*all pics are clickable to see "in big"

ETA: Welcome to visitors from Field Trips in Fiber!

July first is a holiday here in Canada, known as "Canada Day". Formerly known as "Confederation Day" - it memoralizes and celebrates the unification of Canada as a single country. I spent our National Holiday celebrating all things Canadian, and therefore, took my Canadian self to my sewing room to celebrate me - by quilting. :)


I've been working on all of my "must finish" projects for quite some time (two weeks) and was feeling rather sorry for myself. *hee!* Not only was I working on things I had to do as opposed to selfishly making things for me, I had further limited myself to making things only with my stash for the months of June and July. (Wah, wah *heh* Seriously though, I've loved all the projects I'm working on.) I decided that a reward was in order for all my good behaviour, so I decided to make something quick, fresh and pretty. I remembered I had the pink pinwheels that I ended up not using in "Spring Forward", so this was the result:

I can finally blog about the first of my Pay it Forward gifts that I sent as the recipient has (finally!) received it!

Although I'd originally planned to make her something else, I was fooling around with her colour choices of violet, green and yellow, and came up with a pretty mini block. I liked it so much, that I decided I had to make some more, so I ended up with this:



But what to do with that? Which is when the idea of making her a tote bag was born. I'd never made one before, and I didn't have a pattern for one, but I approached it with my usual "How hard can that be?" attitude, and dove in. Some mistakes were made along the way, but I had a lot of fun making it. Here's the front



I had challenged myself when making my Pay it Forward gifts (in fact, in making anything for the months of June and July) to use only my stash. I didn't have enough of any of the fabrics to make the same thing for the back, so I decided to make the bag "reversible" so that, depending on her mood, she could show a bright and sunny side, or a dark, sophisticated side. *hee*


as you can see, I coordinated the straps depending on whether you were "using" the front or the back. From the sides, the bag looks like this:


And the lining is a very dark purple.

I knew that she used some kind of mobility device from her posts on her own blog, but I didn't know whether it was a wheelchair or a mobility scooter. After noodling around online, I came up with what I thought would be a good strap length, and I am happy to report that she advises it fits perfectly on the back of her mobility scooter. Yay!

I also included a little hand made card:


And she liked that too. So, I'm happy to report that one Pay it Forward gift has been completed and received. In the near future, I hope to report on more, but perhaps before then, I'll have a quilt to show you.

Until then, hope you're enjoying your summer, and remember - pay it forward!

:)

I'm totally excited! lol

I'm (finally) getting around to making the Pay It Forward gifts, and am doing them in the order that BSP pulled the names, so I started making Quilterbear's gift yesterday.



It's a little more time intensive than I expected (not having made one before); but ZOMG!! it's sooooooooo pretty! I'm so pleased! Every time BSP came into the sewing room, it was all "That's so beautiful!" And though BSP thinks everything I make is beautiful, this time, it really is!

Anyway, I'm totally excited because a: I've never made one before, b: I'm doing it without a pattern and thus far, it's turning out well, and c: it's so pretty! Violet, yellow green...

Also, I'm pleased to say, I'm finally caught up on ALL of my birthday blocks (although I'm NOT so pleased with the Depression Blocks I made - I'm going to send them so she doesn't think I've COMPLETELY forgotten about her, but I'm going to have to make another set and re-send them. The points are off. Any hints from my readers? I don't paper piece...) The other ones are pretty though.

I'm also almost caught up on my round robins (sheesh, those are a lot of work, I don't think I'll ever do one again.)

So, I'm being a good girl, catching up on my responsibilities and having fun with them. :)

I hope to have pictures to post soon. Now that I'm almost caught up, I should be able to quilt a UFO so we'll have at least that soon.

Hope you're all doing well, and in the meantime, be good and have fun!

I am back to working on things right now, but sadly, can't show you any of them, because I am finally getting to work on my long overdue Pay it Forward gifts, some birthday blocks for the birthday block club I'm part of, a round robin I'm working on and a sweet surprise I wanted to make for someone who reads this blog. So, I can't show any of those things until the recipients have received them!

I am being a strict discplinarian with myself and I am not allowed to make anything until I'm done at least half of those projects. *le sigh* However, last week, I took two hours off and went to the annual sale at the Canadian Textile Museum and I added some things to my stash.

My favourite, by far, was this lovely piece - two metres of heavyweight silk, it feels like water on your skin:



It may not look like much in the picture, but even as I stood in line to pay, women were coming up to me and stroking the fabric (to which I wanted to say "Keep your sticky mitts off!") but refrained from doing so. *hee*

That put me in a "gray fabric" mood, so I also got a stack of other gray silks:



Another favourite purchase - this little stack of red/white/gray - i've been wanting to do a quilt in those colours for a long time now:



I don't know what I'll do with this, but I loved the lustrous sheen of it:



And I adored, like, ADORED this wonderful bright, relentlessly happy heavy linen:



(Even BSP thought it was beautiful, and BSP doesn't like bright colours!)

I have to tell you though, that the pace of this sale is so frenetic that it's not actually enjoyable. It's my third year going, and in the prior two years, I went on the second day, when most of the "great" stuff was gone (I'm sure); but everyone was much more relaxed.

This year, I went and stood in line for the very beginning of the sale, and though the line was friendly and happy, once we got in, those ladies were evil. EVIL!!! Pushing, shoving, elbowing, one little old lady hit me with her tiny, ineffectual fist because I reached over her for something, they even grabbed things out of your very hands - I ended up buying a lot of stuff simply because I was afraid to put it down,






This was an especially "What the HECK?"





Although I did, in my near-panic, manage to grab some things I'll use:









(I was especially impressed, given the speed and frenzy with which I had to move that in the end, I managed to get some stacks of stuff that actually worked together.

I also got some stuff that truly fell in the "What were you THINKING?" category







Although I'm sure, I'll use them in something, eventually.

I also got a stack of fabric simply because one older woman was pushing and elbowing me so very aggressively that I wanted to step on her (she was just a wee little thing); but couldn't even push back because of my ingrained training as a child to respect your elders (she was at least 25 years older than I), so I contented myself with grabbing, being much taller and having a much longer reach, these (as well as some similar others I forgot to take pictures of)



because I heard her ask the attendant "Do you have any Christmas fabrics?". I saw them, reached over and grabbed the whole stack, just to thwart her and pay her back for my bruised ribcage. *hangs head* I don't even LIKE them.

I did make some great purchases though, like 4.5 metres of lovely white linen for $15



And an equal amount of black with tiny white crosses (which reads as gray in this pic for some reason)



For only $12.

One of my real scores was one I barely paid attention to at the time,



a giant freezer bag of what I thought were scraps, for $4.00, but ended up containing 4.5 by 4.5 charm squares:
















Which ended up containing nearly SIX HUNDRED charm squares! For FOUR DOLLARS!!!

I ended up getting about 25 metres of fabric all told (not including the charm squares) for $80.00 which is about the best sale I've ever been too. I was well pleased.

and so I must take a break for a week or so.

I leave you with this for inpsiration:



And I'll be back soon.

Kit

In addition to this blog, I also have a journal at another site, and someone there asked me how to free motion quilt. Although I am certainly no expert, I offered her what I’ve learned so far, and other people seemed to find it helpful, so I thought I would offer the same “tutorial” here.

1. If your machine doesn’t have one already, buy a darning foot or embroidery foot – they look like some variation of this and are not expensive.

2. Lower the feed dogs on your machine. If you don’t know what they are (I didn’t when I first started machine quilting!) here’s a picture of the
throat plate. The “feed dogs” are the little teeth under the presser foot (the thing that holds your fabric down). Your machine may have an automatic button to lower and raise your feed dogs, other machines are manual. On one of my machines, it’s a toggle switch next to the bobbin case, and on my other machine, it’s a toggle switch at the back and underneath the machine. Your instruction manual will tell you where and how.

3. Before you actually start quilting your quilt, I would practice (and practice and practice (!) ) on small pieces of batted fabric – potholder sized should do it. Just lower your presser foot and go to town. You’ll know that you’ve got it figured out when your stitches look the way you want to them to. Just keep moving your hands in the shapes and swirls you want. Try drawing a pattern on the fabric and following it, or following a pattern already in the fabric until you feel comfortable. comfortable.

4. I’ve found that machine quilting is counter-intuitive for me. You have to run your machine quite fast (much faster than you’ll probably feel comfortable doing); and move your hands slowly. If you’re moving your hands too fast, you’ll end up with stitches like this:

Big and loose looking. If you’re a hand quilter and this is your first time machine quilting, you’ll be horrified! *w* On the back, your stitches may look like this:



*ack!* I took a beginner machine quilting class and brought that as an example of what kept happening to me (I was insanely frustrated because no amount of futzing with tension, stitch length or even bobbin tension helped. She told me that it was because I was moving my hands too fast, and lo and behold, she was right.)

This is an early example of my moving my hands too fast (on the right), next to an example of me moving my hands slowly (on the left):



You can really see the difference!


6. When you’re comfortable and can consistently get the stitch length and tension you want, you’re ready to move on to your quilt! After you’ve batted and pinned your quilt (if you’ve used straight pins before, you may wish to switch to safety pins unless you’re comfortable a: being stabbed to death by your quilt and b: bleeding all over your quilt – yes, I speak from experience lol) you’ll want to roll up the sides of your quilt very tightly and then safety pin those suckers down as tightly as you can like so:


(cat not absolutely necessary, but I find, it helps). *s*

You always want to quilt from the centre out, so that you can smooth any unevenness of fabric out as you go.

7. So, take a deep breath, lower your presser foot and begin quilting. Keep in mind, that your quilt will be much heavier than your practice pieces, so your initial stitches won’t be as beautiful as the ones you’ve achieved in your practice pieces. Quite quickly though, you should catch on to the difference the weight makes, but even if you don’t, don’t worry – that’s what a seam ripper is for!

And that’s it! It’s really not hard at all.