Newsflash!! - I Used The Long Arm!

In what appears to be a most monumental hiccup in the universe, I have actually quilted a whole quilt in the last 24 hours. If this doesn't call for some massive celebrating, then I don't know what does!

Yes, I decided to at least clean, oil, change the needle, rethread top and bottom. I then needed to see about fixing the issue I'd been having (all the way to last fall!) - upper thread breakage. 

My guess was that I needed to loosen the tension knob. I did this, and I now have a fully functioning long arm machine. Yay!

Because I knew I might have to do some experimenting with settings, I wanted to use a quilt that really wasn't that special to me. I made this Good Life Tag Sale a couple of years ago, and had sort of earmarked it as a quilt suitable for a picnic blanket. I added a 6" border at the top. I planned to use this for testing the settings. It was a good idea!

I was also glad for that extra border for another reason, too.  Because I was a bit rusty, I needed that bit of practice space for recalling my muscle memory. 

 

Tag Sale is a pattern by Carrie Nelson that I have made previously. Good Life is a fabric line by Bonnie & Camille for Moda. I added random extra fabrics in to have enough for the quilt which is roughly 80" square. This version turned out to be so very busy! I typically like a little more orderliness, so that is why I designated this quilt as a suitable picnic or beach blanket.

I am so happy that I finally have faced this problem (which wasn't as huge as I'd been thinking it was), fixed the machine and finished a quilt! Now I can load on one that I'm super-duper crazy about!  

I will take the quilt out of the machine this weekend, figure out what to use for binding, then finish her up. I am so eager to get many more done!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne 

New Year, New Projects

 You know how I am by now - I greet a new year with a plethora of projects I am chomping at the bit to start. This January is no different from any of the previous ten or twelve.

Sharon and I have made a habit of starting the last few years with a common project. In 2017, it was 'Elizabeth,' a pattern by Carrie Nelson. In 2018, we did our own invented pattern that we called 'Snow Shoo.' Maybe we have done others together, but those are the most recent.

This year the quilt we are making is 'Lucy' another Carrie Nelson pattern. You can find it in her book Farmhouse Favorites - the very last quilt in the book, if I'm not mistaken. 

Sharon helped me pull my floral fabrics for this quilt a couple of months ago when we were deciding to make it. I am so pleased with this grouping.

Some of these fabrics were purchased this past summer on a vacation stop in Sisters, Oregon. Some were bought in some shopping in DH's hometown of Coshocton. The bigger yardage piece, which is a very light blue, was an online purchase I made a few years ago. Pulling this grouping together seems like it was totally planned; instead, what we have here is a happy accident.

I took quite a few pictures of the selvages, not just for those who might be interested, but for me in case I ever need or want to look for more of any of these. Aren't they pretty?

I have worked on this quilt for a week now, and I am still excited about it. I plan to make all 61 of the 25-patch blocks before making the snowball blocks. That will take awhile. I currently have close to 20 finished. I found that I really, really wanted to see how they looked with the snowball blocks, so I made about 6 of those just to squelch my curiosity. It's gonna' be okay - just have a look:

Wont it be wonderful?!! I will now go back to making those 25-patches and get all 61 of them finished. It will become tedious and I will become impatient, but there will be no more snowballs until the 25-patches are finished. Promise.

Sharon's 'Lucy' will look totally different. In true Sharon fashion, she is making hers of red and white - a variety of French General fabrics. Gorgeous. Yes.

Sharon cut her strips today and is ready to sew. Her neutral will be light beige and cream with the corners of red. Before snowballs though, she, like me, is now about to face some intense piecing time. Soldier on! *grin* 

We all know this is fun, not work, right??

Since this post is getting long, I will wait and share my other new project next time. I think you will like it! 

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Finished UFO

Happy news! I have one less UFO in my sewing room! Celebrating!!

This is Six Degrees, a UFO in storage for maybe 10 years, give or take. It has been a really fun finish, and I honestly don't know why I quit on it without a little more time and effort. I recall being dissatisfied with the sizing of the center medallion, but honestly, the bit of pull that is evident will easily be masked once quilted. 

Here's the post from about 6 weeks ago when I pulled it out for consideration. 

I was close to a finish when I discovered that I was going to be short on my background fabric by 4 - 6.5" squares. I searched the internet and asked friends - nothing. What to do? Go shopping, of course!

At the quilt show last Friday, I checked every vendor's table to see what I could find. Just one fat quarter! That's all I needed! So below, you will see the variety I bought. 

Arrow A shows my original background, and the square has been pieced so I can use it. I have two squares in the quilt made from waste-bin scraps. Arrow B indicates my substitute. I worked it out so that the subbed fabrics are on all the corners. It does not bother me one bit to substitute - our ancestors did this all the time. I certainly had no desire to stress over it. And I didn't.

What next? I am working on an Ohio State T-shirt quilt for DH. Then I have a whole bunch of quilts that I MUST quilt! That means getting myself right about that long-arm. If you have followed that saga here for awhile, you know how good I am at avoidance. *wink*

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Six Degrees Is Coming Along

I have had such a good few days of stitching, dear friends! Last week I was so aimless - indecisive and unmotivated. I wrote about it in a couple of posts (here and here). It feels good to be back to focusing on a specific project instead of flitting from thing to thing, with no measurable progress on any of it.

So a week ago, I had a tubful of parts, put away for so long that I had forgotten why this UFO had become a UFO in the first place!

Some very dedicated puzzling took place as I figured out the hows, whys, wheres and whiches of this UFO. Before too long, I was happily chain-piecing my way to erasing the UFO status on Six Degrees.

Below is a miles-long (seemingly) chain of 1.5-inch strips. A neutral with a dark red and the same neutral with a blue. These are to become little 4-patch units.

Now, I will address those raggedy edges that you see. However long ago this project took on its UFO status (15 years?), I must not have been too overly concerned with cutting strips on the straight grain of fabric. Since they were already cut, I am going ahead with them, as I believe it will not be too terribly results-damaging in the long run if the little 4-patches are somewhat cockeyed.

And from the looks of these 12 pinkish-rose blocks, I think the little 4-patches will work out just fine. These came together in no time! I'd one made, and now all 12 are done.

Yesterday Sharon was here to sew and I put in a full, satisfying day of block-making. The 24 blue blocks are made (the pattern shows green, which I have switched out in favor of blue), and two of the 32 red blocks are done. The chain-piecing of those remaining red blocks will be my focus for today.

I am very eager to finally be finishing this quilt. The designer is Carrie Nelson, and I have made soooo may of her quilts over the years. She does love her little pieces, but the time required is worth it when you get a great finish, which she always delivers!

Click here, and here, and here for just a few of my previous Carrie Nelson quilts. She is also the designer of all those Schnibbles from several years back, and she designed Village, which I worked on, as well. I actually got to meet her when she came to Old Town Fabrics a couple of years ago.

Have a great Tuesday, Peeps! It's a gorgeous summer day here and after all the rain we have had, I plan to enjoy it!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Front Porch

I have collected such a full tub of what I call contemporary fabrics, and I have been increasingly antsy to use them. So a week or so ago, after browsing through some older pattern books I found one that interested me. Finally, the stars aligned - the right combination of pattern and fabric - and a quilt was born!

This 2003 Miss Rosie's Floral Quilts book by Carrie Nelson is what I happened to be perusing. I was looking at old books for inspiration.

This quilt grabbed my attention. The entire quilt is one unit and even with triangles, it would be really easy. As I read the instructions, I saw that it was a foundation pieced unit, and heavens! I don't mind foundation piecing with scrap fabrics, because there is some waste involved. I sure didn't want to waste any of this new fabric! I knew I could find a pattern that had this same unit which was made with cutting pieces normally.

This is a newer (2017) Carrie Nelson book and the cover quilt has this same unit used for the points on the stars. Below, I have zoomed in on a block and outlined the units I am referring to.

The unit is the exact same size, so instead of using the foundation piecing method from the old book, I used the regular piecing method from the new book. Got that??

Here is a closeup of one of my units in the deliciously color-intense fabrics. I wonder if this unit has an actual name? We have HSTs (half-square triangles) and QSTs (quarter-square triangles), so maybe this could be TTS (triple-triangle square)???  Maybe I have just coined a new quilt term.

I have made all the units I'm going to make, and now have them laid out on the guest bed. Today will be all about stitching them together. If you look at the bottom of the picture, you see a potential border for this quilt. I have very little of my dark blue fabrics remaining, but I would be willing to get yardage for borders to finish this quilt. I will consider my options while I sew.

I am listening to a good audiobook and the weather has been rain-rain-rain lately -- all perfect for hours of quilting.

Hope you are able to do some stitching today!
Happy Quilting, Friends!

Village Top Finished

Saturday afternoon I spent a couple of hours at the sewing machine and attached the remaining rows to my Village quilt. Overall, I am quite pleased with how it turned out, and for a quilt that was nowhere near my radar at the beginning of April, I have a fun, cheery quilt to show for my efforts!

My version is slightly different from the pattern. It is designed to make use of Charm packs, and I did that, but I didn't have enough to do all 132 houses. My version has 100 houses - all Corey Yoder fabric lines -- Lulu Lane, Sundrops and Flower Mill. Even the yellow I used for my background is CY.

All the time I have worked on this quilt, I have thought these houses look like sherbet or fruit parfaits. Shall I call my quilt Sherbet Village? Parfait Village? It's a sunny neighborhood with that happy yellow background, so maybe it should be Sunshine Village Parfait? Parfait Sunshine? I don't know.
Whatever I decide, I know I am happy to have another quilt top in the finished column.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Retail Therapy

On Saturday when I attended the seminar featuring Carrie Nelson, I also did some shopping. Old Town Fabric Shop offers a discount when a class is going on, and I knew of a couple of things I wanted to get. No absolute necessities, but some little bits of stash enhancers.

I felt that my Village quilt needed more variety, and so I bought two more Corey Yoder charm packs from a line I didn't have. These Flower Mill packs will mesh nicely with the two Sundrops packs and the two Lulu Lane packs that I already had. Now I have a total of 6 charm packs to work with on the Village quilt, and I think that variety will be fun to mix and match. Should I become bored with these, I happen to know that a new line called Pepper and Flax will be appearing very soon, so I might even add more. Since I have done no more on Village since Saturday, I am fairly certain it will still be a WIP for several more months.

Then I picked up a bit of neutral yardage in a 3 Sisters line called Larkspur. I have collected bits of this line for about a year or so with no particular quilt in mind. I just know I love the fabric and something will make itself know to me as the perfect choice. For now, I am happy to simply gaze at the pretty fabric and dream of what to make with it. (Weird. I know. Oh well.)

Finally, I can never resist the basket of half-yard cuts that Old Town Fabrics keeps filled just to entice quilters. It's sorta' like at the ice cream parlor when they offer you a taste of any flavor you want - well this allows me a bit of fabric in any color I want for no particular reason other than it appealed to me on this particular day. They always offer these at a discount, and many of these have entered my stash over the years. It's a nice way to enhance the stash without going totally crazy.

Now, remember this was the day with Carrie Nelson? Well, we goofed off a lot throughout the day, and I pulled together some pictures into a collage to capture the fun. Because it was St. Patrick's Day, I wore some sparkly green glasses which were a big hit. Carrie agreed to be photographed if she could wear my glasses in one pic. Cool! So here's a peek at the silliness.

I am going to sew some more houses for Village, I think. Either that, or I am going to start those 9-patches needed next for Prairie Vine. I just know I need to get busy!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Village Day

As I had hoped, the day spent with Carrie Nelson was totally a blast. She was helpful, informative, warm, bubbly, easy to engage with - genuinely a gal you just know could be one of your best buds. Here are some pictures highlighting our day.

 Carrie began the day by sharing her original Village quilt, shown above and below. She explained how it came about and the fabrics used, as well as her personal rules for fabric placement.

The backing on her original is pretty cool, too. I do not know what it is called, but it looks great on this quilt.

Next she showed us another version of Village made by Thelma at Cupcakes 'n Daisies. I have followed this blog since I first discovered quilt blogs; it was very cool seeing this version made with yellow background. I like the way it is quilted, too, with the small scallops.

I had no idea what I would use as a background, but I did have some yardage of this yellow with me, so I went with it! Thelma's is lighter yellow, but it will still look fine, in my opinion. Above is my very first house. The block is very easy and goes together quickly. I hear people say it's sort of addicting, and I can totally get that. Bonus: it's a good pattern for using those Charm Packs I have stacked up - I swear they multiply!!

About 40 women filled the upstairs classroom at Old Town Fabric Shop in Chillicothe for this class. Several were there in groups. Quilters always know how to have a good time.

I went on my own and this group of ladies welcomed me to their table with open arms. This picture was taken toward the later part of the day as several are showing off their finished blocks.

I finished around 8 or 10 houses in the time allotted. I goofed off a bit, too, and wasted some time. And I shopped downstairs. If I had been more focused, perhaps I would  have finished more houses. My fabrics are all by Corey Yoder. I will be mixing and matching from three of her lines. Consequently, when I get mine finished, I will be calling my quilt Coriander Village.

One quilter at the far end of our table laid these out. Notice that some houses have chimneys. Directions in the pattern explain how to add those. If you go back up to Thelma's quilt at the top, you will see that she even added windows on some of her houses. It's fun to see how variations come about.

I will share some more on this fun day soon. I also have some Arizona vacation pictures to share, as well. Stay tuned!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Big Day Ahead!

Today is a very big day for me! Not only is it St. Patrick's Day, but a special quilting guest is teaching at Old Town Fabric Shop in Chillicothe! THE one and only Carrie Nelson, one of my "most favorite-est" quilting rock stars is here - and YES!! I will be there!

OH, HAPPY DAY!!

The prolific quilter, pattern designer, author and founder of Miss Rosie's Quilt Company was here yesterday teaching a class on Moda Cake Mix, and today a class on her new pattern, Village.

Above is Carrie shown with her beloved Rosie. What a tearful blogpost a few years ago when Carrie shared the news that Rosie had passed. Carrie has such a great writer's voice that I felt as if my own life-long pet had died! It will be fun to finally meet her. (I'm giddy with anticipation!)

The pattern, as I said, is Village; the image above was taken from the Fat Quarter Shop website. The pattern uses charm packs - up to 8 if we like. I think I will go with fewer and make a smaller quilt. I have packed my stash of Corey Yoder fabrics to use. I bought 4 charm packs last year that I still have. They will work fine and will make a lively, happy quilt.

All the fun will begin at 10:30 today. In addition to packing my machine and all the necessary equipment, I have all 7 of my Carrie Nelson quilt books ready to go in case my fandom kicks in and I need to get autographs. *grin*

I have made several of Carrie's quilts - off the top of my head let me list a few: Elizabeth, Tag Sale, Plan C, and several Schnibbles - yes, she is the brainiac behind that clever idea. I swore I was not going to fall for such a gimmick as Schnibbles, yet today I would guess I own about a dozen of those little patterns. *sheepish grin*

So, on this St. Patrick's Day, I will be stitching up a storm and having a blast with my new best friend, Carrie. I will be sure to share lots of pictures and anecdotes soon.

Happy Quilting, Friends!