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!

10 Years!

Today is my 10 year blogiversary!  Yay!

Count 'em - there's 10 candles on my blog cake!

I can't believe that I've had this blog for 10 years!  That's a lot of blogging.  It has been one of the most fun things I've done.  I'm always thinking of what to put on the blog, and I take way more photos than I ever use.  *grin*  I've met so many wonderful people (even a few in Real Life!) and made a lot of friends.  And I've learned so much from my readers and other bloggers that I read.  Blogging literally changed my life - for the better!

Thank you all for being my readers!  Your comments make my day!  I love to read your thoughts on what I'm blogging about.

I know it's been too long (again) since I blogged.  December got away from me due to the holidays.  Then, the first week in January, poor old Shade, my cat, got Obstipation (Obstructive Constipation).  He got to spend the first week of the year at the vet's - I had to drop him off in the morning and then pick him up in the evening. The vet wasn't sure he was going to make it, and all the vet techs were rooting for him.  They fell in love with him because he's a big cuddle bug and he kept purring while they were working on him.   Poor kitty, that was pretty tough on him since he's almost 15 now.  But he came through it and is thriving now.  He's got prescription foods, and I have to make sure he gets enough liquids and hopefully this won't happen again.  *fingers crossed*

Then on Wednesday that same week we found out our son would be having surgery on Thursday.  Son got through the surgery fine, but that evening we had to take him to the ER.  (We left home at 11 pm and were there in the hospital until 4 am.  I'm not as young as I used to be, and it took me quite awhile to recover from that all-nighter!)  Son was in a lot of pain.  The ER folks were wonderful and he got lots of different tests.  They decided he needed to be admitted and he was there until Saturday.  Son is having a long, difficult recovery and still has 2 more weeks before he can pick up more than 10 pounds.  He's sleeping a lot.  I hope he gets better soon.

Two weeks ago we took a trip to New Orleans, something for DH's work.  He had to work, but I got to have fun.  Some of the wives get together and do stuff. We took a tour of 2 of the sugar cane plantations along the Mississippi River.

One of the Live Oak trees at the Oak Alley Plantation.

I was really impressed with the immense Live Oak trees - note the person on the left of the photo, to give you a sense of how big these trees are!

Laura Plantation, a Creole home.

The tours included lots of history, which always fascinates me.  I learned quite a bit!

DH and I managed to find time to go on a carriage ride around the French Quarter, which actually is the original city of New Orleans.  Here's "our" mule that pulled the carriage (with 7 people in it, no less!).

Lil Liza Jane

She's all decked out for Mardi Gras, which actually lasts 2 weeks in New Orleans!

Here's her sweet face.  And check out her glittery hooves!  She was a sweetie - she really liked getting her pets and scritches!

I joined two Instagram sew-alongs in January.  The first one is the #wonkystar2018 swap run by @bylancer.  I was in a group of 14 swappers, so I got to make 13 star blocks. Here are my first 4.  My favorite one is in the upper right.

Here's a better picture of it.  I found a leftover star I had made for my Liberated Medallion quilt.  It was 3 inches across and worked perfectly in a 9 inch block. 

And all the rest of them!  You can see that some of them were pretty calm and then a couple of them went wild and crazy!  This was probably the most fun swap I've ever done.   @bylancer is probably going to do another swap sometime this spring, and I'm ready to do more!

Now I'm going to do a Wonky demo at the Tacoma Modern Quilt Guild this month, so I have to get busy and make some more examples of Wonky stuff.  It'll be fun!

The other swap I've committed to is the 6" churn dash block in the Modern Group of swappers with Barb of Fun With Barb blog..  #fwb2018blockswap, if you're on Instagram - check it out.  You can also see Barb's tutorial on how she makes the little blocks.  I haven't started my blocks yet, but I'll be ready in the morning.  I hope they won't take me too long - I have to be done and have them ready to mail by the end of the month.

That's all for now!  Happy quilting!

Bird is the Word*

"Bird" is the word I drew for the Animal Challenge by the Tacoma Modern Quilt Guild.  

"Bird is The Word"
19.5" w X 18" h

The word brings to mind so many possibilities....owls, penguins, emus, cardinals, eagles and so on.  But I knew immediately that I wanted to make my bird with Lynn's tutorial.  Lynn blogs at Patchery Menagerie, and her tutorial is available on her Etsy site.  I've long admired Lynn's way with improv and especially her fabric choices.  So I bought both the bird tutorial and the tutorial on making your fabric work for you.  Both are immensely helpful! And a very reasonable price for all the information she gives you.

The quilt had to be no smaller than 12 x 12 inches and no larger than 24 x 24 inches.  I think that's a great size for a challenge quilt.  It only took me 3 tries to get a bird - the first two times I cut the fabric wrong for the wing.  The rest of the bird was pretty easy.  

check out the little ladybug button!

 But he looked a little lonely by himself.  I didn't want a very big quilt, so I didn't really want to make more birds.  Then I got the idea to do the birdhouse.  After that it just came together easily.  I kept the quilting simple too, as I was running out of time to get the quilt done before the meeting.  I'm very pleased with how my little challenge came out!

* Bird is The Word was a crazy song from 1963 by The Trashmen.  You can watch the video here, which is so bad, it makes the song even crazier!

I'm supposed to be sewing a particular quilt top together, but I wasn't quite feeling it.  So I found something else to work on.  I found this one, hiding in a pile of other projects.  I started these blocks a few years ago.  2011 to be exact.  Ok, I guess that's 6 years ago, slightly more than a few.  Wow, a little longer than I realized! You can see previous posts about this here and here.  When I pulled this out, I only needed a few more blocks.  So I made another 12!  It is set 6 blocks across by 8 blocks down, and it now 60 inches by 80 inches, with only 2 blocks left over.  I've decided what I want to do for the border and am auditioning sizes right now.  I used my brightest plaids for this quilt and it's pretty intense in person.  I love it!  And another long-time WIP almost finished!  Yay!

I had to stop working on this one to do some secret sewing.  I need to get my other guild's challenge quilt quilted.  It's all pin basted and ready to finish this weekend.

Another plaid project!  My local guild had a sew-in day where we were taught this simple quilt pattern to be used as a charity quilt.  It uses 9 fat quarters.  Except my woven plaid fat quarters weren't 18 inches across.  I pre-wash all my fabric and the FQ's had shrunken up to 17 inches across, so I ended up cutting into yardage.  It was a pretty simple pattern to do, and everyone's quilts looked so different with the different fabrics!  Now I need to trim that bottom edge, baste it and get it quilted.  It's bigger than I like to do myself, but I think simple quilting will be OK.

Here is my sample block for the Tacoma MQG's Block of the Month for July.  It's a fun, easy block and I want to make some more before the meeting.  The tutorial by Cluck Cluck Sew for this one is here, if you want to make it too.  The original quilt looks a lot different from this block!

My DS recently made a wedding gift for some friends, and I thought you'd enjoy seeing it too.  He made a woodburned clock for them, using a celtic Tree of Life design.  I think he did an beautiful job!

For Father's Day, we went with the family to Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma for the day and it was a lot of fun.  The zoo had an amazing display of artwork called Washed Ashore on the zoo grounds, and I think you might enjoy it too.  It's very creative work.  Be sure to click on each photo to see it bigger.  They are incredible!

The explanation of these art works goes like this: 

About Washed Ashore - All of the plastic on these sculptures was collected from beaches by volunteers.  Each sculpture is designed and directed by a lead artist and then created through a collaboration of the artist, Washed Ashore team members and volunteers.

An ocean wave

The other side of the wave has a sea turtle!

The marine debris in this sculpture includes shot gun shells, disposable lighters,

 bottle caps, flip flops, toy shovels, soda bottles and a boogie board. 

It was fun to look at each sculpture and try to find what items were used.  There were even more sculptures, and all were just as good as these are.  I love seeing how others are creative!

That's it for now....Happy quilting, have a great weekend and Happy Independence Day to my American readers!

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts' Finish It Up Friday.

Gwennie-Inspired Liberated Medallion Reveal!

 Today is the day!  The stars have aligned properly and I can finally show you my completed quilt.  Yay!

This was the beginning block - a liberated basket

This wall quilt was the result of my participating in the Gwennie-Inspired Medallion Quilt Along with Lori at Humble Quilts blog.  Since I love all things Gwen Marston, I thought it would be fun to play along.

We were supposed to begin our quilts with a liberated basket.  I had the basket already made - I had made it in a Liberated Basket class with Gwen I took a couple of years ago.  I thought that was perfect.  The fabric that the basket is made from is some vintage fabric from the 1960's or 70's.

The second round was "childhood memories", the third round was log cabins, the fourth round was stars and the final round was "something fishy".

Ta da!
26" wide by 30" high

For the 2nd round, I thought of that childhood game Pick Up Sticks and also stilts.  I always played Pick Up Sticks at my aunt's home, as it was one of the few kids' games she had. (My cousins were grown and gone.)  And my sister and I spent a lot of hours trying to walk on our stilts.  We never did get very good on them!  I'm not sure I ever got to the end of our short walk from the front porch that ended abuptly in the middle of the lawn.  *grin*

Third round was easy - I love liberated log cabins!  Once I had decided on keeping the black polka dot consistently in the center of the log cabins, they just flowed.

For the stars border, I really wanted to continue the black dots fabric from the log cabins.  So I thought that just a limited number of stars in that border would be good.  It was looking very static, so I got the idea to have those stars "dance".   I love the way it turned out!

By this point, the quilt was looking finished to me, so I had a hard time figuring out how to do the "fishy" part of the 5th round.  I considered adding a border of flying geese pretending they were fish.  But in the end I decided that the fishes had to live on the back of this quilt. 

I had to include more dots too!  Of course!  It makes me smile that the dots remind me of the bubbles coming from those colorful fishies' mouths.

I decided to do one of my favorite quilting designs for liberated quilts.  Just not-too-straight straight lines.  I love that it doesn't disrupt the looks of the piecing and just seems to almost disappear.

highlighted to show the quilting

The center of the quilt is quilted this way.  I decided that in the black border, I would outline the stars then do straight lines parallel with the edges.

I'm not sure how well you'll be able to see the quilting here, because I used black thread on the black fabric.

I love my little Liberated Basket quilt!  And, when I showed it to Gwen, I got her "Seal of Approval"!  That really made me happy! 

I need to say a big Thank You to Lori for getting this QAL off and running, and to Katy, Cathy, Cynthia, and Wendy for the additional prompts.  It was so much fun to participate in this QAL and to make this quilt!

You can see the grand reveal of all the participants' quilts on Lori's blog here.  Lots of fun, wonderful quilts to see!  It has been so fun to see how everyone else interpreted the prompts.  

I'm going to be sending this quilt to Lori for a display she is doing at Quiltworks (in Bend, Oregon) for their 'First Friday' and monthly exhibit for May 2017.  If you live nearby, be sure and go visit!  You won't be disappointed!

New linky party:

Sew, Stitch, Snap, Share

A New Year's Post

Well, 2015 has gone down the tubes and now it's the start of a shiny, brand-new year!  I hope everyone had very happy holidays.  And I hope 2016 will be a good year for all of us, with all the quilty goodness one could hope for.

I'd like to take a moment here to say "thank you" to all my readers who stick with me, through the dry spells when I don't post.  December was one of those times.  I just had so many things going on that blogging just kind of fell off my radar.  But I was sewing and having fun times.  

My granddaughters did another year of ballet, with the December recital being, as usual, selected pieces from the Nutcracker.  It's fun to see them in the different roles and watch how they've progressed from year to year.

We had a very fun Christmas over at DS #1's house with the granddaughters.  We must have been good this year, because I think Santa was kind to every one of us.  Another aspect of Christmas I enjoy is seeing how the girls' Christmas lists have changed over the years.  Our oldest DGD has now become a teenager, and it's so fun to see how she's growing up.  I think the best part of Christmas Day was playing games with the whole family after dinner.  That was so much fun!

The big, fun sewing project I was doing in December was making a Secret Santa gift for another member in the Tacoma Modern Quilt Guild, that I joined this last year.  Her choice of style matched up with mine very well, so it was easy to make something for her.  The guild gave everyone a list of possible hand-made gifts to choose from.  We were to pick 5 things from the list.  That actually made it a lot easier.  So, one of the items my recipient chose was an insulated lunch bag,  And she likes text fabrics and brights with white. That sounded easy-peasy to me! 

I took an idea from Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen, one of my fave books.  I was doing the improv piecing of the sew & flip triangles.  Very fun and easy.  This was test block #1.  It was so soothing to be doing improv again, just sitting and sewing bits together and then seeing how they worked together.  I want to do more of that! 

test block #2

test block #3

It was interesting to see that, even though I thought I was being totally random in my placement of the triangles, they all came out at similar angles.  I don't know if that's good or not, just interesting.

And this is the design I went with.  It was more fun and less expected than the layouts in the test blocks, which pleased me.  The pattern for the lunch bag I was using was this one from All People Quilt.  It was a pretty good pattern and easy to do.  The only thing I would change the next time I make this bag would be to make the bag bigger.

Once I had the front and back put together, I did simple straight line quilting, and I used Thermolam, the insulated batting that one would use for pot holders.  I thought that would insulate the bag pretty well.  I also used a layer of cotton batting, which in retrospect was too much.  Just the Thermolam would be enough, I think.  Of course, making the bag big enough to account for all the batting would help too.  The pattern didn't call for any batting, so that's one reason why it seemed to be on the smaller side.

Here is the completed bag, with the top open.

And closed.

Here is the back of the bag.  My recipient's first name starts with G, so I thought it would be fun to personalize it for her.  I used Tonya's book Word Play Quilts, of course!

Here's a closeup of the text fabric I used in the center of the G.  If you  click on the picture, you can read what it says.  

The inside of the bag.  I used some plastic canvas in the bottom to help the bag hold it's shape. 

And I made a mug rug to go with, using the leftover scraps of the piecing.  I wish I had done the join of the binding a little better than that!  Sheesh!  That's kind of embarrassing.

Here is the entire gift.  G. said her fave designer is Amy Butler, so I found this little jelly roll to include.  

We had a fun Christmas meeting with the Tacoma MQG, and my recipient loved her gift!  Next time I'll share the wonderful gift that I received.

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2015 Edition

I'm late to the party but I couldn't miss the Blogger's Quilt Festival!   Thanks to Amy for hosting this again, and to all the wonderful sponsors.

I've shown this quilt on my blog before, so apologies to my regular readers.

Ochre : : Strata is my entry this time around, and it is in the Original Design category.

Ocher : : Strata
31 x 32.5 inches approx.

This quilt came about because I had some Cherrywood Fabric scraps leftover.  When I was going to Pacific International Quilt Festival a few years ago, every year I had to visit their booth and I bought some of their scrap bags.  These colors are not my favorites but, come on, they're Cherrywoods!   I couldn't let them languish.  These fabrics are so fabulous that they are a joy to work with.  I have no affiliation with Cherrywood Fabrics, I just love their products!

Anyway, the scraps were all about 5 x 7 inches, so I didn't have a lot to work with.  I just cut strips and started sewing them together in stripes (strata).  I made a bunch of strata, and then lost my mojo.  So these got put away for awhile until one day I saw on a pin on Pinterest (that now I can't find again) and got inspired to pull these out and do something similar.

the diagonal stripes on the right hand side are the painted fabrics

In addition to the Cherrywood Fabrics I also included some hand-painted fabrics from Barb's Elegant Designs for a little sparkle.  They're shiny and metallic but are subtle in the photos, so I'm not sure you can see them too well.

I had fun just improvisationally sewing everything together.

Nothing went together perfectly and I had to do a little tweaking to get it to work.  When I was all done, the quilt ended up being pretty wonky and doesn't hang perfectly straight.  But it's supposed to be "artsy", and I love it anyway.

The details in the border came about because I ran out of the brown fabrics I was using and couldn't find another brown that was even close to that shade.  So, I had to make it "stretch" and I think it came out even better because of that.

Shari Bahr quilted this for me on the long-arm.  I think it was the first time she'd done the straight-line quilting, and she did a great job.  

Be sure to check out all the other entries in the Blogger's Quilt Festival.   Grab your favorite beverage and enjoy all the quilt-y eye candy to be seen there!