Friday Night with Friends Report for February

I have been working on the quilting on my cat quilt – some of it was done on Friday night but I try to do a bit every day.  Here is some of my progress.

Detail around the cats in the sun.

The title of the first panel.

And some straight line quilting border work on the cats in the window panel.

It seems that I didn’t plan enough time for finishing it though as I keep on being too busy and I am worried that I won’t get it done in time.  Oh well, all I can do is try and if it doesn’t get done for this visit it will be done for the next one!

I did manage to get a few other things finished this week.  On Wednesday I went to a Bernina class at my LQS.  Ruth holds these classes once a month (except in summer – noone would come then).  We make a little project and learn about how to use some particular foot or feet or settings on the machine.  I attended these classes when I first bought my machine and learned tons but I feel like I have lots more to learn.  This class we made a wall hanging.

I learned how to do machine sewn binding the right way – it turns out that the way I was doing it on the placemats I made at Christmas was my own invention, although it worked okay.  And I learned a different way to do a diagonal join on the binding.  Here is my leaf on my mini quilt hanger.

And I had a spare hour before the class started during which time I put the straps on this bag (that I made at quilt retreat last September!!) 

It is a very large bag and I quite like it, although I like the smaller version that I made even more. I made this one about a year ago but I don’t seem to have ever posted a photo.

And that’s all folks.    I have a busy week coming up.  I am attending a workshop on Monday and Tuesday, working on Wednesday and part of Thursday and attending five films at the Available Light Film Festival, one on Tuesday evening, one on Wednesday afternoon and three on Thursday.  And Thursday is my birthday – and it’s a big one – 65 – so I get to watch all the movies I want to.

Please check out Cheryl's blog to see what everyone else got up to for Friday Night with Friends.

Janet

Friday Night with Friends Report for October

I am really late posting for FNWF.  Arghh!  Life seems to be so busy all the time now.  Is the world spinning faster?  Am I out of control?  Or maybe just lazier?

On Friday night I laid out two En Provence blocks to sew together.  You may remember from my last post that I have four left to sew.  This is as far as I got.

The sub-blocks for the first block are sewn into rows, but the rows aren't sewn together.  The second block isn't even started.  I kept thinking I would at least get the rows sewn sometime this week, but it isn't going to happen.

It was Thanksgiving weekend in Canada last weekend.  I had to attend one turkey dinner and host a second one.  Both were delicious!  Lots of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, yams, Brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, whipped cream and other miscellaneous offerings such as broccoli salad, kale salad, green bean salad, and delicious appies.  Today is my hubby's birthday as well as a good friend's.  We are going out for dinner and then to a documentary about the Tragically Hip, a legendary (at least in Canada) Canadian rock and roll band, which is one of my hubby's favourites.

On a fun note, I have another "what is it" photo for you.

This one should be easier to guess.  The teaspoon is there for determining size.

I hope you will stop by Cheryll's blog to see what everyone else got up to for Friday Night With Friends.  I haven't had a chance to check them all out yet myself!

Janet 

Friday Night (and Saturday and Sunday) with Friends

I hope everyone had a fun filled FNWF.  We did here! I was terrible at taking pictures and the ones I did take aren't flattering so I am not going to post them.  But I really did sew with some in person friends as well as all my cyber buddies.  Lori was working on a UFO that she figured was about 17 years old.  Marg had made a large wall hanging of a rearing stallion using the fusible web method and she was busy stitching around the edges.  Linda started a new quilt and got four blocks done.  And Connie, who is a bit of a new quilter, made a set of four placemats with matching coasters.

On Friday night I finished stitching down the binding on my postage stamp quilt and sewed on the label.

I'm keeping the details of this quilt for a full post sometime so you're only getting a peek.  😊

And then I spent the rest of the weekend working on En Provence.  First I cut and sewed 169 of these two patch purple blocks to make a total of 336 of them altogether.

And then I turned about half of them into 4 patch blocks.

But then I had to say "enough" because I wanted to at least make one more block.  Four of the sixteen done!  But I still have to make a whole lot of the joining strips and then there is the border to put together.

And there you have my weekend's worth of sewing.  It seems like so little in retrospect.  😞

Here is a little quiz for you.  Can anyone guess what this is?

 Tee hee! 😃  Head on over to Cheryll's blog to see what everyone else got up to for Friday Night with Friends.

Janet 

Friday Night with Friends Report and Some Lovely Mail

I did not get anything done on Friday for Friday Night with Friends.  Friday nights after a week of work are hard, but I can usually rally myself to at least make a hexie flower.  But not last Friday.  I was tiiiirerd and I made dinner and went to bed.  But I did get a few things done earlier in the week.

A couple of hexie flowers for my July swap partner - Jane in the UK.  These were off to her in the mail on July 31st - squeaking under the wire!

And another hexie flower for my Grandmother's Flower Garden.  I was really obsessed with using the six pieces that make up the inner petals of the flower.  It turned out a bit odd looking but at least I have that obsession out of my brain now!

This weekend DD # 3 came out so I could help her sew.  She signed up to make a block for a baby quilt for a friend who is having a baby.  She has a sewing machine and says she wants to learn to sew, but pinning her down to actually do some sewing is often difficult.  And this block was to be made using fusible applique to make a picture - definitely not my favourite type of quilting.  But she got it done with her own design and a lot of instruction from me.  And it turned out quite cute!

We have had what for us is really hot weather for about a week now.  We have had lots of company with my granddaughter and her friend staying here for three nights of the week while they take their Bronze Medallion course, our friends from Nelson, B.C. visiting and of course DD # 3.  We have been enjoying getting out in the boat, splashing in the water and soaking up the sun!

And today I had a lovely surprise at the post office.  Quite a while ago I won a book from Raewyn at Stitching Farm Girl.  But it took her a while to get it in the mail and I had temporarily forgotten that it was coming.  But there in the mail today was a parcel pour moi!!

Along with the book Raewyn sent a lovely hand towel with an appliqued strip of Kowhai - a New Zealand flower.  The bird on the card is a fantail and the same bird appears on the pen.  Chocolate with plum and almond in it - yum!  And of course a quilting themed book for me to read. This was such a fantastic parcel to receive.  Thank-you so much Raewyn!

That's all for today.  I will be sure to check on at Cheryl's blog to see what everyone else got up to for Friday Night with Friends.

Janet 

Friday Night with Friends report for May

It was quite the week last week.  It started with two 6.2 magnitude earthquakes at 5:30 and 7:15 Monday morning.  The epicentres were about 100 km from my town.  We were really moving and shaking but no one was hurt.  There were a few building issues, but nothing huge.  In my house a pair of already not functioning well binoculars fell off a shelf and one of the eyepieces broke off.  In the bigger picture there was an Argentinian climber trying to solo climb Mount Logan, which is the tallest mountain in Canada and the quakes caused avalanches that left her unable to go up or down.   The weather wasn't conducive to a rescue right away but they managed to get in with a helicopter and get her out on Thursday.  She was fine but says she won't attempt another summit of the mountain. I wonder why! :)  Here's more on her story if you're interested.  http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/climber-rescued-mount-logan-natalia-martinez-1.4100727

I had a super busy work week and had to work some overtime, but I took Friday off to attend another quilting retreat.  Exciting!!

Although I sewed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday I didn't get a lot accomplished.  I think I must have been socializing too much.  And on Sunday one of our quilters learned her son had passed away overnight which put a real damper on my day.  My heart aches for her.

But there were a few good things on the sewing front.  I did get the straight line quilting finished on my postage stamp quilt and cut the excess batting off.

I still have to do the binding.  I'll do a post about this quilt sometime with all the details.

I cut a bunch more purple 2 inch squares for En Provence - still have about 175 to go.  But I made up a second block.

And I did work on one hexie flower but didn't get it finished.  Pitiful output.

And I won the door prize - a ruler and rotary cutter - and received a retreat gift of three fat quarters and an awl.  Pretty nice haul!

I hope you had a great Friday Night with Friends.  I sure enjoyed quilting with my friends and seeing all the quilts they were working on.  Now I am going to go and check out my on-line quilting friends at Cheryl's blog.

Janet 

Friday Night with Friends for April

I forgot to sign up for Friday Night with Friends on Friday, but only because I was so busy sewing!  What did I sew?  I bet you'll never guess!  Yup.  Two more hexie flowers.

But then today (Saturday) I had a sewing day with some ladies from the quilt guild I belong to and I worked on the En Provence quilt,  This is a mystery quilt by Bonnie Hunter that I started before Christmas.  She does a free mystery quilt every December - I have no idea why she picks right before Christmas of all times!  And she only leaves it up for a short while after all the clues are revealed.  I made one of her mystery quilts before - Easy Street (this seems to be the only picture I posted of it. I did get finished and gave to my nephew and his wife as a wedding present!)

But about En Provence.  It is made up of smaller pieces than Easy Street and I have been cutting and cutting and cutting. I decided to try and make it all out of the mountains of small scraps that I have, which increased the cutting required a lot! But today I got to start sewing!!

64 quarter square triangle blocks.  They aren't trimmed yet but will be 3 1/2 inches when they are.  This whole quilt is made up of 3 1/2 inch squares!  I am not sure why I get myself into these things but I do, over and over again!

Here are what some the others were working on today.

My friend Dahn put together a lot of scrappy blocks from bits and pieces of her hand dyes mixed with some old fabrics.  She is going to cut 24 inch blocks out of these.

Wendy was working on an art quilt piece from our workshop with Elaine Quehl last spring.

And another women, whose name I never did learn, was working on a bunch of scrappy quilts, all made from a fat quarter bundle of Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  Some of them were to go to a Canada 150 project to make 1000 quilts for Ronald MacDonald House, others were going to our local cancer ward.  Here is one that I liked a lot.

So, all in all, it has been a good sewing weekend thus far, and there is still Sunday to come! 

I hope you had a great sewing time on Friday night or sometime over the weekend too.  Please check out  what everyone else accomplished too.  

Janet 

Friday Night with Friends Report for March

Greetings fellow sewers,

When I returned from Hawaii I laid out my three completed rows for the hexie flower quilt along with the five rows I already had joined together and I decided it needed to be a little bit bigger.  I needed eight more flowers for the sides and one more row for the bottom.  So on Friday I started putting the flowers together.  

I managed to get one side flower prepped and ready to join on the main quilt.  

And this morning at our local craft club meeting (we meet once a month on the first Sunday for an hour - mostly to plan what we are going to do, but I always take some hand sewing to work on) I sewed it on to its spot on the quilt.

I have decided that I want to get the additions done and the two big pieces of the quilt sewn together by the end of March.  This may be unrealistic, but I am going to try.  I also want to get all the pieces cut and the preliminary blocks sewn for Bonnie Hunter's last mystery quilt En Provence.  The mystery steps are no longer available from her, but I saved them all when they came out over Christmas.  I want to put that quilt together at my quilt retreat which is the third week of April.  I'm going to be busy!!

I hope you all had a great Friday of sewing.  :) Please check out Cheryll's blog Gone Stitchin'  to see what everyone else got up to for Friday Night with Friends.

Janet 

Friday Night With Friends

For this Friday Night With Friends I got to actually sew with a friend.  My friend Linda worked on a Shashiko kit that she bought at the local quilt store.  I resisted buying a new kit because I am still working on one of the two that I bought last time I was here.  But I'm sure we'll get back over there again. :)

Here is the beginning of Linda's Shashiko whale

 

 

I brought my hexie quilt to work on.  And I have a lot to do.  Last night I added twelve green hexies to this row.  I see I forgot to remove the paper in the centre of the left hand flower that tells me where to add the green hexies.  Oh well...

 



 

Time to start on the next row.  Although I have made the quilt five flowers across in one row and six across in the next, I think I might add one more flower width ways.  I can decide that once I have more rows together.  I certainly have enough flowers.

 

I hope you had a wonderful night of sewing. 

 

Janet



 

Friday Night WITH Friends

At this time of year in the Yukon it is dark and cold.  Now I actually like cold weather - it is crisp and clean and healthy feeling, but it sure sucks the energy out of you.  After a lot of -5 C to - 15 C our weather finally plunged to normal levels of cold for January so it is -15 C to -30 C now.  The cold makes everything very beautiful too, with ice fog and hoar frost and sun dogs - or even moon dogs - featuring prominently along with the Aurora Borealis.  Here is what I get to look at when driving home from work at 3:30 p.m.

And here is how beautiful the trees look with a hoar frost coating.

These pretty pictures are leading up to my excuse for not getting much done last night at Friday Night With Friends.  I was just tuckered out what with the cold weather and working all week.  I managed to finish putting a second round of hexies on one of my flowers for my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt.  And I basted a bunch of green hexies for the next garden path.

A productive night despite my lack of energy.  I'm off to check out what the rest of the friends got up to.  

Janet  

Friday Night Without Friends

I wasn't sure whether January 1st was going to be the night for Cheryll's Friday Night with Friends or not.  And I guess I was too lazy to look it up. I just sewed instead.  And it turns out that she had postponed it to the second Friday of the month, so as not to interfere with people's New Year's Day fun and excitement.  I guess I didn't have any fun scheduled, except for some sewing.  I am scrambling to catch up actually.  It's a new year and I haven't finished all my swap items from last year!

Well I got two things finished on Friday night, even without any friends....

My hexies for Mary for December in the Inchy Hexagon Flower Swap.  She asked for bright colours and solid centres.

Then I whipped up (it actually took a couple of hours) this paper pieced block for Jan in the Quilting Block Swap paper piece group.  Jan asked for blacks, oranges, greys on a white background for this block.  I think she must be making a Halloween quilt!

I still have two blocks to make for 2015, both for the Canadians Quilt bee.  Hopefully I get to them next Friday, when it really is Friday Night with Friends.  If you want to sew along with us please go to Cheryll's Gone Stitchin' blog on Wednesday to sign up.

I'll see you on Friday! 

Janet 

Friday Night With Friends Report

This weekend has whipped by in a blur it seems.  Part of the reason for that is that I spent a good bit of it sewing!  Friday night and Saturday I hung out with my friend Dahn and played with fabric and other fun things.  I love going to Dahn's house.  She has a great studio to play in, for one thing.  But even better - her first love is art quilting and she has pieces of her work hanging all over the house.  It is wonderful!

Her studio isn't huge but there is a lot of stuff in it - fabric (lots of her home dyes), thread, magazines, inspirational pieces on the wall, art quilting supplies and Ripley, the cute dachshund.

We may not have been as productive as one would think though because we had lots to talk about. :)

Dahn created this huge tote bag.

I worked on some hot pads that I am making for my friend Judy.  She is having a booth at a craft show and asked me to give her some things to sell.  You can see I haven't quite finished the binding on one of them.

And I made this postcard for Sheila's fall postcard swap.  I watched a show about giraffes last week and decided I love these animals.

Yup!  It was a pretty fantastic Friday Night with Friend's!  I hope you had a good one too.  Head on over to Cheryl's blog to see what everyone else was up to.

Janet 

Friday Night Sew In Report–ARG!! This was Friday Night with Friends!!

Another Friday Night Sew In Friday Night with Friends has come and gone.  It seems sometimes like time disappears through a big hole.  Ah well.  I did manage to participate in FNSI FNWF this month.  I haven’t done any work on my Grandmother’s Flower Garden since I was in Hawaii in January, so I decided it was time to pay it some attention. 

I added the bottom green border hexies on two flowers…

Earlier this week I made hexie flowers for my April swap partner, Helen (no blog) from England.  She wanted purples or blues in small prints.  I think I managed that…

WE have had an early spring, the snow is almost gone and some days has been quite warm.  Some though are still quite cool… Today we went on the first spring canoe and bird hunt.  We didn’t see many birds but there were about fifteen sheep hanging out up on the mountainside. 

It was nice and warm when the sun came out.  

How was your FNSI FNWF?

Janet