Yes, I got a couple of small quilts done, yes I used up some of my material but what I promised myself I would get done, I didn't, so I'm looking at finishing that this month. My Christmas Quilt. Here is just one block. I have 16 blocks completed, and all four rows completed, I have stars all completed with them, but I am not framing the blocks, I am using the same fabric around, so the stars which are very yellow and really pop up!!! I have to add another 2 1/2 inches around to complete the stars, and then I want to put another 2 1/2" border around that. My binding is the same material but a darker green, which is what I will be using for the backing as well. That's about 6 hours work, let alone quilting. So this will take me at least a month, and I am working 2 weeks in the month full time, so that doesn't leave me much time. But it's doable.
My next quilt is also something that I started for my cousin's Christmas gift. She's really big into Halloween, so the idea is to complete this one. I have 5 rows completed, and have to make another 5 rows, to get it going. It's very forgiving, and comes together beautifully. All the pieces are cut, it's a matter of placing it on my floor, putting things together so I don't have the same color side by side, and sewing it together. I can only do 5 rows at a time. So although it's easy to do, forgiving, it is time consuming as well. Two in one month..... phew.....
I can only hope.
The last piece of news, I was cleaning out my closet and I found this one.... It's very old 2010, and was in the Fraser Valley Quilt Show. I love it and it's perfect for the colling down of things here. I love it. And my husband is crazy about it because of the warmth. I just love how it looks on my bed.
OK, another month, another time of making a list of what I want to accomplish, but this month, it's a little harder. My mother's estate is finalizing, and I'm going through the trauma and the memories of that. My aunt (her sister) is in the hospital for the 2nd time for not responding properly when talked to because of a concussion three months ago (she couldn't even talk to her daughters when her daughter got there). I'm still working part time and I'm getting tired of it, and all this with life as usual. That's crazy!!!!
So what do I do? continue on like everyone else.
So here's my list of things to do:
Continue with my paper piece Christmas quilt. Looking at finishing the entire quilt.
need to make 3 more blocks. I'm behind but I find it so hard to make this one....
And now the final thing:
The quilt pattern that's a skeleton, from Sew Fresh. I've had it for a while and I've looked and couldn't find the pattern on her website nor on her Etsy account. Here's a major hint of what it's suppose to look like, everything has been cut except for the white, and that's where I'm at. It's queen size and it shouldn't take too long to do the rows. It's for Christmas for a girl who is nuts about Halloween. Yeah I know, I know, it doesn't make sense but that's my family.
I also signed up for something new and I'm very excited about. It called Fresh Paint from Ali Kay's Studio. She's a gorgeous painter with bright, very loose painting that I just adore and wanted to learn how she does it. I took a $10 week of painting with her (5 days actually) where I learn her style and because I was enjoying it sooooooo much (it's acrylic) I signed up by the month to all her classes. Here's an example of her style. I love it!!!!
A true stunner, and I'm learning her style. I'm painting a corn flower and a group of pumpkins in this style. See another of her works below:
The corn flower is completed. I love it, but my style is still tight, I still need to loosen up, so tomorrow's class and the next two days is the pumpkins, for me to learn. Can't wait..... Here's my corn flower.
I can still get more loose, so we'll see what happens. My goal for this month is to do the pumpkins, a tulip one and then who knows. At least two more.
Well, I've been working and here's what I got done, even with 4 different trips this month, but the trips were 3 - 4 days so that still gave me plenty of time. I'm hooking up to Stories from the Sewing Room for my finish. Check out the others at that site and see some really beautiful work from the host herself. It's absolutely gorgeous.
Here's my stuff. On the painting side I said I would do the following and see what's been done.
Painting:
three cards that you can mail but you paint the images on them. Ones a secret so here's the other two.
seal mammal from the last post. It showed the video that I will be following
Acrylic painting of Zeon National Park. - almost done, except for some of the rocks. Will have to finish it in the next two weeks.
I never got it done. I have a hard time to get these done.
The Giant Swoon called Patchwork Swoon from "Thimble Blossoms" by Camille Roskelley. I love her work. I started it in August, and now I want to finish it. It was one of my kits that I always wanted to do. It's an old pattern that I bought 10 years ago. I'm using a Jelly Roll by Collage Bitterweet, something I purchased from Craftsy.com when they changed hands 10 years ago as well. It's sweet, and just right. As for the rest of the material, I used scraps that I purchased from a woman online that can no longer quilt because of her arthritis. It's very common in BC with all the rain. This one is not even in a container, it's in a paper sheet protector, so I really want it done. And I love the pattern. I'm doing it because I want to see if I can do it. One of those challenges.
And here are the results:
It looks so excellent on my wall. We have a loft condo so the living room ceiling is so high.
It may not look it for the blocks of all those squares were not the correct size. They were suppose to be 16 1/2 and most were one direction and then 15 1/2 the other way. So I started to do some math to try to fix it, it was difficult.
The quilting was fun, even some of the sections because of the wrong size blocks were a little wonky. You can do some stretching but not a lot. So I started to do just simple straight lines with a walking foot to get it secure.
The effect is evident above. This is what I really worked hard at, with at least 6 hours of quilting and it is so worth it. It's now my fall quilt for each year.
And since I have a fall hanging quilt, I wanted something that was fall look for my bed. I had a quilt that was 16 years old, and I only used it once. It's too big for my barn door and for the wall, and too small for the queen bed. It's definitely a twin bed size, and it's gorgeous with it's colors, but see for yourself. I expanded it, giving it another layer all around except for the top. I've been meaning to do this for ages, just too scared to wreak the quilt if it didn't turn out right, but after thinking about how I'm not using it, that was it, it was done.
Original quilt, large laptop, covered 6 inches off the bed. NOW>>>>>
I added the fall trees you see here on both sides of the bed, and part of the bottom part, but ran out, so I added these leaves and forest floor, you see in the bottom picture.
This is a better picture of the fall trees fabric. Wish I bought more (How many of us have said that in our quilting life time??!!!)
That's it, my happy job so far. Maybe I'll get those cacti done after all, but I'm away for a while, so I'm doing what I can.
Been catching up with the Cozy Holiday Sampler QAL by Apples and Beavers. I bought this last year and only had time to do 5 of them. So I gave up. Now I'm back on track, doing one a week with email prompts from Apples and Beaver. Sometimes even 2nd one for the week. There are 20 paper piece blocks. I had 7 of them done before this, so now I have 10. I wanted to do 4 of the following this month and I marked which ones I have completed.:
Teddy Bear
Snowflake - done
Ms. Santa Claus - done
Female elf
Male elf
Sock wasn't on my list but I got it done.
Sock in blue.
Star with two colors white, one is shiny.
I had fun with this one and the eye glasses were so cute.
I also am in a challenge of the week for water coloring that I found online. So I completed the following as a practice of a YouTube video I found online. Below is mine and after is the YouTube video:
Then I purchased some acrylic tubes on Facebook (6 of them but one was bad so I threw it away) and she also gave me some huge canvases for free. Right away I wanted to use the colors so I painted this:
You can see the sun set better with a light shining on it. There's also birds in the top left corner. It was about 30" wide and 46" length. It really was gorgeous but I didn't have room for it, and my husband said no.... You have to understand I have tons of pictures all over the place, mine in acrylic, mine in watercolor, and my mom's in both watercolor and acrylic (she was a professional artist - she did portraits and landscapes of the prairies.) so I have no room. I circulate my pictures (take some down and put up new ones). It's funny how many I have.
So I offered it to three people and all said no. It's the size..... Finally I told my husband "Hey listen all I wanted to do is try this out, and I learned something about it, so it's OK, lets give it to a second hand store as a donation". So off I go to do this and while in the elevator of our condo another person steps in, says she likes it and my husband says "you want it? It's yours" and she says yes that its a beautiful painting, I say thank you and she's impressed that she knows the artist. So that seals the deal, she takes it. Funny hun???
But in the end when I offered the painting to one friend she said no it's too big but she really likes this other one in my place, and I end up giving her that one. I have way too many pictures, so one less is enough. But it wasn't enough apparently because I finished another item on my goals list. This ended up on a wall that my husband said "No pictures are going up here, I want one wall clean, nothing on it". Not any more:
This was the 2nd part of my challenge of the month to finish a quilt, but really I always wanted to make it, but was always scared to do so, It had so many little details to add, and then to embroider. But in the end it's done, and in my own style. I didn't make it exactly like the pattern, but I still like it and so does my husband.
The 1st part of my challenge of the month to finish was the Cat in the Hat quilt, which I completed a week ago. You can read about it here at this link but I've included a picture of the quilt below. Really, it turned out great for a gift for a brand new mother. She'll love it. And I'm gifting it with a couple of Dr. Seuss books that I bought at a used book store. It's perfect!!! All flannel.
Those two things were what my goals were when I hooked up with Stories from the Sewing Room One Monthly Goal for completing so much and also for starting a new one (that's the one that I mention below) and finishing that new one in one month.... Can't believe I did that Here's my goal stating blog post from the start of the month. On to planning Septembers goals but I start subbing again and school starts, so I have to make it small.
This month I joined the Summer Block Party 2025. It was a free BOM with some really cool blocks that were 18" big. The blocks were so cute I could not resist (and I should of because I was going to add another UFO to the list!!!!). But instead of a quilt I wanted to make a bed runner, and that's exactly what I did.
There were 9 blocks in total by a great group of people. I was following A Bright Corner for her links and getting emails from all the girls who were putting this on. It's over with but I did complete the quilt. I quilted it, and did all the blocks in a month. I AM SO PROUD of myself.
Love the bathing suit, but it turned out to be bigger than the other blocks so I had to cut it down a bit. The hardest block to do was the umbrella with the chairs, something that I really wanted to complete but I made a mistake. Can you see it? I want to do that block again so next time I'll do it right, hopefully.
That's it for quilts. I'm following Crystal Coast Quilting Guild for the numbers of the quilts to do for the American Quilting Society UFO challenge. I'm sure I covered 2 of them, and the Summer BOM was an extra that I started this month and completed this month.
Now the next month's challenges:
my watercolor challenge: to paint sea life so this is what I want to attempt. The video I'm looking at is below:
As for the next quilt, who knows but it will definitely be a new one and one that I started and need to finish, like the girl with the red blocks all around it (the blocks are from RB and the applique was a piece I found in a 2nd hand store. It's a quilt I want to make for our bed with no batting, so it's nice and light, especially after this heat wave in BC we're having. We are in the north, and here the town of Lipton was in the 40 degree mark, breaking another record. What the heck.
Good luck to everyone finishing their UFOs. Take care. Have a great September.
Got my info, got my partner, got my swap fairy, and ready to go. Been looking at fabric (great to have an excuse to look at fabric in shops again), and some designs. Starting to get plenty of ideas for a 24 by 24 wall hanging modern look. Excited. Looking at mute pastel colors, something I don’t typically work with, so I need to tone myself down. I love trying new things.
As for my WIPs in process, been continuing to clean and finish some stuff. I have more blocks done for the neighborhood quilt, just 3 left. I also have completed a Canadian Eagle Quilt pillow that you’ll see later when I can get pictures up, and another square for my winter quilt. But I’m away right now in Manitoba, and working a full week when I get back. I’ll have to wait for sewing the first of December. Take care all.
It always makes me laugh the different acronyms for sewing, computers, texting, etc.
FQ: Fat Quarter (a piece of fabric measuring about 18 by 22 inches)
SID: Stitching in the Ditch (quilting along the seam line)
UFO: Unfinished Object (a project that is not completed)
BOM: Block of the Month (a subscription service that provides a new quilt block pattern every month)
B2B: Border to Border (a quilting design that covers the entire quilt top)
EPP: English Paper Piecing (a method of hand-sewing fabric pieces around paper templates)
FART: Fabric Acquisition Road Trip (a trip to buy more fabric)
HSY Haven’t Started Yet\
HD Project Half Done (does that makes my title, Judie Bellingham PHD.)
MGBTQ Must Get Back To Quilting
QAL quilt a long (I'm part of so many of them)
WIVSP Work in Very Slow Progress
TOAD Trashed Object Abandoned in Disgust
USO Unstarted Object - so many of these, all the material collected and not cut....
STASH Special Treasures All Secretly Hidden. Now that I cleaned up the storage and my room, my husband knows exactly how much I have so there's no longer a need to hide anything.
SABLE Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy. Name a quilter that doesn't have this . LOL (that means laugh out loud).
FART Fabric Acquisition Road Trip ( Both my husband and I have forbidden me to buy more fabric!)
TGIF Thank God It’s Friday is the usual acronym but quilters like Thank God It’s Finished.
WWIT What Was I Thinking? A couple of patterns like this. One was a covid one that I'll never do now.
And finally WOMBAT Wast of Material, Batting and Time (Have a few of these!!!).
I can never keep them straight, and add new ones all the times. I have always been part of the OMG (one more gone) club, and now the WIPs (work in progress) one. The WIP is part of Leanne at Devoted Quilter. It's for October and November only and my list is made, with quite a few of them on it. So it's not one more thing (OMT) to my list, it's a challenge for two months, and so far for October I've completed a lot.
3 pillow for the sofa
1 small pod
catching up on "In my neighborhood" and
addition to a quilt that was too small.
I also with the cleaning have found at least 6 more small projects that need to be completed and a couple of quilts to fix into larger quilts. I'm on my way. These are in no particular order:
one large pod
house row by row
bees row by row
2 pillows for bed
1 pillow cover for the bench for Christmas
wool jacket
brown Swade pants
black pants already cut out.
applique tea cozy
black and white table top
two pillow covers for the sofa
complete the In My Neighborhood BOM
catch up with the Cozy Holidays QAL
Add addition to the fall quilt to make it into a queen size quilt.
I plan on having a couple of these done tonight since my husband is watching hockey tonight. Have a great day sewing...
