Last Quilty Project for the Year

 It's the end of the year, and I've got one last blog post for 2018.

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas and have been enjoying the holidays.  On the 20th we watched our granddaughters dance in their ballet school's Nutcracker selections.  They both dance on-point now and they each had their first solos!  A very exciting time for them!

We had a great time Christmas Eve at our oldest son's home with his family, and then a quiet day on Christmas, just the 3 of us at home.  It will be a quiet New Year's for us too.  We're going to watch the Dr. Who special and play board games.  I'm looking forward to it.

Fortunately, we had some honest-to-God bright sunlight this morning for the first time in days, so I could get some photos I've been wanting to take for a while now.  It's been so very dark and rainy here, and just terrible lighting for photos.  So this was a wonderful opportunity!  Plus, sunny makes us happy here!

 My last bit of quilting this year was a gift for the Tacoma MQG Christmas gift exchange.  It was secret sewing, so I couldn't share with you until now.  I made a tablerunner in my recipient's favorite colors.  She requested tropical blues and greens. (some of my favorite colors!)

This is based on a couple of quilts in Alexandra Ledgerwood's book Improvising Tradition.   I had to use mostly batiks to get the right tones of tropical blues and greens.  Fortunately, I have a small bin of batik scraps, which came in very handy!  I just sat down and started doing some improv log cabin-y blocks, which is my favorite kind of creativity!

When I liked what I had with the blocks, then I had to figure out the right proportions for a tablerunner.  It wasn't too hard, and I'd like to do another one of these.  I made notes so I could repeat this!

The quilting design was courtesy of my DS.  He drew a sketch and then was kind enough to draw it on the quilt sandwich with a hera marker, making the quilting very easy.  

Leigh Ann seemed very happy with this!  

side 1

This was gifted to me, and made by LaDonna.  A great tote bag!  I love that off-set pocket!

side 2

inside view

I love all the pockets on the inside!  Those are always handy. I think all tote bags should have multiple pockets - LaDonna must have read my mind! And the fabrics she chose are so fun!  Kitties and then goldfish swimming in bowls for the pockets.

I don't talk a lot about myself on here, but I will say that I'm glad to see 2018 end.  It has been a tough year.  Dear Son was sick for a lot of it, Dear Hubby was traveling for a lot of it and I got to take up the slack.  Which didn't leave much time for quilting.  :(  Then I broke 3 toes in July and found out I have osteoporosis.  DH retired the end of August, which he really needed.  All that world traveling was taking a toll.

Fortunately, he's around now that I need him, because in October I injured my foot.  The doctor thought it was a sprained ankle.  I rested it and used a cane to walk with and then in November I started physical therapy for it.  But by December, it was much worse!  So I quit P.T. and went back to the doctor.  

I've been staying off of it as much as possible and using a cane to hobble around.  Wednesday the 2nd I'm going to have an MRI to find out what is going on and how bad it is.  I'm kind of dreading finding out - I don't want to have surgery!  So, I'm hoping for good news in January!  Cross your fingers or say a little prayer for me, please!

Goodbye 2018!  Hello 2019!

Since I made my tablerunner with a bin of scraps, I think it qualifies, so I'm linking up with Oh Scrap! over at Quilting Is More Fun Than Houseworrk.

And Happy quilting!

February Already?

Whoa!  What happened to January??  I can't believe it's been a whole month since I posted!   Oh, and by the way, my last post was my 300th post!

I went to the mini quilt retreat and had a good time.  I even got some things accomplished.  But I came down with a nasty cold with a vicious cough almost the next day.  And, just when I was getting over that, it turned into a sinus infection.  Ugh.  We were going to be leaving for Florida in a few days when the sinus thing happened, so I quickly took myself to Urgent Care and got some antibiotics and cough medicine.  I finally felt better, right before we got on the plane, and I'm sure all the other passengers were as happy as I was that I was no longer infectious or coughing my lungs out!

We had a great time in Florida and really enjoyed the sunshine.  It wasn't real warm, as FL was getting the side effect of cooler temps during the "winter event" happening in the Northeast U.S.  But it was gloriously sunny, and that was wonderful.  We were in Tampa while DH was having a Professional Development conference with the Co. he works for.  There were 5 other wives there, and we had a grand time seeing the sights.  We went to Clearwater and saw the white sand beaches there (that looked just like powdered sugar!), along with lots of pelicans, and I even got to see wild dolphins playing in the ocean!  Then we went to Tarpon Springs and shopped and ate wonderful Greek food.  (I especially recommend the flaming cheese! Fun to see and yummy!)  Oh yeah, and I finally got some Key Lime Pie.  I had never had the real deal before and it lived up to it's reputation.  Sadly, I never found a fabric shop, but that was OK.  I had fun seeing someplace new, and sunshine in the middle of winter was just what the doctor ordered!

But enough blabbing.  Let's get to the good quilty stuff!

At the mini quilt retreat last month, I managed to make some real progress on my Split Flowers friendship quilt that has been languishing in my project bins for too many years.  I had finally gotten the blocks put together into a top before the retreat and got all the leaves sewn on while I had friends to talk to there.  Now that I've seen the photo, I can see that I need to add just a couple more leaves.

And then it'll be time for the major decision of what to do for the border.  I'm torn between doing some more raw edge applique like the flowers and leaves, probably using a serpentine vine, or doing something pieced.  Any suggestions?  It may come down to what will be faster, as I'd like to have this finished in time for the quilt show in October.

Edited to add: this pattern is from the book Stitch and Split Applique and it's available on Amazon here. 

I didn't make great progress on the Split Decision quilt that I showed in my last post here.  But I got a few blocks made.

Here is an example of what a finished block will look like.  (one block is just folded in half and placed over the other)  I like this!

And that was the end of any sewing that happened in January.  But I have been sewing this past week.

I made some blocks for my guild's raffle quilt.  This year there's no set block size or color theme.  We're just going with the concept of friendship, stars and baskets.

This block finishes at 9 inches and is called "Measure For Measure".  I found the pattern in Judy Martin's book The Block Book.  There are templates you're supposed to use to make these patterns, but I tried to get cute and fake it.  It got ugly.  But I got it done!

This is my second block for the raffle quilt.  It will finish at 12 inches and is called "Crystal Star".  This pattern came from Judy Hopkins' book 501 Rotary Cut Quilt Blocks.  I love that book!  And this block was easy.  I think it took me longer to decide on the fabric than to construct the block!

That's all for now, folks, but I hope to be back soon.  I've got more quilt-y goings-on to blab about.

Have a creative week!

September, She Comes

Help!  Where did August go??  Can I have some of it back, please?

Seriously, August had to be the busiest month of this year!  Only one blog post??  What's up with that?  Obviously a failing on my part.  I can't believe how quickly it all passed.  We had glorious summer weather, and I loved it.   And too soon, it's on it's way out.  Look what I saw 2 days ago . . .

. . . . the first autumn leaf in the yard. Yikes!  It seems awfully early for this to be happening, but the weather is definitely changing.  Groups of Canadian Geese are coming and going from the pond, and the weather is cooler.  (Only got to 69*F today)  We've had 2 or 3 days of thunderstorms and buckets of rain.  Sad to say, I think summer is over.  We'll probably get some more summery days still, but no more real summer.

On the plus side is that, probably, hopefully, more time in the quilt studio will be happening now.

I have gotten some quilt-y stuff done.  I got 3 tops finished, backs made and all shipped off to my quilter, Shari.  The quilt show is happening in one month, and it finally dawned on me just what that means.  It's nearly Panic Time!  I found out yesterday that the patriotic panel I showed you in my last post has to be a FINISHED QUILT at the quilt show!  I haven't touched it since I showed it to you last month.  Holy cow, I'm running out of time very quickly!  I seriously don't know if I can make that deadline.  So, time to put the pedal to the metal and see what I can do.  I think I can finish the top, but I don't know about the quilting, not to mention the binding.  Wish me lots of luck!  I think I'm going to need it.

Speaking of luck, August was a very lucky month for me!  I was a winner twice!  First off, I won a giveaway over Big Lake Quilter.  Cathy was giving away this wonderful book.   I've already had a look through it a couple of times and have thought about trying a few of the projects.  Lots of inspiration in here!  Thank you, Cathy!

The other lucky event was I won the Block Lotto for August!  These blocks are the first six that I made.  My favorite one is the one with the wild polka dots.  It makes me smile.

And here are the other three.  I'll be receiving another 41 in the mail, for a total of 50.  These are wonky stars that will finish to 6 inches by 9 inches.  I've already gotten the first 5, and they're wonderful.  This is going to be a fun quilt!

I fell in love with Kelly's quilt she just finished over at Pinkadot Quilts.  Kelly links to the original tutorial so I had to go take a look.  Since I already had a pile of scraps out, I decided to try making a block.  I think it came out pretty good, and it was easy-peasy.  So, now this has been added to the list of quilts I want/need to make!    

I was asked to do a demo on the Double Disappearing 9 Patch for my quilt guild.  I found the tutorial at A Few Scraps blog, but had never tried it yet.  Of course, I had to make some samples etc. for my demo because, well, one just needs examples!  Here is my first DD9P block.  I started with 3 inch cut squares, and they made up into a 10 inch finished block.

After those demo pieces were made, I had to try the process in another size and color scheme.  I was having trouble imagining what the DD9P would look like in other colors and/or styles.  So, I decided to jump out of my box and go with some real traditional fabrics and make a dolly-sized quilt.  I really should have made 6 blocks instead of 4, but I was tired and running out of time.  So four blocks had to do.  This was my first layout, in the "traditional" setting.  I started with 2 inch cut blocks for this one, and ended up with a 5 1/4 inch finished block.  

Behind my little design board, you can kind of get an idea of what my cutting table currently looks like.  That will be my first order of business in the quilt studio - taming the chaos of fabric!

Here is the dolly quilt layout that I decided on.  I'm not completely certain it really does what I wanted it to do.  I was hoping for a more pronounced diagonal design, but DH says he really likes it.  He thinks it looks very complex.  (Here is where I saw the quilt that gave me this idea - you need to scroll about half way or a little more down the page)  (Oh, going back and looking at this, I figured out what I did wrong differently - no plain alternate blocks!) I flirted with the idea of ripping it out and re-doing it, but sat down until that feeling passed and I returned to my senses.  LOL  I don't think I'll do a border but will do a wider-than-usual binding in the dark brown and let that be enough border for it.  

I hope you're getting a chance to be creative this weekend!

p.s. Haven't seen Froggie for a few days.  He hung around all of August.  Wonder if he decided to go back to the pond?

This and That

Last week was the biggest thing in this area for quilting and sewing - Sew Expo.  I went with my friend C. on the first day.  We didn't do any of the classes or see anything other than some of the vendors.  I really didn't "need" anything, and she was just looking for a baby quilt pattern.  So we just kind of wandered around seeing all the sights.

At the Just Imagination booth, filled with wonderful, luscious hand-dyed fabrics, there was a small quilt top on display that C. really liked.  It was made with only 2 fabrics, but because of the nature of the hand-dyed fabric, it had lots of variations and interest.  It was done in intense blues and rusts. We got to talking to Judy Robertson, who makes all those wonderful hand-dyed fabrics, and found out what pattern she had used to make the sample.

Then we wandered over to a booth selling quilt books and got the last copy of the book (40 Fabulous Quick-Cut Quilts by Evelyn Sloppy) that the pattern for that quilt was in!  

I brought it home to make a sample block of the pattern.  I didn't get any of the hand-dyed fabrics ($26/yard!), so I used some batiks.  I just picked some with strong contrast.  And green and purple are always good together to me.  It was a very simple block to make, and there were great directions in the book.  It's all done with 2 1/2 inch strips.  By the way, I recommend this book!  Lots of great patterns in here, and they're all pretty simple and straightforward to make.

It looks like this will be the quilt my guild will be making for the raffle quilt to raise money for the local arts group/gallery.  I don't know what colors we'll be using, but I'll show you when I know!

I also found some things that I couldn't live without!  I got some zippers (2 for $1), a texture stamp, a stamp pad cleaner, foil, some metallic paints, a new seam ripper (wore out the other one making the Halloween Trips) and a cute pattern for a chicken or pig or bunny stuffy.  I think they'll make cute pincushions.  Maybe a little voodoo doll-ish to stick pins in them, but still cute.

Here is the final layout of the Halloween Trip blocks.  DH and The Kid did the final arrangement for me.  They wanted those bands of color to kind of match up.  I like it, so I left it.  I have 3 rows sewn together and the last two will get done tonight. And I even have an idea for the border now.  Just have to pull fabrics for it!  I'm relieved excited that this one is almost together.  I'm ready to do something else now.  Short-attention-span quilting!

Last, but not least, here are the fabrics I received from Nifty over at Nifty Quilts.  We did a little vintage fabric swap.  Go visit her blog and see all the great fabrics she's got to work with now!  These fill out my selection nicely.  I was short on the grey/pink combo, and I'm always in love with dots.  Dots on dots are even better!

Happy quilting!