Showing posts with label Project Quilting. Show all posts

Sunday, February 22, 2026

Project Quilting 17.4 and SAHRR, Round 5

Hi and welcome 😊After finishing the Cowboy Panel quilt, it was good to start a new small project and make another block for this year's SAHRR. Here is the link to this week's I Quilted This! party.

Project Quilting 17.4 - Another Era

This week's challenge is to explore another era - either through color and fabric choices or by style. After considering a few options, I decided to go play with the Victorians with a small crazy quilt. My crazy quilt is more subtle than some but I used lovely lush fabric like hand-dyed velvet and cotton by artist Elaine Quehl, vintage silk from Japan, upholstery fabric and other shiny scraps 😍.

Victorian era crazy quilt

I used 12 different fabrics for this piece. I started with the blue velvet and the Japanese silk fabric. From there I went through a basket of non-cotton scraps as well as another of hand-dyed scraps. After piecing the fabric, I added a fusible interfacing and used a pillow-case style finishing. I meant to stitch the piece on the outside, just at the edge, but ended up stitching it at a ¼" - a habit that's obviously hard-wired in me 😉.

Crazy Quilt created for Project Quilting 17.4

Once the piece was put together, it was time to do the crazy part, which is the embroidery 😍 I used Sharon Boggon's Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery to figure out what stitches to use. However, since I had less than a week to complete this project, I didn't have the time or the energy to get very fancy. I mostly used my tried and true stitches. The threads used were almost all perle cottons.

In the photo below, i used a chain stitch - threaded with pink. The one below that, in a rusty colour, is a Chevron stitch - that I threaded in white (mostly to hide my poor chevron stitch). At the bottom is a stepped running stitch - in blue, threaded with a variegated pink and blue thread. Threading a chain or running stitch adds complexity to simple stitches.

Threaded stitches

In the photo below, an alternating buttonhole (or blanket) stitch adds interest. They are joined by small flowers in chain stitch (or lazy daisies).

Alternating blanket stitches with lazy daisies

On the left , the vertical line is a cable chain stitch. Unfortunately it's difficult to see the cable part because it's in the same ivory thread.

Cable and regular chain stitches

Finally, there are two types of feather stitches. The first light green one is a knotted feather stitch while the rusty one is a regular feather stitch.

Feather stitches

SAHRR - Round 5 - Two Colours

Gail of Quilting Gail is hosting this week's round of the Stay At Home Round Robin. We get to choose any block, as long as it's two colours, or two colours and a neutral. Since I had no idea what to choose, I turned to a few books that were close at hand. One was Granny Quilt Decor. I was intrigued by a doll quilt in the book. I have no idea what the name of the block is, but it consisted of half-square triangles and four patch. That fit my idea of simple. I made two blocks. You can see the different layouts below.

2 colours, 2 blocks, layout 1

2 colours, 2 blocks, layout 2

Here are my SAHRR blocks so far.

SAHRR so far - centre blocks and rounds 1 to 5

What I learned

When I play with scraps it seems that I'm too engrossed to take process pictures.
I should have used more contrasting perle cotton colours for my stitches. I sometimes forget that not everything needs to or should blend in.
Although my piece is finished, I reserve the right to keep adding stitching to it 😊The embroidery stitching doesn't all have to be at the seams, as shown by the lazy daisies.
As I mentioned, I chose the block for Round 5 based on a doll quilt in the book. Unfortunately the quilt layout is on point - so unless I put my blocks on point- it doesn't look like the picture. Maybe I'll figure out how to put them on point when I incorporate them in the quilt.
Do you know if you can put a couple of blocks on point while the other blocks in the quilt are not on point? I know that I would have to add fabric to the blocks to make them on point, but could that look good?

Saturday, February 07, 2026

Project Quilting & SAHRR Round 3

Hi and welcome. It's incredibly cold here so I hope that you're keeping warm wherever you are! I'm dreaming of tropical beaches - no plans, just dreaming 😊 Project Quilting's third challenge is the Year of the Horse while SAHRR's round 3 is inspired by the Animal Kingdom. Ready or not, here they are! Here's the link to this week's I Quilted This!

PQ - 17.3: Year of the Horse

This week's theme: "find your inspiration from the turn of the year, in the animal, in our hopes and desires for the near future." In this piece, I have included my hopes for my art for the upcoming year. I wrote these goals in my Plans, Goals, and Dreams for 2026 post.

This project was inspired by a quick picture that I created for that post. I really ~~want~~ need to remember this, which is why I made the poster and now a quilted version.

PPT creation

Here are the details.

Scrappy

Small

Playful

Experimental

There is a nod to the Year of the Horse. Let's hope that the horse will find lovely pastures to rest at some point, and not just race ahead with blinders on.

SAHRR Round 3: Animal Kingdom

This week's Stay At Home Round Robin (SAHRR) is a block from the animal kingdom. Thanks Emily! I did a quick search and was lucky enough to find the Chicago Geese Quilt Block. It's a lovely block and includes my favourite technique - stitch and flip!

Here is my 9" block.

Chicago Geese Quilt Block

Here they are ....could be a challenge pulling them all together

The instructions I followed were for a 12" Chicago Geese block. I made this one a little smaller but I miscalculated. No surprise there! 😮 If I can't manage to make all of these blocks play nicely, I can always re-make some of them smaller....and use this year's extra blocks as next year's centre 😁

What I learned

I had a great time stitching up the scrappy background for my 2026 Goals piece.
I really wanted to do something different and just before I started FMQ the word "scrappy", I remembered how words can be written from letters cut up from the newspaper (remember those?)
I'm really happy with how it came out, but I need to be more careful with my super sharp scissors - I'll be repairing the little hole I made 😔
For my Chicago Geese block, I really should have reviewed my calculations before starting.
I'm becoming quite proficient at half-square triangles and stitch and flip. It's nice to be playing with simple traditional blocks.

Friday, January 09, 2026

Project Quilting 17.1 Challenge - A Clean Slate

Hi and welcome to the first challenge of Project Quilting for the year. The theme is a clean slate and should probably include some white.

Here is my thinking process - a clean slate reminded me of a blank page - nothing on it yet, full of possibilities. However for many artists, a blank page is not always a good thing. It can lead to tension and indecision - what to do? how to do it? where to start?

Filling the blank page

I was going through my email (to get rid of some of those 100s of unread email) and went down a rabbit hole of free motion quilting (FMQ). What's a blank stitching area? How to fill it? What to make?

Filling the blank page starts with some tentative white on white FMQ. This slowly opens up to a light pink - nothing too bold, just making marks. Eventually it leads to more colour. In this case, a light variegated thread that flourishes into bold feathers.

Filling the blank page

I was inspired by the book Free-Motion Framework by Jen Eskridge. I drew circles and triangles on white fabric with a FriXion pen. I then started filling the blank page. To be honest, I was going to do much more of the white-on-white but I couldn't see what I was stitching - so it became pink more quickly than I had planned 😉

Filling the blank page with thread

From a blank page

Thanks to both Kim and Trish for this interesting start to season 17. Looking forward to more challenges.

What I learned

It took me a while to go from a clean slate to a blank page. After that, it was a question of what to do on that blank page. As I mentioned an email from Jen Eskridge took me to her book and that was that!
I'm very happy to say that I used cotton thread and that my tension was fine. However, that was probably because I went slowly and my FMQ was small. It's when I expand to larger designs that I get tension problems.
It was a fun FMQ exercise and I've prepared a couple for blank pages to practice on. However no white-on-white is allowed!
Practicing every few months when a quilt is ready to FMQ isn't really enough if you want to get better. I'd like to work on that this year, at least a little bit.

Friday, January 02, 2026

Best of 2025

Welcome to the Best of 2025 post. The annual linking party is hosted by Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs. Thanks Cheryl!

I'm very ambivalent about what I accomplished this year, so I hope that you'll oblige me as I review and see how I did!😟As in the past years, I've placed my finishes in categories. These have changed through out the years to reflect what I've made. This year, the categories are quilts (which this year include baby and cuddle quilts, as well as wall hangings and runners), Practical Quilted/Sewn Objects (this includes my 2025 agenda, placemats, a pouch, cell phone holders and water bowl mats), Art Quilts and finally Hand-Stitched and Embroidered projects. The related links are within the post. It's a long post, so feel free to just look at the pictures 😁

Quilts

In my 2025 planning post, I wanted to FMQ 2 quilts. I had hoped to quilt some UFOs but instead I quilted the two quilts that I made in the 2025 SAHRR (Stay At Home Round Robin). These are the two panel quilts - a cowboy quilt and a Christmas panel quilt, that I worked on most of the year.

The Christmas panel quilt

Finished with a few hours to spare!

My Cowboy Panel quilt is a flimsy, that I will finish in the winter of 2026 🤠

A finished flimsy to be quilted soon!

Baby and Cuddle quilts

In 2025, I made and finished one baby quilt and a purple and a teal cuddle quilt. There were all made for the Table Scraps Challenge 2025. I also FMQ a community project baby quilt for our guild.

Scrappy baby and cuddle quilts

FMQ community project baby quilt for the guild

Wall Hangings and Runner

Snow Happens wall hanging is both an embroidery and a quilt. It was a slightly late Christmas quilt decoration for my DIL.

Snow Happens embroidered wall hanging

The Floral Fusion Wall Hanging was a SAL with Denise of The Quiltery. It started in the Fall of 2024 but I didn't finish it until early Summer this year. It now hangs on my youngest adult child's wall!

Floral Fusion wall hanging

I made this fun scrappy runner purely because I could and I wanted to! 😀

A scrappy runner for these two cuties who keep me company at the back of the car.

Practical Quilted/Sew Objects

This year, this grouping includes my 2025 agenda, placemats, a pouch, cell phone holders and water bowl mats.

For the last few years I've sewn a cover for my new agenda. This year, I made an Upcycled Traveller's Journal that would act as an agenda and a place to keep my project notes, and made a cover for the journal. It turned out to be a good idea. I mostly kept my notes up-to-date and only needed to remove the individual journal to work in. I didn't really use the calendar much but I will use the same system in 2026, and won't have to make another agenda cover.

Fabric cover for the Upcycled Traveller's Journal

Inside the Upcycled Traveller's Journal

The Ombre pouch was made for Project Quilting 2025.

Ombre pouch to carry my glasses and phone

I made Scrappy neutral placemats and cell phone holders as gifts to bring to Denmark on my visit.

Call phone holders - so practical!

Scrappy neutral placemats

Finally I made and quilted two water bowl mats for Poppy. One for her home and one for ours!

Poppy's water bowl mat at her home

Poppy's water bowl mat at our place

Art Quilts

Some of my art quilts this year were made for challenges - Project Quilting and/or from TextileArtist.org Stitch Club.

This art piece was made based on a TextileArtist.org workshop and it just happened to be the theme of the first Project Quilting challenge - Mythical Creatures.


My favourite art piece of the year - The Rabbit's Liver - A Korean Folktale

Project Quilting - Common blocks

Reclaiming Fallen Feathers

My other art quilts are not technically quilts but hand-stitched textile art pieces. I learned the technique in TextileArtist.org's workshop by artist Julia Wright. I've made three of these coiled pieces so far and there are more in the works.

Pink Turtlehead Flowers

Sunset Over Water

Desert Landscape

Hand-Stitched, Embroidered and Woven Projects

This Spring, I finished a Kawandi Style neutral mat for my niece.

Kawandi-style neutral mat

I participated in the annual Zen Stitching event and made a lovely scrappy hand-stitched needle case as well as a Mindful stitch sampler.

Needle Case

Mindful Stitch Sampler

This summer, based on artist Mirjam Gielen's branching video on Patreon, I started making the tree and its roots on a piece of eco-dyed linen fabric. I finished it and called it "Mercury Retrograde - Strong Roots Required!"

Mercury Retrograde - Strong Roots Required!

In October, I went back to my first love, weaving, and made a number of hand-woven pieces made on cardboard. Two of the pieces were also my Table Scraps Challenge since they incorporated, denim, quilted scraps and neutral colours!

Autumn Beauty

Earth Tones

In November, one of my favourite embroidery teachers, Mirjam Gielen, hosted a spiral challenge.

A few embroidered spirals

I almost forgot those cute Christmas scrappy mats that were November's Table Scraps Challenge finish.

Final finishes for the Table Scraps Challenge of 2025

Finally but not at all finished, is my Not-so-daily-stitching project. I'm afraid that it's not even been weekly but I did enjoy embroidering reminders of what I had done this year. Here are a couple of examples.

Joe-Pye weed as seen during our trip

Sunset over water

What I learned

The year was better than I expected. I did finish many smaller projects and on the whole, had fun making them 😊(which is what it's all about!)
The two panel quilts were a lot of work, and although I enjoyed making them, caused me stress because I wanted to get them finished! I'm going to try to avoid that in the upcoming year.
My true measure of the type of year I had is the number of posts that I published. At 63, this is not as good as the past few years, but I'm quite happy with it, considering the year I had.
I'm glad that I hosted the FM Mavericks linking party - that meant that I had to publish at least once a week. I changed the party name and button as of January 1st - I Quilted This!. It has the same objective - quilts that are quilted on a domestic machine or custom quilted on a longarm.
My favourite hand-stitching projects were the coiled pieces and the hand-woven pieces on paper/cardboard. They were so much fun to make and perfect for experimenting and playing.
My favourite quilting projects were the baby and cuddle quilts. They were as simple or as complex as I want to make them but always fun...they are also perfect for experimenting and playing.
I will really miss the Table Scraps Challenge that's been hosted by Joyful. Many of my finishes were as a result of that party, so I'll have to keep myself motivated to play with scraps - especially to make scrappy hand-stitched mats and cuddle quilts. Thanks Joyful for keeping us inspired. We will miss the party but you need to take care of yourself!
I think that I've found my 2026 words - playful experiments!

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, particularly the Best of 2025 as well as Quilting Jet Girl's #2025QuiltingCheckIn. Yvonne wanted to know how our year went - well, it was much better than I expected - so it was nice to see that! Thanks Yvonne.

You may want to check some out! Finished (or Not) Friday, Off The Wall Friday, Patchwork & Quilts, Slow Sunday Stitching,