July 2022

July was so stinking HOT! I work in the yarden in the very early morning (from about 6-8 am) and then come indoors for a shower. The rest of the morning is spent doing chores/errands. The afternoon is spent in the cool basement sewing room working on a quilt top. Then the evening is when I knit/crochet because it is a bit mindless and a good time to brain dump and slow down.

I've been working on a quilt named "A New Slant on Snowflakes" by Tina Curran. The pattern is from an Etsy shop. I'll show it when I get the top pieced.

Project Linus Blankets

I go to Project Linus meetings and pick up yarn for blankets. Most of the yarn is donated so there isn't a lot of one yarn which makes a person very creative to be able to get a decent sized blanket. It is a challenge.

Did I show this? It's Half Double Crochet Baby Blanket. All the yarn was 'sparkly'. Unfortunately the mylar in the white yarn was strange so I pulled it all out before I started to crochet.

 

And the Garter Stitch Baby Blanket. This one is knit from corner to corner and has a drape that is very nice.

Fast and Easy Baby Blanket is crocheted. I started with the green and just crocheted until it was gone. Then I divided a partial skein of white into 2 balls. I weigh the yarn on my kitchen scale and then wind it off into another ball until I have 2 of equal weights.

March 2022

It's been a busy month for some odd reason. I've been knitting this for the last 6 months and just finished putting it together. It can be used as a ruana (shawl) or a lap robe.

When I finished the ruana, I started on some hats. Two 100 gram skeins of each color resulted in two hats.

I was organizing my fabric stash and found a boat load of Laurel Burch fabric. So I made quilts for my great-nieces who are 7, 9 and 14.

Every 7 year old girl likes mermaids, it seems.

 

A 14 year old has a little more refined tastes.

 And purple for the 9 year old.

December 2021

This was a Christmas gift for my most recent Grandson. It was an pattern from Annie's Crafting. The stars were so easy to do since they were wonky points. The backing is a cute blue and green polka dot fabric. I gave a knitted blanket to him at birth, but up until now he didn't have a quilt. Now he does.

Hunny and I spent the morning of December 3 in the garage revamping this wreath. We deconstructed it and then added on some new garland. The lights went back on and then all the ornaments. The one thing I had a problem with was the bow. I could not find one to replace it and it needed replacing! All the Colorado sun beating on it for years turned the bow orange along with several of the 'red' ornaments. Our solution was to spray paint the bow with red paint. 

I've been sewing on a Christmas quilt for myself called Swell Christmas. A friend and I have been doing an in-home sew along retreat. Both of us have been making this quilt. I've gotten the top done, but I doubt that any quilting will happen on it until the first of the year. The instructions had you make 20# of log cabin blocks and then applique Santa on top. There was show through so I cut out the blocks behind Santa. This resulted in more blocks in the leftover pile so I made another quilt that is roughly 42"x56". And with still more leftover fabric so I made a baking for that second quilt.

This was a jelly roll quilt that I made from Jeep fabric!

And then because it was Christmas time I quilted a Halloween quilt.

I hope you have a Happy New Year!

October 2021

 

This is a very busy photo but what you see is a culmination of my summer: 13 quilts ready to quilt. I've said before that I have a sit-down quilting machine. Because of that, I have to baste the quilts with pins. After basting all these quilts I only have 14 free basting pins! 

So #14 of the quilts is folded up and awaiting basting. When I get a couple of these quilted I'll use the pins for that quilt. The #14 quilt is a Christmas gift so it is important to get it done.

Playing with Fabric & Thread

This is just a quick glimpse of what's been under my quilting needle for the past several weeks, months.

Pebble Practice

I've been working on the Miranda Day Bag by Lazy Girl Designs. I needed to quilt the outside of the bag and had this gorgeous batik fabric. See it there in the top of the photo? This step only has 2 layers: the fabric and the batting. I absolutely COULD NOT see where I was going or where I had been on that fabric. So I turned the sandwich upside down and quilted from the batting side. Since you can't see the quilting on the fabric side, I took this opportunity to practice my pebbles in between the paisleys.

I made this one to work on that one

I made this brightly patterned pinwheel quilt with it's alternating applique posy blocks just so I could practice my quilting on applique.

Yes, those are yo-yos in the center of the posies. I wanted something to use to practice the quilting around applique before I went on to this lovely block of the month quilt. When I get this finished, I'll tell you all the trials and tribulations of this quilt.

Pinwheel Quilt

A recent spate of pinwheel quilting has resulted in this child's quilt. I used an older charm pack that I found in the stash and made half square triangles. After putting sashing in between the blocks, it turned into a decent size: approximately 38x38".

Here is a close up of the quilting. I used the seam line of the HST as the spine of the feather for the white side and then just did a curved line in the colored side. Ribbon candy was quilted in the sashing and the border was done with S-curves (or rope). I love how this turned out

Squares

The printed squares in this baby quilt were given to me in the form of scraps at a retreat I attended several years ago. I cut them down into 2.5" squares and put them away.

Recently, I dug them out and by combining them with white-on-white 2.5" squares and some 2.5" WOW strips, I came up with this quilt.

The quilting is easy. I used the quilt's rows and did some hearts. It took a bit of practice on paper before I could get the hearts because they needed to be quilted from the right edge of the heart to the left edge before moving on to the next heart. When I draw a heart, I go from left to right, so quilting these like this was backwards from how I draw them.

When it came time for the borders, I felt more hearts would be too many. And so I opted for straight line stitching, which in this case was done free hand. After all, it was only 2.5" that I had to travel at a time and I was too lazy to do ruler work.

Halted progress

I had to stop the quilting progress on this little quilt. This is another donation quilt using up all the pre-cut 2.5" WOW squares from the scrap bin plus all the 2.5" squares I saved from someone's trash bin at a quilting retreat several years ago. I've gotten the center portion quilted with this:

And the two outer borders are ditch stitched, but then I came to a screeching halt. I realized that even though I wanted to do ribbon candy quilting in that inner border, I had never, as in NEVER, done ribbon candy. Time to practice. I have found that lined notebook paper is the perfect thing to prqactice with since I don't have to drawn the line.

What are you working on? It's a Linky Tuesday post!

A Tuesday Tute, sort of.

I've been doing a lot of quilting lately. I guess you've noticed. A while ago, maybe several years, I had a baby quilt quilted by a long arm quilter. I can't remember if it was a computer generated pattern or a pantograph, but I loved both the quilt and the quilting, so I kept it. I am known for giving away my quilts, so this is surprising.

Now that I have my own machine, a Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen, I am glad I kept this little quilt. I've been practicing this pattern and I like the way it looks when done free motion. It gives it a bit more of the human touch. Don't you agree?

Quilting without a Stitch Regulator

The kitchen is to a point where I can relax just a bit. There are still things to do: put up the blinds, install handles on the cupboards, make dividers for some of the drawers, install the hood/microwave over the stove and change out all the old plug-ins.

This past weekend I ended up in the sewing room and quilted a small pin basted charity quilt. This is just one piece of fabric by Marcus Brothers and a blue fleece on the back.

When I bought my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen sit-down quilting machine, I wondered if I needed to purchase a stitch regulator. I realized that I had been quilting without one on my domestic sewing machine all along, so why was I considered getting one now? Look at those beautiful stitches! And without a stitch regulator.

Shopping the Stash

I quilted yesterday. Yes, indeed. This top has been basted for a while and it was time to get it quilted. I used a free motion quilting motif I found on Amy Johnson's youtube channel as an all-over for the middle of this quilt. There are two borders left to quilt and I will show those when I get them finished. The two daisy prints are vintage Bill Blass fabrics from the 1990s I believe, but don't they look great with that gold? Shopping the stash, yeah!

Do you want more inspiration? Please visit Judy at Patchwork Times for more Design Wall Monday.

I am also linking up with Amy's Free Motion Quilting Adventures Free Motion Monday.

Donation Quilts

This is a donation quilt that I finally finished! All those black and white checks made my eyes twitch. The pattern is from Mary Quilts called Quick Strippie. It really is a quick quilt to make. This was the first time I used this tutorial for machine binding with a flat fell foot for my sewing machine. Let's just say, that I need practice. Quilted with a wishbone pattern on my HQS16 using Signature thread.

This was a panel that I used for a simple allover clam shell quilting design. I used a half circle ruler to do the clam shell and found out that my HQS16 was sitting about 1/4" higher than the surrounding table. This made for some jerky curves. I have since fixed the problem by removing the rubber feet on the machine and installing some silicone bumpers to bring it to the right height. I used a Guterman size 40 quilting thread which was probably a mistake because it overpowers the sweet design on the panel.But done is done and the quilting practice is worth it because even though the curves aren't smooth, the stitches themselves are fairly consistent.

Both of these quilts are donation quilts and will go to deserving homes.

Update: The blue panel uses a poly batting. That is why it is so puffy looking.

 Here you can see more design walls.

Quilt #2

This is the second quilt I have quilted on my Handi Quilter Sweet 16. Busy front, especially that black and white checkerboard fabric, but it was just so perfect for all the cars, don't you think?

Busy back but busy-ness is a good thing when it comes to learning machine quilting.I have to learn how to make my corners sharper when it comes to doing geometric shapes.

Top and bobbin thread: 40wt Signature

How I spent my day

also know as the frog stitch: rip it, rip it, rip it.

I became very familiar with my favorite seam ripper today. Have you ever used this style? I love this as it has a replaceable blade but watch out 'cause it is very, very sharp.

What was I working on? Well, I had this brilliant idea to just quilt around the design on the backing of a quilt. It would have worked too, on any other fabric than this one. ;) After one pass, I turned it over and that's when I realized that the design was just too strange to look nice.

And so, Jack the ripper became my friend today.

Design Wall Monday, July 1, 2013

It's been a long time since I've been able to participate in DWM. The Baltimore Christmas is a finished top and is hanging with other tops while I work on this:

What is this, you ask? Practice sandwiches. I purchased a used HQ Sweet Sixteen and have been practicing ever since mid-June. The latest is on the right. Not too bad, if I say so.

I got a bit bored with the practice, so I put a baby quilt together using a panel on the top and purposely chose a solid color for the back so I could see what was happening.

Oh, look. Really good stitches. Nice and uniform.

Not good is the tuck. There are more than one. Ugh. I know what happened. It was my basting, I did not have the backing taut enough for pin basting. I should have taken it all out, but I wanted to see what would happen if I didn't. Is this going to compound itself?

For other design walls, visit Judy L at Patchwork Times.

Dissappointed

I just got a quilt back from a long arm quilter and I am disappointed in it, to say the least. This was the Block of the Month in 2010 from The Quilt Show. This quilter only did half the job! I was wondering why it was so cheap and now I know.

Do you see what DIDN'T happen? The appliques were not ditch quilted. In fact, the swags needed a bit of quilting inside of them. I love what she did in the negative spaces but she fell short on the others.

It is fixable and I am going to do it myself on my DMS. I am saddened about this and I even discussed what I wanted for this quilt, but she apparently didn't listen very well. I doubt that I will be using this quilter again.

Quilting Results

So I finally got around to trying the free motion quilting on the Singer 66 treadle sewing machine. I had a this little piece that was already drawn (with black pen!) and sandwiched and I thought it would be perfect for this test.

I put the plate and foot on the machine and started quilting. First off I realized that it was a bit 'sticky' and I should have put down my Supreme Slider before starting. And I should have worn quilter's gloves too, just to make it a bit easier.

It looks okay on the front (white side) but on the back side (black) you can see that there is a major tension problem on the flower. The batting bearded also. Once I removed the plate and foot I did a couple of rows of straight stitching. Beautiful. Free motion quilting on the treadle will take practice, practice, practice.

I think I'll stick to the Bernina for FMQ and use the treadle for straight line quilting.

* Just a reminder that all photos are clickable.

Quilting on a treadle machine

I am experimenting with my treadle sewing machine. This is just the awesome quilting from that machine. Look at how straight and perfect those stitches are! There are the requisite three layers that were spray basted. Remember the questions from the last post? This is the small quilt I was wondering about. Wonder no more, for I have quilted it and you can see that I have started the over-embroidery.

Next up for experimentation is free motion quilting on the treadle. My treadle has the darning foot and accompanying plate so I figured, "Why not?"

I'll keep you posted.