A Celestial Finish

Today I finished a WIP that has been about 2 years in the works. It was nearly finished when I put it down to get involved in other more urgent projects.

I've stalled for a short time while making blocks for my 3 x 6 Bee. Needing something to do, I pulled out Celestial to see what was left to do. Not much! I had already quilted in the ditch around all the squares and stars. Each star centre had been FMQ'd too. All that was left was quilting the setting triangles with a meander, and putting on the binding.

The meander was soon done, it disappears into the swirls on the fabric. No worries about mistakes.

For the binding, I used the tutorial on the Red Pepper Quilts blog. Until now I've always sewn down the back of the binding by hand. Now I'm a convert to machine stitching the whole binding. It made a nice neat job, it's strong, and best of all, it's fast! In keeping with the bright colours in this quilt I used a lovely bright aqua with a gold stripe across the width of the binding.

Now I see Celestial finished I wonder why I put it down for so long? It has everything I like: bright colours, suns, moons, stars, solemn cats, fantasy flowers and so on. I'm so glad it got finished!

Hope you are enjoying summer weather!

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Till next time,

Sue

Paper Piecing is Possible!

This week I decided to try out a few blocks for my Bee, the  3 x 6 Mini Bee. It's not so Mini really, we make a block for 6 bee members over 3 months, 2 1/2 months with time for mailing. The blocks are our choice, and in each persons chosen colours.

I thought I'd try a paper pieced block, and since I'm new to paper piecing, the more practice the better!

Here's my first try:

Pretty simple to piece, not too many mistakes to rip out.

Next I tried this one:

This was more time consuming, but I like Circle of Geese to look at. The circular movement is fun. I made mistakes, you can see one in the middle at the bottom. More practice needed!

Today I'm going to try a third block, a different star, and see how it goes.

I finished the cushion cover, and tried it with a pillow form. The pillow form is too small, this is to get an idea of how it will look:

I did straight line quilting around the star and a meander on the border. The back is a green leafy fabric. I thought of Christmas fabric for the back, but decided it limited the cushion too much, and this way it could get more use. After I get the pillow form in 20" I'll get this sent off.

I also mailed the placemats and table runner, and finished binding on Shooting Star.

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Lots of great projects to see here!

Till next time,

Sue

What a great week!

The weather has been just lovely this week, sunny and hot. Well, except for the wild hailstorm that blew in last night, but this is Calgary and such things are to be expected.

I've been productive with my sewing, and I have something to show at last.

Shooting star is quilted and being bound. The label is on, it's nearly ready to go to its new home. I echo quilted all the large and medium stars, then I got out the FMQ foot and outlined all the small stars and quilted in the middles of all the stars. Lots of sewing, I like how it looks. The binding was in my stash, and the colour is just what I want. I wish the dots were smaller, but I decided to overlook that complaint.

It's a large queen size with plenty of overhang, so no need to fight over it on a cooler night!

I've been following Christmas in July on Elizabeth's blog at Don't Call Me Betsy. Sadly it's finished now, well, July  is over. There were lots of great projects, and I was inspired to try Elizabeth's Mariner's Star Pillow. It's paper pieced, and I got the scaling wrong on my printer, so the star is larger, but I can deal with that. Here it is, ready to be quilted. I'm a paper piecing newbie, and there was a lot of ripping and re-sewing but it worked out in the end.

While I was away in England I met a very nice lady who was very helpful to me with the family stuff. I want to send her a gift, so I made placemats and a table runner. They are quilted and ready for binding.

Hope she likes them!

And my Neapolitan quilt is ready to go to the longarmer for basting. The backing had to be 101" by 114" to allow for the machine. 81/2 yards of fabric!
I'm thinking of straight line quilting it, but not on the diagonal like the placemats.

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and

 

Till next time,

Sue