A Very Crafty Month

My yard still looks exactly the same as it did in the photo from my last post, only there's more snow. A LOT more snow. We had a little January thaw in the middle of the month, and most of the snow on the ground melted. Sunday's nor'easter dumped 14 inches in my town, and it's been so cold there's no hope of melting. We're still waking up to mornings near or below zero this week with daytime highs in the teens. Perfect sewing weather!

The second little Courthouse Steps mini got finished earlier this month. The fabrics are mostly the same as the first one, except where I ran out of the original fabric or changed my mind. I hang my minis down my hallway wall with the Command strips, which work perfectly, and this one has been hung.

I finished quilting the big Courthouse Steps yesterday afternoon. Once I settled down to work on it, I was surprised how fast the blocks went--they're 14 inches finished. The quilt will finish at 56 x 70 inches, which is a fine size for a lap quilt. This one will be donated to Maine Veterans Home after I get the binding on. 

I used a pantograph called Two Fold Feathers by Lorien Quilting. I love this design because it's easy and not too dense, and because I love feathers. The large scale of the pantograph worked well with the big blocks, I thought. 
 

With the last of this hunting print stripped into the middle of the backing, I had just enough green to finish it off. More fabric out of the stash, my quilt chapter's stash, that is. 

It would be nice to get another finish for the month of January; but with only two days left in the month, I doubt that will happen.  

At our second chapter meeting this month, we did a square in a square workshop for charity. The blocks are set 7 x 7 and finish at 7", so the quilt should finish at close to 50" square. 

These block were pretty fast to make, and I especially liked them because the on point squares are floating; that is, after the seam allowance is taken, the point of the square is back from the seam line. That means nothing to match when you sew them together. 

There are plenty of patterns out there for square in a square blocks and variations, so I could see another one of these in my future. 

 We cut 5" squares for the centers of these blocks, but you could substitute a pieced square if you wanted. Coincidentally, Studio 180 just came out with a brand new ruler for nine patch blocks in nine sizes or something, so for example you could put a nine patch block in the center. Or you could change the dimensions of the outer triangles so you didn't have to deal with crazy math. 

The Tango top has been finished for a little while and will be the next quilt to go on the frame. This was from a workshop I took with Diane Harris, the Stash Bandit, last summer at Maine Quilts. It was a fun class, but I changed up my methods a bit when I got home. The fabrics are all from my Lori Holt collection. Because like 30s repros, they just all go together, lol. 

This is another pattern I've seen around the web in different sizes and variations. SewCanShe has one called Fancy That, 1 and 2, I think. 

The block size was pretty big, and I took all my cutaways from the corners of the big blocks, turned them into half square triangle blocks and sewed them together this way, which will turn into a nice sized baby quilt. 

I'm hoping I can find a backing fabric in the stash big enough to quilt both of these tops at the same time.

I have large scrap bins with lids in every color squirreled away in another part of the sewing room. The organization of said scraps occurred several years ago, here, one of the most sensible things I ever did. Additionally I had a big drawer full of scraps, also sorted by color, that I could dive into for something quick or throw in a few handfuls left over from some other project. It was handy to have that drawer full so accessible right in the sewing room. When it got too full, I'd move some scraps into the larger bins. 

Last month I guess, the triangles got out of control; so I moved all the scraps out of the drawer and replaced them with these containers of triangles. These are baby wipe containers I saved from when my granddaughter was still in diapers, because what good quilter doesn't save all kinds of containers? 12 of these containers fit perfectly in the drawer, all sorted by color. Brilliant.   

Then I had nowhere to throw a few scraps before I either sorted them into the big bins or used them. So I cleared everything off my countertop, and I am making these small bins in rainbow colors for a quick toss of a handful of scraps. 

I am loving these containers. The pattern is the medium fold up basket from SewCanShe, and they finish at about 5-3/4 x 7 inches, plenty big enough for a few good handfuls of scraps. After the sewing is done, the flaps allow you to fold it up into a basket. 

These fold up baskets are available in three sizes. The directions are free on the website, but you have to contend with ads; so the patterns are also offered as pdf files for $5. 

You need two fat quarters to make the medium size basket, so that's another half yard out of the stash! 

The best part about these containers is that they're easy to sew, there's no hardware to attach, and they unfold to store flat. This is what it looks like unfolded. 

I have three made so far and trying to get two more made this week. 

Two more ornaments were finished this month. This one is called Bethlehem Star....

... and this one is called Reflection and was given to a friend for Christmas. 

I finished this little cross stitch last week too. This design hung in the bathroom in my friend's quilt studio for years. When she passed away, it was given to our other friend Sherry. 

I hunted in vain for the pattern online and never found it, so I borrowed it from Sherry and duplicated it. At long last it is finished. The cost of having it framed like Koleen's original is stupid, so I want to make it into a small quilt. I haven't a clue how to do that right now, so I'm trying to find out something about that online. Blue Pip Designs has a little tutorial on how she finishes her small cross stitch pieces, so there's a starting point. 

Somewhere in there, a dishcloth got finished this month too, but I didn't take a snap of it. 

More fun next week! 

**Linking to Alycia's  Finished (or not!) Friday

 

 
 

January

Here's hoping everyone had enjoyable holidays, and Happy New Year to all. My granddaughter was sick on Christmas Day, so we didn't get to see her until after New Year's. With blended families to contend with, catching up with everyone has become difficult, but we try to make it work. 

We've had plenty of winter weather this past month, but mostly it's been bitter cold. Cold enough in fact to break some records around the state for the month of December. We had about three inches of snow last night, on top of what's already on the ground, which isn't vey much; and we're expecting another three inches tonight, followed by sleet and freezing rain in the morning. Delightful. We'll miss the second quilt chapter meeting in as many months. 

This little mini Courthouse Steps, which measures 14 x 17, was my last finish for 2025, making a total of 9 finishes for the year. Not my best year, but a nice balance of large and small, scrappy quilts and planned projects, and new and old projects. 

I have a friend who has been more than generous with her scraps, so this little quilt is for her. I had hoped to have it to her before Christmas, but I couldn't get it finished in time. Since our meeting tomorrow will likely be cancelled, it'll have to wait until mid January. 

The little blocks finish at 3", so it's paper pieced using mostly civil war reproduction fabrics. 

  
 

There were a few tiny quilt blocks and a strip set that was probably supposed to get cut apart in one of the scrap buckets I got from my friend. I didn't have a project in mind for them but didn't want to throw them out, so they went into the backing. 

My husband was quite taken with this little quilt and wasn't too happy to hear that I was giving it away, so I started a second one. Most of the fabrics are the same as the first, but I did have to switch some out because I ran out of some of the fabrics. He particularly liked the inner and outer border fabrics, and luckily I have enough of those to finish it the same way. 

These little blocks are fun to make, and they don't take hours to sew. I think there may be a few more of these in my future.  

After foundation paper piecing for 30+ years, I was pretty sure I knew everything there was to know about the subject; but nope, someone is always coming up with something new. This was something I just learned, but I forget where I saw it. 

I usually prefold the lines on my paper pattern to make it easier to trim seams after stitching. Instead of prefolding, someone thought to use one of those rotary cutter blades with the perforated edge to go over the lines in the paper beforehand. I was amazed how well this worked. Not only was it faster than folding by hand, but it saved some wear and tear on my fingernails.

A very light touch is required so the pattern doesn't fall apart before you finish stitching. Perforation worked well on paper you normally use for printing, but not as well on a lighter weight paper like Carol Doak's foundation paper. Still, a dandy tip indeed. 

And here is an ornament called Pirouette that I made a few weeks ago. I love it, but I say that about most of them, lol. 
 

December

The last two months have gone by in a flash with no notable occurences, except for Thanksgiving. One of my sons and his family stayed for a few days, and we had a lovely holiday. We found time to play some cribbage, which I haven't played in years; and now hubby and I try to play every day at tea time. 

I started this Courthouse Steps a month or more ago; but I haven't been doing a whole lot of quilting lately, so it is still on the design wall. This is mostly fabric that is part of my quilt chapter's stash, that no one else wants to work with, so I'm (still) trying to use it up. This is a masculine quilt and is perfect for using up most of the man-themed fabrics. 

 

I bought a secondhand Handiquilter Avante long arm just about a year ago that came with a ProStitcher tablet for computerized quilting. I have spent the last year mostly in the dark about the operation of the tablet, frustrated by endless thread breaks, and lack of progress, until I was ready to just heave it out the back door. 

A totally unsatisfactory situation. Two days ago, I sewed some ugly fabric together into a top and decided to make another attempt. After spending quite some time playing with the top tension, I finally managed to stitch out two different patterns across the quilt top, with no thread breaks. An exciting breakthrough to be sure! I have much more to learn, but hopefully now I am on my way to actually quilting a quilt on this machine. 

I am keeping my Lizzie for now. That one is a much lighter weight machine than the Avante, and I love quilting on it, so I'm not giving it up. 

Truthfully, for the last month I have been way more absorbed in making quilted ornaments. I starting learning how to make these a couple of years ago from theornamentgirl.com. While the website has many patterns available for purchase by the general public, they also offer a couple of different subscription services, one with a complete kit each month, and one with a new original pattern each month, no kit. I am subscribed to both, so I have access to many gorgeous patterns and the supplies to make them. 

Ornament Girl also has a YouTube channel where you can learn to make some of the free patterns. 

The Nutcracker and the Santa Suit above are two of my favorites. The Santa Suit was December's ornament of the month. The gingerbread man one was just finished yesterday.

I made my daughter-in-law a Grumpy Cat ornament for Christmas. She has a 13-year old cat named Mo that she rescued from a shelter earlier this year, and he's very grumpy. He's bitten everyone in the house. He looks just like this too, lol.

This is another very pretty one called Daydream. 

Having a ball making these!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October

I don’t know why I feel compelled to write a post about a month that is long gone, chronological consistency I guess. But first, a couple of small finishes! This is a table runner for our coffee table at camp, taught to us by one of my quilt chapter members in a spring workshop. The pattern is Waverunner by GE Designs, purchased from Cut Loose Press; and perhaps Cut Loose Press owns the rights now, not sure. 

My table runner is 14 x 42, shorter than the original pattern to fit my table. I quilted it in a variegated blue thread with a panto called Riptide from Urban Elementz, a favorite of mine because it is not dense and is pretty easy to quilt. 

 

The backing is an odd piece I acquired from somewhere, scrap bag maybe. I had no idea what to do with this crazy print, but it works just fine for a backing, and I had exactly enough.  

This one is called Beach Buoys, an original pattern (I think) by Seams Sew Perfect in Madison. This was a kit I bought a long time ago on a shop hop, and it's a little wider and a little shorter than the Waverunner. I plan to hang this one at camp. Love that striped binding. 

 

I quilted this one with the same Riptide pantograph. You can see the quilting a little better in this photo. 

 

I usually hang my minis and small vertical wall hangings like this one with a sleeve on the back and the 3M Command strips, the kind that stick to the wall until you release them. They've worked extremely well and haven't damaged any walls; but we have cedar boards on the walls at camp, so Command strips weren't going to work. 

I remembered I had seen someone use folded triangles in the corners of a mini for hanging; so I added those, and now I can slide the lattice strip right up into those pockets. All I have to do now is tack a picture hanger to the wood strip, and that'll work just fine.  

The backing was pretty perfect for this one too! 

September was filled with many gorgeous days, and we had beautiful weather as well in the beginning of October. We shut down camp for the year about mid October, and my son and his family wanted to come up one more time before we closed. 

That weekend coincided with my new daughter-in-law's birthday, and I had J Marie Bakery in Augusta bake her this lovely cake for her birthday. DIL's favorite color is purple, and the pastel colors in the cake were just so pretty. 

 

I love how the flowers trail down the side of the cake. It was a surprisingly tall cake, lol. 

I came back up to camp the following week to start the fall cleaning. Every last thing gets cleaned at camp in the fall, and there's usually a mountain of laundry by the time I finish. 

We've had three small above ground garden beds every summer for the last three years that have produced very well. Even in the second week of October, the tomatoes, bell peppers, and green beans were winding down but still producing. The first day I was up there that week, I picked all the ripe cherries, a few green beans, and all the peppers worth picking. 

 

The cherries don't last long because we usually eat them right off the vine, but there were bunches of bell peppers. We had so many this year that we didn't know what to do with them. Then we decided to slice and saute them, and they're fabulous cooked that way. 

Last summer, we discovered you could saute radishes too, and we had bunches. I hate raw radishes, but I can eat 'em all day long sauteed. Who knew?

Unfortunately I waited until the next day to pick the rest of the swiss chard. Too late, the deer visited that night and ate all the leaves off my chard. 

The following night the deer came back and ate all the stalks too, lol. We haven't seen a deer here in five years; but not only were they up to camp, they seem to be all over the place. We caught six of them on the outdoor camera traipsing through our yard one night at home, and there were two young ones wandering around in the neighbor's yard one day. I heard they ate all the neighbor's hostas, but they didn't touch ours.  

They also ate every last leaf off the green bean plants...

 

... and they did the same thing to the peppers. Ate all the leaves off only one plant the first night...

... and came back the second night and polished off  the rest of the leaves. I guess they don't like tomatoes though because they never touched those, lol. 

By mid October, night time temps start dipping into the 30s, so we drained the pipes and buttoned everything up. 

We went back up to the lake a few weeks ago, just to check on things; and the water level has recovered a little, and the well has fully recovered. It will still be some time before the lake freezes over, so I'm hoping the water level will come up some more. It's supposed to be a snowy winter, which could mean a lot of spring runoff, which would be good. We'll see.  

September

I spent all the time I could at camp in September because I don't get hardly any time to do that during the summer because of quilt show. After Labor Day, most folks have closed up camp and gone home for the winter, so it is peaceful and quiet but still warm enough to be out on the water. 

We have been experiencing drought conditions all summer long, and it is not much improved this fall. Two summers ago, the water was up over this top step and over the dock and stayed that way through part of August. This summer, the water has receded quite a bit. 

Normally, all this sand is covered with water, with just a narrow beach up by that house.

 

The water level has been so low for so long that the grasses have gotten a foothold. 

Neither my granddaughter nor I go swimming, but we do like to go wading every summer, and I was amazed how far out we were able to walk. There is even another sandbar behind me in the picture. 

You can see we were a long ways out from the beach when I took this picture, and the water was still not even mid calf. I wondered if we could have walked all the way across the shallow end of the lake, but my granddaughter decided she wanted to go back. 

 

I bought a kayak for my (ex) daughter-in-law several years ago but had never kayaked myself. The kids brought their kayaks up, and we keep a couple under the deck during the summer, so I whipped up my courage and decided to give it a try. My kayak was a wider one, so no worries about flipping it over and not being able to extract myself from the kayak. 

We decided to paddle straight across the lake, which was a lot further than it looked; but we made it. I actually had a blast, and paddling wasn't as tiring as I thought it would be. I paddled a canoe years ago, and that was a lot more draining for me. 

I choose a project to work on at camp every summer. I leave my small sewing machine up there and have everything set up in one of the dormers so I can just walk up and start sewing. A few years ago it was the 21-Year Pineapple Project, which took a couple of summers to finish. This year, it was these Cherry Crunch string units, pattern from Bonnie Hunter. I need hundreds of these units, and I'm up to 330 so far. I figure I'm close enough to the end that I might work on it this winter at home. 

These are all string blocks of course, and I've even incorporated a few selvages here and there. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before to do that. I think it adds a lot of interest.  

 

My granddaughter is old enough now to use a sewing machine. She made a pillow at her friend's house, so she's used a machine before. Although she has not expressed any interest in making a quilt, I did ask her if she would make a Cherry Crunch unit that I could include in my quilt, and she was happy to oblige. 

She feels quite confident behind the machine and knows exactly what to do. Her block is the one with the little fox at the top in the photo above. 

 

I worked on some of these blocks too for Bonnie Hunter's Shattered pattern. These are so fun to make!

This unit is one of my favorites so far, which also incorporates part of a selvage. 

I also made this string block, which will eventually become diamonds for another neutral strings quilt. I have no immediate plans to work on it, just had to make one to get it out of my system, lol.