Working At It

Finished quilts can be really glamorous.  Chain piecing the zillions of little bits to make the top really isn't.  My reward for all this hard work?  I will get to cut off all those corners (they've been double seamed already), press them, square them, and use them in a border.  Yep, 800 of them.

Recent Quiltifications

Beth's Double Delight

Babs' Pink Random Boxes

Two donated panels turned into donation quilts

A Quilts For Kids donation quilt

A delightful drunkard's path variation pieced by Michelle

...and the Attic Windows donation quilt our monthly group made last time.

Sometimes I don't have much to say about what I'm quilting, but I always enjoy it.  Thought I'd share.  :)

February Blog Train

I'm hoping for an early spring - so far the winter has been far wintrier than what we generally see around here, so my contribution to this month's Stuff To Scrap blogtrain is all about early signs of spring. You can pick up the other pieces of this really interesting train at the links below. Don't forget to leave some love behind as you stop at the various points. Everyone has put lots of thought and effort into giving you a beautiful kit absolutely FREE. :)

Click on the preview below to be taken to the download site for my portion of the February blogtrain.

Becky aka SAHM Scrapper
Night Light Scrapper
Digi-Scrapz by Christi
Scraps N Pieces
¡nyi + a digit·lis scrapbooking
Nibbles Skribbles
Little Red Scraps
jensenmotleycrewdesigns
JIC Creations
Scrapalicious Cereal
Just For Fun
Saphira's Scrapdesign
Lots of PrettyThings
Let Me Scrapbook!
Rainamoon Scraps
Adriana's Cafe
Quiltifications    YOU ARE HERE
Always Be Neighbors Designs
Scrappin' Serenity
The Scrappy Kat
Craft With Me
Shel Belle Scraps
Tonisha's Playground
Where The Heart Is
Altered Sea
Kerry's Scraps
GB DESIGNS
This Little Missy
Seal Scraps
Samantha Scraps
Milly Dee Designs

eine kleine helles Nähen

It isn't quilting really, but it did use up a bit of my stash.  :)  I just need to do something ELSE once in a while so I made one of these wallets.  I've had the pattern so long I can't remember who made it.  A cursory search of the internet didn't yield anything.  If any of you remember who made the original pattern let me know so I can apply proper credit. 

FOUND IT!  Lazy Girls Designs Wonder Wallet!

Seems like it was referred to as having a magic coin pocket.  Yah, bad memory.  The whole thing goes together in less than 30 minutes from fabric selection to adding credit cards and coin.

January Quiltathon Day 2

09:24 Sunday

Woke up in my own time instead by the alarm (slept until 8, can you imagine?!), took way too long in a very steamy shower, fixed myself a big mug of strong black coffee and came straight up here to see how everyone is doing on their Quiltathon weekend.  I really enjoy reading the reports everyone makes along the way.

This morning Terpsichore and I will be working on Beth's quilt and I'll post a picture in an hour or two.

FINAL EDIT Monday 21:00


You'd think I could get a simple picture to upload.  It isn't even a spectacular picture.  Just some leaves.  Lots of leaves to quilt on this one.  At any rate, here's the promised picture.

January Quiltathon Begins

07:40 Saturday

YES! Everything is organized for the quiltathon this morning and I've started on my first project which is binding a donation quilt. From there I'll move on to getting a friend's quilt on Terpsichore and starting the quilting,


but I'll be moving back and forth as my attention span wears out between that and some piecing for two other charity quilts (only one is pictured).

If all goes well I'll be piecing the Hunter's Star quilt Beth and I worked up in EQ6 recently tomorrow.

Pour yourself a cuppa and get out your own quilting project and sew along with me! Check out the progress of other quiltathoners HERE.

I'll be back periodically with updates throughout the day.

12:10 pm

Finished the binding on my donation quilt!
A few friends are over helping me enjoy the saturday morning quilting. Babs is working on some snowball blocks, Beth is squaring up, and my mom is catching up on the latest quilting magazines.

I'll start working with Terpsichore on this quilt soon.

15:50

Attic window blocks are assembled but awaiting borders. It's time for me to go play in the greenhouse for a few minutes to rest my eyes and relax. Back soon with more quilting!

21:30 Saturday

I have made some progress on Beth's Double Delight, but nothing photo worthy as yet, so I'll just leave you with this composite picture of some of the things that are being happy in my greenhouse right now. Yes, that bottom right photo is of a bowl full of moss. Perhaps it grows everywhere in your part of the world, but around here greenhouses are about the only place it grows!

Terpsichore and I will be dancing through our Sunday and we'll check in with you right here from time to time with our progress.

Happenings

There will be a QUILTATHON this weekend. I'll see you here bright and early tomorrow morning. You can join in yourself. Check out Judy's blog HERE for more information.

What Friends are For

The long story behind this quilt is for someone else to tell, but the December meeting at my house of the gals known as The English Street Quilters was spent turning several yards of blue and gold cotton into this:

We started out with freshly washed cottons and a plan. Beth pressed, I cut, Swooze and Babs sewed their little hearts out, making rows. Once everything was cut I made the HSTs and then started assembling rows. We kept Beth on that iron the entire time! After only about three hours we had a finished top. I spent a day quilting it, and now Babs' husband will be curling up in his very own custom made quilt for Christmas.

Merry Christmas David! from all of the English Street Quilters, but especially from Babs!

It's December, so mostly I don't get to breathe this month unless I've carefully scheduled it. Between custom woodwork and custom quilting, I'm always swamped pre-holiday. It's a good kind of busy of course. I love it all. But it does keep me from posting here regularly and the older I get the shorter the days seem to get.

Very recently I had an opportunity to work on several really interesting projects for various customers. You might find them interesting as well.

First up - a quilt that was many years in the making. This bad boy (and this time bad means bad!) was a long time in the piecing. Ask my customer about it. You'll be able to feel the stress and tension in the air as she talks about running out of one kind of fabric, not understanding about bias cutting (this was her very first quilt, the poor thing!) and the fight she had with the border (I think the border won). When she brought this quilt over to me she wasn't sure it could even be quilted. And I must admit, it was pretty wavy. When I tossed it down on my living room floor to check for warping, it looked like a spanish dancer's skirt. L. wanted the top quilted though. She'd persevered and gotten the darned thing turned into a top for her son and she really wanted to give it this year for christmas. I smiled and said, "I don't think it will be a problem at all!"

It was on the machine for a week before I steamed, tucked, and pinned it into something approximating flatness, all the while hearing my own words mocking me, "I don't think it will be a problem at all!"

TIP: BEFORE CUTTING FABRIC ON THE BIAS, STARCH THE HECK OUT OF THE FABRIC TO PREVENT STRETCHING.

Why don't they ever say that to beginners? The whole time I was trying to flatten this thing out on Terpsichore I was picturing poor L crying her eyes out as she made it.

Here's how it ended up:

Now, to those of you who are accustomed to building and using show quality quilts, you might not be impressed. But to anyone out there who has ever made a top that you were sure wouldn't be useable, look closely. This is a very pretty quilt! Completely useable, nice texture, nothing to laugh and point at at all! I love working on quilts like these. It's a little like hiring the handicapped; awkward at first and gloriously worth it in the long run! Thanks L, for letting me tell your quilt's story. I'm looking forward to working on more of your tops in the future.

Another quilt that I came across recently was this tiny little baby blanket. I've never seen a baby quilt that shouted "delicate baby things" so loudly. The quilt isn't any more delicate than any other of course, it's very well pieced. But the fabric choices and the delightful little pinwheels along two edges of the quilt really emphasize it's size and the character of the quilt. This one is so small that it took me longer to mount it on the machine and take it back off afterwards than it did to quilt it!

By the same piecer as the delicate baby things quilt, this flannel quilt had me worried from the day I accepted the commission. She wanted me to use fake fur for the back. Ok now, I've sewed with furs plenty in the past. From stuffed toys to overcoats to accessories, I've probably done a little of everything. So I know how much work it is to keep the fur out of the works while you work. I was only thinking of Terpsichore's health, I swear! I didn't want to be digging long green bits of nylon out of her innards for months afterwards or even worse, busting something during my busy season. The quilt eventually made it to the front of the line. I thought about laying out butcher paper over the fuzzies, but decided to just get brave and try it as though it was a regular back. There was a little stretching on the fabric, but it wasn't bad, and Terpsichore bit through all those layers like they were chiffon. The only time I had to clean up fur was when I trimmed edges to roll the backing over to the front for binding (the customer's idea and I LIKE it!). Now have a look at how cute this is! I guarantee you that the child for whom it was built will be dragging it around with them for years. It feels more like a plush toy than a blanket. The furry binding is a real zippy accent on an already cute top. I used wooly nylon in the bobbin on this quilt - I like the way it blends with the fur on the back.






And finally this little repair gem. S brought me this quilt after being pointed my way in a series of emails from one quilter to another. Her granny made this quilt a long time ago (don't quote me, but it has to have been somewhere between 1942 and 1950). Sadly, S's dog got hold of it and bit a big hole right through it.







Like most people who don't sew, S didn't realize that one of the beautiful things about quilts is they are entirely MODULAR. That is, if a section is ruined, it can be excised and replaced; lock, stock, and barrel. I spent a few days scouring my stash for just the right fabrics. I tea-dyed the backing to get the right aged look, and very lightly abraded the prints to keep them from being too glossy compared to the rest of the quilt. For several small tears on the back, all I did was apply a patch as though it were an applique. For small seam rips in the front I simply removed existing stitching, fabric fluffies, wee bits of who knows what, pressed, and re-sewed. For those areas on the front that were too bitten to be repaired, I snipped all seams, removed the old patch (or what was left of it) and added a new one.


All the new work has been done by hand, but the original top was machine pieced. It was all hand quilted with baptist fans. Once the repair work was finished (including replacing a bit of batting that has probably made it to the dog's favorite spot in the back yard by now) the repaired areas were requilted by hand in a stitch as closely mimic-ing the original style as possible. For me this has always been the hardest part of any repair. Hand quilting is like handwriting. No two quilters do it exactly the same way. Lucky for me, this one was quilted in a way that is very similar to my own natural style, so I had little trouble with it.

Voila! Granny's quilt. Good as ... well, not new. But all in one piece again and ready for many more years of love.

Quilted Greenie

Faith an' begorrah! I've finally uploaded pictures of my finished green and beige quilt. I'm just posting two of them here. The rest can be found by following THIS link if you want to see them. I have to confess though - I pulled a newbie stunt and used a dull needle all the way through the quilting without really even realizing what I'd done to myself. It doesn't quite mess up the tension to do this, but it did leave me with lots of little green dots of thread showing through the back (I used neutral in the bobbin). Luckily for me I got this 2 x 4 to the head reminder on my own quilt instead of a customer quilt. Chant it with me, "change the needle every ten machine hours even if it still looks pointy."

Something Completely Different

Stuff To Scrap has a blog train each month. For the first time I'm participating as a designer. I know most of you aren't digital scrappers, but you're still welcome to download my portion of the kit and visit each of the other bloggers in the train as well. There are lots of really interesting things in the kit this month. You can download my portion HERE (or by clicking on the preview) and click on the links below the preview to visit the other bloggers for their portions. Below is a thumbnail of my portion of the train.



Nibbles Skribbles
Becky aka SAHM Scrapper
The Scrappy Kat
Quiltifications YOU ARE HERE
Scraps N Pieces
Mommy Me Time Scrapper
Bubblescrap Designs
Little Red Scraps
Ginger's House
light's digiscrapworld
Grandma's Templates
Jensen Motley Crew Designs
Scrap Me Silly
Shel Belle Scraps
Crafting at Your Special Delivery
Saphira's Scrapdesign
Scrap Attack Scraps
Scrappin' Serenity
Ányi + a digitális scrapbooking
Life is Not a Cereal
Kerry's Scraps
Rainamoon Scraps
Lotsofprettythings
Rucola Designs
DigiScrapz by Christi
Nita's Things
Funky Time Designs by Amber
Midnight Scrapping
Desertgirl Designs
moms unique possiblities
CityGurl Creations
This Little Missy
Let Me Scrapbook
A valóság tükre - OsDesign
Ayu's Scrapping
Adriana's Cafe
Altered Sea
Flower Scraps
Kori's Scraps
Always Be Neighbors Designs
JW-DigiScraps
Mad Genius Designs
A Fish Design

Lord of the Circle Lord

I did it. I broke down and bought a Circle Lord. In some ways I think of it as selling out. At least until I look closely at my freehand circles. Then I just cackle with glee. This thing makes even my quilting look good. No kidding. Have a look at some of the things just a super basic stripped down Circle Lord can do:



this was my first ever attempt to use the gizmo, too.

There won't ever be a replacement for artistically worked careful freehand quilting, but there is plenty of room in my repertoire for well made circles.

I'd write more, but I need to search the internet. I'm now in the market for a Dirty Dishes Lord.

Houston Quilt Festival

I know, everyone else has already posted fabulous pictures of the quilts on display. The winners were all breathtaking; so were most of the quilts that didn't even get a mention! The vendor booths were interesting - many of them had new tools and gadgets on display. There were lots of technique tutorials. The folk at Thimble Art were showing off their dimensional paper piecing technique, Fabric Fanatics had the best deals on beautiful batiks (some of which are pictured below!) big companies and individual entrepeneurs were side by side in booths. I bought some metallic thread for which I have high hopes, and found just the right blend of oranges and yellows in a thread for a top that's waiting in the queue; my buddy Beth and I spent a lot of time directing each other to various sights.

This is all completely normal.

What we did that's blogworthy this year is, we made a quilt.

That's right. We made a quilt while we were at the Houston show. You know how seeing all the beautiful quilts is well, at first it's just humbling, but then it makes you really want to get back home and get busy, right? We are both already aquainted with that feeling so we brought along fabrics for a donation quilt. We cut, pressed, sewed, (frog stitched :( ) and sewed some more. When we left Houston we left with an extra quilt top! I used the leftovers for a back and quilted it, and today Beth will be taking it home to sew on the binding. It was a most satisfying experience. We had plenty of spare time while we were there because we didn't have to pick up anyone else's dirty socks, cook dinner, help with vocabulary words or let the dogs in and out. We went with a simple rail fence block in a zigzag layout. almost (but not quite!) impossible to mess this up. I sewed on an entire pair of rows upside down and we didn't notice it until we were setting it out to admire the finished top. One bad seam in the whole top isn't too awful though.

I quilted it with a pointy, angular meander. It took almost no time. I've seen Beth sew binding. That's not going to take long either.

Capital Equipment Care

I was out of town for a while helping someone through a spot of maintenance. You can take your Singer to the shop; hearts are trickier. Don't ignore the clunks and dings.

Fall 2009 Online Quilt Festival

Welcome to the Fall 2009 Quilt Festival online! Thanks Amy, for hosting it. The spring festival was amazing! To see other quilts in the festival, go to Amy's list, HERE.

Here's my entry for the show. It is a quilt I started piecing about four years ago and finally dragged out of storage to finish up this summer. I stepped way out on a limb to quilt it with contrasting thread and it turned out surprisingly better than I thought it would.

Clicking on pictures takes you to the larger photo, and there are links to detail shots at the bottom of this post.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you really enjoy the rest of the quilt show!

Hot Summer Nights seems like such an obvious name for this quilt...

Detail shots can be seen HERE and HERE, and yay! another item on my current project list is completed!