Lady of the Lake

Yesterday I began working on a project that I don't believe I have ever mentioned here on the blog. And even though it may not ever have been mentioned, you can be sure it is one that has been on my radar for a very long time.

Exactly how long, I cannot be sure. I took a picture of a quilt that I admired at a quilt show at least 20 years ago. I still have that picture, and occasionally I come across it and think about attempting to replicate it. In a future post I will try to provide the picture. For now, just imagine a blue quilt made with blocks that are similar to Lady of the Lake.

I even bought fabrics for it - also probably 20 years ago, as well.

These are the four fabrics, all in blue that give the appearance of water. As I recall the quilt in my picture was based on the theme of the Great Lakes, and the blocks look like Lady of the Lake, so blue watery fabric made sense. (Are you following this convoluted line of thinking?)

Now, I have one pad of Cake Mix papers for use with layer cakes. The fabrics are all 1-yard cuts, but would be easy enough to cut down to layer cake size. One block is completed, so have a look at my latest project. It isn't the most exciting stitching I've ever done; actually, it is rather mind-numbing, but it does result in a pretty block. It works nicely with an audio book queued up.

The Cake Mix pad has 40 or so pages, and that will determine the size of this quilt, I suppose. I'm not really thinking that far ahead at this point. When I run out of papers, I will see what makes sense from there. Not gonna stress about it, that's for sure!

Hope you are having a wonderful Saturday!
Happy Quilting, Friends!

Finally, A May Finish

Late Friday night, I took the last quilting stitch in my UFO of many years - the one I refer to as The Paper-Pieced Quilt. It has a long history - most of which has been spent in a plastic tub in the quilting room - but it now can at last shine in all its wondrous glory. (Sorry for the hyperbole.)

As quilts go, this one falls into the wall-hanging category, I guess. It measures at 41x48 inches. I think I will prefer using it on a table. We shall see.

Back in the late 1990s, several of my quilting friends were getting into paper piecing. I learned how to do it on these blocks. I had no plan in mind at all; I was simply learning a technique and grabbing whatever scraps I had handy to create each block. Had I used a plan, I would have definitely placed colors carefully so that a secondary design would be achieved. Oh well.

After I made the blocks, I just piled them away in a tub; on odd occasions I would come across them, pull them out and consider options. And then I'd put 'em away again.

At our 2014 Veterans' Day sewing event that Sherrie hosts each year, I brought this along to complete. Here is a brief mention of that.

And then instead of aging in a plastic tub, it spent a couple of years aging on a hanger in the closet. I pulled it out last October when I was preparing to demonstrate hand-quilting at our History Day event in Greenfield.

And Friday night, some eight months later, I stitched on the binding. Whew! What a needlessly long journey.

It seems rather typical of me, though, to have long-term projects like this. I often work in fits and starts on quilt projects. When I don't have a true deadline to meet, I am too easily distracted by other quilts or projects. This would be why I can count such an astounding number of UFOs stored here in the quilting room.

Let's have a look at this little gem in some random photos I took of her this weekend.

I can't say that I have very many quilts that represent so many different methods - paper piecing, machine assembling, hand quilting, and machine binding. All in less than 20 years! (hah!) 

Since this epitomizes s-l-o-w, I am linking up with Slow Sunday Stitching. Why not head on over there for a look around??

I have also linked this finish to Crazy Mom Quilts' Finish It Up Friday linky party. Go have a look-see!

Have a great week!
Happy Quilting!

Slow Sunday Stitching

I don't limit my slow stitching to just Sundays, do you? I found myself feeling a bit under the weather yesterday, and about all the energy I could muster was to sit in my easy chair with my quilting on my lap and quilt on the border of my paper-pieced UFO.

I have one side completed, another side partially done, and hope today to finish it off. The end is in sight! I am still using the Pounce tool and Grandma's stencil to mark the quilting lines; I find that this method suits me well. I can deal with the dust in exchange for the fast results of the Pounce. (Click back here to see my explanation of Pounce.)

Yes, I am feeling better today, but I still plan to quilt. And I will be linking up with Kathy and her Slow Sunday Stitching link party.

On the back burner for me is making more blue Swoon blocks using Kaffe Fassett fabrics. I have quite an assortment spread out in the sewing room. That will be the subject of tomorrow's post. Come back if you like 'eye candy!'

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Simply Handquilting

It's been a full, full week here for me, so today I will do little more than sit with a needle and thread in my hands and a hoop on my lap.

This morning we had Frankfort girls over at Terry's and I worked on the project above. I did enough to move to a new section which is what you see here. The blocks were paper-pieced many years ago; if any of those fabrics look familiar, you can judge how long this has been a UFO.

The rest of my day promises to be low-key, and I will let my husband take me out to Olive Garden for a dinner date with friends. Now can you think of a nicer end to a busy week?

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom for her Friday link party. Hope you'll stop for a visit.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Many Updates

It seems as though I have many topics that have been needing updates, so I will combine them all into one conglomeration of updates today.

First, our downstairs remodel is moving right along. DH has finished the hardest areas - the spaces with both crown molding and chair rails. Those detail-laden aspects of the dining room, front room and entry hall really took a lot of time. Here are a couple of pics of our front room slowly being put back together.

The wall that the sofa will sit on has yet to have its wall decorations put up, but it does give a good view of the Agreeable Gray wall color along with the Pure White trim.

A corner of the opposite wall has our antique secretary and a leather chair put in place. A few accessories have been added, too.

Now the work has moved into the family room area, and we are really feeling the pinch, as this is where we live. Traffic through this space is heavy, and we are tripping over ourselves and each other as we navigate the painting. It doesn't help that I still have the quilting frame up, which takes up a huge amount of space.

Speaking of the quilt frame, this I can also update. I am working my way down the rows you see above; I suppose I am about 1/3 across this section. I find that I am going to be running out of my thread, and my local quilt shop has discontinued it. I need Sullivan 5 pearl cotton in Lt. Christmas Red (#35398), if anyone in the central Ohio area has any leads for me.

At quilting on Friday with the Frankfort girls, I continued to quilt the throw that I began October 1st at History Day. It is nearing completion. Since History Day, the only time I've worked on this is at our bi-weekly get togethers.

And finally, I have finished the last of the commissions and have delivered it to Terry for quilting. After quilting, I will have just the binding to finish off and then delivery. In this new-found sewing freedom, I have rewarded myself by working on binding a quilt Terry finished for me months ago. As a reward for finishing the commissions, I held this back. I can't wait to show you the finished quilt.

Hope you all are having a great weekend! I am linking this post to Kathy's Quilts and her Slow Sunday Stitching linky party. Go on over and have a look!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Slow Sunday

Here we are again at the beginning of a new week and still, the task of hand-quilting is taking center stage.

On Friday, I attended our Frankfort Girls sew-along over at Sheryll's house. What a dreary day it was, but the warmth and coziness of freshly-made coffee cake and coffee combined with dear friends and stitching made it just as pleasant as ever.

I brought out a project that I "sandwiched" for History Day. I did quite a bit on it that day, and worked again on it the last time we girls met. So, basically, every two weeks, this quilt gets about 3 hours of stitching. Since it is a rather a small quilt, I won't need many more days to finish it. The backing is pieced with two pretty fabrics the details of which you can read about here.

I need to give this quilt a name. Generally, I refer to it as the paper-pieced quilt. I went back through old blogposts and found 3 occasions where I either mentioned or worked on it. Just for the sake of pulling related material together, I will link them here, and you can enjoy if you like. (2012 mention; 2013 mention; 2014 mention.) This quilt truly has been a multi-year project.

My other hand-quilting project, of course, is Erin's Diamonds. It takes up most of the dining area, as the picture above illustrates; I so want to get this monster frame out of the way before DH is ready to come this way with his painting. I estimate that I am 25% finished with it. Most days I do get at least an hour of stitching in, oftentimes more. The picture above is from the very beginning, but I can use it to explain my process thus far: I started on the blue side - those tips of yellow are the bottom border. I quilted up to almost the light purple row. Then we lifted the frame and turned it 180-degrees, so now the orange-y pink-red rows are nearly finished. Again, I can reach to almost the light purple row. I hope that by day's end I will be ready to roll up the finished side and begin new rows (and maybe zip across that unquilted purple row, too).

While I quilt like crazy on my diamonds quilt, a close friend is just getting started. Frienzie Kay is the original fan of Kaffe Fassett fabrics; she introduced these fabrics to me way back about 10 years ago. Anyway, she is in the cutting phase of making her own diamond quilt. Because she has asked me several questions about how I cut this quilt out, I went back through the archives and uncovered a post that explained those details. If you were ever thinking you couldn't do a quilt with so many bias edges, think again. This quilt was a dream to cut and sew. Click back on the link to read all about it.

About the painting job that DH is progressing on. The formal dining room is nearly completed. I know he will be very happy to have one room done - as he said the other day "I need closure!" He's not the only one, either! *wink*

Next he will move to the front room. I will do all I can to return the dining room to "normal" and still keep up the pace on Erin's Diamonds, because when the front room is finished, he will have a small, easy entry hall and then - oh boy - the main living area will become his final area. I need to be out of his way, for sure. Nothing like a little pressure, is there??

I hope you have a pleasant Sunday. Maybe some slow stitching is in your plans? I am linking to Slow Sunday Stitching; hope you go there and have a look around.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Class In Session

Claudia and Denise were here on Tuesday for sewing/quilting lessons. I can't really classify all that we do as quilting; in the long run, I suppose mostly these are sewing classes. Anyway, the plan was for me to surprise them with the project for the day. I contacted them ahead of time to tell them to bring two matching fat quarters for a little bag. Since the project was fast, bring additional varieties so a second and even a third could be made, if desired.

My plan was to make the little Snappy Bag. I made one several months ago and shared it here. Since I'd given it away, I needed a new one to use for demonstration purposes. And here it is.

Just like the first one, I added machine quilting - a 1" diagonal grid. It takes a bit of extra time, but I just like doing it. It probably doubles the time it takes to make the bag, but it's already so fast, that this seemed negligible. Plus it would show an option for Denise and Claudia, should they want to do it.

After making the first one so fast, I decided that I would make a sleeve for my iPad mini. They might want to change up the sizes, and I had the necessary hardware and batting. Here is my larger snap bag.

This time, my machine quilting was just vertical lines, measured against the edge of my walking foot. I really like the addition of quilting, but this definitely added time to process.

There is a significant difference between the two bags with regard to the closure. Each one uses a metal tape measure (like carpenters use). The small bag uses metal that is just a half inch wide. It is very pliable and works well on the small bag. For the larger bag, I used a tape measure that was nearly an inch wide. It is quite a lot sturdier, and for a device such as an iPad, I wanted to be sure it wasn't going to slide out. This wider closure is definitely strong enough to protect the device.

Now let's see the results of Claudia and Denise's day. I think they should be quite proud of their efforts.

Claudia's First Snappy Bag

Denise's First Snappy Bag

Snappy Bag Parade

After the ladies were comfortable with their process, and happy with their results, they both set out to make a second bag. Claudia wanted one just a bit larger than the original to meet some needs for traveling. Denise decided to make a larger bag for carrying sewing/quilting tools such as scissors and rotary cutters.

Claudia's Bags, a matching travel set

Denise's Sewing Supply Bag

Pine Tree Parade - Paper Pieced Coasters

When all the Snappy Bags were completed, we had some time to spare. I'd anticipated this, and had a suggestion that they were happy to take. Both had heard of paper piecing, and Denise had actually done it once, years ago. I had about a dozen copies of a small pine tree pattern and a variety of green, neutral and brown. We went to work, building our trees, and got a basic grasp of the concept of foundation piecing. It's sort of remarkable that we all began with the same pattern - just look at the variety in our finishes.

So a sewing class day was completed, and I think the enthusiastic students left with satisfaction. One additional thing I offered: Frienzie Kay is in the process of moving. She is weeding out her sewing room and had a giant laundry basket full of books, patterns, fabric, BOMs and more. Kay offered this stuff for them and both Claudia and Denise were pleased to find things they definitely thought they would use. Free stuff! What's not to like about that??

Happy Quilting, Friends!

What We Accomplished Yesterday

Here's a wrap-up of all we accomplished yesterday at Sherrie's for our annual day of sewing on Veterans' Day. We are ever-grateful to our veterans and active-duty military for the freedoms we enjoy and often take for granted. We are also grateful to Sherrie for welcoming us each year to converge on her house for the day.

Kay made this doggie quilt for her granddaughter's new puppy. Must be one special pup - or maybe it's one special granddaughter! ;)

The dog quilt didn't take much time at all to whip up, and when it was done, Kay went to work on hand-quilting that beautiful 9-patch quilt that you've seen here a few times in recent months. Click here and here, if you need your memory refreshed.

Linda made pillow cases - one for granddaughter; one for grandson. She was thrilled at the quick finish on these.

Then she finished another quickie - a table runner;  yes, those are frogs and yes, this is for herself!

Three of the group were paper-piecing, all quite coincidentally, too. The variety couldn't be more striking, either. First let's see Sharon's. You may recall that she was working on a Block O Buckeye quilt at my house last week. This is the same quilt, but the O parts are paper-pieced, and she made all of them yesterday.

The A block and B block may look exactly the same, but in reality, the B block is larger, to account for the shape of the O. Here's the link to last week's post about Sharon's quilt; you can see the pattern there.

The above four pictures show the teeny-tiny paper piecing that Sherrie did yesterday. Amazing.

This is Sherrie's pattern; I didn't ask which version she's making.

Pam whipped up this paper-pieced table topper/wall-hanging. It is 3-dimensional. She is learning to piece and quilt at a class, and this was a recent project they did.

I can mark a UFO off my list! I removed old borders; measured the center correctly, made the outer border bigger. I am much, much  happier with it now.

I also prepped another project for quilting - Sunday Best, my Schnibbles that is on the UFO list. I needed to stitch together some batting remnants, press and stretch the backing, and pin the top on. Very happy to have this ready to take to the machine. My goal states that I want it quilted and bound, so I have a bit more work to do on it.

This is mid-pinning; it's got lots in place now.

Frienzie Lyn was with us too, and she was there to be surrounded by loving friends and cheering up. Her mother had just passed away, and she was a bit weepy and fragile, as one would expect. We did our best, I think, to comfort her and give her a chance to reflect and share special memories. What are friends for? We have all been close enough now for so many years - we know where we can always go for love and support and comfort. That's just what Frienzies do.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

An Ancient UFO

Some quilters are embarrassed by how long they've had UFOs piling up around their sewing rooms. And, too, the number of UFOs cause definite consternation for some. Neither of these problems have been particularly bothersome to me, however. And that is a good thing because I have many and have had for a number of years.

Case in point, these paper-pieced blocks that I began mostly just to "play around" with the technique of paper piecing. I really had no burning desire to have a finished quilt, I just wanted to use some of my wonderful fat quarters and this was a handy excuse.

Once I got tired of it, into a tub it went, and it "aged" for oh, about 15 years. Then it started gnawing at me. Taking up space in a tub and on a shelf - why, if I'd just get that back out, it wouldn't really take all that much time to finish it and have it ready for quilting. I wrote about it here.

It finally made the list of 2013 goals, and I am happy to report that I have finished the quilt top.

 It isn't very big, at just 4x5 blocks, but it was all the effort I wanted to put into it.

I added a couple of borders. It seemed to get some wonkiness, so I might have to go back and address that at some point. I had considered putting an outer border on, but this seemed to suit me just fine, so I am leaving it as it.

It feels pretty darn good to finally have something finished. It has been awhile! I think I lost a bit of my quilting "mojo" for a couple of weeks. I just haven't had much interest for some reason. Weird.

One UFO marked off the list.
One item on the 2013 list completed.
One item on the Ten Things This Summer list completed.

Wow! And it was just this one project! Cool!

Happy Quilting, Friends!