Four Patch Owls

This is Robin’s Four Patch baby quilt and she used the most adorable Owl fabrics for the focus.    I chose Flirtatious for the panto design as it reminds me of crescent moons so that makes these owls night owls!    I used a soft yellow So Fine thread.

This weekend our neighbour drilled a few holes out in the ice so we could do some ice fishing.  Still about 28” of ice so safe to walk on and most of the snow on top of the ice has melted so that makes for easy walking.  We set a few Tip-Ups in some of the holes and the fished from a few others.  We noticed the flag go up on one Tip-up so both ran over and this is what we pulled out of the lake, a nice sized Northern Pike.  It was able 30” long and 12 lbs.  You can eat Pike but I’m not very good at filleting out all the bones so we let it go.  I prefer Pickerel, already filleted from our local fishery!

I have to admit that it is pretty nice to just walk out our front door and be able to enjoy this!  One of the perks to living in this colder climate.

As you can see I let Tim do all the fishy work, I prefer to be the one taking pictures! 

Lone Star Quilts

I have two Lone Star quilts to share with you today and they were made by  Florence who will be giving them to her granddaughters for their graduation this June.    The first one is made in pinks and greys and the inner grey border has a very pretty feather print.  Lots of flowing feathers and CC’s in the diamond shapes to give it wonderful texture.

The second one is made in bolder colour palette of blue, green and purple fabrics and quilted very similar to the first one.

Scrap Buster

This is Robin’s quilt and she made the blocks using the stitch and flip method using a dryer sheet as a foundation.  She used brown and beige fabrics from her stash making this a great stash buster project!  She created her own layout with the blocks by added a ‘string’ block between to give it an abacus feel and then sashing strips between each column.   She added a nice 7 1/2” wide outer border in a solid fabric so I quilted it with the Curved Echo border design.  I have a tutorial on how to quilt this design here.    I quilted swirls in the sashing strips, U-turns in the string blocks and did a quick twisting design on the scrap blocks.  

Sticks and Stones Sampler

This is Marg’s Sticks and Stones Sampler quilt and it was a BOM from Periwinkles Quilting and Beyond.  Here is a link to the shops info on the blocks.    The fabrics and blocks used in this Sampler give it a Modern neutral feel so I used the Bayside panto to keep the quilting simple.  Batting is Quilters Dream Blend and I used a medium beige So Fine thread.

Mahjongg #6

This is Jeannie’s Mahjongg quilt that she made at our guild’s Beginner class in the Fall.  She fussy cut the large blocks so the moose were the focus of the largest block.  She used Stonehenge fabrics with really blended well with her focus fabrics.

The pantograph is Fascination, the batting is Warm and Natural, and I used a medium beige So Fine thread.

I’m going to try to add a video to the bottom of this post of the Northern Lights the other night.  My husband took a series of continuous picture and my son made a movie from them.  This way you can see how they move even though the quality of the pictures was reduces to make the movie.  My husband was taking 10 second exposure and taking 10 continuous pictures at a time, I believe he did this three or four times.  If you look at the bottom left corner you see a light flash on and off…that’s me taking pictures closer to our house! 

Northern Lights on St. Patrick’s Day

Last night we were treated to a beautiful display of Northern Lights and it seemed fitting to end St. Patrick’s Day with a display of green lights!   There were a bit of red and a lot of purple mixed with the green this time.  My husband has an App on his iPad that give us an idea of when the aurora will be active and it was indicating a very high potential for activity so we were ready with our camera!  We were able to walk out on top of the snow to the middle of our bay to set up our tripods and every once in a while the lake ice would make a cracking sound that made me jump!  It’s a very creepy sound at night but that just added to the fun!

Winter Menagerie

This is Kerri’s Sidelights quilt, which is a pattern by Mountainpeek Creations.  She purchased the kit from the Prairie Rose quilt shop in Minot and the fabric is called Winter Menagerie by Jason Yenter.    Kerri asked for Flurry for the Panto design,

I used a silver grey So Fine thread  for the top and a grey Bottom Line for the back.   The backing is a navy Fireside and even though I used grey thread you can’t tell and it looks like I used navy.   One thing to think about when choosing threads for a quilt with Fireside or Minkie backing is that the plush nature of these fabrics tend to beard to the top of the quilt.  So keep that in mind when choosing thread and you can minimize that effect.

We have had a few +10’c days so the snow is melting like crazy and the ice is now all fractured on the surface and the cracks are widening.  The lake ice is still a few feet thick so very safe to walk on but I’m hoping for an early melt this year!

International Round Robin–Round Two

In September I started another Round Robin with my friends Lori, Desley and Bronwyn and you can see Round One here.  Today I’m sharing the results of Round Two!  Picture above are the blocks I made to go with Lori’s blocks.  This round we were to make 9 to 12 points worth of blocks using the focus fabric that came along with the first round blocks.  In the picture below you can see what all of Lori’s blocks look like.  I pulled in more of the wine and brown tones to complement the green and browns she started with.  I made two more 12 inch Sawtooth variation stars and four more smaller stars.

Here are the blocks Lori made to go with my original blocks.

Here they are with my blocks, you can see what she is envisioning for there use.   Wonder if the other ladies will play along with that idea or come up with something else?  It’s always a surprise!

Here are the blocks Desley made to go with Bronwyn's blocks.

Here they are all together.

And here are the blocks Bronwyn made to go with Desley’s blocks.

And here all of Desley’s blocks and these are the ones I’ll be getting next.  What to do?