Another UFO completed

I got my April UFO project completed early last week before we took a 3 day trip to Charleston for a Corvette car show.

The APQ UFO challenge number for April was 9 and that equaled the Sugar Blocks quilt top on my list. Last week I was still mulling over how I wanted to quilt it and as usual, I went with my tried & true all-over meander. To add some pop, I decided to go with a bright yellow thread and I had a solid yellow fabric in my stash that I used for the binding. A finish is a win!!

Here are a few close ups of the quilting

I’m still working on my Little Pink Houses quilt, I need to finish the backing and then get it basted.

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Here are a few pictures I took while we were in Charleston. I opted not to go to the car show on Saturday so there are no pictures of Corvettes :-p The first two are at Shem Creek just outside of Charleston and the last two are from Joe Riley Waterfront Park. We had absolutely gorgeous weather, upper 70’s with no humidity ❤

We got home just before lunch time today… man, it’s nice to go away but it’s even nicer to come back home!!! :-p

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That’s about all for now… have a great rest of your weekend!!

Picture heavy post!

I finished my Learning Quilt last week and I have tons of pictures to share. This quilt started about 3 years ago when I picked up the quilting habit 😉  At that time I was still testing out knitting and one of the knitters I followed online was trying her hand a making quilt blocks so I jumped on the band wagon. Oh my, the name of this quilt is so appropriate because I learned a ton while making these blocks…so many mistakes!! I won’t recount them all here; let’s just suffice it to say I laughed heartily while finally putting all these blocks together into a quilt.

Without further ado…here is a shot of the whole quilt and then close ups of each block:

I apologize for some of the wonky picture angles…this was hanging on my design wall and I don’t have a whole lot of space to back up for straight on pictures. I hope you can make out some of the quilting – I FMQ each block in whatever design hit me as I got to it and I used a loopy circle in the sashing and borders. Although this is not one of my finest quilts it is still very special to me because it shows me just how far I’ve come in the last three years 😀

Another exciting thing this week, I got a picture of one of my quilts being given to it’s new owners…the happy parents-to-be! It makes me SO HAPPY to get these kinds of pictures and I hope the baby loves that blanket for many years to come…

I’ve been trying to work on some of my WIPs and this week I pulled out my Sugar Block Club blocks from last year and decided on a layout. I was trolling the hashtag #sugarblockclub2016 on Instagram and I found this completed top by @stitchymomma and instantly knew that’s what I wanted to do.

I wanted my SBC blocks to be the focal point so I pulled out a bunch of low volume print fat quarters and cut 12.5″ blocks

I let this simmer on the wall for a day or two and decided “nope, I’m just not feeling it” so I raided my solids stash and tried something different – WOW! I love it. I’m calling it Sugar Block Skittles!

I’ll be spending the afternoon sewing it all together. I think I’m going to use Angela Walters’ quilting design, Paisley Feather, for the solid blocks and I’ll probably echo quilt designs in the pieced blocks.

Ok, just one last picture…we’re building a house in Myrtle Beach and will make the permanent move there when our house is finished so I thought I’d share an in-progress shot. Still a long way to go but the builder says once the roof is completed things will move along pretty fast.

Oh and I almost forgot…I’ve been following along with Yoga by Adriene all this week. I started her Revolution 31 day series and I’m on Day 7. It’s hard but it feels good!

Have a super-fan-tab-ulous day!!

Sickness and sewing

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted on the blog and I’ve got several projects I need to get caught up on. I’ve completed quite a few quilts and this week I’ve been focusing on getting ready for the trunk show coming up on Sunday. This will be my first event ever where I’ve sold my stuff to the general public so I’m a bit nervous and anxious to see how it will go.

I put all the items I’m going to be selling at the trunk show into a spreadsheet and between quilts, oven mitts, table toppers, table runners, zipper pouches, I have over 40 items that I could sell! I’ve put a target price for each of them into the spreadsheet and if I were to sell all of them at that target price I would bring home $2,000! HAHA yeah, I’d be happy if I sell just one thing!

In other topics I’ve put up all of the Christmas decorations, there aren’t a whole lot but at least they’re up.

 

I have this coming week off work so I hope to get quite a few more quilting projects completed. I have one specific that I’d like to get finished before Christmas and get it shipped off to that special person but I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to get it done – we’ll see how focused I can be next week.

Last week was a complete washout, I picked up a stomach virus from dear hubby and was really down for the count for almost an entire week. I didn’t step into my sewing room for FOUR STRAIGHT DAYS so you know I had to be really sick!

And now the gratuitous display of my finished items and WIPs:

I finished the commissioned “Beachy” table topper and mailed it off to Maryland.

I started another Halloween top with the Cheeky Wee Pumpkin fabric I won. The center is a panel that came with the FQ bundle…how cute is this!! It’s now basted and ready for quilting.

Here’s the stack of basted quilts waiting for me to ‘get er done’! The top one is Acorn Park which I finished up last weekend (picture below). The second one (turquoise) is the quilt I hope to finish this week and send off to a special friend. The middle one is a project that’s been sitting in the closet for a year. I pulled it out when I was basting all the other quilts – I have no idea how I want to quilt it!! The bottom two are my Halloween quilts (I’m sure all the black & orange didn’t give it away!)

I finished up the Sugar Block club December block…ugh, now comes the hard part of figuring out the layout I want to use…this could take a while

I saw this really cute tree farm quilt on Pinterest and decided to make a table runner…I’m taking this with me on Sunday, if it sells I’ll just have to make another one for me!

Last but not least, here’s the finished Acorn Park quilt. I just love all these bright autumn colors. Yes, this is going with me on Sunday too.

ttfn…

Catching up on BOM

Since my two favorite football teams weren’t playing today (both had Bye’s) I figured I’d try to do a little catching up on the Block of month sew alongs I’ve been participating in this year.

First up, Sugar Block club with Amy Gibson. We’re on our 11th block – one more and we’ll start putting it all together…yay!

I pulled up the instructions for the November block and quickly realized the template that was provided was not correct – I did some math and made my own template so I could make the block today.

Unfortunately the picture is a little blurry – I took it with my phone and then cropped it to zoom in…that didn’t turn out so good.

This block is called Hello Sunshine, I could see making a whole quilt out of this one!

I also completed three Splendid Sampler blocks…I started with the most recent and worked backward (great tip from Pat Sloan!)

#77 Prism

#76 Little Things

And then I skipped back to #73 +Love…I promise this block is not as wonky as it looks in this pic :-s

I still have many more Splendid Sampler blocks to make…hopefully I can do a few extra each week and get caught up. I’ve decided I’m not going to do anymore embroidery blocks…it’s just not my thing and I’m not going to feel guilty about it 😉

That’s about all for now…G’night!

Let’s try this again…

For some reason I’ve been having issues trying to load pictures up on WordPress so I just stopped trying for a while. I’m gonna try again today and see what happens…

Hmmm, well I had issues again when uploading pictures so I went to the WP forum for help (none of which I could understand!)…but then it magically started working…(((scratching head)))!

I quickly loaded up all my recent projects and here they are:

1. I’ve been commissioned to make a Cat quilt…you may recall last year I made a dog quilt and a friend showed a picture of that to a co-worker and she asked if I could not only make her a dog quilt but could I make a cat quilt. I searched the webs for a pattern and came across Elizabeth Hartman’s The Kittens – ‘purrrfect’!!! This first picture is a ‘test’ I did with some scrap fabric – love it!!

The cat quilt will be for her MIL who has two rag-doll cats so she wanted me to try to make the cats with those colors and use jewel-tones for the background. I found this ruby-red fabric at Mary Jo’s and knew it would be a good contrast with all the tans & browns. I’ve made 7 cats so far (took this pic after making 5)…I need a total of 25.

2. We celebrated our 31st anniversary on Oct 21 with a nice dinner on the town with two friends who were visiting from Maryland.

3. I was itching for a finish so I went to my Pinterest and scrolled through the hundreds of quilts I’ve saved. I ended up choosing this simple yet interesting design. I opened up a FQ bundled of Cotton+Steel and went to town. Once again – fabric selection is everything and I think I got a little carried away…it looks a little ‘busy’ but there’s no going back now!! 

I decided on a more calm backing!

Next up is another quick finish…again, I found it on Pinterest. It’s called 2,4,6 because of the size of the fabric cuts. This finished size is about 48″ square.

I completed the October block in the Sugar Block club BOM (top left) and put them all up on my design wall to start contemplating the final layout. Amy suggests something a bit more airy (with lots of negative space)…I may follow her guidance. 🙂

I’ve been seeing a lot of folks working on tiny houses the last few months so, of course, I had to give it a try! I got this Bonnie & Camille Handmade fabric in the October Sew Sampler box and thought it was perfect. I found the green floral for the border in my stash…now I just need to figure out how to quilt it…and then I have no idea what I’ll do with it. It could be a wall hanging as it measures 22×30…???

And last but not least is this 10 minute block quilt from last month. I don’t have any finished pictures because I was not really happy with how it turn out after I did the final quilting. I used a QAYG technique for each of these blocks and then sewed them together to finish the top. I added the backing and then did more quilting in the diamond squares on each block. Unfortunately I did not baste it correctly and there are fabric ripples on the back (ARGH!!!).

I decided I was not going to rip out all those feather stitches so I plowed ahead and put binding on it. I tossed it into my stack of finished quilts and forgot about it. My neighbor stopped by to give me the check from her co-worker for the Dog & Cat quilts and she saw it in the pile. She went ga-ga over it. She said it would be the perfect gift for her DIL because grey & yellow are her colors. I told her I was not happy with the finished product but she was adamant about buying it!! Wow, ya just never know!! I gave her a discounted price…

OK, this post is getting pretty long so I’ll just add one more thing…

Another neighbor contacted me to ask how many quilts I have ‘ready for sale’ so I counted them…17! Most are baby/child size but I have a few that are lap size and one twin size. She’s going to be hosting an ‘artisan party’ at her house in early December and invited me to show my stuff!! WOW!! Now I’m thinking about making some smaller table top/table runner items for the show…squeeee…this should be fun!

ttfn…

Warning: Lots of pictures

I’ve got a ton of sewing projects to get caught up on … so be warned there are a ton of pictures in this post!

First up: The Splendid Sampler

Although I’m still about six blocks behind I have completed quite a few blocks since my last blog post…

#48

#49

Bonus Flip Flops

#47

#46

Block 50!!!

#41

And here are all my completed blocks up on the design wall (taken before I finished #41)

I’ve also finished and shipped my very first t-shirt quilt!

Next up – I had a friend ask if I would FMQ a baby blanket she made and of course I said YES! I just love an all over meander!

And as if I didn’t have enough going on, I jumped into a 12 days of Xmas in July QAL hosted by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. You can still follow along with the steps on her blog – her directions were very clear and easy to follow and I especially love how she made sure to provide pressing instructions so all the seams nested – double win! I’ve pieced the back and it’s ready for basting – hoping to get that done today so I can start FMQ snowflakes all over it!!

I’ve also managed to stay current with the Sugar Block Club BOM hosted by Amy at Stitchery Dickory Dock. I’ve been using the same color palette that she uses in each of her blocks – not sure how it will all end up! Here’s the August block, I just love this navy fabric with clouds & rain… must.get.more!

And last but not least…I was itching for a finish so I pulled out an old UFO and got the top done this morning – whoop whoop! Don’t quite know what I’m going to do with this but it measures 54×48 so it would make a generous sized baby blanket…if someone is really into purple!

Ok, I think I’m all caught up now…whew!

Off to watch the Olympics (GO USA!) and maybe do a little more sewing…ttfn…

Quilting update

I just realized I haven’t posted anything since 7/5…whoops! I can tell you that I have not been running (surprise, surprise!) but I have been sewing!

After I finished the Quilt for Pulse quilt, I got it in the mail…and the coolest thing happened! Alissa posted a picture on Instagram the next week and I actually spotted my quilt in her living room (upper right, circled in red)!! What are the odds of that 😉

Isn’t that just the coolest picture…so much hand-made love ❤

Once that quilt was finished I was left with a bunch of HST so I started putting them up on the design wall trying to figure out which layout I liked best…and landed on this one…it sure is bright!

I decided to do some swirls with echo and before I knew it, it was all quilted.

Since there was so much color on the top I went with a black and white butterfly print for the back.

I had a teal solid left from the fat quarters used to make the border and it became the binding. Finished measurement 40″ square. No destination for this one yet…I’ll post it to FB to see if any friends would like to buy it.

I also worked on some BOM & QAL blocks for Sugar Block club and The Splendid Sampler

And last but not least…I’m almost done with the T-shirt quilt!! I got DH to help me baste it yesterday and I spent last night and today getting it quilted! Whew…my shoulders are exhausted!

I know these pictures have bad lighting but the quilting actually shows up better that way – go figure! The client chose the purple backing fabric from a few online choices I provided.

I finished cutting & piecing the binding so all that’s left is sewing it on…that will be tomorrow night! The shade/color is a little off in this binding picture but you can see the design in the fabric much better.

That’s about all I have for now…G’night!

 

Memory quilt progress

As mentioned here, I’m working on a memory quilt for a friend and each night this week I’ve deconstructed the shirts my she provided. I finally finished 13 shirts (lucky number?) and have enough bricks to layout my design.

I pulled the coverlet off my king size bed and laid it out on the floor to use as my template. In hindsight I should’ve turned the coverlet to the light side since I’m planning to use a tan solid for the sashing but alas I didn’t think of that until I was halfway done laying out all the bricks and I just didn’t have the energy to start over

I decided to go with 8 1/2 bricks per row x 18 rows – this will net a quilt approx 94×108 – WOW! This will be the largest quilt to date for me…I don’t even want to think about how I’m going to quilt this baby! I’ll get to that when I get to that :p

Here’s what it looks like all laid out on the floor

Now that I had the layout I started calculating how much fabric I’ll need for sashing and binding and of course I don’t have enough of the tan. I bought it before I knew I was going to use it for this purpose and only have 2 yards; after doing the math I’ll need at least 3 1/3 yards so I’ll buy 4 yards (I always get extra cuz you never know). I want to make sure I use the same dye lot for this quilt so I’m not going to mix what I already have with what I purchase.

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I had to take a break from this project so I started cutting pieces to make the Sugar Block Club block of the month for Feb. I got all the pieces cut and then ran out of steam tonight…so I’ll finish it in the morning and post some pics.

ttfn…and…G’night