Boxing Day TGIFF!

It is the final TGIFF! of 2014. Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts is hosting this big event and I have one last finish to show for the year...Lucky number thirteen, my version of the Charm Pack Cherry Quilt made using Lush Uptown.

I think this quilt pattern is a great representation of taking something simple and traditional and making it modern and fresh. Simple nine patches are cut up and stitched back together. How easy is that!

 

On the back I used the coveted Ikea Britten Nummer fabric. Almost out of my stash of this goodness :( Man that fabric is awesome. So sad it is discontinued.

This quilt was my final quilty gift for Christmas and now is living with my parents. I think they like it!

Now, the only question is...what shall I make as my first project for 2015?!

Obligatory fur baby helper shot...

Happy Boxing day!
Adrienne

Merry Quilty Christmas

This was the quilty Christmas scene this morning with my family. It was so much fun to gift these quilts, a fabulous way to end a fabulous year.

Now we are stuffed and happy! Time for some post-dinner Star Wars and perhaps a nap.
I hope you all had a nice Christmas Day
Adrienne

A Year of New Beginnings

I expect everyone in Blogland will be doing the "year in review mosaic posts" soon, and hey, who am I to buck a good trend!? Plus I do love making those mosaics!

So here I am looking back at 2014. You know what, this year has absolutely rocked!

First, the Quilts. I made twelve quilts this year! Well actually thirteen, but one is under the Christmas tree so I can't show you yet. This has been the most productive quilting year I have ever had.

I also hosted my first Quilt Along - The Library Project. This was a super fun endeavor and I have gotten to know a lot of fabulous quilters. I didn't accomplish all of my goals but overall I am super happy with what I did get done, and am now more than ever committed to hitting my library and using it! I shouldn't need to buy any more books this year. But if I see something I really want, I'm getting it. No more crazy goals of not buying things. Silly goals.

I also ventured outside of quilt making and made some other quilty things like pillows. Love making pillows! I see more of this in my future.

This year was also the year of the zipper. Not sure that they are my favorite things but now at least I know I can do it! Flag bunting, some hedgehog totes, sewing circle tote and a few zipper pouches rounded out my non-quilty stuff. Smaller projects are fun!

 

And of course Bee Blocks! I organized two Bees this year, Global Scrap Bee and ModQImprov Bee Canada. I had a lot of fun with these bees, but I can honestly say that I am a bit over bees right now. I don't think I will ever be the main organizer for another one, a participant for sure. But not this year! No bees for me this year.

And then there was the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild. Can I just say that being the President of this Guild for its inaugural year has been an absolute blessing. We started the year with seven members and now we have forty. We sew, we share, we problem solve, we have fun! I cannot wait for another year of MMQG. It has seriously changed my life -  in all of the best ways.

And then Patch Halifax arrived in our handmade community! Not only has Chris partnered with MMQG to allow us a beautiful and inspiring place to host our monthly meetings, but she has also opened a door for me that I have been thinking about for 10 or more years. I taught my very first beginners quilting class in September at Patch and have a few more booked for the new year. Teaching and quilting - my dream combination!

 

Of course blogland has been great this year as well, I have to say thank you to you, dear blog readers, for keeping me company on my journey this year. It makes my heart sing every time my e-mail tells me I have a new comment:)

 

To sum up - this year has been completely amazing. Through the guild, and teaching and all of the folks that I have met through both, my little sewing machine and I feel part of a generous handmade community. How awesome is that!

 

I feel like I should wrap this post up with my goals for 2015. But you know what, my goal is no goals! No more Bees, no more quilt alongs. I am sewing for fun this year, not deadlines. I plan on focusing my quilty time on the MMQG and teaching and just sewing for the fun of it. I think this is a good plan.

 

So how was your quilty year? Do you have big goals for the new year? If you do or don't, I hope your new year is filled with fabric and thread and quilty friends.

 

Happy Holidays

Adrienne



TLP Finale Winners!

So exciting! I got right out of bed this morning so that I could let Mr. Random Number Generator do his thing... The winners of our Library Project Grand Finale are...

 

Draw 1 -  $50 gift card from Fat Quarter Shop

 

WINNER: Jeanette from Stamp Stitch Create

 

Draw 2 -  $75 gift card from Mad About Patchwork

 

WINNER: Linda from Scrapmaster

 

 

How tickled am I that Mr. Generator has a thing for my local MMQG Mates :)

Thank you again to my sponsors and to all of the quilters who quilted along this year!
Happy Holidays
Adrienne

The Library Project Finale!

It is time for us to wrap up our Library Project. Twelve months and countless books later, here we are at the end of the year.

Looking back I ended up completing three of my five original picks:

Not too bad at all. Now mind you there has been a lot of other sewing going on and let's be honest, Volume took me practically all year to actually finish! But overall I am pretty happy with this little project. It has certainly made me take stock of what is on my shelves and I still have quite a long list of projects I would like to do from my library :)

But my favorite part of this year? Seeing folks link up each month and following along on your library projects. I cannot thank you all enough for Quilting Along with me. What a blast!

Of course this grand finale cannot be grand without thanking my very generous sponsors! Thank you so much for all of your support. The incentive of amazing prizes has made this project all that more successful!

Now on to the fun stuff. What's a party without prezzies? I have two prizes to offer for the Grand Finale. That's right, we will have two winners!

Draw 1 -  $50 gift card from Fat Quarter Shop

Draw 2 -  $75 gift card from Mad About Patchwork

So how can you win?
All year long I have been keeping track of how many months each participant has linked up with their projects. Every month you linked up (and I will include your December link up) will count as one chance to win the Grand Prizes e.g. if you linked up six times this year you will have six chances to win! (I have included the list below of participants and their eligible entries at the end of this post for your information)

Link up below for one more chance to win! The Linky will be open until December 19th and I will announce the winners on the 20th.

Thank you again for joining me on my Library Project. Next year my goal is to do far less, in fact no organized QALs, Bees, Swaps etc. unless it has to do with  MMQG. Kicking it old school and keeping it simple with plans to sew for fun instead of deadlines :)

Happy Holidays!
Adrienne

An InLinkz Link-up

Name	Blog	Number of Entries
Abby	colorbar quilts	5
Allison	sew into my20s	1
Carole	fresh off the frame	6
Conni	my creative side	6
Dominique	running thimble	1
Emma	emmas daze	2
Heather	blips drips strips	1
Jeanette	jeanette-stamping obsession	7
Jennifer	quarter inch from the edge	10
Jess	one English teacher	2
Jessica	blue owl quilting	1
Karen	squirrel focus	2
Katie	karma willow designs	4
Kimberly	robot mom sews	2
Leigh Anne	ellas cottage	2
Linda	scrap master	9
Nesta	ella and nesta	2
Rebecca	ocean blue textile studio	1
Robin	robin sue quilts	3
Ruth	ben and charlys corner	6
Ruth	gmaruth	2
Sarah	berry barn designs	2
Tina	seaside-stitches	1
Vicki	a quilters mission	1
Julia	just a beginner quilter	8
Anja	anja qilts	8

Broken Bars: A Finish

Ta Da! One more Christmas prezzie struck off the list!

I talked about making this blue and orange lovely last week here. A few of you asked me to show you how I joined my Quilt As You Go rows and finished off the quilt. So here we go. First, I kept all of the rows labeled so that I kept my random scrappy business all straight (I know, pretty anal for random scrappy!).

Once I had all four rows done and trimmed I started joining them together. Simply put the right sides together and sew! Now if you are trying to apply QAYG to a project where seams need to match then you will likely have to stick to a 1/4" seam, which is fine, but in my case, nothing really had to line up and I was ok with losing an inch or so off of the length so I gave myself a 1/2" seam.

Having a 1/2" seam makes the next step a little easier. Using a hot steamy iron, iron open the seams. This helps reduce any bulk you have.

Here is the joined top laid out and getting a backing fitted up.

 

Once you have the top all ready and your backing all set ( I made a pieced backing, all from my stash I might add :)) baste using your preferred method - I am hooked on spray baste currently.

Now take the whole kit and caboodle back to the sewing machine and quilt across the seams where the rows were joined, again this will keep your bulk down. Now I was doing random wavy lines on this quilt, so I kept that up when I sewed over the seams, I just kept my wavy line tight and made sure I had good coverage over the seams. If you were not doing wavy lines, you could stitch in the ditch, or even sew a line on each side of the seam. Whatever floats your boat! Once all of the seams were done, I also added two additional quilting lines to each row. This basically means that the backing is joined to the front in approximately six inch intervals. More than enough to keep everything together.

Bind 'er up like you always would. As my guild mate Crystal says "Machine binding for the win!" and you are done! One fabulous QYAG quilt ready to put under the tree.

The quilt ended up being approximately 70 x 85, a nice cuddly size for a 12 year old who is already as tall as his Auntie!


One of my photo assistants. If it is on the ground, Orangie must get on it.

We have entered the time of short days around here in Nova Scotia. The days where getting decent quilt pictures is practically a miracle. So you can all expect lots of pics from the yard!

My other assistant, Charlie. He just ran around for 10 minutes like the devil was chasing him.
He needed a rest

Well, I hope you get a chance to incorporate more QAYG into your quilty journey. I have another project all lined up and ready to go :) Now, I must get going and head over to Sew Mama Sew. It's Great Big Giveaway Day. A great day to check out new blogs and maybe win some stuff!

 

Adrienne

 

Linking up at Stitch by Stitch for Anything Goes Mondays;  Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday; She Can Quilt for Scraptastic Tuesday and TGIFF!



WiP Wednesday: The One with Ridiculously Self Imposed Holiday Deadlines

December is here. Have you all of a sudden decided that you need all of your Holiday gifts to be handmade? If the answer is yes, I want you to know that you are not alone. I am one of your people.

Among other things, I don't have the strength to revisit my other crazy ideas right now, I decided last week that I needed to make my 12-year-old nephew a quilt for Christmas. It started with this fabric pull from my stash. I love that he and I share the same favorite color - Blue! And I added some hits of orange. Just for fun.

Following this YouTube Tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Company I cut and stitched a lot of strips.

Thank goodness I had a Maritime Modern Quilt Guild Sew In to go to this past Saturday. A solid day of sewing was just what I needed to get this project kicked into gear.

When I got home I promptly threw the blocks up on the design wall and officially fell in love! Scrappy, scrappy goodness I tell you!

Tonight as I started putting the rows together I had a deep conversation with myself. It went like this "Self, you are going to friggin hate stuffing this big quilt through your little machine. Do not try to quilt this all in one piece". After I congratulated myself on being so clever, I promptly deiced that this had officially turned unto a Quilt As You Go item!

I ended up with four rows for the quilt top. I laid those out and cut strips of batting to match, leaving a good inch on all sides. Off to the machine I went, and that long strip was so much easier to maneuver than a whole quilt.

 

I am going with Walking Foot wavy lines again. Since I did these lines on Volume, I am a tad obsessed. These lines are a lot less dense than my previous attempt, I like it.

Once the quilting was done, I trimmed up the batting. Three more strips to go!

So, that's my bit of crazy for today. Stick around, there is lots more to come!
Are you one of my people? Do you all of a sudden have cravings to make your Christmas gifts? Tell me everything!
Adrienne

Linking up with
Lee at Freshly Pieced  for WiP Wednesday
The Needle & Thread Network for WiP Wednesday
Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday