Breaking the Plane

There's a little more progress on my Pumpkin Patch at Midnight to share with you - not much, but some. With each strip/round it gets richer and richer - I'm just loving it. Since this will be a table topper and not a full-sized quilt it should be done fairly soon.

I've been inspired by Krista Withers spiderweb to break the plane of the border in a few locations to make it just a little bit more interesting. The blocks in the upper left of this photo illustrate where the natural border is - it's a bit tough to see here but the outer border will be a black print (the flecked 'fabric' that you are seeing that looks like a border is the carpet, a.k.a. my design wall!). If I was just making it square I would have stopped after finishing the two triangles in the upper left corner of the very bottom web, but I'm going to have this web (or pumpkin) spill over into the border. I'll do this in two or three other places.



I think I have two more full pumpkins, two halves and a quarter to make and then it will be time to sew all the triangles together and put the black border on it. It's so much fun to look at - your eye spends a lot of time travelling through the various circles, and the pieced corners just seem to pop when the oranges and yellow are added to them.










A few of you were asking which of Material Obsession's books this pattern is from - it's from Material Obsession 2. I'd love to see photos of your projects if you decide to make one.

The instructions advise to pull all your strips for a spiderweb and then sit down to sew, trimming as you go, but I've decided to cut all the lengths that I need before starting the sewing - I just find it easier to have everything organized before I begin to sew. I cut what I need for whatever web I am working on and then mix up the colours a bit with remnants from previous strips to make the pumpkins more interesting....M

Stripping is Fun!

Thought that might get your attention. Truth is, I have been sneaking away to the basement for these past few days to practice my stripping and I'm getting pretty good at it too, even if I do say so myself. Or maybe I should be saying strip piecing? Either way, it's lots of fun.

It's also a little addictive - you can't wait to see the spiderweb fill in and it's fun to mix in a little surprise colour into different rings to shake things up a bit.

Sewing and trimming, sewing and trimming.

This is the quilt that I'm using for inspiration - totally scrappy. I don't think Sarah used the same fabric twice in the entire quilt.














I'm using a decidedly autumn palette and, while I'm not a huge fan of Hallowe'en, for whatever reason when I look at this pattern I wanted to get the effect of pumpkins at night. So far I think that it's working.














Circles are slowly coming together and it's neat to see the different effect that different light and dark combos create. Right now it's all just being laid out on my design wall floor...














but it's fun none the less. I think I'm going to call it Pumpkin Patch at Midnight....M

Going To The Top of the Pile

Back in the fall I started playing with this selection of fabrics, thinking that I would try a few blocks of Maple Leaf Rag by Sarah Fielke from the Material Obsession book she cowrote with Kathy Doughty. I didn't spend much time at it before it was time to think of Christmas and Holly Bazaar sewing so the strips went untouched. Despite being ignored they did remain atop a small cart of drawers, even through the post-Christmas clean-up.

On a whim I decided to pick up where I'd left off and see if I could make a few more green/black corners. The colours are a little off because these were taken in my sewing cave, but I am really loving the richness of each little fabric collage - they will create lots of interest. This is what they will look like when they are pieced together.

I had more assembled than I remembered so before long there was a pile of 28 corners ready to go. Time to cut the muslin foundations and see if I could add a strip or two.

This is going to be fun. I love the assembly process and I think the blocks are going to be just what I had envisioned. The strips and corners are sewn on to half a 10.25" block so I'm working with considerably larger pieces than my 1-inch hexies which should help things move along quite quickly. Well, as quickly as anything moves along for me...M

More From 'Little Things'

Here's a few more shots of additional quilts from Sarah Fielke's Quilting From Little Things that I started out showing you last time and then got totally distracted. North by North East is on the back cover of my version of the book and the one that really caught my eye in the beginning (isn't that little guy in the bottom right just the cutest thing?).














It's made up of lots of bright & scrappy Flying Geese blocks and really appeals to me. I'm not keen on her layout so I think that I'd change it up a bit. The large corner blocks would make it go faster but aren't working for me.

Recently I saw an antique Flying Geese quilt with the rows stitched on the diagonal, much like the centre of this one, and I think I might opt for that instead. I am so tempted to start cutting for it but want to finish up a few more things first, so instead I sat down and spent much of the weekend cutting and sewing red, white and green geese for Fly Away Home, which helped get it out of my system a little bit (more about that next time).

Then there's Hanging Lanterns. What a beauty! Actually, the book is beautifully photographed which goes a long way to helping find new projects that you just have to make.


















It is such a great combination of colours - love all the reds and the way that she has incorporated light blue/tuquoise into it as well. And then the quilting in red perle thread just sets it all off. It will involve appliqué, but that's okay.

And last, but not least there's Stars In Your Eyes. This one reminds me of the Candied Hexagons that I'm working on but it is strip pieced.

I think that it's the colours that I love as much as anything. So much wonderful inspiration from just one book!...M

Birthday Surprises

Today is my sister Anne's birthday - happy birthday, Anne! She was up to the Valley on the weekend for meetings so we thought the timing was pretty good to surprise her with a birthday cake, candles and all. Jane was up at the cottage for the weekend too so she was able to join us in the celebrations.














I had lots of ripe bananas and was dying for a good piece of chocolate cake so I tried this recipe for Chocolate Banana Cake. Not only was the batter really lovely but the consistency of the cake is great and stays nice and moist because of the bananas; I also used buttermilk in it, which makes for a nice consistency. And the baking time was exactly as printed, which was nice. I iced it with a chocolate ganache and it was delicious with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (you always need ice cream with birthday cake!). Despite four of us taking a good charge at it and pieces going home with both of the gals, the Official Cookie Tester and I have been nibbling away at the last of it for the better part of the week and it is still lovely. I'll be making this one again.

All of this reminded me of a book that I'd received for my birthday a while back that I'd been wanting to share with you - it's Sarah Fielke's Quilting From Little Things... I'd been intrigued by a scrappy Flying Geese quilt on one of the cover photos (there are actually 2 covers) but really fell for lots of what's inside...

and, as luck would have it, the one quilt in the book that doesn't have a pattern. I think the photo was taken in her sewing room and this is what she had on the design wall.

LUV it! It's going on the list.

It's the colours in it as much as anything.













There was a second shot of it used as a double page spread in the book that really shows it off nicely.

I was so focused on getting shots of this one that I completely forgot to take pics of the one that appealed to me initially so I'll share that next time...M