An image

Do you like this picture?

I posted it on Sunday afternoonish and on Monday it was on Flickr Explore. I have had other photos on Explore, it usually means a few more people view it, maybe a photographer leaves a pleasant comment on the shot. Yesterday this picture became my all time most viewed flickr photo, in one day. A lot of photographers favourited it. It is a nice shot, not perfect lighting, but maybe it is a bit compelling somehow. Then Explore dropped it and regular viewing levels have resumed.

The 2.5" triangles are now sewn together and they are progressing into a mini quilt. I have fallen for it  hard, and hope to have time to quilt it tonight. But it is just a bunch of orange, pink and yellow triangles. Why do some images just feel right?

Enjoy your Tuesday, I hope it is filled with lovely images.

Best,

Leanne

This and that and happy St. Patrick's Day

My Always Bee Learning Bee had an unexpected open month, so they asked if anyone wanted to propose a charity quilt - this is a great group of women who seem happy to step up for most anything. I asked for help to make a quilt to bring to London this summer for Siblings Together, which is the group that the Fat Quarterly Retreat supports. I have asked for the Octagonal Orb block designed by Elizabeth Hartman (tutorial is here), in any colours with any kind of grey background. I am hopeful this will be a good unisex quilt for a teenager - my teenager approves at least.



So the most exciting part of that picture is that those triangles are on my new design wall. I am reorganizing my sewing space to the now empty room down the hall and I tacked up some batting on the wall - what fun this is going to be. I am in the Fab Little Quilt Swap and I am thinking about a triangle mini with lots of white space and dense quilting. You might be reminded of atmosphere. or of Be - I think that I could play with this concept of lots of negative space and triangles forever so I am hopeful it might appeal to my partner.



The pickle dish quilt continues to grow - I hope to make a few of the dish units today.

I am also trying out new blog readers. I have not decided which one to use yet, so am trying many - Feedly, Bloglovin' and Vienna this week. Bloglovin' needs me to paste the following code into this blog so it can identify it. Please do not feel compelled to click it as you will be asked to sign up for Bloglovin' and I sort of hate it when folks who try to trick people into joining up. Also, I am not yet committed to Bloglovin' at all - and may ditch it in a week or two. Any number of readers can import your google reader subscriptions it seems, so when you are ready with your new choice, then I hope you will continue to follow me with the one you pick.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin
I just liked google reader so it is going to take me a little while to decide where I will go - we do have until July after all.

I am still behind on my internet homework, I am responding to comments that are a week or more old today - thank you for your patience. I will be doing some serious FAL stuff this week, so take this as just an advance reminder, the end of the quarter is coming up.

Happy St. Patrick's Day - we have several inches of new snow this weekend, but hopefully most of you have spring.

Best,

Leanne

"Have you lost your marbles???!" - or - a pincushion in a night

I bought a lovely paper piecing letter pattern on Craftsy from Kristy who blogs at Quiet Play a little while ago. I have been collecting letter patterns, it seems.

Last night, it all started with the e. First I reduced the pattern by 50% so that e itself is about 1"square, the whole thing is about 3.5" unfinished.



So since it worked, I made the m. It is not a perfect m but good enough. These each took about an hour to make, mistakes included. I really just needed to focus and stop all the thinking that was filling up my head - it was a busy week by the end of Tuesday it seems.



I needed a pincushion for tonight (Wednesday) to swap with my friends at the Edmonton Modern Quilt Guild. The swap was, after all, my idea and I could not come empty handed.



The g took a while but it might be my favourite.



In case you had any thoughts as to the competence of my work, here is the back - a disaster.



I slapped some batting on that back and quilted a few lines. Then a trim. Then made a box for the bottom.



Around midnight or so, it was basically done. I need to fix the stuffing, and sew the opening shut and take a nice daytime picture. This pincushion is about 5" square and 2.5" high.

And to answer my friend Krista's question above - posted on Instagram last night - yes, probably had lost my marbles but it worked. I had a great sleep, and I have a pincushion that is kind of cool.

Oh and thank you so much to all my Instagram friends, when you need encouragement and cheering on right now, that is the place to get it and they sure were nice to me last night, and I woke up to more cheering this morning.

I am linking this post up to Sew Cute Tuesday at Better Off Thread, where other cute things are being shown off too.

Enjoy your Wednesday.

Best,

Leanne

Playing, planning, and a list of my homework too.

Our eldest son is getting married at the end of June and when I said if I made you a quilt, what colours would you like, he said, some months ago, brown and mint green. Well, those are not my normal colours so I ordered all the brown solids I could find and many minty green and minty aqua prints and solids. I have a bunch of brown prints too, I expect there will be some blocks with the solids and prints coloured the opposite way to these first blocks.

And I thought about wedding quilts and decided this quilt should be based on an historic / traditional pattern but done my way. This is where I am at so far. I am using the Pickle Dish Quilt templates from Kaffe Fassett's book Quilt Romance.

I left some of my kitchen tiles in the photo as they are 12"squares and give some scale. These blocks are big, each pickle dish unit finishes at 10" but I tend to see a group of 4 dishes as one block.



Today I am thinking an assortment of these low volume prints would work nicely as the background - I don't have enough of any single one but I am hoping that variations will give texture and interest. I am excited - I love browns, the colour of trees and rocks and beaches and gardens - you might remember this quilt from two summers ago and its beach inspiration here. Those of you who diss brown, look out, I have a feeling that this quilt is going to change your mind.

Let's see how this goes, and how the plan stays the same or changes.

I have much internet homework, I am going to get to it later, once I play with fabric for a while, maybe after dinner, maybe over the next week, you see I would really rather sew. Given all that waffling, I best write it down so I will feel more compelled to do it. You can soon expect to see:

• A Finish-A-Long update and some information about the fast approaching end of quarter. By the way, if you want to do a tutorial for this or other quarters, please let me know as finalizing tutorial plans is on the list too.

• Progress on my Fabulous Little Quilt Swap quilt - yes, I could not resist another swap. I know I said I would not join too many, this is just one.

• A pincushion for the guild swap and progress on a group charity project for the Edmonton Modern Quilt Guild meeting next week. Also an update to that blog as I am responsible for it now.

• Celebration of my 2 year blogging birthday, which is on Tuesday.

• Bee block updates.

• I am sure there is more but that is all I am going to think of today.

Happy Mother's Day to all my British friends - I hope you have a lovely day with your moms, kids, grandkids and/or friends.

Best,

Leanne

Labyrinth

Here is Labyrinth. Labyrinth is a simple log cabin with logs that finish at 1" wide. The labyrinth forms from the way you place the colours. I pieced the log cabin differently than I usually do - basically I pieced two rows at a time, with the second row one log behind the first.



Labyrinth is my Emerald Challenge quilt and finished at 20" x 19". She is made of various green prints and solids with Kona White. I explained my inspiration for Labyrinth in an earlier post here, I said:

"I have long wanted to make a log cabin that was a labyrinth, and the Emerald Challenge seemed like the right time. Green makes me think of gardens and then I thought of hedges and lawns and that took me to the labyrinth. When my son reminded me that Theseus had escaped the Labyrinth by following a thread, well there was no turning back - the inspiration had hit."



I put a bird in the centre of my Labyrinth, instead of a Minotaur. I was thinking it might be more like the canary in a coal mine, which, I know, totally mixes the metaphors or something like that but whatever. I quilted her heavily - about 7 lines in an inch of space - and washed her to get the greens to puff and wrinkle.



I puzzled over the binding until my other son asked me if I could make it two colours, to carry on the colour changes and make you wonder if this was the full labyrinth or a portion of it. Taking inspiration and guidance (excellent tutorial is here) from my friend Debbie at A Quilter's Table, I did as he suggested.



Her back is Essex linen in olive green. I blogged about my search for the Pantone Emerald, which is the colour of the year, here. In the end, Labyrinth is a celebration of greens, tending toward the emerald side but she also shows how many greens can work together so well.



This little quilt looks so good on my cherry dining room table. I expect she can rest here often.



That picture above is Labyrinth before I washed her. I really debated washing this mini - did I want the pristine flatness or did I want texture and a rougher look.



In the end, I chose texture - more in keeping with my inspiration to give you an impression of  walls, hedges, walkways, grass, depending on how you look at her - this last picture is after washing as are all the pictures except the one. And now she can safely lay on the table as a spill or two will not matter as back in the wash she can go.

The flickr group of all the beautiful Emerald quilts in progress is here. And I am linking her to Ali at a.squared.w to formally join in the contest. There will be many beautiful quilts linked there - the contest closes on St. Patrick's Day, I hope you have time to visit them.

The post travel lurgy has hit, I am trying to pretend I don't have a terrible cold and heading off to work, wish me luck and enjoy your day.

Best,

Leanne