Roll Roll Cotton Boll

I first found out about the Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilts from my Ante Arley. The Roll Roll Cotton Boll was almost done when I found out about it. I got told I should print out the pattern right away if I wanted to do the quilt. So I did. The first photo is Arley's quilt, I quilted it for her. The pattern is now in Bonnie's book Spring Fling. I love the book and might end up doing most of the quilts in that book. 

Here is what my blocks were looking like. 

The stacks of blocks.

The quilting is done but it did not show up in the photo. 

I do not think I have every shown this quilt done on my blog before.

Here is the quilt complete and on a bed. I did make it bigger with an extra row. My mom helped me finish this quilt and then we gave it to a family member getting married. The Bride loved it. 

Last Brown Scrappy Saturday

I had to work on my brown scraps today. I really wanted to finish up my blocks today because next week will be a new colour. I have this 12 block finished today. for my main rainbow quilt I started last Nov.

Go to Soscrappy to see the other great brown scraps.

Last month I made some Orange 16 patches ( yes started another one) so today I got the brown ones done. I made sure to put one other colour in each block, pink, red and blue were used in these.

I keep working on the Spools as a leaders and enders challenge by Bonnie Hunter. So the ones here are new ones done this week. I do not have any more brown spools left to do. I think I will have to work on another colour for a few days.

Here is a photo of Teddy. He is a shade of brown so I am showing him today. Teddy belongs to my friend Yvonne. I was at Yvonne's on Friday. Our surface design group meet at her house to lay out a plan for the next few months. I think we are planning to do some marbling on fabric at the end of Nov. Teddy was a little bad and ate some candy out of one ladies bag and then over night him and the cat ate three homemade buns left from our day. Most of the time he is a good dog. Just likes people food.

Design Wall Monday Sept 17th

 It is Monday again. I love spending time looking over everyone work from the weekend of sewing. I got a few different projects a little farther. I  have leaders and ends Spools in blue and orange. Then I have some orange hexagon flowers. I have the first three blocks done for Grandmother's choice. I had trouble and cut the nine patch square to big and the block on the bottom right is to big by a large 1/4" so I redid the block. I also got the last 10 string blocks done that I needed for RRCB last night.

On the second wall is my Roll Roll Cotton Ball. This wall is much too small to hold much more than this. I think with the addition of the 10 string blocks I might soon be able to sew the main body of this quilt together. I may take this to retreat in mid October. I have tons to do on the boarder as the units are not together yet. 

If you want to see more about Design Wall Monday, go see yourself. I have added this post to Manic Monday at Sew Happy Geek.

I am quilting this sweet wall quilt today. I should have no trouble finishing  after lunch and then getting it back to her on my way to Agility class on Tue.

I have a super busy week. Dog class twice, Birthday, Wedding Anniversary, Golf tournament, Dog agility trial on Saturday, family photos Sunday. And I am to get a hair cut but do not have a hair dresser. Not sure how much time I will get to sew for myself.

WIP Wednesday and Recap July

I am looking back at July to see what I have done. I did not finish a quilt of mine, I did help my customers by machine quilting many of their quilts. This collection of rainbow blocks is looking great. I added four blue ones this month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2012 (RSC2012). I also got half of my Spider Web Quilt pieced together and need to get the other half up on the wall and pieced together.

I got many more wacky log cabin blocks done also for the RSC2012 in blue for the month of July.

I got five more Forester`s wife blocks done that is part of a sew a long and the RSC2012.

I got this quilted in July but did not get around to doing the binding. This is very small and was quick to do but still not done. I plan to use this on my small coffee table as I need some kind of place mat.

Here is the back, it is even in rainbow thread.

I have done a ton of machine quilting. This is one that is currently on the machine and is very very large. I thought I would post a photo as the customer sometimes checks my blog and I want to give her a little peak at what I am doing on her quilt. I am so pleased with it.

The fruit around here has been crazy. Yesterday I spend the day in the kitchen trying to use some of it up. I made a Rhubarb and Raspberry Crisp.

Then I made three bashes of Raspberry Jam. I have picked at least four large pails of berries in the last few days. Glad to have the berries.

Then a double bash of Raspberry and almond muffins. I took my Blueberry muffin recipe and added two table spoons of ground almond and some almond extract. I also did six pies on Saturday but did not get any photos. I have Saskatoon berries on the trees and I not sure I will pick any as I am almost done with the kitchen.

I have added today`s posts to Freashly Pieced WIP Wednesday and Lily`s Quilts Fresh Sewing Days

WIP Wednesday Work In Progress

I have linked up to Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday on this 4th of July. Happy Independence Day to my American friends and family. Yes I have cousins that are Americans. As a Canadian I have added this to Needle and Thread Net Work.

I am working on more blocks for my RRCB quilt. I have decided to make it larger and I need more blocks.

My stack of blocks so far. I have changed the colour to some of my favourite colours.

I hope to get the coloured blocks done this week and maybe next week attack the string blocks I need.

I also got this little triangle scrap quilt sew together. It is now a quilt top and off the design wall. I will have to squeeze in some time and see if I can get it quilted this week too. I have ton of machine quilting to do for customers. I need to keep on track. Maybe stay off the internet after I check out what the other WIP quilter`s are doing.

UFO Day Fun

 Twice a year the Leduc Quilt Guild ( really called The Black Gold Quilt Patch) hosts a UFO day or Quilt Till You Wilt. We have been wilting earlier and earlier each time. I have head cold and packed up around 8 pm even though the hall was booked till 10 pm. I came home last night and went to bed early.

We also do a pot luck supper. I was near the end of the food line so I did not take photos. I was thinking I would show the good food too.

The first three photos are of a quilt by Joan A. She had it basted together and spent her time Machine Quilting it on her domestic machine. She just goes like crazy and gets it done. She likes to use the gloves with little rubber dots. She says she saw this pattern of a star in a quilt at the Red Deer Quilt Show last year and traced out the block. The block units are 3"finished so the block finished up to 9". I love the scrappy quilts that Joan makes. She makes good use of some very old fabric mixed with great fabrics, most people would not do the mixture she does.  She had some of us pick out our favourite blocks. I picked one with the bright pink and some lime green (third row in the centre of the top photo).

Maybe you can see some of the quilting. She free motion quilted some leaves and some square lines.

Here I am, not to far from my box of tissue. I am working on my RRCB by Bonnie Hunter. I got many blocks put together. I am still not ready to put the whole quilt together yet. More units to do. I am considering making it bigger. Crazy Ha. I would need 6 more main blocks and more string units. I would like a big bed quilt. We are considering on buying a King size bed. And a new bed would need a new quilt. 

This wall quilt is by June A. She took a class in St John's Newfoundland in 2010 at Quilt Canada with Pippa Moore. She did the designing in the class with Pippa  and now has it based together and was just started to do the machine stain stitch. Can you see it is Bleeding Hearts?

Happy Father's Day.

Design Wall Monday June 11

Sunday the weather was cold and rainy so, I sewed a good part of the day. I worked on my RRCB quilt. I now have six main blocks completely done and some of the string blocks sewn together.  I have added this post to Patchwork Times and Sew Happy Geek linky page. 

I also worked on more purple triangles. When will they end. I still have more of these to do. 

Friday last week I got to go the Central Alberta Quilt Guild Show. Also known as the Red Deer Quilt Show. I did more shopping. There is a very large market mall at this show. Shops from BC and Manitoba and all over Alberta come to sell us goods. I had to buy more fabric. Some of the fabrics I got were only $1.50 to $3.39 for a FQ and in Canada. How can one not buy fabric then.

The book guy was there, so I picked out two books this time. Whitework Quilting by Karen McTavish. This book is out of print now. I was planning on buying it last Dec when I took the class but she sold out too quickly. Sorry the photo is side ways.

I also bought the Modern Patch Work book. I like a few of the quilts and will have to make some of them.

At the Red Deer show they sold Raffle quilt tickets on this quilt. It is made by some of the members.

Here is a small part of the quilt show. I did not get permission to post photos of some of the quilts. I should be asking each quilts maker and that is impossible. This is just one row. There are more then four rows of large quilts with at least three rows of small quilts and then all the market is around the outside and down another hall way. I am sure it is the largest floor area any quilt show in Alberta has.

Design Wall Monday June 4th

One design wall has the lady bug mystery on it. I have decided to use this red dot fabric for the outer boarder. I had a red with large Black dots picked out and cut but my Mom said "Yuck". I then dug out many fabrics, Black with blue dots, red with smaller dots, Black with white dots but it was random dots and did not work. I had to get more of the red and white dot and it is being washed now. Them I can sew on the final boarder and add this quilt to the pile of tops I have.

Orca Bay Mystery is off to the side still. I have added this to Patchwork Times. You can see more design walls with work under way.

I have all the string units done for RRCB. This is a big milestone on this quilt. I have the 60 string units cut and ready to sew in to a block or triangle unit. If you want to know more about what RRCB is check out the label on my side bar.

This is just a start. I have sewn the first block together. But I do not have quit all the units done and have lots of sewing to get these blocks done. You know what I will be working on this week.

I got my flowers planned yesterday and my husband has the riding ring in good shape. I thought I would show it today. Now to ride the ponies some more. We have a few trail rides planned this year.

I also let the fish outside in the pond. I have trouble wintering my fish outside, my pond is not deep enough to keep it from freezing solid. So for the winter I bring them in to the basement in a horse water trough. I let them get use-to  the cooler outside water temperature. They sat in the tub for about four hours and them we let them lose. They swim around like crazy checking out the new place.

Here is the pond. I have a few more plants to go in the pond and plans to buy some floating plants. It will look better in a few days. So glad to have a green yard again.

Purple Scraps

I got some purple scrap sewing done on Saturday. These are only part of the 600 purple triangles I need for Roll Roll Cotton Boll. This step is going to take for every. They are so very cute. Many little piles of many little triangles. I got to use some very old and special fabric, and some not so old. One of the fabrics was in a maturity dress I made some 15 years ago.

I have added this to SoScrappy Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2012. I am just loving this challenge. I have big news today. My quilt Bouncy Ball got a 2nd place at Quilt Canada in the National Juried Show. I just found out about it and had to tell you. It is the Greek Square blocks I started to make at the beginning of this challenge. I loved it so much I kept sewing till it was done.

My box of purple scraps. I have many lovely purple batiks in here still to use up. Next I will work on a block or two for my Farmer's Wife sew-a-long. I must call it Forester's Wife.

Design Wall Monday RRCB 1 and 2

It is Design Wall Monday over at Patchwork Times. I do not have anything new on the wall yet but I do have some new patchwork on the big ironing board. I have steps 1 and 2 of RRCB done. What is RRCB? Roll Roll Cotton Boll is the mystery quilt Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville did back in Nov of 2010. Yes I am way behind. Well I did not start it till this year. I was seeing the quilt all last winter and made sure to print it out. I believe the pattern is going to be in her new book coming out in July.

Block mapping out my new colours

Bonnie had given a colour way of red, brown, pink and some green. I did not want to do those colours and since I was starting this knowing what the quilt and block was, I picked new colours. I wanted Lime green, navy, turquoise and purple.

I had a couple of hours one night last week to sew for myself. I worked hard on my string blocks. The next day I ironed my string blocks and found out I had very bad tension on my machine all the time. Look at those bad stitches. They are easy to unpick, just pull. But what a pain in the #$%*. I still have at least one more block to fix. Then I have about 12 more blocks to do yet. Finally I am seeing the end of the strings. We needed 60 string blocks. Then they are cut in half and four are sewn together.