Picking Up Where I Left Off

Wow, it's been a long time since I blogged. What invariably happens is that I get busy, put off writing a blog post, and next thing I know it's months later. After all this time, I figure I'm mostly writing for myself anyway. 

At the end of February I finished the Chevron Chic quilt, which was a companion piece to Tango, using the cutaway corners. 

The leaf quilting pattern came out just fine, and I think it's a sweet little quilt. I haven't decided yet if I'll donate it. 

I can't think what I was so busy with after the end of February, but I didn't get another quilt finished until April. The Square in a Square quilt was the product of a charity workshop we did in my quilt group. I particularly liked that the points of the center square don't come right out to the seam line, which means there's no matching at those points, which I find difficult to do with 100% accuracy. 

Four fabrics were all I used in this quilt, and it was a good way to use up a little bit of yardage. I can think of a bunch of color variations to make with this block and might try another one at some point.

I quilted this one with white thread using the Angel Wings pantograph from Urban Elementz (I think), which is my go to for a fast way to finish a charity quilt. 

In April, the work I do for the Maine Quilts show started to ramp up. I was busy with that work through most of the summer and finally finished up for the year in early August. In that time, I only finished two other quilts, small ones; but I did get a couple of larger tops done. 

In May I finished 'My Favorite Season'. The theme for Maine Quilts this year was Quilting Through the Seasons, so my quilt group's challenge was to make a seasonal quilt that was 6" x 60". I used a gold hand dyed fabric for the alternate block, along with fabrics I used in a fall quilt from a long long time ago. I'm surprised most of those fabrics were still in the stash. 

I did some straight line quilting for this one, following the lines of the blocks. 

 

This has been done for a little while but still only a top. These scraps were given to me by a gal who sat near me when a friend and I went to the Bar Harbor retreat in April. They were left overs from a jelly roll project she was doing, so I found this project called 'Dot Dot Dash' on the SewCanShe website and stitched it up. 

I was supposed to sew it in horizontal rows, but I made blocks instead and sewed them together that way. So much easier to handle.  

This is also still a top and a lot more involved. This is a low volume I Spy quilt for my granddaughter, from a pattern I saw on the Woodberry Way blog. With only two or three exceptions and except for the bottom row, all the other fabrics occur only once in the quilt. The bottom row is all duplicates, and I figured that could be a separate matching game. 

This turned out a lot bigger than I expected, not twin sized but a good sized throw. 

 

Last but not least, this little Halloween Twister was a yard sale purchase. I have been really struggling to figure out the ProStitcher computerized tablet that came with my secondhand Handiquilter, so I took four classes at quilt show in July, three of which were specifically for ProStitcher. I loaded this little top and successfully quilted it with no thread breaks or tension problems. I started small in case I had to rip, lol. I was positively overjoyed that I finally got this to work the way it was supposed to. 

I chose a pantograph with pumpkins in it, managed to scale it to what I thought was an appropriate size for this small quilt, and stitched it out in a variegated rust colored thread.  

I haven't been able to get another quilt loaded on the HQ nor on my Tin Lizzie. The kids have been up to camp twice this summer, and I'd like to get some camp time myself, so it may have to wait a little longer. In the meantime I have other projects I am working on, of course, lol. 

 

For years I've had a dedicated camp quilt to work on, for whenever I do manage to get up to camp. This year it was blocks for Bonnie Hunter's Serendipity quilt from her book 'String Frenzy'. I had a 6-foot table set up in my dormer at camp and laid out all the strings by color, so I could pick and choose what I wanted. 

Unfortunately, with the kids up in the loft, there just wasn't enough space for that big table, so it all came down, and the project came home. Next time I get to camp, I'll be taking a mini to work on, lol, because the kids will be up at least once more this summer.  

I need over 200 of these quarter blocks to make what is a pretty good sized quilt, and I'm more than halfway there. I'm piecing these on phone book pages. 

I've also managed to fit in some more ornaments. I love ornament making as much as I love quilting, and ornaments take a lot less time, lol. This one is Blueberry Pie.

The next two are part of a bird series. I don't know when #3 will be released. Below is a Twisted Snow Globe and Tumbleweed.