Free Patterns, Ned's Birthday, Thrifted Fabric, YouTube Channel to Watch And Learn From

This fellow, Our Ned, is two years old! 

He is a quiet dog, rarely barks or makes a sound. His favourite thing in the world is playing ball with Petey and Abby; a close second is taking up most of the bed at night for his long winter naps. 

LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color's prompt this week is to talk about our dedicated sewing spaces if we have one. I have a bedroom converted to a sewing room and love the way I can close the door on the mess as it were. It is small and oddly proportioned and there isn't room for a cutting table which is a drawback. What I like best about it is the window and its view of a portion of the back yard. That changes with the seasons. Here I am in my room with said window engaging in my least favourite part of the quilting experience...using the machine- in this case  to join those pumpkin blocks. There comes a point in almost every project where I have to use the machine.

I had good luck at the Thrift Store when I went through the men's shirts section there in early February. I was looking for the largest size and they had to be 100% cotton which these four are. I'm always surprised by how much fabric can be retrieved from a shirt. I'll just show you that black print up close. Now you can see that green circle. Neat modern design and I thought this would make a good binding fabric. And it makes me feel good to possibly be saving fabric from the landfill.

I have almost all of one block embroidered for the Snow Days quilt. This is the most enjoyable embroidery one can do. Simple running stitch with no colour changes. 

We are watching Noraly's, Itchy Boots, motorcycle adventures on Youtube. We followed her all the way up North America to Alaska last year.  Now in Season 7 she is in Morocco and the Sahara Desert. Just sand but encountering small groups of people living there. I'm totally captivated as such an environment is so foreign to me. How they manage water and food is fascinating. 

It's funny now that when I first thought of making it a Thursday "feature" to offer three free patterns each week,  I thought I would run out of free pattern sites to share with you. Silly me. There are thousands of quilting sites; no end it would seem to the free patterns they are offering either. Lucky us!

 Thursday's Three Free

From The Fabric Hut Blog comes this pattern called Neon Bow Ties.Adaptable for all sizes including a table cloth.

At The Vintage Sewing Box site, Emma offers a bank of free patterns and tutorials for stitching items using English Paper Piecing like this- Butterflies in different sizes. SO pretty.

I saw this block and thought it neat.  Especially as we all get so good at sewing flying geese.  From Quilting Daily comes the PDF download for this block called the Gosling-Go -Round block. At that site you can see Marcie Patch's pretty lap quilt made with this block. I love this colourful scrappy block.

At Days Filled With Joy you can find the first download for Joy's SAL called Teacup Critters. Embroidery blocks combined with quilt blocks, very cute. 

I'll show how my indoor garden is doing in the next post. It's hanging in there.It was -15C on my morning walk but sunny and pleasant. However, another weather event is imminent. Snowfall warning for overnight into Saturday with high winds. 

But it being March, it won't last too long, fingers crossed. 

So happy to join these linky parties...Kathy's Quilts, Small Quilts and Doll Quilts and Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.