An August Finish

I finally can say that the Frozen quilt I am making for my grandniece is finished.  The quilting was not going well, but it looks OK now that I have it bound.

I made a small doll blanket and a pillow. For some reason, I find making a case for a round pillow difficult. I'm not happy with the way it looks and may not gift it.  

Time to move on to something new.  

God Bless.  

Patches of Life by Eleanor Burns, QIAD

Begin again, or is it Same Old, Same Old?

 I took a bit of a blogging break and have missed my blogging friends.  I hope everyone is well. I'm feeling my age but who isn't?   I'm going to try to post at least once each week.  My goal is to get some of my many UFO's moved to the finished stack.  I began with this one, one of my favorites.

I began this project in January, 2012, made 12 blocks and then it became an UFO.  I never forgot it, but just didn't have an interest in putting the blocks together.  A few weeks ago I pulled it out and have made four more blocks.  This is the Radiant Star block designed by Eleanor Burns for the 2011 Winter issue of 100 Blocks by Quiltmaker.  I love this block.  I'm going to play with sashing ideas, and will definitely do borders.  

I joined Pat Sloan's Solstice QAL.  It's a block a week until June.  

Hopefully, this will not go to the UFO stack:)

You can't see the colors very well, but the common colors they all share are black and white. I may have chosen a few too many fabrics for this one, but there are at least 15 more blocks, so I'm hoping they all pull together in the final product.

Take care and God Bless Everyone!

Snow Days = Sew Days

This is the Cookie Jar Block for the February Sew Kitschy BOM. 

The word "Cookies" will be added.  I have some letter stamps that I might try out.

The February block of the Quilt Doodle Doodles' 2014 BOM.

It needs a doorknob and maybe some smoke from the chimney.

The Hour Glass blocks, which are the 19th block design for the

 Ben Franklin Mystery QAL from Erik Homemade Coffee Break ezine.

I want to join the Let's Book It group that Sharon of Vrooman's Quilts began in January.  The Christian Cross Quilt from Eleanor Burns' book Egg Money Quilts has been on my list of quilts I love for a while so that's going to be my project.  No rush on this one.  

I have a fat quarter bundle of Sunnyside with some Kona cream solids for this one.  

The problem with snow days is they are also shovel days, at least for me.  Yesterday's storm was wet and heavy snow.  I'm surprised I did anything else after clearing the snow, but I baked cookies and sewed my blocks.  Call me Wonder Woman:)

God Bless You.

Pumpkin Patch and Treasure Chest Quilt Top

This block is named Pumpkin Patch.  It was designed by Debbie Field of Granola Girl Designs and was published in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks Vol.3.  I've loved this block since I saw it and finally got around to putting it together.

The Tresure Chest quilt top is done.  Maybe I'm unusual, but yesterday it took me over 8 hours to make the flying geese borders, and most of that time was spent squaring up.  Very tedious and because I was running out of fabric I altered the sashing from 4.5 " to 3" so instead of 4 groups of 8 geese I have 4 groups of 7 geese on the long sides.

We are expecting an unwelcome visitor tomorrow in Hurricane Sandy.  Hopefully the dire scenarios won't occur and we'll all just get a little wet and windblown. 

God Bless You.



Work on Treasure Chest Quilt

I spent yesterday sewing together the blocks for the Treasure Chest Quilt.  I wanted to continue making the flying geese border but don't have white fabric so it is on hold for now.  However, I just love the purple sashing.  Has it really been a year since I began this quilt? 

 

I also completed part 4 of the Christmas SAL and will be cross stitching the Santa section next.

 

Today I cut out the Christening cape. 

 

Everything is on schedule. 

 

God Bless You.

A Tarnished Old Penny and Other Good Things

Guess what. Today while I was gardening in one part of the yard I found a one hundred year old penny. I wasn't even sure it was a coin when I picked it up, just that it was round and flat. I needed to use salt and vinegar to clean it up well enough to see the date, and it is clearly from 1910. I love it when I find little things in the yard, usually marbles from our growing up years. So I'm taking this as a lucky penny, something I really needed today.

Here are pictures of the pinwheel quilt which is in the sandwich stage.
I wanted to make things easy on myself so yesterday I went to Savers and bought a 100% cotton Ralph Lauren twin size white sheet (costing a steep $3.20) for the quilt back. After fitting it, I have leftover cotton, something else I love. So now I need to quilt the quilt. Magazine and online patterns all have the same instruction at the end of the making of the quilt top, and that instruction is "Quilt as desired." I don't know what I desire, as far as quilting a quilt goes. I've mentioned previously that I refer to Eleanor Burns' book It's "El"ementary for help when I'm stuck. The quilts in her book are wall hanging size for the most part. Her technique is to roll the quilt to the middle and begin outlining blocks from there for machine quilting with a walking foot. So I guess that is how I'll begin and see where it takes me.

I am at step five of the Erik Homemade Scrap Pile Clean Up Quilt, and this is what it looks like so far:

A few weeks ago I was wondering about my decision in making this quilt, and suddenly now I think it looks as if it has lots of potential. I like the dark and light contrast in this quilt. Hope it lives up to my hope for it.

This may sound funny, but I am yearning to shop for Christmas fabric and make something sweet with it. I very much liked the quilt shown recently on the Moda Bakeshop site that used Christmas fabric.

Today was the last day for pinching pierogies. Next week we make golabki. Week after that is the festival.

I learned that one of the local hospitals was requesting volunteers who crochet, knit or sew to make laprobes and shawls for the patients. Today I found out the specifics of what they need, and now I can begin to crochet some lapghans for them. I have done premie caps and blankets, but didn't think they needed adult items. I miss crocheting and will be happy to get back to it. During the recent quilt bloggers festival, it occurred to me that if it were a crochet bloggers festival, I could reach back into my afghan pile and pull out items I made in the 70's.

God Bless You.