Bloggers Quilt Festival Fall 2016

Hi everyone, 

I have just finished this quilt this afternoon. This one has been in my UFO pile since March 2011. I'm very excited to have it all done. This is a sweet baby quilt sampler that I designed. I used the fabric itself as the inspiration. 

I free motion quilted this on my domestic sewing machine. I have an Elna Lotus machine that my mom gave me a few years back. It's a great little machine, but it hates free motion quilting. I made it work, and got it done though. 

This quilt is 37.5 inches wide by 43.5 inches long. I backed it with a super soft flannel. 

I'm so glad to have this UFO off my list. Now, I have a finished baby boy quilt ready to go in case I need a gift. 

I'm entering this quilt in the Small Quilt Category of the Bloggers Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side.

We are renovating.....

our basement!!

Which means.... I had to pack all my fabric...

all my sewing stuff....

and store it in the crawl space.

See..

Another sad view....

I had all this anxiety about packing my stuff away.

I had to remind myself that I will benefit from this in the long run.

You see, we have a side split house and only half a basement.

Half the house has a crawl space...full of my fabric!!!

(Well, not full.....LOL!!)

Our boys shared a room for a long time.

But as they became teenagers, this arrangement wasn't working any more.

So, we are converting our family room into two bedrooms.

One for each of the boys.

That leaves a bedroom empty upstairs.

That room will become my very own sewing room.

Yeah!!!!!

It means a lot of changes.

We had a sitting room on the main floor, that we didn't really use.

We only have one TV in the house and it was in the basement.

So, now the TV will be moving upstairs, to the main floor.

We will need to buy better furniture for the living room to meet our needs.

But, we will just work with what we have for now.

In the mean time, I will work on a little bit of hand sewing.

I'm actually doing applique.

I'm only doing one block of the Florabunda pattern by Erin Russek.

She blogs at One Piece at a Time.

I've been admiring her appliqued quilts for a long time.

She has great tutorials on her technique.

So, I decided to try it out with the one block.

I love doing the applique this way.

But, I'm a piecer!!!!

One block is enough for me!

LOL!!!!

Shabby Roses Quilt is done!!!

Well, this quilt has been in the making for a while.

I started making the blocks in August 2009,

and finally finished it yesterday April 4th, 2012.

The blocks were designed by Jenny of Elephantz.

It was originally a free BOM.

It's no longer available for free, but you can purchase it on her website.

I changed the setting of the blocks.

I wanted a different look then the one Jenny had designed.

My quilt is 43 inches wide by 40 inches long.

All the blocks are hand embroidered and hand appliqued.

I used fusible web to applique my shapes.

The quilt was machine quilted by me.

I used my old Kenmore sewing machine to quilt it. 

The binding is all done by machine.

I washed it yesterday and now it is so soft and crinkly.

Just the way I love it.

I put a sleeve on the back, so now it is ready to hang.

I'm keeping this one.

I've had a few requested or hints from a few people who wanted it.

But, this one is all mine.

I just love it!!!

I hope you like it too.

Since I have to work all weekend,

I will wish you all a very Happy Easter!!!

Hugs

Four Gifts of Grace Blocks done! & Charming Girls Club goals!!!

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend. I finished two more blocks of the Gifts of Grace BOM by Val Laird. So, now I have four blocks completed. I have them pinned to my Snippets quilt in my sewing room. It's my make shift design wall. I really have to get a real design wall soon.

 I have started the fifth block. I've got quite a bit done. But those letters take a while and I haven't started those yet. I hope you like my blocks.

I'm also part of the Charming Girls Club and the theme for the next two months is Quilting the Quilt. I really need this theme. LOL!!! I have many quilts that need quilting. So my goal is to quilt at least 3 quilts by the end of our session. If I get more done, then they will be a bonus.

The quilts I hope to get done are:

These are not in any particular order of importance.

I just want to get them done.

These are also not the only projects that I want to work on during this time.

1) I hope to get a lot done on the Gifts of Grace BOM which I shared above. These are going to be for a Christmas gift. So I need to get them done.

2) I want to get another little quilt done for my guilds mini quilt auction being held in November.

3) My daughter wants a bigger pencil case. She loves the one I made, but she has a lot of pencils. So...."Bigger" she says....LOL!!!

So, that's it. Well......that I know of anyway. You know me......I like to start new projects even though I really should finish the old projects.

I hope you all have a great night.

Hugs

Ariane

Our first guild meeting of the season!!!

I went to my quilt guild's first meeting of the season last night. They had two wonderful ladies showing their work. Diane Davies and Jane Lay shared some beautiful quilts with us. They are so talented. I took some pictures, but my camera wasn't co-operating with me. I need a new one. But I will show you the best ones. Lots of pictures here....so here we go.

I love the Paddington Bears Maze quilt. It's so cute!

I also love this quilt with all the trees....Gorgeous!!

And look at this large appliqued quilt. Isn't it sweet?

The one lady did mostly applique. I love the dragon!!!!

Another woman brought her Tisket A Tasket quilt for show & tell. This was my favorite of the night. It's just gorgeous, and the quilting is amazing!!!

They also had the community quilts on display. They made 25 quilts over the summer do give to local charities. They were also gorgeous!!!

Well, that's all for today. I work night shift starting tonight and for the next three nights.

I don't know what I will get done sewing related during those days, but I will try.

Hugs

Ariane

A Gym Bag for my 13 yrs old son!!

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all well. Today I made a gym bag for my 13 year old son. I had some camouflage canvas material and thought that would be appropriate for him. I wanted to spice it up a bit and make it look cool. You know.....so that he wouldn't be ashamed of it....and it would be stylin'.......So, I cut out his initials first out of some cream fabric. Then I used fusible web to fuse them to some dark denim. I then stitch around the  cream colored letters and left the edges raw. I cut out the letters from the denim, then pinned them to the bag fabric and sewed them on. I used my darning foot to sew them to the bag front. I didn't want it to look to perfect. I wanted it to have kind of a rough look. So I left the denim edges raw too. Eventually they will frey and it will look more worn. I made two straps out of the left over canvas and added a twill tape tab at the top so that he could hang the bag on a hook and bought a toggle so that the bag could be properly sinched and kept closed.

When he got home from school, I showed it to him. I was really nervous that he wouldn't like it. You know how 13 yr olds can be about their stuff. Well, he loved it. He gave me a big hug and a kiss. He said it looked really cool and that it was big enough he could you it when he went bike riding. I told him it was for gym.....oh yeah.....he said. LOL!!! Well, I'm just glad he liked it.

I hope you like it too!!

Hugs

Ariane

A bit of free motion quilting!

Well, I tried free motion quilting on my old machine. I used my new darning foot. I love it. I had a lot of fun using it.

First, I made a 12.5 inch block using the tutorial for the Sun Rays Quilt Block tutorial by Twin Fibres. Once I had the border done on the block I drew up a little scene and made some appliques for the centre of the block.

My feed dogs were up (because they can't go down anyway), and I did some applique. Then a bit of stippling and then tried my hand at a feathered border. The border turned out okay. I do need practice with that.

Then I trimmed it all up, and put the binding on using my machine. And VOILA......I have a little art quilt that is 12.5 inches square. Isn't it cute? Well, the free motion quilting went really well, even with the feed dogs up. I actually didn't even really notice them being up. It didn't make it more difficult or pull on the fabric. The tension was great....didn't have any problems with that. Now, I just need to keep practicing. So there will be a lot of little quilts in the near future appearing on my blog.

Hugs

Ariane

"A Blessed Day" Wall Hanging quilt

Hi everyone!

I hope you are all doing well. I finished the binding on my little Christmas wall hanging. I decided to call it "A Blessed Day", seeing that we were so blessed to have Mary give birth to baby Jesus and that Joseph was there to support and love them through it all. I still need to put a hanger on the back of it, so that it hangs properly. I just did some simple machine quilting. I only have my old machine and my walking foot to work with. I didn't really want to hand quilt it. Thanks for the comments about the border. I decided that a simple dark blue border would tie everything together nicely. This quilt is 15 inches square. Such a great size for a wall hanging. Well, I hope you like it!!!

Hugs

Ariane

An Accuquilt GO!! giveaway at Sweet P Quilting and some progress....

There is another wonderful giveaway going on at Sweet P Quilting for the amazing Accuquilt GO! Cutter. I would just love to win one of these. It would really make making quilts so much faster. You know how little time we all have to quilt. So go check out her tutorial and giveaway!!!

I also have been working on that little project I gave you a sneak peak the other day. Right now it's just a 12.5 inch unfinished block. I'm not sure what to do for a border. Maybe I should trim it a little smaller, than put a border. It's just going to be a little wall hanging. I hand blanket stitched around all the pieces, than added a bit more stitching. I made this from one of my original drawings. I also have a second one on the go. But I will machine stitch all the pieces and see how that turns out.

Let me know what you think I should do for the border. I need some suggestions.

 Hey! Maybe this will end up a little pattern for me to share....you never know ;). So keep coming back to check!!

Hugs

Ariane

A sneak peak and some yummy fabric!!!

Hi everyone, I hope you are all well. I've been working on some sketches lately. Trying to see if I could come up with something good enough to make into a pattern. The other day when I was at work on my break. I was finishing up my Tim Hortons coffee and started using the coffee cup as a circle template to draw on scrap pieces of paper.

I drew so many little designs in these circles. It's like I was inspired all of a sudden and the images that I was seeing in my head were actually getting drawn on paper. You know how it is sometimes you imagine stuff that would look great, but you can't seem to get it right on paper. Happens to me most times. Well, this time I was doing a really good job. I was so proud of myself. Needless to say the scraps of paper with the drawings came home with me.

I've been working at them here and there seeing what I could make with them. A few of the designs are  inspired by Christmas. I've started to put one of the designs together on fabric. I'm very excited about how it looks. So I thought I would share a sneak peak. I have just started, so there are still a lot of details missing in the pic. I hope you like it!!

On the fabric front, Alison from the Sew Modern Bee had sent some wonderful red fabric to make her blocks and I just loved it. I wanted to know who had designed it so that I could get some. She offered to do a swap with me. I had some Mermaid fabric that she wanted, so we did a swap. My piece of fabric was bigger then hers, so I told her to just throw in a few scraps (which I love) in to make it even. Well, I was so surprised today when I received the package. She sent me so many scraps. It was like hitting the jackpot. I love them all. Now I feel guilty 'cause she sent so much more that I did. Hmmmm....I think I can even it out with some fabric she would like. Well, that was a wonderful experience. I think I might just do it again. 

Hugs 

Ariane 

Gifts of Grace Block 1 and July OPAM finish!

Hi everyone, I did a bit of stitching the last couple days. I got the first block from Val Laird's free BOM Gifts of Grace. These blocks are gorgeous. I've been wanting to start them for a while now, but just had too much on the go. I'm going to try really hard to get caught up on these, because I would like this little quilt to be a Christmas gift. I know someone who would just love a quilt like this. We will see how that goes. I hope you like it.

Well, I only got one finish for the July OPAM. But it was a big one. My queen size Jack-in-the-pulpit Quilt was a very big project for me this month. I put in about 50 hours of work just on this quilt in July. I was very tired and did take a break from sewing when I was done. But I'm very proud that I finished it in time and that my girlfriend and her new husband loved it. I showed it to many of my siblings before the wedding and now I have half a dozen request for queen size quilts. I told them that they would have to get in line. But one of these years they would probably end up with one. I have such a big family, with 10 brothers and sisters. I just can't get that many done, that fast. LOL!!!

One more night shift to go. Ughhhh! I was so tired last night. I really struggled to stay awake after 4 am. I don't usually have such a hard time. I slept longer today. Hopefully that helps!

Have a good night!

Hugs

Ariane

Trying to fix a crooked strip on the backing of my quilt....AAHH!

Okay, when I showed you my Beatrix Potter quilt the other day, I only showed you the front. Well.....I kind of made a big mistake on the back. I tried to be all fancy and put a stripe on the back like a lot of you do. I thought I lined it up properly. I basted, then quilted the top. I kept checking my tension on the back...it was looking good. I got the top all quilted and I'm all proud of myself. Then I flip it over to check the back....and OH NO!!!! It's crooked. My stripe is crooked!!! AHHHHH! I was very disappointed. I wanted to cry. I really had worked so hard on this quilt. I didn't want to pull all the quilting out because it would leave a million little wholes all over. I had done a really good job with the quilting too. I had worked for 4 hours straight quilting it on my little tiny machine. Well, I had decided to just put the binding on it and leave it. I finished it, but just couldn't live with myself leaving it like that. So, I kept thinking what I could do to make it better. So, I decided to put some appliques on the back. So now I have a little hedgehog going down the road towards a beautiful tree. It's still not perfect, but I did what I could. I'm more at peace with it now. So that's what I've been working on all week. I hand blanket stitched around all my appliques. But NOW I'm officially done. I'm not going to try to fix it more. It will just drive me nuts. So, I have to put in the mail soon and send it out. Otherwise....you never know what I could add to it. I have other projects that I need to work on.


On another note, I saw these two little remnants of fabric on etsy the other day. They were on the tliss shop.I just had to have them. They are so cute. They got here so quick and the seller added a few vintage buttons and a fusible applique.


Well, now I can finally work on something else. I've got so many projects to work on. I've got to get to them. I hope you all had a great day. I work all weekend. So I hope to get a bit of sewing done after my shifts.

In the Good Ol' Summer Time Mini Quilt in progress.....

Hi everyone, I finally had the day off work. It was a nice day today. I really enjoyed being outside. I did work on the mini quilt I'm doing for the Good Ol' Summertime Mini Quilt Swap. I'm finished the top and just need to put the batting and backing on. Then, I'll be able to quilt it. I'm going to free motion quilt it kind of like how it's done on the Don't look Now Blog. I hope it turns out. This is going to be my first try doing it this way. The colors in this quilt are not exactly in my comfort zone. But my partner likes batiks and bright colors....so I hope she will like it. My husband says it kind of looks dreary. I hope not....maybe when I have all the quilting in it will make it look better. I plan to add a lot of detail with the quilting in the flower, etc. I'm going to buy some nice embroidery threads to quilt it. Give it a bit of shine with the nice threads. I hope it works. I want to have this done by the end of the weekend, so that I don't have it weighing on my minds as the deadline approaches.

I went and bought a few Schnibles patterns today. Since I joined A Year of Schnibbles. I really like these patterns. My favorite of these three is the Hot Cross. My daughter wants to try this one too. Maybe we can work on this together. I helped her make an apron today. We didn't use a pattern but I turned out cute. I still need to help her put pockets on it. I'll show you that tomorrow. Well, I hope you all have a great day.

Happy Stitching!

Ariane :o)

I finished my spring mini quilt for my swap partner!!

Hi everyone, today I finally finished the mini quilt I was making for the Spring Mini Quilt Swap. I machine quilted it and put the binding on. I also put it in the mail for my swap partner. Hopefully it doesn't take too long to get there. I like the way it ended up. The quilting is good considering I haven't done much free motion machine quitling. It's not perfect, but it looks good. It will make a cute little wall hanging. I hope my partner likes it. Considering I designed the whole thing myself, it turned out nice. Well, I finally have a finish for June. Yeah!! I can add it to my list for the OPAM challenge. Well, I'm going to lay down for a short little nap. I'm a bit tired today. So hope you all have a great day.

Happy Stitching!!

Ariane :o)

A peak at some blocks I'm working on!!

I've been working on some small blocks to add to the baby quilt I'm making. I'm using fusible web. Then I will be embroidering around them with some DMC floss. I just started them tonight. I have three started. I think they are cute. They will look even better once the embroidery is all done. Well, I have to work in the morning. So off to bed I go. I hope you have a good night.

Ariane

A sneak peak!!!

Hi everyone, I would like to wish you all a Happy Easter !! I'm participating in a bag swap organized by Snickerdoodle dreams. This is the first time I have to make something for a swap. I've been a bit nervous. I have to make a bag. Any bag I want for a secret partner than I receive a bag from another secret partner. Well, I did make a bag....then decided I didn't want to send that one. I wasn't confident it would make the grade. It's nice, but not great. I also wanted to push myself a bit beyond my comfort zone so that I could grow and learn more skills. So this is a sneak peak of the bag I'm making for my partner. I made a spring appliqued scene for the front of the bag. I'm not following any pattern. I'm just making it up as I go. So it will be totally unique. I've changed my mind on a few things. But, it's going well. I hope my partner will like it. Happy Stitching! Ariane :o)

A sweat birdy appliqued t-shirt!

Hi everyone, I had bought an aqua colored t-shirt for my daughter. I decided to do an applique on it this afternoon. I had printed off a free coloring page from the Tricia-Rennea Art Blog for my daughter on valentines day. I just happen to find it today amongst some papers I was cleaning up. I looked at it and thought the picture would make a nice applique on a t-shirt for my daughter. So I traced the picture on fusible web and then got my pieces of fabric cut out and ironed onto the t-shirt. Then, I did a blanket stitch by hand around all the pieces and VOILA!!! I have a great looking t-shirt for my girl. I also spent some time outside today. It's beautiful outside here today. It was nice and sunny. I decided to do some raking of leaves in my back yard. It was nice to get some spring fresh air. The snow is all gone here now. We usually still have snow on the ground at this time of year. I'm not complaining. It's nice to have some nice weather where you can wear a sweater and be comfortable outside. No more bulky winter coats. It's so nice. I hope everyone has a great day.

Happy Stitching!!

Ariane :o)

Another Cute little outfit done!!

Hi everyone, I just finished the applique on another t-shirt....and the outfit is done. I made another little skirt for my daughter. I used pink this time. I bought two Lila Tueller Woodland Bloom fat quarters and another pink stripe. I used the left over fabric from the skirt to do the appliques on the t-shirt I bought at Walmart. I decided to just do some simple hearts for the appliques. It didn't take as long to hand blanket stitch them on. I think this outfit will be a nice addition to my daughter's summer clothes. It's casual and cute at the same time. She just loves it. I hope everyone is well.

Happy Stitching!

Ariane