Canuck Quilter

Basting geese

2012-01-26T22:29:00.002-06:00

No, I’m not roasting a few geese. I have however basted my Wandering Geese quilt. Basting is still not my favourite part of making a quilt, but my new basting frame improved things.
I remembered reading about this but couldn’t remember where so I Googled “quilt basting frame” and came up with several references and some instructions. I settled on the inexpensive option: four 8 foot long pieces of 1x2 lumber, 4 C-clamps and strips of inexpensive muslin. I had to cut two of the pieces of lumber down to 7 feet so I could use this frame downstairs with the low ceilings. I wrapped the wood with the muslin, tacking the muslin down in a few spots with a staple gun. I then used the C-clamps to clamp the pieces into a rectangular frame just a bit smaller than my quilt backing. All the instructions said to balance the frame on 4 straight-backed chairs, but lacking those I balanced two ends on small tables of similar height.
After pinning the backing fabric to the muslin wrappings, pulling it nice and taut as I worked, it looked like this.
Next I spread the batting on top, then smoothed the quilt top on top of that. I pin basted all the way around the edges then enlisted help to prop the frame up against the wall.

It worked! No sagging, no crawling around on hands and knees, no wrinkling of the quilt sandwich while crawling around and no accidental pinning of anything to the carpet!
This was easier than trying to baste in sections on the kitchen table, too. It also had the advantage of not having to get all the basting done in one go so we could clear the table for supper. I sat in a chair to baste the bottom half, and stood for the top half.
Now for the next step!

Sneak peek…

Whole lot of cutting

2012-01-21T22:48:00.002-06:00

I spent both yesterday and today at a mini-retreat at the local quilt shop: quilt all day, go home to sleep and come back to quilt all day again. Though I brought my sewing machine I didn’t do much sewing. I sewed a few units but I mostly cut, cut and cut some more. I discovered that the cutting table at the retreat is at a much nicer height for this task than my kitchen table. Since there are 882 pieces in this new quilt I decided to use the better table while I could!

I managed to cut 596 pieces, and have 78 other pieces cut that need to be subcut into 156 kite-shaped things. When I went back this morning I remembered to bring ziplock bags to sort all the pieces into before they ended up scattered all over the workroom.
There is still the matter of trimming points on most of the pieces. I did try skipping this step but found it too difficult to figure out how to match up angled sides without the trimmed points. The trimmed points match up beautifully with each other so despite the tedium of trimming it will save time and gnashing of teeth when I start sewing. At least I can trim points a few at a time as I am ready to sew them.
So far I have this sewn:

I am making a serious dent in my blue stash! This will turn into a version of “Kyoto Garden” by Judy Martin from her book “Stellar Quilts” (thanks for the book, Mom!). The colour selection and placement in her version are very carefully planned, but I decided to try random and scrappy. As I placed everything on the design wall tonight I started having second thoughts about that, but all those pieces are cut so I’ll press on the way I started!
I’m not sure when I will have progress to show on this one. I have two quilts to baste and start quilting, I need to sew the backing to the back of the prairie points on the leaf quilt (the blocks are all quilted!), and I’m toying with the idea of painting the kitchen, and maybe the living room…

Snipping threads

2012-01-19T20:20:00.002-06:00

I have never worked with fabric that frayed as much as the fabric in my Wandering Geese quilt. I’ve spent hours snipping fraying threads off the back, and I’m sure there will still be at least one stray one that will sneak onto the white bits and show through after I have everything quilted!
I have no idea what this fabric is. I bought it as fat quarter bundles and there wasn’t any identifying info on any of the selvedges. I wasn’t thinking about fabric quality when I bought these. I was just sucked in by the pretty colours. I still like them. I just wish they would stop fraying already!
I’m almost ready to baste and quilt the quilt. Here’s the backing all ready to go. All I have left to do is assemble 4 8-foot-long 1x2 pieces of lumber, muslin strips and 4 C-clamps into a basting frame and I can get to work. I have never used a basting frame but I haven’t been happy with how I’ve basted the last few quilts. The backing wasn’t as smooth as I would like. I remembered reading about a basting frame in a library book (don’t remember which one!) and decided it was inexpensive enough to be worth a try. The book suggested that once the quilt was on the frame it could be propped against a wall to make it easy to reach the center. I won’t get around to this until early next week. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Now I’m off to hand quilt the last block of my maple leaf quilt (the one from my header). Yay! I’ll need to add a bit of quilting to the borders after I finish the edges (I need to leave about an inch unquilted until the back is sewn to the prairie points) but the end is in sight!

One more border down

2012-01-06T23:41:00.002-06:00

I finally decided what to do for a border on my flying geese quilt!
I had planned to piece a border of colour rectangles end to end but decided it wasn’t the look I wanted. I then visited the local quilt shop with quilt in hand and came home with the perfect fabrics for a pair of plain borders. Of course those fabrics turned out to not be right either so in late October this quilt went into the UFO bin.
After finishing the top for Whimsy on New Year’s eve, border battles included, I was inspired to take another look at these borders as well and spent a couple of days auditioning fabric in various configurations. It’s funny how I came almost full circle to my original idea, with a pieced border made up of all the quilt’s colours. I just placed them in a piano key pattern instead of end-to-end.

Enough chat. Here’s the quilt, all my own pattern:

Hmmm, I really think it looks better in person. I suppose I could have waited for better lighting to snap the picture…
I considered putting in a narrow inner border between the center and the piano keys, but nothing seemed quite right. Looking at the picture I think it could use one, but full size in person it doesn’t seem to. Doesn’t scale just mess with the mind?
I’m planning to machine quilt this one. I have a few ideas, but I’ll let them simmer a little before I start to be sure I end up with what I like. I do know I plan to bind the quilt in the two fabrics I intended for borders:

No name for the quilt yet. Maybe Wandering Geese since they don’t seem to know which way to head?

A New Year’s Wish for Quilters

2012-01-01T22:37:00.002-06:00

May your points always meet

May your thread never break

May your borders behave

And may inspiration never desert you

Thank you all for your friendship and encouragement! I wish all of you joy and peace in 2012.

(Borders still pending on two of these tops…)

Just under the wire

2012-01-01T00:01:00.003-06:00

Ta da! Just under the wire as a 2011 finished quilt top, with 20 minutes to spare:

I`m not sure how long ago I started this one, but it was back in APQ blog days, so at least 2 years ago. I think it was closer to 3 years. It has gone in and out of the UFO bin several times, but this week I decided it needed to be done and here it is, after wrestling the borders into submission. The quilt really doesn’t bow in the middle the way the picture makes it seems. I`m not sure why all my quilt pictures do that… Anyway, Whimsy (pattern by Darlene Zimmerman) now moves to the finished flimsy pile to await quilting. It’s next in line for hand quilting after I finish quilting the leaf quilt.

Looking for a Potluck

2011-12-13T11:58:00.002-06:00

A while back I bought an issue of Simple Quits and Sewing specifically for the instructions to this project. I’ve been to a few potluck dinners since, but only today got around to making this casserole carrier. Of course now there isn’t a potluck anywhere on my calendar!

Finally a few finishes

2011-12-05T16:27:00.003-06:00

They aren’t big finishes, but they are UFO’s from the summer so I’m feeling like I accomplished something.
Here’s a runner made with leftover units (plus a few extra) from the table runner and placemats I made for Mom. I have now officially used up all these fabrics.
I practiced a bit of freemotion quilting in the white areas, stitching along a tear-away paper template. Oddly enough, the earliest bits had the tidiest design. As I kept quilting the stitch length became more regular (yay!) but the design got more wobbly…go figure. The rest of the runner has straight line quilting because all the FMQ designs I tried looked messy against those bold prints. I decided that just because I can FMQ a bit, it doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for every piece.

A second set of placemats and runners, which I actually started first, stalled out in June but is now almost done I just have to finish stitching the binding to the back of 3 of the placemats. The runners – one wide and one skinny – are finished. I couldn’t get a good photo of the whole length, but you get the idea.
The feathers are hooked feathers with no backtracking. This was my first effort and not at all as regular as I wanted, but overall I like the texture it gives the runner. I hesitated before trying these feathers on an actual piece instead of a practice sandwich, but I can only do so many practice sandwiches before I get bored. I had to start “for real” sometime!
Again, I freemotioned the white bits and stitched straight lines elsewhere. Of course I only came to that decision after I had covered one placemat in an all-over pattern and stepped back. I solicited other opinions, let it sit for a few days to see if it would improve with age, then used up a couple of hours of my life unpicking all those stitches. The triple diagonal lines in a single direction look much tidier.

Next up, tackling Whimsy’s wavy borders. I will finish that quilt yet! Somewhere along the way I’ll also finish hand quilting the leaf quilt you see in my banner. I thought I’d have that done by the end of October, or November at the latest. Hmm, yes, well, that would have required me to consistently quilt one leaf block most evenings, and I have not been even close to consistent. Ah well, this quilt is for me, with no deadlines, so it will get done when it gets done.

Battles with borders

2011-11-07T21:20:00.001-06:00

I've been running into problems with borders the last few quilts. You might remember that I was working on Whimsy's pieced borders when I decided I needed to go piece a gazillion flying geese instead. Mostly that was because Whimsy's borders were waving at me when I attached them and I didn't feel up to dealing with them just then.

I happily went off to piece the flying geese and was astonished and delighted at how quickly the center of the geese quilt came together.

Nevertheless, I'm sure you have noticed that I haven't posted any progress on this unnamed quilt. That would be because I'm not sure what to do with it next. I made a trip to the quilt shop specifically to choose border fabrics and actually came home with two selections. At the quilt shop I and all the staff were sure they were perfect choices, but when I got home and spread out the fabric and laid the quilt on it to mimic borders...nope. Not quite right. It's in a UFO box until I figure something out. Perhaps when I get set up to download pictures again (that's a whole other sigh-inducing story!) I can post pictures and you can all send me suggestions.

When I hit that roadblock, I didn't pull Whimsy back out. (Sorry Pat! I'll get it out again at some point, I promise!) Instead I finally cut into my Greetings from Canada fabric to make a "Canada Quilt". It came out more or less as I had designed it on graph paper, with a few adjustments.

However, the lovely dark blue fabric with maple leaves and provincial flowers that I had planned to use as a border, while still absolutely lovely, just doesn't work as a border. It worked beautifully as a filler in the body of the quilt, and will make a lovely backing, but it will not be a border. So now what? I don't have nearly enough of the greens and reds to piece into borders either. I fear this one is heading to the UFO bin as well for the time being.

I have a few placemats and runners to finish, so I'll work on those and hope I come out of those projects inspired to push ahead with these three!

How well do you get along with borders?

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T23:08:00.002-05:00

Take a guess which one the young man in the family carved! We were very proud of ourselves for getting these carved last night rather than this afternoon after school in a mad rush before trick-or-treating began!
Last night I also obsessed about the new quilt in progress. I started cutting and sewing, and changing the plan as I went along and the next thing I knew it was way, way past my bedtime. I made progress though. With another few hours of work today, this is where it stands:
I’ve been having trouble sorting out exactly how I want to piece the body of the lighthouse, and I have to rework my plan for other pieces of the lower half to balance out sizes and colours a bit with the upper half. I’m also peeved that my log cabin blocks are just a smidge smaller than they should be so I’ll have to redo a few seams to make the border fit around the center as the graph paper claims it should. That said, I’m pleased with this overall so far.
Tomorrow’s task will be to stay clear of the quilting corner and clear the desk of office chores. It will be tough though. The desk sits on the opposite wall from the sewing machine…

Cutting fabric

2011-10-26T13:49:00.002-05:00

I am finally cutting into this little stack of fabric.

These are mostly “Greetings from Canada” by Thimbleberries. (The light blue one second from the left is from my stash.) Mom sent these to me a year ago and I don’t think she quite believed me this summer when I assured her I had a plan for it that just needed to simmer a bit longer.
Here’s the plan:

OK, it doesn’t look like much in the picture :). Maybe if you click on it to enlarge it you might be able to make out some of it. I’ve drawn it out a few times to tweak this or that and I’m still not sure it will work the way I want it to. You’ll just have to be patient right along with me until I get these pieced:

This just goes to show why I’d like to win a copy of the EQ7 software in The Pickledish Patch’s givewaway It would be so much quicker and easier to design a quilt and I’d get a sneak peek before I actually sew it up!

The giveaway closes on October 27 so you still have time to go over and diminish my chances by entering too (I’ll understand and won’t take it personally, really!)

Seam ripping again, and again, and…

2011-10-14T20:06:00.004-05:00

You should know it’s time to step away from the sewing room when you spend more time becoming better acquainted with the seam ripper than the sewing machine.

Today I unpicked the free motion quilting I started on Wooffles’ quilt last night. It was worth it and I then spent a comfortable while practicing free motion on this little quilt. It turned into a little sampler of different filler patterns.

By the time I was done, I decided I might as well put the binding on too. I decided to use TLC Stitches’ faux piped binding and I happily cut yellow strips for the “piping” and pulled out leftover purple strips for the binding.

Mistake #1: I cut the piping strip 1/4 inch too narrow and didn’t have any more of the yellow. That’s OK, I just trimmed the purple narrower too and hoped for the best.

Mistake #2: I sewed a right side to a wrong side as I joined the binding strips. Seam ripper!

Mistake #3: I sewed a beautifully straight 74” seam joining the long edges of the binding and the piping. It just happened to be a 3/8” seam. Another time I might have just left it but I remembered my binding strip was already 1/4” narrower than it should be and I didn’t think I could fudge with another 1/4 inch gone. Seam ripper, it’s nice to see you again!

Mistake #4: I reset the seam allowance to a lovely perfect 1/4 inch, and promptly sewed the right face of the binding to the wrong face of the piping strip. At least I noticed at only 30 inches into the seam this time. Still, I had another visit with the seam ripper.

At this point a sane person would have stepped away from the sewing room, but my stubborn streak asserted itself. Happily, it exuded a stronger aura than the seam ripper, which was not needed (much) again.

Here’s the final product. It’s a little more “modern” than my usual work. I don’t think any of those quilting motifs would work terribly well on my more traditional tops but it was a fun exercise. Wooffles and his owner are perfectly happy with it, too, so it was worthwhile!

Now for something completely different

2011-10-12T20:50:00.002-05:00

Well, different for me, anyway. As my hand, full of tiny fabric scraps, hovered over the waste basket I thought “Why not sew them all together willy-nilly and see what happens?” So I did.
I didn’t plan, measure, or square anything up as I went. I didn’t even use my iron! This was really out of character for me but it came out kind of cute so of course I pushed on a little further.

Voila! Wooffles’ new play quilt (well, the top at least – it still needs quilting). You see him in the picture on the right for scale.
That row of vertical stripes was supposed to be much less regular than it ended up. Considering all the effort I have to put in to avoid wonky crooked blocks, you’d think that going wonky would require less work. Not so. Getting a crooked result on purpose was actually quite challenging! It didn’t even get as crooked as I wanted.
The bottom section was inspired by CW quilts’ Jelly roll 1600 quilts. I just sewed all my leftover bits of 1 1/2” bright strips together end to end, folded the resulting strip in half tip to tip and sewed along the long edge. I cut the fold and opened up a new wider but shorter strip, which I then folded and sewed and cut again. This was really the only way for me to sew all these bits together randomly, because otherwise I would have thought through every placement and it really wouldn’t have been random at all. Am I making any sense?
Also, I want to point out that the little purple triangle in the white border was – ahem – totally intentional. It had nothing whatsoever to do with sewing on a border strip a little bit over from where it needed to be and needing to fill the gap. At no time was I – ahem- tempted to pull out a seam ripper to reposition said strip. It is supposed to be totally improvisational after all!
This was a fun little side trip for me, but I’m going to head back into my comfort zone of carefully planned quilts for a little bit. Here’s where the flying geese quilt stands, waiting for one last seam and then some sort of borders. (No prizes for guessing where the scraps for Wooffles’ quilt came from!)

I had thought of doing pieced borders with all the various colours, but now I think that would be overpowering. Maybe two adjacent blue sides and two adjacent purples? Or maybe not. Perhaps I need to bring the top in to the quilt shop and see if any appropriate fabric finds me.

Geese inspiration

2011-09-15T13:36:00.002-05:00

On Monday I saw Canada geese flying south. Already???
On Tuesday I admitted I wasn’t getting anywhere getting borders on Whimsy. I packed it back up into its UFO box and pulled out my box of bright fat quarters.
By Thursday more geese had taken wing.
In the last two days I’ve made 100 2x4 inch geese and 25 3x6 inch ones. They are making me happy. I’m smiling and singing as I sew and cut and press. I think I wasn’t making progress with Whimsy because this was what I’ve been wanting to play with all along. Whimsy will come out to play again later.
That’s all for now because I need to go make 7 more small geese and 8 more large ones, and cut strips to border them all, and cut background fabric to fill in the gaps. See you all again in a bit!

Stitching again

2011-08-27T00:09:00.002-05:00

I’ve finally sat down at the sewing machine again after what feels like forever and it feels wonderful!
First up were a few flying geese. Last spring and early summer I made this table set for mom. As I worked on it I realized my flying geese were not consistent enough for me to enjoy making this quilt I planned out. I really want to make this so I’ve been trying out different methods to see which gives me the most consistent units.
Thank you Love for the tip about Eleanor Burns’ flying geese ruler and technique. I always hesitate to buy specialty rulers, but I went out and got this one this week and I did in fact sew and trim nice, consistent units with the points right where they should be. There is a bit of fabric waste, but I think that tradeoff will be worth it.
With that settled, I’m clearing the decks, so to speak, to clear the way for total obsession with the flying geese quilt. I have a few projects that stalled at my less favourite stages of quilt making. I decided to move them past the hump before I start the new project.
I finally basted and started hand quilting my leaf quilt. The top has only been waiting a year for its turn! The basting and deciding how to quilt it were where this one stalled. I have decided to quilt overlapping sets of concentric circles all over. I’ll have a picture once there is enough there for you to see what I mean. So far I have 8 of the 42 blocks quilted.

Next I cut fabric for the borders on Whimsy. That top was slow coming together and it is time for it to be finished. Yesterday and today I started sewing triangle squares for the pieced borders. I’ll need 100.

Some of the ones I’ve finished are sewn together into strips.I hadn’t planned to add another border after the saw tooth one, but now that I have this up on the design wall I think the saw teeth look puny and busy by themselves at the edge of the quilt. I think I’ll add that outer border to tame things a bit. I think I accidentally bought more of that green border fabric than I needed for just the inner border, so that should work out well in the end.
Next week I have lots of painting to do – we’ll see how much quilting I manage to squeeze into the evenings. Did I mention that after the flying geese quilt, I have another quilt plan drawn up and waiting? So many quilts, so little time…

Wrapping up summer

2011-08-16T22:07:00.002-05:00

From a weather perspective there is still plenty of summer left to come, but the kids are heading back to school on Thursday so we’re exchanging summer’s non-routine for regular routine.
It has been a lovely, mostly lazy summer for us. The last two weeks in July we headed back to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to visit family. It was lovely to spend time with my parents, then with my in-laws. The kids got a good grandparent fix, and I hope the grandparents enjoyed the grandkid fix as well.
The weather was lovely the whole time. It has been so beastly hot and humid here at home all summer that the temperatures in the mid 20’s Celsius were a treat for us. The scenery in Pubnico wasn’t hard to take either:

And Smuggler’s Cove:

I didn’t take many pictures in New Brunswick but my son took this lovely one of the sawmill at King’s Landing Historic Village.

We wilted in the heat and humidity as soon as we stepped off the plane here, but happily my garden hadn’t. The girl we hired to water the flower beds did a great job, because we hear that it was hot and dry the whole two weeks we were away but my garden looked very happy. A little weedy too, but we hadn’t asked her to weed, just keep things alive! I spent several days tidying things up – and not doing as good a watering job!
Remember these flowerbeds?

June 29th on the left, August 3rd on the right! That sunflower is a happy accident, sprouted from a seed from the bird feeder. The vine on the far end has grown even more in the two weeks since and now covers most of that end of the frame. Now that we’ve beaten back the Japanese beetles (with nasty chemicals, sorry!) it might actually become covered in pretty yellow flowers again.

Mid-June on the left, August 2nd on the right! You have to love those sweet potato vines! They do fill in very nicely The coreopsis are now in full bright yellow bloom too, which doesn’t show well in this picture, but looks gorgeous beside the purple sweet potato. Finally we are getting pretty blooms on the hibiscus at the back now that we’ve sprayed the beetles.
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, let me introduce you to the Japanese beetle:

Pretty little thing isn’t it? At some angles it even has a pretty green iridescence. It’s less pretty when it is one among a half dozen all clustered on one leaf or flower bud, munching away, with more on all the other flower buds. These little pretties reduced the leaves on 20 feet of grapevine to mere veins last summer. This summer they’ve been deprived of the grapevine (it died of old age) but I’ve actually been flicking them off my marigolds. Yes, marigolds! Those are the flowers you’re supposed to plant to deter pests because nothing likes them!
Ah well, life goes on. Just because I’ve done no quilting at all the last six weeks, I’ll subject you to a few more garden pictures before closing. There should be quilty progress in a few weeks, I hope!

The Plan

2011-07-01T10:00:00.002-05:00

I’ve been playing with graph paper and coloured pencils and think my quilter’s block may have finally cleared. I have a plan for the bright fabrics I posted about a few weeks ago!
Well, a partial plan anyway. If my calculations are correct, I have plenty of fabric to make the 128 flying geese for this 46”x60” quilt center. 99 of them will be 2”x4” finished, and 29 will be 3”x6” finished.
I have no idea what the plan is for borders, though I’m pretty sure the quilt will need some. Then again, maybe a scrappy binding will do the trick. I’ll wait and see how the center comes together to decide.
Getting this one started will be my reward for quilting the placemats and runners I started the last couple of months. I think I should also cut fabric for the pieced borders of Whimsy first. Is there any chance my mind will stay made up about these brights in the meantime? :)

Strawberries…

2011-06-25T10:08:00.002-05:00

There was no quilting yesterday. The morning was spent picking these lovelies:
It’s hard to stop picking once you start and we ended up with a couple of almost full flats.
Of course the first way to sample them is to just eat them as is. These are much smaller than the supermarket variety of strawberries, but they pack so much more flavour that they don’t need any cream or sugar to help them. However, there were way too many to eat them all before they went bad. As it was, they were softening just sitting on the kitchen counter.
What to do? Make jam!

By the time I ran out of jars at the end of the fourth batch I was ready to be done. Another 10 cups of berries went into the freezer.
Breakfast this morning had to feature the jam. Yum! Store bought doesn’t come close to this!

Detour through the garden

2011-06-16T10:57:00.002-05:00

Now that I look back, I did accomplish a few things the last few weeks while I was suffering from quilter’s block. Well, last week was literally a washout due to heavy rain and thunderstorms, but the week before I puttered in the garden quite a bit.
First up was a repurposing of the old swing set. Here’s what it looked like brand new and in use in the summer of 2004.
You can’t tell from this picture, but the kids were very enthusiastic in their swinging and that frame rocked back and forth precariously so we decided to set the legs in concrete.
Fast forward 7 years. You can see below that the frame is rather faded, and you can guess that the kids have grown somewhat and no longer fit on this set. We could dispose of this now, or pass it on, but those legs are set in concrete. Removing it seems like an awful lot of work.

We lost a small maple tree last year. A lot of birdfeeders hung on that tree, and we missed the birds once the tree was gone.
How about using the swing set as a bird feeding station? It looked a little junky, all faded with the feeders hanging off it.
Think a little harder…
Red spray paint (messy stuff if a breeze blows up while you’re spraying!) perked up the frame. The plantings look a little pitiful in the picture, but much better in person. In my mind’s eye I can see the plants filling in. The little tuft of ornamental grass will grow up past the crossbar, with lovely plumes in the fall, and the plants in the planter birdbath will spill over the sides. The ornamental sweet potato plants will mound and spread 2 feet or more. The black eyed susan vine will twine up the strings and up the frame on the far end… I’ll have to post update pictures if and when it grows into what my mind’s eye sees!
Up next was a flowerbed beside the driveway. This was an unexpected task. We had a huge, gorgeous viburnum of some sort there. This spring after the snow melted but before the bush leafed in to hide the trunk we noticed holes at the base of the trunk. It turns out they were caused by carpenter ants, and we just don’t want those anywhere close to the house if we can help it. The pest control guy agreed that if they had found that tree to be a good shelter once, they might like it again, so it is gone. Now what? It left a big empty space.

I divided a few perennials from elsewhere in the yard and transplanted some here. We also bought a hibiscus shrub that should fit the space comfortably as it grows. I tossed in a couple of annual sweet potato vines to fill in the space until the perennials get bigger next year, though the vines are still tiny and not filling anything in yet! I hope that improves in a few weeks. Of course as soon as I planted all this we had a bout of unseasonably hot weather, reaching about 35C (95F) 3 days in a row. The newly transplanted vegetation was highly stressed! I think the past week of cooler, wet weather has perked everything up a bit now. Hopefully this sorry little patch will look less sorry as the summer goes on.
If you’ve read this far about my garden ramblings, I’ll leave you with a picture of the last two summers’ efforts, finally filling in nicely.

Well, the planter in the top of the castle tower is new. I’m hoping the German ivy will spill down the sides… I’m done now, really! Done rambling on and planting though I have to admit that earlier today I stumbled upon a blog with a really fun “tipsy pots” planter…

Quilter’s block

2011-06-14T20:41:00.002-05:00

For most of the last two weeks I haven’t managed much quilting activity other than staring at fabric. I did get as far as unfolding and pressing my 25 FQs of bright fabrics, but then quilter’s block set in.

Every time I decide what I should make with them, I stop before actually cutting any fabric. What if it isn’t quite the right project for the fabric? What if I think of a better way to showcase the fabric after I’ve cut it and have none left for the better project?I need to just get over it and use this fabric! But it’s so pretty, all laid out in gradations of colour…
Yesterday I set aside the brights and got to work on another set of placemats and runner, because I wanted to actually sew something. Let’s just overlook the fact that the last one I showed you hasn’t been quilted yet. I really don’t get much done when the kids are out of school, though I’m not sure why. They are getting older and really don’t need me to entertain them, so what’s making me unproductive?
Anyhow, here’s where I left the new project last night.
This set is also made with 8 FQs and a little bit of cream yardage from the stash. I have to sew all the units of the skinny runner together, then I will add a thin border of orangey-red. I fished through my small stash today and found enough of one suitable fabric for the runner’s border, and just barely enough of a second to bind all the pieces in the same fabric. I also have some leftovers that will do for backing. They don’t quite match the fronts, but they’ll be hiding on the back anyway, so I’ll go with it and use up pieces that have been sitting around for several years. If I use the batting I bought for the previous set of (still unquilted) placemats, I might get them done by early next week. Unless, of course, I suffer from another bout of serious sewing inertia!

Takes 1 and 2

2011-05-26T21:58:00.002-05:00

The last few days I have been busy working on a set of placemats and a table runner from 8 fat quarters and a bit of solid cream yardage. I pretty much knew what I wanted for the placemats, and they came together fairly quickly.
Recently I saw a few zigzag quilts and thought something like that would look fun in these fabrics. A little nagging doubt at the back of my mind warned that while it would be fun it might have too much white space to really go with these placemats. On the other hand the zigzag would be so much fun. I ignored the nagging doubt and pushed ahead.
I spent all day yesterday fighting with 64 HST’s. Why do some come out perfectly square, and others, using exactly the same method and care, come out wonky? Anyhow, I trimmed and sewed them all into submission and did end up with a fun zigzag. It really needs a border, but I don’t have enough of anything suitable in my stash right now, so it is on hold pending at stop at the fabric store.
As the little voice in my head warned, it does have too much white space to go well with the placemats. It really shows when they are side by side. It will be fun on its own, but not as part of the set.
So today I obsessed. Here’s Take 2 on a matching runner (I can’t believe I had enough left from those 8 fat quarters to make take two and I still have decent scraps left):

This is another example of how important contrast is to make the Twister block pop. My fabric layout seemed to have a lot of contrast when it was just squares side by side, but by the time it was reduced to pinwheels a lot of the contrast was lost. I see some pinwheels because I’m looking for them, but most just don’t show. When my husband first looked, he saw scrappy diamonds instead. (Hmm…there’s another idea perking here for things to do with the Twister tool…)
That said, I think Take 2 will go quite well with the placemats. It is also much narrower so I will be able to have it on my rather narrow dining table at the same time as the placemats. Usually I use a runner alone, and remove it when I set the table with placemats because I can’t fit both.
So here’s the set. I need backing and batting, then I’ll have to figure out how I want to quilt everything.

Look what came in the mail

2011-05-18T11:03:00.003-05:00

This came in the mail last week from a super generous blogging friend. Thank you Liri!

They are all fat quarters! There was a craft book too but my kids absconded with it before I got a picture and I want to get this posted.

Actually, the box this came in was addressed to my daughter. Liri has kindly been helping her with a social studies project from school and sent her several small treasures wrapped in all this fabric. The lovely note to my daughter did tell her the fabric was for me :)

I will be playing with this soon, but today I’m going to be busy transforming a swing set that the kids don’t fit on anymore and hopefully planting some annuals. The sun is out but the bugs aren’t yet, so I’m off to the garden!

Y-seams

2011-05-17T12:39:00.000-05:00

For the past few days I’ve been pondering what to make with my lovely fat-quarter bundles of brights. I have quilting magazines spread all over my floor, opened at assorted tempting patterns. The quilt made up of 25 9-inch lone star blocks looked tempting, though I was thinking of a more modest 5-block table runner. My sticking point is that the block requires inset seams and they intimidate me.

Today I decided to plunge in and try one. I didn’t cut into my pretty new fabrics though, just in case. I dipped into the blue scraps and 3 hours later I had this:

It looks much better than my first and only previous attempt at y-seams 10 years ago. That attempt was a wrinkly, wont-lie-flat-under-a-steam-roller mess. More practice should take care of some of the ripples that you can’t see in the picture.

So am I ready to make enough of these to make at least a runner? Hmm. Eventually. It would qualify as practice. However, at three hours a block (though I’m sure each subsequent block will come together a little faster) it doesn’t fit the bill for the quick satisfaction I’m looking for right now. Maybe later.

I’m heading back to all the magazines strewn on my floor. I’ll settle on something soon. In the meantime, I can at least say that I am no longer scared of set-in seams!

Blogger’s Quilt Festival again!

2011-05-14T19:55:00.006-05:00

It’s time for another Blogger’s Quilt Festival. How did that happen? I was going to show my daughter’s bed quilt, which I didn’t finish in time for the last festival, but when asked her opinion she suggested this quilt instead, since hers has been on my blog before but this one hasn’t.

This was my gift to my grandmother when she was ill, since I lived too far away to visit. She enjoyed it for a year before she passed away, and I’m told she used it daily. I’m glad I could send her a little piece of me.

While making this quilt I discovered that I could get a quilt hand-quilted in a month, provided it wasn’t too large and nobody minded the complete lack of attention to things like messy bathrooms and unmade beds…

The quilt was machine pieced and hand quilted. It was inspired by Blueberry Pie, by Mary McCarthy and Pam Buda of Heartspun Quilts, published in the June 2007 issue of APQ. I made it smaller by using fewer, smaller blocks.

Two reveals

2011-05-01T14:38:00.002-05:00

The sun is shining again after more than two weeks of dreary grey. I thought I’d celebrate by photographing my quilts outside, but the wind kept whipping the quits around so uninspired indoor shots it is!

*****

The baby quilt (pattern: Turtle Twist by Blue Meadow Designs):

The turtle is a much smaller part of the quilt than I expected. The photo in the magazine made it seem much more prominent. I still like it though, and the top came together very quickly
I needed a bit of handwork right about the time I got this quilt basted, so I hand quilted the checkerboard and the turtle block. I was enjoying the hand quilting but started worrying about finishing on time so I machine quilted the two borders.

*****

The Swap quilt:

I should come up with a better name, but I’ve called it the Swap Quilt for a year. I doubt any other name will stick now! This was all machine quilted. I worried a bit about messing it up since I’m new to machine quilting, but then decided that it was made of blocks from many supportive quilting friends who would be supportive and would totally understand that I have to start somewhere.
In the end I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I had to make a few changes to my quilting plans. I had planned to put clusters of maple leaves in the setting triangles. It seemed appropriate for Canuck Quilter’s quilt. However, the print completely obscured the quilting and I figured out that I on busier prints I need longer lines and curves. That’s why I put in those fans instead, and I really like the old fashioned look they give.

*****

That’s it for quilting for now. I’m off to the garden to divide a few hostas. I’ve never done that before and I’m a bit worried I’ll kill them instead, but as with the quilting, I’ve got to start somewhere! Time to go get my jeans muddy!

Coming soon…

2011-04-28T23:06:00.001-05:00

I finished quilting the borders this afternoon.

I was all excited to get the binding on and finish but had to slow down to actually make the binding. Here it is, in a tidy roll now ready to go.

Making binding isn’t my favourite part of making a quilt. I really should start making my bindings right at the beginning, before the piecing, so I wouldn’t have to interrupt the fun stuff near the end. Then again that would mean slowing down the momentum at the beginning…

Hopefully there will be a picture of a completed baby quilt in the next couple of days, assuming groceries and laundry don’t hog too much time. The cupboards are bare though…and the sock and underwear supply is dangerously low…

Something new!

2011-04-18T11:03:00.002-05:00

The last few months all of my quilting time has been dedicated to moving projects off the UFO list. It is now down to 2 projects so yesterday I gave myself a reward and played with the fabrics I showed you at the end of my last post. Yes, this means the swap quilt is completely finished! (Insert happy dance here.) I’m waiting for a less dreary day to take it outside for pictures.
Here’s the new project so far:

I’m making “Turtle Twirl” by Blue Meadow Designs from the September/October 2008 issue of Quiltmaker magazine. I don’t often buy a magazine for any one particular quilt, but I did this time. The turtle quilt on the cover was just too cute and I’ve been waiting for an excuse to make it. One of my kids’ favourite teachers is expecting a baby, so here’s my chance!
The pattern used fusible web for the applique and doesn’t actually call for sewing it down, but I wasn’t confident that would survive the use and washing a baby quilt goes through. I decided to go ahead and do a satin stitch all around. Can anyone explain to me why my curves got less smooth as I sewed instead of improving with the practice ?!! It came out OK anyway. I don’t think Mrs. H. will be fussing about the details. She’s too sweet for that and besides, she’ll have her mind on more important things by then!
I have the strip units sewn and sub-cut to make a blue and green checkerboard to wrap around three sides of this applique block, and borders to go around everything. I think this should be ready to baste and quilt by tomorrow. My daughter wasn’t clear on whether the baby’s due date was early or late May, so I want to get this done sooner than later.
I’m off to sew!

Finishing a prairie point edge

2011-04-15T12:40:00.002-05:00

I finished the quilting on the swap quilt earlier this week. Yay!
Now I am finishing up the prairie point edge, sewing the backing fabric to the back of the prairie points. I took pictures to show the process, because I don’t think I did a very good job explaining to Mom on the phone last night.
First, sew the prairie points to the front of the quilt before you quilt it. Stop any quilting about an inch away from the edge of the quilt. I questioned that suggestion, but I’m glad I followed it because now that I’m finishing the back I see that you need that unquilted space to maneuver.

Once the quilting is done, trim the backing fabric about half an inch larger than the raw edge of the quilt top (you could do less, but I like having more turn-under to work with).
Trim the batting a quarter inch smaller than the raw edge of the quilt top.

Flip the prairie points out away from the quilt. The batting will tuck under the seam allowance.

Fold the edge of the backing fabric so the fold just covers the seam line on the prairie points. Pin and hand stitch to the prairie points.

Here’s the back. Getting the corner of the backing nice and pointy and not visible from the front of the quilt was fiddly. If anyone has any tips on how to do it I’m open to suggestions.

Here’s the front. Only one more side to stitch and the quilt will be finished!

And here’s a peek at my incentive to finish the swap quilt today:
These were on sale today and I’m allowed to play with them as soon as the swap quilt is done.

That took how long?

2011-04-05T19:46:00.002-05:00

I managed to baste the swap quilt on the carpet without pinning it to the carpet after all. Well, I did pin it down in a couple of places, but not too many.
I started quilting it yesterday. It didn’t go as quickly as I anticipated. Would you believe it took me three hours just to quilt in the ditch on both sides of the white sashing? I am happy to report that my stitching, while it still needs work, was straighter and more even than in my previous effort, and the needle didn’t skip out of the ditch as often either.
I’m glad I tested out my free motion ideas ahead of time. I wasn’t 100% happy with what I posted last time, so I went back to the pencil and paper again. I unpicked the center stuff in one block of the test runner and substituted a spinning sunburst. I’m much happier with it and that’s what I’ve been quilting on my quilt yesterday and today.
I have 11 of the 25 blocks quilted. I only got 4 done this afternoon but there’s still the evening…

Testing…

2011-04-01T14:16:00.002-05:00

In the past week I’ve turned my attention to the Swap Quilt. How to quilt it??? I finally settled on “Hedgerow” from Quiltmaker’s Quilting Motifs, Volume 1, with detail added in the center.

Still, I wasn’t completely certain this was the way to go, so I reached for the scrap bin and made up a few extra blocks to test the quilting pattern on. Since I had the blocks, I decided the test might as well be something useful as well and it turned into a table runner. I think I’ll donate it to a school fundraiser coming up.
Here’s a better look at the quilting on the block.

I’m happy with it overall, though how much I like it depends on what kind of lighting there is. I’m also wondering if I should enlarge the pattern just a wee bit to fill the block just a bit more.
I quilted an ivy leaf vine in the border.
I’m happier with the ivy than I am with the hedgerow, but it really wouldn’t look good in the block :) On the plus side, looking at how this border works with what I did in the blocks I think a cluster of maple leaves in each setting triangle in the swap quit might work well.
Now, what shall I do in the sashing? I had thought to just quilt in the ditch, but the sashing in the runner looked bare when I did that and needed an extra little something. I need to keep thinking on that one.
In the meantime, I need to figure out how I am going to baste the quilt. My table is too small and all my floors are carpeted. I’ve paid to have a longarm quilter baste large quilts for me in the past, but she gets more expensive every time and the last time I had a tough time getting the tiny locking stitches that sewed down the centre of the quilt! This time I’ll figure something out by myself.

Wish I could see this…

2011-03-28T16:24:00.001-05:00

Carrie just wrote a post about the American Folk Art Museum’s exhibit “Infinite Variety:Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts”. She has various links to articles and pictures about the exhibit but you have to go see the slide show in this link.

Seeing 650 red and white quilts in one place is stunning enough, but the way they have displayed them is really cool. I suppose nobody will get a really close up look, but it’s still a beautiful way to display these quilts.

Whittling down the UFO list

2011-03-26T10:46:00.002-05:00

My Hawaiian quilt pillow is finished! It only took me 15 years and a couple of months :)
It came as a kit, with the applique piece already cut out. I wasn’t very familiar with sewing at the time so it was slow going when I first attempted it. Knowing what I know now I realize that the poor quality fabric and the very poor instructions that came with the kit probably didn’t help my progress. I don’t know that I could have gotten the hand quilting done following those directions if I had gotten to that step 15 years ago, so I’m glad I set it aside till more recently.
Here’s how the UFO list stands now:
1. Leaf quilt – needs basting and hand quilting
2. Swap quilt – needs basting and machine quilting (currently stumped on what I want to quilt on it)
3. Whimsy pinwheel/windmills – needs borders, basting, quilting (hand or machine?)
4. Designing a Canadiana quilt (maybe this doesn’t count as a UFO since there’s no fabric actually cut yet?)
It feels great to have the list whittled down like this. It’s about as long as I like it. It gives me one of every activity I like to have available: piecing (Whimsy’s pieced border), machine quilting and hand quilting. I think the swap quilt will be my next big focus. Any thoughts about what to quilt on it? There is an extra 3 inch border and prairie points all around (all in the same fabric as the setting triangles) since this picture was taken.

Tackling UFO#6

2011-03-10T14:10:00.002-06:00

On Monday evening I decided to take another look at UFO#6, the one I wasn’t sure I even wanted to finish anymore. Here’s where I left it last May, the last time I pulled it out.

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I started this at least two years ago, possibly three, with fabric I received for my birthday. It wasn’t fabric I would have chosen myself, but I stretched a little and decided to make a smaller version of “Whimsy” by Darlene Zimmerman from her book “Granny Quilts”. Hers was made with scrappy 1930s reproductions.
My first pinwheel came out perfectly so I was encouraged to go ahead and cut up the rest of the fabric. Since the first one came out so well I figured I had the hang of it and merrily chain piecing units for the remaining 11 and for the sashing units as well. When I got tired of that I took the units that were finished and started putting them together and discovered that my seam allowances were not as consistent as I had thought. With this pattern it mattered. Pinwheel blocks were a smidge too small to fit with the sashing, or points got cut off or wouldn’t meet neatly where they should. I bundled everything into a box and left it.
Last May, with my new sewing machine and a lovely 1/4 seam guide I took it out again. I was able to fix some problems but thought I would have to rip a lot of seams to fix the rest. A lot of those seams were on the bias and I feared I would distort the edges while I ripped,so I decided against it and just bundled the whole thing up again.
When I pulled it out again this past Monday I decided the flaws weren’t as bad as I had thought after all. I must have been in a very grumpy, critical mood last May!

By the time I quit for the night on Monday I had pieced all the cornerstone pinwheels and sewn all the green triangle units for the sashing.

Tuesday afternoon I matched points and pinned and pinned and pinned some more to sew pairs of triangle units together point-to-point. Those points were a thing of beauty!

After the kids went to bed Tuesday evening I sewed units into rows. So far so good, all points behaving. When I sewed the rows together those earlier not-quite-right seam allowances made themselves known again. I had to do some tugging in places and easing in others, and fudge seam allowances in the new seams to get all the sashing units to line up properly with the big pinwheels. Sigh. In some places I can’t quite see why things weren’t fitting.
There are rippling seams in places where two units were just not quite the same size and more rippling where I had tension issues with my old sewing machine. There are points that don’t quite meet where they should or aren’t pointy. No amount of fiddling would make the points in this picture behave without making the quilt crooked in other more obvious ways.
However, the center of the quilt is finished. It isn’t going to a quilt show, so who is going to be looking for the faults besides me? I’ve decided to relax a bit and just enjoy the whole without focusing on the little things (That said it isn’t going to be gifted where I had thought to give it!)
Standing back from it, I think it looks really cool. It still needs borders, but here it is so far.

Looking at the whole

2011-03-06T13:42:00.002-06:00

I spent the last couple of days finishing up a table runner that I started in January. After feeling like I wasted weeks cutting up scraps into useful units I felt the need to use some just to prove it was a useful exercise! I dipped into my bin of conveniently cut scraps for a variety of blue pieces, followed the pattern “Churnover” that I got for my birthday, and promptly decided I was vastly disappointed in it. It just wasn’t as vibrant as I expected. I was uninspired to do anything else with it.
Last week I decided to use it for freemotion practice and to try out a few tips from the machine quilting class I went to a few weeks ago. I found a quilting motif that I thought would work and traced it onto tissue paper.

If you try this, be sure to use tissue paper that is made to tear away easily, like the kind used for tracing sewing patterns.

I pinned the tissue paper onto the runner where I wanted the design to go.

Next I quilted over the lines, right through the paper.

I’m sure you’ve figured out the next step: tearing away the paper.

Voila! A quilted design that didn’t leave behind any telltale markings showing where I didn’t quite quilt on the lines!

What does this have to do with “looking at the whole”? This is a piece I seriously considered not finishing because it didn’t soar. Then I started the quilting and fell in love with it. Then I finished the quilting and felt I really should have done something different along the edges. Then I added the binding and fell in love with the whole thing all over again. So, I’m resolving to never again pass judgment on one of my projects until I can look at the whole finished product.

Who am I kidding? I’m bound to fail at that, but it’s something to strive for, right? With that new resolve, I’m going to be tackling #6 on my UFO list after all. Stay tuned :)

All done!

2011-03-04T21:37:00.005-06:00

Thank you for all your encouragement in the machine quilting department. My Christmas quilt is all quilted and bound and I am very pleased with my first effort.
I decided not to push my luck and try feathers in the borders just yet. I tried some on practice sandwiches but I haven’t quite figured them out yet. (Any tips on those are welcome!) Instead I did a free form overlapping drops kind of thing in the inner border and decided the narrow pieced outer border didn’t need any quilting.

Looking at it in my living room, I it actually fits in quite nicely with the rest of the decor. Maybe it won’t be limited to Christmas after all.

Back in January I did get around to quilting the pinwheel table runner but somehow never posted a picture.

I’m enjoying crossing projects off the UFO list. It wasn’t very long by most standards but it was really bothering me. Knowing I had projects sitting unfinished kept me from enjoying new ones. That’s just a personality quirk, I guess. Anyhow, here’s where the list stands now:

Leaf quilt – needs basting and hand quilting
Swap quilt – need basting and machine quilting (still pondering quilting patterns for this one)
Churn dash table runner – machine quilting in progress
Hawaiian quilt pillow – hand quilting in progress
Canadiana quilt – have fabrics, design is taking shape on paper
Whimsy – do I even want to finish this anymore?

Almost there! I think once I finish #3 and #4 and get #1 basted I’ll be happy to start something completely new again. Or perhaps I’ll be inspired to try to fix all the problems in #6 after all (and trust me, these aren’t subtle!) . We’ll see…

Flying Monkeys

2011-03-01T09:01:00.001-06:00

No, not unbelievably cute fabric. Unbelievably cool girls though. The Flying Monkeys are a team of local junior high age Girl Scouts who competed in this year’s First LEGO League competition. Half the competition involves LEGO robotics, but the second half, where these girls have really made their mark, is a challenge to come up with a solution to some real life problem.

The Flying Monkeys designed and built a prosthetic device that allows a three year old girl born with no fingers on her right hand to hold a pencil in her right hand for the first time. As I understand it, the Bob-1 as they call it is a device that is adjustable and can grow with her to some extent. Not a bad accomplishment for a group of 6th and 7th graders!

Here’s where you come in. The girls are competing for the First LEGO League Global Innovation Award. This award comes with a cash prize to be used towards patenting their invention and making it available to others. They have already had enquiries from people who feel this invention could help them in their daily lives. If you would like to encourage the girls along, please vote for them at http://fllinnovationaward.firstlegoleague.org/teams/flying-monkeys/submission/bob-1-hand-device. You can vote every day until March 18, from as many IP addresses as you have access to.

Go Flying Monkeys! Go Girl Scouts!

Wrestling

2011-02-26T09:02:00.002-06:00

I have now confirmed that no amount of practicing freemotion skills on a small practice sandwich can prepare me for quilting anything larger than a table runner. I’ve started quilting my Christmas quilt and I am learning to wrestle the quilt into submission.

Surprisingly it was the straight line quilting with the walking foot, which I thought would give me an easy start, that gave me the most grief. Despite my best efforts at folding and rolling and supporting the bulk of the quilt it kept catching on the edge of my extension table. That resulted in tiny stitches when the feed dogs just couldn’t compete and the fabric didn’t advance much, or jogs and wiggles in my straight lines where I stopped to adjust the quilt.
At first I got discouraged and gritted my teeth and wondered why I was machine quilting in the first place when I could have so much more control hand quilting. Then I remembered exactly how long it takes me to hand quilt a quilt. I told myself it wouldn’t be perfect but at least it would be done. I also reminded myself that I have to start somewhere! It looks OK from a few steps away. I’ll just practice not looking too closely :)
So, all the straight line quilting is done, and about one third of the freemotion motifs. The stencil I have has options for much more detail. I was getting pretty good at them on my practice sandwiches, but when I started wrestling with the whole quilt I opted to leave out the details. I need more practice on large pieces before I can do a decent job with fiddly details. It works out well though. I think the size of the motif without the extra details gives me a pretty good match with the density of quilting on the rest of the quilt.
I’ll try to finish the centre of the quilt today. The next question will be “What to do in the borders?” I’m thinking about treating the inner border and the pieced outer border as a single border and doing a large feather all around. That may be a little ambitious at this point. We’ll see how I feel when I get to it!

Almost pillow cases

2011-02-20T15:38:00.001-06:00

My nine 4th grade Girl Scouts made a start on these at camp this weekend. They wanted to learn to sew and they wanted to do a service project. Making pillow cases for pediatrics wards seemed like a good way to do both. Each girl is making one, though there are only 4 in this picture. They got as far as sewing on the cuff and pressing it. We used the “sausage pillowcase” method to hide that seam, and pinning three layers of fabric with edges more or less even turned out to be more challenging for them that I anticipated. They were troopers though, and kept at it. Two of the girls admitted to being “scared” when they sat down at the sewing machine, but in the end I think they ended up with the straightest seams! Using an iron was also a first for all of them, with lots of whispered comments like “Mom won’t let me do this at home!”. We’ll sew the side and bottom seams at our next meeting and they can show their work off to their parents before we donate the pillow cases.

We would have finished these at camp but the weather was so unbelievably lovely that we opted for more time outdoors and less inside. We played games to learn to use compasses, and laid trails for each other with part of supper hidden at the ends. A lot of fun. We even had time for a good long sing-a-long before bed. I may regret introducing them to “The Quartermaster Store” song when they ask to sing all 26 silly verses in a row at some point (and they will!).

Now that camp planning and packing and the actual camp are over I’m treating myself to uninterrupted quilting time. It seems like a long time since I’ve indulged properly. However the quilt shop in town finally held a freemotion quilting class last Thursday night and I came home inspired. I have a new plan for quilting the Christmas quilt and I hope I will have progress to show on that by the end of the week.

Have great week!

How many pieces???

2011-02-07T14:45:00.003-06:00

In looking through my bins of fabric for inspiration I was overwhelmed by the number of small bits of fabric I have. At least half of each bin was filled with pieces of fabric less than an eighth of a yard (fat or otherwise), with many smaller than 6” square. These have been adding up because I keep telling myself that I might use them someday but I never actually do.
Bonnie at Quiltville describes her “scrap user system” in great detail, and she makes amazing scrap quilts out of her scraps. In fact I don’t know if she uses anything BUT scraps anymore. Inspired, I pulled all the “scraps” out of my stash bins and started cutting everything into squares and rectangles of useful sizes (though I really have my doubts about whether I’ll ever use all those tiny 1.5 inch bits).

Is it just me or does the pile of untrimmed scraps seem to not shrink very much? To keep myself motivated I went and browsed Bonnie’s free scrap quilt patterns. I picked out Oklahoma Backroads. Yes indeed, these scraps are going to be put to use!
Over lunch I did some math to figure out how many squares and bricks of darks and lights I will need. HOW MANY pieces???? To make a throw size, 6 blocks by 9 blocks, I would need 252 dark squares, 252 dark rectangles and 504 light squares. Right. I’m not even halfway there, and even the remaining pile of untrimmed scraps will not get me there.
I promptly pulled a few pieces to make a scrappy table runner and stopped obsessively trimming my scrap pile. I’ll cut a few bits every time I’m at the cutting mat for something else, and I’ll make sure I cut down any new scraps I create. It will at least keep my stash bins tidier and in a few years I’ll have enough for this quilt, by which time I’ll have changed my mind about what I want to make!

Pondering…

2011-01-27T21:46:00.002-06:00

The coloured pencils came out this week as I pondered how to quilt the 3 tops and the table runner that are waiting in the queue. My leaf quilt is waiting to be hand quilted but as I am actively hand quilting my Hawaiian quilt pillow top I’m OK with the leaf quilt waiting a little longer. The other two (the swap quilt and the Christmas quilt) are stifling my creativity. I’m feeling that I shouldn’t just add new tops to the unquilted pile. I can’t bring myself to start anything else, but I’m grumpy. It’s just time to get those tops quilted!
I’m working up my courage to freemotion these tops. I have been practicing on small quilt sandwiches. My stitch length is all over the map, but at least stitches aren’t skipping anymore and I think my tension is pretty good.

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A couple of days ago I decided I should take a deep breath, move on from practice sandwiches and quilt the twister table runner. I promptly sat down and stared at it for over an hour, having absolutely no idea what design I wanted to quilt on it, beyond knowing I didn’t want an all-over design. That evening I drew the runner in MS Publisher. I’m sure EQ would have been more efficient but I don’t have that software! I printed out a few copies and started coloring and doodling. Here’s what I came up with:
Whether or not I have the skill to actually quilt this remains to be seen. I haven’t have time to try it out yet. It’s on tomorrow’s “to do” list though.
Thinking positively, I decided that I should plan a quilting design for the Christmas quilt as well so I’ll be ready to go with that when I successfully finish the runner. I’m afraid my design is a little ambitious – I don’t have nearly enough control yet to consistently make these curves and make everything cross tidily in the middle as it should. I like the design though so I’m going to be drawing grids on practice sandwiches and going over and over the design until it seems half-decent.

At least I’m confident I can quilt the straight diagonals!

Progress

2011-01-13T22:27:00.002-06:00

Every day this week I've woken up thinking this would be the day I'd have time to get things done in the sewing department, and every day it hasn't happened. When there's no milk or veggies left in the fridge it's time to do groceries, and when there are no more clean socks, that's my cue to get around to laundry. Let’s not talk about the state of the bathroom...and will you look at the time, it's time to run to school and collect the kids... In a nutshell, the things I was waiting to finish before writing a post aren't done.
However, I did make progress on various projects last weekend. First up, the socks. I finished them Sunday night and they’ve been worn to school already. I could probably have made them a touch longer in the foot. I’ll know for the next pair. They really were not as difficult to knit as I’d imagined. I’d always heard about the dreaded “turning the heel”, but the pattern instructions were very clear and easy to follow. Isn’t the internet great?
Next up, remember this quilt? It has been waiting a while for the promised borders and prairie points.

i I It acquired 3-inch borders on the weekend but is still waiting for the points. I used the method that yields a continuous string of prairie points instead of having to make and place each one individually. I was quite pleased with my string of points.

These are made from 3” squares. They looked great on their own, but I’m glad I set this strip on the quilt before making the strips for the remaining three sides. The scale was all wrong!

It looks like little saw teeth or a pinked edge, not quite what I envisioned. After a moment or two of dejection, I regrouped and cut a few squares to audition point sizes, which I suppose I should have done in the first place! I settled on points made from 4-inch squares. I also decided that with the continuous prairie points method the points end up overlapping more than I like for this particular quilt, so I’m making the 100 points individually after all so that I can adjust the overlap. I’m glad I had enough fabric left to start over in a new size.
Once the points are on (hopefully tomorrow?) this quilt will be ready to baste and quilt. I want to machine quilt it, so I need to practice. I know I’ve said that before, but really, I’ve now taken concrete steps towards practicing. Here’s the last project I completed on the weekend:

I cut a stack of batting and fabric to make practice quilt sandwiches. Now I can’t use the excuse that I don’t have sandwich fixings to grab when I have 10 spare minutes to practice. Yup, I’ll be practicing any minute now, if I can just pull myself away from blogs…
One last thing. Last night I just needed to FINISH something, so I made a cute little wallet from a pattern I got for my birthday. This only took about 30 minutes to make. It still needs a snap closure, which I didn’t have on hand, but I’m counting it as a finish anyway.

Finally a little bit of piecing

2011-01-06T14:42:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I finally sat down at the machine to do a bit of piecing. It was extra-fun because I used an early birthday present my in-laws gave me when they were down at Thanksgiving. My birthday isn’t until this month but they didn’t insist that I wait till the actual day to use what I picked out. In the end I didn’t have time to play with it until almost the birthday anyway, but I savored the anticipation.
I used my new Lil’Twister tool to piece this table runner. To use the tool you start by sewing together 5” squares of fabric and adding a 3“ border all around. It feels like you have a quilt just about ready to go, complete with borders, but then you use the Lil’Twister template to cut it all up again. It does create a lot of scraps, but I’ll find a use for them.
I had made a small sample to help me get my brain around how the squares translate into pinwheels so I could figure out how to arrange my squares to get the pinwheels in the arrangement I wanted. The sample block below (which was a little rumpled when I took the picture) was made with four fabrics in a plain four-patch with a black border. There isn’t any border added to the final block. The pinwheels just float on whichever fabric borders the squares.

To get the individual pinwheels to float on a background instead of interlocking with each other as in the sample block, I had to piece a checkerboard instead.

I’m pleased to finally almost have a runner to match the placemats I made with these fruit fabrics a couple of years ago. The leftover fabric was waiting for just the right pattern. Now I just have to machine quilt it, which means I need to start practicing. Yes, piecing this was just an exercise in procrastinating on learning to freemotion quilt!

Again, not a quilt…

2011-01-05T13:17:00.001-06:00

but it did involve playing with fabric! I updated my daughter’s lamp to better reflect her current tastes in colour. When she was 4 years old, and for several years after, she was all about pink – the cotton candy, bubble gum pink variety. In the last year or so she has shifted to more vibrant colours.

Back in the mists of time when this lamp was in my room it had a green base like you see at left, and a plain white shade. There were twin lamps. 6 years ago one was adorned with green trim and bright buttons for my son’s room, and the other with the requested pink and flowers.

Yesterday I spent a lot longer than I expected changing the pink to blue. Son is still happy with the green.

My daughter chose the fabric. While I loved it, I was a bit skeptical about how it would look as bias binding wrapped around and around. I stand corrected. My daughter “did good”!

Quilting temporarily on hold…

2010-12-29T22:14:00.002-06:00

…while I indulge in a different obsession!

I haven’t knitted in a long time but my daughter overheard me tell a friend about the lovely yarns in a new yarn store that just opened in town. Guess what she put under the tree for me?
Is this what is called self-patterning yarn? It looks like I’ve put a great deal of effort into changing colours every half inch or so, but it just knit up that way straight from a single skein. This could be addictive! I’m also just tickled that this thing is actually starting to look like a sock. I’ve never tried socks before. I found this free pattern (“Wise Hilda’s Basic Ribbed Sock” by Kate Atherley) on Ravelry.com and so far the instructions have seemed straightforward.
Somehow, I remember socks knitting up faster when my grandmothers knit them. That partial sock is the result of about 10 hours of obsessed knitting! Also, Wise Hilda claims this pattern is “more interesting…than a plain sock but not so interesting that you have to pay attention”. Well, ummm, I guess that would be for the more experienced knitters! I’ve needed to pay plenty of attention, and have had to unravel when I didn’t!
I’ll be back to quilting soon. Santa’s helper gave me a new book about machine quilting, my current challenge, so once the socks are finished I’ll be making up a tall stack of practice quilt sandwiches. But right now, that yarn is calling again…

Ready for Christmas

2010-12-21T16:51:00.001-06:00

The last little while has been filled with Christmas preparations. Last week I spent a lot of time in the kitchen baking up all our Christmas favourites.

Starting at the top we have fruitcake. Go ahead and make the obligatory fruitcake jokes but the extended family loves this recipe and just this year my son acquired a taste for it too. The gingerbread cookies need decorating still. The first batch was mostly given away and now I need to sit the kids down with icing and candies to embellish this batch. They’re still tasty though. In the middle are my hubby’s shortbread cookies. I love to bake but I can’t make shortbread like he can so I’ve been waiting for the baking mood to strike him. He finally obliged on Sunday night and these are the best ever. Beneath the shortbread are frosted orange cookies. Mom found this recipe in a newspaper back in the early 70’s and I cannot remember a Christmas without these. Christmas just wouldn’t be the same! That last little cookie, a maple log, is a recent addition to the Holiday lineup but a popular one. The one on this plate is the only one left.

There was also a batch of caramel corn in pretty little packages but I neglected to take a picture before they were given away. I also didn’t get much of a chance to indulge in it. I’ll just have to make another batch soon. Maybe for New Year’s.

Tree trimming was later than usual this year. The kids asked to wait until they were out of school for Christmas vacation, so we waited until this past Friday afternoon. I set up the tree and brought up the bins of decorations before they came home from school, hubby came home early and we spent the rest of the day and early evening decking the halls.

It is becoming a challenge to fit all our ornaments on the tree. When my husband and I were first married, we had a little 2 foot tall tree and about a dozen ornaments that were carried over from my childhood trees. It needed work, so every year we made something new to add to the collection. We graduated to a 6 foot tree so needed to keep adding. Of course a when the kids came along they started contributing creations. Soon adding new ornaments became less a necessity and more a tradition. I’ve recently suggested that we could either stop adding or start removing a few to make way for the new but that was met with resistance, so this is what our now 7-foot tree looks like:

This is not a decorator’s dream by any stretch, but it’s exactly how we like it. I’d say except for the lights (which are hard to see in this daylight picture) and the coloured balls, 95% of the ornaments are homemade by me or the kids, and/or have a story attached. In fact, I think even the three oldest boxes of coloured balls have a story attached. Part of the reason it takes hours to decorate this tree is that stories of the Christmas we made this one or that one get trotted out and that slows down the decorating process. It’s a fun tradition though.

Here are some of my favourite ornaments. Some are by me (one of them circa 1976), some by the kids, some by us together.

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And here is the only bit of quilting this house has seen in the last couple of weeks.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas decor creeping in

2010-12-07T10:38:00.001-06:00

We are of that odd breed that doesn't trim the Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving. December 1st doesn't turn the switch on either. Usually the tree goes up the 3rd week of Advent, 2 weekends before Christmas Day, but then it stays up till after January 1st so we can enjoy the Christmas cheer through the kids' "winter holiday".

However, we do let a few Christmassy things sneak in, a few at a time, earlier than the tree. This past weekend we took advantage of a milder day to deck out the front step railing with greenery and bows without freezing our fingers. I added a poinsettia to the coffee table. Our first Christmas card arrived yesterday so the garland we attach the cards to every year will make an appearance shortly.

And I've been playing with a Christmas fabric honey bun. It would have come together even more quickly if I'd trimmed units earlier in the process. I haven't used pre-cuts very often, and I forgot that they aren't exactly sized. My "1.5 inch wide" honeybun strips were a little wider so when I sewed two strips together with a 1/4 inch seam the resulting strip was wider than the 2.5 inches I needed. This is when I should have trimmed the strips down to the proper width, but I didn't think of that until after I had subcut the strips into 2.5 inch units, which weren't quite square after all. Instead of trimming 18 strip units I trimmed 108 individual squares.

I've encountered this kind of frustration with pre-cuts before. Am I alone in this? I suppose the advantage of these bundles is that it gives you a little bit of a lot of different fabrics to play with, but I don't think it really cuts down on the cutting chore.

Anyway, it's done now and today I'm going to take a deep breath and try my hand at freemotion quilting again. Wish me luck!

Now Showing: "Heart Mania"

2010-12-03T19:35:00.001-06:00

Since I'm hopelessly unoriginal at naming quilts I'm warming to the idea of having the recipient name their quilt. It worked for my husband's quilt. My daughter came up with "Heart Mania" for her quilt. Here it is, finally!

The 6" heart blocks are the "Heartfelt" paper piecing pattern by Cindi Edgerton. The setting, with 3" borders on two sides of each block, is mine. The cable quilting motif in the middle part of the quilt is "Avalon" from Quiltmaker's "Quilting Motifs Volume 1". The motif on the outside border is mine.

I finished sewing the binding to the back around 1 am on Tuesday. I should have stopped earlier and finished on Wednesday, but I was so close to being done it was hard to quit. It was even harder to get up on time and get the kids' lunches packed and everyone off to school on time in the morning! However I got an "extra squeezy" hug from my daughter after she woke up and found herself tucked under her new quilt, so it was worth it.

On Monday night as I was attaching the binding I was pondering how astounding it was that a 26" square of fabric produced enough bias binding to go around the whole quilt. I use the bias tube method to make binding. I have a lovely laminated "cheat sheet" (Quilter's Strip Ticket from Lamb Art Press) with instructions and diagrams on one side and charts listing what size square of fabric I need start with to make various lengths of various widths. I love that cheat sheet and was rather dismayed when it failed me this time! Three quarters of the way around the quilt I realized the binding strip would be about 20 inches too short.

It turns out that the chart only works when you put in the right numbers at the beginning...go figure! I got exactly as many inches of binding out of my 26" square as the chart said I would. My quilt is 308" around, not the 288" that I looked up in the chart. Luckily I had enough scrap left over to piece together an extra 20".

Now I'm off to ponder what I will make next. I can play with other projects guilt-free now that "Heart Mania" is done and delivered. I'm thinking about a Christmas zigzag table runner for my coffee table...

Almost made my deadline

2010-11-30T22:14:00.001-06:00

I almost made my self-imposed deadline for finishing my daughter's quilt. Of course, the deadline kept shifting, from the end of September, to the end of October, to the end of November. I'm going to claim qualified success with that last one. I finished quilting the last little bit of border this afternoon around 4:30 pm and today is the last day of November. :)

The quilt still has to be bound but I'm pressing the binding strip now and will have it sewn to the front by the time I head to bed. I won't obsess and stay up till the wee hours to hand stitch it to the back, though it is tempting! If all goes well I'll be able to spread it on her bed while she sleeps tomorrow night so she sees it the next morning. December 1st is not too far of the mark!

Sorry, no pictures today. I've got to run back to the ironing board!

Bloggers Quilt Festival in red and white

2010-11-03T22:02:00.001-05:00

I was hoping to show my daughter's new quilt in this fall's Blogger's Quilt Festival. (Thank you for organising this Amy!) The quilt was supposed to be done by the end of October, then by the end of this week...Well, I'm still stitching away at that one, so I'll share the quilt I made for my parents a few years ago.

This was the fourth quilt I made and was my very first attempt at making a quilt without a pattern. Looking at it now there are things I would do differently to balance the design a bit more and to even out the density of quilting, but as a first design effort I think it is quite respectable.

The quilt started with the nine patches in the center. They are the first blocks I pieced - ever. This is where I learned that a small variation from a 1/4 inch seam results in a block that is not the size you expected. I wasn't sure how to fit these into any pattern I had since they weren't a convenient 6 inches square, so I tucked them away in a box for 3 or 4 years.

With a bit more experience under my belt I pulled them out, stocked up on graph paper and coloured pencils and drew up a plan. Initially I was going to make a wall hanging, and the design stopped at the red border outside the flying geese border. Then I decided I wanted to practice my hand quilting skills more and would need more quilt to do that on, so I added more.

Having added more quilt to quilt on, I needed to choose what motifs to quilt. By this time I had decided this quilt would be for my parents, so I selected various motifs that told their story. At this point I learned how to make my own templates. Some of the motifs are derived from free clipart. Others are resized from stotre-bought quilting templates that of course were larger or smaller than the spot I wanted to quilt them in.

I sent my parents a picture of the finished quilt top that Christmas. Mom was very appreciative. She also didn't expect a finished quilt anytime soon. Of course knowing she didn't expect it I made a point of finishing before we visited the following June :)

Now, if I could just finish my daughter's quilt... If any of you are following that progress, I have 3 blocks and 3/4 of the border left to quilt. The end is in sight! With time she has warmed up to the hearts in the border, too, so I guess it is taking me just long enough

Thinking ahead...

2010-10-24T21:18:00.002-05:00

Time in my sewing room skipped right past Halloween to Christmas. I have never pieced a quilt top this quickly before. On Friday morning I cut into my Northwoods Botanicals ayer cake. By Saturday evening I had the center of my quilt all pieced. Today I stitched up the pieced border and had to stop for lack of just the right fabric for an inner border. Here's the quilt so far as it looks on the design wall. I need a creamy/gold fabric for that inner border. I had planned a red outer border after the pieced border but looking at it at this stage I think I'll leave well enough alone and stop at the pieced border.

It didn't come out quite as I had pictured in my mind, as the lights were just a bit darker and more varied than I thought once they were all cut up and jumbled together. However, overnight Friday I threw out the mental picture and was more than happy to keep working on my Christmas quilt on and off between chores on Saturday.

I can't believe how quickly this came together, and I can't believe how little fussing I had to do to match up my seams. Why is it that in some projects the seams just seem to line up all on their own, while in others, where in theory they should also line up beautifully, they just won't no matter how much pinning and seam ripping and starting over I do? I'll just savour the victory in this case. :)

Looking at the picture I see places I wish I had oriented the four-patches differently to put less emphasis on the lights, but then I look at the actual quilt and I don't notice them. Isn't it interesting how scale really makes a difference in what you see?

Speaking of scale, Ann Hermes can rest assured that I won't be stealing customers for mini quilt items. I made these five little ornaments for myself and while I'm pleased with them I'm not in a rush to mass-produce any! Talk about fiddly little pieces! The two smaller ornaments are 2 1/4 inch square. The larger ones are 3 inches square.

Now that I've gotten these two Christmas projects taken care of, I guess I should backtrack to Halloween. Sometime before trick-or-treat I need to make Pippi Longstocking's braids stick out straight...

I almost forgot - the quilt design is Scrappy Prairie Queen by Sandra L. Hatch. I made the blocks smaller but the idea is hers.

Still slowly stitching...

2010-10-09T12:14:00.001-05:00

When I talked to Mom on the phone this week she commented that she hadn't seen a new post on my blog so she assumed I'd been busy with other things. That's partly true, but mostly I just haven't had much new to show. I'm still stitching away on the hearts quilt. Did I mention I'm a slow quilter? I've made progress though. I now have 32 of the 48 blocks quilted. That's two thirds. Yay!

Because I was getting bored quilting the same thing over and over I went ahead and started working on the outer border adjacent to quilted blocks. I leafed through a lot of books and thumbed through my idea files for inspiration then took out a compass and paper and came up with a template for this.

When I took it out of my lap frame the first night I worked on it I had a few misgivings about my choice. I thought it was perhaps a little too girly sweet for my daughter's taste. All I could see were heart flowers with big tulip-like leaves, which hadn't jumped out at me when the design was just on paper.

Sure enough, the hearts in the border were just too much for her. Not that she said so. She just looked and looked, smiled a wobbly smile and disappeared. I found her crying in her room. She finally admitted that she thought it would "take a long time to get used to" but she hadn't wanted to hurt my feelings.

We both still like the curves but I'll leave out the hearts. I'll try some lines running behind the curves and see how that looks. It will take a few more than what I have now to really see if it works. If not I can always - sigh - stitch in the ditch along that inner border to make sure I don't have too big an unquilted space between the last quilting in the center and the dip between curves. Have I mentioned I really don't enjoy hand quilting in the ditch?

Maybe by the time I finish quilting all the curves the hearts will have grown on my daughter and I can use the hearts to fill that gap after all.

After working on just this for the last few weeks, I'm feeling the need to piece something and use different colours, so I sat down with pencil and paper yesterday to figure out if I had enough of this

to make a smaller version of this:

The fabric is a Northwoods Botanicals by Holly Taylor layer cake that I won in Thelma's giveway a while back. The pattern is Scrappy Prairie Queen from "Creative Scraps: Quilting with Bits and Pieces" by House of White Birches.

Reworked to use 12 12-inch blocks instead of 20 15-inch ones it will be a throw size quilt mostly made with my layer cake. I'll just need a little bit of light fabric for the inner border and something for an outer border. This can be my Christmas quilt if I get it made in time. I know I'll have it pieced but I'm not sure I'll have the quilting done. Ah well, if not this Christmas, there's still the next one!

Playing with blues

2010-09-20T14:28:00.001-05:00

Here's what I was playing with the last couple of days.

It's 16"x20". The resident dolls Susie, Curly and Elizabeth will be sharing it once it is quilted, though there is a rumour that the vast collection of stuffed animals may challenge them for it.

I'm happy to report that this didn't make a huge dent in my new blue stash. All it took was a 1.5"x10" piece of each blue and one fat quarter of the white, so I have plenty left to make a throw size version, with more and bigger stars now that I'm satisfied that the pattern looks like I thought it would.

I started thinking about this one shortly after I made this little Kansas Dugout. The more I looked at it the more I could see stars where the rings meet, and I thought that careful colour placement would make an interesting star quilt.

I never did finish the Dugout quilt. I was going to make it into a doll quilt and practice free motion on it. Unfortunately, because it was a practice piece I sandwiched it with some really cheap fusible batting I had left over from a craft project, and it really messed up the quilting. Apparently it was the cause for my skipped stitches and broken threads and birds' nests on the back. It took 3 visits to the quilt store and leaving the machine for service before anyone came up with that idea, and then that person was me...We'll see how this little blue one quilts up with good batting and see if that was indeed the issue! Plain practice sandwiches with good batting and no seams are quilting up OK now.

Now I'm heading back to the hearts quilt: 27 blocks quilted, only 21 more to go. I'm past the halfway mark!

New playroom

2010-09-19T15:39:00.000-05:00

This was the scene downstairs in my house about 5 years ago. Playroom all the way. In the intervening years the playroom slowly morphed into a family room with futon, bean bag chairs and TV. This month it underwent a huge face lift...back to a playroom again.

MINE! The family room stuff has been relocated to the north end of the L-shaped room, and I've expanded my playroom into the bright sunny half. After all, who needs all that bright sunlight to watch TV? And there are plenty of couch and chair options upstairs if anyone wants to read by daylight.

To celebrate, I've been playing with this in my playroom.

You may notice my blue stash has been replenished :)

I just couldn't hold to my resolve to not start anything new until my daughter's quilt is quilted. I hadn't pieced anything in two months and I was going into serious withdrawal. However I did make sure that the new project was something for the patient daughter. She's thrilled with it, so I don't feel too guilty. It's a small project and the top should be done soon. I'll post pictures then.

Hearts quilt quilting

2010-09-09T21:57:00.001-05:00

I'm much less grumpy today, I promise. I went in to the shop about my machine, and their machine guru will sit down with me next week to see just what the problem is that is causing skipped stitches and broken thread or poor tension when I freemotion. They kept it for service when I brought it in in August and gave it back having found no issues, so now we'll have to see if it misbehaves when the techs are watching... If it's something I am doing wrong, that's fine too, as long as someone can tell me so so I can start doing it right!

In the meantime I'm concentrating on my daughter's quilt. She has been very patient waiting for it while I got sidetracked with various other projects, so I have promised myself not to start anything new until hers is finished.

The top photo shows the colours better, but the rest show the quilting better. I guess I need to get up earlier to catch that early morning light before the morning running around starts, getting breakfasts and lunches ready and getting everyone out the door on time! Hmm. I think for now I'll just settle for late night poor lighting. Sorry!

I've quilted in the ditch around the heart shape and around the polka dot background. I really tried not to stitch in the ditch, because it is my least favourite thing to quilt. I really have trouble getting into a rythm and keeping my stitches even when I'm in the ditch. Maybe it's because the extra layers on one side of the ditch make the fabric stiffer there. At any rate, I tried outline quilting 1/4 inch from the seams instead, but it just didn't look quite right, so after about 6 blocks I unpicked all the outline quilting, gave in to the ditch and am much happier with the result.

By the way, can anyone tell me how quilters count hand quilting stitches? Do you count just the stitches on top, or do the stitches on the bottom count as separate as well? I read a blog recently where the blogger was told by "experienced" hand quilters that "good" quilting has at least 9 stitches to the inch. I think even stitches are more important than tiny and your batting and fabric will affect the size of your stitches anyway so one size does not fit all. I seriously doubt that any family or friends I quilt for are going to whip out a ruler and check my stitch size, but I'm curious anyway. How do you count?

Getting the grumpies out

2010-09-07T22:10:00.001-05:00

I just spent a frustrating afternoon and evening almost swearing at my sewing machine. If the kids hadn't been right there I might not have been able to say "almost". As it is both of them gave me a wide berth and headed for bedtime routines without being asked... So, I'm going to post about things happy and completely different to get myself back into a better mood. Maybe if that works I can ask you all for advice without launching into a long rant!

First Happy Thought: thank you to Thelma at Cupcakes'n Daisies. I won this lovely layer cake and honeybun in one of her blog anniversary giveaways. The layer cake is Northwood Botanicals by Holly Taylor and the honeybun is Crazy 8 by Sandy Gervais. I usually don't buy a lot of fabrics in any one collection, so making something up with these will be a fun change of pace. I'm not sure what, though I'm thinking "Christmas".

Second Happy Thought: thanks to Ann at A Good Yarn for a win on her blog earlier this year. I'm sorry I not only neglected to blog about them, I also neglected to take a picture before undoing the lovely packaging around this fabric, and before consuming all the lovely chocolate, and before my son absconded with the pincushion (he's quite handy with a needle). Those blues are the start of rebuilding my blue stash. The others will find a good home too when the time and inspiration is right.

Third Happy Thought: Mom sent me some lovely goodies as a thank you for looking after her sweet pooch last winter. She really didn't need to do that. Apart from the fish food incident he was really great to have around. That said, I'm not turning up my nose at these half-yard cuts. They're all from the "Greetings from Canada" Thimbleberries collection. The fabric on the right is all postcards of famous Canadian landmarks. Ideas for a quilt are simmering. So far I'm thinking of pine trees, maple leaves, flying geese, delectable mountains...I can add a few more fabrics to work in lighthouses and beavers. Does anyone know of a good beaver block?

Happy Thought Four: 21 of the 48 blocks on my daughter's quilt are quilted. That's almost half, and I'm holding on to that encouraging thought! My goal is to have it done by the end of October. Of course that goal requires spending an hour or two hand quilting every evening instead of sitting at the computer...maybe I can learn to squeeze both in :)

I'll post more pictures of the quilting next time. It's about the only thing quilt related I've accomplished in the last several weeks - except for the little project that had me so frustrated earlier. Now that I'm all calmed down and getting drowsy I'll just forget about it for tonight. I'll be picking your brains another time though!

Aunt Ruth's quilts

2010-08-18T10:34:00.001-05:00

My husband's Great-Aunt Ruth was a prolific quilter until her eyesight gave out. I haven't had the opportunity to get to know her personally, since we have never lived close by, but I do have some of her quilts to admire. I thought you might appreciate a peek at her work.

The butterfly quilt was her wedding gift to us. It is hanquilted, and I check the stiches on it occasionally to see if I'm getting my stitches on my quilts as even as hers. I'm sure you noticed the prairie points too. I measured those to give me a place to start when I was auditioning point sizes for my leaf quit.

The quilt below was a gift for my son when he was born. It arrived complete with the first place ribbon it won at the Stanley Fair. I love the brown border. It wouldn't have occurred to me to use such a colour for a baby quilt but it frames "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" perfectly.

I also have my husbands baby quilt that Aunt Ruth and Aunt Beth worked on together, but I haven't figured out how to photograph it properly. It is a handquilted whole cloth reversible quilt, pink on one side, blue on the other, with alternating pink and blue prairie points. I haven't gotten the lighting right to get the quilting to show, but it's a wonderful quilt.

Thank you Aunt Ruth! I'm off to quilt on my daughter's quilt now, striving for even stitches just like yours!

Prairie points

2010-08-11T17:33:00.002-05:00

I started making prairie points for this quilt top that has been waiting its turn for about a year now.

I cut out paper squares of various sizes and folded them to audition sizes, then cut 86 4-inch squares out of 14 fabrics leftover from making the leaves. The squares are folded twice on the diagonal to make tidy little triangles.

Next I started to lay them out along the edge of the quilt.

Next, thunderstorms came rolling through again. It was the 3rd night in a row, and they go on for hours, and after 7 years in the Midwest they still wake me up. I'm getting a bit cranky from reduced sleep... Anyway, I didn't want to leave my machine plugged in during the storms so the points didn't actually get sewn to the quilt. They got picked up and put away so the kids could curl up down here if the storms turned severe.

For those of you not in the Midwest, severe refers to damaging winds and/or hail. Last night's storms weren't "severe" but coupled with the previous two nights of heavy rainfall they caused two rivers to overflow their banks and cause record flooding in parts of town. Happily we're OK where we are, though currently we have no running water (the kids looked at me very srangely when I told them not to flush the toilets...)

So easy cooking tonight - sandwiches and whatever doesn't create dishes to wash :) And as long as the power stays on to keep the A/C running to keep the heat at bay (105 F/41 C with the humidity factored in) I can keep quilting. There aren't supposed to be any storms tonight...

The package is in the mail...

2010-08-07T18:12:00.001-05:00

Mom, your runner and placemats are almost in the mail! They're in a box and addressed and everything short of being actually in the post office's custody. Monday, I promise!

My oldest UFO

2010-07-28T14:56:00.001-05:00

At Christmas 1995, before I ever quilted anything or even sewed anything more than a loose button, I used a gift certificate to buy the kit for this:

It was a kit for a Hawaiian quilt pillow (and yes, I liked blue back then too!). It included the background fabric, the pre-cut applique shape, batting, backing, and fabrics for a pillow back and for binding. Oh, and one short instruction sheet that I now know leaves a lot to be desired.

Traditional Hawaiian quilts have a single large, symmetric and often complex appliqued piece on a plain background, and they are densely echo quilted. If you've never seen any look at this site for examples. It has step by step photos showing how a gorgeous Hawaiian quilt was created.

This quilt is small (the top is about18 inches square) as well as simple, with mostly broad curves and few Vs, yet I worked for months, a tiny bit at a time and still didn't finish. We moved in August 1996, I discovered cross-stitch and crocheted snowflakes for the Christmas tree and the Hawaiian pillow-that-wasn't found a home in the bottom of the craft chest because let's face it, I'd never get it done

Fast forward to last week. I needed some handwork to do while sitting waiting while the kids had their swimming lessons. In desperation I dug to the bottom of the chest and pulled out my old nemesis. I was surprised to see that it was almost 2/3 finished. I was even more surprised to find that after avoiding applique like the plague, because it was so frustrating and time consuming, I finished that last third in three mornings by the pool. Hmm, I seem to have acquired more skill with a needle in the last 14 or so years. The last third wasn't only much faster than the previous two, it is also much smoother. Maybe applique won't ever be my favourite quilt to make, but perhaps I won't run the other way anymore :).

I still have to sandwich and quilt this little piece, but it will wait until I've finished quilting my daughter's quilt. The quilting is the fun part anyway, so I'm considering this almost off the UFO list. Maybe I need two lists...".UFO" and "Almost not"...

Don't Panic!

2010-07-21T21:14:00.001-05:00

Presenting Don't Panic, the quilt formerly known as Astro Quilt. You may recall this one is for my astronomer husband. Since I have no imagination at all when it comes to naming my quilts, he was charged with naming it himself before he could take possession of it. He came up with a few obscure astronomical terms but decided it was a fun quilt and deserved a whimsical name. Split Infinitive was a contender (a rather geeky reference to Star Trek, ask me if you want to know more), but last night after I finished binding the quilt "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" came up in conversation and the catch phrase "Don't panic" won out. It seems appropriate, since I had a few early setbacks working on this one, and hubby can always go hide under it when grant proposals or whatever other work stresses pile up.

I had planned to finish this one quickly by tying it, but decided to hand quilt it instead. The whole background is quilted with patterns like you see above. I'm quite pleased with the way it tuned out, even though it took a few months longer than anticipated to finish.

I even like the back. Piecing the back wasn't planned. When I decided to add borders the quilt grew bigger than the backing fabric I had bought, so I added scraps from the front. The quilting pattern really pops on the back. The green is brighter in person than I managed in the photos, so it's really quite a striking, cheerful backing.

So now my UFO list looks like this:

1. ~~Astro quilt~~ - ~~all quilted, just needs binding~~!
2. Mom's table runner and placemats - ~~add borders and~~ quilt
3. Hearts quilt - still quilting, still quilting...
4. Swap blocks quilt - add borders and prairie points then set aside till my freemotion skills improve
5. Leaf quilt - add prairie points and quilt (machine or hand? haven't decided yet)
6. Whimsy - lots of piecing still
7. Hawaiian quilt pillow - started this in 1995 and found it again just today!

Finally a finish!

2010-07-19T14:52:00.003-05:00

Finally, a finished (even delivered to its new owner) project. I don't think I've had one of those in a while. I suppose I could check my past posts to be sure, but I digress. This is what I was working on the last time I posted. I ran out of time and didn't get a chance to go to the quilt shop to work out my freemotion woes so I planned out a quilting motif of squares, all nice straight lines, and used the quilting foot. It came out OK, though I don't feel the picture does the runner justice.

I made this runner and placemats set for my good friend Monica.

She and her hubby invited us to spend a few days with them and their two kids at their family cottage on Lake Manitoba. We had a marvelous time. In fact I was so busy having a marvelous time that I forgot to take any pictures of the fun we were having. My friends who scrapbook would be appalled! It was wonderful to see her. I think this visit, at three nights, two days, is the longest we have visited in person in 17 years. Thanks to regular letter-writing we just picked up where we left off the last time we saw each other 2 years ago. The husbands even obliged by retiring early one evening so the two of us could catch up till the wee hours (very wee, about 4 am).

Since we were up in Manitoba, we used the opportunity to visit Winnipeg a bit and steep the kids in a little of their Canadian heritage. This particular area was new to me too. I've lived in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and British Columbia, and have family in New Brunswick, but all the middle part of Canada is brand new to me. On the way up to the cottage we stopped in Morden so my husband could meet Bruce at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre:

The hubby loves dinosaurs, and while Bruce the mosasaur is not technically a dinosaur, this prehistoric marine reptile has a head bigger than a T-Rex's. Bruce was the best I could do without doing way more driving than the kids and I could stomach in our little "purple cramper", as my daughter called our valiant little Neon on day 2 of our drive.

I'm a sucker for living history museums and Parks Canada does a wonderful job with those, so Lower Fort Garry was a must. We ended up spending most of a day there because we are a curious bunch and ask a lot of questions and look at everything. The Manitoba Museum was also a big hit, and the kids were fascinated during our tour of the Royal Canadian Mint.

There was supposed to be a visit to a quilt shop in there too to see if I could bring back some Canadiana prints, but I left it to the end of the visit. I had found an address for a shop on our way out of town, drove through some construction to get there, and found it closed. Sigh. Oh well, maybe next time.

Now we're home again in mid-Iowa, the laundry is done, the fridge is restocked and I have drawn up a list of projects to move along:

1. Astro quilt - all quilted, just needs binding!

2. Mom's table runner and placemats - add borders and quilt

3. Hearts quilt - still quilting, still quilting...

4. Swap blocks quilt - add borders and prairie points then set aside till my freemotion skills improve

5. Leaf quilt - add prairie points and quilt (machine or hand? haven't decided yet)

6. Whimsy - lots of piecing still

I'm off to work on number one. It's so close to completion!

*Edit* I forgot to give credit for the runner pattern. It was inspired by the pattern "Choc-O-Cherry Turnover Treat" by Monica Solorio-Snow over at Moda Bakeshop, but I pieced it entirely differently than she did to avoid cutting a zillion triangles and dealing with the corresponding nmber of bias edges. The placemat design is all mine.

Summer sewing

2010-06-30T17:32:00.008-05:00

Summer means kids' camps, which require sleeping bags, which are unwieldy to lug around. Happily, someone else agrees and created a free pattern (find it here) for these:

They are very roomy, so any sleeping bag should fit even if you're not very good at rolling it into a small enough roll to fit in the original bag it came in. As it turns out my kids' sleeping bag rolling skills are much better than I thought, so they can fit pillows in their bags as well. My son happily took his to Scout camp last week and my daughter went off to Girl Scout camp with hers yesterday. No prizes for guessing whose is whose - I think the fabric prints give it away!
I haven't finished any quilting projects. I was sucked into a few good books instead, cutting into quilting time. There are worse fates :). I hadn't enjoyed a good uninterrupted read in quite a while. My husband and I also indulged in a movie watching spree, also something we hadn't done in a long time. In the space of 2 weeks we ran through the 3 Pirates of the Caribbean movies (very unsatisfying ending, by the way!), and all three Lord of The Rings installments.

Back to quilting. I said I hadn't finished anything, but I did make some progress on several different things. I hoped to have a picture of a finished runner and place mats set instead of just the peek at right, but my beautiful machine is acting up. It is making awful banging sounds when I try to free motion quilt, and messing up the bottom thread half the time. Very frustrating. I'm taking it in to the store on Saturday so they can either show me what I'm doing wrong or fix the machine, whichever is needed. Of course, this little delay cropped up precisely because I have a deadline on this particular project!

My mom's table runner and place mats have a few more seams in them, and I've been to the quilt shop for border and backing fabric for them.

Last but certainly not least, I've made progress on my swap quilt. Ta da!

It still needs borders. I've decided not to add an inner border after all. I'll just add borders of the same fabric as the setting triangles so that the center appears to float. I also plan to add a prairie point edging in the same fabric. That's the plan for now, at least. It may change by the time I get around to finishing!
I hope you are all having a great summer (or winter if you are down in the other hemisphere...)I haven't been keeping up with all of you very well. My attendance online has been a little spotty and will continue to be for the next month or so as I enjoy the season.

Going into summer

2010-06-13T13:10:00.005-05:00

I've been absent from blog land the last couple of weeks. I've been otherwise occupied with end of year school field trips (3 all-day ones in in a little more than a week), puttering in the garden before the heavy heat sets in, stacks of Girl Scout paperwork, my mom's visit...

There has a been a tiny bit of quilting happening. I dragged mom to the local quilt shop and while it seems I won't turn her into a quilter, she had no trouble browsing fabric. She chose a lovely fat quarter bundle which I am turning into a set of placemats and table runner.

The placemats in the picture don't actually have any sewn seams yet, but I was playing with colour layout so I went ahead and took pictures. There will be a wider border in a darker print all around the runner, with matching strips on each side of each placemat. The pattern for the table runner is "Shades of the Season" by Gayle Camargo, free on the Robert Kaufman Fabrics website.

Machine quilting - yikes!

2010-05-24T20:21:00.007-05:00

I have been playing with my new sewing machine and confirmed that free-motion quilting does indeed require skill. Sometime this week or next I have to go buy some inexpensive yardage to make stacks of small quilt sandwiches to practice, practice and practice again. Supposedly 10 minutes a day will lead to improvement. Of course the snippet I read that in said nothing about how many days of 10 minutes a day are required... Well, I knew there would be a learning curve and I haven't become too discouraged yet, but I'm not going to be free motioning on anything I care about, like an actual pieced top, anytime soon.

I have done a bit of straight line quilting with the walking foot though.

I'm not 100% happy with the result but it's a start. I think I might quilt it differently if I had it to do over, but I'm not so unhappy with it that I care to rip out all the stitching. Call me lazy :) I just have to adjust my mind's eye to the look of machine quilting. It really does give a different look than hand quilting so I have to plan it differently.

My swap block quilt is now a pile of blocks waiting for sashing. Last night was supposed to be the night it all came together. I pinned position labels to all the blocks in case they fell out of order, cut a few more sashing strips and sat down to sew. I'd sewn several seams by the time I realized I hadn't set the machine properly to sew a 1/4 inch seam. Ooops. I decided to set those aside to rip later, adjusted the machine, and sewed a few more seams. Then I realized I'd run out of bobbin thread 3 blocks earlier.

At that point I looked at the clock and decided perhaps it was just a little too late for me to think clearly, so I turned off the machine and went browsing the Blogger's Quilt Festival instead. I should have gone to bed, but all those quilts were just waiting to be viewed! I only made a tiny dent in the long list of links.

For a change of pace, tonight I'm turning off the technology. I'm going to hand quilt on my daughter's hearts quilt or my husband's astro quilt. I haven't decided which yet. His simple one is 3/4 done, so I would inch closer to a finish. Hers, with the more elaborate quilting, is only 1/4 done, so I need to make more progress...

It's that time again: Blogger's Quilt Festival

2010-05-22T17:39:00.004-05:00

Amy is hosting the third Blogger's Quilt Festival. Instead of just looking this time around I've decided to join in. Some of you have already seen my entry. I asked my kids which quilt I should blog about and they both picked this one. You just can't argue when two kids agree on something right away :)

This quilt started out as a throw. It sat unquilted for a year and every now and then my son would check back about who it was for. He was very clear about not wanting this one to leave the house. In the spring of 2009 I realized his bed quilt was getting worn and I decided his favourite quilt top might be expanded to a twin size. A few extra borders later I started hand quilting it and it finally made it onto his bed in October or November 2009.

I learned 3 things while making this quilt.
First - don't take shortcuts when bias edges are involved. I thought I would cheat and sew the sashing strips on without measuring them, then cut the extra off the ends. Oops. The sides of the braids are all bias edge and they just stretched, so my quilt developed a very pronounced curve. I had to rip all the those seams, measure the sashing as I should have done in the first place, then sew then back on. Lesson learned!
Second - I hate having to pull thread through wax or some other conditioner to make it stronger for hand quilting. I'd always used hand quilting thread before, but this time wanted to try a variegated thread in the braid so it would blend more. It turned out just like I wanted it to, but I'm not sure I'll do it again.

Third - Traditions are easy to start. Back when I made my son's first quilt I messed up the first block and didn't have enough fabric to redo it, so I made one plainer block and embellished it by quilting his name onto it. Then it was expected that I would quilt my daughter's name into her quilt somewhere. When I started quilting this one my son's first question was "Where are you going to quilt my name on this one?" It's in there. This picture doesn't show it, but each letter of his name is in one of the coloured squares in the small innermost border. I'm now quilting a new quilt for my daughter and guess what she wanted to know?
I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's quilts. I'm off to browse the festival now!

Swaps on the wall

2010-05-11T10:30:00.009-05:00

I've been slow to post pictures of the last few sets of blocks I received, but I was just as excited about them. Here they are now, from Ruth, Theri and Beth:

Thank you very much ladies! Your wonderful blocks have been up on the design wall since they came. I have two sets still to come then I can start stitching them all together.

That trip to the quilt shop that resulted in buying a new machine was originally a trip to buy fabric for the sashing, setting triangles and borders. Here's what I came home with, besides the new machine (did I mention the new machine? Sorry, I'm still a bit excited about that!). I had planned to make the setting triangles from the same fabric as the sashing but when I put all the blocks up on the wall together I noticed that many of them have at least a touch of pink, rose or wine. I decided to try pulling them all together by making the cornerstones and setting triangles echo those colours.

Last night I worked on the sashing. I messed up my planning and made a few of the white strips too short, but I have enough fabric to correct that. I'll make certain not to be doing it late a night again though!

The last thing I did before going to bed much later than I should have was test my idea on the design wall. The blocks were already up so it was quick to add sashing strips and setting triangles. I didn't start low enough on the wall so I ran out of batting at the top to lay out the setting triangles there, but this still gives me a pretty good idea what the quilt will look like.

I plan a thin inner border of the polka dot fabric, followed by a wider border in the red fabric, and perhaps a prairie point edging instead of binding. Now I need to go practice, practice, practice my free-motion quilting so I can eventually quilt this one! Free motion is just as tricky as I expected...

An exciting day...

2010-05-08T23:25:00.004-05:00

I'm exhausted. It takes a lot of energy to be as excited and giddy as I was today. Can you guess what is new in my sewing corner?

No, not the green swap blocks. Well, they are new, but not the cause of me jumping up and down in giddy excitement. Since I've never shown you my sewing space it might help if I narrowed down the options for you:

No, not the cutting implements or the pincusion either. I have a brand new beautiful and really cool Husqvarna Viking Sapphire 835 sewing machine! It seems only distantly related to my faithful little mechanical Kenmore. I'll be keeping the Kenmore, but I'll mainly be playing with this one now.

My old one didn't allow me to free-motion at all and that was getting a bit frustrating. My hand quilting speed just isn't keeping up with all the patterns in my head that I want to try, and I didn't want stacks of unquilted tops. However I have a fierce penny-pinching streak so I didn't really plan to spend on a new machine. I'm not sure what possessed me to drop by the machine salesroom at the local quilt shop when I was in for fabric on Friday. I let the saleslady talk me into trying it out. It was very nice. Then she told me it was on sale for the Mother's Day weekend. A really good sale.

Still, I walked out without it, though a little giddy at the possibility of owning that machine. By the time my husband got home I'd talked myself out of it and explained to him all the reasons why I didn't really need it. Of course all the features that made it so appealing also got trotted out . My husband knows me well. He let it go last night, but this morning he noticed my wistful preoccupation, sat me down and talked me right back into buying my Sapphire. Apparently he feels this quilting hobby isn't going away and I might as well be well-equipped. He practically handed me the car keys and pushed me out the door. What can I say, I married a really sweet and thoughtful guy!

The green blocks on the ironing board are the first things I sewed on the new machine, to see if I had the basics figured out. I spent about an hour reading the manual first, figuring out how to thread it and wind bobbins, and choose stitches. It's a wee bit different from what I was used to, but with a bit of practice I'm sure the basics of this one will became just as automatic. I'll just have to spend more time sewing the next little while (oh darn!). Just for the record, I already love the presser foot with the seam width guide.

Tomorrow I'm putting together a quilt sandwich and practicing a little freemotion! Happy Mother's Day to me! Hope you have a great one too.

I've got mail!

2010-04-27T20:29:00.010-05:00

Thank you ladies! I'm racing my daughter to the mailbox these days because the postman is delivering more than bills and junk mail :)

These lovelies arrived Thursday from Mary (Stash Heaven). That magazine seriously interfered with my preparations for taking 7 Brownie Girl Scouts to camp, but I was more disciplined on Friday and left for camp fairly well-rested and well-prepared on Saturday morning.

Ann's (A Good Yarn's) beautiful blocks and goodies arrived Saturday after I left (good timing, those Brownies would have been disappointed to delay their departure while I leafed through this magazine too...). As it was, the package was a lovely surprise when I came home Sunday afternoon after a mostly sleepless night. The chocolates are a wonderful restorative.

Monday the postman had a little trouble fitting everything in the mailbox but he persevered. When my daughter beat me to the mailbox she did a little happy dance and presented me with three packages. (The rest of these pictures insisted on loading sideways. I have no idea why, but they will have to do.)

These bright blocks and goodies came from Liri at Liriopia's Legacy. Her embroidered block is superb, and the back looks just as tidy as the front. When it slipped out of the package I didn't realize right away that it was wrong side up and I puzzled a bit over what "AWOI" stood for... Then I turned it over and was even more impressed with the right side, plus the letters now made sense!

Marsha of Grandma's Quilts sent these pretty blocks and the quilted ornament. I'm saving it for my Christmas tree, and borrowing the idea for 2010's ornament. We add a new batch of homemade ornaments each year, and though the tree is getting awfully full and I'm running out of ideas I've been told the tradition has to continue. Thanks for the inspiration Marsha!

Kathleen (Seventh Sister) has an impressive variety of fabric styles in her stash and shared some bits with me along with her cheerful blocks. It's nice to increase my pitiful stash of scraps - I may manage a scrap quilt eventually!

Today I found Christine's package before getting the kids at school. I managed to restrain myself and leave it in the mailbox so that 1) I wouldn't be late to pick up the kids and 2) my daughter wouldn't know I sometimes sneak to the mailbox while she's at school (mailbox checking is supposed to be her special privilege). She doesn't notice a few extra bill envelopes on my desk, but she will notice a couple of new swap blocks on the wall!

Here are Christine's blocks - one showcasing her bright fabrics, and another from her Civil War reproduction stash.

Now that over half my blocks have arrived I've started playing with them:

Sashing? No sashing? On point? Hmm. I'll need to keep pondering. Whatever the setting, this quilt will have a much greater variety of fabric than I'd ever have chosen on my own, and that makes it just plain fun!

Decisions, decisions...

2010-04-21T10:41:00.008-05:00

I bought this charm pack (Me and My Sister Favorites from moda) on impulse thinking it would make a lovely spring and summer throw. Oddly enough I was thinking along the lines of snowball blocks, but it's just a name right? It doesn't mean I'm pining for snow again already!

A double dose of second thoughts kicked when I got home. First, there just isn't enough fabric there for a throw. Second, I'm currently hand quilting two tops, have a third in line, and all the fabric cut up and partially pieced for a fourth, not to mention the swap blocks coming my way. Do I really want another top in the queue? I'm getting a bit discouraged as it is about the patiently waiting tops pile.

So, I changed gears and decided on another table runner. I have another gift occasion coming up and this will do nicely. Of course the decisions didn't end there. What pattern? I spent a week musing, made a firm decision, then the next week I started waffling again. Perhaps rows of flying geese instead? Actually, that would look great in these fabrics...but I went back to my original decision and promptly cut fabric before I could change my mind again.

The block is from the quilt "Kansas Dugout" by Nancy Brenan Daniel in the book "Creative Scraps: Quilting with Bits and Pieces".

The blocks came together very quickly. But wait, I still have decisions to make! I need opinions please! Should I make the runner version, or the square table topper/centerpiece instead? Either way I'm thinking of a thin white inner border then a wider border in similar fabrics.

I do have one small finish from the past couple of weeks. I quilted and bound the table runner I showed last time, all the while hating it. The binding really pulled it together though. It's now on my coffee table and it really belongs there. I'm going to have a tough time giving it away after all!

Satisfying the piecing bug

2010-04-09T20:42:00.005-05:00

I have a backlog of quilt tops to quilt and finish. It isn't a very large number, but since I handquilt anything larger than a table runner, and I'm slow at it, I've got enough to keep me busy through the end of the year. I really shouldn't add to the backlog or I'll never catch up.

So, what can I do when the urge to piece something strikes? Table toppers and runners! They're small. I can manage to machine quilt them on my small machine on my small work surface. I get the satisfaction of a finish fairly quickly.

This one is a gift. It's not quite in my taste, but it is in the recipient's so I'll try to get it quilted and bound in the next week or so. I'm thinking of a pieced binding in the teal/blue fabrics. Who knows? Perhaps with the binding on it will appeal to me more. Binding transforms some quilts.

This one is for me, made with the extra swap blocks I made. I just had to have some of the blue for me! It also still needs to be quilted and bound this week.
And coming soon, I'll be adding another flimsy to the queue after all. My first beautiful set of swap blocks came this week, along with a few extra goodies.
Thanks, Katie! The pincushion is in use with my quilting needles already, and there isn't much of that chocolate left. For the record, my husband was very disappointed. I'm usually not a huge fan of milk chocolate, so he figured he'd get most of it. Well, this Milka is not your run of the mill milk chocolate. It's mine, all mine! Well, I shared a tiny piece so he'd know why he wasn't getting the rest :)

Not much quilting going on

2010-04-01T12:25:00.007-05:00

I've been distracted by the sudden disappearance of the snow and the emergence of these

followed by these

Now that the sun is out again and the spring bulbs are blooming I'm starting to get excited about planning plantings. I have a tricky spot that is mostly in light shade except from noon-2 pm when it is subjected to blazing sun in the summer. If anyone with more gardening experience has any plant suggestion for shrubs, perennials or annuals that can live with that, please share! (I'm in mid-Iowa, what hardiness zone is that? 5?) It's still too early to plant, but I'm planning...and in the meantime I'm tidying up other parts of the yard, seeding a few bare patches in the lawn and putting in some brick borders in a few places. Now is a perfect time to do it. It isn't too hot yet and the biting bugs aren't out and swarming.

Sometime in the evenings when it's too dark to putter outside I'll be making a table runner with these fabrics. The blue is actually more teal or turquoise than it looks in the photo. Browns aren't really my thing, but I think the gift's recipient likes them so I'm stretching a bit.

These fabrics are also a very good illustration of why I'll probably never have much of a stash. I went ahead and chose these fabrics without a pattern in mind and now I'm having a terrible time figuring out exactly what to do with them. I do much better sketching a plan in advance, then buying fabric to fit. So far I've had 5 flashes of inspiration that quickly fizzled, but I think I may finally have a plan. I'll keep you posted.

Swap blocks done

2010-03-23T10:33:00.004-05:00

Ta da! All my swap blocks are done. I made 4 extra to make a table topper for my kitchen table and borrowed one to make my layout come out even. I'm auditioning layouts for when I get all your blocks, swappers!

Looking at this I've decided I need to replenish my stash of blues and make myself a blue and white quilt. I'd bought all this fabric a few years back for just that purpose but never got around to it. Now I'm inspired to make one after all. Eventually. Once I have a few more quilts moved off the UFO and WIP lists. (For my family who isn't familiar with the terms, that's "unfinished object" and "work in-progress").

Lisa and Katie, your blocks are now in the post office's custody, on their way to you.

Tiny bit of handquilting

2010-03-18T20:07:00.008-05:00

I've gotten a start on handquilting the two quilts that came home basted last week. The first is my daughter's heart quilt. We still haven't settled on a name for it. Christine, any flashes of inspiration? :)

The chain pattern in the purple border is "Avalon" from Quiltmaker magazine's "Quilting Motifs, Volume I" book. Making a template from this was a real treat for me. For the first time ever I didn't have to resize anything to make it fit where I wanted. I also don't have to stretch or contract the motif at any point to make the pattern repeats fit. This one fit perfectly straight out of the book! I must say it made it easier to choose the motif, because the other two I also liked needed fussing with. (Disregard the large grid. That's just the machine basting.)

I've quilted 2 more hearts and the adjoining border areas since I took this picture. That's a total of 3 out of the 48 blocks in the quilt, so I still have a way to go.

There has been more progress on the astro quilt quilting, as it is quilted much farther apart in a much less detailed design. It is difficult to see the quilting in the picture, due to a combination of poor lighting and black thread on black background. I didn't want contrasting thread to add to the busy look of the background. You can see it a bit better on the back in the picture below if you click on it to enlarge it. The poor lighting really washed out the green in the picture though. Again, disregard the basted grid.

My daughter said it would be OK to work on this instead of hers since she already had a quilt and dad didn't. Frankly, I think she took pity on me because I kept having to re-mark quilting lines that were fading before they disappeared altogether. I marked this one all over before basting so I could see the whole effect, and make sure I balanced the number and size of the circles and where they overlapped. With my daughter's "permission" I am now trying to get all these quilted before I have to squint and mark a third time. I can go back and quilt the stars later.

I bought "White and Natural" batting for the astro quilt because the label on the batting claimed it could be quilted as far apart as 10 inches. I'm a little closer than that, but too far apart for the Hobbs 20/80 batting I've been using in most quilts. The White and Natural is thin and lets me make smaller more even stitches, something I hadn't considered in batting before. I wish I'd put it in my daughter's quilt as well, because with its flannel backing it has extra thickness and I'm getting larger less consistent stitches. What batting do you prefer and why?

Change of plans

2010-03-11T14:06:00.010-06:00

On Friday afternoon I called the longarm quilter to find out if and when she could baste two quilts for handquilting. It turned out that she was about to start two fairly large projects, but she could squeeze my basting in before those if I brought the quilts to her on the weekend. Otherwise I'd be waiting over a month. Guess who finished preparing quilt backs on Friday evening and went for a little drive on Saturday?

That left me a bit at loose ends on Saturday so I decided to use the time to work on my swap blocks. I cut up enough fabric for the rest of my sets and sewed up a few. I did a few more on Sunday. Then I figured spring was showing signs of actually arriving (yay!) and that would lead me to yard chores and planning flowerbeds and that would lead to less quilty time so I decided I really should just go ahead and sew all the blocks up now. This is how far I got:

Obviously they still need frames. The rest of the blocks got as far as you see on the right. Then the quilter called and said the quilts were basted and my focus shifted completely! I just had to start quiting and see if the motifs I had planned for them worked as well on the quilts as in my head. Pictures will follow eventually. I'm off to quilt!

March Swap Blocks

2010-03-02T16:15:00.007-06:00

I finished my first two sets of blocks for the APQ Blog Buddies Swap. I hope they're scrappy enough even if they're colour themed. I've discovered my stash is definitely blue-heavy, from all the fat quarters I bought at once a couple of years ago for a blue scrappy quilt that hasn't happened yet. All my other quilts yielded surprisingly few leftovers. I guess I've done a good job (or bad job, depending on your point of view) just buying enough for a particular project.

And look at what these blocks do on point. It amazes me that just looking at a different angle makes me see more movement. Do you see that too, or is just my eyes? I just may have to set my share of the blocks on point.

Astro quilt progress

2010-02-28T13:36:00.010-06:00

The top is done! I set it aside for a while as I pondered borders. I had originally planned to not have borders at all, but the quilt didn't look finished so I played around a bit. I thought I had settled on a thin blue border, but when I started sewing I decided it still didn't look done. I thought about a black outer border, to sort of go with the background fabric, but that didn't look right. I finally remembered that I was thinking a little outside the box with this quilt, and decided the background could spill out of the box too.

So, after being inspired and discovering exactly what I wanted, I was completely deflated to find the fabric I bought 8 months ago was no longer available (who'd have thought?). I could have sworn I saw some the previous week though. Anyway, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I finally found some online. It arrived and I became obsessed and neglected the housework again but I finished the quilt top. The lighting has washed the colours out a bit, but you get the general idea.

I wavered back and forth about how to quilt this. I had meant to tie it for a quick finish, but then the quilt said "swirls". Of course it changed its mind and claimed the quilting would get lost in all that busy background. I suggested quilting the stars and tying everywhere else and it was happy with that while it waited for borders. Once its borders were attached, the quilt started talking about circles...

I spent the afternoon Friday marking the quilt for quilting with a lot of not-quite-concentric circles in the background overlapping with other sets of circles. I'm not describing it very well, but it looks interesting. The test will now be to see if the quilting shows up at all on the background, and if it looks as interesting quilted.

There will be a delay, however. I hadn't planned borders. Adding borders made the quilt larger. A larger quilt means the batting and backing I had prepared are too small. I really need to start waiting to finish a top before I prepare those. It isn't the first time I've gotten caught. Long story short, I need to piece together scraps to extend my backing, and I need to go purchase more batting.

Oh, and the larger size is just a bit too big to baste in sections on my kitchen table, and I still pin to the carpet when I try to baste on the floor. Off to a machine quilter it goes to get basted, then I'll finally get to start. This is taking much longer than my initial plan, but the quilt is going to be so much more interesting than how it started out in my head that I don't really mind. Besides, spring is bound to get here soon so my hubby won't be needing the quilt right away, right?

One WIP down

2010-02-23T15:07:00.007-06:00

I have a sneaking suspicion that Kicking and Screaming will have the last word after all by waving its borders at me when it hangs on the wall, but for now I'll just savour the satisfaction of finally finishing it! Including all the time it spent in a box as I stewed about the latest set of setbacks, it only took about 14 months to make. :) I ordered a quilt hanger for it today, but it may take a while to arrive so I don't need to worry about the wave just yet.

Here's a look at the pringles lid quilting on the checkerboard. It isn't the full circle of the lid. I just used as much of the curve as I needed to fill the space.

I also like the way the back looks (from a distance, anyway - I'm still working on making the quilting as even and pretty on the back as on the front). I think I may have to put a whole cloth quilt on my list of quilts to make. I might get to it by 2020...

If you need a chuckle...

2010-02-21T15:28:00.002-06:00

I don't know about you, but the "Advice from a 1949 Singer Sewing Manual" contained in this blog made me chuckle. I'm just thinking of the state of my house when I really need to sew... And dabbing on the lipstick before I sit down at the machine? My husband would think the pod people had arrived! :) Happy guilt-free quilting (just go ahead and leave those dishes in the sink! - you'll get to them eventually).

Clarinet and skates

2010-02-20T09:59:00.006-06:00

My son's clarinet and music and my daughter's ice skates and associated gear both get lugged around at least once a week. We got tired of gathering all the bits and pieces at the last minute on our way out the door. Both kids went shopping for appropriate fabric and here's what we ended up with:

We couldn't find ice skating themed fabric but thought the penguins conveyed an icy message. The buttons on the music tote are the buttons my son earned from the band teacher for practicing (no nagging required, yay!). My daughter has plans to sew the skating badges she has earned onto her bag.

This week I also sewed up a couple of heat packs using this tutorial. (Sorry, no pics!) I had made one last year as a heat pad for aches and pains, but this winter we've all been wanting it to heat our toes when we slip between cold sheets at night. Somehow the winter just seems colder this year, even though the thermostat is set just as before. Now that we have more heat packs the weather is bound to warm up soon, right?
I'm plugging away at three quilts, though there isn't enough progress to share new pictures yet.
1. My husband's astro quilt is waiting for borders. I finally was inspired there but had to stop when I discovered I didn't have enough of the space print to do what I wanted. The quilt store was all out of it, though I had seen some there the previous week. After 45 minutes online I was about to give up searching when I found some. Yay! It came late this week but I was in the middle of something else at that point. Soon though!
2. My daughter's quilt is progressing more slowly than I had anticipated. All those heart blocks have seams that need matching with seams in other blocks, and I hadn't planned ahead to press in appropriate directions to help the seams nestle together. I'm figuring it out as I go along, making do where I have to but overall I'm able to make it work. It's just a slow process. 4 rows are made and joined togeher. Just half left to go.
3. My Kicking and Screaming quilt is almost done. Just one more side of the outer border to do and I can move on to binding. Pictures of the Pringles lid quilting will follow when the quilt is finally hung on the wall.
Now I'm off to waste more time, not quilting, but adding pictures of past projects to this blog - there are links to 2 new pages on the sidebar. I thought it would be interesting to have a record of what I've made all in one place. How do all of you keep track of how your hobby has evolved?

Superbowl Quilting

2010-02-08T22:02:00.010-06:00

Here's what I was working on last night while the rest of the family watched the Superbowl. I finished the last of the blocks for my daughter's new quilt. I now have to join all the blocks, but seeing them all up on the design wall is inspiring me to keep going.

The hearts are paper pieced using Cindi Edgerton's Heartfelt tissue paper foundations. The setting is mine, thanks to graph paper, coloured pencils (gotta love colouring!) and playing around on the design wall to fine tune colour placements.

I asked my daughter's opinion about fabrics for borders. She had a definite preference for "the light blue". That was actually the light aqua colour with the swirls. I decided the quilt needed a slightly darker border than that to frame it, but I kept the light blue theme. I came home from the local quilt shop on Friday with the blue on the far left in the photo below. I was also looking for more of the polka dot fabric I used in the heart blocks (far right), but had to settle for the smaller, denser polka dot (second from left). Happily, once I got it home with all the finished blocks I realized the denser polka dot will work better as a thin inner border than my original choice. It all looks like I planned it all out ahead of time :).

I'll post a picture of the finished top when it gets done, but it will be a while before you see the finished quilt. My daughter has a very realistic view of my quilting speed. She told me she was excited to see her new quilt come together, but she didn't expect it to actually be on her bed until next year since it will need to be quilted. I offered to send it out to be machine quilted to speed things up, but she declined. She explained that it would be cozier if I did all the work on it. Here I was, finally ready to part with some cash to get a quilt done sooner, and she sweet-talked me into taking the slow route. Ah well, since she cares, I'll be happy enough to hand quilt it :) I'm thinking heart chains or cables, and somewhere in there I have to quilt her name.

Now I'm off to do more quilting on "Kicking and Screaming". Thanks for all your encouraging words about that quilt. They gave me a nudge to keep at it, and I think it may finally be tamed. Perhaps I'll be sewing on binding by next week.

Pringles to the rescue

2010-02-04T21:38:00.011-06:00

I spent most evenings this week quilting this small quilt.

It is about 40 inches square. Some of you may remember it from a post on APQ last spring. I referred to it as the "kicking and screaming" quilt because it gave me so much trouble. There are still some problems with the top that bug me, but I declared it good enough and put it in the queue to be quilted.

Well, I'm finally quilting it, and it is still giving me trouble. Quilting started smoothly, with outline quilting in the star, a thin rope cable in the yellow inner border, a nice motif to fill the large white corners. I was making quick progress and was looking forward to finally getting it on the wall. That checkerboard border had other ideas. I didn't try a crosshatch pattern through the squares right away because I thought that would accentuate the problem of some of the squares near the corners not being actually square (one of those things that still bother me). I tried stitching in the ditch but it didn't look right with the rest of the quilting. I tried quilting a quarter inch from each side of the border but that didn't look good either. I tried the crosshatching finally, and was quite thrilled as I stitched that it looked really rich. Perfect!

Well, perfect until I took the quilt out of the lap frame to move on to the next bit of border and looked at the whole quilt. Because of the on-point orientation of the checkerboard, my lovely crosshatching turned into a side to side grid, and only the vertical lines really stood out. It really looked odd. If I turned the whole quilt on point it the quilting looked OK again. Back to the drawing board.

As I munched on some Pringles potato chips in frustration, I toyed with the lid of the Pringles can. It was just about the right size... I traced it to make a curve template to draw a loose chain and I think I finally have something that works! My husband has given the first little bit his thumbs up (though of course he is probably tired of hearing me grind my teeth so maybe he's just trying to hurry the process along).

Stay tuned! Hopefully the final outer border will give in more peacefully. I think I know how I want to quilt that part...

Quilt washing hangups

2010-01-29T11:35:00.004-06:00

Thanks for all your suggestions about cleaning my quilt yesterday. The gummy stuff came off with some gentle scrubbing and left no stain, just the smell, but once I'd rubbed off the gummy stuff, I had to get the kids from school. When I returned the patches had dried and I had trouble finding all the patches needing odour treatment. I could smell the fish but had trouble pinpointing exactly where I should be treating. So in the end, I went with Katie and Christine's suggestion, took a deep breath and dumped the whole thing in the washer and dryer after all.

Here's what I discovered. I lack confidence in my workmanship. I'm always sure that when I put a quilt in the washer, even on the gentlest cycle, all those stitches, both machine piecing and hand quilting, will just pull apart. I'm always convinced that I'll find tatters when I pull the quilt out of the washer. Maybe the colours will all bleed, even if I pre-washed the fabrics (and did I forget to pre-wash some?). When that doesn't happen, I dread the dryer because maybe the batting will shrink too much, or the weight of the wet quilt tumbling around will pull the stitches apart... You get the idea.

I blame all those quilting books that I love to read, that all have a section on "care of quilts" that insists on gentle hand-washing and laying flat to dry, and expounds on the dangers of regular laundry detergent and the necessity of supporting the massive weight of a wet quilt, and so on and so forth. There were no quilters in my family, so no quilts, so no other experience to go on. So I stressed about washing my quilts.

I'm over that now :) . My quilt survived its washing and drying just fine. Maybe it won't last a hundred years and be passed down to generations to come (or maybe it will!). I've decided that I make my quilts to be used and enjoyed now, and any longevity is a bonus. If I didn't care about the sun bleaching and the LEGO wearing down the fabric in my son's first quilt as it lay on his bed for 5 straight years, why should I worry about using the washing machine and the clothes dryer?

For those of you who might be wondering, the dog is still alive and well and we are friends again. He really is beautifully behaved most of the time - which is good because otherwise relations with my mom might be a tad strained when she comes back in the spring and collects her pooch. Did I mention we're only dog-sitting?

Dogs, quilts and fish food

2010-01-28T11:39:00.008-06:00

Trust me, all three are related.

This dog disappeared today while I put away groceries. Since he is usually a little shadow, following me around every step I take, I thought his disappearance was suspicious. I went looking and found him, with a broken plastic jar of fish food and very little food left. I'm guessing he was just finishing up what he started while I was out getting the groceries. Doesn't he just have "guilty" written all over his face?

Here's where the quilt part comes in. Not satisfied with destroying the jar of fish food and consuming the contents, he decided to do it on my bed, on my quilt.

For those of you who don't keep pet fish, let me say that fish food doesn't only feed your fish, it also smells very strongly of fish. And the dog's licking it to get it up off the quilt made it nice and gummy and worked it right into the fabric. So, does anyone have any idea how to spot clean a fishy smelling spot? Washing the whole thing is a bit problematic. I have nowhere to spread it out to dry while the backyard is covered in snow.

Would you believe I took this dog for a lovely walk before taking the groceries out of the car, blissfully unaware of his mischief?

Wishful thinking...

2010-01-20T14:37:00.003-06:00

Last weekend the winter blahs took over so I tried to inject a touch of spring into my living room.

I made new pillow covers for all four tired throw pillows on the couch. My daughter helped with the striped one until she pricked her finger on a pin. That rather dampened her enthusiasm for the actual sewing part. She did choose all the fabric strips and line them up in order. "We" sewed them directly to a backing and batting sandwich, sort of like foundation piecing, doing the piecing and quilting all in one step.

I made the swirl pillow the same way. I found measurements for a 9" Snail's Trail block here. I wanted mine to keep swirling a bit more so I calculated the triangle size needed for just one more round, cut one out and found it much too small. I had been quite sure all my logic and use of geometry and Mr. Pythagorus' theorum were correct. I'd allowed for seam allowances and everything. I puzzled quite a while before I finally found the problem. It turns out that all my reasoning was correct after all, but it would seem that 6.72+0.35=7.07, not 6.07. Sigh. So proud of all my fine reasoning, then tripped up on simple addition. You'd think I should have noticed that my sum ended up smaller than one of the parts! In case any of you want the dimensions, cut that largest half-square triangle from a 7-1/16 inch square.

Since the backing is hidden inside the pillow covers I didn't care what it looked like, so I used up more of this fabric. I'm not sure what possessed me to buy a couple of yards of it for a quilt backing a few years back. I'm sure someone somewhere has made a quilt with it that they absolutely love. there's a fabric for everyone! This one just isn't for me, and I never could bring myself to back the quilt with it, so I've been using it up piece by piece anywhere that it won't show. So far, it has been backing for several quilted pillow fronts, and inner bags of rice heat packs. I'm sure I'll find more hidden uses for the remaining yard or so.

Incidentally, though the new pillows have brightened up the living room, they didn't do much to hurry spring along. The kids are home today, yet another day off due to "inclement weather", an ice storm to be precise. So far, they have 5 days to make up at the end of the school year, and the novelty of having surprise days off is wearing thin!

Astro Quilt

2010-01-13T20:04:00.020-06:00

Here's a peek at what I've been working on for my husband. When he pointed out last spring that both kids have "fun" quilts to snuggle under when they watch TV but he didn't, I went out and bought a bit of this fabric as a joke. I didn't actually think that after working as an astronomer all day he'd want more of it at home. Apparently he has chosen to work at what he loves, because his eyes lit up when he saw the fabric.

So, I went back to the quilt shop and came home with this:

I had a star quilt pattern in mind, but realized before I cut into the fabric that the tiny pieces wouldn't do the space print justice. I pulled out graph paper instead to come up with something new. I decided I wanted large swaths of the space fabric. It took a while for me to remember that there is no rule that says a quilt has to have blocks all the same size lined up in rows, but once I clued in I just sprinkled stars across the graph paper. I spent a few hours figuring out the best way to link them all together with the background fabric. I suppose applique would have been the simpler way to scatter stars across a fabric, but I'm not skilled at that, so piecing it was!

These plans then sat in a box with the fabrics for 8 months while I finished my son's quilt, started my daughter's, made a few table runners....

I've been wondering if the fabric version would live up to the picture in my mind, and last week I finally pulled it all out. I hesitated before cutting in, because I just might have calculated wrong, but finally cut some fabric and started piecing.

It turned out I had figured a few things wrong, but I'll post about lessons learned next time. For now, here are some of the star blocks.

Once I started placing them on my design wall (a big piece of batting thumb tacked to the wall, but "design wall" sounds much more grand!) I wasn't a hundred percent happy with the layout I had on paper. I'm still playing around with it. I'm not sure I'll ever be completely happy with it, but my husband is a very agreeable man who tells me he likes it, please finish it :) I'll post pictures when the top is done in a few days. I'll want your ideas about what to do for borders.

Meanwhile, happy quilting!

Welcome!

2010-01-09T19:40:00.017-06:00

Welcome to my new quilting blog. I've posted a bit on APQ, and certainly lurked there quite a bit. Changes happening at that site were just the nudge I needed to try a blog of my own.

I started my first quilt back in 2000.
I had a friend who walked me through paper piecing this first quilt, but I was on my own to figure out how to quilt it. Let's just say my brother and his wife received their wedding gift a year late:) I've gotten a bit speedier since then, though hand quilting bed quilts still takes me a while.

This is the last one I finished, just last fall. This was for my son, and my daughter is now patiently (less patiently some days) waiting for her new quilt. It may be ready by the end of 2010 - or not! :) I'll share my progress when there is some to show.

Meanwhile I started something completely different, just for a change of pace. It's a throw for my astronomer husband, and isn't my usual fare of similar sized blocks or rows joined with sashing. I'll take pictures and post about it soon.

In the meantime, happy quilting! I hope to meet many of you through your blogs as well!