Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts

Monday, April 15, 2024

First Quarter Check-in

Hi, I was catching up on my blog reading when I found Yvonne's Quilting Jetgirl's First Quarter Check in party and post. It's been such a whirlwind of activity here that I thought that it would be nice to actually see what I said that I would do, and what actually happened so far! Thanks Yvonne!

January to March 2024

Quilts

In my Quilts section, I got distracted and chased a squirrel! I ended up not participating in this year's SAHRR (Stay At Home Round Robin) but instead signed up for Joanne's at Canuck Quilting Designs, 2 Colour Mystery Quilt. It's been a challenge because I'd forgotten how fiddly a traditional quilt can be! The mystery quilt started at the beginning of March. I followed along well for the first month but I'm a little behind at this time. I am getting there!

Weeks 1 to 5, with week 6 slowly happening! Only 1 week behind!

I did start on Hubby's wall quilt but didn't get very far. I'm hoping to get it done in June....but who knows. I ended up taking a class with Cyndi McChesney, one of the experts on quilting with panels! It was a two-part workshop on Zoom with Cyndi who taught us how to make wonderful quilts with our panels. It helped me immensely since I really had no idea where I was going. Now I know what to do, it's just a matter of getting it done!

Wonky improv strips that will be the background

Layout of the final design

I did measure between each panel to see how wide each improv section of the background needs to be. I had to get at least that far since we needed the dining room table for Easter supper 😋.

Finally, I FMQ my girlfriend's quilt. I'm happy to say that she loved it! 😊It's a beautiful quilt and she did a great job!

FMQ my girlfriend's quilt

Challenges, Journal Making, Art Quilts and Mindful Stitching

The beginning of 2024 was extremely busy as I participated in 4 of the 6 challenges of Project Quilting. I actually started another one but never got it finished.

Project Quilting 15.1 - Bird House Challenge 1 was my favourite make so far this year. It was even part of a small fibre show at a local restaurant, Chez Lucien, in the market in Ottawa.

Home to Feed - hanging at Chez Lucien

Project Quilting 15.2 - Sky Colour, Challenge 2 was a very practical make. I improv pieced and FMQ an agenda cover.

Sky Colours, my 2024 Quilting Agenda Cover

Project Quilting 15.3 - Inside Out, Challenge 3, was a smaller make. I made a meditation quilt piece and attached it into my journal. It was a lot of fun!

In a fish bowl, looking out!

Project Quilting - 15.6 - Irish Chain, Challenge 6 was more practical. I've always wanted to make an Irish Chain quilt, so this is my first one. It's a cuddle quilt that was donated to Community projects through my local guild. These lovely, tiny quilts go to the Intensive Care Neo-Natal or Post-Partum Units. I had a great time FMQ it!

Irish Chain Cuddle Quilt

My favourite year long challenge is Joyful's Table Scraps Challenge 2024. I've been participating for a few years now and love it. At the end of each month, I make a small scrappy piece. Scraps and colour - what's not to love!

For the March (purple) and January (green) Table Scraps Challenge, I made Hubby and Sarah some scrappy colourful improv placemats for the house.

Last year's and this year's scrappy improv placemats

For February, since I was away at the end of the month, I made a meditation piece for the Red challenge called Love All Around. It was perfect for making in the car and hotel.

Love All Around, February's Table Scraps Challenge

So far this year I've only made one hand-make Scrappy Journal. It was a Challenge and a lot of fun. Hubby liked it so I'll be making him a few.

Scrappy Journal Cover drying

Finished Scrappy Journal with Zig-zag stitch

In February I finished Swirling Leaves 3. It's for one of my daughter's friends who got married in the fall. Since she loves all things Fall, this was a perfect gift.

Swirling Leaves 3

I've been doing some mindful stitching - not on a daily basis, which is what I was hoping for, but rather in spirts. That's so much more my style.

My big stitching project this year is doing some mostly mindful stitching on a hand-woven tablecloth that I brought back from Istanbul many years ago. There are 16 boxes per row and I've stitched 3 rows so far. Here are a few images. I guess that I'll have to post an update soon.

Playing with colour, chain and running stitches

Celebrating my daughter's 30th birthday

Tablecloth - I now have 3 rows finished!

I also started my Outdoor Hanging Art Quilt. I started by making a meditation mini that I'm slowly using as the inspiration for my outdoor piece. You can read more about the inspiration here.

Inspiration for my Outdoor Hanging Sculpture

I'm working on different translucent scarves to make the first 3 Suns.

Dawn Sun

Noon Sun, still needs stitching and trimming

I've stopped working on these since I'm busy creating a piece for the Out of the Box (OOTB) Fibre Fling. I started at the beginning of April and it's my One Monthly Goal (OMG).

Spring Tulips - still needs a few more tulips

What I learned

I'm really glad that I took the time to write this post. Like I said, I've been so busy making that it's good to step back and see what exactly that was!
I want to add that I also celebrated 12 years of blogging!
I'm probably as productive as I was but my energy is generally fairly low, so between making, I spend a LOT of time reading! That's what re-fuels me 😍
As you can see, the smaller projects are so much easier to work on than the larger ones. It's not that their easier to do, just easier to pick up and work on, as opposed to projects that need thinking time.
As soon as I finish my Spring Tulips, I'll be focusing on my Outdoor Hanging Sculpture since that's due at the beginning of June. Although I haven't been working on it, I still think about it a lot and have figured out a few things....I hope. I won't really know till I try it!
I'm also looking forward to having a little bit of energy to play in the garden. Spring is when my favourite bulbs come out! With the rain this week, my Allium are getting big and will soon be blooming!

My favourite - I wasn't sure that they would be coming out!

Pretty pink spring bulbs

Poppy in the garden, ready to chase
squirrels, birds and bugs!

Linking parties

I'll be linking to Quilting JetGirl's linking party as well as many other ones. Let's see what others are doing! Design Wall Monday, Patchwork & Quilts, Sew & Tell, Put your foot down, Off The Wall Friday,

This post is based on my January 04, 2024, Making Plans on my 600th post!

Great news! Home to Feed was featured on Put your foot down. Thanks Denise 😊

Saturday, March 02, 2024

Fun with Red Scraps - Love All Around

Hi and welcome 😊 Today it's about a scrappy challenge done with hand-stitching and embroidery.

February Table Scraps Challenge - On the Road

The colour for February was red and of course, the theme was hearts. Here's my mini.

Love All Around - Table Scraps Challenge for February: red and hearts

When I realised that I would be away at the end of February, I packed up a little travel pouch of mostly red fabric, both hand-dyed and commercial, as well as thread, perle cotton, scissors, Frixion pen, pins and needles. I also included in the pack my travel light with magnifier.

The small travel pouch with my lamp & magnifier

I made this little piece mostly in the truck, on the way to Toronto. It's on a 4" x 4" white flannel backing. I used 3 different pieces of hand-dyed fabric for the background. I love the yellow-red piece on the top 😊

I started by tracing and cutting out the hearts from commercial fabric. The top two are hubby and I. They are touching but each is fully outlined, even when it goes through the other heart. That's to symbolize that yes, we are together, but we are still individuals.

The next three red hearts symbolize my wonderful adult children, Jeannine and Stéphane and Sarah who is now part of our family. The yellow heart, which touches mostly Stéphane and Sarah but is also part of our sphere, is Poppy. She is very much a part of our family. 😍 We are all surrounded by lots of love!

I enjoying adding texture and dimension to my pieces. These are the scrunched up fabric layers on the side. They can mean absolutely anything that you like since you are the viewer of the art. 😁

On the way home

On the way home, I stopped in at a quilt store in Belleville, Artistic Quilts With Colors. It sure had a lot of funky fabrics! I was very reasonable and only bought 5 beautiful fat quarters, 2 spools of thread and some Tula Pink ribbon.

Shopping on my way home

Wednesday, when we drove back to Ottawa, the temperature went down by about 20 degrees. The wind was incredible. We were very happy to be back.

One Monthly Goal

For my March One Monthly Goal, I will finish quilting my girlfriend's quilt. It's about ⅓ done 😊

March OMG - to finish quilting this gorgeous quilt!

What I learned

Next time that I pack, I'll have to include some more contrasting fabric and thread. Because I want to do a red piece, doesn't mean that it should all be red! I'm glad that there were some snippets of yellow in there.
The piece looks very red until you look at it closely. A little more contrast, even if it was only the thread, would have been good.
I only used my lamp and magnifier a couple of times, but I'm not going anywhere without it! It makes threading a needle so much easier.
I also brought a small pair of heavy duty scissors. They were perfect for cutting the little bits of fabric and they actually fit my large, knobby fingers.
I've started working on a small mindful stitching piece about my eye. I've been wanting to do this since the fall but it wasn't a happy story at the time. Things are now good and I'm ready. I'm looking forward to sharing it with you.
The fabric on which the pouch and mini rest is an ombre fabric that I'll be using for my Two Colour Mystery Quilt with Canuck Quilter Designs. I need to find a light background fabric in my stash and then I'll be ready to start. Hopefully even an accuracy challenged quilter will be able to do it! Update: I've changed my mind on the ombre, I just couldn't find a light fabric in my stash that I liked. I did get some great priced new fabric, so I'll have to show it off as soon as it's washed and cut!

Friday, February 09, 2024

Project Quilting 15.3 - Inside Out, Challenge 3

Hi and welcome to another Project Quilting (PQ) challenge. This week, we were asked to create a quilt based on the theme, Inside Out. What an interesting idea. It did take me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. The obvious would have been to make a mini quilt with the seams showing, but I was hoping for something a little more original.

Inside Out or Inside Looking Out

I ended up making a meditation piece with a backing and many layers of fabric that were all hand-stitched. I also did a little bit of research on how or what do fish see. Are these enough clues?

Inside looking out - from a fish's perspective

I was dog sitting this week and brought a few things with me, but there's always something missing, like scissors and the right thread colour! With pins, borrowed scissors and lots of patience (NOT), I created an outline of my fish bowl. I had a great time creating the window, curtains and couch. It took me a while to get all of those French Knots done but I wanted it to look like pebbles at the bottom of the aquarium.

Almost done!

When I got home, I found the right coloured thread and then looked in my scraps for things that I could add to the room. The sewing machine and bear were great. Then I place the organza over the whole piece and stitched along the aquarium lines (the dark blue) and the bubbles. I took my sharpest scissors to cut the fabric as close to the stitching as I dared.

I added the plant at the bottom of the aquarium and finally found a fish to make it super obvious that it was an aquarium.

Inside Looking Out - in my mindful stitching journal

What I learned

I love the addition of the organza. I didn't iron it on purpose so that the creases look like the distorted view through the glass.
In my research, I found that fish can see very well, just differently from us. They also don't see the water, just like we don't see the air.
I've added this piece to my Mindful stitching journal.

Tuesday, February 06, 2024

Spending Quality Time Slow Stitching

It's already February although outside it feels like spring is in the air. 🌞 Frankly I don't mind if spring comes a few times this year 😊! I've done quite a bit of slow stitching this week and it's been lovely.

Lots of Hexies

This summer, the #100hexies100days2023 challenge started in August. I started off well but life really got in the way in the fall. Lets face it, 100 days is pretty long! On Instagram, I made it to week 11 with hexies of fruits since I didn't have enough berry fabric 😁 I did make 3 more hexie flowers with Christmas scraps but never did post them. That gets me to week 14 which is one week shy of the 15 for the challenge. I can live with that.

Berries and fruit for week 11

Christmas hexies for three more weeks

These hexie flowers haven't been added to the rest of my scrappy hexie blanket yet because I wanted to fix my very wonky side. This image shows it best. If the top row is relatively even, then the side row is really, really off.

Side row of double hexie flowers are off!

I undid the last three double hexie flowers. It's not perfect but it's better than it was.

I won't be winning any prizes for accuracy but it's a little better!

This is how much extra hexies I had to add before stitching the double hexie flowers back.

Trying to make the edge a little straighter

I worked on these hexies for a few days. Since I'm dog sitting Poppy this week, I'll keep working on adding these hexie flowers and making more double flowers.

Daily Meditation Stitching

Actually, this is no longer daily and not always meditative but it is stitching! You may remember the hand-woven tablecloth from Turkey that I'm stitching. It is coming along, but instead of daily, it's more in spurts.

It's not daily but I did ensure that I stitched the 24th block for my daughter's 30th birthday!

Celebrating my daughter's 30th birthday!

Here are some of my favourites, in no particular order. Sometimes I was experimenting and other times just stitching and playing with the thread.

Playing with variegated thread

Experimenting with variations of the fly stitch

Trying out battlement stitches

Experimenting

Trying to make fly and chain stitches work together.
I haven't succeeded yet!

One Monthly Goal

I have two objectives this month - to quilt my girlfriend's quilt and to finish ~~Falling~~ Swirling Leaves 3. My February OMG is the ~~Falling~~ Swirling Leaves 3 quilt. I worked on it and appliquéd all of the leaves. It's now ready to quilt!

A great way to remember the size of the
zig-zag stitch that I'm using for the appliqué

A couple of the leaves appliquéd

Exhibition - Chez Lucien Restaurant in Ottawa

Some members of the Out of the Box (OOTB) Fibre artists are exhibiting at the Chez Lucien Restaurant in the market. I have a wonderful lunch with my girlfriend, and we were surrounded by some very lovely art.

Wall art at Chez Lucien

Do you recognize the birds in Home to Feed?

What I learned

If it looks like I have trouble establishing a routine, especially when it comes to stitching, then looks are not deceiving. I've never been a routine person, so why would I expect to be one now?
I don't need a plan to stitch or quilt every day because that is what I do - and when I don't, it's usually because I need a rest. I am learning to listen to my body.
I do know that I have to bring more interesting thread from the studio to the living room where I do all of my slow stitching. That does help me stay motivated.
I undid the double flowers on the hexie blanket and then proceeded to stitch them back pretty much the way that they had originally been. The problem is that they look like they are in a straight line. It's just compared to the other line that they are not straight. Besides, try to make a straight line with hexies! 😁
I had a wonderful lunch at Chez Lucien. It's so cool to see my art on the wall! The other members of the OOTB also had some great pieces.
Poppy is not impressed with me - I've been writing this post instead of playing with her! Thank goodness that a few treats will set things right.
Did you see the Project Quilting challenge this week? The theme is inside out. I really have to think this one through!