Showing posts with label Bonnie Hunter Frolic. Show all posts

Busy Week

Welcome back! In case you missed it, be sure to read my previous post, where I showcased my Sunrise mini quilt made from Kelly's Scrappy Improv Quilting book. I'm really proud of how it turned out.

I've been busy with lots of quilting as I try to keep ahead of the curve. Our basement carpet is scheduled to be installed next week, so I likely won't be able to get into my sewing room while they are working. And one of the guilds I belong to is having our big quilt show. Anyway, I've been working a lot to keep up.

Here's Sara's quilt, quilted with More Square Drama. I believe this one is going in the show.

I got to quilt this cute quilt for Haley. It's being quilted with Triplet.

Next, I snuck in my Highland Cow quilt. As you may recall, this quilt is not only my OMG, but I also entered it into the show prior to starting on it. I was planning to custom quilt it, but had a serious case of design block and a time crunch too, so I went with the Friends of P design instead.

Here it is fully quilted.

I wasn't really sure what fabric I wanted to use for binding. My daughter and I searched through my stash and couldn't find anything suitable. I found an older Moda print at one of the local stores that I think will work. Now I just need to get this thing bound and get a label and hanging sleeve on it. I have a week--no sweat, right? 😅

Next I quilted Robin's vintage squares quilt.

And another Christmas one for Keetah. 

I was able to get in a bit of sewing over the past week. I finished the second block in Denise's Flower Patch SAL. Here are my first two blocks.

I started in on this month's Macaron Mystery. Sorry so many of my pictures are dark. I've been doing a lot of nighttime sewing and quilting.

Finally, I finished binding my first Bonnie Hunter quilt. Frolic is finished! I put in the last few inches of binding stitches yesterday afternoon and had my daughter take a picture while my son and I held up the quilt. Can you guess which side I was holding? 😄 Guess I should have stood on my tippy toes! This is another quilt I entered in the show, so I do still need to get the hanging sleeve and label onto this one as well. The sleeve is at least made.

I have several things I need to get done within the next week. As stated above, I need to put hanging sleeves on both Frolic and the Highland Cow. I need to make and attach labels for all three of my quilt entries. I need to make and attach labels to three white pillow cases for the submissions. I need to sew block three of the Flower Patch SAL. I need to deep clean the floors downstairs in preparation for the carpet installation. I need to type up and submit the minutes from the last guild board meeting. And buy some birthday presents for someone in the house.

Those are all firm deadlines. I still have an abundance of quilts to complete for my lovely clients. I need to finish up this month's Macaron clue, though it's not a big deal if I don't. I haven't started this month's #Trending block either, again no big deal if I'm late. I'd like to make a little progress on the Grassy Creek mystery too--it's almost time for the next mystery, so need to get this one at least to flimsy stage! I guess one good thing about being unable to get in my sewing room for several days is that I will have plenty of time for sewing hanging sleeves and labels onto quilts.

I don't know about you, but I never run out of things to do, sewing, housework, garden, or otherwise. 

I hope you have a wonderful week.

Linking with For the Love of Geese, My Quilt Infatuation, Alycia Quilts, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Posted by at 5 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Lots of Big Quilts

I didn't accomplish quite as much this week as last, but it's still forward progress, I guess.

I have all the string units made for my Grassy Creek quilt. I need to cut four squares for each unit to make stitch and flip corners and do the actual stitching and flipping. I'm looking forward to having that step complete, because then I can put it up on the design wall and start assembling!

Grassy Creek does have an inner border and an outer, also string pieced, border. I'm not sure that I'm going to do that. My gray stash is getting pretty low and I didn't plan any fabric for an inside border. We'll see how I feel about it once I get to that point.

I've made very little progress on binding Frolic. It's now officially 1/4 done and the month is more than half done. I'll really need to kick it into gear to get this one finished.

On the quilting front, I've still been really busy. I quilted four very large quilts and attached binding to the fronts for Ann.

This one is being quilted with Alfalfa.

Leaves in the Wind on this one.
Starlet for the Lone Star Log Cabin.
And Basic Swirl.

I quilted a pretty large quilt for Sonja. This is all sorts of little strings. Isn't this a great way to use scraps and tiny strings? Quilted with a large scale Baptist Fan.

I also quilted a smaller one for Sonja using 60s Mod Butterfly. This is an interesting pattern because you load the quilt sideways in order to get the string of vertical butterflies effect.

Here it is reoriented.

Check out the amazing pattern matching she did for her backing! Have you ever tried this? I haven't.

I met Charlene to pick up a quilt and she gave me homemade Snickerdoodles.  Yum!

My husband harvested a bunch of his coolapenos (jalapeños without the heat, though most of us are wimps and these are still hot to us).  I used three to make a chicken dish and cornbread. No idea what he's expecting me to do with the rest! 

He worked hard and got the basement all painted. Even though this paint is supposed to be very low VOC and such, I seem to be allergic to the smell of it. 😕 Hopefully the fumes will dissipate soon. 

Meanwhile, I had an unwelcome visitor to my sewing room window well which makes me leery of opening the window. Yes, I know this is irrational.  Warning: scary images ahead.






I won't be attending to my little garden anytime soon. Or anytime later. I really don't like snakes! Why did it go into the wall? 😨

Posted by at 3 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: , , , , , , , ,

Homebound, Week Six Thousand

Or something like that.  Is anyone else losing track of what day it is?

 In the last week I have made small progress on a number of things.  We got our vegetable garden planted. Luckily I had bought snap pea seeds a couple months ago.  Everything else we planted was from leftover seeds, so hopefully some of them germinate.  We have planted beets, baby bok choy, snap peas, and lettuce so far.  We have some green bean seeds, but it's too early to plant them.  I'd like to pick up a cucumber plant and my husband would like a jalapeño plant.  We need to replenish our strawberry plants too. Maybe in the next few months we'll be able to go get some plants.  I'd love to go flower shopping.

 I've done a lot of math with my kids.  I teach my son a half hour of Algebra four days a week and I help my daughter fill in the holes with her pre-calculus. Other than that, I hover and make sure they are completing all their assignments. We found out yesterday that our school year will now end on May 7, about two weeks earlier than if we'd been having a regular schedule.  Thus my daughter's high school career goes out with a whimper.  Just think how much more interesting this story will be than a standard school story though.

 Our solar power generation is going well.  We've had a couple of really nice days and our production is more than our consumption.  It will be interesting to see how our first month's electric bill comes out.

 In sewing news, I have completed most of the first week's clue of Bonnie Hunter's Unity mystery quilt.  I haven't added the borders yet.  Maybe I'll sew week 2 and then see what I think should go between.  Also, I ordered several pieces of fabric that I was short on and I am still waiting on one order to come in.  Of course it's the piece I need right away. 😞
I sewed a few more blocks with the Fig Tree fabric.  I'm a third done with the initial block plan.

I started sewing together the Bonnie Hunter Frolic quilt top. I have the upper left corner done. This thing has a lot of seams!  Also, as I was staring at it on the wall, I noticed that I had sewn one of the pieces in the top row in the wrong direction. I'm glad I noticed it and could correct it before the whole thing was sewn.
I am watching Julia Quiltoff's free online appliqué and quilting class on Facebook.  I bought a kit from her and started working on it over the weekend.  I did make a mistake by not exactly following her instructions. I was supposed to stick each individual stem down, then stitch it down, and then build and stitch from there. I made this way harder than it needed to be by sticking down almost all the pieces at once.  Also, my machine appliqué skills are really rusty.
I also worked on Bethany's t-shirt quilt.  This is the first time I have quilted a t-shirt quilt and it was much easier than I anticipated.  I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

I managed to finish absolutely zero of my nine proposed quarter 1 finish along projects.  I guess I can repeat those projects for quarter 2 and try again.  I also missed posting an April One Monthly Goal.  Gah.

 I have one project that I really want to start and can't, because I am still waiting on the fabric order I mentioned above. I am planning to sew along with my friend Denise's For the Love of Geese quilt.  Paper piecing is always challenging to me, but Denise has started publishing tutorials and videos that really make sense to me and I am itching to give it a try.  If only my fabric would come....   You should go check it out too!  Here is the link to the second week.  It's definitely not too late to join in.

 Finally, I looked out my sewing room window yesterday and saw this!

It is a squirrel lying there with a walnut hanging in his mouth.  So weird.  After a while, he sat up and started nibbling the walnut.  I'm hoping that he nibbled the whole thing and didn't plant it.  We find planted walnut trees sprouting in all the wrong locations thanks to our furry critter friends.

 I hope anyone reading this is doing well.  Feel free to email me if you need to chat!

Linking with For the love of geese.

Posted by at 1 comment
Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)