Farewell 2013, you were a very good year

So long, 2013. I learned, laughed, made mistakes, had some accomplishments, had things go wrong. My kids made me smile, my sweetheart filled my life with love and music, my work stretched and challenged me, my friends were the best, my family was lovely, and the rest was, well, what it was. In the quiet spaces, I quilted, sewed, knitted, blogged, read books, hung out, and learned to make soup and jelly.



I hope when you look back over your year, you see so much more good than bad, happy than sad, fun than difficulties.



I am sharing all that I finished in 2013 in this post. You can click each mosaic to go to the flickr picture where there are more details and links to the actual individual pictures.

Despite it feeling a lot like I am being a horrible "show off", I need to see it all together in this one space, just on one day of the year, as I really cannot believe that I made this much. I have so many other things I do all day, so I need to see that I also clearly have a lot of time to create too.



The one thing I did not do at all well in 2013 was take sufficient care of me as physical entity. That is my number one goal for 2014, to become strong and fit again - taking care of me, as well as, but no longer second to, taking care of the family, pets, home, and office. My other resolution is to laugh as much as I can - including laughing at trouble, at challenges, at obstacles - and just do my best at whatever comes along.



Besides the pictures, there are a few other sewing things I wanted to note that happened here in 2013:

• Shattered won an Honourable Mention Ribbon at QuiltCon.
• I went to Texas to attend QuiltCon and met wonderful quilters.
• I went to London to attend my second Fat Quarterly Retreat, where I saw my dear friends and made more friends.
• I hosted the Finish - A - Long.
• I participated in 2 Bees (an optimal number of Bees for me), a couple of swaps, the 4 in Art Group, the Emerald Challenge, and occasionally sewed along with a few internet events. 
• I wrote some tutorials, some which were part of internet events.
• I participated in finishing 3 charity quilts.
• I was active in the Edmonton Modern Quilt Guild and joined a committee of the parent Modern Quilt Guild.
• I blogged a reasonable amount and continue to make new internet friends doing so.
• I instagrammed a whole lot too, where I find inspiration and constant encouragement and support.

I expect I will add this post, which has both my December and all year finishes, to Fresh Sewing Day, which will be hosted by Lynne at Lily's Quilts tomorrow, and then I will be reading about everyone else's month and year too. 

I am linking up with Anne from Play Crafts and Sarah from Sarah Quilts too, they have a lovely end of the year link happening too. More inspiration there to read too.

Oh, and do come back here tomorrow to see how, despite all this sewing, I really did not do well on my Q4 FAL list at all. It is a good thing that Katy is going to host the FAL for 2014, as I still have many UFOs to finish.

I wish you and yours the very best new year! Thank you for your friendship, encouragement and support for 2013.

Best,

Leanne

The Picnic Quilt - Ta Da!

The Picnic Quilt is another finish from this fall that I have not shown off here yet. That photo above is before she was washed. She is about 53" x 66" finished and is made from fabrics from the Lucy's Crab Shack line by Sweetwater and Kona white. The binding was made from left over fabrics from the top and the back is an IKEA numbers print.



I made this quilt top this summer using  the St. Louis 16 Patch  tutorial that had become so popular on instagram and is here. These blocks come together really quickly and are fun to make. I used white with the fabrics because I was finding that the quilts made with all prints, although beautiful, sometimes felt too overwhelming.

Then I became underwhelmed with this quilt and let it sit.



I quilted her with diagonal lines which made nice puffy soft squares on the quilt after it was washed.



I am still find this quilt somewhat underwhelming, despite how much I love the quilty texture. Maybe it is the colours, or the fact that I just used one line of fabrics - which was in part because of my limited choices while on holiday.



Having said that, she is soft and cheerful and a nice size for cuddling.



She reminds me a little of a gingham picnic blanket, and and thus her name. That is my picture from yesterday, for a few minutes the light worked nicely.

There are no more completed quilts hiding on my shelf. If I am lucky I might be able to finish one more today as it has only the smallest bit of quilting and a binding to do.

Best,

Leanne

Giant Plus - Ta Da!

I use this quilt all the time, for naps and as an extra layer on my bed. She is one of my favourites. Today I realized I have not shown her off properly here as a finish. She was made with Amy Butler fabrics and a Three Sisters Paris Map print and finished at about 55" x 60".



This quilt took a morning to invent and piece, I shared that with you here.  The quilting was fast too, I just sewed straight lines on either sides of the seams, which makes a nice pattern on the back too. The binding is also an Amy Butler print.



I know why I delayed showing her off. The photos were so blueish, as you can see from the photo of the back, which I took this fall. But then she was on my bed, in use, and no better photos were taken. I also planned to write a pattern for this quilt, but just around then several other giant plus patterns appeared or were located around the internet and I was not sure that folks wanted or needed another. So I put it off and thus put off sharing the finished quilt.



So, does anyone want a pattern for this quilt, or are we content now with all the others available on the internet?

I have one more quilt that I did not post about this year to show off, but I truly need better photos of it, so maybe the light will be ok this afternoon. And with any luck I might even finish one more before it is time to post my FAL finishes, wish me luck.

Best,

Leanne

Q4 FAL and other news

Today I am pleased to share with you the schedule for the fantastic tutorials we have scheduled for Q4 of the 2013 FAL tutorial series:

• January 2 - Anne from Playcrafts: Color Series - Contrast
• January 3 - Agnieszka from A Quilt, Maybe - Envelope Pouch
• January 5 - Vera from Negligent Style - Leather Zipper Pulls
• January 6 - Christa from Christa Quilts - Valentine Table Runner
• January 7 - Aylin from ayliN-Nilya - The Magic of EPP

The link to start posting your Q4 finishes will open on January 1, 2014 and will close on January 8, 2014 at midnight MST - giving you a nice long bonus week to finish any projects that you did not get to yet. 

You are going to want to get that last project done, because each finish will qualify as an entry into the random draws for these prizes from our wonderful and generous sponsors:

$75 Gift Certificate from the Fat Quarter Shop

A Moda Jelly Roll from Green Fairy Quilts

£25 from the Organic Stitch Co.

A charm pack from Simply Solids

€20 Gift Certificate from Fluffy Sheep Quilting

$30 Gift Certificate from Knotted Threads

$25 Gift Certificate from Pink Chalk Fabrics

Surprise Package from Rhonda at Quilter in the Gap

 

£25 Gift Certificate from Tikki London

$25 Gift Certificate from Pink Castle Fabrics

Fat Quarter bundle of solids from Sew Sisters Quilt Shop

Fabric Bundle from Sew me a Song

3 Patterns of Your Choice from Happy Quilting

$30 Gift Certificate from Image Gnats

3 Patterns of Your Choice from Sew Sweetness

<center> <a href="http://thelittlestthistlecraftshop.blogspot.com/"><img alt="Finish Along 2014" border="0" height="180" width="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUHvBD1mT09ODRc2DR8hPah6fiR4Hq6aEW_-pjO6SELKA99FbhwMEO8KwORr8pg8bEv_hZ2VlqM8kAL4r08cYtgcz9hvRaFmAUrbecejM_UhnAHxjhiSSDtmr-mIg4n5cYFH7T9z8FgQoC/s1600/FAL-2014-Button.jpg" /></a></center>

Then, on January 9, 2014 the FAL moves to our new host - Katy from The Littlest Thistle, who will pick up the FAL mantle and lead us through another year of getting those started projects done and out of the sewing room. Feel free to grab the 2014 FAL button now.

My other news is that yesterday, Cycles 2 was delivered to the American Quilter's Society folks. If you are going to be in Phoenix for the AQS show from February 5 - 8, 2014 you can see her in person in the modern quilt category. Apparently there will be 15,000 other folks there to see the quilt show too.

Despite my reservations about putting my quilts out to be judged, I think that quilt shows are enhanced by including modern quilts for everyone to enjoy and be inspired by. I was very pleased that Cycles 2 was accepted to be shown and now I am trying to figure out how I might get there too, as one gets free admission if your quilt is on display.

I had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends, I hope you did too. We have more family coming for the weekend too. Today, however, is a day with nothing scheduled, so I am going to take my holiday cold (sigh) into my sewing room and just play all day.

Best,

Leanne

Season's Greetings

I hope you have a lovely holiday, whatever and however you celebrate or don't celebrate!

Best,

Leanne

ps, I learned how to make this pretty picture, called a bokeh, from Debbie's post here.

Happy Holidays, Mittens and the Q4 FAL schedule

I am wearing that infinity scarf as I write this and it is making me smile. I have fabric to make more for presents and such, but to gift for next year.



I have been working on my Snowfling Mittens. The pattern and yarn are from Tanis at Tanis Fiber Arts. I modified the mittens by flipping the pattern so that the mittens mirror each other rather than look the same on both hands. For an asymmetrical pattern like this one, I knew it would make me crazy not to. I just scanned it and flipped the pdf in my computer and printed it out the other way round.



The inside of the hands has this pretty snowflake pattern. I have worn these mittens without their linings, despite the fact that they are not finished or blocked, but last night I started knitting the lining.



You can see the lighter sock weight lining yarn (it has some cashmere in it) which is a lovely bright turquoise. You just knit another mitten shape and then tuck it into the first one. When I am finished I will have fully lined mittens which are really warm. I am keen now to finish the linings so that I can wear them some more.



This is a picture from a last weekend. I knit the smaller mitten on the right first, using the needle size that the pattern called for. It was just a little snug on my hand, so I knit the one on the left with a needle the next size larger to see how it looked and fit. Since the larger one was much better, I took apart the smaller one and reknit it. If you look carefully you can see my other pattern modification. On the larger ones I added one extra row of background (blue) stitches above the chevrons on the cuff so that it matched the row at the bottom.

In Finish - A - Long news, here is the schedule to bring Q4 to a close, and to get Q1 of 2014 handed over to our new host from Scotland,  Katy from The Littlest Thistle. If you don't already follow Katy's wonderful blog, I recommend that you start so that you don't miss any of the FAL 2014 fun.

• January 1:          The link opens to start posting your Q4 finishes. 
• January 2 - 7:     We have 5 wonderful tutorials scheduled.
• January 8:          The link to post your Q4 finishes will close at midnight MST
• January 9:          The link to post your Q1, 2014 list  will open over at Katy's blog.

I'll tell you more about the tutorials later this week, after the family and friends have been and gone. I am looking forward to see all the finishes as this year draws to a close and I wanted to make sure you knew that the schedule will give you lots of time to be finished your own celebrations before Q4 ends.

I wish you all the very best holiday season. I hope you will stay warm and safe - despite the abundance of storms and such all over the world - and enjoy time with family, friends and community. 

Best,

Leanne 

Sunset - Ta Da!

Sunset is finished. After trimming and washing, she is 42" wide by 41" tall. I used a bunch of Kona solids with Kona Charcoal for the background and binding.



I have a lot of photographs of this quilt, but none of them actually show her off that well. The reds and oranges tend to turn into saturated burning blobs and the threads disappear. Like a sunset I guess.

For the matchstick quilting, I used a lot of different threads, including Aurifil, King Tut by Superior Threads, Sulky, and Valdani. They are 40wt and 50wt.



The picture above is the back after washing. The orange strip is a Katie Jump Rope print by Denyse Schmidt. I varied the thread colours randomly, with no advance plan, as I felt like it.



This back photo is before washing, the only photo here that is. You can see that the washing added some more texture but it is not a dramatic change. The real change from washing is in the drape of the quilt. Even though I pre-washed all the fabrics, the quilt gets fairly stiff from the matchstick quilting. After the wash, it feels and moves almost like any other quilt, a significant improvement in the drape.



You can see the matchstick quilting better in the close up photos. I worked to make the lines unevenly spaced and added some greater spaces from time to time. I use a fairly long stitch length, it is 4 on my Horizon.



To keep the lines from tipping over or becoming too wobbly, I used a hera marker and marked a line about every 2".



I started quilting in the middle and just worked to the edge. I encountered some pulling when I returned to the middle and changed directions, you can read about it here. Some folks have suggested first quilting lines spaced 1" or 2" apart over the whole quilt and then returning to fill it in. I think I might try that next time as it will also provide markings that are easier to see than the hera marker.



Other people suggested quilting down a line, taking the quilt and turning it and quilting up next the line. While that is how I quilt small items, and I expect it is a method that will seriously reduce any pulling on the fabrics and piecing, given the time and effort to matchstick quilt this, all that extra turning of a quilt even this size is not for me. I did find that it also helps to lessen the pressure on the presser foot and to remember to hold the fabric in place as I went, especially at the beginning of a line, to reduce any stretching.



A bunch of the photo attempts were on a windy day. I love this action shot, although it is hard to see the details. You can also see a little of how my house is decorated outside for the holidays. It is hard to decorate evergreens that are over 50 feet high and take up the entire frontage of the house.



And here is probably the best photo I have. I adore Sunset. All she needs is a hanging sleeve, and she is going on the wall.

By the way, my back has improved dramatically, and should be all better soon. And I am mostly on holidays after today, so there will be more blogging and sewing for me, in between cooking, and visiting and relaxing.

Finally, don't forget that Q4 of the Finish-A-Long is drawing to a close. I, for one, will be working on my finishes in the week after Christmas to get them done before the end of the quarter, maybe you will be too. I will share more on the schedule for year's end this weekend.



I am going to show off Sunset around the internet, and there will be other lovelies to visit at each link - Fabric Tuesday, TGIFF, Finish it up Friday.

Best,

Leanne