minatures .. what a joy

I decided that I wanted to try my hand a minature quilts.  I have a huge collection of dolls and figured they could use  some quilts.  I did a search on the net and found some interesting patterns for some minature quilts.  I decided to try this one

http://www.caroldoak.com/pdfs/NewMini.pdf

 

The squares are very small.  Here is a pic of them with a quarter in between.

I worked on it most of Saturday and just loved it.  It was like doing a minature puzzle.  While doing it I kept thinking I'm never throwing out even the smallest pice of material.  As you can tell it is using paper piecing, this is the first time I've used this technique and I really enjoyed it.   Here is the top finished. 

 

It measures 12" by 12".  I'm quilting it now and will take another pic of it then, probably with one of my dolls.  I bordered it with the orange that I had left over from the easystree quilt.  I think that the orange jhas become one of my favorite fabrics.

 

 

I love weekends

I love weekends I can do some seing.  Working from 8:00 to 4:00 week days doesn't give me much time during the week to get things done.  The problem usually is that i plan on doing more on weekends than there are hours to do them in.  This eeken I was able to accomplish some things.  The  first thing I wanted to do was to get a picture of where I've gotten to on the easy street quilt.  Now for most people this would be an easy job, but not for me.  We are in the middle of winter which means I leave for work in the morning and its dark out and when I get home at night it's dark.   To get the true colors of something you need natural light, which means outside.  Ok got up Saturday morning and it was snowing lightly.  No the best place would be on the clothes line in the back yard, but that would mean trudging through 3 feet of snow carrying the quilt top and clothes pins.  Now I had no motivation to do that, so the problem was going to be how to convince hubby to get the idea to do it for me and think it was his idea.  Well after showing him some of the blogs with what people did to get good pictures of their quilts, he came up with the brilliant idea to hang it on the clothes line and take pictures of it.  Now there is a smart man lol.  

Now the next thing I wanted to do was some work on these 2 1/2 inch squares in 5x5 squares in a baby blanket I've been working on. I was able to get 11 more squares done. Which made it a 3 x 5 (14" )square quilt.  Which is 42" by 70" quilt too big for a baby blanket and with the green borders it just doesn't look babyish so I think I'll add 5 more blocks and make it 4 by 5 which will be  56 by 70 which will make a lap quilt.  So next weekend if I don’t get side tracked.

 

Now the next thing I have been meaning to do which is boring but important is to backups computer. I have tons and tons of pictures and even patterns on my computer and all my favorites, if my  computer was to crash then it might take me days to get it all back, so just in case it only takes an hour at most to back it all up to my external hard drive, and now it's done.  Then I cleaned up a lot of pictures off my hard drive since I have them backed up.  This is one of the pictures I found on my hard drive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see I collect dolls and love knitting and crocheting.  This was one of my periods when I knitted Norweign sweaters, Hubby also has ONE.

This was a during a time when I decided some of the dolls needed nightgowns.  The dolls are 3 American Girl Dolls and the other 4 are Baby Face Dolls.  The Baby Face dolls ares some of my favorite dolls.  They are also sitting on my favorite afghan.  The afgan is a pattern I first did over 20 years ago and Its always been my favorite.  It's done in Tunisian crochet.  There are two afgans the other is folded on the right of the picture.

 

 

Easystreet Comming To An End

Ok still working on Bonnie's Easystreet.  I'd better post now, I didn't get as far as I wished but I keep on plugging aay.  This is the first Mystery challenge I have ever done.  I really enjoyed doing it and never thought I woould ever make a quilt with this many pieces.  Here it is so far...

 

 

 

 

 

The individual blocks

 

 

I hope I can get the top finished this weekend and then start thinking about a border.

Please check out all the quilts at Bonnie's site

http://quiltville.blogspot.ca/p/easy-street-mystery.html

 

 



 

Wednesday middle of the week is it 1/2 over or is there still 1/2 left?  I think this week  its 1/2 over for me.  The weather is suppose to be nice all week, and I'm getting closer to finishing Easystreet, last night was able to get a corner triangle done 2 border triangles, and was even able to sew to squares one corner triangle and one tap triangle together.  Which leaves me left to complete 3 corner triangles 6 B squares and 9 side triangles.  My goal is to have it all together by Sunday. Have to take the pup Amy to the vet tonight, she had an accident with her eye and has had stitches keeping one eye closed for about 10 days now.

I guess it will be a short post today as there is nothing else I have to say.  Have a good day.

Tuesday A day closer to the Weekend

Tuesday morning! It is a dull day here in Montreal, but on the warm side for a winter day 36 degrees F or 1 C.  I took this picture this morning from one of the windows on the floor where I work.  It is one of my favorite windows to look out.

Last night I did some work on the Easystreet project, but don’t get a lot of time during the week.  By the time I get home from work eat supper, talk to hubby, I have about 3 hours to do work on something, and I like the last hour before I go to bed to be something that I can sit in the living room and watch tv doing.  So as of now I have done the 16 blocks of  A, and 1 of block B, so still 8 more block B and 12 triangles and the 4 corner triangles, then I Should be able to start putting it together.  I’m interested in seeing what it will look like finished as this was not well planned on my part.  I started by ripping apart theses squares that I had done,  I didn’t like the look of the squares at all, so apart they came.  

Then I wasn’t sure that I even like the colors themselves, but at the time I wanted to buy fat quarters and this was all the store had .  So I decided to try this mystery challenge by Bonnie Hunter.  I worked on the quilt during the 10 days I had off at Christmas,  I was always concerned that I would hit a part where I wouldn’t know what to do.  I was able to follow along the complete time, ok not sure if those flying geese are flying or have crashed, but they are there.  I then needed some other colors to go into the quilt, and I knew I had bought a few different types of black on white prints on my travels, so out came those from my stach. Now let me explain I have two spare rooms upstairs, but do all my sewing at the dining room table.   When I need to press seems which I needed to do often in this quilt, I pull out some spare material and use it as an ironing board.   While I was pressing the pieces from part 2, 3 and probably 4 I uses this Orange fabric I had.  I had bought this a few months back it was very wide material,  made for backing, but I loved the color of it so I bought a meter of it.. Yes here in Montreal we use the metric system and believe me I’m old enough to remember the days before we did, I always remember that a meter is basically 3 inches longer that a yard.   Well I then needed another color added to the quilt so figured why not use it, so that how the orange ended up in this quilt.  Tonight I hope to get at least 3 more of block B done and maybe a triangle or 2.  

Square A there are 16 in this pile and they are bot pressed yet

This is square B 1 finished and 11 more to go 

Years gone bye

I’ve just spent a few hours looking at all the quilts from easystreet by Bonnie Hunter, and the more quilts I looked at the more I like the real scrappy ones, not the ones that looked like Bonnie’s.  Now don’t get me wrong I think hers  is beautiful, but this was a scrappy quilt, so I expected people to use scraps they had, not go and buy the fabric for the quilt.   I spent 2 weeks during Christmas working on the quilt, and I loved every minute of it, I didn’t buy any fabric for this quilt, all the material I used was material I already had.  I kept feeling my grandmothers hand on my shoulder saying “go girl, now you understand”.  She quilted crocheted knitted and painted.  I’m sure she didn’t go out and buy the fabric for her quilts but used material from clothes or sheets or whatever.  I know that we should use cotton thread on are quilts, but shhhhh for the piecing I use polyester as my grandmother had spools and spools of thread, and I refuse to throw it away and go buy cotton.  I have to be realistic with myself, I am never going to be a good quilter, with working full time and having so many different crafts I am interested in  I just don’t have the time or patience to be a good quilter.  So my quilts are not going to be handed down and become treasured treasures, they are just going to be for my pleasure.  The one thing that will take a long time with all my quilts is going to be the hand quilting part.  Yep hand quilted, first I don’t want to pay a $100 dollars to have someone machine quilt It for me.  I also am not sure I like the idea of machine quilting a hand made quilt.  I know I pieced the quilt using a sewing machine, so what is the difference?  Well for me I sewed the pieces together, not someone else.  I remember one of the last quilts my grandmother made, she had finished it and was going to start the hand quilting on it, when my dad came up with the idea to use the sewing machine to quilt it.  He sat down at the sewing machine and machine quilted the quilt, and my grandmother just kept saying “that is not the right way”.  I guess for me I am like my grandmother, it’s just not the right way.

Yes that time of year back to work. Work really is a 4 letter word. I'm getting tired, ok being 56 doesn't help and being in a field (computers) that changes constantly  is difficult. Just when you think you know something they change it on you.
I worked during the Christmas holidays on the easystreet mystery quilt. I spent 10 days catching up, and just like me there was absolutely no planning. I decided to do the mystery quilt as I had  a package layer cake and jelly roll that I had bought a year ago.  I had started a quilt and didn’t like it,  I’m not sure I even like the colors in the layer cake.  I bought it because it was a layer cake and I had read about them but hadn’t seen any.  I live in Montreal, Quebec and there are not may quilting stores here in Quebec. This past weekend I finished 14 of 16 of the main squares in the quilt,  I hope that I can sew at least 2 squares of the 9 I need each night this week.  That way I will only need to do the triangles and put it together by the following weekend.   I’m not sure that is realistic.  If not I’ll just post what I have done.

2013 a NEW YEAR begins

The start of a new year.  I just had 10 days off, but unfortunately back to work tommorrow.  2012 had good points and bad ones.  One of the good points as Amy a new little pup we adopted in December her mom was a german shepard but a dad or grandparent must of been a bernese.  She is adorable and has a great personality.She likes quilted things too,  Because of Amy we didn't have a tree this year so the christmas ornaments I made ill have to wait till next year to be hung on a tree,