This-n-That & a Christmas Finish

My week has been fairly uneventful, bordering on kind of boring. Just the way I like it - no huge surprises unless you count the 12" of snow that arrived Sunday & Monday. My kids have all been home, driving me nuts some of the time, but the boys are off to my mom's tomorrow for 2 nights so I have lofty hopes of actually making some headway on a client's quilt.

This client is from Sacramento, CA and located me from my quilting of the Folsom Quilt & Fiber guild's raffle quilt. Photos of this quilt were recently uploaded to their site here. I started on this quilt yesterday, but have been severely lacking the creative mojo so I have been poking around with other things so as to minimize how much pickout I will have to do!

My Italian floor quilt, as you know, is off the frame and is undergoing some pick out and marking for a final quilting that will happen in a week or 2. You might think I love the seam ripper considering I have spent 8-10 hours this week picking out sections!

I'll leave you with pictures of a quilt I did for my mom. The fabric is a Stephanie Brandenburg panel. I just had fun with it, using nearly a dozen colors, and a variety of fillers.

The view from the back is my favorite!

Have a Happy New Year!

Think Spring

It was a frigid 1F this morning. Today seems a bit late, but then rather appropriately cold day to show the table runner (17"x44") I made for my mother-in-law for Christmas. It was from a Moda pack of charm squares Lisa gave me last summer. I had originally wanted to do something for myself with them. I really love the butterflies and tulips, but it was crunch time in December and I really needed a Christmas present too.
The quilting is overly simple, almost insultingly so. I should have done it on the longarm, but wanted to use the varaigated King Tut thread I had, and had never tried this on the longarm. Blah, blah, blah, long story, I opted to simply stipple it on the domestic machine. Only a good quilter would know what it could have been.

Not sure if my feeble embroidery shows, but under the birdies (which my MIL loves to watch), it reads "Think Spring".

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I have had a steady stream of quilts to finish up in late December and this month. I did this one, despite not having a good picture of it. The T-shirt quilts are challenging, kind of like quilting a slinky. Once you get it pinned to the leader, it just pulls back in. I wanted to scream ! Takes a bit of TLC to get to lay flat and square. On the plus side, I did not have to do anything complicated for the quilting so it did quilt reasonably fast.

The rest of these are quilts I have done for other people. The brown one was tedius, and made per the customer's request. I tried my darndest to talk her out of parallel stripes, but she didn't want to budge. They weren't easy. I'm not sure what is up with the raw edge "bits" down that stripe, but I think they are supposed to get scruffy when it is washed. It does have an interesting texture :-)

Here's a fun child's kaleidoscope quilt all in jungle animals. It quilted up cute with the gold thread and the swirls. The backing is purple so the quilting shows nicely.

And another quilt belonging to the lady who owns the brown stripes quilt...She requested this swirling cloud all-over pattern that I freehand. It is in a variagated rainbow thread.

My week has been crazy. My class started Monday. It always takes a couple weeks to get the students engaged and really working, but my schedule has resumed. No more lazy holiday mornings. I started an online class running for the next 3 weeks "Quilt Wisperer" taught by Carla Barrett aka Feathered Fibers. It'll be humbling I am certain, but I hope to look at quilts and how I may quilt them differently. If you look at some of her quilts, you'll drool for sure though!

I have also made up a sample of some things I can quilt for a local quilt shop. They won't refer me to clients until they see this. Nothing like buying and "wasting" 8 yards of fabric just to impress/show one person! OK, sarcasm aside, it was a pain to squeeze this into the current schedule, but it will come in handy to show clients what the many patterns can look like on ugly tan fabric. To better show what I am up to as a longarmer, I have also pieced some swap blocks into a top and have quilted away at this for the last 2 days. It has different quilting for each block, and pretty sashings and a feathery border. I will show this to the shop too (when it is off the frame!!). That is tomorrow's task: finish it. Then I have 2 Crayola Challenge quilts to quilt, one which I have, and one which is due to arrive Friday. Can you say "They both must be done by next week"??? Yikes!

Time to run and do kid pick up, dinner, and all that other yucky stuff which fills my days.

It Takes a Village

Mostly pictures...few words tonight. Made this for my mom for Christmas. She's my rock, and we are most fortunate she lives in our "village". A table runner or a 17"x52" hanging. Her choice.
All houses are paper-pieced, even the wonky church with the slightly crooked door! DOH.

I had fun with the embellishments and embroidery, right down to the wreath on the door, the apple tree, and the pot of hydrangaes.

As a retired teacher, I had to include a little red schoolhouse.

To keep the folksy, scrappy feel, I used different neutral/tan background fabrics for most of the house blocks. I designed these one day while my Thermodynamics class was taking a test.

City hall has granite steps, a clock and a flag flying. I couldn't find narrow red&white fabric at Joann's but did manage to get a few inches of ugly patriotic military fabric, complete with a flag!
Viola!!

It was a blast to make, and I know that she loves it.

A Day (week) Late & a Dollar Short...

...as the saying goes. Leave it to me to decide I want a Christmas table runner on December 30! Anyhow, I saw this one and thought it looked too simple to pass up. Only, she did a simpler quilting scheme, which just so happens to lay flat! So often I am left at the end of a project, scratching my head, asking myself "what was I thinking?"!
I just thought that a large all-over stipple was too boring. Go figure! I did a stipple on the inner diamonds (on colored part of squares), used a walking stitch white to outline the diamonds, and then did a swirly pattern in white rayon on the white border. My walking foot is starting to crap out on my, which makes me a tad irate. My regular foot leaves fewer puckers than the walker did!!

Because the binding has a touch of gold, I tried to do this decorative leaf stitch in the metallic gold thread. It looked AWESOME!! Only problem is that the stinking thread broke too often. I had to rip it all out and opted to redo it in red and greens.

The decorative stitches do add a nice touch. Hopefully washing and setting it on table will help it to lay flat (or perhaps it will just make the red bleed onto the white...!).

A Christmas Quilt

Here is one of the queen sized bed quilts that I completed and gave as a Christmas present this year to my parents. This was started last spring/summer, sat in a box for a bit while I scratched my head over whether I really liked it or not, and then had it finished this fall. The heart blocks came pretty close to becoming two Project Linus quilts in July. Here it is modeled on my 4-posted bed, just for the taking of a few picture.

I sent it here to be hand quilted by the Amish. I just knew I would never get it finished in this decade, let alone before Christmas. There's just something about a hand-quilted quilt. They are far softer than the machine quilted cousin, and it will undoubtedly increase in value, rather than just being like a pretty comforter. Fortunately, the Amish service did a wonderful job, and it was safely returned to me on December 3rd.

This was a great learning experience with quilters, especialy the Amish. To them, quilts are utilitarian, rather than a show piece in a bedroom. They mark with lighter fabrics #2 pencils, which I found immensely hard to get out of the quilt top. When I contacted them about this, they were not so concerned.."Just erase them", they told me. I bought an art gum eraser. It didn't really work. I used a stain stick and against my preference to washing, I washed the quilt. And dried it. Marks came out of all but 3 of the yellow fabrics. I then scrubbed the marks with a toothbrush and a solution of 1C water, 2T alcohol and a couple teaspoons of oxyclean. Talk about a pain in the butt! I then washed it again. Most (not all) of the marks are gone. I really did not want to give a quilt that was already shrunk up and wrinkly; it's just not my preference.

When I came home, I added heart quilting in some of the squares.
The back is actually pale yellow, and shows the quilting off nicely. The sashings have very small feathers. Talk about a real quilting job! The quilt's borders have large feathers too. Much of the rest of the quilt squares are just stitched in the ditch. The Amish just did not want to sew more creatively with the multitude of seams in the heart blocks. ... I really wanted feathered hearts.

After it was sent back, I endeavored to make pillow shams. Yes, in just 3 weeks. I am most definitely nuts. They are simple in design, but are completely hand quilted to mimic the quilt. No, my hand quilting is not as fine as that of the Amish, but then. A week before Christmas, I decided that the shams needed a punch of color (the Kaffe Fassett/Philip Jacobs Grandiose Turquoise) - the heart appliqued on the top of the sham. This was ordered a day before an ice storm hit the northeast (ordered from Portsmouth Fabric Co.). It arrived just a couple days before Christmas. I thought that this choice of accent fabric was just perfect to tie into the small accents of this fabric that are in the heart blocks (see picture above).

A Glimpse at Christmas Present

I promised to show a picture of "Apple of My Eye", a quilt my mother made me for this Christmas. It is made from Benartex's Cider Mill Road Apples materials, which I had to look up to find out what it was. The colors are SO totally me - nice greens and burgundys. I have most of my favorite mini's hanging either in my daughter's room or in the staircase/hallway. I didn't want this to get lost there though. My mother is so self-conscious about her triangles and her sewing in general. It is totally ridiculous. She has sewn forever, and made many quilts and tons of clothes for me when I was little. It's so great to have something I can keep forever that she actually made.

It may still get moved to my bedroom (also in these colors), but for the time being it is in my bathroom. Pictures can be very misleading. The green of the wall actually looks great with the quilt. I hung it diagonally too, as I thought that it exemplified the cathedral ceiling. Yes, the ONLY room in my house that has a cathedral ceiling is my bathroom. Where's the logic in that???

A Christmas Delivery

Though I posted pics of this quilt weeks ago when I started it, I held off showing finished shots as I got a hunch that the recipient may be peeking at my blog.
It was delivered to my sister-in-law in Italy, and opened yesterday. I spoke to her briefly, and she does love it. I pieced the top in 3 large pieces, machine quilted them individually, pieced them together (backs and batts by hand) and then machine pieced over the joint. You cannot even tell that the finished quilt was ever in 3 pieces (much to my surprise!)! It's mostly log cabin blocks, except for the center medallion block.

After quilting, I added a navy blue fleece backing. my sister-in-law wanted to to be snuggly, initially asking for just fleece. I tied the fleece to the quilt, and then did some basic stitching to hold the fleece to the quilt.

I chose the fabrics because I thought they specifically reminded me of her. She lived in France years ago, and loves it still...hence the sun flowers. She also lived in Japan, where she met my brother. There are a couple of Asian fabrics as well.

Yesterday was surprisingly pleasant. I am so typically on edge on Christmas that it is hard to try to enjoy the day. We usually rush our tree in the morning and drive to my mom's house for the day. We also have another Xmas with the inlaws on the 23rd which I often host. It was nice not getting home at 8pm or later with tired kids, a carload of stuff, and a huge mess in our own house that we left. I did have to do a LOT of cooking and prep and cleaning here, but to be able to send my boys upstairs to play with their goodies was definitely worth it. Dinner was very good, despite forgetting my MIL's potatos. The woman does not do dairy on account of some skin condition, so it's a real PIA to cater a menu to her. I didn't even try. I just had a potato out to cook separately for her (and forgot to do it!).

So what did Santa bring??... In some regards, Santa's offerings were interesting and wonderful, and in other regards, the same old mundane crap that I usually get. My mother made a lovely and quite sentimental little quilt for me. I will post it soon. It was very touching as she doesn't usually do that kind of thing. I always say that I am easy to gift for, as I give the kind of things I like to receive. That should rule out boring scarves and stupid baskets. Who doesn't have enough of these??? I often make handsewn things, and I was pleased to get one in return. My SIL got us a great ceramic tile sign for our entryway - tiles from Italy. She also got me a cashmere/silk wrap in greens that is to DIE for. The hubby got a digital picture frame for me, but I secretly think that the geek in him wanted it for himself! The other thing I got that I really wanted was EQ6 - I will be learning to use this for a while. Hope your holiday was a good one :-)

Update...my neice LOVES the dress I made her (see last post). I can hardly wait to see her in it.

Copy Cat

Here's a snippet of the back of a quilt in progress, quilted by a talented long-armer.
And here's my attempt to mimic this for a pillow sham. It's actually not too shabby!! You'll have to wait a few weeks to see the fronts of the sham and quilt.

Pretty Little Dresses

I have been playing with the fabrics I showed last time, making a couple of blocks for my daughter's twin bed quilt (to be finished next year sometime). I want it to be super feminine, colorful, flirty and fun. I saw this dress pattern done recently, and drew up my own pattern for one. These blocks are not finished, but you can get the idea. I will be adding an embroidered hanger (as I have seen Louise do recently), and embroidery detailing on the dresses. This is a bed quilt design in progress, so I have not decided if I want all 18 blocks on the quilt to be dresses (all different, but same general shape, idea, etc), or if I want to vary the block designs to include dresses, large dahlia-style flowers, and a few other things I have in mind. To applique 18 of these would certainly take a while (about 2 hours each block since my stitches are very tiny so that quilt will withstand the rigors of a child)! Any cute ideas from my readers???

yes, I know the collar is a tad wonky. Oddly, I am not too bothered by this.

Boy, I love those Lakehouse Dry Goods cherries!!

Here's a peek at a quilt I whipped up in the last week. It is a Secret Santa mini. I'm just cursing myself for forgetting to embroider the partridge's comb atop of his head!! I may also add some Swarovski crystals to the tree for a tad of holiday shimmer. I really love the fabrics, and my design concept came out well, I think. I believe that the end recipient will like it.

Some Christmas Projects

I couldn't show these before Christmas for fear that the recipients may see them. And it is kind of a no-brainer who they were for if they happenned to see them.

This is my neice Alyssa, with her new fairy quilt. I did her a pillowcase for her birthday in November, but I don't think she had any idea a quilt was in the works. It's bright. BRIGHT. I had a local woman, Mary Dacey, do the machine quilting so that I'd ensure it'd be finished in time.
My mom got the 60" table runner, as requested back in the early summer. I don't think she expected it though. Perhaps nobody really expected that I actually listened when they subtley made requests. Her runner has 8 matching dark blue napkins too. I learned that the mitred corners look great and are not that hard to do. Use the iron! The fabrics are some great ones I got at a local quilt shop. It's hand quilted too.

Here's a picture of a table runner I did and sent to somebody. It was a big quandry whether to actually give this one away or not. The piecing took a long time and is exactingly perfect, if I do say so myself. I love the Provincial style fabrics. In the end, I let my husband decide if we kept this or gave it away (actually, he chose between this runner and another I was working on and have of course NOT finished!). I am really bummed, which sucks because it's not at all in the spirit of Christmas, but the recipient of this lovely runner sent us something with no appeal whatsoever, and just like every past year, has yet to even say thank you. Oh well, next year this runner will be for me!

My brother met his wife when his submarine stopped in Japan, 10 years ago. The sub was enroute to home port in Hawaii. She was working civil service on a Navy base there doing occupational therapy. Within a year they came back stateside and begun planning a wedding. Since about 2000, they have been living in either NY or CT, and we have visited frequently. We watched as they had 2 girls, that are now 4 and 6. At the end of this month, they are being transferred to Italy for 2 years. She used to travel a lot before they married. So, for my brother & sister-in-law, I made these placemats and napkins in pretty Japanese fabrics, to help remind them of where they have come from, as they venture out into their new life. I just love how they came out. The napkins are in the parasol Geisha girl fabric. There is also a table centerpiece that I failed to get a picture of that is a hexagon with the parasol girls that is done like a kaleidoscope. Real cool. I was kind of in a funk on Christmas and did not get pictures. That's a pitfall to my character...I love to make the great presents but the holiday itself stresses me out so that I cannot really enjoy it. I often just get frustrated and upset that other people do not put the forethought into presents that I do. That's life...