Tuesday, March 04, 2025

Putting together the Cowboy quilt and other updates

Hi and welcome back! I couldn't wait until Thursday to post these updates since I wanted to make the Table Scraps Challenge and my March One Monthly Goal (OMG) deadlines. As well, I'll be out of town for a few days and have extended last week's Free Motion Maverick's party for a week. Please keep linking up there 😍

Planning the Cowboy panel 


This is what the Cowboy panel looks like so far. I have just one block left to make.

Cowboy panel so far

After the kite block, I knew that I wanted to make several appliqué blocks. I found this lovely free children's pattern, Home on the Range (see Related links below). It's got lovely appliqués of a cowboy hat, boot, cactus and horse shoe. Perfect! I dipped into my hand-dyed fabric and found everything I needed. Here are the three blocks I made.

Cowboy hat and boot

Two cacti

Horse shoe with horse and dog

I didn't add any borders around them - I'll wait and see how things look as I put the quilt together. I've decided to add a very narrow medium brown border around the panel and then use a slightly lighter brown around the blocks. This way I can add whatever spacer I need to make the blocks fit. 

Here's what those fabrics look like on my design wall.

Proposed narrow border
and spacer fabric


February's Blue Table Scraps Challenge
and March's One Monthly Goal

I started playing with blue scraps in early February in anticipation of the TSC. I got to a piece about 24" square before it was no longer fun (it's good to know our limits! 😁)  I had no idea what to make - I have enough placemats etc. and didn't want it to be complicated. I settled on a baby quilt (as opposed to a cuddle quilt) since I have a baby quilt to FMQ for our guild. That reasoning doesn't make as much sense to me as it did back then, but oh well....

Here it is. It's coming along well.

Blue baby quilt so far

After doing the stitch-in-the-ditch, I FMQ some wavy water lines at the top of the quilt. I also hid a few fishes in the water.

I then quilted the outside background area of the top part of the quilt. Then I FMQ between the blue scrappy line areas. It was a lot of fun 😊 I'm hoping to add a few hidden images in the FMQ, like the fish. That will make the quilt more interesting for the recipient. 

A closeup of the FMQ area

The back of the quilt - stitched-in-the-ditch and FMQ

What I learned
  • I've had a lot of fun making the blocks for the SAHRR and I don't want to stop - otherwise I'll end up with two more UFOs! 
  • I'll be working on the Cowboy panel first since it's going to a cute little boy who is growing very quickly!
  •  I have no idea how large it'll be - it will be as large as it needs to be!
  • I do want to get the Christmas panel quilt pieced by the end of March. It probably won't be quilted for the final SAHRR party....but you never know! Life could get boring again! 😂
  • I didn't think that I could get bored stitching scraps together so it must be that it was all one colour and one large piece.
  • I cut the scrappy pieces and added the strips between the turquoise background. Since it's scrappy, I was able to add small pieces to the ends of the strips to make them a little longer. 
  • I don't often worry about the size of my scrappy quilts but this is supposed to be 36" x 40" since it's for the guild. That's considered a child's quilt.
Related links
Linking parties


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Thursday, February 27, 2025

SAHRR Week 6 and Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome. It's a very short post today - just too many things on the go and not much stitching to share. 
Update: I'll be travelling the first week of March, so I've extended the Free Motion Mavericks linking party by a week. Please link up 😍

Week 6 - Kite block


I didn't really find any methods that I wanted to use to make the kite block so I did a stitch and flip. It mostly worked. Too bad my math wasn't quite right.

This is the first kite block that I made since it was the closest fabric at hand 😁. I made each quarter using the stitch and flip method, starting the stitching line at 1" at the wide part, going down to ¼" from the end. It worked out really well.

Kite block - starting the stitching at 1"

This is the second block I made - starting the stitching at 1½" from the edge. It made it wider. It does waste a lot of fabric but I'm working with scraps so I really don't care. You have to stop clinging to those scraps eventually! 😂


The only issue that I had is my math - my calculations made a 6" block instead of 6½" . I forgot to take into account that each quarter has to have an extra ½" . Darn. I was so proud - but it's not a problem. When I put all the blocks together, I'll just add a border or something. As you can imagine, my blocks are not all 6½" so there will be a lot of setting borders happening. 😉

Kawandi style neutral mat

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm making a Kawandi style mat with neutral colours for my niece. I'm probably about a quarter done. There was stitching done during the hockey game and then as I listened to some training.  I love it!

Kawandi style neutral mat

I'm writing this post at my son's place, while Poppy sitting. Here's our girl!

Poppy 😍

What I learned and updates
  • When I don't have much to share on the learning front, I'll add "updates" to this section.
  • As  I mentioned above, I'm really happy with my stitch and flip version of the kite block. I just wasn't in the mood for foundation paper piecing so this was a great compromise. I figured that if it didn't work out, that it could be a wonky version, but I didn't even have to do that!
  • I've decided to make only one kite block for each panel.
  • Now I'm working on finishing my blocks for both panels. I figure that I have 4 more blocks to make for the Cowboy panel and 6 more blocks for the Christmas panel.
  • I've started making appliqué blocks for the Cowboy panel. I found a free baby quilt pattern that had cool cowboy related appliqué blocks and I'll be using those. I'll link up to the pattern when I'm done.
  • Two of the blocks will include the shape appliqué as well as fussy cut appliqués of animals. That will be very cute!
  • I haven't really thought about the extra blocks for the Christmas panel but it will include at least one bird appliqué block.
  • I started quilting-in-the-ditch the blue scrappy baby quilt that I'm making for the February Table Scraps Challenge. I'm assuming that the linking up party will start on Friday but I'm hoping to have the weekend to finish most of it. I'm really looking forward to FMQ it.
    Sneak peek at
    Blue Scraps
  • I also want to FMQ Poppy's mat but she's probably not visiting for a couple of weeks, so I have time (right, like she'd even notice!)🐶
  • Thanks for your kind words and wishes for hubby and me - we're probably off to the emergency this afternoon since it looks like it's a disk problem.😔
Related links
Linking parties

Free Motion Mavericks


Welcome to week 521 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a very productive week! Thanks so much for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting. 

Quilting Gail took part in the Runner Up Blog Hop. This featured a runner made using one of the rulers that they received, as well as Island Batik fabric. I couldn't resist the picture with her grand dog.  Gail quilted the runner using the Silly Moon Rocket ruler and meandering.

Gail's grand-dog guarding the bench...or runner?

Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts created a runner called Crystal Pendants. It's also reversable!

Preeti's Crystal Pendants runner

Preeti's Crystal Pendants runner - the other side!

Kat of Scrapbox quilts made a Little Blu Bear Hug - her 4th bear hug quilts. It's so sweet. Kat used her walking foot to quilt it!

Kat's Little Blu Bear Hug

Here is the mini quilt - Little Blu Bear Hug by Kat

Donnalee quilted a very cute placemat, the first of four - fabric chosen by her husband. 

Donnalee's first of 4 placemats

Gwyned quilted this amazing piece, Pond Life, for Project Quilting 16.4. Her densely FMQ is so fun! You'll want to read the post for her inspiration.

Pond Life by Gwyned

It's now your turn! The linking party is open for two weeks. Enjoy!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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Saturday, February 22, 2025

SAHRR Cowboy Panel Update

Hi! I hope that you are well and enjoying the weekend. We've had a lovely quiet day so since I had a bit of time, I was able to add three blocks to the cowboy panel and write this short post😊. 

Cowboy panel blocks


As you may have seen in my last post and around the internet, week 5's block is a half or quarter log cabin. I made a quarter log cabin block and then realised that I had made two of these last week as insert blocks. In the image below, you can see on the right the three quarter log cabin blocks. One has two cows with dots while the other has a horse and then another cow.

Thirteen blocks made so far

Since I love them so much, I made a real log cabin block to change things up. It's so much fun featuring interesting fabrics in the middle.

A real log cabin block with Canada geese

A quarter log cabin with polka dot cows

Then I decided to make another insert block that doesn't look like a log cabin. This is one of my favourite fabrics so it's great to have another block with horses. It was also a great way to add the gray fabric into another block.

Insert block with my favourite horse fabric

So far, here's what's happening:
  • Week 1: 2 Art Square blocks
  • Week 2: 1 Friendship star block (with HSTs) and 1 framed fabric block
  • Week 3: 2 Nine patch star blocks and 1 framed pocket block
  • Week 4: 3 Insert blocks, but two are more like Quarter Log Cabin blocks
  • Week 5: 1 Quarter Log Cabin block, 1 Log Cabin block and 1 Insert block
It's difficult to know how each week's blocks will related to each other since we only find out on Monday about the upcoming week. That's ok since blocks can fit in more than one categories. I figure that I have another 5 blocks to make to go around this panel. I'm really looking forward to Monday to see what our last block is.

I don't have much to add about what I learned so I'm going to leave this post as is, except to include Related links and linking parties. 

Related links
Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, including Brenda's Week 5 SAHRR. Off The Wall Friday, Finished (Or Not) Friday,  Patchwork & Quilts, 


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Thursday, February 20, 2025

SAHRR - Week 5 and Free Motion Mavericks

Hello and welcome 😊 With any luck the snow has stopped coming down for a while. ❄❄❄❄❄ I'm not sure where we'll be putting it if more comes our way. Enough of that....here's what's been happening in my studio this week!

Week 5 of SAHRR


This week I started with the Christmas bears panel since it was on my design wall. The block was chosen by Brenda of Songbird Designs. It's the half or quarter log cabin. The log cabin block is one of my favourite blocks to make because it's easy! It can be wonky and still look like a log cabin 😁.

Christmas bears panel after week 5

Can you spot the two quarter log cabin blocks? Here are close ups.

Quarter log cabin block, in green fabrics,
at the top of the photo

The other quarter log cabin block, mostly in yellow and blue

I've been trying to use some of the fabrics that I previously used to make the quilt more cohesive. The blocks will be re-organised, and I envision a thin plain border around the panel - we'll see!

So far, here's what's happening:
  • Week 1: 4 Art Square blocks
  • Week 2: 2 Fairy Floss inspired blocks (HSTs)
  • Week 3: 4 Friendship star blocks
  • Week 4: 3 Insert blocks
  • Week 4: 2 Quarter Log Cabin blocks
That's a total of 15 blocks to date. I figure that I need another 7 blocks to go around the panel. There's one more week to go. After that I'll make whatever blocks I like, either repeats or new ones. It'll depend on how I feel. 😊

What I learned and Updates
  • You all know about "best laid plans..." Hubby was injured a couple of weeks ago and it would seem that shoveling and going from his office in the basement to our room two flights up has aggravated the problem. Thank goodness he's very self sufficient, but there is a limit! I am hoping that doing all those stairs a few times a day will help me 😉
  • I haven't tackled the second panel yet but hope to on the weekend.
  • I did work on February's Table Scrap Challenge - I played with blue scraps and made a baby quilt. I'll be showing you that soon. I figured I may as well make a child's quilt (36" x 40") for donating through our guild since I took a child's quilt to FMQ for them. That will be two finishes soon.
  • I talked about making a small Kawandi style mat for my niece. I made it quickly so that I would have something to stitch while our friends and hubby were watching a hockey game. I don't want to offend anyone but I really don't like sports.
  • Finally I have a small placemat sewn up to place under Poppy's water dish at home. Going through my scraps, I found a bag with my doggy fabric, so Poppy will have her own placemat. 🐕 It just needs to be FMQ.
  • I shared with you my first Poppy placemat but it wasn't quilted at the time. Here is the final version.
Poppy's water bowl mat 

The back of Poppy water bowl mat

Lots of snow - thank goodness Poppy
didn't see anything to chase after!

Related links
Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, including week 5 of SAHRR. You might want to check some out and link up below. Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, Put your foot down, Needle & Thread Thursday, Off The Wall Friday, Finished (Or Not) Friday,  TGIFF, Patchwork & Quilts, 

Free Motion Mavericks


Welcome to week 520 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a very productive week with lots of link ups! Thanks 😍. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting. 

Donnalee has finished her king size bedspread, pillows, shams and runners. She did quilt some of it and it all looks really great!

Donnalee's new bedroom textiles

Gail of Quilting Gail shared with us her collection of Valentines quilt that she's made over the years. Here is one of them. Check out her post for many more!

One of Gail's Valentine quilts.

Sandra of mmm quilts has two lovely quilts to share with us! The first one was created for Project Quilting 16.3,  common blocks. This quilt is called Seacliff Beach and has three blocks pulled from one of Eleanor Burn's books: Jewel box (EQ calls this Hourglass), Schoolgirl's Puzzle, Peace and Plenty. Check out Sandra's post for more details!

 Sandra's entry for PQ 16.3, Seacliff Beach

Here is Sandra's Jasper quilt for her cousin who lost her home in the wildfires in Jasper last year. The quilt includes a grizzly bear as well as mountains, trees and the aurora borealis. You'll want to read more about this quilt in Sandra's post.

Sandra's Jasper quilt

It's now your turn!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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Thursday, February 13, 2025

Blocks for both panels with SAHRR

Hi and welcome. I've been spending as much time as possible in my studio. There's still just enough space to work in and that's what matters! I've been enjoying piecing my blocks. Now that I've stopped playing with 8 HSTs (half square triangles) in one block, it's all good😊 

Block with inserts for the cowboy panel


This week is week 4 in the SAHRR (Stay At Home Round Robin) challenge. We were asked to make blocks with inserts. That's a pretty wide open brief and I may have pushed the limit, but here are my blocks!

I just had to put some of this lovely horsey love fabric in the quilt. I think that the radiating circles make a nice contrast. 

Horsey love fabric and radial inserts

These next blocks have a little more than inserted lines but I did want to add these two farm animals to the mix - a horse and a cow. I looked in a bag for scraps that I thought were in it. I didn't find the ones I wanted but I found a lot of very nice fabric to use. I even tried to make a flying geese. It's not a great attempt but the fabric plays nice with the others, so it's in!

Horse and cow fabric with many inserts.

So far, I have 10 blocks for the cowboy panel. I do want to add some friendship stars to it since they are so easy to make! We have two rounds left in the challenge so I'll see what else I might add.

Oh yes, I also added a pocket block to the mix. The plaid shirt that I used had a pocket - that's so perfect for a child's quilt. 😃 You can see it near the bottom of the panel.

Blocks so far for the cowboy panel


Stars and inserts for the Christmas panel

Monday evening I put aside my cowboy fabric and spent most of Tuesday making blocks for the Christmas panel. I made 2 insert blocks. One looks like a present - I didn't think that through but I love it! The other one is more of a V shape - sort of like the tree. You can see these blocks on the photos below. 

Present block at the top
V shape block at bottom



















I then made 2 different sets of HST - this time with the fabric right side up!😉 These friendship star blocks went together easily. I love them!

Here is a photo of my blocks so far. I'm looking forward to rearranging them once all of the blocks are done. For the next two weeks, it's going to be about choosing the fabric and colours to make the whole thing cohesive.

The Christmas panel so far...

What I learned
  • I'm really liking the process of making different blocks, choosing fabrics and colours that work. 
  • I know that a couple of my blocks in the Christmas panel don't really work yet but I'm hoping that adding some of that same colour elsewhere and possibly moving the blocks will help. 
  • I do want to add more green and yellow to the mix in the next two weeks.
  • This is the perfect opportunity to try new things - if the blocks or colours don't play well with the others, I don't have to use them.
  • I'm feeling more confident about the cowboy panel. I'll just add more green.
  • Overall, I'm really enjoying working with traditional quilt blocks and I love the fact that I don't have to make tons of the same thing 😊.
  • It's really weird but I feel at a loss, not having to work on either a Project Quilting piece or SAHRR. I know that I have other stuff to do but....
Related links
Linking parties

Free Motion Mavericks


Welcome to week 519 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was another great week - thanks for linking up! Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting. 

Kat at Scrapbox Quilts made a cute blue quilt for Bear Hug Missions. 

Blue quilt by Kat for Bear Hugs Mission

She quilted it using a large arc ruler. It's the perfect small project for practicing various quilting skills!

Ruler quilted by Kat using a large arc ruler

Isn't this bear adorable? Quilt made by Kat

Donnalee was procrastinating binding her King size quilt and made pillows, pillow shams and runners to go with her quilt. They are so lovely...and it turns out that putting in the binding wasn't as bad as she expected! I'm sure that we're all looking forward to seeing her quilt on the bed with all of its accessories!

Pillow sham made by Donnalee

The matching runner to go with Donnalee's king size bed quilt

This is Quilting Gail's pink quilt for the January Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Aren't those Island Batik scraps gorgeous? She quilted this one with a walking foot. Someone is going to be very happy to receive this quilt!

Gail's lovely scrappy pink quilt

Sally at Painted Thread made a Common Block Postcard for PQ 16.3. It wasn't as straight forward as she would have liked - but the positive side is that she learned a lot 😊! If you don't recognize the blocks, check out her post.

Sally's Common Block Postcard

I hope that you don't mind some self promotion - but here is my "Snow Happens" wall hanging. I managed to forget to link up! It had quite a bit of FMQ on both sides of the border diamonds, mostly loops and snowflakes. I showed restraint by only outlining the embroidery 😀.

"Snow Happens", in the snow, by yours truly

It's now your turn!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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Monday, February 10, 2025

Snow Happens Finish, SAHRR & Mom's Mat

Bonjour and welcome 😎. It may be a tad cold but the sun is shining brightly! I'm happy for those who do winter sports. Downtown the Rideau Canal is open and busy with skaters. I'm happy to be cosy in my studio. There is just enough space for me to write this blog or sit at my sewing machine! If you guessed that the cleanup is not going well, you would be correct. At this point, it's easier to ignore the piles, until I need something in them. 😁 

"Snow Happens" wall hanging


I'm so happy to tell you that my son and his fiancé came over for supper and then left with their new wall hanging. I've made few quilted projects that include embroidery and I'm very happy with it.

"Snow Happens" wall hanging - finished and in the snow!

The last time you saw this project was at the end of January. I had quilted some of it with my walking foot. Shortly after, I finished the straight quilting and then FMQ the rest. I forgot to take more pictures, but here is a closeup of some of the quilting. There are snowflakes on both sides of the blue diamonds and then loops in the white space that links them together. 

FMQ snowflakes on the border.

For the embroidery, I just went around each part of it. I was thinking of going back to add more FMQ once I had done the binding, but it doesn't need it. I took these photos on the snow last night, just as the sun was setting. I'm glad that I did because the photo taken inside has a very yellow tone.

Photo taken inside the house - the white has yellow tones.

I was very lucky to have enough of the blue fabric to finish the binding. It would have been a shame to have to make it a scrappy binding. It helps that the binding didn't need to be doubled. 😊

"Snow Happens".... in the snow!

Star blocks for the cowboy panel

Last week I only had time to make two blocks for the cowboy panel. I was hoping to join the linking party for week 3 but if it's ok, I'll be joining a couple of posts for week 4.


Nine patch star

I have some red plaid fabric from a shirt that I pulled apart as well as some lighter jean fabric. I cut two squares of 6½" of each fabric and made 8 HST at a time. I then trimmed them to 2½". That made 18 HSTs! 😁 Then I had to figure out how to put these together to make two star blocks. In the book, Quilter's Mix and Match Blocks, I found a nine patch star. The pattern was made up of three different fabric colours but I decided to make my own version with only the two. 

Nine patch star in two colours

Second nine patch star....sort of 😕

I just noticed as I'm writing this post that my second block is different! Does anyone else have problems getting their HST in the correct position? I undid many of the HST even though I thought that they were OK...and I still misplaced one! The image is quite dark but you might notice that the denim on each block is different - the first one has the back facing out. I noticed only after slicing through all of the HSTs. I was not going to start over!

I still have to make a star block for the Christmas panel - but I think that I'll stick with flying geese blocks.

Mom's Kawandi style mat completed

I also completed my fourth Kawandi style mat. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the backing is on one of my mother's quilted placemats. It's a bit different from the traditional Kawandi style pieces since the placemat's binding underneath it is showing, and I machine stitched all of the top scrappy fabric. I just loved stitching it, mostly while chatting with my daughter. 😊 

Kawandi style mat, made on top of my mother's placemat

Here's my mother's placemat, cut to size.

I love its wonkiness 😃 - it's very much my style! If you're wondering about the small windmill on the back, you'll have to check out my previous post.

What I learned
  • I learned a lot working on all of these projects, such as:
    • There is such a thing a keeping the FMQ to a minimum and it turned out great in the embroidered part of my wall hanging.
    • I have a note on my bulletin board that says that I should try 1¾" wide binding when it doesn't need to be folder. I have now changed that to 1½". 
    • HST are easy to make 8 at a time but can be difficult to place correctly in a block!
    • When I concentrate, my blocks are sewn pretty well but you just can't trust HSTs to be facing the correct way!
    • I still prefer wonkiness over precise!
    • I love that I was able to repurpose my mother's placemat. She was very much with me when I worked on the mat!
Related links
Linking parties
I'll be linking up to these fun linking parties, including Free Motion Mavericks and the latest SAHRR linking party. Put your foot down, Off The Wall Friday, Beauties Pageant, Patchwork & Quilts, Oh Scrap!, Slow Sunday Stitching, Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell,

I've linked up this post for my February Favourite Finish with Quilting JetGirl. I'm not sure which is my favourite - "Snow Happens" with all that work, or Mom's mat - with it's beautiful wonkiness! 😍

Project details

"Snow Happens" wall hanging
Designed by Bird Brain Designs
Size: 17" by 29"
Materials: embroidery floss, commercial fabric, batting
Techniques: hand-embroidery, piecing, quilted with walking foot and FMQ
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