IT'S ABOUT TIME!

I haven't posted for a while, so here is the finished HST lap quilt measuring 60" square.

I quilted it with hooked swirls from Angela Walters book "Free-Motion Quilting."  The border has feathers.

I need to make some Christmas items to sell, so I got out the bin containing all my left over flannels and Christmas fabrics.  In it there were some strips of pink and black flannel that was super soft.  It was just enough to make a doll quilt.

Among lots of scraps and larger sized pieces, I found these 2 strips that were on the side of a panel of winter birds.  I made place mats out of the birds part of the panel, but didn't use these cute bird houses.  So, I think I will make 2 narrow wall hangings out of these.  Not sure how I will do it yet.  I'll put some sort of border around them.

I'm also working on these wall hangings that I am making out of my Grandma's tulip blocks that I have shown you before.  I have written to my cousins and some of them have responded, so I am going to send some of these to them.  On the back I'm putting a label about my Grandma.  She was always making something:  pajamas for her grandchildren, crocheted pot holders. knitting mittens, tatting on handkerchiefs, etc.

I just quilted this one and need to bind it.

This one is partially quilted, except for the blue corners.  I really love the triangle of blue and orange flour sack fabric under the tulip.

Saturday I was a vendor at a craft/quilt show and my friend and I have 4 or 5 more lined up for November and December.    On Tuesday I had oral surgery for the 3rd time on the same tooth (endodontic treatment).  Ugh - what an ordeal!  Hopefully, this time will do the job.

Fall is here and the trees are beautiful!!

IT'S JUNE ALREADY?!?!

 I have been very lax about posting lately and it's been over a week!  I meant to post this a couple days ago, but I've been busy.  Can't believe it's June already!!!

In my last post, I showed you the "cheater" panel by Kim Diehl, and now it is finished!  It sure goes a lot faster when you don't have to actually do the appliqué!!!  This was a fun project for me.  I decided to make the medallion similarly to the "Faithful" quilt-a-long that Lori had a few years ago.  I do love that and you can see it here.  My finished panel below is a little wonky and I'm thinking about blocking it.

This is the table runner.  I have placed it on my coffee table.

When I was digging through some baskets, I came across some 4-patches already done and decided to make a small quilt (doll quilt) out of them.  Here it is hanging on my clothesline.

Can I brag about my grandson?  He just graduated with honors (Magna Cum Laude) from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.  We are very proud of him and can't wait till he gets back home in Oregon.  He should be arriving this week!

Today I'm going on a shop hop with my quilting buddy!  We plan to hit about 5 or 6 shops in the Salem area!  I hope I can avoid spending much money.

BACK TO DEAR JANE!

 Since it's been almost 3 months since working on my Dear Jane quilt, I decided I needed to take a little time and get going on my side triangles.  I made 4 triangles for the top row and I already had 6 of the top row done, so that means I only have 3 more to have the top row finished.

Top Row Triangles 7 - 10

They keep getting more complicated it seems.  The first one in the photo, #7, was the worst.  The red and white one was the next worst.  For it I paper pieced the two diamond shapes near the bottom and the only hand appliqué I did was the rounded humps on the bottom and they didn't turn out even, but will stay as they are.

On Thursday, Abby came over to sew.  I thought she wanted to make a pillow, but she said she wanted to make another doll quilt instead.  She picked out the teddy bear fabric for the top and I was fine with that as it was a lot faster to get the top done since all she needed to do was add the borders.  Here she is pin basting the layers.  She kept wanting to put the pin through my cutting mat!

Then she stitched in the ditch with navy blue thread and only veered off into the white 2 times and it doesn't show very much.

She wanted me to do the quilting in gold thread, so I proceeded to quilt around the teddy bear, but the gold thread kept breaking, so once I got totally around him, that was it for the gold thread.

Then I remembered I have some "glow in the dark" thread and I used that to outline the stars, teddy's heart and do some top stitching in the white borders.  She was thrilled at how it looked in the bathroom with the door closed!

By that time she was DONE sewing for the day.  All we need to do is turn the backing over for the binding, which we will do soon.  She starts school on Tuesday, so there won't be as much time available.  It was a fun day for both of us!

GETTING BACK TO QUILTING!

I'm finally getting back to quilting and the first thing I did was quilt this small doll quilt.  I made one of these for a customer and thought, "why not make 2 while I'm at it?"  So this is the 2nd one, which will probably go in my Etsy shop when I get it bound.  I also have one hanging in my sewing room that I made during a Jo Morton Little Women class several years ago in Texas.  I'm keeping that one.

Then the question was, What to work on next?  I decided I needed to finish my Oak Leaves and Turkey Feathers wall hanging designed by Jan Patek that I blogged about here and here.  So, it's only taken me 5 years to get to this point, which is almost finished with the borders.  And I definitely want to get it finished to hang up for fall.

Here's one border.  I have the 4 corner blocks finished and am almost finished with 3 of the borders.  The other one is waiting for the vine to be made and then I can iron down the flowers and leaves.  It shouldn't take too long to get that border finished and then I just have to baste, quilt and bind!  I still have a little appliqué stitching to do on each panel, because I need one more color of thread.

I use Sulky thread for machine appliqué and I made a great garage sale purchase a while ago of this bag of threads.  I was hoping I had enough to finish a certain project, but I still need one new color. 

I think I may have mentioned before that we get a lot of deer walking or running through our neighborhood and yesterday morning I got a picture of 4 of them.  I was out talking to a friend I saw walking by and then we saw these lovelies coming toward us.  They were heading for the ravine that runs through the middle of our town.  This picture is cropped, but if I didn't do that, you would see that I live in a regular neighborhood, not in the middle of the woods.  I cropped it so you could see the deer better.  My GD (and all of us) really enjoy seeing them

Happy quilting, ladies!

EXPLORING AND SEWING

We went into Salem the other day and walked across the Willamette River on this walking bridge, which used to be a train bridge.

Abby and DS looking out at the river.

Looking north at the Willamette River

The doll quilt is finished now.  Below is a picture of Abby quilting it on my Janome 6600 sewing machine.  I decided it would be easier and best for her to use this machine instead of the Featherweight because this one has a stitch speed regulator that I could set so no matter how hard she pressed down on the foot pedal, it would only go to the speed I set it for.  She stitched across each diagonal row to form an X on each block.

The back of the finished quilt.  She picked some fabric with pictures of deer and bears on it, because she has been delighted to see lots of deer around our neighborhood.

The top of the doll quilt!

I folded the back over the front and ironed it down so all she had to do was stitch around it on the sewing machine.  I decided that would be easier for her first quilt.  ALL DONE!

SEWING LESSON

Our DS and family are staying with us until the rental house is ready on July 19th, and since we have a small house, they are living in my sewing room.  Yesterday I decided to set up my featherweight on the patio since it was such a beautiful day.  I no sooner began sewing than my GD Abby said she wanted to learn how to sew!  

So, I found her some 3" square scraps and she picked out the ones she liked to make a doll quilt.

She is learning to line the fabric up against the 1/4" marker.

The speed of this machine is kind of hard to regulate, but she managed to figure out a way.

Once my Janome is more available, I can let her sew on that and turn the speed down to low, so it will be easier for her.  We don't want any fingers getting sewn!

The top of her doll quilt is done!!

BTW, Abby is 7 years old.  So far she is signed up in the summer reading program at the library and we have been to several parks with play grounds.  I'm sure we will find more to report on.  The house they rented is about 2 miles from our house.  DS starts his job on Monday!

My project will get done, but maybe not in time for my brother's birthday, which is a special one for him.  We might get rain today, so the table might get set up in the garage for sewing.

UM YA YA!

Before I explain "UM YA YA" I want to share some quilty items.  A blogger I follow had a post where she showed her ironing stick, which is used when you want to iron open a seam allowance and it raises it so you don't have to worry about messing up the rest of the seams when you iron.  I looked it up on some sites where it was sold and didn't want to pay anything for it, so I just got a strip of batting (which had been multiplying in my closet) and folded it over, sewed on 2 sides and slipped a dowel rod inside.  I could make it nicer by covering it with muslin, but I guess I'm too lazy to do that.

Home made ironing stick

I recently made a pink and brown HST doll quilt and decided to make another one to sell in my Etsy shop.  The one I made was a special order.  The HSTs finish at 1 1/4" and there are 12 rows of 10 HSTs per row.  It's just like one that I have hanging in my sewing room (I made it while I was a member of "Jo's Little Women Club" in Arlington, TX.  I love this little quilt made with all CW reproduction fabrics and alternating with pink and brown HSTs.

2 rows that need pressing

Using the ironing stick to press open the seam allowance

Here's what I have done so far on this quilt.  I keep running out of pink or brown HSTs because I don't want to put any fabrics next to each other, so I'm constantly digging out something different.  I have 9 rows almost finished, so I will need 3 more rows

The dark brown in this HST is one of my favorite fabrics of all time and I just happened to find one strip of it in my scraps so I made a few HSTs with it.

 I apologize that my pictures are kind of dark.  It was very early when I took these pictures.  Oh, and please excuse my ugly wrong board.  I need to put a new cover on it.

Now we come to "Um Ya Ya."  If you have ever attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, you will know what it is.  My DGS just finished his sophomore year there and he wants me to sew "Um Ya Ya" onto something.  Actually, its the pad for his accordion.  These are the letters I came up with.  Anyway, "Um Ya Ya" is what the students yell at sporting events.  Don't ask me why.  Maybe its a Norwegian phrase - must be.  He is home for the summer, but may take a job at a camp in Washington State and may want to take his accordion along, so I need to get these words sewn onto the pad ASAP.  I think I'll work on it now, just in case he gets that job and needs to leave soon.

Have a wonderful quilty week!  After a very hot weekend, the temperatures will be cooling off by Wednesday.  Woo Hoo!  Um Ya Ya!!

TABLE RUNNERS GALORE!

I have been busy making table runners to decorate the tables at my GD's wedding reception.  They are not quilted and are fairly simple to make, but so far I have made 14 and have one more to finish.  Below you can see examples of the table runners, which will sit on top of a white tablecloth.  The printed fabric is from Japan and there will be a Japanese theme to the decorations.  I'm also making 5 bow ties out of the solid fabric and am almost finished with those.  

Small table runner and doll quilt top

The following 2 table runner tops will be for my Etsy shop.  One is a custom order and the other is just because.  Both are easy patterns, but I really like them.

I have a shoe box full of 4" finished saw tooth stars and decided to put these together into a doll quilt size quilt.  I have backings picked out for these last three items, so maybe I can get them basted and quilted soon.  I think I'll wait until after the wedding (on the 15th) to tackle basting and quilting 2 large quilts.

If you follow "The Quilting Show" you may have seen an article about a man's view of quilting.  But if not, follow this link to read a speech given by a criminal judge in Canada regarding his wife's quilting hobby.  It's hilarious!

Last, but not least, come remember to come back soon as I will be having a Give-Away!  I decided it was about time I have one.

TABLE RUNNER AND DOLL QUILTS

This post will link with QuiltShopGal's Creative Goodness Linky Party.  If you have any new projects, you can link them there as well.

I have had the Moda Laura's London Lawns II charm pack for several years and "finally" decided to do something with it.  I made HSTs with the charm pack fabrics and two different white on white fabrics.  This will make a great spring or summer table runner.

I quilted it with white thread on the white portion and a variegated blue, pink and green on the colored portions.

There were some 5" squares left over, so I cut them into 2 1/2" squares and made a couple simple doll quilts out of them using the backing fabric for the alternating yellow squares.

I dug around in my stash to find a backing for the doll quilts and came up with this Timeless Treasures doll fabric by Bonnie Benn Stratton.  It is to cute and I had been saving it for something - but didn't know what.

I still need to sew on the binding, but will get that done this weekend.  Thanks for visiting!  What have you been working on?

FAITHFUL IS FINISHED!

How long ago did Lori have the Quilt-A-Long for Faithful?  I searched her blog and found out it was October, 2013.  So, it only took me about 1 1/2 years to get this done.  Woo Hoo!

25" square

I have a reason that it took me so long.  First of all, I used the basket block in the center and it is on point.  You can't really hang a quilt on point, so I had to add corners to Faithful.  I had to think about that for a while.  If I added corners, they had to have something in them.  It wouldn't look very good to put plain fabric there, so I thought it would look nice to have lighter fabrics fanning out.

Then, I thought they needed something else and decided to appliqué something on each corner.  So I had to find things to put in the corners.  I got out magazines and books to try to find something and the first thing I picked was the bird sitting on the star.  I love Kim Diehl's quilts and have 2 of her books, although I have never made any of the quilts in them.  I have used them for appliqué designs before though, so I used some of the flower appliqué designs and the bird from her Simple Blessings book.  I'm not sure where the circle and star came from - I know I saw it somewhere.

Backing toile fabric from Boersma's basement.

The last thing I needed was some flowers for the basket, so I took the easy way out and made yo yos for it.  Thanks, Lori, for the QAL!

I finished my stack of little quilts as well and the last 2 are below.  I am on a roll with stars.  I've got a stack of 31 solid stars (not scrappy, in other words) and 9 scrappy stars.  So, I see more little quilts in my future.

21 1/2" x 17 3/4"

17" s 14"

Happy Wednesday to all of you!