Comforts

Its a miserable day today - rainy, breezy, damp and chilly - making it one of those days to sit inside, happily distracted by creature comforts, including needle and thread. There will be lots of time to sit and quilt on Candied Hexagons and watch a little football.

I'm happy to report that I've been able to stick with my quilting since I got back to it and feel that ever so slowly the finish line is appearing on the horizon.

Sometimes I've had the company of the Official Cookie Tester sitting next to me in his chair and other times we've had a little guest who quite likes that seat as well. Both are great company.

This is one of the first blocks that I made for this quilt and I quite like the way the print created a secondary pattern. There was only a small bit of fabric so some piecing was required to make it work - can you see it?

There's something about this purple print that I just love.

Every now and then I get a glimpse of the backing as I stitch and its fun to see the quilting coming through on it too.

This will be a perfect day to enjoy comfort foods as well, including fresh apple crisp. I have to say though that I was mightily distracted at one point when it was coming together because once it was in the oven I discovered that there was an apple still sitting on the counter that should have been included in the mix. Ah well, that just means that there's lots of crumble on this one (my favourite part!)....M

Colours of the Harvest

With the dying days of October the Holly Bazaar comes closer into view so it's been a full court press to get myself organized to finish up a few items for the craft table and something for the Silent Auction. Happily, these placemats are now quilted and bound and ready to go. I love the colours and hope that someone else will too.

Nothing overly fancy in the quilting department, just evenly placed diagonal lines of stitching with a blue/green variegated thread. Its what I used when I made a set of Christmas placemats using a similar pattern and I quite liked it.

They are bound and backed with the same deep orange print - its a deep colour and yet soft at the same time.

I had strips galore to work with so I made two pairs of pot holders to match. The gals will be able to decide if they want to sell them all together as a set or as three separate items. If they like the thought of them as a complete set maybe they will go into the Silent Auction - they can decide what works best. More bazaar projects to come!....M

Caramel or Café au Lait?

Jane also made great progress on a project at our girls getaway a few weeks ago. She started it in the spring when she was surrounded by water and looking for something else to think about other than the flood.

Its a beautiful palette - almost café au lait (or is that caramel?) with a little pink and green tossed in for good measure. Again, a simple but very effective nine patch that lets the prints do much of the heavy lifting.

It will be a throw as it is not overly large, but it will be a lovely accent piece. She's adding a border of large squares and then it will be ready to quilt. It is just so soft and creamy.

She's saving the drama for the back - this huge floral print that she discovered in her stash. It is as though the colours were made for her quilt!..M

Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere

You don't have to look far this time of year to find lots and lots of pumpkin inspiration. Karen at Moose Bay Muses found herself down a pumpkin rabbit hole recently, so I decided that maybe I'd join her.















I started playing with this little block that finishes at 5" using a free pattern that she found on Annette's blog.

They are cute as could be, but you know me and scrappy - just have to loosen things up a bit. So I tried a couple where the stems were less chunky and the odd strip was made of a couple of fabrics. Cute, but still a little predictable.

I think you know where this is going. Given my love of improv blocks/made fabric, I decided to see what totally random would look like. Out came the orange scraps, including the last bits of this black spider print, and I was off. LUV!

I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do with them but they all look great together and I do have to say that they are a ton of fun to make. I suspect that there will be more on the pile before the orange scraps get put away....M