the quilt on the design wall and said "I love it... You should write a pattern for that".  
Ummmm NO! That's the fun of improv... there is no pattern, and no two quilts are alike. At times I look at the design wall and think it is just a hot mess. At other times I think it's such a fun quilt and can't wait to sew it all together. That is just how is goes with an improv adventure!
Linking up to Oh Scrap! and Let's Bee Social.

Lovin Improv!

It's very freeing to make quilts using improv methods. No pattern. No end product in mind. You have no idea where the journey is going to take you. Art imitating life.

pile of leftover blocks and scraps

You look at your supplies and ask yourself what do I like about this collection? You just start taking action and see what happens.
You have to park your fears at the door of the quilt studio. You cannot entertain thoughts like "what if it's a total disaster"? You have to give up all your expectations of creating something wonderful. It might be terrible and you might have to do a "walk by drop off" at the guild meeting to dump the whole mess in the scrap bank!

first collection of strips and squares

All your worries about "wasting fabric" have to be put aside so you just focus on the next step of creating and enjoy the process!
Hmmmm...what would I like to sew more of? There has been some deconstruction of leftover blocks and lots of putting things on the design wall and asking myself "what do I like about this" and "how can I fix/change what I don't like". 

10" sections interspersed with Kate Spain squares

I started off this project knowing that the Kate Spain squares from Sarah are 10", so I decided to create blocks that measure 10" and maybe sew them into rows. The Kate Spain squares are pinned on the wall in various widths to create rows. I can see from this photo that some of those squares are not going to make it into this quilt, especially the ones that look too pink or too pale. They will have to be part of the backing. Looking at the photo I'm wondering if I need some horizontal lines to go with all that vertical movement. I'll try some and see if I like it. 

There is no "right" answer in improv... we're just making it up as we go along! The only thing I know for sure is that I am having fun and can't remember what I was working on before this!
Linking up to Small Quilts and Oh Scrap!

Scrappy Saturday

It's aqua month over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and for some unknown reason, most of my projects at the moment involve aqua, so the scraps are everywhere!
First I got a lovely surprise package in the mail from Sarah from Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge. Just look at these pretty Kate Spain fabrics which are mostly aqua, with a bit of lime and purple. The colours reminded me of a triangle quilt I made in 2009, and the Starburst quilt made in 2015. I searched around in the scrap bins and found the leftover blocks and scraps from both of those projects! It's a disaster in my quilt studio but miraculously I can usually find things I need!

Here are all the pieces I found. The plan is to combine the Kate Spain fabrics with the leftovers from these two finished quilts. It's so fun to make an improv quilt using this process. It's kind of like looking in the refrigerator and making a casserole from whatever is in there. You never know how it's going to turn out! 


I also finished up some quarter square triangles for the next border on my Clarissa quilt.

To see more aqua projects in the making, hop over to the weekly RSC link up.

Improv Inspiration

Being inspired by the quilt bloggers posting their projects over at the AHIQ monthly link up, I got out my pink and white improv quilt again. 
It went into the UFO closet last year because the pink just became too much for me! I'm sure a little girl would love all that pink, and even though I like pink, this much pink is hard on my eyes to work on!

This quilt combines two types of blocks started in two different classes:
1) quarter log cabin blocks made in a class with Bethany Garner. The fabric pieces were cut with scissors and pieced in a free from way. 
2) strips sets made in a class with Cinzia Alloca.
This quilt layout just needs a little TLC to make some major progress, but it is competing with The Bear for time in my brain.
Suggestions are welcome!!
Hop over to the AHIQ link up and see all the wonderful improv quilts being made.

Totally in Love!

The Scrap Vortex quilt is FINISHED!  
The photos aren't great because it was late in the day and I had to fiddle with the camera's exposure settings, it was 5 degrees outside, and it was windy. But it's done!
Oh how I love thee, let me count the ways...

1) First of all, I love that it is a finished, useable quilt (instead of a UFO sitting in a closet). I am proud of my efforts to move it constantly forward to completion.

2) I love the asterisk corners and think that creative spark is growing into another whole quilt idea.

3) I love the metaphor that scrap quilts are. All those tiny bits of fabric have joined with their friends to become something amazing! That is the power of a group, and the beauty of a mosaic, with the strengths of each part contributing to the beauty of the whole.

4) I love that the quilt began with a quiltalong at Crazy Mom Quilts, and the quilting design also came from Crazy Mom Quilts! The spiral quilting is perfect for the vortex theme, and I am relieved at how flat this quilt is in spite of all those tiny pieces, bias edges, and intense quilting... there were a lot of variables to manage in this project. This is the back of the quilt, made from two pieces of yardage joined for a simple backing with two seams.

I like this terrible photo because it shows the wind and camera exposure elements I battled to get a good photo. At least I was able to get some shots before the rain started.
Ahh the trials of a quilt blogger.... LOL!

I am so excited to be able to post my finish over at the One Monthly Goal link up! Woo hoo!

Design Wall Monday - Finished Quilt Top

The Scrap Vortex is finally a quilt top!

I started this quilt in June 2015 and it has used up a ton of scraps. The piano key borders took a long time to prepare and attach, but I'm soooo happy with how it all turned out. It is rich with scrappy fabric memories and completely frenetic - just like my life! 
The quilt top measures 59" x 77".
I have a week left in April to get this quilt pin basted, quilted and bound. I feel like I'm on the amazing quilt race TV show...will she reach the finish line in time?!?!
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times. To see some amazing improv quilts, hop over to the AHIQ link up.

UFO update

April is more than half over and I am not exactly on track with my UFO goals, but am making progress in the right direction. I was hoping to have the quilt top finished by now and ready for pin basting, in order to be able to finish the quilt by the end of the month. That goal doesn't feel impossible at the moment, but we'll see what progress the next week brings.

There were 3 tasks to do:
1) The areas of the quilt top that needed to be improved (so I could like the quilt more) are now fixed. That task involved tedious unsewing and resewing, but I'm happy with the changes.

2) The scrappy piano key border strips are almost finished.


3) I made 4 scrappy asterisk blocks and they will be perfect for the cornerstone blocks at the ends of the border strips.

Now I just need some time to connect all these parts together into a quilt top!

PS... hop over the Cynthia's blog to see her fabulous colourwash scrap vortex quilt. She pieced it as a leader-ender project... just wow!
PPS... hop over to the Oh Scrap! link up for more scrappiness and thoughts about backings.

Design Wall Monday

Scrappy piano key strips are on the design wall today. These are going to be borders for the scrap vortex quilt. I am piecing the scraps on wax paper to see if I like this technique. It's keeping the strip sets perfectly even and so far, I'm really liking it. A few more sections are needed to add to the quilt top, but right now it's the perfect mindless piecing job!

To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

April's UFO

My UFO focus for April is the Scrap Vortex. This quilt was started 2 years ago and inspired by a quiltalong at Crazy Mom Quilts. It's such a fun technique for using up scraps and after teaching the improv class in Paris last month, I've been stoked about finishing this quilt.

Here are the tasks:

1) fixing the top 3 things about the quilt top that aren't quite right for my eyes.

2) piecing a scrappy border and attaching it to the quilt top. 

3) spiral quilting using the Crazy Mom Quilts tutorial. It only makes sense that since Amanda Jean started this quilt, I'd use her fabulous quilting idea too!

4) piece and add a scrappy binding. 

Can all this be done in one month? Well, my regular blog readers know that my goals usually exceed my available time.  Considering that my goal for last September took me SEVEN months to finish, I'd say I have a severe case of "delusional doability" (a perfectly coined term I learned from Elaine Therault)!!
Linky up to the April Goal link up and crossing my fingers for a finish within one month!

Scraps and Improv

I am teaching an improv piecing class in Paris (in Ontario, not France!) on Saturday and am getting all my samples out of the closet. I decided that I really wanted to have my Scrap Vortex finished to show the students. It's one of my favourite quilts and it demonstrates how you can use crumbs, scraps and letters to make an "interesting" quilt. 


I started this quilt in June 2015 and this is how it looked when it came out of the UFO closet this week.

I still loved it, and particularly loved that the 'S' in SCRAP turned out to look not as bright as the rest of the word. That's seredipidy!
However, I really wanted to have the word 'vortex' in the quilt, so I pieced the letters, surrounded them with scraps, cut the quilt top in half and inserted the vortex strip.

Here it is...
UGH!
OH NO! 
Definitely not serendipity!

The R's cannot be right above each other! That just didn't look like how I had envisioned it!




Out came the seam ripper, and the quilt top was dissected again! 
I inserted a scrappy strip between the words. 
Better.
But there are a few things that need to be changed so I can like it more. And a great border idea popped into my mind, so this project isn't close to being a finished quilt top yet! But it's ready for a road trip to Paris on Saturday!

Linking up to Cynthia's Oh Scrap! party!

Building Loving Neighbourhoods

When I was at quilt retreat, our guild president showed us how to sew improv house blocks starting with any sized square. It was a little bit scary at first since I didn't want my houses to be totally crazy looking. But every block was more fun to sew than the last. Here are some of the blocks we made at retreat from scraps of batik. Marjorie is going to turn them into a donation quilt. 

Building houses with my Singer 301 (Ethel)

When I heard that the members of the Montreal Modern Quilt Guild were making quilts to donate to the families of the victims of the Quebec City shooting, I couldn't resist participating.

The guild requested 12" house blocks. So I made a little neighbourhood using the Stash Bee tutorial (which is exactly what we learned at retreat) for improv house block construction.  My little houses started out as 6" charm squares and ended up between 4" and 5". 
9 house blocks were joined together to make this 12" neighbourhood, which is in the mail on the way to Montreal.
One little quilt block will not change the world, but it will be part of the efforts to provide more love and comfort in lives and situations where fear and darkness live. 
Linking up to the Let's Be Social party!

Quilt Canada Class #1

My first Quilt Canada class was on improvisational strip piecing and the teacher was Cinzia Alloca from Montreal. I must like improv piecing because last Quilt Canada, I took an improv class too (read about 2014's class here). Here is Cinzia showing some pieces that she is going to combine for a quilt she is working on. This is the first time I have ever worked with strip sets, and it's a whole other process than making improv quilt blocks. It's something I have never tried before.



For this class I started with the quarter log cabin blocks I made in a class I took with Bethany Garner last month. I wanted to combine these blocks with the strip sets from this improv class. I had to whip up another 2 blocks to make an even 12 blocks.

First we cut and strip pieced some sets of fabric to work with and started to play with possible layouts. It was so relaxing to piece these blocks and I loved the look of of the fabric piling up behind the needle. Don't you think it looks like ribbon candy?!? 

This is the beginning of adding strip sets to the sides, and we were encouraged to think about direction of the strips, and the widths. 

Here I am with Cinzia at my sewing machine. When she was making the rounds in the classroom and helping each student, I got a quick photo with her. 
I should also mention that even though I was worried about working with a sewing machine I didn't "know", I didn't have a single problem with this learning this Janome machine. It sewed really well for me all day and I ran it hard!

The next step was adding in the accent fabric, which for my project was lime green. But where should it go, and how much of it do you like, and do you want a strip or a small square?

So many decisions to make and it's all up to you!
I thought my project was looking way too pink, so the next strip sets I made with wider white strips and narrower pink ones.

Here is Cinzia helping me with the layout and making suggestions for improvements and additions. It was fascinating to hear her ideas and to learn how to "see" the process of building a quilt in a different way. 



Here are some of the other projects in development. It was challenging to work on layouts on the floor and I realize that a design wall is really essential when working on a quilt layout. There were some really amazing quilts being created here!

Taking a Quilt Class

Bethany Garner

It has been such a busy week that I haven't had much time for being near the computer. My local quilt guild has quilt teacher Bethany Garner here to help us celebrate the guild's 25th anniversary. It's quite an accomplishment for an organization to be so vibrant and full of exciting and creative energy after all these years! It's such an amazing group of women and I am so so lucky to have found them 22 years ago. 
I was able to take a class with Bethany on Monday called "Creative Design in Patchwork". 
As we all know, taking a class means starting a new UFO.
I started my new quilt using quarter log cabin blocks in the Gees Bend style of using only scissors (no rotary cutters or rulers) to make the blocks. The fabric choices were inspired by a backing fabric that was on my cutting mat, and the scraps and fat quarters that were hanging around. This was not at all the fabric I had intended to take to the class, but there it is, with it's bright and obnoxious orange and pink presence.
It was so fun making these blocks without caring about anything matching or worrying about what the plan for the quilt is. 

So fun until you put them on the design wall and have to actually look at them.
OMG that's bright! They're so bright they could be a night light!
Oh sheesh, there really is no plan on how to deal with these things!
I have no idea what's next. 
I guess I'll just keep making more blocks until I'm tired of them, or a plan emerges.