It's a Finish!

Truth is, I finished this quilt in mid to late September.  I kept forgetting about taking pictures.  So today I figured out a new place to take smaller quilt pictures -- one wall of the new sun room is perfect (after I move two pictures, three plants and one basket....) 

Here's Tumbling Doggies. 

This quilt measures 38.5" x 40". 

Made and quilted by Bonnie (that's me!) 

Quilting Design Squiggle Wiggle Edge to Edge by My Creative Stitches

Thread So Fine 504 - a light grey

Take a look at the backing and the cool black and white stripe binding.  I found the backing at JoAnns at a Fourth of July sale -- Whoop! 50% off. 

Generally, a small quilt like this would go to one of the NICUs my guild support. But I really like this one.  I think it is going into a bag for the possible future great-grand children. (It's years away as my oldest grandchild is only 11.)  And, I strongly suspect there is another Tumbling Doggies in my future. 

I'm sorry for the quality of the pictures.  All of them look great on my computer.  But when I uploaded them to Blogger they have gotten "mushy." You can enlarge them by clicking on them but I'm not sure they will look much better.  

I'm linking up with these parties: 

MidWeek Makers

Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop!

Finished or Not Friday

Beauties Pageant

Enjoy some surfing time! 

Happy Quilting All.  Bonnie 

September Table Scraps Challenge -- DONE!

Orange is the color for September Rainbow Scrap Challenge and the Table Scraps Runner/Topper Challenge.  I decided I would try to make a table runner using my 4.5" tumbler die.  It's a great size to use scraps.  (In fact, the quilt that has been waiting for the long arm to be repaired is a tumbler using some of my doggy fabric. Inside info -- the parts came and I finished that little quilt.) 

I started cutting one piece from all the orange scraps that would fit on the die. Um, that wasn't enough.  So I started looking at the few leftover charm packets I have.   I finally found enough although I did have to cut into some of my yardage.  Isn't it great? Yea orange! 

My oranges go from very light peach to dark rust and from gold to bright orange.  When this was all done I realized my stack of orange fabrics needs some additions.  (But that is for another day.) The inspiration for this was a table runner Sherri, who writes about quilting at A Quilting Life, showed recently on an AccuQuilt Live event.  Shortly afterwards she wrote a whole post about making tumbler table runners.  So anyone who wants to make one check this blog post.

I found an old piece of Halloween fabric to use as the back.  I had to piece the it so it would fit. The plan was to do free motion stipple on my domestic machine.  My first try the tension was off even though I tested it.  Ugh.  Rip, rip, rip.  My second try it started out ok but my free motion skills are totally rusted.  And the tension whacked out.  More ripping.  Eventually I decided that if I ever wanted to finish this I needed to try something else. So I set up the walking foot and did the "organic" lines.  It worked pretty well.  

It's almost October and I'm wondering what color we'll be working with and what type of runner I can make next.  

Here's one last look at it. 

Up next will be to trim and bind the doggy tumbler quilt.  Then, I need to quilt a new quilt that's sitting on Ruthie.  And I have great hope to quilt 2 quilts before I head off on Thursday for retreat.  If I succeed I'll pass them off to a friend from Maryland who attends the retreat and she'll pass them on to the guild.  Lots to do in very few days. (Good thing I've already kitted up a couple of quilts.) 

Here are the linky parties to check out: 

Needle and Thread Thursdays

Can I Have a Whoop, Whoop? 

Finished or Not Friday

Beauties Pageant 

Table Scraps Runner/Topper Challenge Linky Party

Scrap Happy Saturday 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Sigh, Nothing Finished

Usually I have a finish for the Finished (or Not) Friday.  Not this week.  I'm sewing but I don't seem to have much progress to report.  But I do have some pictures! 

Big Stars are a direct response to this post by Nancy at Wyoming Breezes.  I have a quilt (ok, probably a UFO) that I made with various 4 patches.  The shoebox I stored the 2.5" squares still held quite a few 4 patches and I began sewing more together.  

A little later I got to thinking about one of the project boxes I have that was labeled 16 patches.  Upon looking in it I found at least 6 16 patches with red and white/cream squares and a few with blue and white/cream squares.  And a bunch of blue and light strips sewn together.  I realized that years ago I had requested those blocks from the FCQ Equilters and I had already made one quilt from them. Looking at the bounty of blocks I knew I would use them to make Nancy's stars.  They make huge 16" blocks so it will only take 12 and more than half of the 16 patches were done.  

On to the star points.  I took out my trusty Wing Clipper from Studio 180 and got to work.  Evidently I didn't pay attention correctly at one point. OOPS! 

I haven't decided whether I'll be working on these while I work on my Ombre Log Cabins or not.  I'm going to a retreat at the end of September and I like to have projects all cut out and ready to sew.  I may just cut out everything for the other 10 star points and finish them and the top at retreat. 

On other fronts I decided it was time to start up Ruthie and see if she will work for me.  I loaded this cute tumbler top I made with leftover doggy fabric. The first row did fine but the next one has balked.  It won't stitch.  I'll be contacting the company that did the electronics that connect the computer to the long arm and order some new cables and 2 different circuit boards. I'm hoping it will be resolved with a new cable.  Luckily there is no deadline for this little quilt. 

I've been spending a lot of time reading this last week.  The one I'm almost finished with that really struck me is The Premonition by Michael Lewis.  I'm usually not a huge fan of nonfiction but this book reads more like fiction. It is based on real people and the real beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic. In many ways it shocks me -- how inept America's response has been -- way more so than just the last administration's bumbling and denying. The American public health services have been vastly underfunded for years. The for-profit health providers (think hospitals, labs, pharmaceutical and insurance companies) really aren't benefiting people -- they are in it for money. It's a fast read and is only 300 pages (my copy. Although Amazon says it 320 pages.) It's well worth the time and has done a great job keeping my interest.  

I need to get back to sewing.  I'm linking up with Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?, Finished (Or Not) Friday, and Beauties Pageant. Take some time to check them out.  

Happy Quilting All,  Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 3 - 29 - 2021

I can't believe I totally messed up my last post!  It was Saturday (afternoon or evening?) I was writing about my Table Scraps Challenge finish.  But, oops!  I added my goals for this week and the results of last week.  (You'll need to scroll to the bottom to see last week's goals.) So, bear with me a minute as I repost this week's goals at the end. Nothing else got completed since Saturday, that's for sure.

But up now is progress on my doggy tumblers.  A couple of years ago I used my Accuquilt Go Tumbler 4.5" die to make a slew of tumblers using my doggy fabrics. I also used a bunch of paws, dots and checks to make it less busy.  Um, no.  It was a hot mess.  So I called on Jack to rip out the stitching.  I piled them all up and put them in a gift bag and stashed them a way for future use.  

Pause a moment for the years to go by . . . I knew I needed a background fabric to give the eye somewhere to rest.  When I was ready to take a project to the beach house and I didn't have much time to get it together -- the doggy tumblers came to mind.  I did a search in my whites and neutrals and found a great fabric from Free Spirit. Here's a photo taken to help decide which of two fabrics to use. 

The bottom is a Moda solid -- I'm not sure which color but it looked more yellow than beige in this picture. 

The top one is the Free Spirit one. I really liked the bit of texture it added but I only had a yard.  I quickly did a bit of math to see how many I could get from the yard.  It was big enough to make a 36" quilt or so.  Before I knew it I had the whole yard cut into tumblers and packaged for travel. 

I really like and use my Accuquilt Go, a lot. (Full disclosure I'm a Accuquilt user but I don't receive any thing for this opinion.)   More than once I've been able to quickly cut all the pieces I needed of a desired shape under a time deadline.  These 4.5" tumblers were so easy to sew together because there are slices cut off the "corners" to make it easier to match them up. I didn't even pin them, so add fast to the easy. I think I might like the larger 6.5" one too.  

You can see it looks odd when you match them up but it does give you a nice straight line when you sew them together. 

Below you can see the rows I was able to get done between working at the beach house this past week.  

I got 6 of 7 rows completed.  I need to find a couple more doggy fabrics to do the last row.  Mostly I have bones, paws and blenders left.  I'm hoping I have some dog pictures left I can cut

This will be a pretty small quilt but I think there are a couple of charities that take small quilts. I'll pick one of them to receive this one when finished.  

Just a reminder of my goals for next week:

3/28/2021

Quilt and bind another quilt

Make and apply binding for my quilt 

Cut out a couple more r, w, & b Ohio stars 

Figure out more dog fabric for tumbler quilt

That's it for me today.  Hopefully at the end of the week I'll have a couple of finishes to share. (Or at least 1!) 

Parties I'm linking to: Oh Scrap, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday and To Do Tuesday. You know the drill, I'll link up with To Do Tuesday after it posts. (Hopefully soon after it posts rather than days after!)  I'm looking forward to surfing time.  I've hardly had time to check out what's going on on the Internet for the last half week or so.  

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie