Getting Unstuck

 I have been stuck. Stuck trying to find a way forward with my sewing. I do understand that it comes and it goes and I'm not worried I will never sew again or anything weird like that. And I know why I'm stuck. Grief can do that to a person. I do have some days where I sew, and I enjoy it. Other days, I don't feel like doing anything at all. I have a couple of projects in process. One, I can't seem to muster any enthusiasm for right now, and that's okay. It's more of a winter looking quilt.

My temperature quilt is one I am slowly plodding along with. I at least update the charted temps every week or so. I know I will sew them up eventually. I did some last week and am now mostly caught up.

This is January and February. I have decided to do each month as a calendar page. Whenever there is extra space in the month, I will use a piece of fabric that represents the month. Here, January is white on white that looks like snow, and February is hearts.

This is March, which has shamrocks for St. Patrick's day. Can you see how the temperature colors are changing?

This is April. April showers are represented here. Now, each month has 5 horizontal rows, but because of the way things fell in April, the 30th was all alone in a sixth row. I checked the rest of the year and it was the only one like that. So, I opted to split the last block between the 29th and the 30th. I know they usually do this on a diagonal line, but the houses don't lend themselves to that. So I guess I am caught up for the first time on this project.

Then, I got a bee in my bonnet, unlike anything else recently. I started a new project and finished the quilt top in one week.

This is from the book, Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. One of my all time favorite quilt books. I go to it a lot for inspiration. This is the High Five quilt. Amanda Jean's version is totally scrappy and I do love the look of hers. But I used some scraps and some yardage that I was looking for a way to use. I also made it a few rows shorter that in the book. I am very happy with how it turned out and now I just have to find the energy to pin baste it so I can quilt it. This got me a little unstuck.

What really got me unstuck though, was this quilt.

I started this quilt two years ago. I made the top while living in California. My plan was to have it available to quilt when I moved home. I finally basted it, using thread basting, because I had thought to hand quilt with Perle Cotton and big stitches. Until two days ago, I stopped and started many times. I really wasn't into it and working on it was a struggle. You cannot do something you are not enjoying. 

I called on a friend of mine for help. I said I don't know what to do. She said she had only hand quilted one quilt in her life and that was one too many. That really struck me. I had hand quilted many quilts back in the day before I learned to quilt on my home machine. But hearing her say this freed me somehow.

I spent a couple of hours picking out all the hand quilting I had done. It was somehow satisfying to cut those stitches and pull the threads out.

I wanted, and needed a quick and easy finish. So I did an all-over large sort of stipple. Remember stipple quilting? It used to be so popular when we were all learning how to free motion quilt. I loved it!! The quilt is soft, and crinkly. It was enough.

I found a half yard cut from the same fabric line and did the binding. The entire process of quilting and binding took me about7-ish hours. I can't tell you how good it feels to have this one done! But I'm sure you know.

Have a great rest of your week.

My Missing U Quilt is Finished!

 

Remember this? It wasn't very long ago that I started this and now it's finished and on my bed, just in time for the cold weather we're supposed to get this week.

And here it is all quilted and crinkled from the dryer. I love so much how this turned out. There are so many of my favorite fabrics in this quilt. Some new, some old, some from clothing I made.

It's all quilted with wavy lines that I did with my walking foot on my Bernina. I was scared to start this hug beast, but I have to say it went better than I expected.

The top half was all done with pink Aurifil thread, 40 weight. The bottom half was done with a blue-green Aurifil 40 weight. This spot is where the two met on the quilt.

This is the quilting on the back. The light is making this look grey, but it is navy blue in reality. The thread on the back is Aurifil variegated pink to an orange red.

So, one more done! Talk to you soon.

Missing U Quilt top

 A number of years ago, when the book Sunday Morning Quilts came out, I was smitten. It was the best quilting book I have ever found for inspiration. I wanted to make every single quilt in the book, and I never feel that way. I started an on line bee, based on the book and for 3 years we helped each other make quilts from the book. Then, I eventually moved on to other quilts.

But I have never forgotten that book and those quilts. Fast forward to now and I pulled it from the shelf again. I wanted to make another scrap quilt. I am really trying to use up my fabric scraps and the fabrics I have on hand. And it is working. I do have lots less than I used to. So, enter the Missing U Quilt by Cheryl Arkison. A rainbow quilt, big enough for my queen sized bed, if I add a few more blocks to the one in the book. But I didn't end up with a rainbow.

I started off with my blue scrap bin. Then, I pulled out my teal scrap bin. It holds every shade of blue that is of a teal or aqua shade. I didn't really know the direction I was going with this, but I thought I would make these blue and teal blocks until I either figured it out, or ran out of fabric in these colors.

But then, it finally dawned on me...after I posted on IG about this, and Cheryl commented that yes, I should use all the colors of the sea. I wanted to make the ocean, with a sunrise.

And so I did. I was so into this quilt top, I made all 36 blocks in less than two weeks. It has been a long time since I have felt that way about a quilt. So much freedom to create from my scraps that I couldn't stop. The quilt top is 91 inches square. I have ordered a 108 inch wide backing for this one. My goal is to get it quilted and on the bed before winter. I have decided on a fairly simple quilting pattern. I will be back to show you when it's finished. Man I am loving this!

See you soon.

What's in a Color Name?

 Remember the 64 count box of Crayola Crayons with the sharpener on the back? I loved that box of crayons. I especially loved all the names of the colors. But this is where my question comes in: what is the difference in some of the names? Blue-green, green blue, turquoise, aqua, teal, aquamarine, sea-green, azure, cerulean. See what I mean? What is correct, and what is not?

I have two bins of scraps in my stash. One is labeled blue, the other is labeled teal. I have done my best to sort them in good light, so they are in the correct bins. On Sunday I took out the teal bin to begin a project I want to do. (Like I need another one?)

This is what I have made so far:

                                      More blue than green

                                       More green than blue

The rest of the blocks are similar to the first two, although the second one is definitely the greenest one.

I decided it didn't matter too much to me, what went with what, as long as I liked the end result.

These are all blocks for a new bed-size quilt for our bed. I wanted to really use my stash and as much scraps as I could, so when I went looking for inspiration, I landed on the Missing U quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. It is still one of my favorite books I ever bought. I have used it to inspire myself many times. The quilt in the book is a rainbow of colors, but I am not so sure any more that that is the direction I am headed. Time will tell.

I hope you have a lovely creative day.

Yellow Yellow Yellow

Yellow has long been my favorite color. It is sunny, warm and happy. I love all yellows. I have long had quite a stash of yellows, and when it starts to get low, I panic a wee bit and buy some more. I know this is my aesthetic, and not everyone's, but I try and incorporate it whenever I can.

When Cheryl and Amanda Jean released Sunday Morning Quilts, I learned about making slabs out of scraps. I loved the idea. I ran a flickr bee where we used the book as inspiration for three years. A lot of great quilts came out of that bee. But when that finished, I still hadn't had enough of slabs. I decided to start a yellow slab and see where it took me. That was 5-6 years ago and I am sorry to say that project has languished in a bin for quite some time. Yesterday I decided to pull it out and see how it made me feel.

 This is the big chunk I have done so far. So many of these fabrics are so old. Some ten or more years old. Some nearly 20 years old. I am so happy to see them again, like old friends. I remember buying them at my LQS, which has since closed. It melts my heart a bit.

Yesterday I made the strip on the left to add to the big chunk. I am thinking this will end up a comfortable lap size quilt.

 I still have quite a few strip pieces that I am debating exactly what to do with. I don't want just a bunch of long strips, so I may sub cut them after joining them together.

And I still have a bunch of smaller scraps as well. The goal is to use all of these up. I haven't yet decided if I will use any of my more recent yellow scraps, which all live in another different bin. Those scraps are more tame, as I began cutting my scraps into usable sizes a few years ago, so 2.5 inch strips, 2.5 inch squares, 3.5 inch squares and 5 inch squares. I did save a very few odd sizes, but not many. I did this with all my colors.

 As I was sewing and pressing seams, I saw this small strip of aqua colored Newspaper Butterflies left from a recent project, and decided to add it into the slab for just a wee bit of interest among all the yellow pieces.

And when I trimmed it to fit, I had this one small square, which ended up in a log cabin block that I love. This will also be incorporated into the slab, once I decide it has enough logs on it.

I am truly enjoying working on this once again. It is fresh and new for me and I am thinking of ways to quilt it, some machine, some hand embellishment. I am excited with this. I needed to find something to re-energize my sewing. I was in a funk. This may just have been the ticket out of the funk. Off to sew now. See you soon with an update and hopefully a finished top!

Ticker Tape Parade

When the Sunday Morning Quilts book came out, I poured over it again and again. I loved the Ticker Tape quilt. I decided to make some, smaller mini ticker tapes, in specific colorways. I made these over a couple of months, and then did nothing with them...until now.

 I used lots and lots of scraps. There's one in here from my very first quilt.

 This is the only one I ended up making in a different shape. Guess I didn't like the shape much?

 I love looking at all these small bits of old projects. I had some great fabrics.

 It's also a great reminder of all the projects that have gone before. I don't think I could do a large quilt of these.

This was my very first one. Yellow is my favorite color. My computer is rearranging them for me, this was supposed to be at the top.

 Ah, purple...most of these are pretty old scraps. I don't have much purple in my stash these days.

And this is what I finally did with all of them. I love seeing them up there every day. So get inspired and do something with all those scraps. This project is easy! Talk to you soon.

My Strip Easy Quilt Challenge

So Denise at Pieced Brain had this idea to host a challenge where we make things with strips, which, let's face it, we all have bunches of sitting in bins and bags, right? So, of course, I joined right up since I had just been making bee blocks with strips that very week. So, this is what I did:

 I took a bunch of strips and made 4 Scrapper's Delight blocks from the Sunday Morning Quilts book. Each block is 12 1/2 inches. And then I sewed them all together into a 24-ish inch square.

 I made a quilt sandwich out of it and sort of doodle swirly quilted it. Yes, that is a real technical quilting term.

 I backed it with a plain piece of scrap fabric that was a couple of inches smaller than my quilted square and I stitched them together, leaving an opening for stuffing.

 I stuffed it, stitched it closed and photographed it. And now it is on my couch and let me tell you, it is a great size and so comfortable too.

 I might be onto something here. My other couch pillows are 18-20 inches and not nearly this fluffy.

And to think it all started with a bunch of scrap strips and a challenge. Thanks, Denise. This turned out great! Be sure to check out the other challenge quilters.

Sunday Morning Bee Quilt...Done!

I have finally finished my Sunday Morning Quilts Bee Quilt.  Wow, that's a mouthful. Anyway, it is finished.  My month was April, so now that it's August, I am finally finished.  I chose the Gumdrops quilt from the book as my quilt. The one thing I did was to change the color scheme. I think it turned out quite nice. What do you think?

 The lovely Loulouthi backing. Even my hubby loves this fabric. He says it might be better than the front.

 I don't ever do this any more, but I pulled the backing around to the front to make up the binding and I have to say, I love it on this quilt. I even put my label tag on the front this time.

I had two beautiful strips that were made entirely of batiks. I couldn't make them work here, due to the length of the strips and I didn't want to just cut them off to fit.  So I found some batik in my stash and made this instead:

Don't you just love it? I do. And if you're wondering about the white patch in the top left of the quilt, I had to add to those rows to extend them and make them all the same size as the others. With bee quilts you have to finagle sometimes to make it all work out.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day.

Monday, Monday...

It's been kind of slow going over here lately. I've had 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there, and the occasional hour or two. Truth be told, I haven't really pushed too hard to get more time. Sometimes quilts just need to come along in their own sweet time and rushing makes for a less than satisfactory finish.  So here is an update on what I am up to.

 I finally started quilting my Gumdrops quilt from my Sunday Morning Quilts Bee.  The quilting isn't too difficult, really. My machine was having some hiccups though.

 I had to change the needle, the thread broke, the bobbin thread got changed out when I thought that was the issue. I dusted and oiled it and dusted it again. I thought I would never get the lines over the gumdrops done.

 But I did and now am on to the meandering stitching in the white background. So far, so good and no more problems with the machine.

 I decided to use this wonderful chunk of Loulouthi I had been saving (for Lord only knows what) and I didn't want to cut it up. I had made a pillow out of a piece of it awhile back. The size is absolutely perfect for this quilt.

 I am very happy with the way the stitching looks on the back. It doesn't really detract from the wonderful flowery print.

 I saw these on line somewhere and coveted them. When I was at the hardware store yesterday I saw them.  So I grabbed a 6 pack of them. They are a historic limited edition of the original Ball canning jars.

              I am in love with the colors and am looking for items to fill them with.

 This is also in my sewing room now. I finally got some sand and put it in my trifle bowl, which I never used, and put my seashells from my recent visit to the west coast in it.

 I added a few I already had. They were jus sitting in a can and a jar anyway.  I love it.

                                      Another shot of the Ball Jars.

 This is a quilt I have recently started for my youngest sister.  This is Laurie Wisbrun's Holiday Tweets. I wanted to use this because of the Cardinal's in these prints.  It is slow going to figure out the perfect layout. I have long wanted to do stars like this.

I am only using a few prints from the line. My sister is not a computer person, so I know she won't see this, but just in case, my other sister shouldn't show her. It's a surprise.  Hope you have a good day and a great week. I hope to have more progress to show you soon, as I have 3 more quilt tops done and waiting to be quilted.