April Finish

I've spent several days drowning in paperwork, but I managed to finish my little potholder quilt a couple of days ago. 36 blocks that finish to about 5-3/4" for a quilt that is about 35" square. Very time consuming to hand sew all the blocks together, but well worth the effort. I've made a sleeve for it and stitched out a label, but it's finished! Yay! 

I'd love to make another one of these embroidered potholder quilts, specifically a Rose of Sharon quilt. I have the embroidery designs and the fabric, but I dare not start anything else just now! Some day. 

 

That's Progress

We are finally on the back end of last night's nor'easter, and I think we have a foot or so on the ground. Before last night, most of our snow had melted, which I was glad about. Now they are already talking about another potential nor'easter on Monday/Tuesday. It's really been a very strange winter here in Maine.

The weeks have really flown by, and progress has been made on several quilts. This one is Stella Blue, by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company, pieced by my dear good friend Koleen. I've mentioned Koleen once in a while on the blog. She passed away last July after a nine-year battle with cancer, and I miss her so much sometimes that my heart hurts. Koleen left most of the contents of her sewing room to our other dear good friend and me. As a consequence, I inherited this top, and I'll return it to Koleen's husband when it's finished. Up close, it's a gorgeous quilt.

Koleen pieced the middle of this top before she passed away, and she made the flying geese units but hadn't sewn them into border strips yet. I had a devil of a time adding them because her quarter inch seam was a less generous than mine, lol. But it's now ready for quilting.

Welcome Home, Baby was my February finish. I bought several packages of those Cake Mix triangle papers, which I think are very clever. I have become a big fan of creating half square triangle units with triangle papers. I usually print my own from the Inklingo software or Brenda Hennings' Triangulations software, but the cake mix recipes were something different and fun.

I also bought some Cupcake Mix papers, which make smaller quilts; and this quilt was made from a block design on the Cupcake Mix #1 package. I had two sets of the block panels, so I'll make another one of these at some point to use the other panel.

I have two pumpkins left to stitch out for my Halloween quilt, and then I can add the borders and toss it in the RTQ pile. Yay! I enjoy machine embroidered applique, but the prep takes time, so this has been a long slog.

And this is my One Block Wonder, an experiment from Maxine Rosenthal's book of the same name. The stack and whack quilt I finished in January was supposed to have been a workshop last year for my quilt chapter, but it was cancelled due to weather, so I made it on my own. The workshop did occur last month finally, but I wanted to try some other stack and whack project, so I dug this fabric (on the left side of the photo) out of the closet and decided to give it a try. Didn't think I'd like it, but actually, I love it.

I still need to shift a few blocks around along the left and right edges, but I've already started sewing vertical rows with the blocks in the middle of the quilt. Only half the hexagon block is sewn together, then vertical rows are sewn and joined so there are no inset seams.

All of these quilts were new projects, started within the last six months or so. When they're finished, I've GOT to get back to the UFO pile.

First Finishes for 2018

Last year was a dry year for me--only 6 finished quilts, my second worst year since I started keeping track in 2004. 2016 was my best year, with 18 finishes, and some of those were large quilts. I resist making New Year's resolutions; but I can do better, so I'm making two resolutions this
year--make time for more quilting and more blogging. I miss my blogging friends too. Housework will just have to suffer!

I finished Blue Palms for my son yesterday, so named because that was the name on the selvage. It is, of course, a Stack-n-Whack quilt from Bethany Reynolds' first book, Magic Stack-n-Whack Quilts. It's a big quilt--85" x 102"--so I was surprised that every hexagon block was very different.

My quilt group was supposed to have a Stack-n-Whack workshop last year; but something else came up for the instructor, so I went ahead on my own. She is slated to do the workshop for us next month, but I'm debating if I want to do another one right now. I'd like to try one of those One Block Wonder ones; so if I have something in the stash that will work, I might make a small one. Otherwise, I really don't need any more ufo's.

I had just enough of the original 6 yards to add a couple strips on the backing. Which was a really good plan, because I didn't have quite enough. I was never nuts about this fabric, but I was nuts about the colors, and I love how it looks in the hexagons.

And speaking of ufo's, I have over a hundred of them, in various stages of completion--sad, but true--so I go through my list once or twice a year and cull a few that I don't like anymore for one reason or another. This quilter's block case was one of them. I thought it was a great idea, but I wasn't happy with the way it was going together, so it landed in the ufo pile for several years.

I actually dug it out to disassemble it, but I got to looking at it and realized it was almost done, so I finished it. Now I'm glad I did. It's supposed to have a handle attached with grommets, and that may or may not get added. It unfolds completely flat, and it's large enough to hold a stack of 12-1/2" blocks. It's lined with flannel, so it's great to take to a workshop--the blocks stay where they belong in the case. I'd tell you the name of the pattern I used except I can't locate it right now. I think it was probably called Quilter's Block Case, but I couldn't locate it online either.

Update: the pattern is called Graham's Quilter's Block Case, GCC018 from the Graham Cracker Collection, grahamcrackercollection.com

The holidays were pretty crazy--a trip down to Maryland for my MIL's 90th birthday, gift making, Christmas parties, multiple trips to son #1's house, two blizzards, bitter cold weather, and a couple of weekends with Baby Girl. Baby Girl, who is 18 months old now, got a puff quilt for Christmas. We took her to a craft fair, and she liked this; so she and her brother got it for Christmas. No way would I make one of these, would rather pay someone else!

My MIL moved to an assisted living facility last summer. At 90, she is forgetful and sometimes is easily confused, so she needs something on the door of her room to remember where it is. After her Christmas wreath was to come down, I stitched out this hummingbird for her door. There's some foam core inside to give it some stiffness. Now hubby wants one too.

We exchanged ornaments at the Christmas party for Monday Embroidery Group, so I made a couple of these free standing lace ornament covers. They turned out very nicely, but I never got one made for myself. Next year.

I must have made 6 or 7 dishcloths for Christmas. The kids each got two diagonal dishcloths with Christmas colors, plus a couple for us. This one was made from Red Heart Scrubby yarn, a polyester yarn I think. There is practically no absorbency to this yarn, but it scrubs well enough. Red Heart offers this yarn in cotton too, but it's harder to find and there isn't a huge choice for colors. I ordered mine from Amazon.

This is what the yarn looks like, so it's very forgiving if you make mistakes. Like many other novelty yarns, it's also harder to see if you drop a stitch and harder to rip back the work. It's also too busy for a patterned stitch, so a plain round garter stitch pattern worked fine.

After I knit so many dishcloths, I decided I wanted to use up some of the leftovers, so I made one last diagonal dishcloth. Ugly but functional.....

... and it's better than this, lol.

Wanda at Exuberant Color made a lovely dishcloth from leftover bits. I shall aspire to make my leftovers more attractive in the future, lol.

The Halloween quilt is coming nicely but I shall wait until I have a bit more of the top sewn together before I post it again. Still have over a dozen appliques to stitch out. The quilt is not that big--good wallhanging size--but it's lots of work to prepare, stitch and square up these embroideries.

Plus there are several other things I'm working on right now. Hoping to get four finishes in February.

Embroidery Group Monday and Dishcloth Tuesday

Yesterday was Embroidery Group, and I worked on the candy corn blocks. They seem big, but the blocks finish to about 3" x 4", I think. All of the blocks are oversized right now, but they will all get squared up eventually.

I finished up 10 candy corns yesterday, 12 more to go. I still have pumpkins and candy blocks to make, plus a few odd ones, before I can start putting the quilt top together. It's time consuming to make these blocks because of all the prep work, like any applique block.

My kids have raided my dishcloth stash recently, so I figured it was time to make some more. I want to use up my odd bits of leftover dishcloth cotton from earlier projects. Last week I worked on using up the last bit of a mustard color in these two dishcloths. Still had several yards left over, so I cast on for another dishcloth, used up the rest, and now it will sit and wait until I get down to the last several yards of another little ball.

Coincidentally, Wanda over at Exuberant Color  has also been knitting dishcloths, and she shared with me her pattern for a diagonal knit dishcloth. I've been Christmas shopping this week and decided some of these dishcloths in Christmas colors would make nice little stocking stuffers. Finished this one this morning.

I cut my soap into bars this morning too. For the last year or two, Adult Ed at the local high school has offered some different classes on making soaps and lotions. I've wanted to try it, but there was always a conflict. This year I managed to get into the first class on lotions, lip balms, and deodorant. Teacher did all the work, we got to take samples home.

It was easy and fun; so I decided I'd try basic soap making next, but the class was already full. Hopefully I'll catch that in the spring.

In the meantime, last Friday was the class on making milk soap. Another fun class, but a little more involved. I used goat's milk for my soap, but others used cow's milk, and I read you can use coconut milk too. I was a bit nervous working with the lye, which is required for soap, but it was fine. It won't really burn a soft ball sized hole in your arm if you get a granule or two on yourself by accident. But you do have to exercise caution, the same as you would if you were handling bleach or ammonia. The other thing about lye is the fumes, but the way we added it to the frozen milk, the fumes dissipated quickly enough so it wasn't an issue.

The teacher provided us with a small plastic container with a lid to use as a mold, and also so we could take our soap home. We lined the container with a plastic bag, and that's why the end pieces look like they're cracked. They're not really, it was just the folds in the bag. The plastic bag made it easy to pop out of the mold. The soap is now the consistency of cheddar cheese, and it has to cure for a month before I can use it--to harden it up and also for the ph to come up to the correct level.

When I took the soap out of the mold, there were a few little stray bits around the edges that came off; so I scooped them all up in my hand and washed my hands with them. I was thrilled to see that my soap actually lathered up and behaved like, well, soap. It worked! I scented it with grapefruit essential oil, so it smells really good too. Can't wait to take a shower with it, lol.

Catching Up To Autumn

The lovely summer weather we had this year continued right through October and into the first week of November. Lots of places set record breaking warm temps in October. Then we had a cold snap. Temps were frigid, and we had one night that was 19 degrees. Wasn't ready for that.

We like to go leaf peeping every fall, and this year we visited the northernmost quadrant of the state--Madawaska, Presque Isle, Caribou and Holton.  This is probably the most spectacular fall foliage I've ever seen, but it was from last year, not this year. The end of September was supposed to be the peak viewing time for that zone; but, for whatever reason, they called that wrong because there just wasn't much color in the trees. There wasn't much else to see up in that area either except for lots of potato fields.

The weather was gorgeous though, and we did take a short hike into Baxter State Park to see one of the falls. My younger son likes to get right on the edge to take photos. Scares me half to death to watch him.

AND, there were 3 Marden's stores up that way, and we hit all of them. I bought a bunch of fat quarters in greens, oranges, purples, and yellows for a machine embroidered applique quilt with a Halloween theme that I've wanted to make for a long time. (No matter that Halloween has passed.) My LQS has an ongoing Monday morning embroidery group; so I signed up. That was the motivation I needed to get started, and now I'm rolling along.

The pattern features ghosts and witches hats, moon bats, cats and spiders, and candy corn and candy. It's been a fun quilt to work on so far, but I still have quite a bit of work to do. It measures something like 55 x 63 finished.

Machine Applique Monday

I have three sewing stations set up in my basement sewing room; and yes, it's nice to have the space to do this. I like being able to set up three different projects and not have to keep picking them up to work on something different. My primary station is where my Janome 6500 is--love that machine.

Another station has my Bernina 200E set up, and that is the machine I primarily use for machine embroidery and machine applique. In my humble opinion, Bernina has the perfect buttonhole stitch, and I use it exclusively for machine applique.

Last week I finished buttonhole stitching another project that will be a Christmas gift so can't speak of it. The newest one is a small Lori Smith quilt with 6 applique blocks. Although I can needle turn applique pretty well, I prefer the machine work because it's faster. Besides, if it's good enough for Pat Holly and Sue Nichols (and they're award winners), it's good enough for me.

Anyway, I've just got started on this, so I'll be a while on this one. I can't hunch over the machine for too many hours without discomfort in my back and shoulders, so I just work on it for a few hours on Mondays.

The last station in my sewing room is for my Singer 301. It was my mother's only sewing machine, and I learned to sew on it when I was 15. I was delighted to have it after she passed away. It hadn't been used for years, so I found a gentleman in Nobleboro who works on vintage machines. He took it apart, cleaned and oiled it, and rebuilt the motor for me for a very reasonable price; and now it runs like a top.

The Singer 301 is a slant shank machine, so I bought a generic 1/4" foot for it. Still can't get an accurate quarter inch seam allowance with it, so it has been relegated to paper piecing. This is the machine I used for the Honeycomb quilt. The top is now complete, just have to figure out what I want to do for the quilting. This little quilt finishes to 12" x 14".

Since I've been on a tear for months in the sewing room, not much knitting has got done; but I'm nearing the end of my Imagine When shawlette by Joji Locatelli. The construction is accomplished with short rows, using wrapped stitches. And you don't have to pick up the wraps, so it's really easy. The yarn is a wool-silk blend called Amitola from Lousia Harding--love the long colorway.

It sleeted most of the day yesterday, which is okay because sleet doesn't stick to the trees, meaning no down power lines. I'm sure the roads were slick, but they're really good about plowing and salting the roads up here. Then it warmed up and rained, probably a good part of the night and all morning today. Late in the afternoon, we're finally seeing a little sun peaking out.

A Lucky Day

It was -5 degrees this morning when I woke up at 7 o'clock. We experienced a week or so of the so-called January thaw; and now we are in an arctic freeze, probably for another week or so. Last night the wind chill was 25 below. It simply takes your breath away.

I had a great day yesterday, went to a workshop for quilt group; but first, a little catching up. We had a good Christmas because both my sons were home; but they were both in and out, which made for a hectic couple of weeks in December. After Christmas, my older son had to go back down to New York to work two days, then he was back up to Maine until New Year's Eve. My younger son was here for Christmas, then left for Boston in the middle of a snowstorm so he could catch a flight to Dublin, Ireland. He finally came home Jan 8 and stayed with us another day.

I spent most of November and the first half of December planning the Christmas party for our quilt group. My co-planner Koleen spent much of her time shopping for items for gift bags, game prize bags, and accessory items for the party. I spent most of my time machine embroidering 37 candy cane holders, one for each member's gift bag, and we stuck pencils in them instead of candy canes. The pattern for these came from Embroidery Library. Both of us also made quite a few baked items to fill the giftie bags.

Koleen planned a couple of Q & A games, and I worked out a Bingo game, where each player had a blank bingo card and a list of holiday related words, which they used to create their own unique bingo card. Each player also received a small baggie filled with red and green M&M's that they used for the markers.

We had a potluck meal, so there were lots of good things to eat at the party. All in all, I thought the party was a great success, but I was exhausted by the time it was all over, and I dragged through the rest of December trying to finish getting ready for our own holiday. In November I finished a tree skirt for my older boy, and my husband took that down to New York with him for delivery, but I never got the second one done for my younger son until January. Had it quilted, but never got the binding on. It didn't matter though, because my son was too busy with college finals before Christmas and never got a tree, then he was off to Ireland.

Here's the second tree skirt before it was quilted and bound...

 ... and here's the quilting on the back after it was finished. I used a holly berry and leaves design from Lorien Quilting.

The hexagon blocks got put on hold again because I had so many other things to do, and I haven't been able to get going with them again. I think I'm about 6 or 7 behind now. This is the last one I got finished, Hexie #54. I suppose it's a little boring, but it looked good to me when I started it.  Maybe you need a few toned down ones to focus some attention on the more interesting ones.

The only other sewing I really did over the holidays was Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street mystery quilt.  I finished building all of the block components, assembled the four corner units for the quilt, and got 4 of 12 setting triangles done. Hope to get back to it this week.

Yesterday was a workshop at my quilt group, Tacoma Lakes Quilters. Before we got started, we had the Mini-Raffle, which is a small fundraiser we've been doing for the last year and a half. Members donate items throughout the year, then we sell raffle tickets for a dollar a ticket. It's been quite successful and a whole lot of fun.

I really liked this little pincushion with the matching lamp that was for the raffle yesterday, and I was absolutely delighted when I won it. My good friend Barb made the pincushion, which has little pockets round the outside to hold spools of thread. The gray cording is fed through the holes of each of the spools to keep them in place.

Then, with the same fabric, she had a shade made for a small Mason jar lamp, which is now filled with buttons and residing in my sewing room. I love, love, love this set!

For our workshop yesterday, we did a Jelly Roll race. If you google it, you can find videos on YouTube for the way this works, but the general idea is to take the strips in a jelly roll and sew them end to end as if you were making a very long binding strip. Then you find the midway point of that long strip, cut it in half and sew the long edges together. You repeat that process until the quilt is the size you want.

A jelly roll typically contains about 40 strips. We used only 10 strips for each little quilt and wound up with about 30 quilts in just a few hours. The remaining kits that weren't sewn up were dispatched to folks who will take them home and finish them. Once they're all quilted and bound, they'll be donated to nursing homes and assisted living facilities locally. Their small size makes them just right for folks in wheelchairs.

Because it was a timed race, prizes were awarded to the first three contestants who completed a top, and one prize for the person in last place. I finished in second place and won this gift bag, comprised of paper and pen, candy, a pack of Kleenex, tiny candles that look like chocolates, a candle holder, and a heart shaped plaque with a cute saying on it. My favorite stuff. How come quilters like office supplies and candy so much?

May Finishes

It's been a long while since I've posted to the blog. We're nearly halfway through the year and I've written nine posts. That's pitiful, so I guess I'd better rectify that!

I was really busy the month of April working on these two small challenge quilts. They were due the first week of May, and I actually finished them on time, binding and all. Then I spent the month of May catching up on all the stuff I put off in April while I was working on the quilts.

The pink and green one, "O' Tacoma", was designed by our chapter president as a mystery quilt in three parts. I liked the fact that we had to choose only three fabrics, but the challenge of assembling the quilt more than made up for it. I really liked this quilt when it was finished.

My other challenge quilt, "Snow Day", was a Mix and Match challenge. Each participant drew slips from five categories, which determined the parameters for the quilt they had to make, and each quilt had to measure 24" x 24" at completion. The categories were Theme, Embellishment, Color, Fabric, and Block.

The Theme for the quilt could have been one of the four seasons or a holiday. My Theme was winter.

An Embellishment, like ribbon, lace, yo yos, buttons, etc, had to be included somewhere in the quilt. My Embellishment was ribbon, and I cut small lengths of ribbon, laid them in the center of the star blocks like little pickup sticks, and stitched them down.

My Color, which had to appear in the quilt, was yellow.

The Fabric which had to be included could have been a novelty, polka dot, batik, solid, something like that, and mine was plaid. The snowmen, which were machine embroidered appliques, had patches on each snowman; so I cut a patch from a small scale plaid and stitched in place over top of one of the embroideries.

The Block we chose had to appear somewhere in the quilt, and there was an additional requirement that the block measure 12". My Block was Dutchman's Puzzle, which I placed in the middle of the quilt and then embroidered the snowmen on top of it. I used flannel for the snowmen bodies so the blue background wouldn't show through. They turned out pretty nicely, I thought. You can see the rest of the challenge quilts here.

My last finish for May was this small kids' quilt. The top actually got done quite a while ago, and I finally got around to quilting it.

A Crafty Day

Today was my monthly meeting for embroidery group, and we learned how to make an embossed design. Embossing is heavy stitching on a napped fabric like terry cloth or fleece, which mats down the background so the primary design stands out. Monograms and lettering are a popular way to use the embossing technique, so I stitched out this little "home" design on a hand towel. It looks a little shiny in the picture because I haven't rinsed out the stabilizer yet. I really love the effect. It's hard to resist the urge to go around the house embroidering every towel I own.

I am in the mood to make small quilts these days, so this afternoon I worked some more on this crocus pattern. I'm making the mini size, which finishes to 14" x 16". I started it only three days ago, so I'm making good progress.

The pattern is from Eileen Sullivan's Designer's Workshop. She has a whole series of different flower patterns, and I think I probably own all of them. She just released two new ones, Daisies and Coneflowers, which are on my wish list.

Any Day Spent Sewing. . .

. . . is a good day. That's what is emblazoned across the front of the shirt I finished embroidering earlier this evening. I probably say that to myself just about every day too.

This is the first "real" tee shirt I've tried to embroider since Barb showed us how to do it, and I am beyond thrilled with how it turned out. It is nothing short of a miracle that I managed to get the design centered, and not a pucker anywhere in the fabric around the design. I'm learning.

I did have one moment of sheer panic when the edge of the shirt rolled up around the hoop slid down under the needle and got stitched in. You know, kinda like when you're machine quilting and you catch the corner of the top in the quilting. You've all done that, right? Luckily it was just a few stitches, and I was able to extract the rest of the shirt easily enough. I think it put a tiny hole in it though, but I fray checked it, and hopefully that will fix it.

Next up -- more practice with freestanding lace.

Design from Embroidery Library

November Finish

It took nearly forever to get the Jewel Box quilt done, but I finished binding it and made a label for it about a week and a half ago. AnnH quilted it with the Baptist Fans I am so fond of. This ranks right up there as one of my all time favorite quilts.

I learned how to manipulate text in my embroidery software so each letter in the title would stitch out in a different color. A very useful trick.

Quilt design by Jinny Beyer