A finish!

Took longer to do the binding in the car than I expected. Probably not my best binding job, but it turned out pretty. Most importantly, the recipients loved it! Note - Pattern is Square in a Square from a Missouri Star Quilt Tutorial.  MSQC also did the quilting on this. I was very happy with their service for quilting!

Merry Christmas!

Nothing like the last minute

If it wasn't for deadlines, I don't think I'd get anything done.  

We are doing a little road trip and I am working on the binding of a quilt that I need to have ready to give to its recipient on Sunday.  

Airplane sewing

Hexies - On a flight to Paris and this is what I do.

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas!

I got a few projects done for Christmas and made some progress on my primitive pennies Irish chain.

A candle mat

Three rows of the 16 I have to make of the primitive pennies quilt.

And my first attempt at this kind of wool appliqué.

Sunday Funday!

Worked on my Primitive Pennies, trying to turn the six patches into nine patches. Pretty much only ironed them. 

Then I decided to give hand quilting a try.  I had bought this preprinted square at a quilt show.  So today I hooped it up am trying to learn that whole hand quilting rocking needle technique.  Any advice is appreciated!

Primitive pennies Irish chain

Hoping I can do this.  It's a king size.  It's taking forever.  My nine patches are still only six patches.  

And I want to do Bonnie Hunters mystery  quilt next month.  Started pulling fabric you the MQ, but I don't love it.  Off to buy more fabric! Here are two ideas that I have in my stash.

Or this?

Playing around with a few new projects

I have a friend who is expecting this month...Yes, this month and I am still working on the baby quilt.  Here is what I so far.  It's a bit of stretch for me, not only in the color scheme as she picked jewel tones, but also the pattern. I hope she likes it in the end.



Then my BFF gave me these gorgeous fat quarters, that I so need to decide what to with them.  Any suggestions?



We took a little trip to Seattle and I spied this quilt in a quilt shop in La Conner that I just loved the simplicity of it.


I remembered that my juicer doubles as a pasta maker, so I wiped up some noodles on Sunday!



Last spring a dear friend, Becky, sold me her Singer Featherweight.  I had it serviced and tuned up but hadn't sewn on it at all until this week. I know I suck.  Well, I set it up on the coffee table and played around with her and made a few things.   This is becoming my new favorite thing to do.  Thank you Becky!

A Christmas table runner


Six Charm Packs paired up and now doubled


Then I also threw together a table runner on my Bernina too.



I am also working on a Missouri Star Quilt Shop Irish Chain pattern.  It will be king size with matching shams and pillowcase - one day that is.  Here is my slow progress.


What are you working on?

In honor of my wonderful hubs!

Sorry for the delay in blog updates.  I had a little procedure back in March that I have been focused on healing and recuperating from - all is well.

Back in May we took a wonderful trip to Boston, Cape Code and Boothbay Harbor.  What a beautiful part of our country.





















And now some quilt inspiration







Then we went to the Orange County State Fair for some fun and games!





And then I started my garden project...





It's been a good summer and I promise to be back soon with more quilty, sewing, stitching goodness soon and more frequent!

If I don't finish something soon...

I may just go insane.  Too many UFOs laying about for too dang long. So I finally ripped off the band aide and decided to machine quilt a top I made last year.  I did a bigger format stippling with free motion quilting. It was hard to say the least,  since I have never done something this size before.  It was heavy and it was hot!

Here is what it ended up as.

Update on my stitching roll

I felt like I was making good progress until I hit the centers of the sun flowers. The instructions said I could put as many french knots as I wanted and well I wanted and they take time and lots of floss.





They gave all the more appreciation for the sheep people stitch where the fleece is nothing but french knots...whew what a lot of work.



Tonight I want to start on the bottom section - the instructions call it the "lace".

My adventures in paper piecing

So I have been working a quilt from the She Who Sews panel.  It has 15 squares and I want a square quilt not so oblong.  

So I thought I would add a square to make it more like this.

Which as you can see in the bottom left my start to making a paper pieced square.

Here are some of my experiences with paper piecing...never cut until it is ironed in place, yeas shortening the stitch makes the paper perf better but it becomes harder to undo stitches.  Uses up scraps, makes a bloody mess.

Only to get this kind of sadness

So in the end I will not be using the paper pieced block, but instead will make 15 more blocks to checker board the panels with...

.

As soon as I can I will link to the blog that I used the paper piecing pattern from.  She had some wonderful tutorials and I think maybe I bite off too much for a newbie to paper piecing.