Mid-January Update

Although I did not make it an "official" New Year's resolution, I think I am going to be trying harder to finish up a few more projects this year than in previous years. So I guess my first "finish" would count as one of these, even though I only started it on Dec. 27. A bit of background - our Christmas was protracted this past year since I was sick on Christmas Eve evening and Christmas Day and the next day was just beginning to get better. By that night DH was sick and he ws just beginning to get better by Sunday. During this time we missed the Christmas Day gathering at his mom's house, that we had only missed 2 times until this year in the 33 years we've been married, and we had to postpone the gathering with our kids until New Year's Day. His brother offered us 2 tickets to the Falcons game that Sunday but we had to pass on that too - DH barely felt like watching it from the couch. We were at the home of one of our daughters and her husband - They are newly pregnant and we were all so afraid she would get the stomach bug we both had, but thankfully she didn't. On Saturday I was ready for some retail therapy so I went to A Scarlet Thread, a great quilt shop in McDonough, GA where we were staying. Along with a "few" fat quarters, a Rowenta iron, and 2 pillowcase kits (see the previous post for one of the Spiderman pillowcases) I also got a cutting mat and rotary ruler to leave at their house. That way, when I am there from now on I won't have to worry about bringing a mat from home and have it warp - ask me how I know that happens - and I can work on a greater variety of projects. With the mat and rotary ruler I was able to cut out all the 6" squares for a rag quilt for this daughter and her husband, plus enough to get started on one for us. On my previous post I have pictures of the first 5 rows of it, but now it is finished and UPS will deliver it to them tomorrow. Here it is on our couch and here is a close-up - I did try it out for a few minutes and it is very comfy - hopefully it will help keep them warm in this cold weather that even GA is feeling. I think DH is glad to be rid of all the little "sprigs," as he calls them, that are a necessary by-product of a rag quilt, but I do plan sometime to make one for us too - and next time I will try to clip as I go so i don't have 15 rows to clip at one time! Washing it at a laudromat the first time was a good idea, but I was able to do it a second time in my washer. It is about 60" x 75" and has a square of white flannel in each square so is pretty heavy.

I also made a pillowcase for me last week to demo it to the Senior Center quilting group that I lead - Not actually quilting, but since I used some of my quilting fabric I'm considering it a project finished. This pattern is really easy to do. I had not made pillowcases until these, so don't know if the way described in this pattern is typical or not. It has you sewing the border, the body of the pillowcase, a folded strip of accent fabric, and the other edge of the border all at one time (with the body of the pillowcase rolled up so that you can reach the other edge of the border). This makes a tube sort of thing that you turn inside out, then make French seams across the bottom and up the side and Voila!! - done!! You could also serge the seams but since I don't have a serger I'll stick with the French seams.

My next project will be to try to finish Lillian's quilt - 10 blocks to go with the hand quilting, and the rest of the boders. I will be trying to do 2 more this afternoon/evening. If I could do 2/day all next week I might be finished by the end of the weekend, but I'm not sure my wrists and thumbs will hold up to that much quilting.

While in the midst of writing this post I have had a couple of welcome interruptions - youngest DD who is also a quilter has emailed me for advice about where to get some wide backing for a large quilt she is making as a commissioned work for a niece of her employers in the Hudson Valley of NY, and while I was replying to her email my oldest daughter called while on her way to a quilt shop in Marietta, GA. So now oldest daughter is looking for wide backing fabrics for youngest daughter and I've had a nice conversation with both of them! Oldest daughter has recently gotten back into sewing a bit. She made some neat gift bags for Christmas, and is now working on a dress for her middle daughter, and we even discussed how to use some of her scraps to make a kind of crazy quilt looking bibs for her baby. As a mother of 3 under the age of five and a practicing attorney, she is doing well to even find her sewing machine!!

Christmas Ornaments, Another Fabric Basket and Lillian's Quilt

I was home all day on Friday - this doesn't happen often these days since I work 2 1/2 days and volunteer at the Senior Center one day. I decided to get an "early" start on Christmas ornaments. Carol Doak recently gave her Yahoo group a new pattern for a paper-pieced ornament. I made two of them, as well as 3 others of her patterns. In this picture the new one from her is the package. They all have a two-piece backing that forms a pocket, in case you want to put a little treat, gift card, etc in it. I'm thinking I will make these for our grandkids (4), my mom and siblings (3), my great nieces and nephew (3), our kids who don't have kids (2), misc. others (???). Hmmm, good I got started this early I'd say!

Earlier this week I finished another fabric basket - this one is for Lillian, our youngest grandchild. It goes with the quilt I am making her. I am slowly doing the hand-quilting on it, but my thumbs and wrists are making the hand-quilting a challenge. I have 7 of 35 blocks quilted - here is one of them in progress, but it is hard to see the quilting stitches.

Signature Quilt for Carolyn

During the past couple of weeks I have been working on a quilted signature wall hanging for my supervisor at the hospital office where I work part-time. I finished stitching the label on about 9:30 this morning - so not much time left before it was to be presented to her at noon. Here is the front, the label and the basket that I made to go with it, now with a big daisy button and little heart on the frog's chest. I spent many hours on the quilt, especially since I got the center with the signatures on it last Wednesday night. I machine quilted around each of the star blocks, and quilted a star design inside each of the 9-patches, then hand-quilted hearts inside the 6 frog blocks. For the border I hand-quilted stars. I've not done machine quilting and hand quilting together in the same quilt before, but I felt like I could do a better job with the hearts and stars by hand. What would the quilt police say???

I am finding tonight that I have a surprising feeling about these two items. I knew all along that I would be giving these away - that is why I was making them, but I find that I am missing them more than I expected. It is like I made them so quickly, and gave them away so quickly that I didn't have time to properly say good-bye to them. Is that why it generally takes me so long to finish any one project - that I just don't want to say good-bye to them??

Pantry Quilt Backing is Done!

I've never pieced anything this big this quickly. Saturday night and Sunday night I worked out a design using leftover fabric from the front of the quilt and a few fabrics that I bought for the front but never used. After several hours of drawing, measuring, etc I discarded the first design I had and then came up with this one. Sunday night I started cutting out the pieces, then this morning I started putting the pieces together. You can't see it but there is a white square in each corner. My thinking is that when I have finished quilting it I could add a few appliqued jars to the large white area, but I don't want to add them now. I am planning for the hand quilting to be outlining the jars, inside and out so I wouldn't want to have jars on the back that would have the quilting around jars on the front showing. However, I have plenty of time to think about this because it will be a long time before I finish the hand quilting on it, unless there are lots of people helping me quilt it at the Senior Center this Saturday.

Next I need to lay out the batting, trim it on one side and piece it on one end. Then I will be ready to begin basting. I have been spray-basting smaller things in the last year or so, but because this is so big I think I will baste it by hand. I'll be using my big Q-Snap frame to do that. I don't use it much for quilting as the height does not suit me, but it is convenient for basting.

How Do I Decide ~~~

One of the online quilting groups that I belong to recently asked the question - "how do you decide what to work on next?" It got me to thinking about how DO I decide. A few days ago I was working only on Lillian's quilt - see the previous post - but had to stop because I ran out of one of the fabrics for the backing of her quilt and had to order more. Fortunately, I was able to still find it where I got it first - Thousands of Bolts - and it arrived yesterday. Just have to wash it, cut one piece out of it, add it to the backing and I'll be ready to sandwich that quilt and start the hand-quilting on it.

In the meantime however, I met with the Senior Center quilting group and began to make plans for the demonstration that "we" are going to participate in on Oct. 11. Months ago I agreed to set up a quilting frame that was donated to the Center and have a quilt on it to be showing hand-quilting. This is to be part of their presentation for the "Mountain Days" celebration in Buena Vista where the Senior Center is located. So, we need a quilt to put on the frame. I had thought that maybe one of the other members would like some help on hand-quilting one of her quilts that is ready to quilt, but I was wrong. On to Plan B - to put another quilt on the frame --- but which one? I don't have any that are totally ready to quilt and the one that is the closest to being ready, Liliian's, I really don't want any help on. I go thru the other possibilities - BargelloBowl (no decision on the border yet and not very mountainy looking), Orange Crush Mystery (blocks are finished, but not sewn together yet), the quilt as you go blocks I started 20+ years ago (they are quilt as you go, not suitable for a frame), the Senior Center's Turning Twenty (but I have already made plans to quilt that on my friend's longarm). That brought me to my Pantry Quilt that we made at the Senior Center a few months ago. Others have finished theirs, but in my typical fashion, I had not finished my border nor decided on the backing. It would be appropriate for the frame however and I wouldn't mind having some help on it, and I did plan to hand-quilt it -- I just have to finish the borders and decide about the backing - before Oct 11. I wanted the border to be braided, like Bonnie Hunter does on some of her quilts, but had not finished sewing them together, and was really worried about how easy it would be to put them on. Since it seemed like the best choice for the up-coming demo, I am now working on it in spite of my concerns. Here is a picture of the quilt with one border on it - The braid is made out of 1 3/4" x 5" strips from the fabrics in the jars. Last night I finished sewing on the first side. With lots of spray starch on the braided strip, and a pin on each strip, and slow, careful sewing I think it turned out pretty well. I have the the other side finished and starched, but not trimmed yet. One little problem with the quilting frame we have at the Center - there are no cloth leaders on it to attach the quilt to. One of the resourceful ladies in the group suggested that I temporarily sew a strip to the top and bottom of my quilt that I could then wrap around the rollers and pin in place. Sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure I want to do that with these braided borders on the top and bottom, so I'm thinking that I will just sew some muslin strips to the top and bottom as they are now, after I get the other side border on, and let those muslin strips be what wraps around the roller. Would that work - I'm not sure. Maybe the muslin strips need to have some batting on the outside edges that would be the part wrapping around the rollers first - I'll have to think about that. Oh, and decide about the backing - pieced from what I have or buy a "fat back."

Lillian's Quilt Top Finished

I just finished piecing the top of Lillian's quilt - and am working on the back of it now. (Lillian is our new granddaughter who was born August 16.) I am planning to make the back one large 9-patch square like the ones on the front, using the purple/black/red fabric in the border and one of the lighter red prints, then make a wide border of the purple used in the narrow border on the front. I am also working on a plan for the hand-quilting designs using a few extra blocks that I had. I've used a couple of purple fabrics that I used in her sister Reba's quilt which I think is fun to do. The pattern is "Glory Days" from Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting magazine, July/August '08 issue - I've just made mine more scrappy than theirs. I'm hoping to get the back pieced today, then I'll be ready to sandwich it. I've used spray basting a lot recently so think that I will use that for this quilt, but want to try it on my little sample first since I'm not sure how it will work with handquilting. I'm planning to use a new kind of batting - Quilters Dream Green. It is 100% polyester and is made out of recycled plastic bottles. I'll post a photo of the back when I get it done.

Guild Retreat is History Now

How can it be 4 weeks since my last post? So many times I have thought - "just let me finish this next thing then I will post about it on my blog." Silly me!!! Most of the past month has been spent getting ready for my quild's Quilt Retreat - I was on the committee to plan it, and we had decided to make a "saddlebag" for each attendee. Here is a picture of all 9 that I made and a closeup of one laying flat and of the same one hanging on the arm of a chair One of the other committee members had been given one and she drew out the pattern for us. It took more time to select the coordinating fabrics than it did to actually make them! We had been given some fat quarter/fat eighth bundles by one of the other guild members, and I made 10 more of them so we'd have one for each saddlebag. Here are the bundles I made - Again, it took longer to decide on coordinating fabrics than it did to make them. I also made 4 Toasty Toe Warmers to give as door prizes. Here are two of them. They are made by sewing 3 sides of 9 pouches together (a 4.5" flannel square and a 4" muslin square with a tuck in each side of the flannel piece), filling each of the pouches with 1/3 cup of aromatic rice, then sewing the pouches carefully together on the 4th side. Sew them together like a 9-patch, then assemble them as you would to "birth" a quilt.

Marty Moon from Culpepper, VA was our teacher. She taught a class on Friday on making Drunkard's Path blocks. She has just recently started using Quiltz Dual Arc Drunkards Path Templates. We had not seen them before - I think she saw them for the first time at a recent quilt show in Atlanta. They are made by someone in Bowdon, GA. It is a set of 4 fluorrescent green acrylic templates that you use to cut both of the shapes for the drunkards path. Each template is used to cut both the pie and the L shape - and each one makes a block of a different size. Some people were able to finish piecing and sewing a top before we finished for the day. I was not one of these, but I did get 16 blocks made, and an idea for what I want to do next. Here are photos of 3 different designs I considered for my drunkards path She also showed us how to make coasters by folding and stitching 5 blocks together, then flipping them inside out.

We played a version of Strip Poker after the workshop was over. Thanks to Jen for the link to her post about it. We had decided to make it fairly simple for all, so we just played Five Card Draw and the most you could lose in one hand was 2. We told the members to bring 15 or so 2.5" strips, but Erin and I, the other committee person in attendance, brought extras. I had 43 strips - all neatly rolled up and tied with DMC thread - when we started. I gave 10 to one of the gals who didn't bring many, and by the end of the poker hands I had 6 left. I had never played poker before so the night before the retreat started I practiced at home with several hands -- I don't think that helped! But it was fun and enjoyed by all who either played or watched -- and revealing about who among us knew ALL about playing poker! We also had two local massage therapists come to give 10-minute massages to all who wanted them - what a great treat --- shoulders, backs, arms, hands - we were all so relaxed afterwards. Erin showed folks how to use 3" squares that we asked them to bring to make 4-patches using Bonnie Hunter's Leaders and Enders method. We will take those 4-patches and make a quilt using them and the nametags we each signed and wore. The quilt we make from all that will be given to a name drawn from the list of the attendees as a special momento of the retreat.

On Saturday Marty gave an embellishment workshop. I made my first yo-yo without a yo-yo maker, learned about couching, weaving, stamping, piping, etc. It was a fun time to play with some things we had never done before. After lunch of the yummy leftovers from the potluck dinner the night before, Erin showed the group how to make some scrap blocks using Bonnie Hunter's method of sewing pieces onto strips, cutting those strips into segments, sewing those segments, etc. It was interesting to hear everyone's comments about doing that. Some who are scrap quilters at heart were happy to see a new way of doing that -- Erin had 3 quilt tops to show as suggestions for how to make them up. Others who had never used scraps had a hard time of letting go of rules enough to do it. Here is a link to Erin's blog on which she has posted 2 pictures of one of her tops in progress - they are the bottom 2 photos. We all had time to finish several scappy blocks before folks started going home.

We think everyone had a good time, and learned some new things, and grew closer as a group too. Our guld now has about 65 members, and only 25 could come to the retreat, but we had no one on a waiting list so I guess about everyone who wanted to come got to come. And Erin and I are looking forward to being just retreat participants next year!!

Hydrangeas and Butterflies pillow finished!

Tonight I finished the paper-pieced pillow-top that goes with the Hydrangeas and Butterflies quilt. I did the piecing on it months ago. It was the first Carol Doak design I did before I started on last year's Fat Eighth Swap in her Yahoo Group, which took place from April - June I think. I used some of the same fabrics that I used in the quilt, and made a cording edge using the same stripe that I used for the binding of the quilt. It is probably hard to see the back of the pillow, maybe some of it in the second picture, but it is the fabric from the border of the quilt. I hand pieced it, and just finished assemblying it tonight. The cording gave me a few problems, but I really wanted to use it so I kept working with it. This completes the Hydrangeas and Butterflies "set." Now on to other projects!

Hydrangeas and Butterflies wallhanging is finished!

This afternoon we hung the completed Hydrangeas and Butterflies wallhanging in our room. I have documented some of the progress in making it on my Quilting Links webpage I began this project in September 2006, a few months after we painted our bedroom and got a new comforter, etc. The room is blue, and not a pale blue, and the comforter has a large block of lime green, one of blue and one white, so I knew from the beginning that it needed to have blue and lime green in it, and I knew where in the room I wanted to hang it, so that limited the size. After looking and many fabrics on quiltshops.com I saw the large hydrangeas fabric and knew right away that I had to use that fabric. I looked at the collection it was in - Lakehouse's Hydrangeas and Raspberries - and bought some of those fabrics, along with the butterflies fabric that was in a companion collection by Lakehouse. I found a pattern using big blossoms, that actually used the hydrangeas fabric, but the pattern had some aspects that I didn't like, so I designed my own. I used other fabrics besides just what was in the Lakehouse collection to make the borders around each block. It is hand quilted using the Baptist Fan pattern in the 4 big blocks, a cable around each of the big blocks, and a diagonal grid on the border. For the binding I used a striped fabric from Lakehouse and cut it on the bias so that the stripes would go at an angle. I am so happy with the way it turned out - I have been making extra trips upstairs just to look at it today! I have a paper-pieced pillow using several of the same fabrics that is almost finished that will go on the bed. Can you tell that blue, yellow and green is my favorite color combination!