Showing posts with label #frolicquilt. Show all posts

Ch.ch.changes....July One Monthly Goal

Well friends, we've survived another month of this strange 2020.  I saw this the other day and had to laugh.
2020 has been a lot of things we didn't expect or want, but some things about it have been good.  Spending more time with family, getting house projects done, reorganizing priorities, having hope when it seems foolish to have hope.

 Just when it felt like I would never sell my long arm, I was able to make a connection through Longarm League to get the robotics sold.  Then it seemed like I would never find a serious buyer for the long arm itself. "I really want this, but I don't have any money."  Umm...okay, thanks?  Yeah, heard that one way too many times.  And seriously, how do you even answer that? Then, seemingly out of nowhere, and really quickly, literally overnight, Jenny is the new owner of my Juki.  

 My sewing room looks so huge without the Juki.
Jenny and her husband picked up the machine yesterday afternoon.  I swept and mopped the floor and my husband and I built the new machine, an APQS Lucey, last night.  We took our time and stayed up way too late to get it put together.  Start to finish was under 2.5 hours.  Seriously, it was so easy and straightforward. The directions were easy to understand.  The parts went together well.  I had a case of the giggles over these cone bumper parts.  I've never seen anything like them.

 The room looks so different.

I'm a bit scared to plug everything in, turn on the machine, and use it.  I'm super pumped that I got the automatic quilt advance!  Can't wait to try that out. Side note--I am ordering the robotics this week, so hopefully everything will be business as usual soon.  I still have a big pile of quilts waiting on me and am so thankful that my clients have been so understanding and patient as I work through this transition.
I did finish two of the quilts in my queue over the weekend. Here's a sneak peek of one, made by Nancy. This is part of a sampler quilt she did with one of the guilds she belongs to.  I quilted an overall pattern called Zest on it.

 Nancy had me do custom quilting on this one.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Here are the rulers I used to complete Nancy's quilt.  Top is the 12" ruler from The Quilted Pineapple.  Next is the HQ Mini Scallop ruler.  I love the notched straight edge on it.  I used the cute snowman ruler from Julia Quiltoff and the 4-N-1 from Natalia Bonner.
I did not finish my June OMG, though I did make progress.  My goal was to have the green ring done along with the center parts.  As you can see, I only got the green ring done.
I'm going to shift my focus for July's OMG and go back to my Frolic quilt.  It just needs the borders finished, so that is my goal for the month.


The Morewood Mystery quilt along hosted by Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs starts tomorrow.  Will you be joining in?

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation and For the love of geese.
Posted by at 4 comments
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Chaos in the Workspace

I've been pretty busy this past week, and my sewing room is showing it.  There is stuff piled everywhere.

 I quilted my Dash Along churn dash quilt over the weekend.  I made the top during a quilt along in 2018.  I originally was planning to custom quilt it, but didn't have the time or the plan figured, and I was itching to stitch out this new pantograph I got.  I wanted the scale to be very tiny, so it took eight million years (or so it felt like) to stitch it out.  In reality, the actual stitching time was around nine hours, plus the time to set it up, line up rows, change out bobbins, etc.  It took two days of work to complete the quilting, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  I just need to find the time to make and attach the binding.  The churn dash blocks are 12".
While Dash Along was being stitched, I was planning out my borders for the Frolic quilt.  I use planning in the loosest sense.  It was more of a "let's sew this together and sew this here and see what happens" kind of thing.  I think it's working out well, but I have a few other things to complete before I can get back to it.
The central part of the quilt top, trimmed and stay-stitched.
Joining the HST into flying geese units.
I made the inner border wider than was suggested.
Strips of flying geese border units.
Meanwhile, I am contemplating my color choices on For the Love of Geese.  I had a layout planned and then inadvertently switched some of the pieces while sewing.  I'm debating whether I can live with it or need to redo some.  I think the answer is that I need to redo some.  No one else would probably notice, but I think it would drive me crazy over time.  It's shown on the design wall, along with the lone part of the Bonnie Hunter Unity quilt I sewed.
I am also working on a client's quilt.  The quilting is nearly done, then I will make and attach the binding for her.  Her work takes precedence over mine, so this is what I will be working on for a few days before getting back to my stuff.
Here are a few other views of my sewing room this morning.
So that's where I'm at.  What's new with you?

 PS--My Blogger homepage or dashboard has a new look.  I'm not a fan.  While it is more visually appealing, the functionality and ease of locating things is seriously lacking.  Boo.  Bad choice, Google.

 Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation and Alycia Quilts.
Posted by at 4 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Little Projects

I have gotten almost nothing done since last week.  I think the cabin fever may be setting in.  

 I sewed a bit more of the Frolic quilt together.  Here you can see what I have done versus how much is left. I'm nearing the half way point. It is just a lot of piecing and a lot of seams.

I finished stitching down all of the appliqués for the Julia Quiltoff class project.  The next part of the class is the quilting portion.  I bought the kit from Julia and the appliqué shapes already had the fusible applied and the shapes cut out.  The kit also included batting, backing, interfacing, and binding fabrics.  Really, everything except the thread.  You may wonder why I might need more batting.  Well, I have not worked with wool batting before, nor have I worked with a double layer of batting, and the kit had supplies for both! I am always interested in learning new skills.  You can find the free class on Julia's Facebook page and look for kits in her Etsy store.  Just search her name.
I have been really antsy and couldn't focus this week, so I decided to finish stitching together this group of blocks.  This is an ongoing project using Moda Cupcake Mix papers and a variety of American Jane fabric lines.  With the completion of these, I have two sets done and six or seven more sets to make.  I think each set makes around 80 blocks.  The blocks are 3.5".
I am happy that my fabric order finally came in so that I can start my friend Denise's quilt along, a few weeks late.  Here are my fabrics--Petal Party by Island Batiks.  I just need to decide on how I want them to appear in the pattern.  It seems so hard to make any decisions lately.  You can grab a copy of the pattern here.

No further progress has been made on either the Fig Tree blocks or the Bonnie Hunter Unity.  I did finish my second quilt of the year, my Meadowland quilt.  I haven't gotten any pictures of the finished quilt yet though.

 My vegetable garden seeds are starting to sprout.  Of course we had a freeze warning last night, so we had to cover the sprouts and hope for the best.  Last week it was in the 80s and I was wearing shorts.  This week it is a winter coat.

 I have a few more flower pictures to share.  Most of the daffodils are done, but there are a few hanging in there.  I'm happy my tulips made it.  We had a pretty strong storm last week and I was worried they'd get broken off in the wind.  There are no surviving tulips at all in the front yard.  While the tulips are gone due to critters, we had a lot of other plants that didn't survive the winter due to unknown reasons.  Could be animals, could be something else.  Not sure if I'll get to replace them this year or not.


I also have this little iris blooming.  The flowers are almost right on the ground.  I'm a bit stumped.  Usually the Siberian iris bloom first, and they are nowhere near bloom stage.  This is a regular iris.

One of my pear trees has blossoms, but not the other.  I am doubtful we will have any pears this year.  We didn't have any last year either, and only three tiny ones that disappeared the first year.

Speaking of pears, I really wanted to can some more. They are quite possibly my most favorite food on earth.  Alas, they were not on sale, but pineapples were.  So this week it was time to can some pineapple. It occurred to me on Monday that I hadn't checked whether I had lids for the jars.  I had just enough for my project. No more canning for me until we can find lids reasonably somewhere. (I found some on Amazon for $12/package.  They usually are $4/package.)    

I also decided to try to root the three pineapple tops from the canned pineapples.  Here they are in the drying out stage before I start the rooting stage.  I am using the Empress of Dirt method this time.  If any of these root, maybe I'll get another home-grown pineapple in five or six more years!
Have you grown any food from kitchen scraps before?

 Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation.
Posted by at 2 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Meadowland OMG

Well, we've survived March.  I saw this meme the other day and had a laugh.
How is everyone holding up?  For the most part, we are doing well here.  My husband finally found some flour at the grocery store, so we can bake things now.  The kids have finished a week of e-learning.  It's not so bad.  Truly, other than everyone being home all day, it's not that different than my usual life.  I do miss being able to just run to Target or a quilting store, but I am coping.  I miss going to quilt guild.

 I cut it really close on finishing March's OMG, which was to quilt my Meadowland quilt.  
I got it done over the weekend.  And I missed the link-up party, which closed last night. 😞 

 Anyway, my quilt is still pretty even if I couldn't enter it in the contest. I used Threaded Quilting's Wishbone pantograph again.  I've used that design so much lately.  I did look for and consider a few other designs, but we felt that this one suited the fabrics the best.  Several of the prints are rain or raindrops and I have kind of a watery theme going on--well, that's how I thought it would look in my mind, at least.


If I can get the quilt bound in the next few days, then I will have finished exactly ONE of my nine proposed Quarter 1 Finish Along projects.  😳  Yeah, that didn't go as planned.  The theme of 2020, no?  I've seen so many people finishing so many projects in the last few weeks.  I am amazed at the productivity. I didn't get that memo!

My daughter helped me lay out my entire Frolic top with all the sashing pieces.  For some reason I thought I could grab some pieces and sew them while the computer was quilting the Meadowland.  I failed to recall that I should not walk behind the machine to access the design wall while the machine was running.  Oops.
My alternate plan: making some 2015 Moda Sampler Shuffle blocks with my Fig Tree fabrics that I had been saving for the past five or six years (since finishing two BOM programs).  It's much better to use something than leave it languishing in storage. Here's my progress so far.  I do not have any real plan for how the finished product will look. 
Then Bonnie Hunter announced her Unity quilt along.  Yep, let's start another new project.  I didn't think I'd be able to come up with anything cohesive from my stash to make this new one.  Ha.  Who was I fooling?  I have fabrics pulled and ordered only a few pieces that I was a bit short on.  Amazingly, I found the ones I was looking for, and I'm sure this stuff was well out of print. This is another instance of me thinking, why am I just hoarding all this fabric?  It's not doing any good just sitting in a bin.  Let's make something!  I'll share my fabric pull next week, but here's a teaser.
I'll leave you with some images from my gardens.






And my baby pineapple.


Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation.

 PS--if you don't get the meme at the top...that is Justin Timberlake.  Back in the day, when he was in the band "NSYNC, when he sang "it's gonna be me," it sounded like he said "it's gonna be may."  Ha ha ha.

Posted by at 3 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Everybody Else's Quilts

We are adjusting to our new normal.  To be honest, it's not that different than our usual, other than everyone is at home and we can't just go do something or buy something when we want.  It could be so much worse.

 School started back up today for the kids.  My daughter seems to be able to do her day's work as she pleases. My son has specific times for each thing.

 My husband is still teleworking.

 I am probably having the hardest time adjusting, simply because I am used to being alone all day and now everyone is in my space.  It's not that bad though.  I'm happy to have us all home and safe.  Indiana started our "stay home" directive this week.  It's not especially strict though, and I fear too many people are still out and about and taking their kids with them.  It frustrates me that people are not taking the risk seriously. Since I already addressed that last week, let's get to some quilting.

 I quilted two quilts for others since last week.  First is Marilyn's quilt.  She wanted navy thread and we decided on Saffron Blossom for the quilting design.  This quilt had several firsts for me:  first time quilting with a dark thread on a light background, first time quilting a batik backing, and first time mailing a quilt.  I was in a rush to get this back in the mail, so my pictures are not ideal.  Sadly, most of the pictures I took came out blurry when I enlarged them.  But you can get the idea.



Also, the post office was closed by the time I had it ready to ship, but the mail pickup hadn't come yet.  The box did not fit in my mail box, so I waited until I heard the mail truck coming and put it out like this.  And then hovered in the yard to make sure the carrier picked it up and treated it nicely.  I'm happy to say that this quilt made its way back across the country to its owner, safe and sound.
Next was Keetah's quilt.  This is the largest quilt I have ever done!  It was 112" x 111".  You can see it goes almost from one end of the frame to the other. She wanted a colored thread (we used So Fine #470 Big Sky) and loopy meander. 
You might notice my Frolic quilt on my design wall in the background.  I have started laying it out.  I wasn't sure I'd like it, but it's definitely growing on me as I see it on the wall.  Here is a better shot of it.  Most of it still needs the sashing strips inserted, and it does not show any of the borders yet.  I'm hoping to work on it this week.
I also need to quilt my Meadowland quilt within the next week since it is my March OMG.  It's in the same state as it was last week--need to press and seam the background, press the top since I left it wadded up, and decide on a quilting design.  And then quilt it!
We got an email from Bluprint the other day offering 60% off one item.  My daughter got the Ouroboros pattern by No Hats in the House from Crimson Tate at the IHQS show and we decided batiks would be a good choice for paper piecing since they don't have a definite right or wrong side.  She chose this fat quarter bundle.  We'll still need to come up with some background fabrics somehow.  It's hard when you can't physically go match fabrics.
Other than that, I've helped my husband move way too much drywall over the last few days as he prepares to drywall our basement living room.  We are still trying to go for multiple walks per day as the weather allows. My daffodils are glorious.  Enjoy some pictures of them.


I will need to get groceries soon.  Wish me luck on finding some flour.

 How are you keeping busy?  

Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation.
Posted by at No comments
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)