Sunday, April 12, 2015

I've been sewing and a winner

Half Moon Needle Case

First up, thank you all for sharing your retreat experiences with me for the give away of the digital copy of Krista Hennebury's book Make It, Take It. Mr. Random Number Generator picked Barbara (Mom C) as the lucky winner - congratulations Barbara! She and her sisters are planning a sewing retreat this summer, so they will be able to make good use of this book.

If you didn't win, you still have time to enter the draws to win digital versions of this fantastic book at the end of the blog hop, the stops are:
  • Friday, April 3 Blog hop kick-off: Krista at Poppyprint
  • Wednesday, April 8: Martingale Inc. at Stitch this! (check out their Rainbow Round the Cabin staff party!)
A Brass Ring Pillow in progress

I am so happy to be able to share some work in progress here for a change. Yesterday I began a whole new project - I am making the Brass Ring Pillow from Heidi Staples' new book, Sew Organized for the Busy Girl. It was so fun to just pull fabrics and play.

I also have to say having a design wall butting right up to your sewing table sure comes in handy when working with a 49 piece block. I rearranged the pieces a few times before I began sewing them.

A Brass Ring Pillow in progress

I planned out the back for this project before I even cut the fabric - which is not how I normally work. I was able to cut strips as I cut squares for the HSTs, what a concept to be that organized.

A Brass Ring Pillow in progress

I got as far as piecing the front and back of the pillow, and I will be able to start the quilting this week, maybe even today and be finished well in time for my stop on the blog hop on April 20. Here is the schedule, and I encourage you to both check out this wonderful book and the blog hop (past and forward), where, every Monday, each person will be sharing a project they made from the book.

March 30 - Lynne of Lily's Quilts (Tour Kickoff & Book Giveaway!)
April 6 -      Jodi of Tales of Cloth & Angela of Cut to Pieces
April 13 -     Lindsay of Craft Buds & Debbie of A Quilter's Table
April 20 -    Leanne of She Can Quilt (that's me)
April 27 -    Fat Quarter Shop
May 4 -      Erin of Why Not Sew?
May 11 -      Jennifer of Ellison Lane Quilts
May 18 -     Svetlana of SOTAK Handmade
May 25 -    Lucy of Charm About You
June 1 -       Maureen of Maureen Cracknell Handmade
June 8 -      Becca of Bryan House Quilts
June 15 -     Beth of Plum & June
June 22 -    Jessica of Quilty Habit
June 29 -    Caroline of Sew Can She
July 6 -       Heidi of Fabric Mutt (Tour Wrap!)

2015 FAL at On the Windy Side

Also, I'm finishing my Q2 Finish Along planning list today, and if you have not yet done so, hope you are enjoying your weekend.

Best,

Leanne
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Saturday, April 11, 2015

if you were shopping... #31


Welcome to if you're shopping.... On Fridays - late again, it's Saturday morning now - I share news from my sponsors, in case you want to do a little shopping, or even window shopping, this weekend.




Happy 7th Anniversary to Mad about Patchwork! In celebration, you can have 20% off all Cotton + Steel until April 15th with promo code CS20.


Oakshott Fabrics has released another of their wonderful free pattern booklets! This one uses 10" squares of Colourshott fabrics. These patterns are all by talented bloggers, in a project coordinated by my friend Lynne from Lily's Quilts.


Beautiful new fabrics continue to arrive at Fabric Spark!.



Fluffy Sheep Quilting has beautiful fabrics. I have used this favourite of mine, Paint Swatches from Paint by Carrie Bloomston, on more than one quilt backs and I am thinking it is time to order more. 


Sew Me a Song is spring cleaning and besides her sales, Becca keeps making beautiful bundles. This one especially caught my eye.



Sew Sisters Quilt Shop is featuring a lovely new kit - Glimmer Shimmer.


Over at the Fat Quarter Shop this new Sew Emma Hibiscus pattern caught my eye - a sort of brilliant monster pinwheel. Imagine the pinwheels in bright saturated colours and the background in low volume - this would be a great scrap project for me maybe.



At Green Fairy Quilts thread is on sale! This is a fantastic sale, one of my favourites.

 We are having fantastic weather and I am going to sew today with the windows open wide. I am also off to buy new runners as mine were soaked in an Atlantic Ocean wave that came up to my knees last week. I was not that fussed, it was time to truly step into the Atlantic, I swim in the Pacific often. I do need new runners, as I am going to walk and exercise a lot more, starting this week.

 Oh, and a little later I will announce the winner from my Make It, Take It give away too.

Best,

Leanne
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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Make It, Take It, blog hop and giveaway

"Images from Make It, Take It, by Krista Hennebury, Martingale, 2015; 
used by permission. Photos by Brent Kane. All rights reserved."

Today is my turn to tell you about my project in Make It, Take It, which is a beautiful new book by my friend Krista Hennebury. Krista blogs over at Poppyprint. I am so proud to be a part of this fantastic book with so many excellent contributors.

Krista has run quilting retreats for many years and she used her knowledge and experience to put together a book of projects that compliment the quilting retreat experience. The first half of the book has projects to make to help the quilter take their sewing on the road and the second half of the book included projects to make on a retreat either as a group or on your own. And, all of the projects are just fun to make for yourself or for gifts, whether or not you are actually going on a sewing retreat.

"Images from Make It, Take It, by Krista Hennebury, Martingale, 2015; 
used by permission. Photos by Brent Kane. All rights reserved."

My project in the book is called the Half Moon Needle Case. If you are like me, you have packets of quilting needles, embroidery needles, needles with large and small eyes, needles that are longer and shorter, and packets of assortments of different needles too. This needle case is designed to allow you to keep your entire packets of different kinds of needles together - so you can find them in your sewing room and easily take them all along on retreats - you know, because you never know when you or your table mate will need that special kind of needle.

Half Moon Needle Case

This needle case is large enough to hold a fair number of needle packets. It can also function as a small project case, holding a small pair of scissors, some thread and other small notions. The felt pockets store pins and function as a pincushion when you are on the road.

Half Moon Needle Case

The continuous zipper holds everything securely in place and the dumpling shape provides a fair bit of room. Before you know it (ask me how I know) you will have zipped in your measuring tape, seam ripper, a small ruler, hexie papers, the kitchen sink and any number of other sewing bits that might need for your retreat or for sewing on holiday, at your guild meetings or even just while watching television or a movie. Finally, I also wanted to make sure that this super simple to make needle book could be a place to show off a bit of really easy improv piecing, some fun quilting and that it would be a circle too - all things that you know I love.

Half Moon Needle Case

This book is also special for me as I met Krista in person first at the Fat Quarterly Retreat in London, UK. Yes, two Canadians had to go to another continent to a quilting retreat to meet in person - and we had the best time. Krista is fun and funny, generous and kind, very talented, and a true friend, whether on retreat, working with on her book, or connecting with in person or via the internet.


I have started making other projects in the book too. I took my Double Scissor Keeper to QuiltCon - one of Amy's projects in the book (Amy's post at During Quiet Time about her project is here) and I was so inspired by Berene's video about her project the Ultimate Equipment Tote (go here to her blog Happy Sew Lucky to see it) that I have started pulling fabrics to make one too. I hope to have finished several more by the time I head off to my next retreat.

I get to give away a digital copy of this book - everyone can enter. To do so:

  •  leave me a comment - let me know if you have been to a retreat or sewing day and what you liked most about it. 
  • My followers can have a second entry - leave a second comment letting me know where and how you follow me. 
  • I will randomly draw the winner from the comments on Saturday morning (April 11). 
  • Oh, and please leave me a trail to find you - if in doubt put your email into your comment as if I cannot find the winner I will draw again.
edited: This giveaway is now closed.

 If you don't win a copy of Make It, Take It, you can get it at your local quilt store, on Amazon here or at Martingale here.

Also, this is going to be a great blog hop as the contributors are sharing more about their own projects and each has a digital copy of the book to give away - you can follow along:
  • Friday, April 3 Blog hop kick-off: Krista at Poppyprint
  • Wednesday, April 8: Martingale Inc. at Stitch this! (check out their Rainbow Round the Cabin staff party!)

Best,

Leanne
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Sunday, April 5, 2015

Look - Ta Da!

Look

Today I get to tell you about Look. She is about 47" square after a couple of trips through the washer and dryer - she will relax some once she is used for a bit as the dense quilting pulls in initially but will with use, like your favourite jeans, will stretch out a little. That photo above is the best one I have, which my brother was able to capture.

Lucy Vincent Beach, Martha's Vineyard, Easter 2015

Look came with my son and I on a spring break trip to Boston and Martha's Vineyard and she is going to stay on the island for good. We took her to the beach. This is at Lucy Vincent Beach, where it was far windier than this photo suggests.

DSC_0173

This quilt is a nice lap size or large wall or baby size quilt. She was made using my Consider pattern - which I keep saying will be ready for release soon, and I am still saying, soon.

DSC_0174

Look was quilted with different colours of threads - yellows and aquas. The border was quilted with a variegated Aurifil 50 thread. The quilting is basically all variations on lines, and I had such fun quilting this quilt.

DSC_0195

This photo was taken with a bit of sun at the back, so you are seeing a bit of the backing showing through. You can see some of the fabrics and also the different quilting areas. These fabrics were originally a blogger's bundle that I picked out with Daryl from Fabric Spark and I still just adore them together.

DSC_0185

For the back, I used some larger coordinating pieces. I am totally smitten with using 4 - 8 big blocks of fabrics as a patchwork back. There is enough piecing to make it unique and interesting but not so much as to take too long to compose and make to back when you are eager to start the quilting.

You can also see the binding in this photo. I used the Backgammonish Aqua print by Melody Miller for the binding and I fussy cut it to make the diamonds line up nicely on the front and back - I really think it is a prefect binding fabric.

DSC_0176

Although this pattern has a right side up in my mind, it works both ways - the photo above is sideways to me.  It is hard to photograph the Kona Charcoal borders well. You can see the quilting in the borders well here - and it was totally inspired by the lessons I learned from Krista Withers at my QuiltCon workshop and also by Carolyn Friedlander's quilts. There will be more of this style of breaking up the quilting of negative space in my future for sure.


Martha's Vineyard is just starting to wake up for spring. There are crocuses blooming, grass greening up, and buds on the trees but right now the whole island is sort of beachy browns and greys. It has been a great visit and I even managed to put both feet in the Atlantic Ocean as a rogue wave caught me trapped by a bunch of big rocks. Now we are off for a transportation day, cars, ferry, planes and a bus.
2015 FAL at On the Windy Side

Look was on my Q1 Finish Along list - which is here - and my only finish of the three. I'm close to finishing the winter quilt, so I think that next quarter's list will be similar to this one. If you have not yet linked up your Q1 FAL finishes, you have about a day and a half left - time to get that done.

Best,

Leanne
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Friday, April 3, 2015

Make It, Take It! Blog Hop


Today is the kickoff for the Make It, Take It! Blog Hop for my friend Krista's book. If you head over to Krista's blog, Poppyprint, you can read all about the book, see Krista's projects, and enter the her draw for an electronic copy of the book.

The blog hop continues over the next several days - my day is Tuesday April 7 - and there will be more ebook giveaways at all the stops:

  • Friday, April 3 Blog hop kick-off: Krista at Poppyprint
  • Wednesday, April 8: Martingale Inc. at Stitch this! (check out their Rainbow Round the Cabin staff party!)
Krista has done just the best job with this book. It was so easy and fun to work with her and it is just so thrilling to be a part of this talented group of contributors. I sure hope you love it as much as I do!

"Images from Make It, Take It, by Krista Hennebury, Martingale, 2015; used by permission. Photos by Brent Kane. All rights reserved." 

Best,

Leanne


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