It's March!

Hello friends.

Wow did we have an exciting month! We hardly get any snow and then kablamo! it all comes in one storm. 

We got 29.6" of snow in one weekend! It isn't the first time something like this has happened, but it has been a long time. Last one was in 2013.

I finished several 3 yard baby/child quilts this month. Want to see?

I just noticed that the first 2 photos were taken before the quilts were quilted. I'll have to update them since I still have the quilts. The 3rd quilt with the whales has already been gifted and mom-to-be was happy.

My latest quilt is hanging on the display wall in my living room. This was a kit and the pattern is call Mykonos Marble. It does remind one of a tile floor in Greece, doesn't it?

 

 

This is the quilting diagram I drew up for the center of the quilt. Then I quilted a series of borders. I broke the outer border into 3 smaller ones so there are 6 borders in total.

And now I'm in quarantine until I can get a COVID-19 test. I was exposed on Saturday, March 27 and it is recommended to wait 7 days to get tested. Even though I've gotten both vaccines I want to know that I'm clear. I'll keep you in the know.

Stay safe, my friends.

Quiet Christmas and New Year's Eve 2020

 

It's been quiet around here. The Husband and I are still hunkered down and only going to the grocery store, the library and doing the occasional curbside restaurant pickup. I don't know about you but I'm running out of innovative things to cook that The Husband will eat. I've started baking bread again because it gives me something to do.

You would think a quilter would have a lot to do and, yes, I have. I have made and finished four Project Linus quilts and six Quilts of Valor quilts since March. There are two more smallish quilts to quilt and a third ready to baste. I think I'm bored and I want to go outside. But outside is cold, slick and windy. Not a place for me right now.

I now have five more quilts to quilt. Five! I've been pulling fabrics from the shelves and making simple quilts to use for quilting practice. Except for the Delectable Mountains quilt; that one is a king sized quilt of many seams. It will be heavy. I finally figured out what I'm going to quilt on it.It's a very large meander with squiggles on each side of the line.  Since I have a sit down quilting machine a king size quilt is do-able but the quilting needs to be fairly simple since I have to push the mass of the quilt around. 

I will wish you all a quiet and healthy New Year.

Quilts of Valor

I spent the summer months sewing quilt tops.Specifically for Quilts of Valor. There are certain guidelines that need to be followed, one being size. The quilt needs to fall within a size range and all of these are between 55" wide and 80" long. My goal was to use up the panels that I had accumulated. I not only sewed up the tops but in a couple of instances pieced the backings. All six quilts were quilted on my mid-arm quilting machine.

This first quilt was made with fabric I found at a thrift store. I cut it into blocks and added borders to bring it to size. It is 60"x80"

I had two of the same panels so I wanted to make the quilts a bit different to each other. You can see that I also had quite a bit of the same light fabric with the small stars on it so I used it in both quilts. Yes, that braid is pieced and not a pre-printed fabric. These two quilts measure 56x67"

This quilt uses quite a lot of the same fabric line from Stonehenge. It measures 55x67"

Here's another one that I used up the remaining fabric from the previous quilt.

 The center of this quilt was a fabric panel and some matching fabric that was given to me. The rest was pulled from my fabric stash. Lots of plaids in this one

July 2018

One would think that it is too hot to knit or quilt, but I have a finished object in both categories.

My grandson is three months old and I finally got his quilt finished. I had a bit of fun with this quilt. The pattern had the bubbles as applique, but I have always wanted to try piecing circles so I did! It is easy peasy lemony squeezy. I also played a bit with the quilting. I quilted bubbles in the bubbles, sand at the bottom of the quilt hides a starfish and a snail. There is also a bit of kelp.

 My best friend knitted the little boy Knubbelchen but couldn't finish the girl because of a pinched nerve. Since these were for my grandson, I finished the knitting. Aren't they adorable? This is a Ravelry patter, BTW.

First Finishes of 2016!

I have two finishes! The first ones of the new year.

This first quilt is a Quilt of Valor. Yes, I know, it isn't the Red/White/Blue color combo, but the size is right.

The diamond strips came out of the parts department. They were intended to be borders on another quilt, but it just didn't work. The backing is a black Kona cotton that I discharged dyed so it wouldn't be a solid and would therefore help to hide the quilting stitches.

This next one is a gift but I'm not telling who the recipient is just in case that person reads my blog.

This pattern is the first published BQ pattern. I love to use it when I have a large print fabric that would be lost in smaller blocks.

I did an all over quilting in the center, ditch stitched on each side of that narrow green border and then did a ribbon candy FMQ in the black border. I love this quilt and I hope the recipient does also.

August 2015 Finishes

The colors look strange in these photos, too saturated, so I reset my camera to factory defaults. I'm not going to reshoot these so you will have to live with it.

These are the Spiral Eyelet socks from the last post. I can't believe it took me all month to make these. According to my Ravelry account, I started these on August 3 and finished on August 24. This is a pattern that you definitely have to pay attention to when knitting.

I found a panel at one of my local quilt stores called "Buttons and Blooms" so I bought two of them. The original panel can be seen at the bottom of the quilt. I cut the other one to make a mirror image, added a coordinating fabric and Boom! a child's quilt resulted.

I was on a role with some preprinted quilty type fabrics. This one is log cabins. I backed it with fleece and then quilted it. Another child's quilt!

Here's the back.

For the last several years, I have made a quilt for an annual September auction held by the local hot rod club with all the proceeds going to breast cancer research. Except for last year because I didn't have anything ready. Way back in the dark ages (1980s I think) I bought a lot, and I mean a huge amount, of Harley Davidson bandannas. Not too strange, considering that there was a Harley parked in the garage. I started making quilts with them resulting in a quilt made with brand-new vintage bandannas. I believe that this is Harley quilt number 8. And yes, there are still more of these bandannas.

Spinning Seams

I love to spin the seams. Don't these look cute? It really makes the block lay flat, too.

Two Baby Quilts

I have two completed projects as there is nothing on the design wall today.

Since the Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen entered Casa del Quilter there has been a lot of quilting going on; a lot. The simplest form of practice is to take two lengths of fabric and sandwich them together and then quilt. Don't you agree? Here are two examples of just such a practice.

The first baby quilt up is flannel on one side and 100% cotton on the other. Quilted in an all over free motion and Mettler Quilting 40/3 thread. 100% medium loft poly batting.

Next up is another baby quilt with flannel on one side and 100% cotton on the other. It, too, is quilted in an all over free motion and Mettler Quilting 40/3 thread. 100% medium loft poly batting.

I am not only using up largish hunks of fabric but also chunks of batting, preprinted labels and various spools of thread. The blue fabric I used in my sweatshirt jacket was a perfect match and worked for the binding.

If you want to see more design walls, please visit Judy's blog at Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday - 06/18/2012

I have a design table today. I have all four of these quilts, three of them are Quilts of Valor, ready to stitch down the second side of the binding. I do this by machine without using pins. I hate using pins to machine stitch a binding down. I use fusible thread instead. I am writing a tutorial on how I do this.

To see other, more exciting design walls, visit JudyL at Patchwork times.