Ongoing Saga of GORF

After ten days of little girl grand children, sleepovers and surprise treats of ice cream, tractor driving and rain,  GORF is back on the docket. So, lets get started:

• Clip on the long sashing strips
• Make sure they are long enough 
• Change the presser foot back to the one with the seam guide
• Remember to put it in needle down position
• Find reading glasses b/c the computer glasses aren't strong enough
• Put on music 
• Fan in hall to draw the cool air from the kitchen air conditioner
• Fresh stash of chocolate
• Put away the Morrell blocks off the design wall to show my Sweetie what that beige circle thingy is
• Glass of water
• Clear work space of Ava's crafts 
•  Turn on iron - no steam

Okay. No children today and I feel the cool air on my feet now. I can do this.

I have to remember that I have completed a Dear Jane quilt top so I am no stranger to 1/2 inch sashing strips. Except that these have ended up being almost 3/4 inch wide.

Sashing strips sewn onto one half.  Now to measure then against the other half. Looks pretty good, but what you cannot see is that I have tweaked them a bit to line up with the other intersections as I pinned them to the design wall. Dear Jane also taught me to be more relaxed with errors. But these intersections glare at  me! Why did I decide to do this the first time with red and off white???

•  Make sure I have the correct sides together
• Line up those ends first

•  Line up the intersection

•  Check to make sure they really line up

•  Off just a tad
•  Do it again

Not enough clips to go the whole length, so stopped just past the middle.
So even though I had worked so hard to line them up,  when I got there, it had all shifted ever so slightly. Looks bad here.

 But looks good here. All my sashing strips were cut on the straight of grain to avoid stretching. But the back strip stretched ever so slightly when I got there. Got to be relaxed. There is such a small margin for error. After all, this is the center intersection in red and white. Would Jane Stickle care?

 I care, so out comes the seam ripper. I bought a couple of new ones recently and they were as dull as high school math class, so found one of the old sharp ones.

 A million loose threads later, they are straight now ready to be top stitched

• Change presser foot back to regular 1/4 inch foot

 But what is this??? A ripple!!

 Out it comes.

• Pause for more chocolate

Until this . . .

To be continued   . . .

Blessings,
Chris

Product vs Process

I have always loved process. Now a completed product is a wonderful thing, but I love to see how things are put together and use my words to explain it to others. I love figuring out the pattern and can spend far more time thinking about and planning a project then actually doing it. I originally started my first GORF quilt with the dream of making a Baltimore style quilt in a weekend. Well, I was wrong. First of all, this quilt is more in keeping with the Red and Green style of quilts of the 1850 than Baltimore quilts. Second, creativity cannot be forced.  If I am just copying patterns, it is easy to make up blocks quicky. But I had to make the first ones first. Not that most of my blocks are that original, but I had to make them. I had to choose colours and fiddle with placement. I thought the top border should be an original using left over flowers and leaves. hardest thing ever for me.  

Then they had to be stitched in place. So, with my first GORF (GO Real Fast) quilt, I got a bit ahead of myself. As I was connecting the machine quilted blocks together, I realized that I had missed machine appliqueing some of the pieces. Turns out that with using matching thread, I could not see which ones were done and which ones got missed so I pulled out a big magnifying glass. And marked the 8 leaves I  missed.

And the 4 flowers. These then had to be appliqued through all the layers using a straight stitch.

Now this gives me an idea for future GORF quilts. I had not enjoyed the process of machine quilting all those cross hatch lines and around all those leaves and flowers. Maybe I could quilt the blocks first, then fuse on the designs and machine applique and machine quilt at the same time. 

My task this week is to get all the blocks connected together. I googled this and found several tutorials online. None of them had the same measurements but most had the same process.As it turns out, I chose the measurement that was almost 1/4 inch too big. Guess I should have made a sample block first before cutting out all the red fabric I had. And I cut some of the print strips a half inch too short.

 I use these wonder clips for attaching bindings and now these connecting strips. It is much easier and neater than trying to pin through all those layers and there are too many layers to try to do with out.

Now, I started quilting 40 years ago. I started sewing at age 12. I have several sewing machines. And countless presser feet. But I did not know until recently that there are quarter inch feet with a seam guide!!!!
So I paid the $69 plus tax plus 2 trips to the Oakville Sewing Center to purchase one and I absolutely LOVE it!. I sewed on those strips through the quilted blocks very very nicely. Who knew? These things are now standard gadgets that come with new modern machines, but I had bought mine a few years back.

 I had to switch feet to do the top stitching. Good thing that is simple with my Bernina since I had to do this several times.

 Now to get back to work and complete the task. I still have to quilt the borders. I have not yet figured out how to do the ends of the swags but will see how they line up when the center is all put together. Stay tuned.

Blessings,
Chris

OMG August Quilting Goal

Only one quilting goal this month. To finally complete GORF since we decided to gift it for a wedding this month. So, I guess I need to get busy. The appliques are all fused and cut out with GO dies and machine appliqued. I machine quilted the 16 squares and have yet to connect them. Wish me luck. Never done it this way before. I still have to machine quilt the borders. But I want to connect all the blocks together before completing the ends of the swags on the borders because I want those flowers to land in the right place.

I started this project more than 3 years ago as I was experimenting with applique GO cutters and this crazy idea that I could make one of these in a weekend. Huh! I have taught the class twice and then I made GORF 2 back in May.

It probably took the better part of a week when I add up all the hours I did work on it. I assembled the whole thing than rented time on a longarm at a local quilt shop and did an simple edge to edge design. That was a bit pricey, but it was done 2 weeks before the wedding so I was happy.

Blessings,
Chris

July 2016

Where has the month gone? 

I did not get much of anything finished in the manner of quilting this month. 

And I had such good intentions. 

I stitched

             a bit of Morrell
                      

    and a bit of 1857

However,

On July 3rd I got a phone call from our daughter in New Brunswick saying they decided to go on an "adventure." That meant only one thing. They were loading the van with babies and diaper bags and overnight bags and getting a cat sitter so they could do the 16 hour drive to the Farm here in Ontario. It took them 21 hours, but what do you do with a 2 year old at midnight who gets to the top of the slide in McDonald's play place and won't come down? They spent a couple of days at the Farm and a couple of days at his parent's then he drove home . . . Alone. She had the flight details for my planned trip to visit her on her birthday so, called Air Canada, bought herself and Jonathan a ticket, arranged to have Baby David on my ticket and so we all flew off to New Brunswick together. It was great. So, instead of doing all the stitching I had planned, I snuggled little boys, wiped noses, change many dirty diapers and had wonderful time and the little girls even came to visit. 

pedicures

um . . . how do you drive this thing?

3 year old Devan teaching 2 year old Jonathan how to drive

eating Popsicles

4 year old Elly helping with laundry

Grampa's little helpers

putting on David's shoes 

need a bit of help

Will Gramma's giant shoe horn work?

feeding chickens

watering flowers

kicking the ball

feeding babies

baby on grass

and Baby David started on solids

picking raspberries

picking more raspberries

And now July is in the archives and my heart is really full. 

Blessings, 

Gramma Chris

OMG July Quilting Goals

As the saying goes . . . Go big or go home . . .
I had a big project on the go for the past 2 months that I could not blog about, so could not commit to completing anything else that was of any size. For my July monthly goal, I want to start and complete the center block for the Morrell Album Quilt . I have so neglected this one. I had good intentions of making one block a week. That lasted for one week. Maybe two.  This center block measures 20 inches square and is not for the faint of heart. That has never stopped me from trying. So, try I will.

Morrell Center Block

The first thing I did was change my mind about the colours. There will be lots of detail on this one with applique and surrounded by a daunting red and cream dog tooth border. There are several ways I could approach this block. I am going to give hand piecing a try. At least for that pinwheel.

Also, I want to complete the GORF quilt by connecting all the quilted blocks together. It will be the first time using this method, do wish me luck.

Blessings,
Chris

Slow Stitching Quickly

Its Canada Day here in our beautiful country. We finally have some rain. I am home for 3 whole days with no responsibilities and of course, this means quilting time!! The July 1857 blocks were posted an hour ago and I have all three prepped and ready to go! Yea me. And since I have at least 10 blocks with the corner leaves stitched on, these should not take too long.

I have been sick with a dreadful head cold throat thing this past week. I hope it is gone soon and I have my voice back, since the little girls are tired of me whispering at them. Four year old Elly is coming over for the week and she will be going to Vacation Bible School for the first time. I start leading a small group for the summer once again. This time we will be working our way through a booklet our pastor wrote called "Hearing God". So, for the next nine Tuesday nights, we will be on a journey to learn to quiet ourselves, and listen for the still, quiet voice of God and journal. This is not always easy for someone who operates out of a slightly ADHD mindset. Learning to still my thoughts and lean into God is a challenge for me, but I am the group leader, so I have to do all the homework first. Its going to be good. No. Its going to be amazing.
I bought tickets for our ministry trip to India in October. At the VBS they will be collecting school supplies for us to take along for one of the children's homes.

 I got two of the blocks done. Just need to do some embroidery.  More perfect circles.


Blessings,
Chris

June OMG Finish

I set out to learn how to do the Karen K Buckely's Perfect Circles 

and complete these 4 blocks for the 1857 Album quilt-a-long.

 These ones weren't too hard once I found the missing circle. 

For some strange reason it ended up in the middle of the Dear Jane 2 box. 

Good thing I pulled out the completed blocks to put up on to the empty design all. 

 These circles are small and smaller. 

Since there were only 4 of one and 3 of the other sizes,
I made 7 circles at a time using 7 needles and waiting for them to dry before stitching them down. 

Then I made more until I had enough. Then unstitched them and re positioned and re stitched.

 The circle looks more round now. The bird will need some feet.

Between little boy grand children visiting and babysitting little girls, driving tractors, breaking a tooth and having it pulled and catching a throat thing from one of those little girls, I did not get too much stitching done this month. AND, my publisher finally sent the proofs for my book Denine: One mother's journey with a profoundly handicapped child and now I am in the first revision round. I have no less than 5 areas to address, including a larger font and the dedication. AND, did I mention my daughter and her family are moving back to Ontario in September???? Those little boy grand children will be a mere 3 hour drive away instead of a 3 hour flight. Bring on the summer!!

Blessings,
Chris