PEAR PINCUSHION

I've wanted to make one of these for years but somehow never got around to doing it. It was a fun, quick project. Why did I wait so long? I'm going to make another one (the stitching on the leaf is a little messed up). Might even make an apple, pumpkin and peas in a pod!

Happy Stitching!
corina

Here's the link for the pear tutorial and several other free patterns http://www.oakshottfabrics.com/Free-Patterns.aspx

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas!! Wishing you all the very best for the holidays and the New Year!!

I've been busy making Christmas gifts which I can't show yet, but can show you this top....

 

I designed this for a class I'm teaching in February that I've called Chevron Craze. What's been on mind most lately is my Grandson. Wish I could be near him but he's a bit too far away. He's already getting big. All that growing makes him a bit sleepy!

 

Happy Stitching!

corina

Grandson!!!

My mind hasn't been on quilting. I have a reason...............

My Daughter with our Grandson!

Our little angel.

Circles Rule!

It has been super busy here lately, and will get much worse over the next week! I am going to be a Grandma sometime in the next 2 weeks!!!!! Happy Dance!!!! My daughter is due the 21st and I will be flying out to be with her. I'm sure you will all be sad for me when I tell you she lives in Athens, Greece. I know, I know, you have to do what you have to do. If it means I have to spend 3 weeks in Greece that is the sacrifice I will have to make. The quilt top you see is a gift for her Mom and Dad In Laws. I am quilting that tomorrow. Now I need to make a baby quilt by next Wednesday too. It's not totally my fault that the baby quilt isn't made yet. You see, dear daughter could not decide on what colors she wanted. As an excited grandma I bought several cute panels, border prints, cutesy prints etc. And what has she decided that she wants..................modern in grey, white and a touch of yellow.  I guess I will be making many colorful primary baby quilts in the future. The new fabric purchases for the baby quilt are these.

 And now for some Kitty pictures. Here is Honey. Turns out she had been eating my feral cat's food for a couple of weeks. We caught her and found out she was 12 and originally from one of the shelters. We decided to foster her for them as no owners could be found. She was skinny at just over 6lbs and had many abscessed teeth. A total of 17 teeth were removed. She was in so much pain that even under general anesthesia her jaw was chattering and they had to give her needles on top of it. Here she is 2 lbs heavier, happy and showing how well she matches our rug.

Camouflage Cat! perfect match

Several weeks around such a gentle creature who never hissed or scratched even though she was in tremendous pain and the result was inevitable. WE ARE A FOSTER FAIL!Welcome home Honey!

Happy Stitching
corina

Who's Taken Over my Sewing Room??

BORDERS?

Bali top is finished-maybe. Should I add borders? I'm tempted to just bind it with black. I don't know if it really needs borders.

Which Way is UP? Blues on top?

Or Reds on top?

 I am cutting out more rectangles today. I need to make this quilt again - for me! I'm linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and WIP Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network. Check out what everyone else is working on!

Happy Stitching
corina

Bali Stripping

Too hot to be outside so am in the sewing room. I'm busy making a donation quilt for the guild as part of a strip exchange challenge. Hope to get the top finished this week.

I'm linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and WIP Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network. Check out what everyone else is working on!

Happy Stitching
corina

FALLING LEAVES IN SUMMER???

The raffle quilt for the Assiniboine Circle Quilter's quilt show is off my design wall and at the longarmer's to be quilted. Thousands of squares were cut out of fabrics donated by our guild's members. Each member received a kit to make a 10" maple leaf block, an angel appliqued the stems down, then my friend and I had a blast arranging them on my design wall (along with an additional 1500 or so 2 1/2" squares). I think everyone is pleased with the result.

Now that my design wall is free again I can start quilting for myself. I just don't know what to do first!!

Happy Stitching
corina

ps the show is on Sunday, September 22 2013 from 11 to 4:30. It is held at the St. Francois Xavier Community Club, which is about 15 minutes west of Winnipeg, Manitoba

pss forgot to mention the border design we used was from https://carterquilter.wordpress.com. She has lots of free patterns. 

Violin?

Somehow I got a little sidetracked. In the middle of a ton of quilting projects I switched direction and started taking violin lessons. I've never been drawn to the violin, am not musical and the only instrument I have ever played was a short stint with the accordion at age 12. I started playing that because the "c" note had a rhinestone embedded in it. A very good reason don't you think?

Maybe this happened because I'm so deliriously happy that I am going to be a Grandma sometime around Halloween!!!! There will be many baby quilts in the near future you can be sure! For now though, I'm going to torment my dogs with some awful screeching on the violin (I feel so very talented when all 3 start howling the moment I pick it up!).

Happy Stitching
corina

Just a Quickie

I keep waiting for time to do a proper post that covers a bunch of stuff that has been happening, which means I haven't posted anything for ages! So here's a quickie picture of our guild's raffle quilt in progress. Lots more blocks to come in, lots of squares to be added between the blocks.

I'm linking up to the WIP WEDNESDAY at the Needle and Thread Network. My fellow Canadian bloggers have been busy! I'm also linking up to the  WIP WEDNESDAY at Freshly Pieced. Lots of inspiration!

Happy Stitching!
corina

FNSI Results

 

Working on a little Winter White this week. Very fitting, considering we've had a ton of snow and lots of -34 C nights!

New Design Wall & Fabric Shopping Spree

 Here is my new fab design wall. I guess I should have taken a picture before I covered it with the quilt for my husband, but I couldn't wait. A little hard to get the full quilt in the frame, so I took it from a side view. It is such a pleasure to have enough room to lay out a whole quilt.

I guess I was a pretty good wife this year (or maybe Todd has a memory problem Ha Ha). He gave me a fabric lover's dream gift for Christmas-a shopping spree at Hamel's Fabrics!!! It took me at least two hours online to choose what I wanted, and I loved every minute. The package arrived today and I felt like I was a little kid on Christmas morning.

I tore it open before it even hit the table

Fabric HEAVEN!

The colors are showing a little too bright, more muted colors. I really am in love with Civil war fabrics at the moment. In fact, they have ousted Kansas Troubles out of top spot which I never thought would happen. This year I vow to start doing things a little differently. I will use all my favorite fabrics up first, instead of holding on to them because they are too special to cut into. I have more than a few "special" pieces that I've held onto for soooo long I don't even like them anymore Ha Ha. How ridiculous is that!?! Has that ever happened to you?

Well, I have to get back to organizing my stuff. I'm hoping my special order will be here soon and I need to be ready!

Happy Stitching
corina

Sewing Room Redo!

Here is my first UFO of the year, my husband's Christmas gift. I wrapped a picture of the pattern and put it under the tree, with a note saying to look on my design wall. I would have had lots of time to finish the quilt, if I wouldn't have kept changing which pattern I was going to do! This is going to be the biggest quilt I've ever made, at 94" square. I'm pretty sure my husband will see the finished quilt by next Christmas! I'm in the process of piecing a gazillion squares for the borders (slow progress with the redo happening). Most of the fabrics were purchased online from Hamel's Fabrics.  They had a fat quarter frenzy sale and the gals hand picked 50 perfect fat quarters for me, an assortment of Civil War reproductions and muddy, taupey fabrics.

While we were looking at the quilt on the wall, he mentioned that during his holidays he may have time to get a small project done if there was something I wanted, but no guarantees. I can't remember what I said I wanted because the little project has turned into a sewing room REDO!! I am so excited!!

 My old design wall was removed from this closet and shelves installed (funny, I seem to remember a few years back asking to have the shelves removed and a design wall put in, hmmm).

Some of the shelves are just plywood at the moment, using what we had on hand. Eventually they will get replaced with melamine shelving. Two sliding basket units were added, and some empty space was left for larger totes, sewing cases etc. While admiring the setup, I thought the empty space for totes made it look like a desk area. In one of my very rare lightbulb moments, I realized that my existing sewing table setup would fit into the space. So the closet now looks like this!

The beautiful maple set of drawers was made for me by my husband last year :) The sewing table top is a piece of melamine with a cutout and platform for my machine. I have got a lot of work ahead, organizing the shelves. It doesn't show in the picture, but it is a war zone in the other half of the room.

 Tomorrow I will post pictures of the new design wall. It's 92"h x 107" wide, much bigger than the previous one. I just need to buy new batting for it. I can't wait to see all 49 blocks of Todd's quilt on it. I am also waiting for a special delivery for my space, but more about that later!

I'm linking up to Work In Progress Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network. Check out what my fellow Canadian Bloggers are doing! I've also linked up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Lots of inspiration!

Happy Stitching
corina