I know...I know!!!

I know I know!!

Its been so long since my last post! But truly, I have been so busy. It really just completely slips my mind. I did have another birthday in the interim, so maybe that had something to do with it! Never would I have ever thought that I would have made it to #48. But since I did, and since I'm here....might as well tell ya what I have been up to.

I think that the biggest project has been trying to create 4 memory quilts for a friend. His mom passed away last October, and he had a box of her nursing scrubs that he wanted made into quilts. I was ever so grateful that this box, basically the size of a Volkswagon, wasn't full of olive drab scrubs. I was so happy to find MANY different colors, prints, patterns including a lot of kid and holiday prints. These are the 4 that I came up with.









They are all approximately full size, and they are all quilted with different free motion quilting designs. They were just picked up this weekend. He really loved them, and that really made me a VERY happy person!.

I did finish a couple of other projects that I had hanging around. One was a dresden plate wall hanging.





The dresden plate motifs are trapunto, and I quilted very densely around them with a paisley pattern. Its really not as "poofy" as I would like for it to be...so next time I want to try this Quilter's Dream that I keep hearing about. So...we'll see!

Also, a friend asked me to do a quilt for her 3 year old grandson. Toy Story is apparently this lil one's only reason for living, so this is what I came up with.







She really loved it and that made me VERY VERY happy!



Ok..truly, I was really happy...I had just been up for 2 days straight when the pic was taken! HA!

Well, these are some of the things that have been keeping me busy. I know I have said before, but I am really going to try and remember to update this thing!

Laterz!

Happy Summer Solstice!

Ok, so here in Houston, it has "seemed" as tho it has been summer for a while now. In fact, I was told that the heat index yesterday was 106! It will be a very long time before we get relief...usually around late october.

I wanted to post some pics of a quilt that I have been fiddlin with for a few months now. It is "Deep Blue Sea". The fabric was really inexpensive...in fact its a jelly roll from Wal-mart. But I wanted to try a pattern that I have loved for a very long time. Its a "Friendship Braid". Actually the piecing went VERY fast. I had the braids pieced in an afternoon, and sashed/basted the next afternoon. However, I couldn't figure out how to quilt it tho. I knew I wanted to stay out of the ditch, but didn't want to do just a meander either.

Then my roommate came and saw the top. He said, "its like your swimming in the ocean." So this gave me an idea. I went to my "go-to" site for quilting designs and decided upon Leah Day's Swirling Waters design.

I did a small practice sandwich, and I think it came out decent.


So here is the quilt. I do hope that you can see the filler design in the quilt. Its not perfect, but I think that it came out really well.







And btw, I really am lovin the way the back turned out! I think its really pretty cool :-)



I hope that everyone has a fun Summer...and find some swirling waters of your own!

Thanks!

My attempt at a WholeCloth quilt

Well, I thought that I would give a small *PRACTICE* wholecloth quilt a try. I had gotten a wedding ring stencil from Leah Day's site. So I marked, and basted some fabric that I had from a previous project.



I used water soluble thread to attach the trapunto batting to the quilt top. So far so good. Even the cutting away of the extra batting went pretty well. I think I only cut into the top twice!



After this stage, I went ahead and sandwiched more batting and the back. I didn't really know how I was going to stitch the quilt, so I decided that I would just do maybe a different filler stitch inside of each ring.



After I was finished stitching....I soaked it in water, and Karen McTavish is totally correct in here dvd when she lifts it out of the water...and you hear angels singing! It was really just for practice, but I still really liked the way it turned out. Can't wait to do a "real" one!



Hope everyone's Father's Day was a good one for ya!

Its Been A While.....

Well, yes, it's been quite a while since I have posted anything here. But in my defense, I have been really busy this past month with just working on myself. Its still a work in progress, but i am slowly starting to really like the results.

This doesn't mean my machine has had a chance to gather any dust...so I thought that I would put up some pics of some things that I have been working on this past month.

This is a small baby quilt that I am actually pretty proud of. Not so much the layout or fabric choice, but of the actual FMQ I did. It came out really nice I think.








This is a quilt that I did for my roommate. It really was just some scrap fabric that I had and wanted to play around with half-square triangles. I didn't trapunto the motifs, however I did do some micro-stippling in the sashing that made the triangle squares "poof" alittle.





Im going to try and post some pics of a whole cloth quilt that I did tomorrow. Im new at this, but im trying! Thanks for taking a look.

Thanks Diane!!!

Being so new at quilting, I have tried several different ways of trying to baste my quilts. Trying on the bed...on the floor...nothing was really doing a great job. I have limited space and didn't really have the room for really large tables.

A couple of weeks ago, I found a lady on YouTube with quilting tutorials...Dianne Dye. Her YouTube channel is dyequilter. She has some really great videos that helps out someone like me ...just beginning. Tonight, I tried her method of basting.

First off, as you can see there is not that much room in the living room, but enough to move the coffee table and set up a 4' table that I purchased at Sam's Club.





There are a couple of really cool things about this table. One is that it folds flat and can store easily, but also, it raises to a pretty high level. There was no back breaking issue involved with this at all.




I placed a rubber mat on top of the table, then a 4.5' X 3' piece of plywood on top of that for a work surface.




I was easily able to secure all three layers of the sandwich with clamps from an office supply store.





I used some #1 basting pins and it actually went really quickly!



So quickly, that I basted another one while the table was up. And the best part is that I did it all watching Housewives of NY!!! Too Fun!

Thanks Dianne!!!

Till next time!

Quiet Weekend

This weekend was really pretty quiet. I had a couple of projects that were "cut" and just sitting around...so I pieced them into tops ready to be basted and quilted.





This one was really just some scraps that I had in the closet. I thought about playing with half square triangles. I just started piecing them, concentrating on getting perfect points as much as possible. When I was finished, I had a pile of them. So, I put them together into this top.





This one, I know I know, a roll from Wal-Mart. But I really wanted to practice this friendship braid pattern before I used good stuff. This one made me alittle crazy. The pattern called for 7 braids...but the braids were to be seamed together. I didn't really care for how all of the colors muddled together. So I had this bright idea that I would shash them with 2.5" strips. Well, the overall top came out wider than it was long. I had some extra scraps from the roll that I pieced together into strip units of 8 and just ran an extra line of them at the top to make it alittle longer. I don't think that I am going to be giving this one up anyway, so it doesn't really matter. It really was just for practice.

So this was my weekend. I really should get out more!

Till next time!

YAY! Finished the Strip Quilt

It seems that the closer I get to the finish line with a quilt, the more I just want to power through it and finish it up. I'm not sure if that's normal or not, but that is certainly the way it was with this one.





I think that it looks really cool on my friend's antique bed.

But already, i'm thinking about what I want to do next.

till next time!

Trying something fun today

Well, today I decided to take a break from that strip quilt. I really am enjoying doing it, but I thought that I would try something new. As I have said before, I am so inspired by Leah Day and her blog, I thought that I would try my hand at trapunto.

I had a couple of fat quarters that I wasn't doing anything with, and of course, LOTS of batting scraps. I found a couple of patters in the back of a quilting book that I had, and traced the pattern onto the fabric. Stitched the batting scraps to the pattern, cut out precisely around the pattern. Then I made a quilt sandwich from that top piece and another whole flat piece of batting. I basted, then quilted the whole thing.







I know the lighting isn't the best, and the stitches are kind of "lost" in the fabric, but truthfully, I was really proud of what I did. The whole process took just an afternoon, so it works up really pretty quickly.

I would have taken pics of the process, but honestly, I had no idea it would turn out as good as it did. I just thought that it would be something else to fill up the trash bin at the end of the day. I'm not sure what I will do with it just yet...make into a pillow top? just frame it? (this really is an accomplishment for me after all), or maybe bind it and call it a day? Not sure, right now, I'm still surprised that it actually worked out.

I have read, (OK on Leah's blog again) about how you are to use water soluble thread in the top of the machine as the top layer of batting is stitched to the quilt top. I just could not wrap my head around this step. OK...I get it now! There is really such thread build up by the time you are finished that having a thread that would just wash away makes PERFECT sense! So.....guess what I am ordering next from Leah!!!

Anyway, just wanted to share my "day off" from the strip quilt. I really can't wait to show some pics of that finished quilt. I think its going to look awesome on my friends antique bed!

Till next time!

OK...so this is the deal.....

Well, I made a deal with myself. I have wanted a new machine for sometime now. I finally made the decision on the Janome 1600P-DBX. I have to say, so far, I am totally loving this machine. I got an awesome deal on it from Sew-Vac-City. Their storefront in College Station TX is only about 1.5 hours from where I live, so I just drove up there to “test drive” a few of the models. All things considered, this is the one that I chose.

Now….the deal that I made with myself was that if I did get this machine, I would not spend any $ on fabric this month. My roommate cleaned out his closet and found basically a wheelbarrow sized load of really nice button down shirts that he was going to toss. Toss??? NO WAY! I snatched those shirts up like candy under a massacred piñata!!

I did not really know what I was going to do with them, but I knew that there was no way I was letting this really good fabric go to waste. I remembered seeing a site that had TONS of “scrappy” quilts…(Quiltville) and used one of their paper foundation pieced patterns. Considering that I am so new to this, and also, this technique reminded me of my great grandmother’s way of quilting, I jumped in.

I started slashing those shirts like it was nobody’s business, taking out the collars, yokes, and seams. I then cut them into 1.5” strips and separated them into lights and darks.

Then, I decided to piece them on 8” square paper. After reading some of the suggestions about this type of piecing, I shortened the stitch length considerably so that the paper would tear off relatively easy.

So far so good…all seems to be going along as planned. I couldn’t however figure out how I would quilt these little squares. I really don’t have the experience to do much as far as FMQ. Stippling for some reason didn’t seem to be the way to go in my opinion. I really wanted a scrappy, almost “crazy” effect. I decided to go ahead and use the quilt as you go method and quilt each block separately using a feather stitch.

This is really as far as I have gotten. 30 blocks finished, about another 60 more to go. BUT…the most important thing here is, I am not spending any $$ this month on fabric, and I am really giving this new machine a workout.

Till next time….!!