Quilting again!

I have completed 3 of my unfinished quilts since January 1, 2010. And quilted one other top someone else made and donated to Community projects

The first was given to my dear friend Donna for her 70th birthday. She loves flowers and loves the quilt!
Next was the one I quilted that I didn't piece. I think the quilting really added a lot to this one! I did a free motion, variation of the Baptist Fan quilting pattern on the solid squares and various freemotion flowers on the 4 -patches.

Next I went to Houston for a week of babysitting and took with a stack of half square triangle blocks I had started to make Broken Dishes blocks. This was an exercise in value and started with a pile of 196 four inch squares of randomly different fabrics cut while cleaning up in the sewing room a few years ago. I sorted the fabrics from darkest to lightest and then split them into 2 stacks still in order from dark to lighter. The darkest dark was paired with the darkest light and so on down through the stackes to make the half square triangles. Once I had these trimmed I paired 2 sets of HST's to form the broken dishes blocks. Then I waited until I was home with my design wall to settle on a block arrangement. Here is the finished quilt. Careful placement of the blocks resuted in a built in border effect.
And last, but certainly not least of my accomplishments thus far this year is a quilt I have named "Encouragement". It was started as a block I wanted to try out that became the centerpiece for a nesting round robin I joined. For the those unfamiliar with the round robin concept Each person picks their starting block and others in the group add to it in rounds, passing the quilt from one to the next until all have contributed to the quilt. In a nesting round robin each participant does all the work on their own quilt, but what is done on each round is chosen by a different participant. In the is case the first instructuion was to do a round of triangles. Next was just add a simple strip or two (plain border). Then I fell behind a bit and I combined the 3rd and 4th round instuctions which were a stop sign border and a rail fence border. Next was add applique, then a checkerboard border. The final instruction was to add some stars, which I did in the applique border. I really liked how it looked, but knew I wanted to do something different for the quilting, and so it was set aside. After finishing the Broken Dishes quilt I had momentum going and finally decided it was time. I covered the quilt top with clear plastic and used a dry erase marker to get a few general ideas of what I needed to do. I decided there was too much white and so the quilting was done mostly on the white patches with a jewel tone variegated thread. I am very happy with how it turned out and will be entering it in my guild's quilt show this summer.

12th Day of Christmas

Today is the 12th day of Christmas. It's about time I posted here with some sewing up dates. For presents I made an apron for Kristi (no picture taken), pot holders and a potato baking bag for Josh (no pictures), pajama pants for Nick (n.p.), a purse for Jackie with a matching purse for Seri,

Jumper and shirt for Seri,

purse for Annie (no picture, but same pattern as Jackie's but made of denim and batik fabrics), skirt and vest for Mimi(no pic yet), skirt for Katy(no pic), driving cap and scarf for Gabe, (no pic) quilt for JoeE,

Skirt and top for RoseE (no pics), Robe for Johnny,
Pants and shirt for Ginger,
and a housedress for Mom
and another is promised.

White Christmas Eve in Oklahoma

I finished my sewing...gifts for Josh, Mimi, Katy, Gabe, JoeE, RoseE, Johnny, Ginger and Jim and Gail. We were going to go buy a few things today when Denny got off work, but it had started snowing, so he went to do it himself and called me for consultation on gifts. But he wasn't able to get to Wal-mart for the groceries I wanted. And he isn't able to get home! He's staying with friends tonight. Masses have been canceled for tonight and we are hoping we can get in for Mass in the morning. Fortunately the Astro has 4 wheel drive....




Note the depth of the snow by the minivan...that's a lot for Oklahoma! And we have plenty of firewood to keep us warm.

"Reversible binding"

I was asked how I did the biding on JoeE's quilt and since I had some of the binding left over I took a few pictures to help explain.

First I joined a 1 3/8" strip of the turquoise to a 2 5/8" strip of the navy along the long edge and pressed the seam open, resulting in this 3 1/2" wide 2 fabric strip.
Next I pressed that in half to form a folded binding one side showing only the navy, the other both fabrics.The folded strip was then attached to the back of the quilt using a 1/2 inch seam. In the picture the orange fabric represents the quilt. Pins represent the stitching line at 1/2".
Binding is then folded away from the quilt

and then wrapped around to the front and stitched down as desired.

JoeE's quilt is done!

I decided to make Christmas presents rather than use credit and asked the kids for gift ideas. JoeE requested a warmer quilt. Since his present would take the longest to make I did it first. First I checked my stash of blocks, but found nothing that was appropriate for him, so I started from scratch. I decided to do quilt as you go string blocks and use up some of my smaller pieces of batting and the strips and strings of which I have bins full. For the backings I grabbed things out of the bin waiting to be cut into the scrap users system...the only yardage I cut into was for the joining strips/sashings and bindings. I did the binding in 2 fabrics so it shows one on the front of the quilt and the other on the back, and I am really pleased with how it turned out. This gift will not be a surprise...he has seen it during construction and helped hold it up for the picture taking. I guess that is a disadvantage to homeschooling...the kids are almost always home and it's hard to make surprise gifts! No one else asked for a quilt, so the rest of the gifts should be faster to make. I hope they all turn out as well as this did. Amazingly, I am really not feeling stressed about getting gifts done....maybe I'm delusional?

I forgot to mention

Somewhere along the way while figuring out how many squares to cut for the checkerboard border I messed up and so I have 40 extra 4" four-patches. I have to decide if I want to use them in the backing for the quilt or start a whole new top...maybe a simple row quilt with bright strips between checkerboard strips.....this is how one quilt leads to another and on and on!

I just wanted to try a block....

Last Sunday I came across a block pattern I wanted to try. It's a paper pieced, 12" block, found here . I liked the block, but decided I didn't want to do a whole quilt top's worth of blocks. Paper piecing is nice but gets tedious. So I decided to use the block as a center for a nesting robin I had started doing and not finished because it was getting too big and I didn't like it. The rounds were to add a round using triangles, add a plain strip, a stop sign border, a rail fence or braid border, add applique, add a checkerboard border, and add stars. Since the whole list had already been selected I decided to combine some. So I did a round with stop signs and rail fences alternating and put stars into my applique round. I really am pleased with how this turned out. Now I just have to decide how to quilt it. I don't think my typical allover meandering style is what this quilt calls for....time to grow a bit! The inner black with bright dots strip I used was leftover from that baby quilt, but I really want to bind the quilt with this fabric as well, so I called the shop in Texas, and ordered 2 yards. It just works so well with brights that I want to have some for future use! This quilt was made just for the fun of it and I will be donating it to my guild's community projects. We give quilts to Allie's house (kids in chemotherapy) and to Abbott House (a place for children who have had to be removed from an abusive situation) and I think some child will get some cheer and encouragement from this quilt!
After finishing the top today I decided to do a few blocks for an upcoming lotto.
The top right block was pieced, a circle into a hole. That was tedious! The other 4 are appliqued. I made a freezer paper circle, ironed to the back of the circle fabric, cut around leaving an approximate 1/4" turn under allowance. Than I applied starch and turned the allowance under and ironed. After applying a bit more starch to the edge and ironing stiff and dry, I removed the freezer paper, pinned the circle to a slightly oversized square, and top-stitched close to the edge with invisible or color coordinated thread. I think I may do a few more blocks.

My thrifty Mother

Look how my mother decided to deal with strips of batting trimmed from the edge of quilts. She can't bring herself to throw away something perfectly good....
I'll admit I scoffed at the idea a bit, but she did it anyway. And it really does work. She loosely wove the strips of batting together and then zig-zag stitched around the edge of the resulting batt. This lays flat, and is as flexible as a regular batting. It is extra thick because weaving makes it double, but with cheap polyesterbatting this is not excessive. And in the one Mom has layered and basted already it seems to look just fine. Lesson learned:don't throw away anything! Alright, maybe not....

Baby Quilt and Lotto blocks

Well, I didn't have any baby appropriate blocks in my stash, but I decided to make a disappearing 9-patch, and picked out 9 fabrics...just a FQ worth of each gave me leftovers. I started with 4" squares of fabric and ended up with 10" blocks. It went together very fast. The most time was consumed trying to decide how to quilt it. I think the total time spent was 6 hours or maybe a bit less. Anyway it turned out nice. Unfortunately Gabe took the camera on his youth group trip,but Denny showed me how to get pictures off the camera on the phone. I used his phone to take a picture of the Baby quilt.
Then last night I got back to the lotto blocks I had started Monday before the baby quilt interrupted me. I finished them up this morning and took a picture with my phone, which unfortunately has a scratch across the lens. Johnny was eying the blocks as I was sewing and commented that they were "nice blocks".
Now I have to get busy. My little slave driver is ready for her spelling and reading lessons. She wants to get done quickly so she can go over to Grandma's to sew.

No pictures today.

After a very productive Saturday, I was gone most of the day Sunday. I did get some lotto blocks started. Maybe I'll finish them up this afternoon since we're done with school and a I have a couple of hours to get ready for Guild meeting. Denny wants to know could I make a little girl baby quilt to give to one of his students whose becoming a daddy at age 48. Kicker...it needs to be done by Friday. My immediate answer was "No", but I really should see if I have some appropriate blocks on hand that I could throw together....but it won't happen if I spend too much time on the computer!