FMQ swatches

When I was quilting my Dottie quilt last week, I was reminded how useful it can be to spend a few minutes with a swatch to get warmed up. 

It can be very useful to plan ahead and keep a stack of small six inch quilt sandwiches near the sewing machine for when you want to try something out. They also came in handy when I was experimenting with some of the embroidery stitches on it.  

I really like the wood grain one, and the pebbles.  You can do pebbles as ovals for a whole different look! 

Planning!

Well this is me in a hotel in Chicago, we're here for a few days for Richard to attend a conference

It is pretty overcast and dreary and slushy

Yesterday I went in several stores, not to shop for stuff, but to look at their displays and fixtures!  Yes, my brain is accumulating a bulliten board of ideas for our new store space!

I am looking forward to picking up the keys when I get back to Saskatoon and just spending some time in the space, getting a feel for the size and the possibilities! 

One thing is for sure, those rows of lights have got to go!

Planning the new store space

I mentioned in an email to the mailing list and on the store web-site that we will be moving in February, but I realize that I haven't mentioned it here on the blog. 

We are coming to the end of our lease at Grosvenor and have found a new spot on Broadway Avenue!

It is right between the Nutana Bakery (!!!) and Extra Foods.  Most recently it housed a computer place, but before that it was a Credit Union.

It has some parking out front, but a really great twelve space parking lot at the rear of the building just for us!

These are the before photos , we will be doing some pretty big changes to the space.  It is very exciting, 

The area is a bit larger than we have now, but there is also a full basement where we hope to have a great big sewing room!

There is lots to do-- lighting, signage, taking out some walls, but it will be a lot of fun to re-vamp our look,

Dottie, quilted

Remember this one? 

It is now quilted and awaiting the binding, 

It turned out to be a lot do fun to quilt!

It was about the largest size that I can do on my home sewing machine.

It was made easier by quilting it in vertical rows-- that way there was no turning of the quilt, as I just moved from top to bottom,

First I did a lot of vertical straight lines with the walking foot, and in the sashing spaces I used a loop de loop

In each of the columns of blue octagons I used a different filler design

Cross hatch

Wavy lines

Back and forth

Connected square mazes

Figure eights

Line of leaves (sorry about blurry photo)

No name pattern

I love the backing fabric!

Most of the filler designs I found in my trusty book by Angela Walters

Block 9 World's Fair Block

I really like blocks that use four patches. 

You can get variations by rotating the elements that have light and dark

Right now there's a popular pattern by Lissa Alexander in the February 2014 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting called "tone it Down"

This is the version by Camille Roskelly, from her blog post http://www.camilleroskelley.typepad.com/

I think if you used four of the worlds fair blocks you could get a similar effect, hmm, I think I must go play with my quilting design program now.....