Showing My Patriotism!

In less time than it took me to write yesterday's post listing unearthed UFOs and PHDs, I finished this patriotic mini-quilt. I mean, good grief, what on earth do I think when I let things go for so long??

We'd originally planned to have a little date last night, but we talked ourselves out of it. That left me with a wide-open evening, so I decided that I ought to just get going on an easy item from the aforementioned list.

I had the smaller of the two hanging in my quilting room, so I found a piece of scrap batting, a piece of scrap fabric for backing and even a piece of scrap binding, and went to work.

This mini is 16" square; consequently, the effort to finish was minimal. I did the simplest, most basic machine quilting on it, and got 'er done in no time! The quilting shows up pretty good from the back.

So now I actually DO have a pretty little patriotic table topper for use as we celebrate over the July 4th weekend.

Celebrating big-time over here! Both our country's independence AND my checking an item off my UFO and PHD list!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Tackling That UFO

I mentioned in a recent post that this baby quilt needed to be finished, and for whatever reason, I just kept procrastinating about it. Well, I finally am nearing a finish on it!

On Sunday evening, I cut out and attached the borders. Then I located some batting scraps and sized the backing.

On Monday evening, I stitched the batting pieces together, cleaned off the big cutting table and spray-basted the layers. On Tuesday (yesterday), I listened to an audio book and machine-quilted.

No, I do not have pictures of all those steps, but I can share a few taken while quilting.

I assure you, I never do anything too creative when I machine quilt - straight lines for this gal! I know that many of my triangles were stretching, but that walking food just worked like magic, and as far as I can tell no unnecessary puckering has slipped past me. *win!*

The fabrics used in this quilt were all leftovers from an earlier baby quilt that DD Emma and I made for one of her friends nearly 2 years ago. I hated to see these triangles go to waste, so I cut more from the fabric on hand - you might note that some of the triangles are pieced - yes, I was down to the smallest strips and needed to piece some blocks in order to get a nice-sized quilt. Will baby mind? Nah. I am sure this will make no difference whatsoever!

Some of the triangles that seem "loose" will look just fine once this is laundered, and as it is a baby quilt, I am sure there will be plenty of laundering. I hope they used it a lot!

That book I am listening to?? Oh, sure, I will share that with you! I have read at least two other books by this author and she is most assuredly a gifted storyteller!

The book is set in 1660s at the time the Puritans and other settlers were taming the Atlantic sea coast up in present-day Massachusetts. The narrator/main character is a teenage girl, Bethia, who carries many burdens in this untamed world in which she finds herself. Her one true friend is a young Native American boy, which of course, must be kept secret as social and religious standards were strict for women of all ages. The historic nature of the book appeals to me, and I find it fascinating to think of how my female ancestors had to live in the days when women could not make their own life decisions. Plus the work they did! No wonder life spans were short - they worked themselves to death. 

Listening to this book has made the quilting go fast! I am nearly finished! I hope to finish it off tonight after classes. Maybe even do the binding, too. Whoa!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Baby Quilt Finished

With all the coughing and sniffling and wheezing going on around here, accomplishing very much in the sewing room has been difficult at best. Yes, we are still trying to recover from our respiratory infections. It's been brutal!

Finally, yesterday, I found myself sufficiently fortified to quilt the woodsy baby quilt that DD Emma and I made two weeks ago. She needs it for the baby shower tomorrow, so I was running out of time.

In anticipation of Thursday's being a good day for sewing, on Wednesday evening I prepped the quilt sandwich. Since it is small-ish at 44" square, I opted to spray baste the layers. It worked pretty well, but I wouldn't go much bigger, I think. Just too much wrestling of fabric, in my opinion. Using a flannel for the backing is a good idea for a baby quilt, but this plaid offered a new challenge - keeping the lines straight. I took my time and did a pretty decent job. I think for future reference, I will use a solid if I am quilting it at home, or I will long-arm quilt it if using a plaid.

My plan originally was to just straight-line stitch in one direction all across the quilt. However, after we went to the trouble of haphazardly arranging the blocks so that there is no definite up and down, I thought simply outlining the blocks should be the better way to go.  I am glad I made this decision, and I finished the quilting in a few hours.

After a little break to rest achy shoulders, I attached the binding and stitched it down. It turned out pretty well, all in all, and I am pleased with it. I was worried that I would be embarrassed to send it off with Emma, for everyone to think my workmanship was shoddy. It passes my quality control standards, so off it goes. *grin*  Oh, it has its imperfections, to be sure, but not so glaring that anyone would be dissatisfied.

Yes, I even remembered to add the label. Emma wanted to leave it blank for the new parents to write the baby's name, birth date, and weight after he arrives.

In with the gift, she plans to include a box of color-catchers for laundering. I think that several of the fabrics in this quilt have the potential for running.

I do believe that DH and I have finally turned the corner on our sicknesses; hopefully this is all for us for the remainder of the fall and winter, and then some!

Linking up today with Finish It Up Friday. She has an interesting string quilt to share; check it out!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Commission #1 - Shirley's Quilt

As I began the 2017 year, I sorta' made a deal with myself that I would not do any more commissions for people because it creates such a stress. I am a notorious procrastinator, and I know the folks want their quilts done promptly, yet I have such difficulty with actually diving in and getting these projects going. Such a conundrum.

For whatever reason, I need to spend mental time on these projects, thinking through some of the necessary steps or individual oddities each one presents. Most of the commissions I've done have been t-shirt quilts, but even those require some 'figuring out' - brain time, if you will.

Even with my resolve to say no, I have said yes to two commissions. Commission #1 is for long-time family friend Shirley, and I shared a little bit about it in this post from last Wednesday. My mental problem-solving mostly concerned the many 3-D items that were to be incorporated into this quilt. I have worked on it very diligently since Wednesday, and finally have a quilt top ready.

Before I layer this top with a backing and batting, I still have a couple of small details to tend to. First, the petticoat under the baby dress (first block, top row) needs to be tacked down in a few places. I don't want it to fall so far down into the block under it. I also need to add a snap or a velcro dot to the center of the pocket (last block, bottom row). That plain gray fabric forms a pocket in front of the white block under it, and when I put the remaining items in the pocket, it gaps open quite a bit. It will look a lot nicer with the contents of the pocket contained by a fastener.

For finishing, I have some white backing fabric set aside for this quilt, and I will use the same red calico that are my sashing strips for binding. It will finish in the neighborhood of 59" x 76".

The current round of mental work has been deciding about how to quilt it. With so many objects to work around, I knew it would be too much to ask of a long-arm quilter to fuss with it. My solution is to straight-line quilt it. I have looked around different places for some inspiration, and I have seen some that were quilted with straight lines set roughly 3 inches apart. I like this, as I think less quilting density will be best for this quilt; I will just stop the lines when I run into a 3-D object.

The plan going forward it to make the quilt 'sandwich" this evening, and then quilt on it tomorrow and Wednesday.

Speaking of tomorrow, Terry is having us in to sew at her house. I don't know that I will take this project. It might just be easier to do here at home, so for sewing at her house, perhaps I will get back to working on my June UFO. It's been awhile since I've done any significant work on it.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Molly's Baby Quilt

How I managed to forget to post anything about this recent finish and delivery, I will never know. In the general hubbub of recent days, I guess I just overlooked it. I will rectify this oversight now.

About a week and a half ago, I was finally able to get the baby quilt Molly had requested into her hands. Molly, a high school classmate of my DS, is a second-time mom, and while she was pregnant with #2 she contacted me about a baby quilt. I'd made one for her firstborn, and so now I'd be making one for her second.

Baby Ella was born in July, and about 6 weeks later, she finally took ownership of her quilt.

Good grief.

I've bemoaned here on the blog before about what a great procrastinator I am. This is just further proof. This was the easiest quilt ever, and yet I manage to make a major job of it. Well, let's get to the good stuff - the pictures!

Part of the reason for my slow progress on the quilt was prepping a backing (which was a stripe) and gearing up the nerve to test my machine-quilting skills. I do okay on small quilts, but larger ones still intimidate me. And, yeah, it is a baby quilt size, but it's still bigger than I'm comfortable with at this stage of my machine quilting development. I knew I wanted to do straight-line quilting. Finally, I just sat down and made myself do it.

Can you see the quilting at all? I stitched a quarter-inch on either side of the seam lines. I like the geometric look this provides, and it was just enough for me to make myself comfortable with doing it.

After Molly knew her baby would be a little girl, she informed me that her nursery's color scheme would be peach and gray. Even thought the color in these pictures is a bit off, the orange is closer to peach than what you see. I shopped for fabric on our outing during the Canter's Cave Retreat. It was fun looking for these colors. The picture below shows more accurately the peach color.

The backing fabric is the same as the binding that you see above. I like the stripe for the binding; it continues that geometric motif I was going for.

If I can get Molly to take a picture of her sweet baby girl with her quilt, I will be sure to share it here.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

A UFO No More!

Yes, I know it's 2015. Yes, I also know that we've moved on to a new year of participating in a UFO Challenge.

But a finish is a finish, and I am celebrating, let me tell you. This was a UFO that I had on my 2104 list, and I just never got around to getting it done. Doggone it - I am such a procrastinator.

At Terry's on Wednesday, I quilted this Schnibbles quilt top that I made way back in 2010. Here is a link to the post I wrote about it. Gosh, that seems like ages ago!

Here she is! It's called Sunday Best, and it was really fun to make. I seem to remember the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics was on when I was finishing this up. Vancouver? Would that have been in 2010?

Hmm, I think I missed a row on the front section. I did not see that until looking at this picture. I need to get back to the sewing machine. No procrastinating, either; I will do it today. Promise.

Here are some more views.

I sure am glad to be done with this. I don't know why I make such a big deal about finishing some things. I can do this, but maybe sometimes I doubt my skill, so I just put it off and make the prospect of finishing it even more daunting.

Onward, quilters! Onward!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Pillow Talk

I took one of the Great Granny squares that I made last summer and decided to quilt it and turn it into a pillow.

Looks festive, doesn't it? The fabric is Breath of Avignon. I loved this line, and I've used it for several projects. I don't throw away any of the scraps, either.

I machine quilted it in the stitch-in-the-ditch method. I am a novice at machine quilting, so I thought it would be a good idea to practice on small projects like pillows to become more proficient.

I think I will make some more!

Happy Quilting, Friends!