building a split rail fence

one of my finish-a-long projects is a quilt that hasn't gotten a mention on my blog yet, even though it is the WIP I have been spending most of my time on lately.  Please pardon the terrible pictures.  This endless winter is making it hard to find good lighting { !@&$@#*!% Groundhog!}




this is a pile of strips waiting to be sewn into blocks for a split rail fence quilt.  hopefully after a couple more days of sewing, I'll be able to take pictures significantly different enough from these photos to be interesting :)




the orange fabric to the left is the flannel I bought for backing.  I spent my Christmas quilt shop gift certificate on the backing fabric - all the fabrics for the top have been in my stash for years.

what are you working on?
I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday

UFO review

In January, I decided to round up all of my UFOs, make a list, and finish them by the end of the year.  This being October and all, I've decided to check out how I'm doing.

First of all, I've made a change to my goals.  I am going to aim to have quilt tops finished, not the quilting & binding.  This is mostly because I have some big quilts that I need my Mom to put on the longarm, and she just broke her foot.  I was going to start seriously guilting her about a couple of those tops, but I guess I have to be nice now ;)  {if you are reading this, I'm just kidding Mom.  mostly.}

The List  {que dramatic music}
1.  a red white & blue picnic quilt - see it up there at the top? I still have a long way to go on that top2.  fruit and veggie quilt top - waiting on Mom's foot
3.  a butterfly quilt I'm hand piecing.  I also plan to hand quilt it.
4.  a machine applique flower quilt
5.  a twin size quilt with penguin fabrics for my youngest son.  This is all cut, I need to get sewing!
6.  some pretty brown and pink fabric has been waiting to become a purse  yeah, no.
7.  a small tote bag that will be made from purple and green floral fabrics   finnished!
8.  a blue and white strom at sea that my husband and I started together a few years ago   I really don't want to do this quilt, so I'm repurposeing the blues and putting them in the penguin quilt. 9.  a Christmas wallhanging   I cut this up into 2.5" squares to put in a scrap quilt.10.  an old-fashioned album quilt - eek, I forgot about this one!11.  an abandoned block of the month quilt in pretty lilac fabrics
12.  the same block of the month pattern in Thimbleberries fabrics   finished!
13.  a quilt top for my sister-in-law Quilted & Bound!
14.  a quilt top for my oldest son - waiting on Mom's foot15.  a handful of orphaned blocks made into potholders

so let's see, the tally is 4 finished, 3 ditched, 2 on hold, 6 I need to move my butt on.  In the last two months of the year.  While getting ready for Christmas.  Bring it on, baby.  I'm ready.

I'm going to link my little bit of insanity up to WIP Wednesday and Thursday Think Tank.  Check 'em out if you don't already.

Did you hear it?

That loud thud a few weeks ago.

That was me, falling off the wagon.   I'm so far behind on the We Can Do It! Sampler, it's scary.  I think I did one of August's blocks, and none of September's. 

Here is the one I stiched in August & forgot to post about:

The closest thing I have to a design wall is the boulder in the back yard.  It works pretty well as long as the wind isn't blowing :)

Since I'm so far behind on the sampler, and I've only got three more months to finish the rest of my UFO's {New Years is my self-impossed deadline}, I've decided to join a quilt-a-long.

Makes perfect sense, right? {and let's not forget Christmas gifts}

a bit about potholders

One of my UFO's on my Finish It Up Already! list was a stack of five orphan blocks.  I decided to make them into potholders, and the first one was finished and gifted in May.

It has a hand pocket on back, and binding that I hand stitched down.
About a week ago, the other four became potholders, too.

Three are without binding and back pockets, because I'm lazy like that  :)
I used a tutorial for machine binding from A Girl In Paradise for one, and loved it! 

Each potholder has insulbright & warm and natural batting between its top and back, and the extra thickness was a bit tricky to squish through my machine.

I quilted each one differently, which {unintentionally} made this a mini study in the best way to quilt extra-puffy potholders  :)   {can you see the quilting patterns in the picture?} 

here is what I learned in a nutshell:
quilt in evenly spaced, but not dense, lines.  too dense = too stiff to bend in your hand while taking your blueberry pie out of the oven.  uneven density = a twisted & warped potholder, still a bit tricky for carrying that steaming blueberry pie.

My boys and I picked blueberries today, and have already eaten most of them, too      
Looks like we are going to have to head back to the farm if there is going to be any pie to carry around with the new potholders  :)

One more WIP crossed off the list, and frankly I'm having a hard time facing my WIP pile right now.  I'm just not inspired to work on any of those old projects at the moment, so I haven't been sewing for a few days.  Do you ever have a hard time getting a sense of direction back after you finish a project? 

Done! Finished! Crossed off the UFO List!

I'm so happy to have this done!  I originally started it five {?} years ago as a block of the month at a not-so-local quilt shop.  I chose this colorway with the intention of gifting the finished quilt to my MIL.  I kept up with my blocks while the program was running, but when the shop was sold I fell off the bandwagon.  {the first owner gave the kits for the remaining blocks to the BOM participants when the shop sold} 

 Anyway, when I made my UFO list in January, I only had about six of these blocks put together.  This quilt had me doing my first ever set-in seams, as well as my first curved seams and first paper piecing. 

The first time I put the top together, it was so crooked, I had to rip apart the blocks, sashing, and cornerstones so I could better trim the blocks down to the same size.   It was a bloody masacre of points, but it had to be done since the bottom two rows were an inch+ wider than the top rows.  {sigh}  At least the top fits together now.

Here is a shot of the backing.  I thought about using the backing for the front border instead, so a strip of the cheater piecing and floral would frame the piecework, but decided to leave well enough alone, mostly because I would have been in need of new and bigger backing fabric.

I quilted it on my home machine, making a grid of straight lines.  And I am using the word 'straight' loosely. You see, I didn't mark the lines.  Instead, I just eyeballed it.  Sometimes my eyeball got a bit wonky  ;)

Well, it was an interesting challenge to work with fabrics I would never have choosen for myself, but after spending a whole lot of time with this quilt lately, I needed something a bit brighter.

Like this

Ever since my first glimpse of it, I've been determined to get my hands on some Happy Mochi Yum Yum  :)

I don't have any plans for it yet.  I bought one of each print so I could see the scale of the prints for myself, especially those two on the far right.  For some reason I expected them to be larger than they are.  

So, just incase you have been wondering about the scale of the Happy Mochi Yum Yum prints too, here are a couple photos to help you out :)

I hope you can read the tape measures well enough to get the idea anyway.  I'd make the photos bigger, but then they run over my side bar and just make a mess of the place ;)

Have a great weekend!

Butterflies

We recently went on a field trip to The Butterfly Place.

It was amazing!  So many beautiful butterflies, flying all around us :)

As I stood there enjoying these lovely creatures with my sons,

I was inspired to pick up one of my UFO's. (please excuse the bluriness of this photo - this was one of my favorite butterflies, but they didn't perch for more than a second, and so were very hard to get a picture of)

Another project that has been in the works for awhile - this one I am piecing by hand, and I plan to quilt it by hand as well.  I am packing my butterfly blocks up and bringing them on a quilt retreat this weekend - {!!!!!}  More about both the retreat and the quilt later...



Oh, and the Butterfly Place also had this fabulous fish pond {love those fish}:



Adding Toto to the list...

My Aunt bought these fabrics as part of a kit, but decided she wasn't going to make the quilt, so she gave it to me.  Wasn't that sweet?  Nothing has been cut so technically this isn't one of my UFO's yet, but Mr. 7 has already claimed it, so I'll probably start working on it soon.  He likes the Toto fabric that is for the backing. He likes anything with dogs actually  :)

how to make laundry fun OR a desperation for spring flowers and warm sunshine

Hello!
My sewing machine has been pretty quiet this week, but the washer has been humming away!  These are just some of the fabrics I've been prewashing to use in another of my UFO's.

This quilt is the second I ever started, and this is as far as I got with it. There will be 23 varieties of flowers when it is done.

Here in New Hampshire, we had a tease of beautiful spring-like weather, but now we are back to this:

I'm longing for spring's flowers, but my gardens are under snowbanks, so I'm appliqueing some fabric ones until the real deal starts popping up in the backyard :)

I love my garden flowers, they bring much needed color and happiness to my days.
These are some of my favorites:

Dandelions
Daffodils
Lilacs
pink Lady's Slippers
Violets
Chinese Lanterns
Mayflowers
Johnny-Jump-Ups
Poppies
Jonquils
pink Bee Balm
Lupin
Black Eyed Susan
Snapdragons
Queen Anne's Lace
mums
Impatients
Buttercups

And you?  What are your favorite flowers?
I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced today.  If you haven't been over there, you really should stop by.  If you are new to my blog, welcome, and I hope you enjoyed your visit :) 
Happy Stitches everybody!

time for a coffee break

Well, I finished my mug rug :)

I did all the quilting with my walking foot; along the lines to accent the fake patchwork, and around the hearts with white thread.  Then I used red and blue thread to quilt X's over the center hearts.

I bound it with the same blue I made the hearts with.  Remember the silver sparkles on the right side of that fabric?  Well, you can't see them on the wrong side (showing), but they still catch the sun in bright light, giving it an unexpected sparkle.  I love it :)
I think I'm going to use the wrong side of the sparkly blue for Mr. 5's penguin quilt, he will love the surprise sparkle when he notices it.

Putting my mug rug to good use:

hmmm, it needs something...

Yes, much better with a cherry square.  :)
Oh, and do you remember my Christmas wallhanging?  Well, it looks like this now:

I decided that I want to be spending my time on projects that are more important to me, so I cut the panel up into 2.5" squares to be used in this scrap quilt. 
This was a UFO on my list, so now I am down to 13.  I hesitated to do this to the panel, because it kind of felt like cheating on my UFO goal, but since I'm using the fabric for something else and not just putting it back in the closet, I decided to go ahead and cut it.  Anyway, my personal goal, my rules, right?  :)

Happy Saturday!

With Seam Ripper Close At Hand...

Everything I sew lately needs to be ripped out.  Really. I can't help but laugh at myself.
Here is my latest project in need of a fresh start:

This is a panel I bought to learn hand quilting on.  Obviously that didn't happen :)  Now I'm just trying to get it done so I can take it off my UFO list. 

You can't see it, but a bit farther down on the fabric is the Nativity scene, some Wise Men and Shepards; all the usual Christmas crowd  :)   Oh, and the dove fabric is the backing.

I don't like the white thread I used above, there is just too much contrast between it and the darker colors.  I'm not sure what to use in its place, maybe gold or invisible?

The pattern has me stumped, too.  I tried to outline the important figures, and just meander all over the rest, but I don't like how it turned out.  I tried this mainly because it just seemed wrong to stitch through the Baby Jesus  :)

Then again, maybe I'll just sandwhich this with fusible fleece and forget quilting it altogether.

Well, I won't be doing any more sewing until I finish all my ripping ( I still have my BOM to rip out).  Tomorrow I'll be sitting by a sunny window with a cup of coffee and a seam ripper...

Happy Quilting to you, and may your seam ripper gather dust!

a decision reached

Hello

I don't have any new pictures to share, just an update from last week's WIP Wednesday post.

I'll be spending alot of quality time with my seam ripper.  Once the blocks are apart again and I know what I have to work with, I'll decide where to go from there.  Pot holders aren't out of the question if it gets real ugly ;)     (just kidding, this is going to be a finished quilt if it kills me)

Thanks to everyone who offered their 2 cents last week :)
Happy Stitching 

1 down, 14 left to go!

I finished my first UFO from my List! Yippie!

Listen, can you hear it?  It's saying "take me shopping, fill me with fabric"   :)

Mini Tote

I'm working on a mini tote right now, it's on my list of UFO's to finish this year.  I haven't completed it yet, but here are some 'in progress' photos:
(I went a little photo crazy, if you get bored feel free to scroll to the end, the last photo is my favorite)

Here it is basted for quilting.  I'm rather proud of this, since it is my first attempt at basting with thread and needle. 

Can you see the stitches better in this one?
I didn't have enough of any one print for the lining, so I joined two together.

Here is the quilting:

Inside out, stitching the sides together:

And this is how it looks now, waiting for binding and handles:

And lastly, my favorite photo, the bag being modeled by my 10 year old son:

Not So Happy Quilt Top

This is the last block for my BOM quilt.  And here are the blocks together with sashing and cornerstones:

I put this together a couple weeks ago, but everything lined up so poorly, I just set it aside.  I need to decide what to do with it.  The bottom row is 1/2" short on both sides, and there are a couple seam allowances that are too small. 

The blocks were supposed to be 12 1/2" unfinished.  The two with curved seams I had to trim down, so they were 12 1/4", but I didn't think it would be a problem.  Somehow, when I checked before sewing I missed that there were one or two larger than 12 1/2".  I tried to compensate for minor differances when joining to the sashing, but it didn't work.

I'm thinking it needs to be ripped out, but I really, really don't want to do that much ripping.  But if it needs to be done...

Alternatively, maybe I could try to stitch the scant seams deeper, drown any in question with Fray-Check, trim the outer sashing strips even with the bottom row, add the remaining borders, and hope the sweet lady I'm giving this to forgets to wear her glasses every time she looks at it?

Penguins on my mind

I'm still undecided about the pattern for my son's penguin quilt, but I found backing fabric.   Penguins on flannel for $2.99/yard - it was a happy find  :)

Happy Tuesday!

Penguins - What to do with them?

I bought a kit to turn this panel into two wallhangings for my five year old.  They just needed backing and binding, nice and easy.  When I ordered it, I made sure he knew wallhangings hang on walls.  He said he understood, and even started to pick out where they would go. 

But when I was getting ready to cut the sections apart, he was talking about 'cuddleing' his penguin quilts.  I explained the whole wallhanging thing again, but now he was determind, this was going on his bed to cuddle with, not on the wall (sometime while I was unawares, putting a hanging sleeve on the back of penguins was apparently made criminal).  Oh, and now the panel has to stay as one piece, because apparently the penguins on the right are related to the penguins on the left, and they would miss each other if I cut them apart.  (I think he has named each penguin) 

I don't know why I was surprised by this.    :)

So, now I've got no plan, and a five year old who is impatient for his penguin quilt.  I do want this to be twin size, because he already has enough smaller quilts and blankets.

Ok, I know there are more high-tech ways of designing quilts (I even own EQ5) but I still prefer pencil and paper.  Plus I still love to color with crayons  :)

My first Idea was to try log cabin blocks, like the drawing on the left, in blues.  I would put the panel in the upper third of the quilt, with blocks above and below, and on the sides to make it wide enough.  But, I was afraid a monochromatic blue quilt in this pattern might be too boring (although, I'm liking it better now that I've drawn it), especially since I don't want to add borders of a focal print.
Then I thought maybe wonky log cabins?  Or stacked coins like the drawing on the right? 

What do you think?  Is there something else you would suggest?  I also like the looks of the cover quilt of this book, but I've never done anything like it.  Also, would it work in monochromatic blue? 

Should I add some yellow and orange?

These are the fabrics I have to work with so far.  I'm hoping to add more bright blues, and geometrics for interest. 

These are the guide lines I've decided on so far:

-The pattern needs to be quick and easy

-No borders of a focal fabric

-not a lot of white (around here, quilts are used to build bunkers for Revolutionary War reinactments or the occaisional Mongoul invaison)

-predominantly blue

-the panel needs to be kept as one piece (it is roughly 24"xWOF)

Any ideas, comments, links to inspirational photos, would be appreciated.

Thank you so much!

a picture or two

I finished this three or four days ago, but haven't had a chance to show it to you until now. 

I've been using those short pins on the right for ages, but The Quilting Fairy used the long pins on the left when I asked for some help.  I've been using them ever since, because I can leave them in until the needle is right next to them, and still pull them out from under the presser foot.

I followed advice, and used a ton of pins(18ish).  By the time I was ready to sew them, my Grandmother's Fans had a bite an anglerfish would be pround of! :)

Happy Monday!

more blocks...

from the same Block of the Month Quilt.

I'm working on this quilt in two colorways.  The Thimbleberries version is going to be a gift, I don't know what I will do with the lilac version. 

Thank you everyone who left a comment, I was so excited to read your advice  :)

Hopefully, I will finish my tote bag and get a picture up here this weekend.  I have been making progress, but nothing photo worthy  :)