Long Time No See

 Man, this moving thing isn't for the feint of heart. It seems to just go on and on. To be fair, we did actually move twice; once to my daughter's house and once to our apartment. We are still getting settled in, and will finally be getting the last of our stuff from California next week. 

The sewing room is set up now. I have actually done some sewing. Let's take  look, shall we?

First, there is this beautiful antique quilt rack that my daughters bought me as an early mother's day gift. I truly need a place to display some of my quilts and this fits the bill perfectly.

I have my ironing station set up here. I hung my favorite spools quilt above it. I had it hanging in my old quilting room in our house, but haven't really seen it in awhile. Now that I have the space, I happily hung it on the wall.

My second Penny Sample quilt found a place on a wall in the sewing room too. It's her first time bein hung up.

I set up my wooden crate shelves along  wall and added some smaller quilts above it. The shelves are still messy, but getting more organized every day.

Here is the sewing desk. I absolutely love being able to display my Kingfisher Quilt above it.

And just this week I removed the bridge table I was using for the computer and replaced it with this little cutie from Wayfair. It's a perfect size for just the computer. I do have my design wall up, but forgot to take a picture. It's sew nice to have this all set up again.

It has been 5 years since we have had a space all our own. I am enjoying this more than I anticipated.

 

I got out the rest of the magnetic butterflies that I bought while at my daughter's house and did a little "decorating".

This is the air return for the HVAC system. A metal cover in our living room. This is a perfect way to make it pretty.

And a few leftovers went on the fridge door. These are so pretty, I can hardly get enough of them.

And lastly, a North Carolina sunrise from a few weeks ago when we went to visit our other daughter near Charlotte NC. A cold winter sunrise, but so beautiful.

See you soon with my current projects.

Eight Projects? What?

 I was sitting in my sewing room the other day, and for some reason, I counted the projects I am working on. This does not include crochet or hand work. I have EIGHT quilting projects going on right now. Eight. How did this happen to someone whose sewing mojo was on hiatus? So let's just see what's going on in there.

This is the beginning of a baby quilt. I don't want to show too much of it yet, since the recipient doesn't know about it and I want to keep it that way for awhile.

This is the beginning of another Swoon quilt. I told my sister about a year or so ago, that I would make her one of these. So now I am starting on it. Instead of nine blocks, I am making 16 blocks, in the large size. The original calls for 9 blocks. These blocks finish at about 24 inches and she wants a drape down the sides of her bed, which is a queen. This block has 81 pieces in it, and once I have a block cut and ready to sew, it takes me about 2 1/2 hours to put it together, and press all the seams. So this will be a slow and steady job.

My tiny house quilt top is done and waiting to be basted and quilted. For now, it's on a hanger on the door of the room. I am thinking of stitching in the ditch around the houses for this. I don't want to detract from the houses on this.

The first two rows of my Project Pink quilt are together. I have to remove the paper pieces from each block before sewing them together. So for each session with this quilt, I remove paper and sew one row together, and then sew it to the others.

This is my second Project Pink quilt. I have long wanted to do this quilt. I am using up many of my pink scraps for this one. I had tons of 2.5 inch squares cut and in the scrap bin. I have since had to cut some more from bigger scraps and this is about half of the size of the quilt, so a ways to go yet.

After I finished the pink strip blocks, I decided to do some blue and green ones. I am really trying to use up some of the many scraps I have. These will go into a quilt together. I have way more blue strips than green, so that's the way this quilt will eventually go. I make a block almost every day. This is another slow, steady project. I have found that I like that type of project. No pressure.

My Penny Sampler is near to being done. The quilting is done (picture of that coming soon) and I just got the fabric for the binding. I need to make and attach the binding and label. So, very soon it will be done.

And last, but not least, my Geesey Geesey quilt. The top is done, the backing is ready and the batting has been cut from the roll. I need to pin baste this and I am thinking maybe this weekend I will do that so that it is ready to quilt when the mood strikes me.

My Penney Sampler Club Quilt-the Beginning

I made a Penny Sampler Quilt in the second round of Rachel's classes for that quilt. Maybe a year and a half ago? I loved it. I took the class to get better at the several skills that were used to make the quilt, and it worked. I feel like I have truly mastered those techniques.

Rachel has now come up with the Penny Sampler Quilt Club. I never would have decided to make another Penny Sampler Quilt, but she has two versions now, and the new one is a Dutch inspired version. That was where she got me hooked.

 This is the coloring sheet, for help in getting started on this year long project. I used colored pencils to help me establish some sort of color scheme for the quilt. I knew from my last class that this was the best way to keep it from being a daunting task to choose colors and fabrics. Some things will change, as this quilt will lead me and show me what it needs as we go along.

 This is my initial fabric pull for the quilt. I know that as we work through the blocks, some fabrics will not make it into the quilt, and others may join this stack. But the point is to have a starting point.

 This is my first block for January. The compass block. It turned out so much softer than I had imagined. But I truly love it. I have left it on the design wall so I can just look at it.

 This is the row of diamonds on the top of the quilt. My second element for January. The red in this block was not in the initial fabric pull, but when I was digging through my stash and I saw this, I knew it was perfect. The color is so rich and sharp, especially compared to the compass. This quilt needs some of that kind of color in it. I am super happy with this.

My third January element is the ribbon block. Again, a bit softer look, but all these came from the original fabric pull, except for the pink background. After I did my initial fabric pull, I ordered some Kona solids to compliment those colors. This is such a busy quilt, it needs some solids to give your eyes a place to rest a bit. It makes the other fabrics really show off to their best advantage.

This is a year long project, so I will be back with updates along the way. You can still join the club at any time. There are two different Penny Samplers to choose from. You get the patterns for both and you can mix and match as you like. Don't care for an element? Swap it out. The only thing that needs to be consistent is the different block sizes in their place in the quilt.

Have a lovely weekend, and I will see you soon.

Tea, A Drink With Jam and Bread

In a previous post, I talked about a special quilt. It is for my sister, who doesn't read this blog. So I can share it here with you. She collects teacups. She has quite a few and they are lovely. After doing the Penny Sampler Quilt last year, I got the idea to make a small wall hanging of the paper pieced tea cup in 9 variations for her. I started it, with the intention of Christmas. This week, I finished the top.

The tea cups finish at 6.5 inches and I added the sashing to spread them out a bit so each could shine on its own. I decided it needed a pop of color, so I added the cornerstones in the white dot on red. I need to come up with a back, but I think I know how to quilt this. I will wait until it's done to choose a binding.
Here are close ups of the individual tea cups:

I am very please with the outcome. I know she will love it. Have a great rest of your week friends. Talk to you soon.

Have You Missed Me?

I have had so many guests here and there was only a little sewing going on. I have been thinking of what to post about for almost a week now. I couldn't quite make myself sit down and do it. I think what makes it hard for me is I need pictures downloaded and edited and then sometimes my computer doesn't cooperate. Anyway, here I am.

So here is the first block of my Firefly quilt. It's the first quilt I have ever made with only solids. I am using Kona cotton for the top. I pulled my color card out and tried to pick colors that were similar to the ones used for the original pattern. I am pretty happy with my choices. Just 15 more blocks to finish. Each block is finished at 17 1/2 inches.

These are some more of my 100 Blocks 100 Days doing the Tula Pink City Sampler on Instagram.

These two are a couple of my most favorite blocks. I am learning how to successfully fussy cut.

And these are the first 3 out of 9 blocks I am making for a special wall hanging quilt. The pattern is from Rachel at Stitched In Color and her Penny Sampler Quilt class that I took last year. I still am not a big fan of paper piecing, but at least I know how to do it and it does come in handy.

So, that's what's been happening around here. I also started another new crochet project, which I will show you next time. Have a great week, and I will talk to you soon.

Pushing Myself, Creatively Speaking

How do you push yourself to continue being creative? I love sewing, it's a really big part of who I am. But sometimes I feel like I am just churning things out and not being terribly creative. Or it begins to feel same ol' same ol' to me. So I started thinking about this yesterday. And in the last year or so, there are a couple of things I started doing to keep things fresh and new for myself.

Now, I have never been a big joiner when it comes to quilting. No quilt guilds, and only a few classes back in the early days. I love working on projects, but I hate packing everything up to go work on projects. I am a bit of a solitary maker. And then I love to show it off when it's done. I stayed away from many techniques that seemed too hard. And then I realized that that is what was holding me back and making me stale. I had to get over it and do something.

One of the first things I did was to make this set of tiny blocks to work on my precision piecing. These all finished at 2 inches square. I found that while they weren't tooeasy, they weren't too hard. Slow it down and do it right.

The next thing I did was to take the Penny Sampler quilt class on line from Rachel. I love her classes for their content, but I was also able to work on this at a pace that worked for me. The other thing about it was that there were some techniques in this class that I needed to learn and master. Like paper piecing. I came away knowing how to paper piece. It's still not my favorite technique, but when it's called for, I can do it. Also, this was a 12 month class. I have NEVER taken that long and slow to make a quilt and I found I really liked that slower pace, with time for other projects as well.

The next thing I did was to make this quilt for my niece. I used only fabric from my stash, except the background fabric. I have never done that, and only blues, which is also the first time I have made a quilt using only two colors. It wasn't that it was hard, just different and helped me to stretch myself a bit creatively.

I am currently working on an English paper piecing and applique piece, also hosted by Rachel of Stitched in Color and Jodi at Tales of Cloth. I never had any interest in EPP when it was all the rage a few years back, but now I cannot seem to get enough of the slow hand stitched pace of the hexies.

And now I have joined in on the 100 blocks in 100 days 2018 on Instagram. I bought the book for inspiration, the year it came out and then it sat on the shelf. This 100 day project is really pushing me creatively. I am doing every 10 blocks in one color, like a rainbow of sorts. I added pink, teal, dark pink and split the violet into red violet and blue violet to have enough for ten sets. It is all coming from my stash and scraps and choosing the colors is tough, but oh, so satisfying. I do a happy dance for each one I pull.

So that's what I am doing to keep moving forward as a sewist, quilter and maker. Tell me, what to you do to keep it fresh for yourself?
Talk to you soon.