It's Time To Bind

It seems that my quilts very seldom go from start to finish in a big rush. Instead, they simmer at various stages. Eventually the spirit moves me and it's on to the next stage, so now this bundle is ready for bindings. As a reminder, from top to bottom they are Snippets, God's Green Earth and Huddle.

All three have been quilted for a few months now but it has taken this long to trim them up and start prepping the bindings. That's okay. I've enjoyed seeing them and knew that once the spirit moved me I'd get at them.

It's amazing how much smaller the pile is now that they are trimmed of the excess batting and binding and how you really see the quilt without all of the extra bits.

And I get to enjoy another good look at Roberta's beautiful quilting...

I've taken a tally of how much I need to cut for each one to take the guesswork out of it.

These are the options I'm looking at: yellow for Snippets, purple and a bit of red for God's Green Earth and the red and cream for Huddle. Now to decide on which one to tackle first!....M

It's The Little Things

I celebrated my birthday a couple of weeks ago and was the happy recipient of a few quilty goodies that made my day. The first is a beautiful Auntie Green's Coverlet Quilt iPhone cover by Brigitte Giblin Quilts. Isn't is pretty? I've had my eye on these covers for some time now. Actually, it's been so long that I wondered if they even made them any more. I never had a phone cover for my cell phone when I was working and it's taken me a couple of years to decide to finally get a phone now that I'm not. After much hemming and hawing about how much I would actually use it, I scored one of my sister Frances' old phones and it suits perfectly. It was also the perfect excuse for this little treat.

My second goodie is a new quilt pattern called Santa's Village. This is another item that I've pined for and now find in my possession. It's about as close to a sampler quilt as I'd go but it's scrappy and I just love that Santa. Isn't he great? 

As usual, there will be a few changes made. I like Elizabeth Eastman's version with several of the green and white blocks switched up; the block in the upper right corner is particularly dark. And I'm not yet certain about putting the houses in each corner; maybe I'll switch those up as well. Time will tell. 

Finally, I find myself closing in on having my scrappy Pineapple Tidbits ready to assemble. This is another project that I'll need to do some carbon dating on to determine how old it is, but very happy to finally see pulled together. Lots of little reasons to be happy 😊.....M

Fisherman's Friend

This fishing-themed quilt is another one of the three that Jane recently had Roberta quilt for her and it is SO perfect for it's recipient.

Several years ago she made a quilt for one of her brothers and apparently it has been worn thin from use, so it was time to give him an upgrade. He's an avid angler, so she dug into a stack of fishing themed fabrics.

The illustrated print was actually a panel that she carved up into pieces that she could then border on two sides. Those illustrations have a real Norman Rockwell feel to them, don't they? She asked Roberta to use a wavy quilting design and the one that she picked really suits. 

In addition, there are square-in-a-square blocks, just to make things interesting. 

That black print with the fishing flies is beautiful and has been in her stash for a while; it works perfectly here and many of the block colours were pulled from it.

Not sure what size the blocks are but this will give you a sense of scale.

Love the occasional hit of red.

It is backed with a wonderful mottled green, which I think might be a Stonehenge print. Whatever it is, it feels beautiful. Tim is going to love this!

There was a third quilt in her bundle, a nine patch throw that I shared a while back when she was putting it together. Unfortunately, this is the only pic I got of it, lurking in the background. It evokes café au lait and butterscotch (not a bad combination 😉) and is really lovely. We'll see if we can't get a few pics after it is bound....M

Secret Sewing and a Sweet Treat

There's a new project on my sewing table - one that I had totally forgotten about. It's a bit of a secret squirrel thing right now but I can give you a peek at a few of the fabrics.

I've mentioned before that attempts to tidy up my sewing room can most often be equated to an archaeological dig - I always dust off something unexpected. This time it was a bag of fabrics and pattern instructions that I'm certain have been sitting around for at least two years. They are for a quilt that I saw at Roberta's and knew exactly who I wanted to make it for, and then it got lost in the piles.

And, there's a second part to the dig. In looking at the instructions I had this sneaking feeling that I had a ruler that would work for parts of the quilt. Another deep dive into the sewing room produced a set of Tri-Recs triangle-in-a-square rulers that were still in the package. I had bought them for another project that has yet to be started and then filed them away with my other rulers. Sort of felt like Christmas!

My new Creative Grids cutting mat arrived just in time to get taken for a test drive. Love the blue/grey colouring.

Between all my digging and cutting I baked a batch of squares. I've been craving fresh strawberries but they seem to be very scarce, I'm thinking because we had such a dry spring. But cherries are in season and I love them too, so I made a batch of Cherry Almond Squares. SO good! And yes, there is a square missing in the corner of the pan; taste testing while they cooled...

It was a new recipe but one that I will definitely make again. You can make the dough in a food processor (it is buttery and tender with a little crunch from the ground almonds) so the longest part of the job was pitting the cherries, which wasn’t long at all. The combination of almond and cherry is hard to beat. If you like cherries these are a winner. At least that's what the Official Cookie Tester says....M