Tuesdays are Just For Me

Seems that I have been a bad swap girl lately. I kind of let my monthly block making slide when things got really busy last month. Over the weekend, I pulled out the packages to discover that there were blocks due from September - gasp!...I got busy. I don't know who each is for, or which month or even which specific swap at the moment - just have pics to show.
I despise making modern-style blocks. The strips that came were all the wrong lengths or widths; I nearly ran out of fabric. I hope that these play well enough with her others.

These are 2 8" strings made from vintage sheet fabrics.

Two spider webs which are unironed here. It's a poor pattern, in that she will soon find that it results in at least 16 layers of fabric at each point! That would not be my friend to quilt :-)

Here's a 24" nice and simple HST block.

Over the last year I participated in the Quilt Block round robin on Flickr. It is a good group of ladies I have swapped with several times/years before. It all was going well until Lynn decided to steal 3 or 4 packets of people's blocks, and not send them back. I consider myself lucky to have gotten mine back. Clearly, I chose trees. They were all supposed to be done with a white or tan background, but I think it will be fine as is. Maybe next year I'll get this assembled as a Christmas quilt!

Or maybe I will just sell it - who knows!

And alas, a glimpse at the last and simplest border that is being assembled for my Italian floor quilt. I seriously thought that this would take me no time whatsoever. Again, I am the idiot. Underestimation ought to be my middle name. I have all the parts assembled - 4 corners, 260" of that striping, and 4 of the mini checkered units. It was all great until I discovered I was short a few inches of that damn black fabric! It is currently on order, along with some nice 108" wide backing and I will put this aside for a few days and focus on more pressing issues. Like Christmas, or a couple client quilts! Or how in the world I might quilt this beast. So many thoughts, so little time.

Happy Tuesday.

BTW, For the nosey and inquiring minds out there...my daughter's spree of mischevious behavior has not really lessened. I have gotten smarter, though, and at the very least removed her chair and all ointments. Oh, wait, she used all of them up on Sunday. I did find her a little while ago emptying her drawers in search of swimsuits to try on. The mess was manageable, but seriously, I am sick of cleaning up little messes everywhere!

List of Completion

I most happily retrieved my LA from the annual servicing yesterday. I am quilting rather slowly on a custom quilt right now, with hopes of having it mostly done before the end of the weekend. Not sure if my luck will hold out though. Here's some of the putter-stitching I did in the last week, in my feeble attempt to chip away at my To-Do list (below).

This block went out to Leanne in Canada, for the Bees Knees. It was due last month, but, hey, better late than never.
Here's one of my September blocks for the same Bee, it went out to Marlene in KS today (I think!!). She wanted paper pieced spider web blocks. They are not yet stitched together. The batiks are prettier in person than in picture.

Here's the entire set of blocks headed to Carol in the Quilt Block Round Robin. Mine are the pink and plum ones. Again, more batik blocks.

and here's mine. Nothing too crazy here; just needed to get them done, and be sure they were of correct size.

Jaclyn asked for these circles. It's a crummy method for making circle (not her method), if you ask me, unless the background fabric is dark. The way they are made forces the seam allowance to the outside of the circle, and the damn blue circle fabric shows through on the lighter one. Oh well..the fastest circles I have ever made at any rate.

And shall we see how I did at my weekly list?...

1. piece two tops, twin sized, commission jobs - Both are in 2 large pieces, and were awaiting the border fabric, which arrived today. Sometime in the next 8 weeks I will finish and quilt these.

2. quilting bees...Blocks are all caught up (see above)

3. piece backing for one of my own quilts - NOT DONE, but I did piece one backing for the commission quilts instead.

4. finish paper piecing on my Italian floor quilt (this is only a personal goal - there's no pressing deadline here) - Done...see previous post.

5. piece the next rows on this quilt top so that I have it available for hand appliquing when on trips or at appointments. In progress...

6. Plan the quilting for a sweet pink & white custom quilt that I must do as soon as Mr. LA is back home. Planing done; quilting is 25% done.

7. Figure out how to get out of making 3 Halloween costumes. If you have read this blog long, you know that despite loving to sew, you know I hate to make costumes. Goal: Make one lamb costume and buy 2 boys costumes, somewhere, somehow. Bought one bunny costume at consignment store. It needs bunny removed and ears/tail modified. Not completely effortless, but simpler! I also found parts to one Dracula costume for middle man. Could this be true???...no Halloween costumes to sew?? (Ha HaHa Ha~.....)

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Next week's Agenda...

1. Finish Pink Pinwheels quilt currently on LA

2. Quilt one of my quilts that I will bring to the retreat

3. Quilt (or start) another customer job

4. Finish the row of hand appliqued ribbons (#5 above)- all but 3 corners are done.

Have a great weekend!

Weekly Happenings

I spent a day or so's free time preparing for my oldest's 8th birthday party which was yesterday. He had 10 friends to a party at a bowling alley! The kids had fun with the bowling (we have mini or 10-pin bowling), the arcade games and pizza. The biggest hits of the afternoon were the roll of quarters I had to dole out and the re-lighting sparkler candles!
It's been a busy week of this and that, and not a ton of what I really need to be tackling (ie., the quilt below!). I have started it, and spent 3-4 hours on it, but this week I must hit it hard. I have more work arriving later in the week. It's gorgeous applique done by hand and is immensely time consuming to quilt. I have to be SO careful. I thought a couple afternoons of doing piecing and tying up loose ends in my sewing room might give my arm/wrist a break from the continuing carpal tunnel that is creeping in again. Yuck!

Earlier in the week I added the flower at the center of this piece, and today I added the green piping and the outermost deep purple border. This is my piece for the Maine Quilt Show in August. It's 95% finished. I have just a couple things left in mind before I get the backing prepped and get it quilted. I am so tickled how it's changed just by adding the outer borders. I'll get a better picture soon (this was taken in the dungeon where I like to sew).

A month or so ago I went to my oldest son's 2nd grade class and spent an afternoon teaching them about quilts. It was a blast and I am so surprised how interested they all were. We talked about the secret code of Harriet Tubman and the Underground RR, and then had a couple projects. They made these self-portraits using fabric pens. I did a similar project 2 yrs ago when he was in kindergarten - that quilt turned out great. He came home last week with the pile of 6"x6" portraits that I need to get made into a quilt. To date, 19 of them are now bordered and I have a concept for the remainder of the quilt.

I machine quilted a couple banners this week too - one for my business. The pic below is the back of it. I am a guest vendor at a Linus blanket show this weekend. The other banner is for the Linus coordinator. It's simpler but cute.

And a close up of the really quick quilting... It's nothing gorgeous, but then the coordinator wanted this done yesterday.

I spent time this week making a couple of blocks for the Bees Knees quilting bee. April is my month, and I have designed a paper-pieced tea-leaf block. I needed to write a tutorial because I don't know how many people are skilled at foundation piecing. It took a while to do the tutorial, taking a picture after each row of stitching. I think I made the 2nd block in about 15 minutes! I know it's a bit of an odd combination of colors and fabrics, but my EQ6 rendition of the quilt is great!

And lastly, I leave you with a cute picture of my 3-1/2 year old. She's my shining light, and the sweetest thing ever.

More Awesome Backwards Weather

But who's complaining??! Not me. It is early March and it's 55F here today. Rare I tell you, but becomming more the norm this year.

It's a peaceful day here at Casa Quilts of Love. My husband and younger two kids went to my mom's for the day. My daughter was dying to play with my cousin's girls (he's up from CT this weekend), but I dummied up and goofed dates on my oldest's friend's birthday party. Thought it was yesterday, turns out it was today. So he and I stayed home so I could shuttle him to the party and "take care of business". I have a good bit of school prep to do (and Lord knows I can find some sewing to do as well!).

I have done my next blocks for the Quilt block round robin. It's a bit of a tedious star, but my 2 blocks (on right) are done. Now to mail on to Carol.
And here's the black & white houses for the Bees Knees quilting bee. Seems simple enough. Really sucks that I made one errant cut on her original fabrics. I had to go dig out black and whites from stash and remake them! Hopefully it will be ok.

And a few sneek peeks of a client's quilts. They will get mailed back to her once I finish removing chalk marks. She's actually local to me, within an hour's drive but prefers the USPS!
This one I finished this afternoon. It's a 45" wall hanging. I was actually cursing it a bit because the damn brown threads were showing here and there through the white fabric. I don't know what the white is, but I need to tell her about heavier weights like Kona. Once I laid it in my hallway and opened the door to allow lots of natural light, I loved the texture.

I tried to keep the quilting relatively simple - ie., no outline/ditch stitching. I put leaf wreaths in each card-trick block, and a leaf motif in the center. The background is just filled with a peacock fill. This client generally prefers less quilting to more, but since it is a wallhanging, I probably did more than I might have otherwise done.

I like it, and hope she does. Who doesn't love a feathered bordered?

This is another of her quilts. It's a similar pattern, but with different borders, and a bit larger.

Again, more simple, but pretty quilting. I copied a flower motif that is in the owl fabric into the loopy-flower fill I used. Because of the pink, it is obviously for a girl and it can handle the flowers and swirls to make it more feminine.

And lastly, a very bright DP9. And as advertised, this simple quilting scheme produces the softest quilts! They just mold around you.

Buzzing with Activity

I am participating in 3 online quilting bees. One is technically a block round robin, but it's close enough to a bee. I just won't get all the blocks until the end of the year.

February has been my month for the Fresh Comfort II bee. I designed a wonky log cabin block and sent out an assortment of brown and aqua fabrics. Some of these are not trimmed yet so disregard the variety of sizes. I am still awaiting 8 blocks so that this can be larger. I can hardly wait to quilt this one...have some very radical thoughts for the quilting and interesting threads currently on order too!

I am also participating in The Bees Knees quilting bee. My month is April, which is really right around the corner considering I have to have fabrics sent out in 3 weeks (and a block plan finalized prior to then!). I have gathered pretty fabrics for months. My plan was to do one bee quilt more modern and edgy (above) and do one more traditional (this one). I have 4 yards of the Martha Negly floral below. Most of this will go on the backing, but all of the other materials were selected to coordinate with this. I stumbled into a great thing last month...Mardens (a legend if you live in Maine) had MANY of the coordinating prints in stock at $3 per yard. I bought more than a few. I think that the large floral backing was also only $3 a yard at Whittles too. That is a great online store if you have not heard of it!

I love the set of coral/orange prints And there are several different greens as well.

And I have 4 small pieces (under a yard each) of finger paint fabrics - for those interested, they are FingerPaints by Stephanie Brandenburg. I thought they'd be nice for small accents on the blocks, since I cannot send a ton of any to all people.

The stripe at the top is likely for the binding and maybe for a small accent border. I probably won't send it to anyone in the Bee.

Now, the problem is that I cannot settle on a design. Wanna weigh in your thoughts?... please....

Here's one thought (created with EQ6, using pictures of the actual fabrics). Note that this will likely NOT be the background fabric for the stars, however....It is fairly traditional. They'd be 12" blocks, and each person I think has already agreed to make 2. I'd supply a tutorial for a block. The fun thing about this block is that color placement can drastically change how the star looks. It can look like a flower or a star or even a twisted friendship star. Interesting, but not my favorite. I am currently polling the Bee members to get a sense of their abilities and whether or not they want to create their own design or follow a tutorial. Stars and triangles are easy for me, but I'm not sure how the masses feel about keeping every point!
Concept #2... A little more radical and modern. I love flying geese. And I love circles...I really love when the geese fly in circles, if you catch my drift! I'd probably make instructions to a few blocks available to those that are not comvortable making their own, and then hope that I did not get 20 blocks that are all the same! These would also be 12" blocks.
The thing with a 12" block is that it does not allow for too much detail, or the beauty of these larger scale prints gets lost. So, I am also contemplating an option where each swapper makes just one 18" block. It's the same area as 2-12" blocks approximately. Here's just one concept. I made one of these blocks last year for a round robin in an 8" block (if you can believe how small some of those pieces were!). It was largely paper pieced. I think I can print off the pattern pieces for people and that size won't be that hard to make. My only concern...people that don't paper piece much can be very wasteful using that technique, and the thought of wasting this gorgeous material... ... I'll likely redesign this larger 18" block, but you get the idea. I'd send "x" number of fabrics, specifying a desired background fabric, and let people pick and choose how they wanted to color their blocks.

So, what is your recommendation for the swap block(s)??? My inquiring mind wants to know :-)