May was a Productive Month

Happy June!

The blog hasn't had any activity because there's been nothing to show, but I now have something to write about.  Yesterday, the last day of May, I finished 2 more quilts, and 2 more "others". I made a big dent in my UFO pile last month. Here are my latest finishes.

This pattern is called "Ashley", from one of my many fat quarter books. I remember working on this in my room in Santa Fe, NM, and that was at least 3 years ago, so it's been in the UFO stack for awhile. 

Traditional binding. Funny story about that. I had attached the binding, and ran about 8" short. Argh! I did some asking around, but the fabric is so old that no one had any more. I put the quilt away, with a back-up plan for "just in case". Sure enough, though, when looking through my scraps (reason unremembered at this point), there was the binding fabric, with more than enough for the small section I needed to add. Love it when that happens! Great complimentary quilting of ginkgo leaves and berries done by the ladies at Lynn's.

I didn't have quite enough of the yellow/purple fabric, so added a strip of "something else". 

Red tumblers. This is a small piece - the tumblers are just 3" high. I cut them on my GoBaby cutter using only scraps. No new fabric was harmed in the making of this piece.  Simple (almost) straight line quilting done by yours truly. I started the quilting using YLI 40-weight machine quilting thread, but my Bernina coughed and hacked like a healing pneumonia patient. Weird! Switched to rayon and sailed right along. (The experience wasn't that simple: it took me about 90 minutes of tinkering to finally figure out it was the thread. If you're having stitch problems, keep trying till you narrow down exactly what the problem is.  It'll save you a bundle on service costs.) 

Traditional binding on this one, also - because for some reason I had this black binding already made. Who knows? I had cut this binding only 2" wide, but it turned out to be perfect for this small piece.  Moving my needle position 3 ticks to the right gives me the perfect measurement when attaching the binding with my walking foot.

The back.

After I finished the quilts, I picked up the next thing I saw, which were these wool pincushions. I had done all the handwork on the circles during my trips to California this year, then began stuffing them when I got home. Last night they finally made it to the top of the list and got finished.  I have a bunch more of these to do. They're fun!

And so May went.  Thanks for stopping by!

2015 counts

Tops: 8 

Finishes: 23 (13 quilts, 10 other)

The holiday season! Yay!

In no particular order, here's what I've been doing this holiday season.

This top (Fractured) got finished. It's also already been quilted, so I'll be able to show a finished quilt as soon as I get the binding on.

I put up a Florida wire tree with flamingoes and vintage ornaments (and I gave no idea why this font is red and underlined. It just happened. Computer magic, and I can't change it - at least not on the iPad.)

I made a bunch of stilettos for some sewing peeps I know. (Clueless why this ISNT red! Magic!)

And I finished the last of the pincushions. They were sitting around, stuffed, just waiting to be sewn shut and stacked. All done!

That's it for me. Time to bake now!  

Thanks for stopping by.

More Progress

It's been a productive few days. 

I've finally finished the last of the stacked pincushions. They'll also be in The Etsy shop soon. One is sold already.

I finished the last of the 16 patches.  I had only made half as many as I needed, which meant making the second half was not fun! But they're done, so now I can lay out this quilt and get it together.

I've finished sewing the blocks for the Fractured quilt and have started putting the rows together.

This was a lesson in perseverance. When I got the first row put together and on the design wall, my heart fell. I thought "oh no, I don't like this at all!"  But the blocks were made so I wasn't about to give up. When I got the second row on the design wall. I started to like it a lot.  Now I love it.  Perseverance!

This quilt needs discernible contrast, but not terribly stark throughout. The middle blocks need to be strong and stand out so that your eye immediately picks up the pattern.  You can see that in my row centers. I think lesser-contrast blocks are adding a bunch of visual interest to this piece, however, so mix it up!

I'm road-tripping today, so probably no progress in the sewing room will be made - but there's always tomorrow!  Thanks for stopping by.

Today's progress

I've been working on this for the last two days.

I laid it out on the design wall while back, and am finally picking it up to "get 'er done".  

When I lay out on the design wall, I start folding into rows & columns (think "excel spreadsheet"), and label. Then I can come back to the project when the spirit moves me.

Stacked - see the clip on the right? That tells me that is the seam side - sew those edges together

Labels for columns, so I'll know which one goes where

I managed to get this far before I just couldn't sew anymore.

Just 3 more borders then it will be a top. Yay! First one of 2014.

Meanwhile, these little cutie patooties made it to the "finished" column. They needed only the button on top, but that meant they were still UFOs. Now these little guys (12 of them) are DONE! Woohoo! These are for a gift swap we'll do in one of my classes at Empty Spools.

And that's what I've been up to. Thanks for stopping by.

The Big and the Small

  

I've been doing big things - learning my long arm, and small things - making pincushions.

Practice, practice, practice for the long arm. I have a huge stack of tops for practicing that will be donated once they have their bindings. The machine stitches beautifully, and getting the rhythm is going quite well. (I have a Martelli LaCresta, not computerized).  It's fun to get back into quilting my own quilts again, although it will be a long time until I totally stop supporting my friendly neighborhood long-arming ladies!! 

I'm also making billions and billions of pincushions for a gift swap.  OK, 30 - but it SEEMS like billions. It takes me a full evening to stuff just one (they're chubby little suckers) What was I thinking!

My hand is in that one for perspective.  They still need their little yoyo caps, but they're just the cutest darn things! All from the scrap basket(s).  It's fun to remember the quilts that were made from those fabrics.

Staying busy.  That's a good thing.  Thanks for stopping by.