Weathering the storm

I live about 20 minutes south of Charlotte, NC and for the past week we’ve been preparing for the effects of Hurricane Florence. This storm was traveling so slow it felt like it was never going to happen but Friday the winds started to arrive and yesterday we got heavy rain on and off. Last night the winds picked up a bit and we got even more rain…which is supposed to continue for the rest of today. We’re fortunate enough to live on very high ground so flooding won’t be an issue; rather we’re more worried about falling trees and losing power – so far, so good.

Of course I spent most of the time in my sewing room trying to keep myself occupied from my worries and I’ve got another small finish. I started this tumbler quilt several weeks ago when I finally broke down and bought the Accuquilt Tumbler die, I wrote about it here.

I’ve got about 4 quilts waiting to be basted but between the hot, humid weather and now this storm I just can’t get outside to use the spray basting…and I refuse to get down on the floor to pin baste! This tumbler quilt was the perfect size to glue baste on my ironing board so that’s what I worked on!

Here it is after I finished the quilting. I didn’t initially plan to quilt it so much but once I got started with the swirls I just kept going.

And a little close up

The backing is a flannel I picked up in Myrtle Beach earlier this year…I have to say, this made the FMQ a bit difficult because the backing would ‘grab’ or ‘stick’ to my sewing table/tray from time to time; it was the weirdest thing!

And here it is all trimmed and bound – I stepped out on the front porch to snap a picture with natural light; it finished 34×43.

That’s all for this week…once the weather clears I’ll be focused on getting four quilts basted so I can get some quilting done. My first priority is the receiving blanket quilt for my great niece.

Have a happy day wherever you are!

 

 

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Getting things done

As mentioned last week, I finished the top made of my great niece’s receiving blankets and had to order fabric for the backing…it arrived on Thursday. When I saw this fabric online I wasn’t sure if the lines were part of the weave or part of the print and I was a bit worried…

Thankfully it’s part of the print and it gives the fabric a bit of a vintage look. Since this is 108″ wide I only need to make one cut and it will be ready for basting.

Next up, I continued to work on my Sept Scrap Attack project and made excellent progress…the top is done!!!

I took it outside to get a shot in sunlight

And I gave the IG swirl a try

And one more shot up on my design wall.

I’m so tickled with how this turned out with all those happy, bright colors. It measures 63×72. This will now need to go into the ‘waiting’ pile as I prioritize finishing the receiving blanket quilt and working on the memory quilt commission project.

Speaking of that, I pulled all those shirts out last week and deconstructed them…now I need to get down on my bedroom floor and work on a layout – my knees and back are already dreading it!

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An update on the house in Myrtle Beach: we’re supposed to go there next week to close on the house and I’d be so happy about that if it weren’t for a little storm called Florence! I just can’t believe our luck!!! 😦  So we’ll wait and watch to see what happens and hope the storm takes a hard right out to sea!!

That’s all for now…enjoy the rest of your weekend 🙂

 

 

Back in the groove

I failed to mention last week that while visiting my great niece her Momma gave me her old receiving blankets and asked me to make a toddler bed size quilt because she would be transitioning into one pretty soon.

I began thinking of a cute pattern and landed on a simple 4-patch/square design and without even hesitating I cut all the blankets into 10.5 squares and 5.5 squares…too bad I didn’t take a picture of those lovely stacks 😦

Here are the blocks on the design wall…and on the table because I couldn’t get them all to fit on the wall – this is going to be 70×90

I spent all day yesterday piecing it together…while watching US Open tennis matches. Here’s the completed top on my bedroom floor.

The lighting is horrible and the angle is pretty bad too but it was just too humid to take this outside for pictures – seriously, the deck was still damp from the overnight dew even at 6pm! ugh…I can’t wait for FALL!

I didn’t have anything big enough for the back – I didn’t want it to be pieced…so I hopped online to search for 108″ backing and found the perfect fabric! So this project will be put on hold until it arrives.

Speaking of fall, I pulled my September Scrap Attack project…and look at this beautiful picture! Unfortunately it’s just a picture link on Pinterest so there’s no pattern or even a name I can give credit 😦

Oh my…at first it looks like a lot of work but once I dissect it, it’s really just 9-patch blocks with heart applique blocks. I’m not going to make a bed size quilt so I won’t have near as many blocks to make.

I’ve already printed a heart shape from Google

…and I’ve already cut 3.5″ strips from my scraps to sew into groups of three…using a bit larger size will (hopefully) give this a bit of a modern touch – and the fabrics will help with that too 😉 Once the strips are sewn, I’ll cross cut them into 3.5″ strips and assemble them into 9-patch blocks. I’ve also got a stack of smaller pieces of fabric I can cut into 3.5″ squares if I need more.

As if that’s not enough to work on…I have another memory quilt commission – here are three bags of shirts I need to deconstruct and apply stabilizer before determining the layout…she wants it to be random placement :-p

And lastly, just because…here’s Miss Campbell at almost 10 months ❤ ❤ ❤

 

Not much to share

I don’t have any sewing/quilting to share this week – I had to travel to Maryland rather last minute due to a death in the family. I flew up on Thursday and got back last night.

I was able to visit with my great niece and although I didn’t take any pictures I did snag a video of her learning to stand but I just realized I can’t post it here because I don’t pay for the upgraded blog 😦

So this week will be short n sweet – I’ll be back in my sewing room today and will hopefully have something to share next time…

 

Have a great week 🙂

 

Lots of quilting going on

All my time in the sewing room this week was devoted to quilting my Stoplight quilt. I finished the top and backing back in March, got it basted in July and it’s been sitting in the corner waiting for me to quilt it. I just couldn’t figure out how I wanted to quilt it so I did some internet surfing (stalking) of other Stoplight quilts and settled on a FMQ echo flowers in the center of each block and small loops to fill in and travel.

Here are some in-progress shots

As soon as I finished I took it outside for pictures, it was very overcast so I didn’t get a lot of good shadowing on the quilting 😦 That one bronze block in the lower left of the picture does show the quilting pretty well…

I put the binding on last night and laid it on my bedroom floor for picture…ugh, more bad lighting but you get the gist 😉 Finished size is 60×72, I’ll post it for sale on FB and see if I get any takers. Using the new calculations mentioned in a previous post, I’ll list it for $180.

I liked this flower fabric for the backing but didn’t have quite enough, so I filled in with some solid fat quarters in coordinating colors.

That’s all the sewing/quilting for this week…SO happy to have this one done 😀

Have a great rest of the weekend!

 

This week

Lots going on in the sewing room this week. After playing with the layout for the Framed Out top for far too long, I ended up going with the first random layout! And now I have a finished top! Unfortunately I didn’t take a good pic after piecing so here it is on the design wall before it’s all pieced.

I also decided on the backing fabric and got it all pieced! I have this gray tone-on-tone text fabric that worked really well with all the busy-ness of the top but there wasn’t enough for the whole back so I pulled out my solids bin again and went to work…I love it ❤ Now I need to get it basted so it can wait in line to be quilted :-p

I follow KatyQuilts blog and she frequently posts about quilts she makes with tumbler blocks and how easy they are when cut with the Accuquilt Tumbler die. I’ve almost bought that die about a hundred times and when I saw it was on deep discount last week I went for it!! It arrived on Friday and you know I couldn’t wait to try it out…

It was back to my solids bin (I still can’t seem to get to the bottom of that thing!) I started cutting tumblers from all the scrap pieces and put them up on the wall…

Before I knew it I had enough for a baby size quilt…Yay!! All these beautiful solids look so awesome in this size. I again started playing with layout…and got myself all confused so, as I did with the Framed Out top, I went back to my first layout! Lesson learned – I hope!

Chain piecing the tumbler blocks was a breeze – the die cuts the corners off so it’s super easy to know how to line them up. I can see me using this die A LOT!

Next was trying to figure out what to use for backing. I have two pieces of flannel that are the perfect size but I was stumped which one worked better. The Hello Kitty fabric would be perfect for a little baby…but the gray/green starburst fabric had a bit more sophisticated feel. So I posted on Instagram asking for folks to vote…and the winner is

The gray/green starburst flannel! I was leaning that way myself but it’s nice to hear other opinions! I’ll put this in the ‘basting’ pile and hopefully get it done soon 🙂

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No walking this week…ugh! And I’ve not been keeping up with the blogger who challenged folks to join in with her weight loss efforts…I suck! I haven’t been able to find a program/plan/process that keeps me engaged – BUT – I’m gonna keep looking for one!! 😉

Have a great rest of the weekend…ttfn!

 

Lots of sewing going on

I’ve been working on my new Scrap Attack project for August and it’s really coming together beautifully.

Here’s the project I pulled – this beautiful quilt was made by Cynthia Brunz and I found the instructions for the blocks on her blog

She didn’t have a name for this design so I’m going to call it “Framed Out”. I started by cutting 2.5″ strips from my scraps and then sewed them into 4 strips sets. I then cross-cut them into 2.5″ sets of 4 aquares.

I quickly realized I would also need sets of 2 and 3 squares so I made a few more. I then had to figure out what I would use as the accent fabric for the frames. I have a whole tub of fat quarter solids that doesn’t seem to have a bottom, so I decided to use those. I can get 1 of each block A & B from a single FQ so the frames will be ‘scrappy’ too!

Here’s my first Block A

And here’s what I’ve finished through last night… OH! I am so loving this!!!

I have four more blocks to make – 2 with green frames and 2 with orange – then I’ll have to figure out color placement.

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I had another finish earlier last week…this pattern is called Limelight and it’s free from Benartex. I made my top from Lily and Loom Daisy Delights. I’ve had a half yard bundle of this fabric sitting on the shelf for months and I’ve also had this pattern on my ‘to make’ list for a couple of years. It came together pretty quickly since the pieces are pretty big…and the fabric just sings!!

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Not a lot of walking this week – it’s rained almost every day – but I did get out at least twice. Fingers crossed next week will be better. I follow a blogger who laid down a challenge for others to follow along with her as she posts every day how she’s doing following her eating plan. I jumped on and I’ve been checking in on her blog every day. Hopefully this will be the kick in the ass I need!!

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Have a great rest of the weekend!! ttfn