Design Wall Monday 11-4-13

Late today as I was out of the house at 8:15 on my way to pick apples! Sadly, I have nothing new of mine to show today. But I can show you what is going back on Ruthie. 

Michelle won these blocks from our block lotto at the retreat.  She quickly sewed them into a baby quilt and passed them on to me to quilt and bind for her.  Hopefully I'll have that all done by this Saturday's meeting.  I won 6 of them also but I haven't decided whether I want to make more or do something with only 6.... decisions, decisions. 

Next up is a label Jenny has made for her Row Along quilt. (Hum, I don't think I've taken pictures of it since I've gotten it.  Notice she has me down for quilting it... and this pic is from June! I received the backing from her last week so it is in line to be loaded on Ruthie.  Luckily she doesn't want it back until we see her in early December. 

How about my goals... not the most productive week but I had several events happening so didn't have as much time to stitch. 

Week of Ocober 28, 2013

Bind June retreat quilt √

Load and quilt bright and white 4 patch on Ruthie √

Quilt Michelle’s Black and White didn’t happen

Make binding and bind Michelle’s Black and White or this either

Sew together pinwheel quilt √ started

Sew up 3 pillowcases√

Border shaded 9 patch wasn’t even looked at

Help out at photo session at church Sat.√

Make desserts for Election Day bake sale √

Week of November 4, 2013

Finish binding on bright and white

Quilt Michelle’s Black and White

Make binding and bind Michelle’s Black and White

Load and quilt Kate’s green 1600 quilt

Border shaded 9 patch

Use x block ruler to cut 9 patches and make last two rows of red, white and blue quilt

Plan Christmas placemats

Sew three more pillowcases 

Make labels for quilt group

That's it today.  Make sure to visit Judy's Patchwork Times for the links to design walls across the internet. 

Happy Quilting All! 

Stashbusting Report -- October

Way too many purchasing opportunities this month and not that much finishing going on! 

2013	Fabric In Month	Fabric in Year	Fabric Out Month	Fabric Out Year	Total In or Out Year
October	16.75	85.21	9.25	78.515	-6.695

I purchased all sorts of fabric -- for the Shaded 9 Patch, for the white and bright 4 patch shown below,  and some fabrics for stash building. (What?  Building stash???)  Well, it's fun to get some new fabrics even if they aren't earmarked for a specific project.  I was hoping to finish that white and bright 4 patch before the end of the month but little Miss Ellie had a different idea. And, yep, I'm so glad she's here! 

Here's what's been happening around here: 

Are you going to be making this year's Bonnie Hunter Mystery, Celtic Solstice?  I haven't decided whether I will or not.  I stopped at Lowe's while we were dog sitting last weekend to pick up the color chips.  And, just look how well these new fabrics go with the cards.  These are from Connecting Threads.  The plain orange is Mirage in Carrot, the yellow is Classic Dot in Sun,  the last one is Pin Dots in Light Carrot. (It's on sale now too!)  I spent a tiny amount of time looking for a Moda blue I have but couldn't find it.  Maybe I put it with some other project... (note to self, hunt down that fabric!) 

The guild will be having a pillowcase day soon.  In the past we've had fabric donated to us.  This year the members are also adding fabric.  So, I made up 4 pillowcases mostly from the fabric I bought at a guild auction a couple of years ago.  I'm really happy to be able to put some of those fabrics to a good use. I've got 4 more pillowcases ready to sew up.  I might do it before our sewing day so I can concentrate on the kits we made up last month. 

Here's the bright and white that came off Ruthie today.  I will be working on the binding this week, hopefully.  I used my spirals grooved boards.  I've got another quilt to throw on Ruthie tomorrow that I'll use the same design. 

Remember the high tea I served last December to the tea group? You can read about the meal here.  It was Jennie's turn to host us for October.  (She's the witch in the center...)  Let me tell you about Jennie -- she LOVES Halloween.  Her house is decorated all over with Halloween decorations (see the black bird on the wall and there are bats that went up the back wall too.)  She suggested we come in costumes and several did.   That's me with the sedate necklace.  Mickey (2nd from the right) came as an alien but she'd taken off her mask by this point. Our zombie and Red Sox fan were in costume too.  We always have a good time when we get together.  Plus she had a little craft for us to do.  I'll show you what it was when she sends it over.  It needed to dry before it could be moved.  The disappointing (really?) part of Halloween last night is we had very few kids come by so we have pounds of candy left.  Oh well.  I guess we'll have to eat it. 

Hopefully I'll get more things finished over the next few days but we've got a few things to do so I won't be having much quilting time.  Sigh. 

Happy Quilting,

Design Wall Monday 9-29-2013 Ooops! A Day Late

I have a great reason to be a day late on my design wall: 

Welcome to the world Elise Mae!  

Born Friday, October 25th.  She weighed in at 9 lbs, 3 oz. Here she is at less than one day old. 

Here she is at about 2 days old with her proud Daddy, Kevin.

And Mommy Aimee and Elise just home from the hospital. 3 days old. 

Ellie joins our other two grand daughters, Sophia and Natalie. 

Grammy and Peka are proud as can be! 

Nothing else to show this week since this would trump anything I showed! 

Needless to say it did impact what I got done this week. 

Week of October 21, 2013

Border bright and white 4 patch√

Load and quilt Michelle’s Black and White√ loaded but waiting for new thread

Trim and bind baby quilt from June retreat Trimmed but no binding applied

Try lace applique on embroidery machine problems with applique software…

Load bright and white 4 patch on Ruthie

Sew together pinwheel quilt

Sew up 3 pillowcases √ well one was done and one pinned.

Border Shaded 9 Patch No time!

Hopefully I'll get more done this week! 

Bind June retreat quilt

Load and quilt bright and white 4 patch on Ruthie

Quilt Michelle’s Black and White

Make binding and bind Michelle’s Black and White

Sew together pinwheel quilt

Sew up 3 pillowcases

Border shaded 9 patch

Help out at photo session at church Sat.

Make desserts for Election Day bake sale 

That's it for today.  Time to make some progress on this list! And, October is coming to an end really soon and I need a few finishes besides pillowcases!

You can still check blogs across the internet at Patchwork Times. 

Happy Quilting All!   

Triangle Thursday #26

Cactus Pot

This design is number 700 in Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. It is attributed to “Oklahoma Farmer Stockman” periodical. This design was published in January, 1930. Go here to get a printer friendly version. 

Cutting directions are for 6”

Fabric	Number to cut	6”
Triangles –	4 rust, 6 background 2 brown	Use the 1.5” template.  Or cut 2 rust sqs., 1 brown sq., and 3 background squares at 2.5”. Draw a line down the center and sew ¼” from each side, trim to 2” unfinished. If you have trouble making half triangle squares cutting the squares slightly helps to make more accurate units.
Large Triangles	1 rust 1 brown	Use the 3” template. Or cut 4” squares and follow the procedure above.
Background Squares	2 background	2”
Rectangles	2 background	2 x 3.5”

Here are the pieces that will make up this block.

Make half square triangles:  Sew the triangle sections together. I actually cut one pair as a square so I followed the directions above for that.  You will end up with 4 rust/cream and 2 brown/cream small triangles.  Then sew the larger triangles together.

Layout all the pieces as shown above.  Be careful to keep the half triangle units going the correct direction when you sew them together. That’s a major reason I pin my pieces together.  Sew the 2 pairs of rust/cream triangles together. Sew a brown/cream to the short side of each of the cream rectangles. I generally pressed all seams to the darker fabric.  Sew a pair of triangles to the larger triangle unit.  Sew one of the cream squares to the other triangle pair. Then sew that to the other side of the larger triangle pair. Next, sew the rectangle/HTS (half triangle square) unit to the bottom of the main unit.  Now sew the last cream square to the other rectangle/HTS unit.  Sew that unit on the block. 

You are done! Sorry I didn’t think to take pictures of how I sewed the units together.  A picture would definitely have helped.  

Happy Quilting All! 

Back to Drawing and a Baby Quilt

Yes, I'm finally going to announce a new winner for the Mighty Bright Sewing Light drawing.  It's number 5.  Wait, that means nothing.  It's TwynMawrMom and I suppose that means nothing to all but a few of you but I know it is Ashley in Philly. She has adorable twins who I haven't seen in years.  She wrote this in the comments section. 

"I remember when you started the blog! I thought the whole idea sounded so 'high tech' to me and now I'm enjoying blogging as well. Thanks for the inspiration as always. I have two machines, both Singers, one is a serger. I haven't named them (well I have many names for the Serger but none of them fit to print). My "main man" Singer is how I sloperate, so we call it a Singer-Sloperator. It would love a light!! :)"  

So Ashley, I actually have your mail address and I will get this out to you this week.  Thanks to everyone who entered the drawing. And, I apologize for being so late getting this finished.  

Now to share the quilt Jenny and I made for Aimee and Elise Mae.  Jen and I thought it made more sense to make one quilt from the two of us rather than each making a quilt.  So when I was at the June retreat in Maryland I found some elephant fabric at the local shop. Aimee loves elephants.  Being a modern woman (what? who, me?)  I quickly snapped photos of the various pieces and texted them to Jenny so she could help decide on which one we wanted.  She liked the orange and I gathered a few extra pieces to go with it.

We each made some big blocks and then Jenny cut them apart and sewed them back into a quilt.  She dropped the top off to me at some point and I quilted it and did the border using the striped fabric. I found a great elephant panto at Urban Elementz.  I enlarged the elephant a bit and copied and taped it together to use it on the quilt.  

I changed the tail and decided afterward that perhaps the original tail would have been easier to quilt and make it look good.  Too late! 

It seems pretty bright here but in reality I don't think it is quite that bright.  Here's the photo I took at the retreat before I wrapped it.  It was early morning and the sun was shining on it. It doesn't look so bright.  

Aimee was tickled with it.  In addition I made her a custom hospital gown which allows her to nurse without baring all.  I forgot to get a picture of that but here's what the beginning looked like. (More elephants.)

This is a free pattern from Creations Sew Crazy and Lazy Girl Designs.  You can get your own PDF version here. I spoke to my friend Janet who works in a hospital nursery and quizzed her about  some of the instructions on the gown.  First, no I didn't need to make an open shoulder.  And, wouldn't it be fabulous if a mommy could nurse through it without taking half her gown off.  Hum, I've sewn enough clothing to know how to make that happen, kind of.  I basically added two seams to the front -- think of princess style dress.  I added fabric where the breast would come through so I could have it finished rather than raggedy.  I sewed the princess seam leaving the "slit" open to allow easy access to the breast.  I did make the back a bit bigger so there would be enough coverage back there!  Aimee loved it.  She particularly liked the nursing slits.  I hope I can get a photo of her in it when Elise is due -- Monday!  Well, you know babies, they come when they want.  She's a big girl according to all the testing. She might already be a 9 pound girl.  Hum, sounds an awful lot like her daddy! 

Here's Aimee in her cute T-Shirt at her shower. 
It's too bad I didn't get a better picture of her and the darling little sweater someone had knit for her.  Aimee's a scientist and loves all thing scientific.  Check out those bones! We found some fabric with skeletons on it where the bones were accurately labeled. It is in her collection now.  

And here as a funny conclusion to this post is a cake that was made in her honor for her shower. If you are easily offended you might not want to look at the cake picture.  Once I figured it all out I wanted to howl with laughter. In fact I did when I shared it with some of the gals at the retreat when I got back there.  Hi Mom! 

Time to get back to my studio.  Happy Quilting All! 

Design Wall Monday 10-21-13

Here's what's on the wall:

The 9 patches are cut using the X-Block ruler which gives the bottom lay out.  I decided to make this a bit longer thus the two extra rows of blocks. Now to finish up the inside and start thinking about the borders. 

I laid these blocks out to start thinking about sewing them together.  I was thinking I might need another block to go with these.  My biggest concern though is that lite aqua background.  It really stands out.  The red block has red polka dots in the background . . .   I received these blocks and a LOT more from my FCQ Equilter group.  (Hum, the blocks above came from them too...good that I'm finally making some progress on them.)  I will play around with them some more and see what I can do about them.  

I'm trying to finish some small quilts and use up some of the blocks I have hanging around.  These two will be donation quilts, eventually. 

I did well with the goals this week.  Yea! 

Week of October 14, 2013

Sew the shaded 9 patch together√

Clean the studio√ well more of it at least

Sew the bright and white 4 patch together√

Load on Ruthie the baby quilt from June retreat√ and it’s quited!

Attend Women’s Club meeting√

Attend Powhattan’s Festival of the Grape! Yum√ unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate. 

Week of October 21, 2013

Border bright and white 4 patch

Load and quilt Michelle’s Black and White

Trim and bind baby quilt from June retreat

Try lace applique on embroidery machine

Load bright and white 4 patch on Ruthie

Sew together pinwheel quilt

Sew up 3 pillowcases

Border Shaded 9 Patch

I've added a bit more to the goals list as I finished more than I listed this past week.  I still need to do some putting away and straightening in the studio but I think I'll do that as an ongoing event.  I've found my cutting table is getting crowded with leftover scraps of fabric and "stuff." 

Don't forget to visit Patchwork Times to find links to lots of Design Wall Mondays. 

Happy Quilting.