International Round Robin – Third Round

You might remember that I’m doing a Round Robin with Lori, Desley and Bronwyn and we just finished our third round which was to put the block on-point and add the WOW factor.   We didn’t disappoint, they all look GREAT!!    I was working on Bronwyn’s this time and added a Celtic appliqué design.

Lori worked on Desley’s block and an added a quarter Dresden to each corner.   It looks so nice and leaves a lot of room for Desley to quilt in!  :)

Desley worked on my block and added interlocking borders design and repeated my center star in the corners.  Love it!!

And Bronwyn worked on Lori’s block and hand appliquéd those fun feather shapes that look like colourful water splashes using her hand dyed fabrics.

I’m so impressed with how these are turning out.  There is one more round and I just received Lori’s block from Bronwyn yesterday so I better get Bronwyn’s block off to Desley next week!  

Fresh Diamonds

 

Eileen and Phyl worked on this quilt together as it is a wedding gift for a friend of theirs.  The pattern is called Fresh Diamonds and you can find it free on Craftsy here.   It’s a great pattern to use up scraps!   I quilted it with the Popcorn panto, used light brown So Fine thread and Quilters Dream Blend batting.

The leaves are starting to pop out and I might get brave this weekend and buy a few flowers and plant my vegetable garden. The ice on the lake has only been gone a week!

Under The Sea

 

This is Phyl’s quilt and she used a fabric collection called Under the Sea by Heidi Pridemore.   She made this quilt for a young girl who lives on the west coast so I’m sure she will love it!   The black sashing really makes the blocks pop!

I used the Curlz pantograph, a blue Lava thread and Dream Puff batting.

Four Patch Charm Quilt with Tutorial

Free PDF Pattern is now available for download.  Click here! 

I have had this quilt in the works for a  few months and finally got to quilt it this week.  When I loaded it on my machine I was planning on doing a panto but it kept nagging at me that it deserved some custom work so I gave in!  :)    Large pebbles and swirls it was!     I had made the blocks at a guild UFO day and had a few guild members help me decide on the finally layout as there are so many options when playing with HST style blocks. I really like how the blocks are worked into the border and glad my friends suggested it!  :)

 I used  soft yellow So Fine thread for the background quilting and a light brown Lava thread on the dark batiks.   Batting is Quilter’s Dream Blend.

I used a Stonehenge extra wide backing.

I thought I would share how I made the blocks as I didn’t use a pattern but used a technique that I saw on a Missouri Quilt Company YouTube video that you can see here on how to make quick HST blocks. But instead of using just two fabrics from a charm pack I resized it and replaced one of the fabrics with a  Four Patch made with 5” charm squares and that turns out to be 9 1/2” square.

Once I had the four patch sewn I cut a 9 1/2” square of my background fabric and layered them right sides together and sewed a 1/4” seam around the outside perimeter.

Then I cut the block diagonally twice.

Then press open the four sections ( to the dark side) and end up with four HST blocks. Trim blocks, if needed, to 6 1/4" square.

Now the only down side to these blocks are they are all bias edges so you have to be very careful when sewing the blocks together that you don’t stretch them out of shape!  When adding the border cut 6 1/4" strips WOF of the background and piece in the two corner blocks that extend the design into the border. DO NOT piece white and white HST in the border as that would put bias edges on the outside edge.  I have had a few readers do this and that makes for a very unstable outside edge.  So if you have a few charm packs sitting around and want make a fast and easy quilt why not give this a try!  I used 3 charm packs and my quilt finished 63 3/4"x 69 1/2", that includes the 6 1/4" border.  I used about 3m of background/border/binding fabric for this size.

Polka Dot Pinwheel

 

This is Helen’s Pinwheel baby quilt and when she brought it to me she said the polka dot fabric reminder her of Minnie Mouse.  She asked if I could incorporate a quilting design with the Minnie Mouse theme as her granddaughter loves Minnie Mouse.  I had no clue what to do at first but gave it some thought.  After searching online for images of Minnie I realized her main accessory is her bow and realized that would be the perfect design to recreate.

I printed out a bow image and using my sewing machine without thread I stitched along the outline to perforate the image.  I didn’t follow the outline exactly as I didn’t want the bow to be as tall as in the image.   I then used my Chalk Pounce pad and transferred the bows into the black fabric.

I was pretty pleased with how it turned out!  :)   You can see the quilt has a border of Prairie Points and I also quilted loops in the border and sashing to go with the polka dot theme.

There is still ice out on the lake but it is only 2” to 4” thick and melting quickly from the shoreline.  Tim and I got the canoe out and went for a paddle around our bay and then around the island that you see in the distance in my last photo.   The wind has been blowing the ice towards the island today so I didn’t think we would make it around but we managed to squeeze thought a few tight spots and break the ice in a few areas!  That was a lot of fun and I’m glad we didn’t get stuck out there!

Bloggers Quilt Festival Spring 2014

It’s that time again Blogger’s Quilt Festival and I thought I would share our Lug Nuts quilt.   If you are new to my blog I am a longarm quilter that has started designing quilt patterns with my friend Lori Suss, we call our design company Highway 10 Designs.   I live near Flin Flon, Manitoba (hence all the snow in the photos!) and Lori lives in Dauphin, Manitoba and the highway that connects use is Highway 10 so that name just seems to fit us perfect.

Our Lug Nuts pattern creates oversized Hexagon using 9 fabrics.  We used Little Black Dress 2 fabrics and chose 3 ivory, 3 grey and 3 black fabrics for our quilt but it can be made with any 9 fabric, 3 color combinations.

I quilted it with a pantograph called Fascination, used So Fine thread and Quilter’s Dream Blend batting.  We had fun with the backing as we had a few blocks left over.

You can find this pattern in our Esty shop here.

I’ve entered this quilt in the Original Design Catergory in the Bloggers Festival. Hope you’ll head over there and check out all the other quilts in the Festival!

Signs of Spring!

So nice to see signs of spring when I returned home today after 10 unplanned days in Winnipeg.   No quilting happening here, that’s why the blog as been so quiet.  I had an opportunity to get some more dental work done ( another crown)  that a local dentist said I needed but when I got to Winnipeg to see my family dentist he said that the tooth is not strong enough for a crown as the root is reabsorbing!  He sent me to a Endodontic specialist and he agreed, no crown, no root canal…it will just have to be pulled eventually.  He also said my face pain problems are related to my teeth clenching so I am back home still feeling crappy!  Think I need to take a different approach to my face pain now….any teeth clenchers out there with any suggestions for me.  I hate wearing the splint at night!!!

It as also a good for me to spend a week with my mom as my grandmother is in the hospital so I was able to drive us to visit her everyday and give my mom a break from the 4 hour of city bus rides she does every day to see her!  I could drive us to the hospital across town in half an hour!  It was good to see my grandmother get stronger over the week and eating better too!  I told her that was because I came to visit!  :)

So you can imagine my quilting ‘mojo’ is pretty low right now but I hope to get back at it next week.  Looking forward to spending the long weekend with my husband and boys.  Might get the canoe out to paddle around the ice and take pictures of the Northern Pikes that are swimming around the shoreline.  The loons are back and it is so nice to hear their song again.  Spring is here!!

Boxy Stars

This is Robin’s Boxy Stars quilt and the pattern is free on Bonnie Hunters Quiltville site here.   The pattern can be made with scraps of 2 1/2” strips but Robin used a jelly roll.  When I asked her how she wanted it quilted she said it didn’t matter as she didn’t like the fabrics she used.   So I took that as a challenge and hopes she likes it a bit more now that it is quilted.  I really like the corner stone design she used, it really adds to the pattern.

That panto is called Whirlygig and the batting is Quilters Dream Blend.  The thread is brown So Fine.

Stonehenge Meets Jamestown

 

This is Marg’s Stonehenge Meets Jamestown quilt and I found a link to the kit here.   The quilt is made entirely of Stonehenge fabrics and is a mix of Log Cabin and Sampler blocks.  This is going to be a gift for a guy so I chose Mimosa for the panto and an orange Lava thread.  The batting is Quilter’s Dream Wool so you can really see the definition of the quilting.  Took this next picture last night when I just finished it and  it was sunny but today is very cloudy and might rain.

You can see the snow is disappearing fast here but the ice is still on the lake, it usually is gone by May 10th so we will see if that happens this year!

Marg’s quilt looks lovely against my neighbours cottage as a backdrop!