A Bit of This, A Bit of That

I really need to get my sewing room under control and I think the only way to do that is to finish things. In an effort to finish one project, I have been working with my leftover triangles again. I got them all sewed together into half square triangles units. Got all of those trimmed up and put them together into Broken Dishes blocks and then added them to all the blocks I have made in the past. 

I saw a quilt somewhere online using rows of blocks of various sizes. It had either grey or tan as strips in between those rows. I counted all the blocks and figured out how big a quilt I could make and it was going to be pretty big so I adjusted and decided to make two smaller quilts, thinking they would be easier to sell or give away or something. I sewed the blocks together by size into strips around 45-50" long and took them to work to lay out on the floor. As I laid them out I was talking to my boss about the upcoming Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner and Talent Show at the church and she mentioned having a silent auction also. I offered to add a quilt so I picked up what I started and took it all home to adjust the lengths of the strips to something more like 70-80".

Here is a picture of the rows hanging on the drying rack after pressing.

 Here are the rows laid out at work. As you can see the rows varied a lot in length depending on how many blocks I had of each size.

I took a few of the blocks to the fabric store to see what I could find for the 'in between' and my favorite was an apple green. I added green to each row to make it 85" and then put 1" finished strips between the rows. Here is a picture of it on the floor for basting.

I backed it with a barn red flannel - a king-size duvet cover that my husband got at a garage sale for $5 last summer. Here it is all finished and hanging at the church. 

I did a medium stipple using a variegated green thread. Here is a picture of the two smallest rows. There are 4 little 1/2" Broken Dishes blocks and then a strip of 25 - 1" blocks.

Tuesday was craft night next door and Sally had Linnea's quilt finished for us to see. Isn't that a cool panel?

Linnea also brought her quilt from Mary from one of the previous exchanges. Mary hadn't been able to finish all the blocks and get it put together so we didn't get to see it at the reveal and then Linnea brought it one night to craft night but I wasn't there so I asked her to bring it so I could see it. It is quite beautiful in person!

I finally finished my grandson's baby quilt. He is now 7 months old!

It was made from blocks I cut out of the quilt I made for his mommy almost 30 years ago. While pregnant I had embroidered the 12 old-fashioned babies on a piece of pale green fabric. When I had them done I just quilted around the embroidery and then between the babies. It was a pretty boring quilt though she loved it. When we talked about a quilt for her little one I suggested redoing her quilt and she was open to that. She told me she likes the 30's prints so I got some and cut 2 1/2" squares to frame the blocks. When I cut the blocks I left the original hand quilting around the babies and just cut through all the layers and used them that way. I machine quilted diagonals through the small squares and added another round of hand quilting about 1/4" out from the original. The back I used was fabric I purchased in Sitka when I visited my daughter when she was in college and I thought it was appropriate since little Karl visited Sitka when he was just one month old.

I have had everything done but the label a month ago but just didn't get to the label. Finally this week I wrote out a label and got it stitched to the back.

I have pulled out my denim now and hope to work my way through that next. That would mean at least two large bins will be emptied and I should be able to get rid of some backs and batting that has been given to me too!

I am hoping my next post will be an update on denim quilts.

Failure?

Well, I guess the weekly thing is just not going to happen! I wish it would but it just isn't. I guess I have to be satisfied with every two weeks or so!

I have two 'finishes' so far this year though! The first was finishing the border on a round robin top. I will be taking that to Idaho for the reveal in about a month.

On January 6th we had our 5th and final reveal at my neighbor's house in our quilt exchange. Luckily, she emailed a reminder on the first or I wouldn't have had this one done for Cindy (on the right).

Nadine (left) made this one for Mary (right). Some of the black and whites were the same ones she used in this one for me.

Mary made this huge one for me! It really isn't that orange in real life. As you can see, my grandson took part in the festivities.

Nadine (left) got this lovely quilt from Cindy (right). 

A great pattern and I love this focus fabric!

Linnea (right) created this Bargello Beauty for Sally (left). When she had the quilt loaded on her machine she discovered a mistake and had to take it off and fix it before quilting this. 

Sally ran into problems while quilting Linnea's so she just got to see it partially done. I will post pictures as soon as I get to see it finished.

My little Grandson had fun playing with his mommy - he had just pulled her glasses off in this picture.

Here are a couple of parting shots of my little buddy. The first is taking a short nap in Grammy's sewing room and the second is playing with my tote bag under the ironing board. He has started crawling so I will have to either clean up the sewing room or keep a close eye on him when he is helping. Which do you think is more likely?

Quilt Exchange And So Much More

It may have been a while since I have posted but at least this one will have lots of photos...and not all will be of the new puppy!

We will start with the quilt reveal at the neighbors. Here is the quilt that Cindy made for Linnea. 

This was the one I received from Sally. You can't tell from this picture but the black and white blocks are a print of women with purses and various adult beverages. It is all flannel and very snuggly. 

This is Nadine's from her sister, Linnea. The main print is a shoe print in red and black and white. Nadine does love her shoes!

Mary wasn't able to be there that night but I got word that she did like this blue and yellow lap quilt that I made for her.

I think you can tell from this picture that Sally was pleased with her quilt from Mary. It was the only really big quilt that evening but it seems Mary doesn't know how to make a small quilt!

Sally just wanted to cuddle up in it!

Last, but not least was Cindy's quilt from Nadine. it was the third with the red and black theme!

Little Ginger slept through most of the reveal on my lap. (I said they wouldn't all be of her, but there has to be a few!)

Last Sunday, we welcomed my new grandson, Karl Andrew into the family. We didn't care whether he was a boy or a girl but we all were hoping for red hair and we got that! 

Here he is shortly after he got home from the hospital, stretching out.

This one was taken when he was a couple days old. A request from a friend's 2 year old for a picture of the baby with me.

My eldest daughter and the grandkids came for the 4th of July and here is my granddaughter holding her little cousin. She thought he was pretty awesome!

My oldest holding the puppy back. Ginger gets pretty excited about the baby.

I made tie-dyed shirts for all three of the kids so here is that photo op. The baby was awake and happy for the occasion even!

Mandu and Ginger wanted to be a part of the excitement.

Kissing Cousins!

We celebrated Clara's birthday last night since we won't be with her for her real birthday. She was pleased with her birthday cake since she is very interested in plants.

Here is the picture from the end of May next to a picture I took this morning before the kids headed home. See how much Ginger has grown!

Our final baby/puppy picture was take this morning. I was cuddling the baby and Ginger really needed to get up close. She really wants to play with that little baby but no one will let her so she has to be satisfied with some snuggles, albeit restrained snuggles.

I have been enjoying being able to get back outside again. I have even roto-tilled the garden twice. The first time with our old roto-tiller that hubby repaired a couple of weeks ago and then with the brand new tiller. The garden isn't weed-free but I think we can tame it still. The strawberries are about done and the raspberries have taken their place! I bought a couple of boysenberry bushes last year and discovered this week that they are actually very healthy raspberries! So a little later this fall I will transplant them into the raspberry row and I will have to look for boysenberry bushes elsewhere!

Yesterday I decided it was time to prune the 'jungle' across from the deck. It is an old planting of lilacs, beauty bush, mock orange, forsythia, and a couple of other types of bush. I usually prune them to some degree each year but the last two years it wasn't too drastically due to health issues. They are done blooming so it was time again and I did about half of it yesterday. There are now three distinct bushes of lilac, beauty bush and forsythia on the right side. It looked a lot like the left side before I got started. 

Clearing out allowed us to see a bunch of junk at the end of the garage so hubby was inspired to clean it up a bit and put that gate there to hide the propane tank that is used to heat the shop. Through the bushes you can see the chairs we've been sitting in watching the puppy play and also the garage shed. Once I finish the pruning we will look into getting bark to spread underneath. We might have to pull the old bathtub out of there also and put it in a better spot. My vision for that is for it to be a water feature with a shower head spraying down.

What a Fun Night!

But then, it is always fun at craft night. Tuesday was especially great though because it was Quilt Reveal Night! It is always so exciting to see what creations we came up with this year.

I drew the #1 so I went first to reveal the quilt I made for my friend, Nadine. She seemed to like it...I was so honored to make this for her. As I cut the pieces and sewed the blocks I was given the opportunity to pray for Nadine and the success of her treatment.

Next came Linnea's quilt for Cindy. In the center of the stars are pictures of all of Cindy's grandkids.

Sally our hostess was the next to hang her quilt. This time for Mary. We got to watch this quilt come together. You can't see it in the picture but the colors in this looked so soft - almost as if it was flannel.

Then Linnea left the room so Mary could hang up some of the blocks for Linnea's quilt. Evidently Mary made two other quilts but wasn't satisfied with them so she decided on this one. She had hoped to have at least half of it put together for the reveal but there was a good bit of unsewing that needed to be done so it just wasn't to be. It is going to be gorgeous when it gets finished.

Next up was Nadine's quilt for me! It is great! Now I don't have to make my own black and white quilt with a splash of color!

Our last quilt was Cindy's quilt for Sally. She struggled so with this quilt. She was very proud of herself for actually following the pattern but some of the strips were mighty thin.

All the quilts were so awesome! 


After we finished oohing and aahing we got down the business of figuring out who will be making a quilt for whom. We each just have two more people to make quilts for now, so we figure we will just work on them both, but only one is expected to be finished by May 2014. My first needs to be made for Mary. She is fine with any size and is interested in Black and White with a bit of Red and does like Log Cabin or any more traditional quilt. I will need to look at patterns and see what I come up with. I am hoping to get it done sooner rather than later and then I can get to work on one for Cindy.

First Finish of Firteen ('13)

Here it is!

I love how it turned out! These quilts are very fun to make and I will be making more once a few other projects are finished! This type of quilt really adds fuel to the question some husbands ask - "So you just cut up fabric so you can sew it back together?" - because that is really all I did. Cut up one piece of fabric into little triangles and then sew them back together! I now look at fabrics in a different way wondering how they would work for one of these quilts.

I finished the binding on this one on Tuesday morning and Tuesday afternoon I finally got the label on the quilt I made for one of my crafting ladies so I could bring it over for the big reveal. Nothing like leaving it until the last moment. I will hopefully get a post done with all the pictures later today.

Yesterday I did another last minute project. This one is for the the round robin group I am in with my sister and niece and other friends. I posted pictures of our last reveal in November and we were supposed to have our beginning block for the next one done by the end of January. Mine is appliqued so I had my work cut out for me (literally). Here is the finished block...

The idea came from a wall hanging I saw in a quilt shop on a long ago shop hop. I managed to get some of the fabrics and it was one of those 'someday' projects. I saw the pile of fabric when I was trying to decide on my block and thought this was a great opportunity to do something about it. This should be a fun whimsical quilt once all the other folks add some borders. 

My next project is my Relay for Life Raffle Quilt. I have it all cut out and a good start on sewing the blocks together so hopefully the top will be done in the next week. When that top is together I need to add some borders to my niece's block for the round robin.

A month!?!?!

I am a little surprised that it has been a month since my last post but only a little! It has been a bit busy around here with things other than quilting!

My daughter and grandkids were here for Veteran's Day weekend and my granddaughter stayed with us for the following week. She was such a good girl and went to work with me each day. On Friday we drove across the state to meet her mom and brother for dinner before she headed home with them and I went to my sister's for our Quilt Block Exchange Reveal. All of the quilt blocks sets turned out so well!

So the deal was that we sent along the star points and backgrounds and then everyone made the stars with a 6.5" center of their choice. You may notice that there is one that has a bonus block (someone wasn't happy with their first block) and several are missing a couple of blocks (they just didn't make it all the way around but will be finished soon). You might also notice that there is a little mistake in one block (it was fixed within an hour of the end of the reveal).

Katie's - Neutrals

 Lynn's - Christmas

 Donna - Fish

 Lynn B's - Black & White with Lime

 Martha - Batiks

 Sarah's - Aspens and Sunlight

 Marty - Fall

 Judy - Floral

 Mine - Black & White with Brights

 Karla - Summer

 Teena - Fun Cat Print

Jill - Batik Outdoorsy

Aren't they great? All but three of us were able to meet at Karla's new home for the reveal. While there we decided that we will do another border round robin so by the end of January I need to come up with my center square and theme. I am going to look through some of my orphan blocks and see if there is something that will work.

Last week was a busy one at work. Our church hosted the Community Thanksgiving Eve Worship Service which is a joint effort of 4 churches. It went so well but did add to the stress level of a short week at work! 

We had a fairly low key Thanksgiving. Our son was home for the week from school and niece Katie came over for the weekend. 

Katie, daughter Rebecca and I took part in the Holiday Bazaar at our church and did fairly well. Better than any previous bazaar I have been a part of. I wish I had had more owl hats on hand as the 8 I had on hand sold pretty quickly. I did finish one more during the bazaar which also sold and I got orders for 2 more! I also sold a quilt and a pair of mittens. Since then I have spent my spare time getting the two hats done that were ordered over the weekend and I am now working on the 9th of 9 hats for another niece. I hope to have those all done over the weekend so I can get them in the mail and start working on a stockpile of more hats!