Another quarter here and gone, as well as 2016

Well the 4th and last quarter is here, and it's done.  I'm hooking this up to Leanne at "She Can Quilt" for the 2016 Finish A Long.

OK, in the last three months I have once more purchased some quilt blocks, so I'm upset.  It's over 60 quilts to make now.   Remember, I am a fabricaholic....  But I did complete many quilts this year, and many of them are queen size so I'm still feeling good about the entire thing.  So lets get to it, and show what I did complete this term.  And if you want to see the entire year in review, you can go to my page of the 2016 quilts completed at this link.

My original list is here, and many of them are not done, so I won't bore you with the ones partly, completed, I'll get right to the ones that are fully completed.  

Here's a list with diagrams of where I was at and where I am now.

Got two potholders completed but I gave them away before I could take a picture.
I got one done for a very good friend of mine.  So even though I wanted to get more done, I'm happy with at least one.
All quilted and all completed.  I'm extremely pleased at how the pattern took off.

Well, although this was my list (above) I did do a number of extras, and they were on the list at one point of time, so I'm OK with showing them all.  See below:

Premie quilt for the hospital.

Gift to my aunt for Christmas.

Quilt on my bed.  A queen size quilt.

Pillow case for star wars.

A wall quilt from Manitoba.

My table topper - Butterflies.

A quilt for my cousins in Manitoba.  Art Deco - beautifully quilted.

Well, it was busy, but not with what I signed up for.  Still, a great year of sewing.  Thanks for helping to push me to get going on some of these  :)

Things done before the 25th

Well, it's been a long time since I've written last, and in that time period although I got a lot done, it wasn't as much as I wanted to.  The holidays were very tiring, and I never did catch up on my sleep.  So without further ado, let me show you the great things that I did get accomplished.

A gift for my friend Gro, "Just because" she's such a good friend.

A quilt for the hospital for Premie Babies.  I'm very pleased with this one.  Take a good look at the fabric, it's adorable.  All about pirates.

One more block for my Midnight Garden BOM.  I'm two behind for this one.  But I'm still happy with this one because it took forever.

My block lottery quilt!!!!  Completed!!!  Look at the quilting above.  Below is the size of it.  In the end I placed the blocks where I wanted, not following the final placement, but it looks great!!!  The quilting on it is amazing, with every block quilted every inch.  In the end it's stunning.  I'm calling it "Multicultural" because of all the different shapes would not be put together, and yet, it matches in the end.  That's what is so amazing of this quilt, the fact that even when we're all so different in Canada, we can still fit together.  I'll have to measure this one so I can enter it in my Quilt Guild's show.

And a quilt table top that I have created for my Aunt for Christmas.  It was one of the Row by Row's for "Home Sweet Home" for Seattle.  I was very happy with the results. I weaved quilted it to make the quilting look like waves all over the piece.  Notice the sea hawk emblem on the stadium?  For you Seahawk fans.  And to the right is Mount Ranier.  There is even a pod of whales in the water.  This row by row is a work of art.  I have one for myself made and one for my aunt.  I'm so pleased with the results.

So that catches me up, I'm pleased to say.

One monthly Goal has moved!!

Patty at Elm Street Quilts is doing it now!!!  It's still the same, and she'll be doing it for the rest of 2016 and next year as well.  Yeah!!!!!  Another year of it, because it does help me!!!  Buy thanks to Heidi at Red Letter Quilts for doing it all this time!  It's a big job and you did a fantastic job at it as well.

OK, was too busy last month to submit anything but I'm doing it now.  So much to choose from, so I'll make it easy on me.  Been working on this one, starting to piece it together, it's my block Lotto quilt that is 2 (yes two) years old.  Need to get my UFO's down, because I keep on starting new ones, and I have one I want to start for Christmas for my cousin.  Here's what it looks like now, not sewn together, just placed, but we'll see if that's how it ends up.  Really modern right?  Made it with as many wild colour material that I could find in my stash, then brought it all together with that cool colour green.  Good luck to me!  Have fun everyone.

January Goals Completed and More

It's official, I got the zoo completed.  I call it animals in the City, with a yellow border of city buildings and boxy quilting, I'm proud of how it turned out.

The lion was the hardest (as stated in the instructions), but it does look so good!!

See the quilting?  Wandering in the blue and squares to match the buildings (they're very faint) in the yellow. This block was my favorite.  Which one is your's?

My second goal was my Quilt Doodle "These are a Few of my Favorite Things". Will write more on it later showing the complete progress but here is a picture to show it's completeness.  There is embroidery, beads, applique, everything...  It's quite large - 104 inches by 80 (I added another border to the edging to make it bigger).  But it's great for an overlap for the pillow, and hanging down around a twin bed.

December's block was anything we wanted.  I wanted to add a  quote of some sort.  One quote that always stuck in my head is "It's not the years in your life, it's the life in your years." and with a quilt of favorite things, it's  great words to live by.  I embroidered it on the quilt.  You can see apart of it above.   Cindy at Quilt Doodle did such a great job again!!!  And she's starting another one already!  Check the top left hand corner for the newest or click HERE. 

But that's not all that was done this month, there was December's Aurifill mini quilt by Celine Perkins.  I do so love doing the minis but now Pat Sloan and Aurifil are back to doing blocks to make a completed quilt.  The next one is by Heather Valentine and it's quite modern.

Also in my frenzie to quilt I finished another row from the Row by Row experience this summer.....

The theme was water.  And now this makes 9 so far.  And next year a new one is coming - Home Sweet Home.  So I have to complete all my rows before I can start again....  My rule, not my husbands..  But with 52 rows to complete, come on, I have to get real!!

I started the new Quilt Doodle BOM - 6 reindeers.  The quilt will be a Christmas one, and you can never have too many of those...  :)

It's Called "Tis the Season", and it finishes as a 63" x 73".  The finish item is the picture on the side of my blog, so I know what it will look like, and I'm quite excited about it.

An entry to the Block Lottery which also has a mystery quilt on it for all the blocks you make.... Birds for this month...  I entered these 5 blocks in a lottery hoping to win blocks from others to make a complete quilt.

And I completed the forth block for my girlfriend's Christmas quilt (yes I know I'm late).  Sorry, no photo right now.

How did everyone else do this month?

Linking up to OMG for the Goal contest.  So pleased with myself!!!  Made the two goals!

Aurifil and Block Lotto Mania with a little more...

It seems thats all I have been concentrating on this month (which was only two weeks).  But I had the AYOLFs as the Aurifil bed runner, and I also completed this August's block.  So Lets see that one first...

August Aurifil.  Buttons.

All blocks so far.  I still need to square up two of them.

The quilt has been made with all flower fat quarters that I had been collecting randomly over the years.  So I thought this would be a great way to use it.  So far, so good I think.  What do you think?

But I've also been trying to catch up with the Block Lotto quilts.  I missed one, the sun paper piecing, and I was behind in the spokes and windows, but this week I caught up.  Here is it.

Blocks for the lottery

14 blocks for my quilt.

As for the rest of the time today - spent more hours (2 more) for the Aurifil bed runner (almost complete), and continued on with my blocks of the month.

And finally, the Doodle quilt...  It's really looking great, I'm so excited !!!  And so happy I entered this BOM!!

August's Block

Doodle Christmas Quilt - Looking spectacular!!!  Need to sew the blocks together!!

Happy with what I have accomplished today.

Debbie Mumm's Quilt coming along....

With my husband's order to stay home and take it easy, "sew if you want" - boy what hardship ;)  My flu was not as bad today, all that sleep yesterday seemed to have helped, and a day of just taking it easy, and doing a bit of sewing, has also helped it along.

I did some cutting, to catch up on a couple of quilt blocks that need to be done.  There's Debbie Mumm's Stars of Honour - a free block of the month every two months.  Each block of the month you need to make four or six of them.  Here they are:

Another project I worked on was the spike block from the Block Lotto site.  I want to join in the fun this month, I missed the last one completely because of all the striking going on at the end of the school year.  But this time, I'm bound and determine to join  :).  I need to make 14 blocks for the queen size quilt this month, and here are 9.

Two for the Block Lottery

These seven for me.  Need to make 14 in total.

The basic colours for my block lotto quilt are wild colours - but the most of them are the orange and yellow background fabric in the picture.

I've also worked very hard, and cut out the Vice Versa blocks.  It's the first time I've every make flying geese with the large block and four smaller squares method, but at the end I found it extremely easy.  Can't believe I've done it any other way....  Hopefully I finish the blocks tomorrow and will post them then, as well as put it up on Flickr.

Busy Sunday...

Block Lotto

Been going at it really strong to catch up with the Block Lotto modern quilt and I have to say it was really fun!!!  I had to do 12 blocks of the May block which was stripes.  Many people said it was hard, but I guess my sewing foot is on the mark for a 1/4 inch because once I started I had no problem doing them.  The ones on this bed have been sewn together into units of four.  Now I have to put them on on the Block Lotto site and tell them now many I made.  Not only did I do the 12 for my queen size quilt that I am building (been at it since January - but you can start late because all the patterns are there, you just need to catch up) but I also did 4 more to enter the lottery and 2 others that were the wrong size.  So that's not bad - 2 out of 18 that didn't work.  The secret, I made the side triangles (you make a square and cut it in half to make

two triangles) from a 5" square, much bigger then what they ask for, but really, it's easier to cut down to being short on the size.  The size of each square is 7 1/2" which makes the large square.  They had to be true blue, and that's what they are with cream on the lines.  But as you can see from the above picture, I made a couple with the orange/yellow/wild colour original quilt colour that will be the border as well as more squares.  It's in some of the circle blocks as well.  

So I have to remember (and ladies we know what it's like to remember anything.... with the large list of things-to-do we have  ;)  to enter the block lottery before the end of May.  Check out my post!!!

The other Quilt that I've been working so hard to get done from my list of things-to-do this month is the Layer Cake Quilt from Material Girls' website.  It was an excellent QAL that was fast (truthfully, with working full time and only quilting every second weekend this was quick for me but so much learning) and teaches you so much that each square can before a quilt of it's own.  All you have to do is choose one or two of the blocks you liked and make a complete quilt on it.  Here are quilt blocks 13 - 18 (I did 19 and 20 last month).  All are done now and I need to sandwich the quilt.  I missed the deadline for this one (by one month) but that was because I had to go into the hospital (nothing serious) and the medication before that got me size for 3 days before and a week after.  So darn, no final prize, but the quilt itself is a prize.  Judge for yourself.

They look fantastic all together, with a border of 2 1/2 inches and a large finish border of 3 1/2.  I won't show the final picture until it's all together and then you can be the judge yourself.  If you want to see the blocks along the way, click here.  Everyone says the background is what makes it, the layer cake was a simple, light, pastel layer cake, but it pops with the black and white.  The borders will only be the black and white, so all will really show up in the end.  I'm excited about it and I said I would put the quilt together and have the top layer by the end of the month, then in June, I'll quilt it with tiny circles in black thread only on the black material.  That would be so good looking, it will be approximately a queen size quilt.

I've done more but I'll blog about it in another blog. 

Thanks for listening.

Busy weekend, but always time for sewing.

With my list fresh in my mind and a couple of quilt due dates coming up I spent about 4 hours sewing today.  I did most of the cutting on Friday, so it was nice to just sew and see what appears.  I wanted to keep up with many of my BOMs that I caught up with last month, so here they are, the steady ones.

There's the steady one, the Quilt Doodle which is really turning out so well, I am so happy with it.  I sewed 3 of the large blocks together to make a complete row.  Showed it to my husband and his only comment was "Its a Christmas quilt??"  I explained to him that it won't be finished until Christmas anyways so that's perfect.  Then dutifully he said it was very nice and continued to watch his hockey game  ;)

Doodle Quilt - did the tree on the right.

I completed the Aurifill block.  My entire quilt is all flowers, so it will be very bright when it's done.  It's a chain on point.

I also tried to catch up on the Material Girl quilt - layer cake quilt which will be due on May 16th, but it will take quite a bit of work.  I still need to do quilt blocks 13 - 20, but at least today I finished 13, 19 and 20.  They looked so intriguing I wanted to complete the last two.  And it turned out exactly like it should, so take a look at all three then some close ups.

All three together.

Love the colors.

The pastels look well in the black dotted material.

Looks like the disappearing pinwheel I want to do.

But as I said before I still have so much to do:  blocks 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18, then put the borders on them to put all together.  I'll also need to quilt, and that will take some time.  I want to do a circles on the black all around the pattern.

To continue on, I had some extra material from before and I did a table runner.  I practised my quilting on them.  Did leaf design and flowers in the centre.  Take a look.

Square table cover.

Notice the quiltings?

I was finishing off the edge, and this time I machine sewed it.  It looks perfectly fine.  Will show this and the 3D quilts to my Quilt Guild on Tuesday.

At the same time I tried to catch up with the Block Lotto March block (Irish Chain).  I did two of them

April's Block Lotto Quilt

but I still need two more.  They take quite a bit of time.  One thing that does not take a lot of time is May's lottery block.  It's a simple block with three fines of white and blue.  I love the look.  It's very simple yet beautiful.  I need to do a good amount of them but with creams and simple blues.  the instructions say do not do any in aqua blue and of course that's the one I did  ;)  So I'll have to make more but I'll use these in my quilt.  I love the look of them.  Considering doing an entire quilt of them.  They look so modern, that's what I like about it.  

Notice the block below that is suppose to go all together.  I finally got one whole section completed.  Notice also the Irish block, March's block that I did not complete and one of the things on my list of things to do. It's simple but does take a lot of time, especially the centre star.  I would like to do the block in a different color, I don't like so much green in it then the white.  It would be better to do the opposite.  Maybe for the other two blocks I need to complete I'll do that.

One of the sections all done.

What else?  I still need to do a lot but  when looking at all that I have done today, I still feel that I've done well, and I'm happy with myself.