Christmas break is here

I have actually gotten some piecing in.  Working on the Grandmother Flower Garden.  I hope to have at least 4 rows sewn together before the break ands and 1 row kitted for working on.  I have missed quilting something awful, so I am hoping to set aside an hour every week.

GFG - Light in the tunnel?

Last week was a good week for hand piecing.  I completed 5 GFG blocks.  I now have only 17 to go before I have all the Grandmother's Flower blocks from the jelly roll pieced.  Then I have to figure out how to put it together.  I'm wondering if I should buy another fabric and use it between the flowers and to do a side boarder.  No idea how much I would need.  I guess I'll wait until I get the blocks done first. 

Not doing any hand work today.  Been doing a lot of knitting lately - socks and mittens for winter and last night I really overdid it watching Christmas specials.  My hands are extremely sore and the knuckles swollen and painful from knitting to much.  I hate having arthritis in my hands.  It doesn't usually bother me as I usually know enough to quit before my hands start hurting.  I finished the second mitt of a pair for my Dad last night and one and a half mittens for my son.  His second mitten will have to wait until the swelling goes down.

I am glad I don't have karate this week.  There's no way I could make a tight fist with my hands like this.  Typing is difficult enough.

I'm going to baste and start machine quilting a holiday table runner today.  Hopefully, I'll be able to find it before the weekend.

Progressing away

I'm up to 47 completed GFG blocks - over the halfway mark now. 

I'm also halfway around the border of my Magic Tile quilt.  Figure it will take me a couple more weeks to finish the quilting.

Poking along

Thanks to landry night, I have the first short side of the Magic Tile quilted.  Then I accidentally skinned my thumb (Ow), so not much hand quilting going on.

I have finished another row of the flower basket quilt.  One more row to assemble and attach, plus borders and that top will be done.

I finished yet another GFG - I am now up to 33 complete.  Almost halfway.

And I've spent a good deal of time playing in EQ7.  I am tring to design an Ocean Waves quilt in EQ.  The block doesn't exist in the software, whcih is very strange.  I managed to draft a block and set it into a quilt, but printing out the instructions I have run into soemthing strange.  I coloured the quilt in 3 colours for simplicity, as I am planning on doing this one scrappy, but the colour/fabric requirement has tossed in a fourth colour and I don't know where it has come from!

Progress...

Well, I got two more of the Grandmother's flower garden blocks pieced while watching karate last night. My ankle isn't up to the stances or kicks. So I sat on the sidelines and pieced GFG blocks. I now have 29 blocks pieced.

And I've gotten a few more pieces on the stained glass. 9 more applique pieces to go and the pillow top will be done. I got some black yli handquilting thread from sew-sister's quilt shop mail order (I think I really like this company) so I'm ready to start the quilting as soon as I get the applique done.

Grandmother's Flower Garden

A trip to Toronto this weekend was very productive in the GFG making. I completed 6 GFG blocks on the bus to and from Toronto.

A header down my basement stairs and the subsequent time (4 hours) spent in Emerg, to find out that my ankle is not broken but very badly sprained saw 2 more of the blocks completed.

Christmas update

Well, Christmas was good for quilting treats. I now have two scrappy runner patterns, a new template, some odds and ends and two quilt kits.

The first is called All Squared Up and is in batiks. The other is a flannel Into the Woods. I'm looking forward to completing them.

I've made progress on the red hearts wallhanging/pillow. I hope to finish the quilting today.

I'm going to be in the city in January, so I hope to get the Hawaiian piece basted so I can take it for working on.

I also got another GFG patch pieced and one partly done.

Found it!

It took a while but I found the perfect fabric for the back border of the Parrot quilt. It's perfect - a sort of splotchy blue colour. I just have to get the borders on and basted now. Problem there as I toasted my last good rotary blade on a pin last night.

And the Christmas lights center is finished. I just need to put the borders on and that quilt top is done as well.

It's slow, but it's progress.

And I have 15 of the hand pieced grandmother's flower garden patches done.

Updates

It's been a while.

I haven't gotten any further on the Christmas Lights other than 2 rows stitched together. I went on the local shop hop and found border fabrics. Sadly, one of my favourite quilt shops was closing that weekend. The owner had passed away. I will miss that little store. That's two of my favourite shops gone now.

The parrot quilt is moving forward. I have the blocks in rows. I just need to do the blind stitching so the rows can be put together. I may get two rows done before I head to Toronto next week. It's definitely something I can do in the hotel room at nights. I am still dithering about adding a border. Now I'm wondering about not adding a border at all, but I think the back needs something to pull the blues together. I'll be on the lookout for a fabric for the back border.

I have 11 GFG blocks together now. Slow and steady - I get the odd one done here and there. I'm going to mark the stitching lines in a bunch and take them to work on in the evenings as well.

Post-IPM update

First - the IPM quilt show was nice - the plastic shielding the quilts was a visual distraction and I suspect it muted the colours significantly. I didn't get a lot of time to look, but I did like several of the quilts.

I bought a Halloween quilt kit with a cat and moon on it called "Meowing at the Moon". It is so cute. I can't wait for a good chance to work on it. Maybe Thanksgiving weekend.

I didn't take the last qayg Parrot with me. I still have half of the last block to finish. I've been making GFG blocks. I did 2 1/2 on the train to the plowing match - was too tired to piece on the way home.

Hexagons

Well, so much for no new projects.

I've started cutting a jelly roll into hexagons to do a grandmother's flower garden as a hand piecing project. I have been resisting doing this for a couple of months. I had bought a package of templates specifically for jelly rolls some time ago.

I've got about 80 more to cut - there will be 560 in total. Ow. I am feeling it in my wrist and back. The colours are interesting. It's an American Jane set of fabrics - sort of limey green, peach, red, blues, pinks. I think the end result may be very pretty. A couple of the strips and polka dots, don't really lend themselves to GFG, but I don't care. I'm going to use them anyways.

The next thing will be to choose the colour sets. Each Jelly Roll strip produced 14 hexes. This will make two flowers and two centres. A total of 80 flowers. I think the final result will be a large lap quilt. The test flower ended up about 6 1/2" across.