Friday With the Frankfort Girls

It has been awhile since I shared any of the goings-on from my quilting group. We met Friday morning at Becky's and in honor of Valentine's Day, she had prepared a pretty table for us.

Becky is an expert min-quilt maker, and this pretty table topper is one such example of her eye for color and design.

Becky also shared a recent finish of another mini-quilt. She was just finishing this off the last time we were together.

Terry had a pretty wall-hanging quilt that impressed all of us. For me, anyway, it's the way the blues pop in this wall-hanging. Pretty!

I have one more quilt top of Terry's to share, but I want to save it for tomorrow. It is her interpretation of our 9-patch exchange that we did last year. One by one, we are all getting our tops finished, and even quilted. I will pull all the previous pictures of these quilts to share together in tomorrow's post.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Blockheads 3 totally rocked the Valentine's Day option for me with this week's block. I felt compelled to make the block in the 12" size, and use typical red/white-ish colors; here's what I ended up with.

It has been years since I last did foundation paper-piecing, so I did this as a refresher for the process. I admit to ripping out a few bits. It may become a pillow, or perhaps a mini quilt. I just don't rightly know what to do with it, but it was fun to make, and now I am ready to make the 6" block in the fabrics I'm using in the sew-along.

My sweetie and I are going for Mexican tonight (no surprise; we do that every Friday!), but we are bringing along our friends John and Dorothy. That will be fun. And we will play cards afterwards.

Hope all you Valentines have a great day!

Work Room Vibes

Outdoors today was gray, rainy, sleety, breezy and foggy. Total ugh. But in my sewing room, the brightness shines!

I have mini-quilts on the wall. Just random ones that I have made over the years. A Sunbonnet Sue sits in the chair on a pillow that Grandma made for DD Emma back when she was a baby - 26 or 27 years ago.

On the design wall is half of Diagonal Madness, the Kaffe Fassett quilt I started last fall. The plan is to get back to finishing it as soon as I have my current project done.

The current project is draped over the table - Summer Nights, a pattern by CottonWay. I worked on it all day today, which made for a very satisfying business, I must say. Those sleet and rain showers just pounded away on my window, but my machine was humming right along.

This last picture shows a bit more of the design wall with the scrappy project underneath Diagonal Madness. I definitely will be getting back to that, too, as time permits. I really love the way those scrappy bits are coming together.

I hope you had a sunshine-y day even if you were in the pervasive gray weather we've had lately.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Sewing With Sharon

Oh Gosh! Sharon and I had a sewing day yesterday! It has been sooooo long since we have had the time to do this. We were so regular about it for so long, but life had a way of interfering this past fall, and we have been hard-pressed to see our way clear to continue.

I had 4 days of classes each week last semester; she had a chance to step up her Grandma game with her older grandson, and like I said in yesterday's post, we had to take a hiatus.

Well, all that time away meant we had a full day of catching up as well as a full day of sewing. Sharon had a Moda Love quilt all pinned together, and succeeded in her plan to stitch it into a top. The fabric is Cinnaberry by 3Sisters/Moda - a gift from someone - me! - and it looks fantastic in this super-easy quilt.

I worked on my setting blocks for Summer Nights. That mainly consisted of chain-piecing for 4-patch blocks.

By day's end, well after Sharon had gone home, I finally made a grand total of ONE block!  I intend to get a good bit of the rest done tomorrow.

Oh, it felt so good to get back into the sewing routine with Sharon. We will still have to be sporadic in our days together, but we are shooting for a day in early March to once again get together. Crossing my fingers!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Lotsa' Stitchin'

We are only 41 days into 2020 and I feel really good about how much time I am devoting to my quilting. I have that renewed energy I always get at the beginning of a new year, plus I am teaching just two days a week this semester as opposed to the four days I taught last semester. Whew! That was a killer on my stitching time.

So far this year I have a couple of finishes - baby quilts - and lots of random starts. To name a few - BH1 and BH3, Summer Nights, scrappy square-in-a-square and Diagonal Madness. Is there more? I can't think of any, but golly, I have TONS of ideas swirling around in my head! I just keep adding and adding to the goals list. It would be really nice if I can maintain this pace.

One maintenance chore necessary last week was some needle attention. If you sew a lot, you know you can actually hear your needle going through the fabric. Well, the sound I was beginning to hear sounded "off" and I realized when I saw the seam shown below that I was in need of a new needle.

The blue showing through in the stitching is the navy fabric on the underside. The top and bottom threads are both gray/neutral. The result of this is that I have tiny little holes in the fabric because of the dull needle! Heaven only knows when I last changed the needle, but I know a whole lotta' stitchin' took place with that old needle. Weird coincidence: it is uncanny how withing 24 hours of my changing this needle I saw this picture on Facebook.

I have no idea how many times magnified these photos are, but suffice it to say this is a great illustration for us all to be more mindful of changing needles at regular intervals, and more frequently if we sew a lot.

And while we are on the subject of doing a lot of stitching, this also has been occurring quite a lot lately: running out of bobbin thread. And this time, I not only ran out of bobbin thread, but my spool of bobbin thread has run out, too! Further evidence that I am getting in lots of stitches. *smiles*

Today, my good buddy Sharon was able to come for a sewing day! Whoo-hoo! We have had a very long hiatus, so it was a real joy to be able to catch up and sew the day away.

I need to prep the pictures I took, so come on back tomorrow for a full rundown of our fun day.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Summer Nights Stars

Seems a bit strange to be making a quilt with the name Summer Nights here in mid-February. We currently have a bit of snow cover and seasonably cold temperatures, so thinking about summer is somewhat far-fetched. But thinking about a blue and white quilt, or a star quilt, or better yet both, is not far-fetched at all.

I have had this pattern ever since it was released by Bonnie Olaveson of CottonWay - maybe two years ago? Three? It's been awhile. Anyway, I made a couple of the star blocks right away, and then promptly moved on to other endeavors. But finishing this quilt was always lingering in the recesses of my mind.

I put it on this year's goals list, but I think I was already back at work on it last year. I showed a picture of my chaotic design wall here, and several blocks are pinned up there in the madness.

Well, today all 18 star blocks are at last finished. Whoo-hoo!!

My stash has provided me with wonderful navy blue options, and it has been a lot of fun revisiting some of these almost vintage fabrics. I have used perhaps 8-9 different blues in these stars. My plan for the setting blocks is to use just one consistent blue as a way of taming the chaos and letting the stars shine with their variety.

Now, I should qualify my claim of having all 18 stars finished. When I stacked all the blocks from the design wall, I discovered one block that was significantly smaller than the rest. I have no idea what happened, what I did, or how it came to be so small. I don't see any way of making it work, so I am going to save myself the aggravation of trying to force it and instead just make another one.

The small block is shown above. My guess is that it's a full inch smaller than necessary. I am pretty sure it was one of those early blocks made back when I got the pattern. Still, why I have such a huge discrepancy is mystifying.

Oh well...

Happy Quilting, Friends!

A Baby Bag

I have just been as busy as a happy little bee in my sewing room lately. There has been no lack of projects keeping me occupied, a situation I hope will continue for a good while to come. So many of the things I have recently worked on were near-finishes, and with the efforts of the past couple of days, I can now count them as finishes. Yeah!

The baby quilt I finished off and wrote about in this post, now has a sweet bag made of the same fabrics. I will use it as a gift bag for the quilt; I hope that the new momma will use it as a diaper bag or a grocery bag. It could serve mulitple uses.

After playing around with remnants from the quilt and ending up with this star, I arrived at the decision to turn the star block into a panel for a bag. I worked on it most of one day this week, and I am pleased with my results.

We have had such cloudy days lately, that I set the bag on a barstool in the window to get adequate lighting. I lined the star block and used it to form a front pocket. The strap is filled with a scrap of batting to make it comfortable as a cross-body bag or a shoulder bag.

Inside, I have two smaller pockets made with the larger yellow and white dot fabric. I had a clasp on hand, so I inserted it to keep small things like pacifiers and rattles from falling out. You can see the front pocket opened up in this picture, too.

And tucked into the bag is the quilt, awaiting the birth of the baby it is made for. I am happy to have this project finished, and checked off my to-do list. I am also eager to meet the little girl when she arrives, and give her her first quilt.

Happy Quilting, Friends!