Feeling Better

So, now that I am feeling better, my knee is still recovering though, I can sit at my machine and sew a little. So this is what got sewn this week.

I was able to sew up the blocks for April's installation of the Pas de Deux quilt that I am making along with Rachel Hauser of Stitched in Color. I had cut all the pieces out last week before I hurt my knee, so, the sewing went pretty quickly.

 And I was able to sew up last week's and this week's blocks for the Perfect Pineapple QAL that I am doing with Amber from Gigi's Thimble. This one is a block a week for 36 weeks and now we are half way there.

Last weekend I made carrot cupcakes for Easter with the grandchildren. This is a recipe from King Arthur Flour and the stuff on top is candied walnuts which turned out great. The recipe is their Spicy Carrot Snacking cake, which also has directions for the cupcakes. So good!

Then, just because I felt like it, and also because there was a need, I made some thread catchers. This is a tiny one to actually hold chalk for a chalkbord. Thimble is there for scale.

This is a pattern I bought years ago from Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts. I have mad a bunch over ther years for lots of folks. My oldest daughter has taken up stitchery and needed one to crry around with her as she stitches all over the house. I had given her one of mine, but the time has come to make her one.

This one with the Rapunzel fabric is for my granddaughter. She needs one because she will take her mom's if she doesn't have one of her own. And I have never been able to figure out what to do with this cute fabric.

This one is for my daughter. I thought she would like the mustard yellow and the bright pop of pink.

This one is for me. I haven't had a new one in years, and I do love this fabric. Besides, I'm not taking the one of mine that I gave her back, so this counts as a replacement. I love these little thread catchers. I have become so used to them being wherever I need them. Have a great weekend everyone.

36 Patch Progress

Making progress on my 36 patch quilt. All 36 blocks are now finished. Yipee!!

These are the last 5 blocks I made for the quilt. I am so happy that they are done. I am hoping to start putting them together this week.

I started laying them out on the bed to figure out my arrangement. I have trouble getting a picture of the whole bed with my phone, but when it is all put together, I will get a better picture to show you.
Have a great day y'all.

36 Patch Progress

So much going on here. This Saturday I am going to do my first ever craft fair. I am so excited for this. I have been making bags and pouches and other small goodies to sell. I am hoping this will be a way to make a bit of money to restock my sewing needs.

I am doing a bunch of other sewing as well. I am slowly amassing 36 patch blocks for my next quilt. I have long wanted to make a second one of these, after doing a quilt along with Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts about 8 years ago now. This time, I am doing blocks that are made of my most favorite fabrics and designers. But only what is in my stash.

Amy Butler

 Sarah Jane

 Rae Hoekstra

Farm Fresh





















Bonnie and Camille

Now I have 17 of the 36 blocks finished. Back to the stash to find some more pairs to cut and sew.
I have finished and mailed my Hands 2 Help quilts for Jack's Basket yesterday so that project is done. I will be sharing those quilts with you soon.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a couple of roses out of my sister's garden. I will talk to  you soon.

Firefly Finish

I bought the pattern for the firefly quilt this summer. Only the second ever solids quilt I've made, but oh so striking. I just couldn't resist. You know, we don't have fireflies here in California like we did in the midwest and back east. I never knew that before I moved here.

 Last weekend was all pin basting. I wanted to get that part done because crawling around on the floor is the toughest part for me anymore.

I figured once that was done I could take my time with the quilting. But seriously, this went so quickly. I began on Saturday and I think it was done on Tuesday.

Here is the finished quilt. All crinkly from the dryer, this will be going to my oldest grandson, V. At age 12 I am thrilled he still wants a new quilt for his bed. I know enough about pre-teens to know that may not always be the case.

 I quilted with a large stipple and a few loops here and there. I also added random asterix here and there to simulate the blinking of the fireflies. I used a bright lime green Isacord thread for the quilting.

The backing is a blue cross weave I got from Pineapple Fabrics. It was a three yard cut of 108 inch backing that I used on another quilt, and had just enough to piece together the backing for this one.

And of course, one of my new labels from Dutch Label Shop to finish it off. It is now winging it's way across the US to V. I can't wait until he gets it.

One of my many "next" projects is another 36 patch quilt. I made one about 7-8 years ago with Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts and I still love it so much. I have always wanted to make another one, so I started, with no deadline in mind. I am going to use all my most favorite fabrics for this one, instead of scraps. I have already chosen some Heather Ross and some Sweetwater to begin. Because one cannot have enough in progress projects, right?
Happy weekend friends.

Kingfisher Quilt

So, finally, my Kingfisher quilt is finished. Totally finished, washed, dried and spread out on my bed where I can just stare at it.

 Yesterday I finished the quilting of it. I quilted it on my Bernina 440 QE. I used my walking foot and quilted along either side of the seams between the diamonds, and then I quilted 3 lines in each angled direction through the center of each hexagon. I messed up in the second row I was doing and spaced the lines too far apart. Rather than pick out all the stitches, I incorporated that into the design and did wider lines in every other row.

And then I bound it. I used the umbrella print from the Charleston line that I had used for the borders. I wanted a dark blue, and then I remembered I had this print and plenty of it for a change. So that's what I used and I am pretty happy with it.

 Here it is, all crinkly from the dryer. I love the amount of crinkle it got. Not too much in the center, but plenty around the border.

 I set my machine to do a wavy zigzag line for the borders. Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts showed this on one of her quilts one time, and I loved it. I have used it a couple of times. This is the first time I've used it like this, but I love the look of the border.

 Not all the stitching is perfectly centered, because when I appliqued the hexie flowers onto the diamonds, I just eyeballed it. Probably should have measured it to make sure, but, oh well.

 I had two chunks of red fabric in my backing pile. Both were two yards, so I chose the stripes for the biggest part and used half of the width of the circles for the rest. I think it worked out great.

And there we have it, all done and labeled. Have a great Labor Day weekend. Talk to you soon.

New Makes

I do sometimes make other stuff, besides quilts. I like to share them too. I have now made enough different kinds of bags and pouches that I feel like I have the basics down. That said, I decided when I needed a specific bag for a specific use, I decided to make it up on my own, using the knowledge I gained from using patterns others had written. I noticed a big improvement from the last time I tried this.

And this bag was the result of all that. I knew how to make the base of the bag, and quilt it. I knew how to make the lining and insert it. I knew that I had to attach the handles before adding the lining and sewing the two sides together. I struggled a little with putting the flap on, but only because of the bulk of the whole thing. That is the one thing that keeps me from making too many bags. The bulk is so hard to sew. But I am very pleased with how this one turned out.

In an effort to tame all my 1" strings finally, I made the balls of cloth "yarn" and crocheted this little baby. It's a little misshapen. I was going for oval, but still I love it. I got the directions at Crazy Mom Quilts. Amanda Jean knits and crochets these great rag rugs. I have done two previous rugs, which are holding up quite well. Those were rectangles. This was my first attempt at an oval. I just needed a small one on my side of the bed. I started with red, then low volume, mostly white and cream, then all the pink I had. I have decided I like separating the colors like that, instead of doing a mish mash of colors. Blues and greys and black and white will be my next one for my husband's side of the bed. That should use up almost all my strips! Yay!

The last thing I am working on is the Kingfisher Stitch Along quilt. I have the hexie flowers done and they are appliqued onto the diamonds. The next step will be to attach the rows to one another and then the borders. I have gone quite quickly so far, but the process will be slowing down now. I am letting the quilt talk to me about what it needs for border fabric.

One of the borders has EPP triangles on it. I still need to make those, but until the border is figured out, I don't know what fabric or fabrics to use for them. As I said, I am letting the quilt lead me at this point. This has been a very enjoyable process so far, since I never thought I would ever want to learn EPP.
Talk to you soon.

She Said No More Quilts

My oldest daughter told me awhile back that she needed no more quilts. Now, that's just crazy talk, I thought. But for awhile, I made her and her family no quilts. I sewed clothing instead and I did enjoy that a lot. But then, one day I saw this on line and I was a goner.

This is Front Yard by Sandra Clemons for Michael Miller. Now there was a bundle on sale and so I bought it, along with a bit of extra yardage of two prints, knowing that this was destined to be a quilt for Miss N. She is the youngest grand baby and only has a few baby quilts to her name as well as one bed size quilt. And she is a purple girl too.

I wasn't sure what to make exactly, but I knew I would fussy cut these birds for the center of the blocks. Then, Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew shared a pattern for no pointed stars and I knew that was the one. This is such an easy quilt block to make. I decided to make 30 blocks originally, but then found I didn't have quite enough fabric for 30, so 5 x 5 blocks it was for a total of 25.

This is a shot of most of the blocks. My design wall isn't quite wide enough to fit them all. I just put them up there as I went, and this is not the final arrangement, but you get the idea. I knew I wanted to add sashing of some sort, but what?

 In an effort not to waste the scraps, which I often just toss in the trash, I sewed all of the cut HSTs that were trimmed away. This went pretty quickly, despite the fact that there were, 200 pairs of them. Chain piecing is your friend here.

 Then I pressed all the seams open, to reduce the bulk in them since they were so small.

And of course I had to clip off all the little flags that were hanging off at the opposite corners. So happy this part is behind me now.

 Now I have begun sewing them together in strips like the orange one above. My plan is to use them as sashing between the blocks. Before I do that, I need to get all the blocks squared up at 12.5 inches and get all my sashing strips sewn together.

This is approximately how it will look. I have a dark grey that I will use for the corner pieces in between the sashing strips. I don't think I have enough to go around the outside edge of the blocks, so that will be another adventure to figure out, once I get to that point. The goal is to get this done ad quilted by spring break when I go to visit so I can take it with me and give it to her.

Have a great weekend and I will see you back here soon. Linking up with Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts. Finishing 25 blocks and 200 HSTs qualifies as a finish in my book.

Pin Cushions Are Contageous

I have been following Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts for a bunch of years now and I have to say, every time she posts pictures of more pin cushions, I just want to make some. So now I have.  It is the perfect thing for when you want to sew something but have little time. So here are some I made last week.

 This one I made and showed last week from a leftover block from the Penny Sampler Quilt. But little did I know it would only be the first.

 Then I saw these cute scraps and I knew that they were the very last of my favorite fabric from Sunkissed by Sweetwater. Too tiny for anything else.

 And these, for the same reason and to make something with tiny triangles which is always fun.

 Then, I found the 4 tiny blocks I made last spring. The block finishes at 2 inches square and the whole point was to work on your precision piecing skills. I didn't make them with a plan in mind, but here they are. This is the first one.

                    And a little Lizzy House on the back.

 A tiny rolling stone block here and I used wider borders to make it a bit bigger. This one is a favorite. I love that yellow butterfly print. It's Heather Ross.

I even used it on the back and tried to get the selvedge in the picture. So bright and pretty.

 Then, there's this one. I kinda messed up adding the strips to make it bigger. I didn't want white next to white, but my brain had checked out I guess.

This is my favorite one. I love the tiny churn dash block. I don't know what else you could do with these if not pin cushions, but I do love these a lot.

So, here is my "collection" of pin cushions. They are addictive to make and I know I will make more. I will probably have to find a way to give them away or I might get over run with them. I like having several, but I already have 4-5 in use. Any suggestions?
Talk to you soon.