Meanwhile, Down on the Farm

The Farmer’s Wife was a woman’s magazine during the early 1900’s, and The Farmer’s Wife is the name of the current Block of the Month at my local quilt shop.  The blocks are a selection of those published in the magazine and the fabrics are all 1930s reproductions.

These are 6” paper-pieced blocks and they range from simple 9-patch to tear-your-hair-out complicated!  If you are not in love with paper-piecing, maybe you should not make this quilt!!

I have almost four columns done so far – only the fourth one stops at the floor.  This is going to be a Very Big Quilt!

I am loving the fabrics in this project.  And, yeah, I love some of the blocks.  Just not all of them.  Ha!

Evening Star

This is the cover of the January issue of American Quilter.  I just love this combination of flying geese and star burst.

I don’t usually make a magazine pattern until long after the magazine comes out.  I will (sometimes) flag the page and (usually) forget all about it until (nearly always) several years later.  But this one is just too pretty to forget – especially when I played around with color changes in Electric Quilt.

I love how it came out and I think it is prettier than the magazine version – if I do say so myself.  It’s about 47 inches square, so I could quilt it on my home machine.  For now, though, I’m enjoying the view while I consider quilting options.

WIPs, PHDs, and some Finishes

Wow!  When I decided to let the blog go silent, I had NO intention of being gone for NINE MONTHS!!  As you can imagine, things just got in the way, and then something else, and pretty soon you are out of the habit.  Don’t think that means I haven’t been doing anything worth showing.  Not at all.  So let’s see what’s been happening.

Works in Progress (WIPs)

This is a quilt I am working on right now.  Pattern is by Elizabeth Hartman and the “critters” are all standard piecing – rectangles, squares, and half-square triangles – so it is going pretty fast.  I loved the owl eyes laid out on my ironing board!


Another quilt project (yes, I usually work on several projects at a time.  Can’t be getting bored, you know!) is this Stars & Hourglass.  I hope to get this one finished for Quilts of Valor next year.  The blocks are all done, just need to finish assembling rows.



This is a (crooked) shot of the first three blocks from The Farmer’s Wife 1930’s style – a Block of the Month from my local quilt shop.  Actually, it’s eight blocks every month, but they are small!  They’re also foundation paper-pieced, so tiny pieces are not tooooo stressful.



Annnnd. . . . here is the “test” block for a Stack ’n Whack project.  The fabric is something I inherited from my Mom.  I haven’t the least idea why she would have yards of Finding Nemo fabric, and I struggled to come up with a design to use it in.  Stay tuned to see how it works out.

Since I have a lot of fabric that was acquired without a project in mind, I’ve been trying to pick some interesting patterns and match them up with fabric for future reference.   Anytime I have all the fabric for a quilt, I make up these “kits.”  When I finish a quilt I just grab the next kit and start cutting.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent in the stash!


One thing that does help in reducing stash, however, is cutting all my leftovers into 5” squares.  There are tons of patterns out there that start with a 5” square (Stars & Hourglass above is one) and you can see how fast they stack up. 

Projects Half-Done (P.H.D.s)

I classify these as a project that came to a stop and shows little signs of getting started back up.  Most of these were class or club projects and they are stuck in the state from the end of the class.  There may be no hope for these projects, but I’ve gathered them together so I can see what is what.


Here you can see two dolls and a row of doll heads.  Club projects waiting patiently for the grand finish.  Also some postcards – just need the backing or maybe a few more stitches – and a Stump work project that came to a halt when I realized I haven’t made enough flower petals!  The ribbon and lace to the side is actually a future project, but it’s also a club project so probably won’t make it to finished either!

Finished!

While it may appear that my working habits are in disarray, I have managed to finish a few things.  What else would I be doing instead of blogging?


I went to Florida again this spring and took another class from Deb Wood.  This Dryad was our project and the other students were people I knew from previous classes.  It was a wonderful week and I am feeling so much more confident in my sculpting skills.


This is Puck – that mischievous imp from A Midsummer’s Night Dream, among other stories.  I made his head a long time ago and you’ve probably seen it before,  I decided that it was time to test what I learned from all these classes.  I think he turned out pretty well!


You might recall I was working on an Alice in Wonderland quilt when I last blogged (more on the quilt in a moment).  My doll club did several shows this year and picked Wonderland as our theme.  My character was the caterpillar.  Fortunately Suzette Rugolo has done several patterns from the story so I did not have to start from scratch.  This doll is BIG!


This is the quilt made from patterns available on Fandominstitches.com.  I made it to hang behind our dolls displays at shows.  Yes, it was a lot of work, but since I was laid up with a broken foot there wasn’t much of anything else I could do!

There have been several quilt tops finished as well.  Some have even been quilted and bound – others still waiting to be quilted (I’ll have to photograph the pile of Waiting!)  Here are some of them, in no particular order.



And last – but definitely not least! - - - -

My contribution to our club charity project – One Million Pillowcases.  I made 28 and I think I can safely say I am a whizz at making pillowcases!

There you go – nine months neatly packaged in one post!  Now I am adding Blog to my ToDo list so maybe there will be more for you to see in shorter bursts.  At least I’ll try!

What the Heck Happened to February?

It just got here and I turn my back for one minute . . . .  Good grief!  OK, so a little bit of flu caused some lost time.  And spraining my foot has limited some mobility.  But, really.  I mean I neither sew nor type with my foot!

At least there HAS been some sewing!

You might remember that I did a series called Serendipity Sunday in 2013, working my way through several books on fabric manipulation.  These three panels have sat on my work pile (and been moved numerous times) and I finally decided what to do with them.  So they are finished!  Some close-ups:

I’ve been working on a quilt using one of Jenny Doan’s tutorials.  These are 12” blocks so it went together really fast!  Waiting for it’s borders now.  Here are the first six blocks:

And another quilt project I’m working on:

The blocks are paper pieced – with a LOT of tiny pieces!  I don’t know why I get into these projects sometimes.  The patterns are from Fandom In Stitches, Alice in Wonderland collection.

I took a Postcard class at the local quilt shop.  Teachers were from the quilt shop, the yarn/weaving shop, local art gallery, and the Janome dealer.  Our little town has some great resources!  As always, though, I need to finish these before they can be called postcards!

So, there’s a few of what’s going on behind the scenes.  A couple other items are still on the camera.  Here’s hoping I get them posted before the end of March!

Another Clue

One last thing added to my polymer clay project before putting it aside for a couple of days.

I’ll bet the guesses will be closer this time!

This is the project that is taking my time for a few days.  Paper piecing with a difference – I am drafting my own pattern.  Oh Boy – is this a lot harder than I thought it would be!!!  I’ve re-drawn the pieces multiple times and this is my second attempt at stitching.  The first one was just sad.  Keeping my fingers crossed, but so far this version is going better.

I have found a whole new respect for people who draft this type of pattern!

At Last!

At long last, I finally have something to show on this blog.  In fact, I have two somethings.  Isn’t that exciting?!!

OK, not exciting.  But good anyway.  So how about some pictures?

Remember my Hunter’s Star experience – er, design variation?  I posted about it here.  This is how I decided to put the blocks together.  It is the perfect size for a table topper and some nice big spaces for quilting.

I had four blocks left over, so I have the beginnings of a medallion quilt.  I’m letting some ideas bubble around in my head to see what winds up on top.  It may take awhile.

And then, there’s my hexie love:

To refresh your memory, I started with this for the center and blogged about it here.

Several borders were added, some of them taking quite a long time to complete.  Half-inch hexies are really a project in themselves!  This is how far along I was at the beginning of April (see this post).

The last border went on today:

This border is foundation paper pieced and I still have all the papers to remove, but it is essentially done. 

The corners were going to be plain blocks, but I wasn’t really pleased with that.  So after a bit of play in EQ7, I drafted up these.  I like them a lot better.

With this one completed, I can turn my attention (little as that may be!) to the hexie medallion quilt in brown.  I’ve switched up some of the borders on it so it should look completely different.

Although, now that I look at this one, maybe it needs just one more tiny border.  Kind of corral all those spikes.  What do you think?

Wednesday WOW–October 16

It seems like it has been quite awhile since on this project.

Foundation paper piecing once again.  It seems to be habit forming!

And it really makes a mess of things!

There must be a way to do this without accumulating piles of scraps that are too small to use for anything.  I haven’t found it yet.

But the end result is soooo worth it!  One more eye and this “princess” will be ready to join the others.  I am really enjoying this project.  I wonder what paper pattern I can find for after this one is finished?

Wednesday WOW–October 2

After a short interruption, I was able to get back to one of my paper piecing projects today.

Working in assembly line fashion is very different from the way my princess project progresses.

I think I prefer doing each step only once, but I must admit there is a certain satisfaction in seeing all the blocks lined up ready to go.  It’s nice to see some signs of order in the universe!

And when the last seam is sewn, there are 36 perfect pieces all alike!  This is what one block will look like when they are stitched together.  The next step is basting them all to the hexie templates.  I did the last set while riding in the car.

Time for another road trip!

Wednesday WOW–September 18

I started out today all ready to re-stitch the seams that had gone wrong last week.  Thank goodness, I decided to check after just a few blocks.  They had the same problem!  Some were even worse!!!

Not a great way to start out, but at least I have the whole day to figure out what’s going on.  Following the trusty TNT Rule (thread, needle, tension), I put in a new needle, inspected and rethreaded both top and bottom and tried adjusting tension.  No improvement.  While checking the bobbin (again!) I noticed a little lint in the bottom.  Hmmm. I wonder how long it’s been since I cleaned this machine.

Now, one clue would be that I had to get out the manual to find how to remove the plate and access the bobbin race.  Uh oh.

Oops!  I guess it’s been awhile.  That may not look like a very large ball of lint, but it has been gathered up and compressed, so – yeah – that’s a lot of lint!

I guess I need to change TNT to CTNT – clean, thread, needle tension!

After that exercise, everything is back to normal and I finally got past that first seam!!

I’m now at the halfway point on these blocks.  Not as far as I would like to be, but considering the bumps in the road – so to speak – not bad at all!

I think I’ll go clean my other sewing machine now!