Fall and Frosts

The soybeans got combined last week and the corn will be in another week or two. The grass got cut for possibly the final time of the season. The leaves on the trees look stunning. We have had a couple of light frosts and the other morning a hard frost which simply means, I had to have the house plants back in the house. 

Got most of them. I discovered that the Geraniums up against the house can handle some frost. But not the Banana or Bird of Paridise. I brought the Majestic Palm in last week. It has grown taller over the summer. I bought it on a whim back in June. Isn't that what we do when we go for groceries? Buy plants? I no longer buy fabric for quilting. So I tell myself. Don't hold me to it. But seriously. I do not need any fabric, thread, needles, cutters or chocolate. 

And didn't Ava bring home chocolate for me the other night from work. Yes our Ava is a part time working girl. Her dream job is to work in a bakery but they hired her on front cash. Close enough for now. She brings random goodies home when she closes. Rescuing them she says. She got her drivers licence last week. Now she needs a car. She says she can wait. 

I wrote up a preliminary list of 10 things to work on for the 2026 Chookshed Challenge. What I really want to do is start 10 new quilts. I have at least that many kits I bought or collected everything needed. Now here is an interesting thought. Several years ago there was a 6 and 6 challenge. Complete 6 and start 6. I will give it more thought. The most quilts I finished in a year was back in 2017 was five. I took them to Poland to give to my cousins. I had a purpose and a deadline. I guess deadlines can be good. Even though I do not like the pressure. 

I was reading back through some of  my old posts because I was bored and avoiding writing. Yes. Still doing that. I have been reading up on story writing. That and reading novels. I love Agatha Christie. 

These pictures were taken as the sun was setting.

In the meantime, I am packing my bag to go on the Hallmark Christmas Cruise next week. Now, I do not watch those movies nor much of any TV except bits of football or now the World Series since our Toronto Blue Jays are contenders. And there is a big noisy bluejay flitting around my SonRoom. I see him everytime I sit in the hot tub.  I plan to take some writing and might glue baste all the bits I cut for Lucy. Now that I have given myself permission to do this by machine zig zag I stand a chance of completing it.

After weeks of discomfort and waiting for appointments, I finally had an ultasound on my left breast, after a very painful mamogram no one booked for me but I just happend to be in the room with the thing. I have an abscess and now another drain. This is supposed to be removed before I leave on Wed. And no more hot tubbing for a few weeks so we might as well drain that too and get it cleaned up before winter. 

And yes, winter always comes. We have days and days of rain in the forecast which is okay since I am not supposed to be in the sun nor eat dairy since I am on antibiotics yet again. My OMG goal for Nov will be to get those Lucy hexies glue basted. 

Blessings, 

Chris

Gail from Missouri Came to Visit

She drove for 3 days to get here to our space in Canada. They asked her interesting questions at the border. Where are you going? How long have you known her? How did you meet? You met on Zoom? They let her and her companion bear Lucy in. We had a great time. Gail, Janice and my sister Elizabeth and I shared a room at the Shipshewana Quilt Retreat for a week 2 years ago. They came out to the farm to join us for a day of quilting and visiting. 

I put all the Stonefields blocks and bits on the big design wall to see what it will look like. I am considering putting a center medallion. I started that at a Di Ford Hall workshop in Shipshewana in 2017 using fabrics from the Stonefields project bin. I had been considering this quilt for more than 10 years. Not sure if that parrot will make it into the center. But who knows. 

I still have to decide if there will be 3 rows of hexie flowers around the outside or 2. I put up all I had made - 60. They are pinned on because the papers are still in and they do not stick to the fuzzy board.

I pulled out the circle making things. Gail suggested using the Faultless heavy starch. It does work better than what I had been using. The white background fabric I am using for some of the squares is much heavier than most of the other fabric and would not behave in the Applipop metal rings. Especially the tiny circles. So, I tried putting the Perfect Circles into the larger metal circle and voila! it works very nicely. 

In the meantime my Lucy came out to play.
Progress on Lucy after ignoring her for more than a year. I made the decision to machine zig-zag the blocks together then machine stitch the hexies and squares. Some of these blocks are sewn together in rows and the rows are random on the wall. Now to fussy cut more pieces. My thoughts had been to make 25 blocks. Almost there. I may make it up to 30 or 35. I cut a lot more white hexies. I ran out of the 1 inch square papers but will remove those already sewn together to reuse. They come out easily enough with a finger nail.

I want to make a few more exciting crosses with stripes and frames. I recalled joining the Lucy Boston facebook group several years ago. Got lots of inspiration. So I pulled out a few fancy fabrics and the see-through templates I made from Luann at Loose Threads. 

Blessings,

Chris

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OMG Stonefields Update

My OMG goal for Sept was to get the rest of the flying geese made for one of the borders. I also made lots of hexie flowers but will need more. I will make those later incorporating  some fabrics not yet used. Doing the math here, I have 1/4 or 25% of the parts made so far.

Half of those blocks still need circles. Lots and lots of small circles. I will use the metal Applipop circles.That will be my goal for Oct. I made the bigger circles using Karen K Buckleys Perfect Circles. But I still had to hand baste around the outsides before pulling them around the plastic templates. My hands did not like that. But I used a hand stitching technique I learned from Jinny Beyer that made it doable, but not too many at a time. I am loving the colour pallet that I chose. I have lots more I could pull from in the cupboard of endless fabric options.

I have been writing for a lot of years. I wrote countless research papers and reflection papers throughout the years. After becoming an empty nester, I went back to school and earned three degrees. I finally published a book I had written in 1986 about the life and death of our handicapped child. Then I started writing about other aspects of our journey as husband and wife of now 54 years. About surviving menopause. About receving healing of memories. About staying married for 50 years. So many journals. So many memories. So many words written. So many teaching points. Did I mention the morning pages? Blogging? Mentoring women? Leading a writing group?

Now I am trying to bring it all together into the first of several short kindle eBooks. This is what I am working on this fall. My anticipation is to hit the Publish button before the end of the year. But first, I am trying to find a Christian Canadian editor. We spell words differently here. 

Blessings,

Chris

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Chookshed Challenge

 

My Chookshed Challenge for Sept is Machine Applique. This is timely. I have about 100 hexie flowers to assemble for Stonefields. I am doing them by maxhine. I have many hexies prepped and ready to sew together for the border. I am starting at the other end of this quilt. Not sure why other than I can. I actually have a lot done so far. I am impressed with my productivity. Now to keep the momentum going. 

There are only 46 more flying geese to make for this border. I think I have most of the coloured bars cut out just need to cut more background squares. This will be my OMG goal for Sept. I am doing the sew and flip method. I like it. I will have a lot of 3/4 inch HST eventually for something mini. 

Devan and I are using them for leader enders. She is progressing with her Jelly Roll quilt. I will show pictures when her flimsy is ready. I am looking forward to that since she is using the big design wall and I want to put up all the Stonefields blocks and borders as I complete them. 

I am working on prepared edge applique. The one using starch and a brush and a hot iron. Not sure if I like it, but I will have lots of practice now that I have started. No hand applique for me for now. 

Check out on how Gretchen and Rebecca are doing. We are all making this quilt at the same time. I love that about this project. I am so inspired by their progress. 

Blessings,

Chris 

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Hexie Flowers

So what's with blogger these days? Suddenly I have hundreds of page views and many going back several months. Got 400 on the 20th then another 1000 just yesterday. 

My plan for Stonefields is to make a 9 x 9 setting of 6 inch blocks, I am thinking about putting a larger medallion block in the center. I had this idea 8 years ago when I did several workshops with Di Ford-Hall at one of the Shipshewana quilt retreats. These are some of the blocks I have done so far. I put them up on the small design wall to see how a 12 inch border will look with all those hexie flowers. I plan to space them further apart than the pattern. Not sure yet how many will be needed.

I have been prepping a lot of the blocks and of course, a lot of hexies. Just need to cut a few more larger scale florals after I get the block prepping done. Devan has been working on her Jelly Roll Race quilt. It is suposed to take about an hour if you know what you are doing. We do not. So she has been at it for a couple of days and has almost half the strips sewn together. One delay was stitching her finger right through from top to bottom. A lot of noise happened and we found the broken needle tip, and bandaged the finger. My goodness! She has such skinny little fingers. She is taller than my Sweetie now. So about 5'6"? Ellyse is over 5'10". When did all this happen?

Another delay was the machine jamming every few flying geese I was chain piecing together. So, today Devan and I took the machine back to get it looked at. And of course, it ran perfectly. So, I brought it home, set it up and sewed a few geese together and it jammed again. Twice. Sigh. I think I am lifting the presser foot up too quickly and my left foot is hovering over the foot pedal and possibly adding just enough tiny pressure to bring the needle up and it jams. So, I started doing everything slower. No more jamming. 

The girls start back to school next week and I plan to turn my focus and time on writing. This past week I have been reading back over the Morning Pages I hade been writing for the past 4 1/2 years. I have focused on the books through 2022. A lot happened that year. I turned 70 and had many unexpected, age related health issues. No wonder I did not make much progress on writing and sewing.

blessings,

Chris 

Stonefields Update

I have been home all alone for a few days without any other humans around. People will show up tomorrow. In the meantime, I have been a busy girl. I can eat what I want when I want where I want. But I still have to do dishes. But not many. I did some laundry and, get this, I even ran the machine through a clean cycle since there were no other humans standing in line to do their own wash. I did stay out of the hot tub since I do not go in there when I am home alone. 

I am starting with the borders for Stonefields. And why not? I am loving doing the flying geese units. Partly because that is all I am doing with them. Earlier, I made flying geese for the star blocks and that is that. I am doing the method that gives me a gzillion bonus triangles. I am planning to make something very tiny with them. Not sure what just yet. I have another 50 to make.

And you would think that with all the many different hexies I have prepped so far, how did I manage to make these first 2 flowers, that are not going into the border, the same sprigged floral? 

I tried hand stitching the yellow one together. That took me nearly an hour while watching Miss Marple. The pink one was a lot faster. I machined stitched it. First I stitched 2 hexies together from the back. One using a tiny zigzag then another seam using a blanket stitch. Both show from the front. Then I machine appliqued them both onto the background square using a tiny narrow zig-zag. I did leave the papers in. Oops. Well, maybe not. I cut away the back and pulled out the papers. I am using a neutral colour bottom line thread that I was hoping would disappear. Almost and that is good enough. Only 168 more flowers to go.

Check out what Gretchen is doing here , here , here and here. Rebecca here and here. I am so inspired! 

Blessings,

Chris

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Stonefields & August Challenges

My OMG goal last month was to make 7 more of these star blocks for Stonefields. 

My OMG for August will be to make several more of the 6 inch blocks. There are 3 or 4 with hexies. I will start there.

I am really enjoying this journey so far. Four of these stars still need some tiny circles appliqued on but I will wait until I am doing more circle blocks. I took time to look through the pattern pages and listed blocks with circles. If I have the circle making stuff out, I might as well make a lot. That was my thinking with the hexies and the flying geese. 

There are 121 six inch blocks in the middle of the quilt then a flying geese border then a wider hexagon border. I am still of the mind to make only 72 blocks.  

For this project, I am working on the outside borders right at the beginning. Here is the logic. As I sorted through all the soft floral prints for the first star blocks, I took the time to cut a multitude of strips of the same fabrics to cut and prep the flying geese and the hexagon units. There will be a lot of each. Why wait until the end?  I layed out several layers of the fabrics and cut, cut cut. Devan helped me cut out hexies with the Go Baby. I will now cut a few more strips for her. She is at camp again this week loving it. I really like the colours so far that I have used. I think I will keep to this pallet. No reds or orange or really dark fabrics. 

The Chookshed Challenge number is 7. I again tweaked my original list and will assemble a flimsy. I have several almost ready to sew up. You will have to wait until the end of the month to see which one(s) I get done. 

Our summer Houseguests have all returned to their respective homes. I see a few weeks of empty spaces on my calendar. My plan for now is to sew, sew, sew and write, write, write. 

The summer days here continue to be nice and hot but the evenings have cooled down to a nice 15C or 60F. Perfect for sleeping. 

Blessings,

Chris

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