Field Trips in Fiber

Quilt for (more than) An Hour

It's done!

Hmmm, something looks funny and

what's this? Did I cut this for the binding? I don't think so. Go back and look at Judy's picture of the quilt. Oh, right! That's a border that I forgot to add!

Un sew

Sew

That's better!

This is a great project. Thanks to Judy for another great Quilt for an Hour project! I really enjoy doing these especially since so many other bloggers are working on them at the same time. I like seeing the pattern in the variety of color choices.    

Of course I also had to do some dyeing today so that I could use my new sink. I dyed several fat quarters to test my fresh dye concentrates. I also dyed a large piece in these colors to use as the backing for my QFAH.

A great start to the weekend!

I love my boss! He called in today and told our admin that we could take the afternoon off! She didn't argue and I got a jump start on my sewing weekend. I finished my QFAH Star blocks so I am caught up on Judy's instructions. I even got my Doubles quilt top together. Based on your comments I used layout A. In the end I chose to continue with the original border plan.I can tell you that it looks much better than the photo. The outer border has more blue and brown than what shows in the photo.

This quilt is from the book Quilts on the Double. You cut out two quilts at once. It's a terrific technique and I will make others. My Mom is making the matching quilt to this one but she's been so busy killing snakes that I don't think she is done with hers!

It's time to review last week's list and make a new one! Here are last week's goals:

• Make a new batch of soap with hemp butter done! I made Hemp and Shea Butter
• Quilt Kim's quilt. I got it loaded Sunday and started the quilting and I like how it looks so far - not done
• Start Judy's Quilt for an Hour project. This will also include a trip to Quilting Adventures to take advantage of the batik sale. My QFAH will be made from bright batik fabrics and I need one more. Besides I think I deserve a present for my great week at work! LOL!  I'm up to date on this
• Finish my samples for my machine quilting class - uh, not done
• Work on my QOV project. The top is done!

Tomorrow a friend is coming to visit and learn to make fabric postcards. That should take about 10 minutes so we might have to go to the fabric shop for a while! My other goals are:

• Quilt Kim's quilt
• Make the backing for the Doubles QOV quilt, I think I have something in my stash that will work. If not, I will dye a backing once my dye studio is back together. More on that later....
• Finish my samples for my machine quilting class
• Make postcards for 2 swaps and for all of the May birthdays that I missed

That should keep me pretty busy! Chris is going fishing Sunday and has a friend coming in to fish with him Monday and then he's going to a cookout Monday afternoon (it's outdoors so I can't go). That means that I will have lots of quality sewing time!

I'm lovin' it!

I think I was supposed to get 12 blocks done today but I stopped after I put two blocks together wrong. I wanted to see how they will look with sashing so I put these up on the design wall. I wish I had the energy to stay up all night and finish piecing the blocks. I love them!

Quilting Progress

I made some progress on both of my QOV quilts! Thanks for all of the feedback on the "On the Double" quilt. It's nice to have some many people close by to help out with a different view. I talked to Mom and she does not have the two pieces that I am missing so we must not have made enough. The first thing I did was to make up more brown pieces so I could finish that one block. Mom, yours are going out in the mail tomorrow. The second thing I decided is that I do agree with the majority of the coments that those borders are not optimal but I'm going to go with them anyway. I already have them cut and it is a charity quilt - not for show. I think it will still be a pretty quilt and I will have learned another lesson. Lessons are good!

I organized the blocks in 4 different layouts. Do you have an opinion? Well, I know you have opinions! Do you want to share yours? I labeled each sample in the lower left corner.

I also made some progress on my QFAH quilt.  I'm probably about a half hour behind. I think I should have finished all of my star points tonight but I have 6 sets left to make. I did construct 1 star to make sure I had cut everything right. These star point fabrics are from a big set of hand-dyed fabrics that I bought when Lunn Studios were going out of the dyeing business. Now they design some really awesome batik fabrics. I have used these fabrics a lot and I love them. I think they are fantastic for these star points.

Typepad had given us a new and improved editing interface. I think I'm going to like ot a lot but it's going to take a little adjustment! 

Story for the day: I am terrified of snakes and had to kill one in my house about a year and a half ago. I was a mess. I called my Mama panicked (Chris was half way across the country) and drank about half a bottle of scotch before I got up the nerve to kill it. To make my humiliation worse, the snake was little. My Mom (and everyone else I know) loves to remind me of it. Today Mom killed the first snake at her new house - she has pointed out before that she killed a rattlesnake with a piece of glass once. Today she sent me this email:

Killed my first snake.  It was a black snake about 2-3 ft long.  I was planting Begonias around the light post and this soil is such you dig out a hold and replace it with good soil.  I was taking it around back to throw over the hill and noticed something hanging out of the top of the propane tank.  I had just cleaned it out. Wrens try to build nest and just make a mess.  I sprayed it with 409 and it fell out of the top behind the tank.  I got the Deer repellent made it come out so I could use the hoe and shovel.  Dee held it down with the hoe and I hacked it with the shovel.
I knew you would want to hear all about this adventure.

Lesson #1: Do not mess with my Mother or you will get a squirt of 409 in your face and your head chopped off.

Lesson #2: Never show Mom your weakness, she will never let you forget it!

My family is so much fun!

 

I'm alive again!

After my magical afternoon nap I finally am over my weekend cold - or whatever. Just in time to go back to work tomorrow. There's nothing like having your energy back though and I took my new energy right into my sewing room.

First I did the first step in the Quilt For an Hour project and then I decided to work on my blocks for the On the Double quilt. This is the one that Mom and I are doing together. I got all of the blocks together - except one. It seems that I am missing two brown pieces! Crap. I hope that Mom has them in the stack of parts that she took home with her. Mom, would you look? If not the quilt will be 1 row shorter and I'll use those 5 blocks for a pillowcase border or something.

I don't know if this will be the block layout or not. There are so many possibilities with these blocks. I pinned up the borders and I am not sure I'm happy with them. Isn't that always the case? I started with the outer and inner borders as the inspiration fabrics. Now I'm not sure about the inner border. Do you think a blue print would work better? I like the black and the outer border. I'd really like to use the brown/black inner border though since it's already cut. Any opinions?

Weekend update - Quilt For an Hour

I  had grand plans for the weekend to cut out the new Quilt For An Hour project and to get most of Kim's quilt quilted. Things aren't going to plan. I've been very tired all weekend and finally realized that I have a cold or something. It's taken all weekend to get the QFAH cut out. You can see that I chose a bright palette. The pink will be the border. It's a piece that I dyed. I was trying for a true red - it's not but it works well with the print batik. I think I will like this one but as I said earlier, it still risks being obnoxious. Regardless, it's going to be a nice counter point to the brown and blue QOV that I cut out two weekends ago. Fortunately I will piece noth of them with medium gray thread. I'll probably alternate an hour at a time on each just to keep myself interested.

So, that's it. That's all I've accomplished this weekend and now I need a nap!

New projects!

Remember on Friday I talked about a new project that Mom and I are starting? It's from this new book by Judy Hooworth and Margaret Rolfe. The basic technique is that you make a lot of strip sets with a narrow strip of an accent color and wider strips of the main colors. You make lots and lots of strip sets and then cut them into triangles. Half of the triangles have the accent on the bottom and half have the accent on the top and each set makes a separate quilt. We picked a print from my stash for the main border fabric and then pulled fat quarters for the strip colors. We purchased black Fairy Frost fabric for the accent (solid black was too stark) and the brown/black print for one of the borders. It was in the same collection as the main fabric. We cut, sewed and cut like maniacs Saturday night and all day Sunday and got everything, even borders, cut for both quilts! My quilt is made with the "accent on top" pieces. Here's a photo of a few of them in the design wall. So far I like this technique but I've got a lot of sewin' to get to!

We are going to make these to be QOV quilts. If that wasn't enough, I've also decided to participate in Judy L's next Quilt For An Hour project. I love her quilt designs and I think this one will also be a good QOV quilt. Judy posts instructions in hour increments every day until the quilt is complete. She posted the yardage requirements today and I think will start posting instructions in a week or so. I'll pick out my fabrics - from my stash - this week. If you are searching for a new project to do, Judy's quilts are always fun!

A small finish!

I know it's hard to believe but I have many UFOs in addition to the sizable stash. This is a baby quilt that I made specifically for longarm feather practice a while back. The binding was never completed. I've decided to finish a few of these "near done" projects. Since I was using white thread on the machine to finish the scrubs top I decided to get this one done.

I love this little quilt. It's 36 x 44. I designed it to use 6" charm squares. I used to collect the 6" squares and I have 2 bins of them. It only used 24 squares but it's still cute! The feathers in the sashing and border were my first feathers on a quilt. The pieced strips were quilted with a cross-hatch pattern. You can see that better on the back - a yummy soft flannel.  I'm not sure what I will do with this quilt but I have a few more in a similar pattern that need to be finished. maybe I will donate the lot of them to Project Linus or something. I'm open for ideas!

This one WILL count in stash used, once I figure out how much fabric is in it.

The third QOV is done!

Last night I finished the quilting, this morning I put the binding on and all three QOV (Quilt of Valor) quilts have now been washed. All that's left to do is sew on the labels. That's a project for American Idol next week! You can see the other two QOV quilts here and here.

This pattern is based on several Chinese Coin quilts designed by Mary for the Heartstrings Project. My pattern is here.  Mary's patterns are  here. The finished quilt is 64" x 78".

In the close up on the right you can see the quilting. I used the Ebb & Flow pantograph with Superior King Tut thread on top and Superior So Fine in the bobbin. You might remember that I was worried that the orange thread was too bright. You said it was OK and you were right. I love the end result. I like this quilt so much that I think I am going to start another - from stash fabric of course!

I even finished the pillowcases for all three QOV quilts!

I used Warm & Natural batting in all three QOV quilts. I know that  lot of people think that W&N is too stiff. I often prewash my W&N batting and that softens it up considerably. All three quilts are very soft and snuggly after being washed.

Wanda's Hearts and Stars QOV

Here is the second QOV quilt top that Wanda made. Isn't it perfect for a QOV?  I quilted it with the Ebb and Flow panto using Superior So Fine! thread. This fabric in the quilt, front and back, is super soft flannel. Here's a close up of one of the blocks.

Thanks Wanda for another fun quilt!

Flora's Quilts!

Several (at least 6) years ago my Aunt Edna gave me all of the quilting stuff that was left by my Great-Grandmother Flora. The box included 3 quit tops. I quilted the first one in 2006 for my Aunt and posted about it and Flora here. Now I have finally finished the last two tops. Mom is going to put the labels on and I believe these quilts will go to two of her cousins.

They are both quilted with my Quilt EZ Baptist Fan template using Superior So Fine! thread. The Baptist Fan pattern was perfect for dealing with some of the fullness in the blocks and borders. Here are the quilts!

Maple Leaf, approximately 68" x 84"

Rolling Stone or Broken Wheel (This quilt could be either pattern. Both patterns are the same layout but the fabric layout is different. Flora's quilt doesn't match either exactly.)

You might be wondering just what's left in the Flora box. Let's take a gander!

There's this center for a hand-pieced Trip Around the World. Mom has one of Flora's TATW quilts. I'm not sure what I would do with this. Maybe quilt it and make it a wall hanging.

I have about 8 of these foundation pieced stars. They are huge! They make about 25" blocks. I don't have a clue what to do with them.

There were also a whole set of pieced curves for a Double Wedding Ring. Mom and Dad got one of her DWR quilts when they got married. Mom now has the DWR blocks so that responsibility is off my plate! I have these star blocks. I haven't researched the blocks but I have bought a couple of pieces of vintage fabric that I've bought for sashing. I love these blocks.

Finally, the coolest thing in the box are Flora's pattern blocks. She made sample blocks of the patterns that she used. You can tell the ones that she actually used because the pattern pieces are full of pin holes!

For now everything is going back into the box. It's time for me to get a few other projects done.

 

A QOV done and weekend wrap-up

I didn't get a chance to post last night. Kim came over and we had a nice dinner and visited through the watching and ridiculing of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. What a lame movie. It was saved by the "scenery" though. I had big plans for the weekend. Let's see how I did.

Get Chris' sauna assembled and installed.  First task accomplished!

QOV quilting I was into it so I kept going and finished the quilt.

Fibre&Stitch article Finished all of the photographs

March birthday postcards

Shop sample and class description for the scrubs class

I didn't get anything done on the last two tasks because I got wrapped up in completing the QOV quilt. I'll show a full size photo at a later date but you can see in this photo that I did overall swirls. I used a Superior Rainbows in Berry Delightful. I swear that thread was designed for the fabrics in this quilt. It was a perfect match! I used Superior So Fine in Antique Rose in the bobbin. After looking at it finished Kim and I thought that it would be cute with buttons in the pinwheels. So I searched through my vast button collection for a good variety and attached them with DMC embroidery floss. This quilt top was perfectly pieced by Wanda.

I have two more QOV tops to quilt by the end of March. Although I didn't stick to the list I think I got quite a lot accomplished this weekend!

I'm in a bind....

That was easy! It's amazing how well made kits are there days. This one from Costco went together in about an hour and a half and that included all of the clean up too. Not only did it go togther quickly, it actually works as advertised! Chris is happy so I'm happy. :)

I could have joined Judy's Quiltathon given all of the quilting I accomplished yesterday! The theme of this weekend is turning out to be "binding". I finished all of the hand sewing on Flora's maple leaf quilt and made the binding for her second quilt. The big surprise is that I got all of the quilting done on Wanda's pinwheel QOV. I'll show the quilting when I do the final shots of the quilt after it's done. I did an all over swirl except for the pinwheels and light squares. I like how it turned out and I got the binding made for that one too. Today I will sew binding to these 2 quilts and work on my F&S article photos.

Kim is coming over for dinner. Chris is making crab cakes. Yum!!

Stash Report

Now that Flora's first quilt is done I can report the backing and binding fabric as offically OUT of the stash! I did not purchase any fabric this week but I did restock lots of MistyFuse but that doesn't count.

In: zero!

Out: 6.5 yards

Finished the Red/White/Black String Quilt

I finished this quilt today. It's a Christmas gift for my friend Anne. Now before you point out that it's AFTER Christmas, I should note that she hasn't even started to make my gift yet! So, I'm early.

I started this in September at Craft Week. I made 4 blocks and Anne immediately claimed it as hers. It is based on the pattern used for the Heartstrings Quilt Project. I originally thought I might make this as a QOV. I'll make another for QOV - this one spoke to Anne and you have to let the quilt speak!

It is 70 x 90 and aside from the red used for the center strings and the inner border, it's all stash fabric. I started it because I had so many left over strings of black and white print fabrics.

The backing fabric is hand dyed gray and it is quilted with the Timeless Quilting - Feathered Curls pantograph. This was the first time I used this one and it will be one of my new favorites. It's very well balanced and has just the right density for my tastes.  the thread is Superior Threads "So Fine!" in Scarlet.

Here's the label that Debra embroidered for me. The color of the backing fabric is most accurate in the photos of the label. It's the perfect finishing touch!

Another quilt off to a new home

This is a quilt I completed in March of 2006 when Anne and I were creating our "Gift Quilt" pattern. This was one of the first prototypes. I had been collecting African fabrics for a while and had just enough to make this quilt. It was also the quilt that I used to first practice cross-hatching on the longarm. That's when I discovered that I LOVE ruler work!

One of Chris' friends went on a big African safari  sometime in the past 2 years and has just finished putting together his trophy room. He saw this quilt hanging in our guest room and went crazy for it. We're going to see them this weekend so I'm taking this quilt to Matt as a surprise.

I'll miss it. I love this quilt! Maybe I'll collect some more African fabrics....or not....for a while anyway....but maybe....

A color matching tip

Mom reminded me to post about a tip that we picked up in the Jean Wells Keenan class at Houston. One of our classmates brought this one to us. It's a tip to help isolate and match colors in small quantities in photos or fabric (or whatever). All it takes is an index card with a 1" (more or less) square cut into the card along with a very small hole at least an inch and a half away. In this example I have placed the hole in the card over a small patch of an orange daylily. With that color isolated I can then place fabric or color chips under the larger opening until I find the matching color. I thought this was just brilliant!

Piecing a perfect corner

Today was yet another great sewing day and a beautiful weather day on top of that. I did some more quilting on the Chinese Coins QOV quilt. It's officially half quilted now. I spent most of the day, however, on the pink and brown Churns Dash quilt blocks. I now have 18 of 30 done and here's a photo of them up on the design wall. I love how this is turning out and have decided that I will work on this to be a show quilt and I've started to think about quilting options. It will still be Kim's quilt, she just won't actually get it anytime soon!

Sewing a 1/4" seam - it's not about the 1/4"

I make a lot of quilts with quick piecing methods - like the foundation piecing that I used in the Chinese Coins quilt. But in the recent Snails Trails (here, here and here) and this quilt I have been concentrating on more accurate cutting and piecing. My favorite resource for learning better piecing skills is Mastering Precision Piecing by Sally Collins. I thought I'd share a couple of tips that I am using in this quilt.

1. Seam Allowance - I did a lot of experimenting on my machines with 1/4" seam allowances. I quickly learned that it's really not about the actual 1/4" seam - it's about the EFFECT of whatever seam I sewed - thread and fabric have a lot to do with the actual effective width of the seam allowance. Garment sewers deal with "turn of the cloth" all of the time and know that a thicker fabric will have a bigger turn of the cloth impact than a fine fabric. For quilters (well, for this quilter), I have found that there is a fabric effect (there are different thicknesses/weights) even in cotton fabrics but there is a bigger effect from the thread. A thicker (heavier weight) thread will effectively create a wider seam allowance than a thinner thread. When you press that seam allowance to one side the top fabric has a deeper fold to fold over a thicker thread. A lot of teachers use this as the excuse to recommend special fine weight threads (Aurafil 60 wt, Masterpiece, Mettler Fine Embroidery). I have some of these threads but I also have some other threads that I refuse to toss out. I use the thread that best matches/blends with the project fabrics. When I start sewing a new quilt I test out my effective 1/4" seam allowance on the fabrics in the quilt and using the project thread.

2. Starch - Any time I am cutting fabric that will have pieces with bias edges (half square triangles) I starch the fabric before cutting. I use a homemade starch of 3 teaspoons of cornstarch dissolved in 1 cup of cold water. I spray the starch liberally over the fabric and let it soak in for a bit before ironing. Letting the starch absorb into the fabric eliminates the problem of the starch flaking off the fabric.

3. Measure at every step - As much as I am careful about my cutting and pressing, the blocks can get out of square. I measure and trim after EVERY seam. Even on this HST block I trimmed off a tiny sliver to square it up. It may not seem like much but over the whole width of the quilt this could make a big difference. Imagine a 1/32" difference on every piece might make a 1/8" difference on this block and that would set the whole quilt width to be off 3/4".

4. When I find that I have cut a piece a little short (even just a thread or two), as I did in the cross piece of this block, I create a template to help me absorb the mistake as I piece the block. In this example, the HST block is 3 1/2" square and the bar block is 4 1/2" x 3 1/2". I discovered that I had cut some of the bar pieces just a hair short of 4 1/2. I created this little template by drawing a 3 1/2"  square and another mark at 1" to the left. I placed the HST block in the square, right side up and them placed the bar block on top (right side down) aligning the block on the 4 1/2" mark on the LEFT. You can see that there is a sliver of the HST block showing in the seam allowance. By aligning to the finished size I am able to absorb my mistake in the seam allowance. Does that make sense?

And that's how I get these pretty points!

I'll be out of town for a few days on a business trip so no more sewing until next weekend. I hope I can get these and the quilting on the Chinese Coins quilt done next weekend before I pack for Houston! I also still have to plan a border for this quilt.

                  

Coins Quilts and other projects

I feel like I haven't been sewing in weeks and that might actually be the case. Last weekend was about tie dyeing and before that was about allergies and before that it was the surgery stuff. So I am so excited to come home tomorrow night and have a real sewing weekend again!  I decided to get a jump start tonight and get things going. It would be really nice to finish a project before I go to Houston and buy stuff that I don't need for 5 new projects.

Just playing around

I haven't done any sewing the past few days, still dragging from allergy issues. But Judy L issued a design challenge on her blog and I decided to give it a try.  She provided the block and we are to design a quilt. Since I have a tendency to get carried away with things like these I decided to limit my time to 1 hour. I came up with several possibilities but here are the two that I am least embarrassed to show!

This was fun to do - I should play with EQ more often! I would never make either of these quilts but this might be a good jumping off point for some more successful designs.

I finally have a Churn Dash pattern!

I think most of you know that I like to design fat quarter patterns for myself. I love scrap quilts and love buying fat quarters so designing quilts around fat quarters works well for me. I don't buy many of the books that have patterns for quilts using fat quarters because I find that most of them aren't really designed to optimize the use of the fat quarter piece of fabric. So I started designing my own. The first was a quilt we call the Gift Quilt. Anne and I designed this one to use 20 fat quarters and to be really fast to make when we need a quick gift quilt. The next two were my Snails Trail and Baby Snails Trail. I've really loved the Churn Dash pattern so I decided to do that one next. For some reason this one has taken me hours to optimize but I finally got it!

Another QOV Done!

This quilt is intended as a QOV and hopefully I can get it out of the house before Chris gets too attached to it. he REALLY, REALLY likes it! He's not getting it though - he has his own blankies.

The quilt is from a patern developed by Judy Laquidara for one of her Quilt For An Hour quilts. I am short two borders from the original design because I ran out of blue fabric. It would look better with an additional narrow white and narrow navy border but it's just fine as it is. Hopefully this photo will not enlarge enough for you to see all of the pieced sectins of the last two navy borders - there are a lot of seams there! The finished size is 65 x 90. The binding is made of pieced strips of all of the red fabrics. In the end I have about 30 inches of red fabric left. Now, that's a nice way to make a scrap quilt!

Here's some more information on the details........

A good weekend

Not only has the weather improved (cooler and dryer) but it was a great sewing weekend and it's not even over yet. Let's review the list!

The Red/Black/White quilt

Anne's quilt top is done and it's big and it's heavy! It's amazing how much weight the foundations add to the quilt top. I am really pleased with the top though. The red Moda Marble matched the border fabric perfectly - it should since I ordered 3 different red fabrics to try to match it! I suppose that means that there are 2 more of these quilts potentially in my future!

But that's why I keep lists. As I was sewing the borders this morning I was thinking of starting another one of these in another color way. I made myself look at the list and decided that my next project will be either the Chinese Coins quilt or the Mini Log Cabin. This is not the time to start something new!

I did have one issue with this one that I will try to work out before I start another one. There are a few places where my red diagonal strips did not meet up right at the corners. I thought I had been careful about my seam allowances but I did switch machines halfway through piecing the blocks and that may have contributed to the difference. Or I could have just been a little careless positioning of the ruler when I trimmed the blocks. I emailed Mary as she is the expert in my book on string quilts. She said that she has the same problem and doesn't worry about it. I'm taking her advice and moving on! But I will try to resolve it on the next one that I make.

I think I will attempt to dye a back in mottled gray. I do not think I want a black or red back because I will likely want to see the quilting. But gray is really difficult to dye so if that doesn't work out I may order this fabric. I have gotten persnickety about  wide backings and seem to avoid seaming backs at all costs these day! Any opinions on the backing color or the quilting for this one?

WIP Confession Time

Judy posted all of her WIPs on her blog today and challenged others to do the same. Egads! I have a few. But in the spirit of openess here goes:

Quilt For an Hour - top done

I took your advice and removed the last two narrow blue borders and added to final wide blue border. I think it turned out just fine! I will not be able to quilt this soon so I'm calling this project "done" for a while! Thanks to Judy for another fun project!

The weekend at the river and a question at the end

One of the cool things about the state of Virginia is that there are so many things to do. There are the mountains, the beaches and the rivers - or as it's called here, "the rivah". The rivah can be any of several rivers including the James, Potomac or the one we visited, the Rappahannock. My friend's house is on the Rappahannock in a town named Lively. It's a tiny little town but one of my favorite signs in Lively is the local drugstore - Lively Drugs. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to get "lively drugs"? We didn't get any lively drugs but we did have a nice view of the river.

Back in the sewing room

I haven't posed anythng meaningful in about a week. It's been a weird week or so. First I had a little health issue that turned out to be nothing big and will only require a litle outpatient surgery in a few weeks.  I just let the whole thing distract me too much. Then my nephew and his girlfriend visited for the weekend - we really enjoyed their company and I think I earned a few brownie points with Mom for bringing him to visit her on her birthday Sunday. And on Saturday I taught a class at the LQS. It was based on the snails trail block that I've been so infatuated with this year! The class was great and I even had time to make 4 more blocks in a baby snails trail that I am using for the class sample.

Do you find that after an extended time away from sewing that you have some trouble deciding what to focus on first? I sure do. So I decided that tonight I would do some of my scrappy Chinese Coin blocks as a warm up.

Quilt For an Hour

Thanks for your input to my fabric options the the new Quilt For an Hour project. I decided on a blend of 4 and 5. I picked some of the darker reds from #4 and the lighter reds from #3. I'm please with it so far. I'm sure this will be the last day that I will be on schedule!

Here's how it looks so far.

When I do piecing on scrap quilts I usually use a medium gray thread.  Am I the only person that is so geeky about sewing that seeing this is fun?

Oh, what the heck, let's start a new project!

Judy L is starting another Quilt For an Hour project and I've decided to go along again. This will be another QOV so I want it to be suitable for a man or woman. Mine will be done from fat quarters. Ilast night I pulled out some possible fabric combinations. Judy's quilt is black, white and multi. I've decided to use some cool indygo fabrics that a friend gave me as my "black". I have two tan groups for the "white" and 3 options for the color. Here they are as 5 options - what's your preference?

QOV Done!

I did it - I finished the latest QOV on Independence Day! I still have to make a pilowcase to ship with it and make the label, but I'm calling it done on 7/4/07.  This quilt started, I think, in 2000. My Guild Chapter decided to make a signature Friendship Star quilt. I like the block so much that I started some of these blocks. And that was the end of that. The Guild quilt did get fiished and it's one of my favorites of the officer quilts. When I decided a month or so ago to start knocking out some of my UFO's, this was the first one up. I thought it would be a nice quilt for a QOV. I decided to try to use up some of my stash of strips for the borders. All in all I am very pleased with this one! Even better my Mom took all of my leftover fabrics from this project so that bin is really EMPTY!

Read on for the photos......

QOV Stars Started

I pulled out the strip bin and the Friendship Star box this afternoon to start the QOV. This was a nice brain break from those postcards. I had 5 blocks made already. I started by pulling out the dark strips and cutting some 9 1/2" foundations. I made some of the string blocks to see if my border idea was going to work. I think it works just fine! So now I have this project all set up so that I can work on it in short spurts of time and maybe get it done this month. These are really easy blocks and there will be 9 rows of 7 blocks. The finished block is 9".

See that strip at the bottom of the photo? As I was sewing the string blocks for the borders, the waste part of the most of the strings was longer than 6". I remembered that some of the Heartstrings Project would use their dryer sheets (after they are used) as foundations. The dryer sheet is about 6.5" wide. I'm doing laundry today and decided to give it a try - and it works great! That's 4 or 5 dryer sheet foundations there, cut down to 6 x 8.5. So I'll make some of these blocks as I create the border blocks for the star quilt. They might eventually become a Chinese Coins quilt. The rest of the "cut away" from this quilt will go in the trash! LOL!

The Graduation Quilt

Another project from the list is done!

• finish the binding and label on the baby snails trail.
• make my class notes and the class samples for the Snails Trail class at Quilting  Adventures.
• finish my nephews graduation quilt
• make the pillow for my boss
• My Indygo Junction jacket
• My class project from one of the Carol Taylor classes
• I also have to finish the Hour A Day quilt that's currently on the longarm for quilting

This one is more special than the others and I completed it TWO WEEKS before it will be delivered. Can't imagine how I did that! Here are the photos.

WIP - and what's next!

While watching the drawn out last night of Idol, I got some more quilting on the wonky trombone quilt!

Good News/Bad News

First, the good news! My friend/co-worker from Los Angeles is here visiting. She's officially here to participate in a corporate-wide networking forum that I am hosting this week. I was very excited when the President of her division selected her as one of the participants! She came in yesterday so that we could have a day to play. We planned to go to two quilt shops. We started at Quilting Adventures where I bought all of this!

Joyce, the owner, buys great fabrics and then packages them perfectly! I'm primarily a fat quarter buyer and she makes these great bundles. They just follow me out the door and jump in my car without my knowledge. This 13 yard purchase pretty much wiped out my stash usage from the past 2 quilts. Oh well.

I was frugal compared to my friend - she bought twice as much! Next we headed to Quilter's Corner but they were closed for Mother's Day. Bummer for us, good for our wallets. That explains why Quilting Adventures was PACKED with shoppers and there's wasn't even a sale! Several men (husbands and sons) taking the mothers out for a day of shopping. Now we're  home relaxing and my fabrics are already being pre-washed.

Now for the bad news.  The Tree Swallow nest is empty. Chris went to check on them while we were gone. Something (snake, raccoon...) cleaned out the nest. He's got to move that box, we lose more birds in that box than any other.

You will not hear from me for a few days. The networking forum  is 3 full days of meeting and dinners. So, I'll talk to you later in the week.

QOV done - another item off the list!

And another one bites the dust!

• finish the binding and label on the baby snails trail.
• make my class notes and the class samples for the Snails Trail class at Quilting Adventures.
• finish my nephews graduation quilt
• make the pillow for my boss
• My Indygo Junction jacket
• My class project from one of the Carol Taylor classes
• I also have to finish the Hour A Day quilt that's currently on the longarm for quilting

The quilting on the QOV went very quickly so I finished off the binding and label today. The quilt has even been washed and is ready for donation! This is for the Quilt Studio 40 Quilts Service Project as a male QOV.

Baby Snails Trail

More progress!

• finish the binding and label on the baby snails trail.
• make my class notes and the class samples for the Snails Trail class at Quilting Adventures.
• finish my nephews graduation quilt
• make the pillow for my boss
• My Indygo Junction jacket
• My class project from one of the Carol Taylor classes
• I also have to finish the Hour A Day quilt that's currently on the longarm for quilting

It's been a good morning! Two project done so far today. This quilt is another sample for my Mastering the Snails Trail class at Quilting Adventures. I made two samples - a lap quilt and a baby quilt.

WIP Wednesday

I'm feeling better today and the conference sessions today were actually interesting and valuable. Tonight there is fund-raising show featuring Dennis Miller. Should be fun!

You might think that because I'm out of town that I don't have a WIP report. One of the side benefits of cleaning out the sewing room was getting my WIP projects in order. So to try to get things a little under control, I've identified these projects that must be completed before I start another new one.  I am glad that Judy has decided to postpone starting another Hour A Day project for a couple of months! This last one has been fun and they are a great way to use stash and make a new charity quilt.

If I finish everything on this list by the end of May, my reward will be taking Sue's Mixed Media class.

Weekend Progress

Blogging just isn't fun without pictures! Although yesterday was a tremendously productive day, I'll just recount it here briefly to record the progress and post the photos later in the week.

First, I got this female QOV quilt from Barbara loaded and quilted. I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that I have loaded and completed a quilt in one day. I did Jamie Wallen's Flurry of Angels as an overall treatment for the quilt. I did my flurry large and, while there are bobbles, it looks pretty good overall. I did this one large because I needed to get it done but the next time I would do it smaller. I used Superior So Fine thread and didn't have any problems at all. If you've been considering Jamie's Cottontracks workshop, go for it, it's excellent!

The other big accomplishment was getting my Hour A Day quilt top done. I put on the borders as I watched Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday for about the 40th time! I picked out some fabric from the stash for the backing and will get that pieced today. I've decided to quilt it with the Square Spiral panto so that I can get this done. It will be donated to QOV as well. This was a fun project and if Judy continues to do the HAD projects, I will do them as community service quilts. I also accomplished a little stash busting - I got rid of 5 yards of the batiks that I hated and 5 yards for the backing plus a lot of scraps for the 9-patch blocks.

Today is house chore day but I should get Barbara's second female QOV loaded and the quilting started. I also need to get back to my nephew's music snail's trail. The blocks are all done, I just need to put them together and add borders. I'm so proud of him - he was accepted into the Peabody Conservatory! They told him that his trombone audition was graduate student quality! Now we are working like mad on scholarship applications  - no one in this family has the $42k annual tuition - but I told him if it was that important to him then he could make it work.

Weekend Plans

Being without a camera is a real bummer! I don't like posting without photographs. I have ordered the new camera, a Canon A710 and it will be here Wednesday. I'll sure have lots of photos to catch up on by then! I selected the A710 for several reasons. First, I only buy cameras that use AA batteries. I always have a huge supply at home and they are very easy to find anywhere else. I didn't want a camera that was too heavy or too fancy. Some day I want to take up more serious photography but I don't have time for that right now. So I narrowed my choices to the A630 and A710 and frankly it was a toss up at that point. Honestly, I would have preferred to keep my Olympus Camedia - I loved that camera!

The last 2 nights I have been working on my version of the April Quilt For an Hour quilt. I only have 5 more blocks to make before I start sewing together the middle of the quilt. I may get the top done this weekend. I wish I could show it, it's looking pretty good on the design wall!

This weekend I must get this quilt from Barbara loaded and quilted. It's a female QOV. Ideally I could also get this one (also from Barbara) loaded a started. I also have a birthday postcard to make for my nephew for his 13th birthday and cards for a local swap with "air" as the theme.

Carla asked in a comment about the TENS machine that I bought on day 3 of MQX. Yes, yes, yes - I love it and would recommend it to anyone with chronic muscle tension issues. I get deep tissue massages at least once every 3 weeks but one day of sewing or heavy computer work totally knots up the muscles in my back and neck. 20 minutes on the TENS machine loosens everything up! I wish I had bought one of these years ago! The one I got came from here but the price was much better at the show. I'm sure you could shop around and find similar models at a better price. Although, I have to say that I would probably have paid twice as much to have this relief.

Quilt For An Hour progress

I'm caught up! I finished Hour 5 of Judy's current project. I will not keep up the rest of the week because I'll be at MQX, but I like this enought that I'll get it done when I return. Have I said already that I'm really happy to be getting rid of this fabric that I hate? The funny thing is that, now that I am using it, I'm starting to like it! Here's a photo of a stack of the 9-patch blocks. The blue fabric wil be the "white" in her quilt.

This photo is just awful. I'm switching from Micrisoft Digital Image Editor to Photoshop Elements and am trying to learn it. I also need to spend somemore time on getting the photo lighting correct. This particular quilt seems to be one of the more difficult to photograph so the next time I photo the progress I will use that opportunity to futz with the photo more.

Something accomplished

I haven't posted in a few days because I didn't have any photos to post! Yesterday, some friends and I went to do the Virginia Quilt Museum to volunteer and to see the Jamestown Challenge Quilts display. Of course, we made a stop at Patchwork Plus in Dayton, VA. A couple of red and black fabrics begged to come home with me and I didn't disappoint them! I always take a hand sewing project along to do while manning the museum desk so I was able to complete the binding of the Blue and White Snails Trail.

WIP Wednesday & Thursday &....

Nothing exciting going on because I started hand sewing the binding on the Blue & White Snails Trail quilt last night. This will take a few days but I'm really happy with the bias stripe binding. If you look closely at the quilting design you will get a sneak peek at just one design from Suzanne Earley's new book More Meandering  Magic. She kindly let me test one of the designs and it was perfect for this quilt. I believe she will be taking pre-orders soon and will have the book at MQX in 2 weeks.

Arc-i-Textures class

Today was the second Carol Taylor class called Arc-i-Textures. It was a great class and I am happy to report that my project is DONE!

Egads! Another UFO!

Thanks for all of the nice comments on the new blog format and my red specs. I hadn't even made the connection that I had changed glasses. I have a serious Jones for eyeglasses and have about 6 pair - these are the oldest but still my favorites!

Today was class day. The bad thing about taking classes is that you generally leave the class with yet another unfinished project. A few years ago I decided that I would not necessarily do class projects. I would allow myself to just make samples. The project from today's class  with Carol Taylor was a big wall hanging. I knew that I did not want another wall hanging but thought I might be able to translate the components into a padded case from my new travel laptop. So the good news is that I still think that the project is good so although it's a new UFO, it's one that I'm excited about. I want to get it done to use to carry my PC to MQX in 2 weeks. Here's the progress so far:

Big sewing day

and a big day all around - today is my 100th post! I'm not surprised that I've done 100 posts - I can talk for days! I am surprised by the number of people that still visit here. I enjoy all of your comments and support and feel like I have made lots of new friends in the last few months. Thank you! To mark the day, I decided to change the look of my blog and even uploaded a new picture. I'm sure Kim will tell me that this photo is bad too - she doesn't understand yet that ALL of my photos are bad!

Today has been a super fantastic sewing day. My husband is on a golfing trip in South Carolina and deserves every minute of the great time he is having. I don't have any completed projects to share but I have some piles of started projects for you....

I quilted to celebrate National Quilting Day

It's the first weekend in a while that I have had so much dedicated sewing time and it's been great! I don't have picture to share today but thought I would just log in with an update.

The weekend got off to a great start Friday evening. Chris and I went to dinner and then he willingly went with me to Quilting Adventures to get some Minkie for backing the baby snails trail quilt. It's the first time he's been in there with me. I found two fat quarter bundles that just had to go home with me and my Minkie! I'm convinced they make those bundles just for me! As I was checking out I couldn't understand why she was practically whispering to me. Then I got it - she confirmed that they do that when the husbands are in attendance! I thought that was very funny. I was very motivated when I got home and I FINISHED piecing the baby snails trail quilt!

Today I was back at Willie (my APQS Millennium) and I'm making great progress on th