International Round Robin #2 – Round Three

This past year I have been working on a Round Robin with Lori, Desley and Bronwyn and we are calling it the International Round Robin as Desley and Bronwyn live in Australia and Lori and I are in Canada.  We finished the third round of our Round Robin in June and I worked on Desley’s blocks this time.  I made two 12” blocks and two 6” blocks to add to the blocks made already and here they are all together.   I have now sent these to Lori to work on for Round Four.

Desley worked on Lori’s blocks and made two 12” star blocks and four 6” star blocks.

Here are all Lori’s blocks and they will be sent to Bronwyn to put the quilt top together.

Bronwyn worked on my blocks and made these four 12” blocks.

Here are all my blocks and Desley will be putting the quilt top together for Round Four.

Lori worked on Bronwyn’s blocks and made four 9” blocks.

Here are all Bronwyn’s blocks and I will be putting them together for Round Four.

Now the rules for Round Four are:

-use every block received in the top

-can not unpick or cut blocks

-can use all, some or none of the remaining consistent fabric received with the blocks.

-new blocks can be made to add to the top

-sashing, borders, setting triangles, applique can be used to put top together.

I have no idea what I will be doing with Bronwyn’s blocks yet but we have until October to put the quilt top together.

Fabric, Friends and Fairies

Wow summer is flying by!    I have been on holidays with the family for the last two weeks, I’m sure you guessed that with the blog so quiet, and we drove 4,000km to visit family and friends.  My son got to see two Nascar races in Canada, here it is called the Canadian Tire series and they just happened to be racing in Edmonton and Saskatoon when we were there.  And of coarse to make sure I was happy we stopped at a few quilt shops.    One was Quilting from the Heart in Camrose, AB.  I have known the owner Ardelle for about 6 years online as she is a longarm quilter and it was so nice to finally meet her in person.  It was like meeting an old friend, we talked for two hours straight and I left we a very large bag filled with most of the beautiful batiks you see in the pictures above.  Here we are in front of her shop so if you are ever in Camrose or near Edmonton this is a must stop for you!

While I was in Edmonton visiting family my SIL got me started on a new little hobby, Fairy Gardens!    I never in a million years thought I would be buying tiny little fairies, frogs, gnomes, chairs and garden tools to put in my rock garden.  I am not a trinket person at all but from some reason liked the idea of adding these pieces to my garden.  Wonder how long they will last until the squirrels start stealing them all?

I have a spot in my rock garden that I let grow natural and it is filled with small trees, thyme and cranberries.  It seemed to be the perfect spot to play.

Fancy Fox Quilt #2

This is our guilds Fancy Fox quilt and it will probably be one of our 3 raffle quilts that we have at our guild show next year.  This is a cute pattern by Elizabeth Hartman, which you can find here, and she also has a free download for the cute appliqued glasses that you might have noticed on the green fox.  I added 3 sets of glasses to this quilt using a fusible applique method and straight stitching the edges down before quilting.

I’ve quilted this one before, see here, and used a free hand wood grain design so wanted to quilt this one differently.  I used the Bora Bora panto to add swirly windy quilting to the foxes.   I’m not sure the name of the fabric collection, the guild had this fat quarter bundle for awhile now and we thought it would work great for this quilt. 

The smoke has cleared for a day but the forecast is for the wind to change and bring heavy smoke are way again!

Hazy Days

We are living in a smoke filled hazy these days from all the forest fires in Canada right now.  Nothing close to cause concern but I noticed we are now getting fine ash bits on our deck and patio furniture!  The smoke smell is quite strong today so I’m hoping we will get rain soon.    Since it is not very enjoyable outside I found time to quilt up a simple batik quilt I pieced at one of our guild UFO days a few months ago.  I used a Bali Pop called River Rock and mixed in an neutral Island Batiks jelly roll to give it this colour way. The pattern is called Popsicle Sticks.

I also tried a new panto called Northwinds and I really like it.  Beige So Fine thread, Quilters Dream Blend batting and Stonehenge wide backing.

You can really see the smoke in this next photo….cough, cough! 

  

The sun has been a red glow in the sky all week.

I found a great online source to track the forest fires, it is called Canadian Wildlands Fire Information System, here is the link.

You can zoom in on the map in the link and find out the conditions in your area.