A Pumpkin "Snowman" Wall Hanging

Fall is such a lovely season to decorate for.  The long hot days of summer are cooling down and ones thoughts turn to nesting for the winter.  Making ones home cozy and comfy.  I thought a good way to do this would be to make a new fall wall hanging.  I have not made one in simply ages.  I bought Jan Patek's book "We Gather Together" last fall.  The season slipped away from me and I did not make a single one of the simply divine little quilts.  I pulled it out again this year and fell in love with this guy.

 He is hand appliquéd.  I usually do a machine blanket stitch on wall hangings.  I have to say, I am so proud of doing the appliqués by hand.

 After quilting this on my domestic machine, I riffled through my collection of fall buttons for embellishments.

 The backing is an ancient piece of fabric from my stash with corn on it.  Fitted in really well with the fall theme.

Are you working on a special new fall decoration?  Have fun with it and thank you so much for visiting.

A Big Secret Sewing Project

There has been blog posting silence from my neck of the woods because I have been working on a very secret project!  My four kids and their spouses and my grand baby came home to spend Labour Day with us.  We had a week long reunion and it was the best of times.  I had decided to make each child a picnic quilt.

 I had been sewing for weeks.  I used Patriotic Picnic and the tutorial by MSQC!

 I added a different inner border and binding color for each quilt.  There are three various shades of blue and one yellow one.

 I did an overall meander inside the inner border, a figure eight within the inner border, and a meander with stars in the outer border.  Each quilt measures 56" x 56"

I am happy to report that the kids loved them.  Only a quilter would add a plastic tarpaulin to go underneath the quilt to save it from damp and mud stains!  Now I just have my own picnic quilt to quilt.  That makes a total of five of these quilts.  They were a joy to make for sure and an enormous pleasure to gift to my kiddos.

Thank you for stopping by to visit.

Works in Progress.

I have so many works in progress.  I thought I would share 3 English Paper Piecing projects with you today.  I am sad to say that I have been working on this Christmas Diamond Hexagon quilt for a number of years now.  I think this might just be the year that it gets done.  I have made 3 new blocks this week.  If I can keep this momentum going, I should have it done by Christmas.

This is an EPP'd quilt made with jewel shapes.  Two jewel pieces make a heart.  One row the hearts are up and the next row the hearts are down.  They interlock beautifully.  This is going to be a sort of a lap size quilt.  The fabrics are all florals.  

This is a new project which I have just started.   It is a sew along and can be found on Instagram under #kingfisherquiltalong

Do look it up!  You might just find yourself starting a new project too.  I had, as a scrap management method made hundreds of 1/2 inch hexagons and just kept throwing them into a shoebox.  My shoebox of basted hexies is about 3/4 full.  Finally I have the perfect project to put these tiny treasures to good use.

Thank you so much for stopping by.  Have a lovely weekend.  I wish you lots of sewing hours.

Love

Chantal

Diamond Railfence Completed!

A few years ago I stitched up this pretty railfence using Petal by Aneela Hoey.  I love the color combinations in this collection of prints.  I think the pattern is from the Missouri Star Quilt Company and is one of Jenny Doan's Friday video tutorials.  

After quilting I auditioned MANY fabrics for the binding and finally settled on a flange binding.  I love how this navy and white stripe frames the quilt.  The contrast of the soft pink just works so well.

As there is yellow in this quilt, I decided to go with a yellow backing.  Yellow is one of my favorite colors and I use it often.  It is a ray of sunshine and a happy color in my mind.  I quilted this top very densely on my domestic sewing machine.  About 10" into the quilting I did seriously wonder what I was thinking.  I went through many bobbins of thread.  I do love the texture though.

You can see the diamonds nicely in this photo.  

I am super happy to have ticked a UFO off the list of many quilt tops waiting to be quilted.  Now to find the next one to quilt.  

Thank you for visiting.

Progress on Hexie Temperature Quilt

I have been stitching a temperature quilt along with Sarah of Sarahdidit.blogspot.com .  We started on 1 June 2017.  I have had so much fun working on these flowers for my temperature garden.

They work up really quickly.  Each rosette has seven hexagons which represents one week.  I decided to turn them into flowers because I have a quilt which is made from rosettes appliquéd to a background.  I needed something different.  A stem and two leaves set on point made the quilt blocks look totally different.  This is really a fun project and you can start one any time if you want to.  It is never too late to join in the quilty fun!

Thank you for visiting.

Love

Chantal

Christmas Tumblers - A Finish!

In the lead up to Christmas, what could be more fun than working on a Christmas quilt.  I have been buying Christmas fabric for many years and have made many different projects from them.  I am always left with some fabric at the end of a project.  My collection of Christmas fabric is fairly substantial and fairly old.  So I decided to make a tumbler quilt to show off all the oldies but goodies and also to get some of them out of the stash.

I wanted this quilt to be used and not so precious that I felt sorry for it.  I want it to be snuggled under on a cold winters night, not up on a shelf somewhere.  

I cut 5" strips from yardage and used the tumbler template from the MSQC.  It was so much fun visiting with and cutting some of these old fabrics.  There may or may not be a few crunchy fabrics in there that were bought before I was aware of quilt store quality fabric as opposed to other stores fabrics.    I stitched them all together in rows of 20 tumblers and there are 17 rows.  Next I did an overall meander because the fabrics are busy.  I am so thrilled with this quilt.  As it happens I only made a small dent in the fabric and ended up cutting so many tumblers that I have decided to make the kids a Christmas quilt too.

I had to include a pic of my sweet lap sitter kitty, keeping me company in the evenings while I hand stitch.  

I wish you a wonderful weekend.

Love

Chantal 

Kaleidoscope! A Finish!

When I went on retreat in July, Kaleidoscope by Lellaboutique was one of the classes we could take.  The lovely Vanessa Goertzen herself taught the class.  It is a really fun pattern to make.

The pattern uses 2.5" strips so I had picked a jelly roll to take to retreat with me.  As I started making the quilt blocks I noticed that they were not laying flat and were pulling awkwardly.  After a bit of troubleshooting I found the jellyroll strips, much to my annoyance were 1/8" shy of 2.5".  Well, I had to abandon it and since I was not at home where I could shop in my stash, decided to make it a two color quilt.  I found a sweet little flower print which reads almost as a solid.  It worked out perfectly.

There is a tiny yellow flower in the print which inspired me to choose a yellow binding to help those flowers pop.  I am so pleased that I did!

What to do with those wide, solid borders?  I knew feathers would be gorgeous.  I was scared to try them in such a visible large space.  I gritted my teeth, put on my big girl panties and got stuck in.  I am so happy I did.  Feathers are really forgiving and so much fun to make.  This quilt delights me.  

Had a good 6 to 7" of snow yesterday.  It was early evening when I got done with my snow shoveling chores.  The light was so pretty and it was still snowing a bit.  

Thank you for visiting.  Have a wonderful day.

Love

Chantal