Christmas Week

Okay, the weatherman was right after all about the snow totals for Saturday's storm. It snowed here all day Saturday, and we wound up with about 9 inches. 

 

I took advantage of a shut-in day to finish the quilting on the Ribbon Candy quilt. Haven't had a chance to trim it up yet, and I surely will not have time to do the binding this week because I still have bowl cozies to finish up before Christmas. But I would love to get this done the week after Christmas and get one more finish in before the end of the year.

I also have some baking I'd like to do. Sunday we drove down to the southern part of the state to drop off some Christmas gifts to my granddaughter's mother's house. My (ex)daughter-in-law loves the stuff called Christmas Crack, which is basically like one of those Chex mixes, with the cereals, pretzel sticks, M&Ms, plus whatever else you want to add, all coated in melted white chocolate. It's pretty addictive once you start eating it. If I can get it made this week, I'll send a tin full down to her when my granddaughter comes for family Christmas on Monday. 

Day 18 of the Advent Calendar was a leatherette cutout of a chick that you stitch together to make a little coin purse. Very cute. The company mascot is a yellow chick, not a duck--I had that wrong. 

Day 19 was a very nice coffee cup with some good weight to it. I have a collection of probably 25 quilt related coffee mugs. Don't ask me why I started collecting them, I just did; so this one will go into the collection. 

Today is Day 20, and there was a rainbow pack of charm squares in the box. There is a project coming up that uses these squares, and I can't wait to see what it is!

December Finish

The weatherman predicted 6-10" of snow for us today, beginning about 10:00 this morning. It finally started snowing at 8:30 this evening. 6-10" ? I don't think so. 

I finished Wiggle Time Oceana yesterday and gave it a good washing so it would be soft and cuddly. 

 

The quilting looks like swirling water to me, and I love it. The Riptide pantograph was perfect. 

I also finished the four small bowl cozies for my kids. The base of these is about 5 inches. I have cut out four of the larger size and will be working on those over the next week.
 

Ribbon Candy, a pattern by Doug Leko of Antler Quilt Designs, is the next one being moved into my five-project quilt rotation. And I'm quilting it with a pantograph called Ribbon Candy, haha. I finished this top earlier this year, but I don't think I ever blogged about it. 

These were all scraps left over from my Holiday Solstice quilt that I made in 2020. I used up a bunch of different white-on-white scraps for the background too. I used the wrong side of quite a few of them to make the print less noticeable.

 

This Debbie Mumm print is what I'm using for the backing. 

The last several days of the Advent Calendar have consisted of a bunch of interesting notions--a threaded needle case, which I've never seen before; a little redwork kit, which will be given to my daughter-in-law; a spool of beeswax, which I will definitely use....

..... a zippered hard case, very nice; fingernail art stickers, which my granddaughter will love....

.... and this thread cutter that uses an old rotary cutter blade, which I've also never seen before. 

Fun, fun, fun!

Bowl Cozy Day

Brrrrr, it was a very cold 16 degrees when I got up this morning, but still no snow in the forecast. Which isn't a bad thing. 

The last several days of the Advent Calendar gifties have consisted of a good mix of notions and project ideas. Along with the Parking sign, there was a small embroidery project. Neither one is really my thing, but my daugher-in-law suggested that a little duck in a charm for a necklace for my granddaughter would probably be well received. A great idea, and I'll wait til next year to make that up. the charm is tiny, about an inch in diameter. 

There was a button jar, to include a little yellow duck button (the company mascot) with directions to make a pincushion top for the jar. Using one of the unused squares from the charm pack from Day 3. 

The next day featured some blue fabric and a pattern for this snowflake pillow, using the buttons in the button jar. 

Yesterday's giftie was a needle threader and needles. Haha, they should have got someone to make a needle threader with a duck. 

Today's giftie is a stashbuilding yard of white on white fabric and a couple spools of cotton thread. 

Personally speaking, I may not use everything in the Missouri Star Advent Calendar box, but whoever put this together put a lot of thought into choosing useful items and fun projects. I have already decided to do this again next year. 

I haven't made quite as much progress as I had hoped on my current projects, but I am moving forward. Wiggle Time Oceana is on the frame, and I've made several passes. The Riptide pantograph seemed like a good choice for a quilt that reminds me of ocean waves and uses some ocean-themed fabrics. 

 

The Cozy Cup mini top plus one mug rug is complete. I still have to add the side borders to the other two mug rugs. 

Whoever designed this quilt did an odd thing with the sashing between the rows. The directions had you add a narrow 1/2" strip to the top and bottom of each cup and snowflake. After I had the top together, I realized it would have been easier, faster and less wasteful to omit the strips on the top and bottom of the cups and just use a wider piece for the sashing. No idea what they were thinking. This would make a great giftie for someone, so it's likely I'll make another; and I'll make the adjustment for the sashing. 

Before I can get these items quilted up, I need to finish the quilt on the frame and get some bowl cozies made. 

Anything that is not quilting is what I call utility sewing, and mostly I don't like to do it. Only occasionally will I make household items like curtains, a tote bag, or anything like that. I did, however, offer to make 4 small and 4 large bowl cozies for my kids, to use up a LOT of yardage of vegetable fabric I acquired at a very cheap price. Why so much? Because I thought I might use it for adult cover ups (bibs), only my quilt chapter never worked on that again as a group project.

So naturally I'm going to use every shortcut I can come up with to make this kind of sewing as painless as possible, so I bought precut bowl cozy batting from Gypsy Quilter. Turns out Creative Grids got together with Gypsy Quilter and made a set of 2 bowl cozy templates which are the same size as Gypsy Quilters batting, which will make it faster to cut out the fabric and more batting. Brilliant!

I made a set of two bowl cozies long enough ago that I forgot some of the little improvements I made to the method, which I remembered after I had most of the first one together last night. 

As I was getting ready to topstitch the outside of it, I realized I had no idea whether my thread was all cotton or a cotton/poly blend, which could be flammable in the microwave. I still have some of the Coats & Clark blends that I am using up, so it very well could have been one of those. So I wound up taking it all back apart, ripping the thread out of the one half, and today I'll put it all back together with the proper thread. I can also include some of those method improvements too.

One side of my bowl cozies is yellow onions, and the other side is red bell peppers. Once I get the first one together, I figure I can put three more together assembly line fashion, to limit how many times I have to change the thread colors. 

Advent Calendar Days 4 and 5

Not much got done in the sewing room yesterday, or today either for that matter. I prefer a block of time to assemble a quilt back and get it loaded, and yesterday was not the day. Instead I contented myself working on the cup handles for my Cozy Cup mini. More about that in a minute.

Day 4's giftie was a two-ring binder with three dividers and some plastic sleeves for pattern storage. This pattern for a Disapparing Hourglass quilt was included, which begs the question, is there a layer cake somewhere else in the box? I hope!
 

For Day 5, there was a container of Quilting and Crafting Spray, which is like Best Press. Who can't use that? I can. And also some Iron Cleaner. Most people would probably use this, but maybe not me, I'll have to try it. Faultless Iron Cleaner works fine; but it got to be too expensive, and it's messy to use. Instead, I've been using Bounce fabric softener sheets They work splendidly, and there's no mess. If I get fusible on my iron, I run my iron over a Bounce sheet, placed on a paper towel, until it's clean, then iron onto a clean paper towel. I can use one Bounce sheet numerous times, which makes it cost effective.

Yesterday I put together the handles for all six cups in the mini quilt and two mug rugs, but only got one attached to a cup. 

There are tons of blocks nowadays that use the folded corner technique, from snowball blocks to picture blocks like Elizabeth Hartman's, where you place a square on the corner of one of your pieces, draw a diagonal line, sew on the line, and then trim the excess. My little cup blocks use this method as well. 

Even with the drawn line, my accuracy is still hit or miss. And truthfully, I don't want or need any more bonus triangles. And to me, this method is wasteful and more time consuming. And I hate drawing those lines. 

Enter the Folded Corners ruler from Doug Leko of Antler Quilt Design. Wish somebody had invented this 30 years ago. It's available in two sizes, but the mini seems to meet most of my needs.

In the photo above, I was supposed to cut a white one-inch square. So I placed my ruler on the fabric with the top edge of the ruler aligned with the top of my fabric, and the 1" line on the ruler aligned with the right edge of the fabric, and cut off that triangle. 

Next, I cut one 2" white square, cut in half diagonally. Oversizing it gives me the ability to square it up after I sew it on. It also gives me a little more fabric to start sewing on so the edge of my main piece doesn't get chewed up in the sewing machine. And I have another white triangle to use for another corner. Brilliant! Less waste and less time!

Doug Leko founded his business when he was just 14 years old. He's had designs published in several quilt magazines; written a number of booklets and patterns; and he must have gotten on the teaching circuit in his teens. He came to Maine Quilt for a presentation several years ago, and he might have been about 18.

And he came up with this fabulous ruler! A remarkable young man.

A Top and Another New Project

I didn't expect for it to take all afternoon and most of the evening to get the Wiggle Time top together, but it's done. It measures 60" x 74", which will be just right. This evening I found a piece of flannel in my stash to go on the back, and tomorrow I'll try to get this loaded on the longarm sometime in between running errands.  

This pattern was fun, fast and easy to make; and I'll be using it again, probably more than once. The other thing I really liked about it is that there are no seams to match except for the block seams when you're joining the rows--four in each row. Easy peasy!

Advent Calendar Day 3 - today's giftie was a pattern for a mini quilt and a half yard of fabric. Surprise, it's the project directions for the charm pack I opened yesterday, and the red is for the binding for the mini quilt and three mug rugs.  

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to get started on this project right away. Except for the handles, the six cups are made, four for the quilt plus two mug rugs.

I like these colors a lot. It's a departure from the typical Christmas reds and greens and seems to be the fashion more and more these days. And they're not really Christmas-y, so I could use the quilt and mug rugs all winter. 

The charm pack, like most precuts, had pinked edges; and you know what a mess it makes when you take them apart. I have a new tool for cleaning up the mess! It's a desktop mini vacuum made by Odistar. I LOVE this thing! The picture is a little blurry, but it's a handheld device with brushes underneath and some suction. It is perfect for vacuuming up all those tiny bits on the cutting table that otherwise might wind up all over the floor. You can also use it to vacuum up the dust on your keyboard; and it occurred to me it will be perfect to vacuum up all the dust that comes out of a new puzzle box. I'm sure I'll think of some other uses.

This is what the underside looks like. It comes apart easily to empty the contents of the vacuum and to clean the filters.

These things come in seven different colors; and there are two models, one that uses batteries and one that comes with a USB charger. I got the ones with the charger for just $12.98. I thought these would make great stocking stuffers, so I bought four of them. 

I checked Amazon today, and they've  gone up in price by a couple of bucks since I bought mine. I've noticed that the prices on Amazon fluctuate all the time for the same item; so if you're interested, I'd keep checking back to see if the price comes back down. 

Wiggle Time Oceana

It snow showered here again the other day, so I caved and put a more wintry photo in the header. Not looking forward to winter particularly because I am cold All. The. Time. But I hate the heat more, so I'll live with it.

Advent calendar Day 1 - how fun it is to start opening little quilt gifties! Day 1 was this glass ornament representing one of the Missouri Star Quilt Co buildings. 

Day 2, which was today, is a Moda charm pack with a Christmas theme, but on the label it says "custom project charm pack". It is not a complete collection by Bonnie and Camille; rather there are fewer prints with lots of duplicates. I think there's a project sheet in one of the other packages for this charm pack. 

I've been very good lately at rotating through the same five or six projects without going off into left field somewhere. That's discipline. For me. The temperature quilt is one of those, and the month of November has been completed and sewn to the other three months. November turned out to be an interesting looking month. 

 

Sashed Tumblers was another one of those projects, and that one is finished now. I was going to load my Ribbon Candy top next, but I'm going to wait now until I finish Wiggle Time. The Construction Zone quilt is going to a little boy in the family, and it occurred to me that I should probably make up a quilt for his older sister. It takes time, however, for an idea to percolate; and at this late date, it had to be something fast. Finally I remembered Cynthia Brunz's Wiggle Time quilt, and that popped into the rotation. 

Cynthia's design is set 4 blocks x 5 for a quilt that finishes to 48" x 54". I needed for mine to be larger because the sister is 12, so I bought some extra fabric to set the blocks 5 x 7 for a quilt that will finish to 60" x 74". I think that will be just about right. 

The collection is Oceana by QT Fabrics, an ocean themed bunch of fabrics with turtles, seashells, seahorses, seaweed, and some beautiful tone on tones. I'm only using 7 of the fabrics in the collection, so there is plenty left for a couple more projects. 

The sister couldn't decide if aqua or cobalt blue was her favorite color. I think I've covered all the bases with this coloration, lol. 

I hope to finish the last two rows I need tonight; then maybe tomorrow I can hunt up some background fabric and get it loaded on the longarm. 

After that I'll get the Ribbon Candy quilt top loaded. And I'll keep working on the parts for the other five quilts in my rotation--the temperature quilt, my Y2K quilt, a couple of Bonnie Hunter projects, and the Shattered Angles quilt. I may have to slip in some bowl cozies for the kids for Christmas. These were promised last summer, and I still haven't got to them.