First Finish

This is the first quilt finished this year, from a pattern called Hand Picked Apples by The Quilted Cardinal. I searched high and low for apple fabric for the background, and when I couldn't locate any I chose sailboat fabric instead and named it Saturday On The Bay. The center squares in the star blocks were also supposed to be the same as the background fabric, but I thought it would be a great place to add a little machine embroidery.

I'm new at machine embroidery and have done just a few quilt labels. It took so much longer than I anticipated to get these 21 embroideries done, but it was worth the effort in the end.

I bought a couple yards of that navy blue fabric with the stars for another quilt that I made last year. When I used it all up, I was so relieved I could still get more. I worry about using up the last bit of a favorite piece of fabric, because I know I may not be able to find it again. Which is silly, but that's the way it is. In any case, I've certainly gotten alot of mileage out of it, and there's a little bit of it in my Quilt for an Hour project too.

Credit where credit is due:
Saturday on the Bay (Hand Picked Apples) quilt design by Koleen Painchaud, The Quilted Cardinal

Blogger Basics

Blogging is a new endeavor for me, so I'm trying to spend a few minutes each day learning one new thing about editing. Creating a blog is certainly easy enough, but fine tuning it will require more time.

Yesterday I decided I'd like to add a counter to my blog, and Mary was kind enough to share with me how to do this. My elder son came up for supper this evening and actually helped me implement it. He learned html in an after school program in the sixth grade, and he's been a whiz with computers ever since. Besides helping me set up the counter, he also showed me how to fix a few little things in the coding that were bugging me. I can see that learning some basic html might also be beneficial.

My son liked the Quilt for an Hour project, so it will be his when I finish it. I really wanted to make him a flannel quilt last month but just couldn't manage it. I did finish a flannel quilt for my younger son for Christmas to use in the dorm. I had worked with flannel once before and swore I'd never do it again. Flannel seems to stretch when you sew it, but I liked these fabrics so much (especially considering where we live) that I had to give it another try. A little coaxing with a seam ripper to push it along over the feed dogs was all it took. My good friend Ann quilted it using a pantograph with moose, bears, and trees. I just loved the result and am now anxious to try another flannel quilt.

Credit where credit is due:
Cabin in the Woods quilt design by Kevin Daniels

First Quilt

I've been working right along on my Quilt for an Hour project. All the Crossroads to Jericho blocks are done, and 10 of the required 31 Good Luck blocks are finished as well.

The Quilt for an Hour concept is such a great idea. It usually takes me longer than one hour to accomplish the daily objective; but even if I stretch it over a couple of hours, it's still attainable and it keeps me focused.

One of the fabrics in the nine patch blocks is a tiny navy and white calico that I used in my very first quilt, an Eleanor Burns Quilt in a Day quilt, the Lover's Knot. You can see I liked red, white, and blue back then too.

I still have some large pieces of this little calico in my stash, after 15 years! In fact, I still have some of all the fabrics from the Lover's Knot left, except the red. It's time to use it up, so I guess I'll put it on the back of the quilt.

First Post

Although I love reading them, I really didn't intend to start a blog and know nothing about doing it. I was trying to figure out a way to search Blogger for some machine embroidery blogs. Never did figure out how to do that, but here we are instead, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.

I've been quilting for 15 years or so. I am a traditional quilter with a particular interest in scrap quilting, but I also love to try out new ideas and techniques. I bought a Bernina 200E just over a year ago, so I'm also learning about machine quilting and machine embroidery. It is my goal to obtain a long arm machine one day.

I am much better at starting new projects than I am at completing them, so I'm making a concerted effort again this year to getting more of them finished. Last year I finished 12 quilts, half of which were UFOs. I did make a list of all my UFOs one day; and you can trust me when I say there are a lot of them. That's all I have to say on the subject!

Right now I am working on one of JudyLaquidara's Quilt for an Hour projects from April 2007. It's a combination of two blocks, Good Luck and Crossroads to Jericho. I kept Judy's original color scheme of red, white and blue for my own quilt as well.

I've been itching to start a new quilt since Christmas, and I thought this would be a quick project to bust a little stash and not turn into a UFO!