Freckled Fox Quiltery

I feel like a Queen

Hey guys, its me, Velda at the Freckled Fox Quiltery. Can you believe its one day away from December already….Holy OMGoodness, how did that happen? I blinked once and 2022 went whoosh…..or possibly it was swoosh, in my ear as it blew by me.

Anyhoo, for those of you who don’t know, I am one of the charter members of an online improv-styled quilting bee. We call ourselves Bee Improv Canada because we are all proudly Canadian. It’s been so much fun getting to know each other over the past twelve months.

And now that December is here, it’s finally my turn to wait eagerly for the mailman to arrive to see what my bee mates have imagined up for me.

I’m all about new opportunities and looking forwards not backwards. And, at this time of year, I spend a lot of my time looking forwards by looking out the window. The other morning I found myself standing in my kitchen with a cuppa coffee thinking about how much I love my windows. Naturally that made me think “ Why not make a quilt all about windows” …. Serendipitously, December is my Queen Bee month, so our December prompt is WINDOWS.

I am looking for graphic interpretations, in black and white, or white and black with a pop of colour somewhere if you feel it. Below are some window photos/shapes to get you started. Please please please allow your imagination to lead you. Add shutters or not. make a whole wall of windows, or build a skyscraper full of windows. Your windows might turn out wonky or seriously straight. Its all good.

I do want the quilt to be read black and white but am absolutely fine with really dark charcoal gray, or any really really dark colour paired with white. I’m thinking that the ‘colour pop’ will be warm such as firey oranges, chartreusey greens, hot hot hot reds or fuscia/pinks. Of course I understand that your process is completely different than mine and if your window wants to have a clear blue pop of colour, then I’m fine with that.

I’ve been test sewing blocks and am happy to share what I’m making. I really love the wonkyish skyscraper….I hope this helps you to see my vision.

This is absolutely one of those quilts that I can already see completely finished in my mind. I am so excited to get it started.

Did you do something g creative today?

Say hello to “Try Angles”, a Community Outreach Quilt for 2022.

Here at the PEIMQG we are sew proud to give back to our community. One of our favourite ways to do this is by taking part in the Annual QuiltCon Community Outreach Quilt Challenge. Its definitely a win/win for us. We get to hang out together as a group to sew on Saturdays in the fall…and then we get to donate a finished “one of a kind” quilt to a local organization.

We have risen to this challenge for several years now; and each time we have showcased an original idea brought forward by one of our members. This year we are piecing a quilt based on an idea from our own Cathy Lumsden-Victor. (You may know her as an accomplished quilt designer and contributor to Make Modern Magazine….yes, we are very lucky to have someone with her quilt savvy in our group).

But before I go to much further, I’ll let you know a thing or two about this challenge. Here is an excerpt from the QuiltCon website.

Theme: Angles

Angles come in all shapes and sizes, with varying degrees. While some are more pointed you can also find others that almost seem to flatten out.

You’ll find right angles in most quilts, so the challenge this year is to feature angles that are not 90º in your quilt. Acute or obtuse, let the angles be the focus of the quilt, instead of simply the place where blocks meet.

Get inspired by a few examples from previous QuiltCon shows, and start planning with your group!

Color Palette

Use at least two of the colors in this fun citrus-inspired palette and let your imaginations run wild! We’ve included coordinating solids from some of our sponsors to get you started. Feel free to add prints and other solids, as long as they match the color palette.

Holy Heck Hermione! how ahhhsome are these colours? Its gonna be a delightful display at QuiltCon for sure….maybe you and I should go? Lets talk more about that later, okay?

Any way, back to the topic at hand.

As soon as the Community Outreach Challenge guidelines were posted, we all put our thinking caps on to come up with a design that would highlight angles in a modern setting and would allow a whole group of people to take part. Several designs were pitched on our Facebook Page, then a vote was held and Ms. Cathy’s design was chosen.

I am not going to give it all away in this post, but for sure, the name we chose gives a very good clue “Try Angles”….hmmm… yessiree, we are making Improv Triangles. This pattern is perfect for PEIMQG, because its sew flexible, There’s room for everyone in this quilt and we hope our members will make one or two for this cause.

I’m IN! But, because I was a bit late to the party (I missed the first sew day) I got this little packet of fabric last week to use to make a couple Improv triangles.

Our triangles are improv inspired, but we hope our members stretch their imaginations and possibly try new skills to make angles. Paper piecing is definitely an option. After we piece our angles we are going to trim them to the same angle as on this Nifty Notions bias triangle ruler.

We are not going to square up the angles, we are planning to piece them in a top to tail fashion, using white as a background colour. Check out the photo below to see a little glimpse of the triangles made so far…

Here’s a pic of Cathy updating the group on Try Angles progress at our last Guild meeting. As you can see our members are jumping right in to embrace the “Try Angles” theme.

I’m definitely not gonna miss the next sew day. Just Saying…

I’d love it if you came back occasionally to see how this quilt comes together over the next couple months. We will have it finished by the end of the first week in December so we can ship it off to QuiltCon in late December or early January.

For more information about QuiltCon and the Community Outreach Quilt Challenge, please click on this link. https://www.quiltcon.com/community-outreach-quilt-challenge-2022/

Did you do something creative today?

oooh, Fireworks!

After working on this quilt for a few weeks, I am still inspired by its awesomeness.

Every time I look at it, I think “Pop, Pop Pop, Ohhh Fireworks”. Right below is a photo of a fabulous fireworks display somewhere in the universe…. Thank you Google! and below that is a photo of my quilt top so far.

Are you blown away? I thought so! Me too… so starting right when I’m talking about this quilt, I’m calling it “Ohhh, Fireworks”.

The above picture was taken a few days ago when I had 8 blocks done. I’m up to 14 finished blocks now and am removing the papers and sewing the rows together as I go. It is just so faboolous! I love it when things fit together perfectly.

That’s all for today. Next time, I’m going to show you how I pieced each quarter section and put them together so I wasn’t getting everything all cockeyed and catawampus in my head while I was working. Stay tuned!

A Cog in the Wheel

FYI, there is absolutely such a thing as love at first sight.

I know this because I fell in love with this quilt the moment it popped up in my Pinterest Feed. Its called A Cog in the Wheel and the pattern was birthed by Teresa at TeresaDownUnder, Sewn Up.

Her website is awesome, and I highly recommend you pop on over to https://teresadownunder.com to see all the charming and unique Quilty things she offers.

If you look closely you can see the block is based on a traditional one called Morning Star; and what makes it feel modern to me is the non-traditional setting. The blocks are quite large at 12″ finished and really quite straightforward to piece–especially if you are a fan of Foundation Paper Piecing (FPP) and I AM THAT. Of course if you don’t love FPP, you can always use the templates provided to cut and piece the quilt.

Don’t you love how the quilt has all those lovely big circles! Guess what, its an optical illusion. There is not one single curved piece in the whole quilt. NOT A SINGLE ONE!

The quilt is made up of plain, flipped corner, and pieced blocks sewn together in simple rows. There are 20 large pieced blocks to make and I’ve got the above 4 blocks finished already! That means after I cut the plain blocks and add the flipped corner blocks I already have 2 rows completed. I can see the beginning of a green circle taking shape and it makes me happy.

I’m using a scrappy colour scheme similar to the one on the pattern cover and I cannot tell a lie…I found it a bit tricky at first to get everything placed and pieced into the right spot. This is not in any way the fault of the pattern, nope that’s all on me. I am somewhat colour challenged and am prone to getting my darker colours in the wrong place; so I was spending lots of time toggling back and forth between the PDF pattern and the FPP section I was putting together. When I decided to cut out all the pieces first, and bag them, everything started falling into place. Now all I have to do is look at the pattern layout, pull the corresponding 60 degree triangles out of the bags and I’m good to go.

All cut out and waiting to be pieced into the Blocks.

I will post further photos as I go along. So far I’m very pleased and excited about how its going.

Did you do something creative today?

Its a Virtual Road-trip

Are you about to go stark raving stir-crazy thinking about another summer of semi-withdrawal from the big beautiful world out there? I know….ME TOO.

So, this is one of those times when I’m ginormously grateful for my friends in the PEIMQG. I’ve said this a gazillion times before, and I’m happy to say it again. I love being part of a Modern Quilt Guild.

The COVID-19 rules here on PEI tell us that groups of more than 10 people cannot gather together inside a private residence, so our Guild decided taking a virtual road trip would help all of us feel a bit more like we used to in the pre-COVID world. It would give us a sense of continued community and be a whole lot of fun at the same time.

I won’t go into all the details here, except to say that we were asked to choose whether we would be making 6″ or 12″ quilt blocks on our virtual trip. I chose 12″ blocks. You cannot go on a road trip without a suitcase full of stuff. Here’s what I put in mine. My passport (a noteook containing details on the fabric colour, theme, etc for my blocks)… FYI I am going with all solid fabrics, any colour, by any manufacturer, and asked for the blocks to be improv-style photographs. Because I want all the frames of the photos to be the same, I added enough Kona White into the suitcase for everyone to use. I also added some snippetss and scraps of solid fabrics from my stash to help everyone out. The only thing left for the road trippers to do is to choose a destination here on PEI and try to recreate it using improv piecing. I am so excited to see what these talented people will come up with.

Because its a bit of a challenge to get started making improv quilt blocks, I pieced some and put them in the suitcase so everyone could see what I was imagining the finished blocks would be like. And I also added a link or two to some really cool curved piecing and improv piecing tutorials.

Here are the 12″ blocks I made

As you can see, I am hoping for my Guild Mates to share some of their favourite places on the Island.

After I get them all back in 6 months time, I plan to put them together into a simple wall hanging. The blocks will be pieced in rows with Kona Silver for sashing….At least that’s the plan right now, who knows I may take a detour and something completely different might happen.

Did you do something creative today?