WIP - No Need to Rush

You've already heard about how I fell in love with Release the Kraken. The evil team of Quarter Inch of Quirk is made up of Angie from Gnome Angel and Kristy of Quiet Play. I ended up following Angie on Instagram... and another WIP was born! This time, it's the Snail Paced Slow-Along Sew-Along.

The deal is that you create just one snail block a week and post it on Instagram (with a whack of hashtags if you want to win prizes!).  The pattern is by Pen + Paper Designs. 

As with a lot of my recent projects (and keeping with last year's Stash Manifesto), I dove into the scrap bins. Honestly, those things are stuffed with goodness!
These are the goodies pulled from my "Cool" bin. I have my scraps organized into five main bins: Cool Prints, Warm Prints, Neutral Prints, Christmas, Cool Konas, and Warm Konas. I know it might seem like a little much, but it works for me.

Thanks to Lynn @ Buttons Quilts, not just for egging me on to start this sew along, but also for the idea of naming each snail. This little cutie is Kneehigh (and snail 4 of 42)!

 And here's Snicket (Snail 3 of 42)

I will admit here and now that some weeks just don't leave much time for sewing. My plan is to sew up a month's worth of snails at my monthly MMQG Sew In. Then I won't be scrambling to meet my Sunday goal! Here are February's snails!

  Snail 5 of 42, Flighty...

 

Snail 6 of 42, Slimey. Almost named Mercury.

 

And here's Woodford.(Snail 7 of 42). 

 And the yet to be released into the Instagram world, Zig. (Snail 8 of 42)

I'm hoping to find time at this week-end's Sew In to get the March snails sewn together!

I'm linking up today with Let's Bee Social @ Sew Fresh Quilts. Pop on over and be inspired! 

J

TGIFF and Friday Finish - Cookin' up some fun!

Welcome to TGIFF at A Quarter Inch from the Edge! If you're new to my blog, I hope you'll cruise around and check out some of my past projects. Perhaps you're a Kona lover like me and want to take on the Kona Love challenge? 

In the non-bloggy world, I'm a Middle School French teacher, as well as a wife and mamma to growing boy-girl twins...currently in the terrible two toddler stage! They're known here as Double Trouble and today I'm sharing some projects I sewed for them for Christmas. Thank goodness Santa has a sewing elf in his workshop so he can bring presents to encourage pretend play and their burgeoning foodie-ness.

As much as I love a play kitchen, I didn't want a hunk of plastic taking up residence in my living room. After saving a pile of versions of slipcover kitchens on Pinterest, I winged it with my own dining room! chair. The "oven" door even opens! 

The back of the slipcover stove has pockets for storing kitchen gadgetry... or produce. I'm pretty sure there's a Melissa & Doug wooden lemon stuffed in there somewhere!

DT have played with it each and every day since Christmas! And when we need another dining room chair, the kitchen just slides off and folds up. GT loves frying up hotdogs or eggs for her guests!

Just when you thought BT couldn't get any cuter, he's sporting a sushi print apron and oven mitt. I used Peekaboo Pages' Toddler Apron and Toy Oven Mitt tutorial. Now I'm thinking they might need chef's hats!

I love that GT's apron and oven mitt are made from fabric I purchased in Montréal when I was pregnant, and also used for a number of wee bibs before they were born. And I've still got some!


Now it's your turn! Link up your finish from this week and click your way over to some of the other linked blogs. I can't wait to see your finishes!

An InLinkz Link-up

Thanks for stopping by! Hope to see you again soon!

J

WIP - Going Swimmingly

Isn't it funny how a tiny scrap can send you off on a creative adventure?

This time it was those bright blue anchors. I found them whilst digging through a pile of scraps passed on by one of Himself's co-workers. His wife is the force behind Me and Mommy Purses and Accessories. I love that whale print... DT has a burp cloth made from it! And the crabs from Miss L's quilt. And some wee blue fishies I snagged at a MMQG yard sale.

But as I kept pulling sea creatures, a funny thing happened. All the royal blue bits got scrapped (hee hee hee. See what I did there?)They just didn't fit the colour scheme that formed as I worked.

To the left in the above pic is my trusty design notebook. If I'm making notes about a quilt, it goes in here! That way, I never have to go looking for a random post-it. I think I'm up to my third one. They're handy to have around when you want to go back to a past project for fabric info or measurements.

I started out with a 5 inch block in mind and then bumped it up to 6 inch. But when I tested out the two block sizes, the bigger one just looked too darn clunky. I guess I'll be diving back into do some more fussy cutting!Pictured below is the centre area of the block. I'll be adding 2½ inch strips all the way around. I'm thinking scrappy, but within my colour scheme.

Can you tell I design by trial and error? I originally planned a narrow white border for the darker prints, but then my eyes fell on the pile of Kona Silver in my Glamp pile. Game over for White!

The lighter prints will get Kona Nautical borders. I'm kind of digging the Nautical since using it for the borders on Miss L's quilt, Not Quite a Thousand Pyramids.

There's no way I could fussy cut these bad boys into 2½ inch squares. They'll make some awesome blocks nonetheless! I fell in love with these Cotton + Steel octopi, but just couldn't figure out where they should live. Under the sea, obviously!

I'm very excited to have gotten a start on this quilt. There's another wee one on the way in our extended family and his room is apparently an ocean-y theme. I hope these fabrics work as well as the ones I chose for his big sister's quilt, Alice in Woodsy-land! The due date is February 22nd, so I better get a wriggle on!

I'm linking up today with Let's Bee Social @ Sew Fresh Quilts, as well as Midweek Makers @ Quilt Fabrication. Pop on over and see what others are sewing up this week! And I hope you'll come on back and link-up on Friday when I host this week's edition of TGIFF!

J

Friday Finish - Drunken Rainbow

 I can't hardly believe I've got another finish! Thank goodness for Sew Ins!
This time it's the offering for my swap partner in the first ever MQG swap. Her favorite fabric lines are Art Gallery and Cotton + Steel and she loves bright and colorful prints and solids.The mosaic that she put on her Instagram showed a lot of rainbow, so I went for it!

Off to the scrap bin to pull some rainbow goodness!  I found quite a few Cotton + Steel and Art Gallery prints. Score! I don't quite know what made me choose Drunkard's Path blocks, but they just felt right.

I used my trusty freezer paper to make templates. So easy!

The last curved pieces that I made were the ones in my session with Violet Craft at Glamp Stitchalot. Look, ma! No pins! 

Speaking of Glamp Stitchalot, the blocks from Glamp have taken my design wall hostage. I need to finish the last few, but I keep getting excited about other things to make! Quilt squirrel! As for the lay-out, I wiggled them around on the design wall until I got something I liked. Drunkard's Path (probably not a very politically correct block name) blocks are versatile like that!

I kept my quilting simple with narrow echoing lines in the negative space. I would have liked to keep the coloured sections unquilted. However, with the curved piecing, they needed to be squished down! Looking at it now, I'm thinking that some FMQ in the coloured sections would have been nice. Oh well!

As I often do, I put hanging corners on all four corners of the quilt. That way, the recipient can hang it any which way they want.

My quilts always seem to like getting out in the snow...

I love this backing fabric... Foxy Owls Rain Basic in White by Timeless Treasures. I bought in a lot of colours. Now I wish I'd bought more!

And since I had pieced every scrap of Star Chart I had to make binding, I had to sneak in a little snippet of Rain Basic into the binding.

Some of those echoes ran into each other a little!

For some reason, these canoes just spoke to me. Maybe they're lonely in the snow and ice. They needed their picture taken!

The Deets  

Title: Drunkard's Rainbow
Size: 19 by 19 inches
Fabrics Used in Top: Lizzy House's Star Chart in White and assorted rainbow scraps
Backing: Lizzy House's Star Chart in White, Foxy Owls Rain Basic in White by Timeless Treasures
Binding: Lizzy House's Star Chart in White (I'm really running low!)
Quilting: Narrow echo quilting in negative space, wider echoes in coloured sections, white thread

Favourite Parts of this Quilt: Playing with curved piecing, digging in the scrap bin

I'm linking up today with TGIFF @ Lisa in Port Hope, as well as Finish Up Friday @ Crazy Mom Quilts. Pop on over and see some more great finishes!

J

WIP - Releasing the Kraken!

What happens when Angie of Gnome Angel and Kristy of Quiet Play decide to hook up for a BOM? A Quarter Inch of Quirk and Release the Kraken! That's what!

http://quarterinchofquirk.com/release-the-kraken-block-of-the-month-2017/

I'll forgive them for poaching part of my blog name... this time! Even though I was more than a little gun shy after the BOM gong show that was Technicolor Galaxy, I just couldn't resist this one. And I dragged the new MMQG Social Media Coordinator into the madness along with me. It's always nice to have a buddy on these adventures!

There are going to be a more than a few colouring sessions with this paper piecing. This was one complicated block!

 

I procrastinated on choosing the background colour...  

 

Thank goodness for my trusty Kona swatches. The original calls for Prussian. After seeing all the variation that came out of Technicolor Galaxy when other quilters went their own way, I just didn't want to follow the pattern. I thought Celestial would be cool, but it was just too close to Prussian. And Social Media Goddess is using Caribbean. Breakers it is! 

For my mermaids, I decided to go with hair colours similar to DT - a ginger and a blond!

For the tail, I grabbed some Michael Miller Mirror Ball Dot I had hanging out in the scrap bin. Love this stuff. Sort of wish I had snagged more of it. It turned out even better than I thought it would!

I'm saving each and every wee scrap from my paper piecing. Using the same fabric in other parts of the quilt will give it some more unity. My plan is to use some of those favourite scraps I've been hoarding. It'll make this quilt even more special.

And because I'm now officially a Kraken Addict, I had to make the second mermaid the next day! I might even like this one better. And I'm considering adding a third to the menagerie.

 Isn't it amazing what some well placed cutting can do? There really aren't that many dots on that print!

 I can hardly wait for March 1st when the next block rolls out. Guess I'll just have to be patient!

I'm linking up today with Let's Bee Social @ Sew Fresh Quilts. Pop on over and see what others are up to this week!

J

 

Mini Mini Monday - Giraffe Love ♥

Even in a mini mini, there's room to sew some extra love in. And Mondays can always use a little extra love!

I stumbled onto this scrap of giraffe fabric and it made me think of a former student - one that could use a little extra support these days. She used to draw these little giraffes on the bottom of her quizzes. ☺Off I went to the stash to snag some coordinating prints... Carolyn Friedlander CrossHatch and Lizzy House Mini Pearl Bracelet. (Sorry for the blur... sometimes I really do have to slow down!)

It was fun quilting around that little fella. It really made him pop. Playing around with some of the thread colours also made me smile. Orange and turquoise belong together... at least in my world!

 Even with a mini mini, I just can't bring myself to machine bind it.

It was fun taking this wee quilty to school and letting it hang out on my desk for a bit. Next it'll be popped into an oversized envelope with a card. If you've never made a mini mini, it's a great way to cheer up a friend or just show you care. Why not make one? Why not give it away?

I'm linking up today with Main Crush Monday @ Cooking Up Quilts. One of these days, I might get around to encouraging others to share their mini minis on Monday in the form of a link-up, but not today!

J

What can a quilter do?

What can anyone do when something as horrible as last Sunday's attack at a mosque in Québec City happens in one's country? If you're not Canadian, you might not even have heard about it. But it hit me hard. Not because I'm muslim. Not because I'm Québeçoise. But purely because I am Canadian and this happened in my country to people who were praying in their holy place. Just praying.

Deep breath. Okay. I've mentioned before that sometimes I feel paralyzed by situations to large for me to fix. But then I make something and sew some extra love in. It's corny as hell and I don't care. This week, I've been sewing some extra love into these...

  

Montréal Modern Quilt Guild (the other MMQG) has made a call to action.  "Nous sommes avec vous. Vous êtes chez vous... We are with you. You are at home" as said the Premier of Québec last Sunday. That said, we're making homes. House blocks to be made into quilts for each of the six families who lost someone at the mosque. And if there are enough, for each person injured. 

My blocks are paper pieced Heart of the Home blocks from Ellison Lane Handmade. They're not the 12 inch called for, but I'll add another border to bring them up to size.

I'm a little ashamed to say that I had to Google to determine what colour was significant to followers of Islam. Once I realized it was green, it was a bit of a "duh" moment.

Though I declared 2016 as the Year of the Stash, I'm still trying to work from my stash and scraps as much as possible. There's just so much good stuff in there.

If you happen to be newish to the paper piecing thing, I highly recommend the Add A Quarter Inch ruler (and not just because it has part of my blog name in it!).  I use mine constantly!

I'm working on my third block and am hoping to get a few more done before our Maritime Modern Quilt Guild meeting this week. We're gathering a bunch up and sending them en masse to Montréal.

So there you have it. A heart of Islamic green sheltered by a home of Québeçois blue with extra love sewn in. And a quilter who feels like she's at least done something.

 

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Or good quilters. Not today... not in my country... not if I can sew extra love in. If you'd like to get involved, check out this blog post for more details. Thank you so much, Montréal Modern Quilt Guild, for your leadership on this important project! 

J