A Christmas Wish

This is the other Focus Quilt that I committed to finish in Finn's New Year's Eve UFO challenge. Simply quilted with diagonal crosshatching using a walking foot on the sewing machine, it measures 37x15".

The embroidered blocks were stitched at bee over the course of 2010 as the blocks were released from Gail Pan Designs: A Christmas Wish BOM. Another wall hanging was not needed around Casa del Quilter, but a runner would be nice under the class on the coffee table so I commenced designing an additional block because Gail's only contained nine blocks. You can find the pattern on my Freebies Page.

Once the embroidery was completed, I tried to match up fabric from the stash to frame the stitchery blocks. Nothing in the stash was quite right. Off to the LQS* and as it turned out, Thimbleberries fabric was the perfect match and so two FQ** came home with me. But I forgot about something -- the binding. Once it was backed, basted and quilted I realized I had to go shopping again for MORE Thimbleberries. O the horror! So another FQ came home with me and I was able to get enough binding out of that one 18"x21" piece of fabric to complete this table runner.

Whew! Finished just in the nick of time.

*FQ: fat quarter
**LQS: local quilt shop

Wordless Wednesday - Quick Fix

Trick or Treat!

Did that get your attention? One project down and one to go.

Remember when I posted about Finn's New Year's Eve UFO Challenge? Thinking it was doable, I committed to finishing two projects. This is the larger of the two projects, coming in at 60"x60". It is my first real attempt at liberated piecing in the form of the words.

The last year was spent working on those stitched blocks every other Friday at bee and they are obviously different sizes. I used twisted frames to bring them all up to a consistent size. One block got twisted in the other direction, but I left it alone. I made one too many blocks so the extra one was turned into a label for the back.

Some of the designs came from various internet sites, some were clipart, and some were my designs. To see a full version of the blocks (and to be able to read them) click on the corresponding links below the photo mosaic.

1. Halloween001-th, 2. Halloween0009-th, 3. Halloween0003-th, 

  4. Halloween0004-th, 5. Halloween0002-th, 6. Halloween0005-th, 

7. Halloween0006-th, 8. Halloween0007-th, 9. Halloween0008-th

Ducks Unlimited

Have you ever had something in your fabric stash that was so old you can not even remember purchasing it? That is the way it was with a fabric panel of preprinted duck blocks. I first used some of the panels in 1991. And just to show you, I dug out my scrapbook and scanned the page. Just look at those points on the flying geese blocks! The photo should be clickable so you can somewhat see the details in the wall hanging and be able to read the text.

Okay. Fast forward to last week. On Monday, I dropped two quilt tops off at my long arm quilter and said that they did not need to be ready by Christmas. On Thursday I got a call saying that both quilts were ready to pick up. Already? Wow!

The remaining preprinted duck blocks and two alternating blocks created this nice sized quilt of 54x72”. Using two colorways of the same fabric worked quite well for the alternating blocks and a solid blue Kona cotton made up the backing. My long arm quilter recommended the cattail panto that can been seen in the close up.

I am really, really pleased with this quilt and it will be very hard to give it away. O, and the title of this post? A play on words; the first quilt was 'Limited Ducks' so the second quilt is 'Ducks Unlimited'. *grin*

Christmas Wishes

Wordless Wednesday - Tea and Cookies

Hugs & Kisses November: Crossed Roses

How about another block? Sorry about the photo quality, but it IS the shortest day of the year and I had to shoot this photo with two different types of artificial light.

Hugs & Kisses October: The Whig Rose Wreath

I finally finished another of these blocks for the Hugs and Kisses Block of the Month. May I present October's block, The Whig Rose Wreath? This one took me forever to do! Only two more to go; o and the cornerstones and the border are all appliqued too.

Wordless Wednesday - Barberry

UFO Challenges

Have you seen the mentions of UFO challenges lately? Here are two that I’ve come across:

• UFO Challenge 2011
  JudyL of Patchwork Times is issuing a 12 month challenge to finish one UFO per month
• PhD Challenge
  Myra’s PHD (project half done) Challenge is for 6 months and you commit to a certain # of projects.

I keep a spreadsheet online of the quilts I’ve finished, the UFOs and the haven’t started projects. I know, I know – it is a bit OCD but I have tons of information at the touch of a keyboard. I accessed my spreadsheet just to see what I have in the UFO category; I am terming my UFOs as a project that has actually been started in some fashion.

1. A Christmas Wish – only needs quilting and binding
2. Echinacea – appliqué
3. She Wants to DANCE! – appliqué
4. Hugs and Kisses – appliqué
5. Iris Garden – appliqué
6. Shore Birds -- appliqué
7. Faithful Circle – hand piecing
8. Double 4-Patch – piecing
9. Embroidered 30’s flower blocks– piecing
10. X-stitch Calendar blocks – piecing

Do you see what I see in that list? A lot of long-term projects: #2 - #7 to be exact. Not something that could be completed in a month’s time, no matter how much I wish it so. I may commit to the PhD Challenge for #8, #9, and #10 since all three are machine piecing and I can then send them to a long arm quilter.

Did you notice that #1 was not mentioned? That is because it is part of the New Year’s Eve UFO Challenge. Hopefully, it will be quilted this coming weekend.

Hello?

Did you miss me? I just got super busy with life lately.

For the first time in several weeks, I was able to get into the sewing room today. I am feeling guilty that I signed up for finishing two UFOs in Finn’s New Year’s Eve challenge and I haven’t gotten either one done. So to that end, I made a bit of time today to stitch a backing together for the Halloween quilt from this post. Then I made the decision that this quilt is going to a long arm quilter. If it gets finished by New Year’s Eve I will be extremely happy! The other one is going under the quilting needle on Friday.

I tracked down the one bad bulb in a string of Christmas lights that was making half of the string inoperable. Then I rewound the string around the large (and I mean large) wreath and made a large (and I mean large) red velvet bow for the wreath. Then it went back onto the outside of the house.

The Christmas cards have been made; the graphic designer in me just can’t use purchased cards. Then they were signed, notes written, sealed, stamped and mailed. Whew!

I have gotten the October block appliqued for the Hugs and Kisses BOM and am working on the November. Photo forthcoming.

Socks are being knit for gifting.

My, I’m tired just reading this list.

Wordless Wednesday - 1930s Flower

Faithful Circle

Every two weeks I meet with like-minded ladies in the church hall to work on UFO projects. I mainly do handwork projects because I'm currently not into schlepping the sewing machine and miscellaneous stuff back and forth. As a further consideration, the lighting in the hall is poor and because of this, hand applique is out of the equation. In the past knitting and embroidery have been the projects of choice, alternating weeks of each so as not to get bored with the project. The embroidered blocks in the Hallowe'en quilt are finished, and knitting has been the hand work project for the last several meetings.

Now, awhile back I did a bit of stunt knitting for Libby, and as a thank you, she sent me this wonderful stack of 1930s reproduction FQ. It has been sitting on the cutting table teasing me, begging to be used. In a Eureka! moment, I remembered a pattern I had saved from an old booklet; a pattern called Faithful Circle that involves rectangles, equilateral triangles and hexagons.

Knowing that this will be a hand work project, conversations with myself about how to proceed with this pattern have abounded. The pattern page (yes, there is only one) has the three aforementioned pieces as templates. And if one were to follow the size recommendations, the quilt would be about 90x109!! Gigantic. Huge.

English paper piecing is the path I am going to take to piece this quilt. Looking online, I found a source for the needed equilateral triangles. But instead of 1.75" on a side the choice was 1.5" or 2". The smaller size was placed into the shopping cart and buttons were pushed to take advantage of the free shipping on Black Friday.

The template hexagon was now too big and needed to be redrafted in the new size. I redrafted the hexagon to the needed size: 2.67" per side and made one template. Easy peasy, lemon squeasy. I traced around the resulting template onto index card stock, two per page (or in the illustration lingo: two up) and spent ensuing evenings cutting out largish hexagons. How many you may ask? over 100. O my kingdom for a die cutter!

Next came the thousands of rectangles. You know what helped? The June Taylor Shape Cut. Yes, I actually used quilting tools for this part of the project. Thirty-three sheets of card stock later, the needed quantity of rectangles were cut with a minimum of fuss.

Next came cutting into the fabric. Cute little pieces of fabric. The FQ stack has been cut into thousands of 1.5x2" rectangles. I added some other 30s repro fabric that just happened to be laying around the sewing room. Once again, the Shape Cut made quick work of cutting the rectangles.  I have a niggly feeling that I will be adding to these fabrics. As I was cutting, I realized that there was no purple. No purple? I need to remedy that problem.

Cleaning out the kitchen cupboards resulted in a to-go box of paper and fabric shapes to make a quilt called Faithful Circle. Definitely a long term project.

Wordless Wednesday - Artisan Breads