Cruisin'

My daughter Melanie and I went on a Norwegian Cruise. We were brainstorming ideas back in November and when we realized that the MSC Poesia cruise ship docked in Oslo, we quickly decided that this was the one and I contacted Hanne to see if she was available mid May to get together. She was. So we did. It was more than great. 

Hanne's husband offered to be our chauffeur and took the day off work. He is easing into retirement. 

We did some touristy things then went back to their home to get the grand tour of Hanne's quilt room. I am so inspired! She does her little stitches with her morning coffee. What a great idea. Doing the stitching to start the day instead of trying to work in the 15 minutes later. 

Hanne has 68 completed Stonefields blocks. We know. Melanie counted them. She wants to finish it so will be joining Rebecca and Gretchen and me as we begin work on ours. Gretchen and I talked about making it together 9 years ago but did not begin then. I came home and pulled out the project box I had put together 10 years ago when I got my pattern. I must have added to the box, because it is quite full of promising soft prints and pastels. Lots of Mary Koval reproduction filler fabrics. Did I say lots? And I finally found the stash of reprodution shirting fabrics I bought lots of years ago. One yard cuts no less.

Since I have most of the fabrics in the box pre washed, I shall whack off a few peices of the shirtings and pre wash them also. I had precut "about" forty 6 1/2 inch squares of other shirtings and some solid creamy fabrics. I am ready to start. More than 20 years ago I bought most of a collection for a cause by Ro Gregg called Heaven Can Wait. There are fussy cutting options of cherubs and flowers. I do like flowers. I have 4 yards of the border fabric. And it is already pre washed. Yes. I do pre wash my fabrics. I like to get the sizing out and have a softer fabric for hand work. Will I be doing hand work? Not sure yet. I got a shot of cortesone in my right hand last month and it feels pretty good. Well, until it got caught between the hand rail and the bus door in Copenhagen. The bruise is almot gone. 

Blessings,

Chris

 

Rambling

Devan and I had a chat about possible quilt projects. She tells me she likes the Flowers for my Wedding Ring but thinks it would be easier to make the Bali Wedding Star. It has to do with the applique. So we pulled out a tutorial for a Jelly Roll Race quilt by Jordan Fabrics.

We may start here. It will have to wait until the end of the month. She likes the autumn coloured roll and the brown batik. So what does that mean for Gramma and her great ideas? The Quiltworx quilts will have to wait. For now. I am okay with that. 

I took all the geraniums outside for the summer. It had been raining for a couple of days. Great time to take them out so they can get all wet and hydrated before getting too much summer sun. That will come later. But where is my good new shovel to dig the holes? I finally found it put away nicely in the drive shed. But not where it had ever been before. Now it is on my porch, close at hand. Speaking of hands, mine are feeling pretty good right now. I will try my hands at pie making tonight. It is rhubarb season and we really like rhubarb custard meringue pie. 

I bought a Majestic Palm at the local grocery store last week. Couldn't pass that up. $22 and 7 feet tall. There were dozens to chose from so I took the tallest one. It looks amazing in the SonRoom. I have already repotted it since the roots were quite potbound. Some 50 years ago my Sweetie and I had gone to visit an elderly neighbour of his who was living with her daughter in a highrise apartment in town. It was her 97th birthday and we took her a handful of tiny pink wild flowers. She hugged them close and smelled them. They were called hipaticus. I had never met anyone so old before. I have known a lot of them since. Anyway, they had a Majestic Palm in the living room touching the ceiling. It intrigued me. I wanted one. Now I have one. Some things are worth waiting for. Now to keep the thing alive until I am 97.  

The consensus for my leader ender project is to start with Trail Mix. No Y-seams. No triangles. No curves. No designated background. I bought a new 60mm blade for my large cutter. Do they really cost $21 for one blade? And is it true that cutting paper dulls the blade? And I have never yet tried to cut through twelve, yes 12 layers of fabric at the same time. That is in the instructions on the Quiltworx pattern. Otherwise, I would have to print off more newsprint templates. So I bought a new blade. Actually, I bought not one but 2 new rotary cutters. Someone wrote about them so I checked them out. Amazon delivers to my SonRoom door quite regularly. I also ordered the Creative Grid Double Wedding Ring Template set. I have been watching various tutorials about the Quiltworx process. Good thing there are so many. I am learning how to read their patterns. No simple feat. I am learning how to prepare to get ready to start one of the quilts. It may take me a while to get out of the starting gate. But I will be ready when that time comes. 

I have a plane to catch Tues and have not yet started packing. Going on my first ever cruise. With my duaghter. To Norway. Plan on visiting with Hanne while we are there. And Katherine's, the only quilt store in Oslo, is walking distance from our hotel. How cool is that? And it is just as warm there as it is here so I will not be taking my winter coat after all. My computer will not download photos off my camera and I do not know how to get pictures off my phone to my blog. Another new thing for this Gramma to learn. But that is what keeps us going isn't it? 

Blessings,

Chris

New Leader Ender Projects

Omigosh by Sue Garman. I first saw this pattern at a quilt show more than 20 years ago. I wanted to make one. But then, I wanted to make one of everything I saw. Years ago, I found the pattern at Come Quilt but could not bring  myself to pay more for shipping than the whole pattern. Recently, I discovered the digital download.

During my surgery recovery I spent a lot of time reading. I read through several patterns. Complicated ones. I had to figure out the underlying pattern and understand the step by step process. Then, I had to decide what colourway I want to make this. That should have been easy - scrappy. But scrappy what? brights? reproductions? white background or cream background? Solids or prints? Do I follow the RSC colours? It all makes sense, sort of. 

My brain will not allow me to mix modern brights with muted repros. Even mixing solids and prints has me hesitating. I know. I don't have enough to do. 

Trail Mix. This is another scrappy pattern that will be great as a leader ender project. This one does not have a designated background. This may make it easier to decide on colours. I saw Gail's when I visited her last fall in Kansas City.                              Trail Mix free download  

I took time to read the pattern to figure it out also. Now, which one do I start on? Whichever one, I will have to take time to precut a lot of strips and pieces and do some organizing. Then there is what colour thread do I use? Probably cream will work for both. However, I am working on 2 fast precut quilts with shiny white backgrounds. Not posted about them yet. 

My right hand is paining so much less and I find myself typing so easily now. I even hunted up the weed digger tool and dug some weeds today.  

blessings,

Chris

Dreaming Again

I came across a great vlog recently by Karen Brown of Just Get it Done Quilts. It gave me ideas. So I started researching and dreaming.

I have been cleaning up and organizing the Blue Room. It was so dreadful. I was initially looking for the left over fabrics from my Cherries Quilt. It has been hand quilted by the mother of the couple that bought most of our cows a few years ago. It still needs to be bound. 

So I pulled out a kits box and had a good look at Jinny Beyers New Moon. I bought this kit 10 years ago on sale. I had really wanted to make the Moon Glow, but it was not on sale. Too bad since it would have had all the fabrics in the kit. So, the other day, I found a free pattern download. So, I did. I downloaded it. All 75 pages. Now I have more options to dream about. 

Jinny Beyer has you printing off countless papers for each unit. Lots of paper needed and ink. Make sure to print the original pattern at 100%. After that you can photo copy onto newsprint. I bought a whole ream on amazon a few years ago. 500 sheets. I wonder now it that will be enough.  How did we ever quilt without copiers and computers?

I also  have her Shenandoah Baskets kit that was the 2015 BOM from Craftsy. See what you get when you start sorting and seeing and organizing. Nothing simple about this one but it is really gorgeous. Did I ever mention I met Jinny in person in Australia when I was there 10 years ago? Forgot to take out my camera for a picture. I do that a lot. Forget. 

It appears that Devan likes this one better than the Bali Star. I have both patterns. Flowers for my Wedding Quilt. I will let her decide since she will be making it with me. She is a get at it and get 'er done kind of girl.  I was looking through a bag of batiks I bought a lot of years ago. Possibly 15-20? I may have a new plan for some of those.

I am now officially  intrigued by the Quiltworx patterns and process. I do like process. My usual practice is to research, track down, purchase and collect everything for a big project, put it in a box, then move on to something else.  

tutorial for fpp   more tips for quiltworks   reading the pattern

Thirteen year old Ellyse is at hockey with Daddy who referees. She is learning to be the time keeper. Seventeen year old Ava has a migraine so we cancelled our lunch out to our favourite secret place. And almost (next week) twelve year old Devan is in the kitchen making ice cream and doing laundry. Ran out of bath towels. It is spring time and raining so cannot do yard work today. And that is how I ended up having access to my own computer for a Saturday.

blessings,

Chris

Chookshed Challenge May 2025

I have been absent from blogging most of this year. Been a bit distracted with a trip to India, Breast reduction surgery and 11 weeks of treatment for a wound that did not heal quickly becuse of an infection. Time to get communicating again. 

Yesterday I had an appointment with a hand/wrist specialist that was booked nearly a year ago. I wanted another opinion.They put freezing in the palm of my hand just at the base of the bad finger. Then the cortisone directly into the joint. That did not hurt. Much. The swelling from that is almost all gone. Just a bit stiff in the finger. I can now use a butter knife and I tried pushing and pulling the needle and thread in one of my Ella blocks. The fingers are stiff, but there is no pain. These blocks have been waiting for over 3 years. The Chookshed Challenge number for May is 8 and that is Random on my list. What shall I work on? As soon as I announce what I plan to do, I change my mind a do something else. 

I have been dreaming again about starting a bunch of new quilts. I have discovered a new to me quilt shop about 1 1/2 hours from here that has retreats and workshops for the Quiltworx Judy Neimyer amazing patterns. I have the Bali Wedding Star I bought a lot of years ago with pattern and all the papers. I went hunting through my many project boxes looking for the Batik jelly rolls I bought from Craftsy back in 2011? And some yardage at a half price sale.

My research shows lots of different colour options. And custom quilting. I wonder if I could machine quilt as you go? I have lots of time to obsess about that since I have not yet decided to start. 

I have gotten new square project boxes to organize all the papers when I start cutting them out. That is something I could do if we zoom with Chooky tomorrow night. Hhmm?

These were for the Bali Wedding Star. I asked almost 12 year old Devan if she liked the pattern enough to spend the next 5 years helping me make it. Maybe.

I found a tutorial to make the thing so I saved it here .

I want to be able to find it again easily. 

I have a quilt retreat here at the farm the last week of May. My quilting friends from Cornwall will be driving up for the week. My friend Robynne said she would give me her Cattails in the Meadow kit. Pattern and papers. And now, suddenly, I may or may not be in advanced Quiltworx school. Am I ready for this? Come back later this month to see if I remembered to pursue it.

I am off on a Norwegian Cruise with my daughter and plan to take along my Ella applique blocks. Will I finish all 5? I hope so. 

 

Blessings,

Chris