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!!
How did it get to be January so soon? My blog definitely needs some updating on projects I finished last month. I did make more of the paper-pieced Christmas ornaments - 
These are the 4 paper-pieced bow ornaments - purple for DGD Reba, red for DGD Lillian, the other two for great nieces Lauren and Sofie. Here are the 6 gift package ornaments - 
soccer balls for DGS Atticus, snowmen for DD Kristi and DSIL Micheal, baseballs for great nephew Anthony, stars on blue for us, Spiderman for DGS Jack, and other stars on blue for a friend at work. And the green Christmas tree that was in my previous post about the ornaments I sent to DD Allie. They are all made from Carol Doak's paper-pieced patterns, and all but the tree have a pocket in the back for putting a little something in.
DD Kristi requested a table runner for Christmas, and after looking for awhile and not finding what I liked I decided to make this one for them - 
It is made using some flannels that I had purchased a couple of years ago to make her a rag quilt, but hadn't made it yet. I designed it based on their table measurements - it is about 70+" long and 14" or so wide. Here is a close-up showing the backing - 
These fabrics are from the "Let it Snow" collection by Maywood. I liked it so much while working with it that I bought more of the pieces I could find online to make a rag quilt for Kristi and Micheal and also one for us. Some of the fabrics that I ordered turned out to not be flannel - because I didn't read the description carefully enough - but I think I have enough for 2 throws. I have started on theirs and have enough blocks cut for the beginning of ours, but will finish theirs first. Here are the first 5 rows of theirs (front view) - 
and back view - 
I like to stagger the rows so the intersections are not so bulky. I think theirs will be 15 rows long and ours will be a bit longer.
I also completed 2 projects that weren't quilting. I made several felt food items for Jack and Reba's play kitchen - some of them are shown here in the kitchen - 
Altogether I made 2 donuts, 2 pancakes, 2 strips of bacon, 2 fried eggs, 2 strawberries, 2 sandwiches with 2 pieces of bread each (1 white and 1 wheat) with 2 colors of lettuce, 2 colors of cheese, 2 tomato slices, a slice of ham and a slice of roast beef, 1 apple, 1 pear and 1 banana. I made all of these from kits I bought at Lily Bean Market I have some other felt food patterns but I thought I'd stop here and see how they go over before I make more. I'd never even heard of felt food before last month, but there are LOTS of patterns out there!
I thought this would be the end of my projects for Christmas, but I was at a quilt shop a few days before we had our Christmas with our kids and saw some kits for Spiderman pillowcases. I've never made pillowcases, but it sounded pretty easy so I got 2 and made one each for DGS Atticus and Jack - here is Atticus with his - 
I did some more hand-quilting on Lillian's quilt but have not finished it yet. I have 12 more blocks to do and the borders that are on the edges by those blocks. I have finished the borders on one end and part way up the sides. I can work on it for a while some days, but not every day because it hurts my wrists/thumbs too much. I did have it with us while we were in GA last month and took a picture of her with it - 
She seems to be looking at it pretty intently!
I just posted the text below on Quiltville Chat but decided after doing it that it deserved a wider readership - so here it is. After reading recently the laments of Bonnie Hunter and others about the lack of help from hubbies during the holidays I just had to write to speak up for the other side. Yesterday my DH took off 1/2 day from work, which he rarely does, so that we could go to the tree farm we've gone to most of the last 20 years and cut our tree. Since the farm is out of town, we combined it with a trip to get one of cars its 120,000 mile check-up. The car part of the trip did not turn out as planned - something about gaskets - and may end up costing us as much at $1500 and they are keeping the car over the weekend. They gave us a loaner though and we decided to proceed with the other part of the trip. We got the tree, 
didn't mess up the loaner getting it home, put it up and decorated it last night. He cut the tree, put it in the stand, carried up the boxes of decorations from the basement, unfurled the lights while I placed them on the tree, put as many ornaments on the tree as I did while we both hummed sang along to some of our Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums, and swept up afterwards. We put up a tree every year even though our 4 kids are all grown and gone from home - and we go to GA where most of them are every year for a week or so at Christmas. Soon he will help me select a photo for our Christmas cards and help write the Christmas letter.Then together we will sign the cards and put the labels and stamps on them.To make this a quilty post, I will also say that he takes great interest in what I am quiting on, and will help with fabric selections for the ones I make specifically for us. Oh, and he also helps with the dishes every night, vacuums every weekend and will even squirt cleaning stuff in the bathroom bowls without my asking. I think I made a terrific choice almost 34 years ago when we met and married - and I think I'll keep him around!!
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.
I have been working the last few days on several different projects. One is my first string quilt. I have suggested this as the next project for the Senior Center quilters, so I am working on an example. No surprise - mine is yellows and blues with a few teals and golds thrown in. 
My guild had a work day Saturday where most of us worked on string quilt blocks that were more scrappy than this, but like mine they did have the same color thru the center of each block. I only have enough of the dark blue fabric to make 3 more 4-block units, then I will use a different fabric or 2 and mix them up, but I do plan to have all blues in the corners so that the centers of the big diamonds will be blue. The blocks could certainly be different sizes, but I am squaring mine up to 10". I am trying to make my stripes varying widths so I don't have anything to match up except the center dark blue stripes.
I've been working on a secret quilted wall hanging over the last week - not ready to show it, but here is a fabric basket I made yesterday to go with it. 
I'd been seeing these on Vera's blog and thought they were really cute, so I went to Pink Penguin and printed the directions. I'm sure I will be making more of these! It is about 4" x 6" and 4" tall, not counting the handles. Thank you Vera for posting your pictures!
Recently Carol Doak started a new BOM on her Yahoo Group - here is my October one. 
Each block will be a 7" square. I already have plans for whipping up another one with a different kind of tree and a creek instead of a road. She has already given us the November one, but I am not looking at it, or the pictures that others have already posted, until Nov 1.Friday I used a friend's long-arm machine to quilt the Senior Center's first Turning Twenty quilt. I had practiced on it a couple of times and selected the stars and loops pantograph to do on this quilt. I got there about 1:00, chatted for awhile and then we began loading the quilt. When I got down to the actual quilting it took about 15 minutes to do a pass across the quilt, then about 10 minutes to reposition, etc. We were taking it off the machine by 8:30, and we had taken several breaks. It is just my first attempt, but not too bad. I thought this pantograph allowed a bit of freedom about exactly where you put the loops, as long as they don't run into the stars! 
Here is the back of the same quilt 
Last weekend DH and I went to Columbia County, NY to visit Allie, our daughter who works at Thompson Finch Farm in Ancram. She is our youngest, and the only quilter. In between tending and harvesting strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, apples and the other garden produce this summer and fall she has also been busily working on some more quilted wallhangings. I mentioned some of her pieces in a previous post but now she has more. The model for "Monsieur Beauregard" 
is a Beauregard sweet potato that graces her doorstep. Here she shows the original and the quilted piece. 
She used some Paris street scene fabric for the background and painted over it. If you look closely at the larger view of it you can see the design in the background. She also painted the fabric for the potato to make it more the real color.
Another one of her quilted wall hangings is "Hans" 
The model for this one was Hans - a bull at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Harlemville, NY. Allie worked at this farm last year, and still goes to the Inwood Greenmarket in Manhattan for them sometimes. He died prematurely and Allie created this quilt in his honor. Here is a close-up of the work on it. 
She made "Lily's Peas" 
for a friend who used to work for a food magazine - this was made to resemble a photo in the magazine. Here is a close-up of the stitching on it. 
Another one of her quilts is this rolling chicken coop 
modeled after one on a farm she worked on this spring. I think my scrap pile was raided for several of these blue fabrics - but what a wonderful use of them! The background fabric has text on it about chickens, painted to blend with the blues. 
Another quilt she made is this one of dried tomatoes - again painted and quilted to emphasis the colors. 
She says the title of this one, "Plump Thing with a Naval," is a translation of the Spanish word for "tomato." I am amazed at the way she quilts the lettering of her some of her titles in cursive writing! 
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.
Late last night I finished the top on the Pantry Quilt 
I like the braided border even better now that it is all done. (See the previous post for why I am working on this quilt now.) It was not as difficult as I thought it might be, but time consuming since there are a LOT of 1.75" x 5" strips in it - 85 each on the top and bottom, more on the sides. The quilt is 78" x 98" which makes it a bit bigger that the t-shirt quilt I made for Dave - and therefore the biggest quilt I have made to date. (Disregard the white sock on the couch - this was taken late last night and Dave was asleep on the couch!) Now I am working on a plan for the backing. I did not any wide backing fabric at Walmart that I liked, and don't have time to go out-of-town to a quilt shop this week, so I am taking a page from Erin and Bonnie Hunter and making do with what I have. I have some of the white left, and some of the woodgrain, as well as some multi-veggie prints that I bought to use on the front but ended up not using, so they will be on the back. Hopefully I will have that done by the end of today. I also have to piece some batting - the biggest piece I have is not quite long enough but is wider than I need, so I will try to piece it together. Any advice there? Speaking of Bonnie Hunter - she has a great new book out - Scraps and Shirttails: Reuse, Re-purpose, Recycle! The Art of "Quilting Green" My autographed copy arrived a few days ago, and after going thru it quickly I was even more inspired to try to make do with what I have for the back of this quilt.
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."
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.
A couple of days ago a quilting friend of mine let me come practice some on her Gammill. I used some of the pantographs she has and also did a little free-motion quilting. I have several quilts in progress that I would like to try quilting on her machine, but we are wondering how to best do that when she also has quilts to do for a few customers as well as for herself, and she has another friend who also uses her machine some. We are looking into the Quick Zip System as a way to easily change out quilts that we are working on since we don't think any of us would necessarily be able to finish one in a single segment of time. Does anyone out there have experience, good or bad, with this system? Here are 2 links to a description of the system - KM Quilting Supply and Quilting Connection. Sounds like she would need to have a machine set and then each of the users would need a quilting set.
Last week I finally finished my Fallen Leaves wallhanging. 
It is a tissue foundation pattern from Cindi Edgerton that was fun to do. I bought mine as a kit at Cottonwood in Charlottesville, VA - primarily because I couldn't resist the fabric that was in the kit for the border and backing. I searched online until I found more of it to save for another project. This is a project that I started last September when I bought the kit, then it languished while I worked on and completed other more pressing projects, mostlly for other people. I had even finished most of the quilting on it - just had to finish up some of the borders and bind it. Now I am looking for a special spot in our house for it to hang. I am pleased with the way the quilting turned out. I just used a regular foot and left the feed dogs up - I'm not ready to cut loose with free motion yet - and found that I was able to move the quilt around enough to to make the wavy lines thru the leaves. There was a lot of starting, stopping, and turning in the border but it is a good example of where I am now in my quilting odyssey.The Senior Center group that I quilt with has finished the top of the Turning Twenty quilt 
that we have been working on. We are planning to make the backing by using a lighthouse fabric in the center and a light taupe fabric surrounding it, since the recipient really likes lighthouses. I should have that pieced by our meeting next Wednesday, then we can begin sewing together the blocks we have for a 2nd one. These will be gifts for the director and assistant director at the Center - one of them knows who this one is for, but neither of them yet know about the other one, which is a pretty neat trick when both of them are usually there when we are meeting and working on them. Both of them are being made from fabric donated to the Senior Center, either by us or by other quilters in our area.I am also continuing to work on my Grandmother's Flower Garden. This picture shows the progress to date - 4 rows of the 9 I expect to do will be done when I finish attaching the last flower on the left in the bottom row. 
I have laid out some of the fabrics I think I will use for the next row - the pink and green one is finished and the pink and blue one is partially finished. We went to the Atlanta area again last weekend for a family wedding, a Braves game and to check in on some of the grandkids. I had time to make a quick stop at Tiny Stitches in Marietta where I met Melinda in person. I will definitely go back to that shop!
She is using a pattern called "Going Around in Circles Again" using scraps of blues and greens. The circles are paper-pieced, then machine-appliqued onto the background fabric. Here is a closer view - 
with some of the pins in. Here 
and here 
you can see the design even closer. I believe I recognize some of my fabrics! When Allie comes to Virginia she stays in our guest/sewing room and sometimes some of my fabrics make their way into her bags. She has been having more time to work on it recently since it is very definitely winter still in the Hudson Valley. I'm hoping she sends more photos soon!
