Monday Meandering 10 - 24 - 2016

Are the weeks going by faster for you?  It sure seems that it does for me.  We spent an overnight at Jenny's taking care of the girls when she was working in NYC while Brian was out of town.  We made dinner and got them to bed.  It was really easy especially since it didn't take much longer than an hour and 20 minutes to get up there.   

I brought up the girls' Halloween shirts.  Sophie decided to wear hers to school -- a day the temperature was above 80! I snapped her picture waiting at the bus stop:

I'm pretty sure the shirt is a bit too big! But Sophie liked Frankenstein.  The design is available at Embroidery Boutique.  They have lots of cute designs.  I'm looking at several for Christmas shirts for the girls.

Below is a close up of the design on Natalie's shirt.  It is from Designs by JuJu and is part of the Halloween Harvest Sock Monkeys design.  I tend to choose appliqué designs for the shirts so that they don't have too many stitches in the shirts. 

The next shirt is Ellie's.  The design is by Embroidery Boutique and is called Windy Witch.  Evidently she asked to put it on as soon as she got home from visiting us last weekend.  

I'm also excited that Ruthie is back up and running.  I quilted one quilt using the computer to drive the long arm after we first set it up here.  I actually wasn't really planning on using it for Theo's quilt but I wanted to look at one design to see if it would look ok.  Except the tablet couldn't find the long arm. Wait!  It's right there -- what do you mean you can't find it??? After several days and several packages of chips and cables we decided to dump the old program and reinstall it.  Except the USB port wouldn't read the original thumb drive with the program.  More wait time and finally the new drive arrived and all is well.  I need to find a small quilt to really test it out but I haven't taken the time to do so... let's just say the embroidery machine was running hot this last week or so! 

I did really well on my goals this last week.  

Oct 17, 2016

Finish the last embroidery on the corners of the flower quilt, put quilt together√ ready to sew the last two borders on

Embroider the last two Halloween shirts √

Finish the last Christmas Favorites block√ need to check through all the blocks and see if anything is missing

Visit with Jenny and the girls√

Oct 24 2016

Enjoy playing with Theo on Tuesday 

Sew the flower quilt together

Check all the Christmas Favorites blocks and add what is needed; sew them together

Knit on the second red sock

Get back to the Stack ‘N Whack top

I'm linking up to my favorite Monday blogs: Love Laugh Quilt's Monday Makings and A Place to Create and Share's Main Crush Monday. 

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie  

Monday Meandering -- 10 - 17 - 2016

Finally a finished quilt!  It's been a secret since Jenny and I started it.  As you may remember Theodore Everett joined my son's family on October 19th.  Since my daughter Jenny is also a quilter we decided (again) to do a joint quilt.  I quizzed DIL Aimee about colors and style for the nursery and came up with Elizabeth Hartman's pattern Fancy Forest.  Aimee wanted foxes so Fancy Forest was perfect.  Yes, I could have picked her fox pattern but I also thought I might want to try some of her other designs in the forest.  

My first fox attempt.  There is a lot of cutting with this pattern because, duh, there are a lot of pieces in each fox.  However, after the first practice block which came out perfectly, the background, eyes, nose and cheeks could all be cut at the same time. (Hum, I don't see any cheeks to the left there... And, was the color that different or is this a different block shown?) We decided on a light gray background.  Jenny made a couple of foxes with the dark gray. 
We thought we might not use them but as we were laying them out they looked great in with all the others. Gave it a modern look.  Who knew? 

One Fox

Six Foxes

And now, six foxes.  Jenny was making foxes at her house during the nights and weekends.  

Now that we live "a day trip away" Jenny and family came down for a visit and she and I were able to put the quilt together from our two sets of blocks.  Somehow we both had blocks made from the same fabric. See Mr. Fox on the bottom left?  His navy blue fabric has thin dark black lines through it.  We had a funny conversation claiming the blocks were ours.  But I had this picture to prove I had also made one.  Hum, usually our fabric tastes are different but we both liked this one! 

Our color information from Aimee was grey, rust, navy blue and turquoise.  I found the grey background fabric and sent some to Jenny.  We used our stashes to make the blocks.  

Once the blocks were together we weren't sure it really needed a border.  But I insisted we audition some fabric from my stash.  We loved the turquoise inner border.  Then the navy blue went so well with it and the rest of the quilt.  Honestly, there was so little of each fabric left we had to make the border width dependent on how much fabric we had on hand.  And, I had to make sure I didn't cut it wrong or it would have meant a trip to a store.  I think the navy blue border ended up being 3 1/4" wide with almost nothing left! Jenny sewed while I ironed and cut sashing, borders, whatever was needed. 

Twenty Foxes

Finally, all twenty-five foxes.

I forgot that I sent Jenny several pictures to help pick out the binding.  This was a dark blue fabric that was turned down.  We both liked a turquoise fabric with quarter-sized white polka dots on it.  (In fact the turquoise was just about this fox's color.) 


I stitched in the ditch around each fox and between the turquoise and the navy borders.  I stippled in the gray. I really didn't want to quilt over the foxes' faces. Then I did angles in the blue border.  In the middle of finishing the quilt we were at Kevin's house taking care of Ellie while mom and dad were having her little brother.  So it was delayed a bit. 

Theo gave a thumbs up on his new quilt when we gave it to him on Saturday.  (Mommy and Daddy liked it too!) I was tickled to find this cute fox fabric that really went with the front.  Theo's almost a month old now.  Yea for a great finish! This is the first some-what large quilt I've finished (well Jen and I) almost the whole year. 

On to the goals. I've been busy in the studio this past week and got most of my goals done. 

Oct 10, 2016

Finish binding on secret quilt√

Knit on burgundy sock√

Sew flower quilt together√ made progress but not together yet

Embroider more shirts and onesies√

Make one more Christmas Favorites block√ started

And for this week: 

Oct 17, 2016

Finish the last embroidery on the corners of the flower quilt

Embroider the last two Halloween shirts

Finish the last Christmas Favorites block
Finish first burgundy sock and start next one

Visit with Jenny and the girls

I'm linking up with Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt and Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts. Hopefully we'll all take some time to visit some of the links to see what is going on around the online quilting world this week. My weeks seemed to be chalk full of stuff but darned if I know what! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meandering -- 10 - 17 - 2016

Finally a finished quilt!  It's been a secret since Jenny and I started it.  As you may remember Theodore Everett joined my son's family on October 19th.  Since my daughter Jenny is also a quilter we decided (again) to do a joint quilt.  I quizzed DIL Aimee about colors and style for the nursery and came up with Elizabeth Hartman's pattern Fancy Forest.  Aimee wanted foxes so Fancy Forest was perfect.  Yes, I could have picked her fox pattern but I also thought I might want to try some of her other designs in the forest.  

My first fox attempt.  There is a lot of cutting with this pattern because, duh, there are a lot of pieces in each fox.  However, after the first practice block which came out perfectly, the background, eyes, nose and cheeks could all be cut at the same time. (Hum, I don't see any cheeks to the left there... And, was the color that different or is this a different block shown?) We decided on a light gray background.  Jenny made a couple of foxes with the dark gray. 
We thought we might not use them but as we were laying them out they looked great in with all the others. Gave it a modern look.  Who knew? 

One Fox

Six Foxes

And now, six foxes.  Jenny was making foxes at her house during the nights and weekends.  

Now that we live "a day trip away" Jenny and family came down for a visit and she and I were able to put the quilt together from our two sets of blocks.  Somehow we both had blocks made from the same fabric. See Mr. Fox on the bottom left?  His navy blue fabric has thin dark black lines through it.  We had a funny conversation claiming the blocks were ours.  But I had this picture to prove I had also made one.  Hum, usually our fabric tastes are different but we both liked this one! 

Our color information from Aimee was grey, rust, navy blue and turquoise.  I found the grey background fabric and sent some to Jenny.  We used our stashes to make the blocks.  

Once the blocks were together we weren't sure it really needed a border.  But I insisted we audition some fabric from my stash.  We loved the turquoise inner border.  Then the navy blue went so well with it and the rest of the quilt.  Honestly, there was so little of each fabric left we had to make the border width dependent on how much fabric we had on hand.  And, I had to make sure I didn't cut it wrong or it would have meant a trip to a store.  I think the navy blue border ended up being 3 1/4" wide with almost nothing left! Jenny sewed while I ironed and cut sashing, borders, whatever was needed. 

Twenty Foxes

Finally, all twenty-five foxes.

I forgot that I sent Jenny several pictures to help pick out the binding.  This was a dark blue fabric that was turned down.  We both liked a turquoise fabric with quarter-sized white polka dots on it.  (In fact the turquoise was just about this fox's color.) 


I stitched in the ditch around each fox and between the turquoise and the navy borders.  I stippled in the gray. I really didn't want to quilt over the foxes' faces. Then I did angles in the blue border.  In the middle of finishing the quilt we were at Kevin's house taking care of Ellie while mom and dad were having her little brother.  So it was delayed a bit. 

Theo gave a thumbs up on his new quilt when we gave it to him on Saturday.  (Mommy and Daddy liked it too!) I was tickled to find this cute fox fabric that really went with the front.  Theo's almost a month old now.  Yea for a great finish! This is the first some-what large quilt I've finished (well Jen and I) almost the whole year. 

On to the goals. I've been busy in the studio this past week and got most of my goals done. 

Oct 10, 2016

Finish binding on secret quilt√

Knit on burgundy sock√

Sew flower quilt together√ made progress but not together yet

Embroider more shirts and onesies√

Make one more Christmas Favorites block√ started

And for this week: 

Oct 17, 2016

Finish the last embroidery on the corners of the flower quilt

Embroider the last two Halloween shirts

Finish the last Christmas Favorites block
Finish first burgundy sock and start next one

Visit with Jenny and the girls

I'm linking up with Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt and Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts. Hopefully we'll all take some time to visit some of the links to see what is going on around the online quilting world this week. My weeks seemed to be chalk full of stuff but darned if I know what! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie