Shine On

"Shine" is quilted, bound and DONE!  This was my first quilt for the Liberated Amish Get Together hosted by Lazy-Gal Tonya.  If you haven't yet seen this blog and the wonderful quilts that were made, be sure to go take a look.

The "rules" for the Get Together were to take an Amish quilt from this website as your inspiration and make it Liberated.  And you had to include some Unruly Letters.  This one was kind of my "warm-up" because this little crib quilt just called to me. 
 

I can't belive it's taken me a year to get this done.  I just couldn't decide how I wanted to quilt this.  I finally took my inspiration from antique Amish quilts (should be a no-brainer, right?) and machine-quilted triple diagonal lines.  Free-hand, of course.  I was liberated enough to use my sewing machine, or it would be a realllllly loooong time before this got finished . . . hee hee!

I didn't measure anything, and I didn't stress about it.  It only took me a few hours to get this done, once I got going. 

I really like this quilt.  I think it finally came together just right.

3-14 - Happy Pi Day!

Here's how I'm celebrating Pi Day today - cherry Pi pie!  I'm actually combining Pi Day and Presidents' Day here.  I forgot to make my annual cherry pie for Washington's birthday, and when I remembered, I was just craving a cherry pie suddenly.  Luckily, Pi Day was right around the corner and one quick trip to the grocery store for the cherry filling and I was ready!  I was going to have a pot pie for dinner also, but I ate lunch out today (including pie!) and was so full that I just had some leftovers for dinner.  It was "pizza pie", as it used to be called, so I guess that counts too!  My "pi" didn't come out too curvy, but it won't be long before you won't be able to tell anyway!

Here's an Unruly block that I did.  This was made for our departing guild president, who wanted blocks in "country" red, blue and beige for a patriotic quilt.  My friend suggested I do the letters.  I'm really happy with how this looks.  It's a 12" finished block.

Here's a little present I received today from my friend M.  No reason, just "because"!  I think that was so sweet of her!  In case you can't tell from the photo, it's a traveling ironing table made from a TV table.  It's big enough for my full-size iron.  If you like this, you can find a tutorial here.  The only difference from this one and the tutorial is that my friend drilled holes in the table top before covering it.

We're starting to see signs of spring around here!  Trees are starting to flower and show some buds, I saw a pussywillow, and there's lots of crocus and some daffodils blooming.   And we are ready for some nicer (warmer) weather!  Although I trying not to have my hopes up that winter is done with us. 

Dunkel knows more rain will be happening!  Probably not in the house, though, Dunkel. Although a cat can't be too careful!

All done - whew!

I got Lorelei's name banner done in time!  It really went pretty quickly, once I buckled down to actually doing it.  And then I stalled on the quilting, which also went really fast once I did it.  So, pretty painless this time.  The letters keep getting easier and easier.  I quilted this in hanging diamonds, which took me a few minutes to remember how to do.  LOL

And Lorelei loved it!  She was so funny.  When she came over, she checked out the wrapped presents (of course!) and then announced that she thought the soft package was probably a quilt for her.  *grin*  She's 6.

The snow is all gone, and I'm starting to see some signs of spring around town.  I saw some crocus blooming in town the other day, and today we had some sunshine and got up to 50*f.  So, there's hope.  Yay!  I'm getting tired of winter, like most of the rest of the country.

The local quilt guild makes a quilt every year for the local community art gallery to auction off to raise funds.  So I did my part this year.  We were given the black fabric and asked to do something with the theme of music.  I was given a fat quarter of the black fabric, so I did 2 blocks.  This one is called Rising Star (courtesy of The Block Book by Judy Hopkins)

This is my 2nd block, called Domino Net (from the same book).  The star block got some of the "music" fabric upside down, but I got it all going the same direction in this block. 

Oh, and my big news!  I entered a giveaway over at the Selvage Blog and won!  I won a 6 months subscription to The Quilt Show!!  Whoo hoo!!  Thanks, Karen!

Snow and Visitors

Snow!

Oh my gosh, two posts in two days!

Here's a weather update.  I got my wish.  We did get snow. We received about 3 to 5 inches last night, and it's been snowing all afternoon today.  I did an errand this morning, and was going to go out again this afternoon, but decided that it could wait.  The temperature is falling and so is the snow.  The roads in my housing development aren't plowed.  The highway was good, but getting there was a bit dodgy. And I don't have snow tires or chains.  If I don't need to go, I'm not going.   We're supposed to be down in the teens tonight.  Brrrr!  I'm real happy staying home.  I guess I can't really say it's a Snow Day since I actually went out. . . .how about 'Snow Afternoon'?  Think that would work??  It doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?  *grin*

We had some visitors today.  They came about 4 different times.  Apparently we have the tastiest foliage in the neighborhood.  They can have all the ivy they want!  We had 2 does and one baby come to visit. 

Oh, and to give credit where it's due, DH did all the photography today, except for the photo at the top of the post.

 



The baby





And here's the wildlife that lives inside the house!  Dunkel thought the deer were quite interesting.

OK, maybe the next post will have more quilt-y content!

Putzing Along

I'm still here, just putzing along. I've been too busy to have much time in the quilt studio. Last week was full of social things, which were fun, and errands, which weren't as much fun.  But I finally made it to the sewing machine and got a few things accomplished.

This is a mug rug that I made for my sister.  I thought she might like it personalized with her initial.  I had trouble getting the letter as small as I wanted, and finally settled on this one, which was actually the first one I did.   

I started piecing together some batik strips for the back of the mug rug, but when I got them done, I decided that they were way too cute to just go on the back. Then I talked myself out of making a 2nd mug rug. So I sliced and diced, sewed on a little border and came up with this.

But I was thinking this was way too static a design.  Cute enough but not really what I wanted.

It needed more "wonk".  So I started piecing some little 4-patches together.  No rotary cutter, just scissors.  So, here's where I'm at now.  I'm still not sure this is quite what I wanted, but I think I'm stopping now.  It could be wonkier, but I'm done.  What's funny is there's wonky where I wasn't trying for wonky.  I've never needed to intentionally add a "humility block", it just comes naturally!  *grin*

I'm on the quilt show committee this year, and our Fearless Leader has decided we all need to make potholders to sell.  We had a workshop last Friday on potholders.  I had pieced together the selvage one before then, and also had the flowered one together, but not quilted.  Well, I forgot my new walking foot (oops), so when I quilted these, they got a little skewed.  So I had to trim the flowered one down some, to make it square again.  Then I was trying the binding method that one guild member was teaching, and I didn't have enough binding.  So I trimmed that potholder down some more!  Then I applied the binding to the wrong side.  That means the pretty stuff on the binding is on the wrong side of the potholder.  Oh well, it will still work, it's just not "purty".  Like DH says, we can set this one on fire and no one will care!

I've gotten the name banner for DGD#2 at the flimsy stage and need to get it ready to quilt it.  I'm kind of stockpiling little projects that need to be quilted and will make a day or two of it and get them all quilted at once.  And I'm still working up to making kitty names.  I'm not *stalling* exactly, as I needed to get some other things done first, but it's starting to feel a bit like stalling now.

We've had maybe 2 or 3 inches of snow today.  But it's all been snow flurries, with some great, huge snow flakes.  It'll stick for a little bit, then melt away.  Then an hour later, it will do it again.  So, there's been no accumulation.  It's just teasing us.  I was hoping for an "official" snow day.  But then, I could actually declare just about any day a "snow day".  I know all you folks in the East are laughing at me - but I'll take snow over all the rain and gloom we've been having.  At least the sun shines once in a while!

It's snowing again!  Time to go sew!  

Happy Valentine's Day!

A sweet heart for Heart Day!

We're all ready for Valentine's Day at Haus Indigo.  We have everything we need:  valentines and CHOCOLATE. Of the frosting variety.  Topping cherry chip cupcakes.  And with special Valentine's Day sprinkles too.  We already taste-tested these, and they passed with flying colors.  Yum.

Here's what I've been working on the last few days.  More Unruly Letters.  This is for GD #2, whose birthday is in a few days. 

I hope you all have a love-ly Valentine's Day.

And I "heart" my readers! 

Missed It By THAT Much!*

(* a rather obscure reference to the old Get Smart TV show)

Well, I must have been asleep at the wheel.  I totally missed my blogiversary the other day, Feb 5th.  Doh!  Something was nagging at me, and I ignored it.  Now I know what it was.  My excuse?  I've just been busy.  Lots of social things going on lately, which is good.  And then I actually had to do some housework too - oh, the horror!  Anywho, it's now been 3 years since I started this blog.  I've really enjoyed blogging and being part of the blogging community.  People that haven't tried it don't know what they're missing!

The quilt at the top of this post was made by a friend of mine, Shirley C., back in 1994 as an exchange gift for me.  This was a pattern in the Fons and Porter magazine at that time, and I know it's an old quilt block pattern as well.  Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the block.

 

Shirley was so sneaky.  We were in the same quilt bee, and I watched her do all the hand quilting on it, never guessing it would be a gift for me.  I remember telling her, more than once, how much I liked the quilt!

Here's a better shot of the hand quilting.  Unfortunately, she used a poly batting and it's starting to migrate through the navy fabric.  And yes, she did piece that corner block in the navy!

I cropped the photo to show what the block actually looks like, as it's difficult to see in the overall shot.  Hmmm, this might be kind of fun to try as a free-piecing idea!

I seem to have lost my motivation in the quilt studio.  I have made NO progress on anything in the last week or more.  I've been dinking around some with some applique and a touch of embroidery, but that's it.  Nothing to show, except a cleaner house.  Well, except in the quilt studio.  That's still a mess.  I wonder if that's part of my problem?  Maybe if I got in there and cleaned up some - made some more room to work - I might be motivated again. 

I've been having fun watching the progress that Beth and Sara are making with the Disappearing 4-Patch.  Beth at Love Laugh Quilt blog made a wonderful tablerunner for Valentine's Day, then Sara at Sara's Scraps blog started making some D4P's and they got wonky on her.  She went with the flow and got even wonkier and made a fantastic quilt top!  Then Beth tried it and got a great one too.  What fun!  It makes me want to go try it now too.  I have a  charm pack waiting in the wings that may be perfect for this.

 

We've been having some cold, clear weather the last few days.  I'm not enjoying the cold, but I am loving the sunshine!  I got this shot of Mt. Rainier today when I was coming back from the post office.  This is about 1 1/4 miles from my house, but we don't get a view of the mountain because of the trees between us and it.  I was going to crop out the house (in the lower right-hand corner) in this photo, and then decided to leave it in so you can see just how BIG this mountain is!  Mt. Rainier is 14,411 feet above sea level, which is pretty darn big.  See that little cloud hovering over the top of the mountain?  That's the start of a lenticular cloud, which is our forewarning that more clouds and rain are again heading our way - that's due Friday.  (If you follow the link, at the bottom of the Wikipedia page is an awesome photo of Mount Rainier.)  Maybe when the rain and gloom starts again, the quilt studio will be more inviting.  I sure hope so!

Plaidness

As you can see, there is plaidness happening in my quilt studio!  I got a bunch of wonky 9-patches done to go along with the plaid kitties, and now I'm working on wonky stars.  I'm kind of stalled at the moment, as I was finishing the name banner for my granddaughter.  More on that in a moment. . . .

I'm really not sure quite where I'm going with this piece.  I'm trying not to stress about it, but it's trying to creep in on me.  I don't know why. . . .this is supposed to be fun.  But this working improvisationally is actually kind of hard to do.  Fun, but also hard. 

If you remember from my previous post, I'll be adding the names of all my kitties to this quilt using Tonya's Unruly Letters.  I considered using a different plaid for each cat's name, except for 2 things.  One, the plaids are all woven and many are the loosely-woven homespuns, so they'll be difficult to work with for the little fiddly bits.  And two, I think that the plaid will be too difficult to read.  So, I looked for some fabric to go with this quilt. 

What goes with every color of plaid??  I finally found a fabric that I think works.  I've had it in my stash for years, waiting for the right project, and I love it.  It's a small check in purple with tiny different-colored hearts on it, but the print is so small and subdued that it reads as a solid from a foot away.  I think that it will work just fine.  But, I have yet to make one of the names to test it.  That's up next, I guess.  I really need to figure that out so I can know what direction to go in next. 

Here is the finished name banner for my GD, all bound labeled and already gifted.  We gave it to her on Saturday (along with some "spy" walkie-talkies!).  It seemed to be a hit.  We were watching the girls while Mom and Dad went snow-shoeing.  When the parents came back, this was the first thing she showed them.  And then she asked her Dad if they could hang it in her special reading spot.  I think that's a success! 

I put 5 little tabs on the top edge of the back so that we could put a dowel in there to hang it with, and so it would be evenly supported.  At 31" inches long, it needed the support.  That took a little thought from me.  I caught the tops of the 1 inch wide tabs in the binding and hand-stitched the bottom edge of them down.  For my little quilts, I just hang them with straight pins, but I don't think my son and DIL would do that.  I wanted to make it easy for them to hang this up.  I need to remember how I did it so I can do it again, so I took some pix of it.

And now, I need to make one for little sister, who's birthday is next month.  I have the border fabric picked out, and just need to find the fabrics for the letters.  Oh, and find the time to do it. 

I seem to be having an explosion of creativity lately, which is good.  Except for the fact that I can't sew fast enough to keep up with myself.  And my quilt studio LOOKS like there was an explosion in there!  *grin*

On Monday, I took a class on how to use my new (in November) Brother sewing machine.  I finally learned how to use the needle threader - Yay!!  I also learned other useful stuff, but this was something I just couldn't for the life of me figure out from the directions in the manual.  Now I get it.  I'm a visual learner and I need to "see" how it's done.    

I've got some links to share with you.  I've been spending probably too much time looking at quilt blogs etc. lately, and have found some fun stuff.  Maybe I'm late to the party and everybody already knows about all these, but for those who don't, here ya go:

First up, Tonya has started a new blog for all things "Unruly" - called, amazingly enough, Unruly Quilting.  It's a place to share all your Unruly-ness.  She's also requested "Bah Humbug!" blocks in Christmas-ish red and lime green.  I'm just blown away by everyone's creativity on this blog!  You should see the wonderful bugs and letters that everyone is making - it's just awesome. 

Leeann at Quilt Whangarei has a great tutorial on how to do the Disappearing 4-Patch.  I'd seen some quilts made with this block around the internets, and couldn't quite figure out how it was done, so this is great to know.  Another fun, easy quilt technique!  Check it out and give it a try. 

The Bent Objects blog, by Terry Borders, is just so inventive and funny.  He does some amazing things with wire.  His creations are difficult to describe, so it's best to just go take a look.  Terry also has a book out - "Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things", which is available at both Amazon and Borders.

More in a similar vein is Stupid Creatures.  John makes stuffed toy monsters and clay "Beasties", some of which are pretty darn cute and some are funny.  Check out the toys here and the clay Beasties here.

Over at BoingBoing website, they had a competition to take something that is usually computerized and remake it with natural media.  Be sure to note the QR Code Quilt made from recycled clothes.  (No, I don't know what QR Code is!)  But all the entries were inventive and fun.

Do you like to take quizzes that purport to tell you about yourself?  Well, here's a couple for you.

First is the free on-line quiz to find out what your Meyers-Briggs Personality Type is, in case you don't know.  This is fun and gives you a description of your personality type.  This is a good tool to help you understand yourself and how you act and react in the world.  Enlightening! 

Second, How About Orange blog has a link to a quiz to find out what your design type is.  This one is a visual quiz - which picture appeals to you the most.  Different and fun.

Well, enough folderol for now.  Time to get busy!