What is your favourite LQS?

How is the weather where you are?  In my neck of the woods, we are paying for the super mild December we enjoyed.  There is lots of snow. Today what fell last night is blowing around so much it looks like it's still snowing.   I'm taking the glass half full approach to it all:  as long a I don't have to go out in it, it looks pretty from my sewing room. The snowflakes in the sewing room itself are also multiplying, but not quite as fast, and not cold!

8 snowflakes finished, 18 more to go! Block patterns are in the Etsy shop!

All these snow days have also given me extra time to think about Canuck Quilter Designs and whether I want to keep moving it forward, and if so how best to do that.  Right along with several other states, Iowa has passed new sales tax legislation and the new law complicates my online pattern download sales.  I've been thinking about what to do next, and I hope you can help me with part of that.

I'd like to introduce more bricks and mortar quilt shops to Canuck Quilter Designs patterns.  Mailing sample patterns to every quilt shop in the country isn't feasible, but perhaps a carefully selected subset would be.  So, what is your favourite quilt shop and where is it located?  I'd like to send them a pattern or two!  Please let me know in the comments or email me at joanne@canuckquilter.com.

If you are a pattern instant download fan, don't worry.  I am in the process of moving my online shop to Etsy, as they have more features to help me stay compliant with tax laws. I have all my full-length patterns listed and the shop is open for business. To celebrate this step forward, I'm having a sale! I hope you'll check it out and spread the word.

I'm off to to sew more snowflakes now...

**Update March 16, 2018:  I missed that the graphic I used here was missing the sale dates, so I am extending the sale to March 18th.  No coupon required.**

Another Black and Red Finish

Hot on the heels of finishing Tic Tac Meow, I finally got around to quilting my red and black mini Sparkling Trail quilt that has been patiently waiting, since January 2015, for inspiration to strike.

 As you might have guessed, I played with my Westalee quilting templates/rulers.

 If you're wondering why the circles and pebbles don't go all around the circles, it's because they would not have fit exactly around, and I didn't feel like fussing with stretching or squeezing any of them to make things look like they fit perfectly, but I also didn't want a gap or an obvious overlap.  Partial strings of beads look very chic, random and modern, don't you think?  :)

Honestly, I was just playing with this quilt and making things up as I went along. The change in direction in the straight lines in the background add a little extra interest and movement to the otherwise simple background, but that was accidental.  I planned to do a diamond crosshatch in the background and started in that lower right corner.  Once I had crosshatched in the black stars, I decided it looked too busy and detracted from the circle quilting.  I stopped quilting in that corner, intending to come back later and pick it all out, and quilted the vertical lines in the rest of the quilt.  I went to bed, woke up, had breakast and pulled out the seam ripper to start ripping.  Hmm.  In daylight that little corner, part diagonal lines and part crosshatch looked like a rather interesting part of the whole.  Plus, that mindset saved me a lot of ripping!

You can see a little bit of the border treatment above, but it shows up even better on the back.

This is a border treatment I've been wanting to play with since I bought the feather templates.  These are just one side of a straight feather.  I started with a circle in the center of each side so I could make a tidy, orderly change of direction, and also liked how it broke up long stretch of feather lobes into more pleasing chunks.  I pondered how to turn the corners, then remembered old picture frames with scroll details that didn't always go all the way around the frame.  I decided to stop the feathers short of the corner and continue with plain straight lines around the corners to complete the "frame".  I love how it turned out and I think a larger version of this might come out to play when I finally get around to quilting the butterfly quilt.

I have quilted 5 versions of this quilt so far - 3 full scale throws and 2 reduced size ones, and each one needed a different quilting plan depending on the fabrics and colors.  Take a look:

I don't think I can choose a favourite...

Tic Tac Meow and Robin

I finished Tic Tac Meow. Thank you for all the suggestions about cat placement.  Clearly, I have not been around cats enough.  Apparently, some of the X blocks would have been scattered or askew if they had truly been around a cat.  I really didn't feel like ripping and rearranging though, so things are rather more orderly than a true cat would have allowed, but here it is.

Tic Tac Meow

I didn't want any quilting on the Cuddle fabric.  I wanted an uninterrupted soft furry surface for the cat, but that would have left too large an unquilted space under the cat.  (I used Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 blend batting and it specifies quilting no more than 4 inches apart.)  To get the effect I wanted I quilted the quilt before adding the cat, and just stitched though all the layers to sew the cat on afterwards.  I hope that survives multiple washings!

I couldn't resist the striped binding.  I'm glad I had blogged about joining diagonal stripes on the bias when making striped binding, because I couldn't remember how to cut the strips to hide the seams where strips join.  I'm glad I didn't have to waste any fabric to figure it out again.  I just love this red stripe and am trying to make it last!

I found the perfect backing too.  Look at those little whiskered cat faces!

I almost hate to let it go, but this quilt will be on its way to its new home soon.

I'll still have a little bit of it though. I cut out more squares than I needed for the quilt so that I could audition the fabric and fabric positions.  I also had waste triangles from the stitch-and-flip corners.  Finally, I had an extra cat silhouette, cut out to fit in one block before I decided I wanted the cat to have more presence.

The leftovers all fit quite nicely into this little piece..  I have decided it will be the center of my round-robin quilt at guild so I'm naming the cat Robin .  We will pass our centers along for the first round of borders in a couple of weeks then it will be several months before I see how the quilt turns out.  I have lots of ideas for borders but the fun will be to see what my group partners will come up with instead.  I'm rather impatient to see, and we haven't even started yet.  I think I'm going to have to develop a little bit of patience!