Ready for Christmas

I really am ready for Christmas. This year I realized that I was not going to be able to get out to Christmas shop.Being house bound for days and Jack's difficulty getting around in inclement weather wiped out the window of time I had counted on. When we finally got out we bought gift cards for most of the people on our list and I took care of the rest of it on the internet.

I finished the pot holders as I had planned to when the weather turned bad again. The finishing was much faster than the piecing because there was no more agonizing over the next fabric to add. They measure 10 inches point to point. I chose  not to add hanging loops because we don't hang our pot holders and they can be used as hot pads or even snack mats.

After I cleaned up my sewing room I hung some of my Christmas wall hangings on my design wall and bulletin boards. I don't have the same number of places to hang them as I did in our apartment. This is our third Christmas here and each year I have done something different. I like to have them up to look at even if there might not be anyone else who comes in my sewing room.

This is on the design wall. The two wall hangings were made different years  but the colors are almost exactly the same shades. The stockings were scraps from many different years and probably were scraps given to me by different people.The two blocks are just block flimsies from my odd block box. I filled in the spaces with left over fussy cut fabric hexagon  motifs that were from my Christmas pot holder project.

 When my mother in law was in a nursing home I made her small mini quilts that slipped over an 8 x 10 plastic stand-up sign holder. This is the Christmas one here with  the Mr and Mrs Santas that I made nearly 20 years ago. The little house was from an ornament exchange at work.This little  vignette sits on top of my printer.

This is the bulletin board and shelf over my sewing machine. The wreath is 22  inches square. I designed it in EQ after I saw something similar. My sister in law had made a Christmas tree quilt for her split level entry way and wanted a small compatible  wallhanging for an adjacent wall at the top of the stairs. I worked it out in fabric as I went along so I could write the instructions. The little mini star quilt was from a Square in a Square class at our guild with Jodi Barrows. Those 4 blocks were all I made. They were too cute to let sit in a box but not cute enough to make me want to make more. I made the 3 angels about 20 some years ago. That is a photo of Jack from 12 or 13 years ago; it sits on the shelf all the time. Once again I filled in with my fussy cut hexagon motifs.

This is a narrow bulletin board on an adjacent wall to the right of the one above. These mini quilts were made with left overs from other projects, one of them is in the photo above of my design wall. Right next to the bulletin board are the high windows above my desk and there is Lucy standing up looking out at the snow.





















Below is the yard she is looking out on. At 10 am the snow was coming down fast and heavy.
It was discouraging but I am getting used to being snowed in and I just went about doing the usual stuff that needs to be done.






And then... about noon I looked out and saw blue sky and shadows.  Much of the heavy snow had fallen off the trees I had a clear view of the barn and a building across the  road. I would be jumping for joy if I could jump.

Maybe we can get OUT tomorrow. 

A Finish

I finished sewing the facing on the second HST quilt.

Here are the two quilts laying on my bed side by side. The one I finished today is the one on the right and it is much more graphic;  it is easier to see the block. Both quilts are 16 patch blocks and both have an equal number of HST patches and plain square patches and they are laid out the same way with alternating HST and plain square patches  The quilt on the left does not have any light plain square patches and therefore the block is harder to identify.

























I like them both but I think I like the one on the left better. That is probably because all of the plain squares being dark give the quilt more color. For me, the more color and pattern the better I like it. My guess is that someone who does not like so much busyness would like the other one better.

I ended up with a lot of left over HST's and 3 1/2 inch squares so I will most likely be making another quilt.  I won't be  doing that soon but I am mulling over the design options. I will be playing with it in EQ7 while I work on some other things.

A Finish

I finished the first of the HST quilts. I have been trying to figure out when I started this quilt and I remember when it was on my design wall in the first room I used for my sewing room in our apartment. If it was on the wall in that room it had to be at least 15 years ago. I remember when I stopped working on it and why. My daughter stopped one day and when she saw it on the wall she couldn't see the overall pattern. I kind of lost interest after that. I left it up on the wall and I didn't sew the blocks together; eventually I took the blocks down and put them away.

Well it is together and finished and I like it. I think the overall pattern shows up well, at least in the photos.
















Here is a little bit closer shot. It has been a while since I sewed the blocks together into 3 sections and today as I was looking at the quilt I had a hard time figuring out what the original block was. I looked at the Quilt in EQ7 and colored everything black and white and I could easily see the block and what my block layout was.









 This is a block cropped from a photo of the finished quilt. Every solid square is a dark or medium print and there is a diagonal line of HST's across the center from top right to lower left. The points of the light triangles on both upper and lower corners point toward the center line. The light fabrics are a mixture; some are near solid and some have more pattern and approach being medium value. I remember not giving any attention to trying to color coordinate the individual blocks. the placement is truly random.

 This shows my finished rounded corner.

 I tried to fold the quilt so I could get a shot of all the binding on the back of the quilt but Lucy kept jumping up on the bed and burrowing under the quilt. I finally gave up.











This is the folded quilt showing all the many fabrics used for the prairie points and some of the binding. I used a lot pieces of leftover binding from my binding box. It was all cut 2 1/2 inches wide and turned to the back as a facing; it finished about 7/8 of an inch and added a little color to the all one piece wide backing.





This quilt also has alternate squares and HST' but the value layout is different and many of the blocks were color coordinated.
I plan to layer up this quilt in 2 sections and I have a backing for it that is the same pattern in red and white. I will finish the edges with prairie points and the same kind of binding/facing but I will round of the corners first and this time I will know what to do so there will not be any much ripping of stitches. Unless life gets in the way I am estimating that it will take 2 weeks to finish this.

We'll see!

It's been a week!

I did have some time to quilt a bit on the small wall hanging. I quilted in the ditch around the patches and will do some filler quilting and something on the borders.















This has certainly been an eventful week. Our 10 year old great grandson had a ruptured appendix and was admitted to the hospital on Sunday. He was a very sick kid and everyone was worried and frusrated.  He is home now with a drain in his abdomen and a PICC line to administer IV antibiotics for the next 10 days. He is staying here at our daughters house (where we live) as their house in torn up and dusty in the middle of remodelling. He is feeling much better and while he is pretty much stationary, because of the drain apparatus, he is playing games and watching TV.

Our grandson in Missouri is getting married today (in Missouri) and our son and DIL were here last weekend with their dog. They live in Pittsburgh and had errands to run here and then left for Missouri  on Tuesday. Jack and I did not plan going to the wedding because of the distance and health reasons. The rest of the Ohio family was all going to go but those plans were changed  when Ben was hospitalized.
So  from our family only John's parents and his brother and his wife will be at the wedding.

We have Buttons (the dog) here with us; fortunately she gets along well with our dog and cat. That is an adventure in itself. Now we have to keep the cat and our son's dog away from Ben because of the drain and PICC line. Kitty is attracted to anything that dangles and the dog jumps and people at times. Tux, our good old black lab with his perfect manners, is the only one allowed in the room with Ben. We are kept busy shutting one door or another to keep the animals away from Ben or keep Lucy from escaping. Lucy is not allowed to go outside but lays in wait for a chance to slip out any time we let the dogs out. We have to make sure Lucy has access to the basement and her litter box.


Late in the week, I did have some  layer up 3 quilt sections to be quilted then joined.
 This is one section; it is 2 blocks wide by 7 blocks long.

This is a 4 block section showing the overall pattern. This quilt  has been sitting around in 3 sections for a few years. It is a different from the one I have been working on recently.

You can see the difference in the two. the one below is an 8 block section.  This one will be layered up and quilted in 2 sections.

I layered the 3 section quilt first because I had an issue with the batting. Lucy had knocked the batting on the floor and had torn through the bag in several sections and tore out pieces of batting leaving several holes. This was a slightly larger batt because of 2 joining seams instead of one and I wanted to make use it would be usable. All the damage was at one end and I was able to cut away the part with the holes.
I have to keep Lucy away from any exposed batting and we have to keep her away from Ben and we have to keep her away from any doors being opened to the outside. I also have to feed her up in the sink counter in the bathroom so Buttons (son's dog) won't eat her food. After her own family left her this week Buttons had stopped eating her own food until I mixed in some cat food. So..... I also have to make sure Lucy doesn't eat Buttons' food. Tux our Lab gives us no problems but would really like to be petted 24/7, walked around the whole yard and the woods out back at least once a day, and given his ration of treats at the usual time in the evening. All three animals line up for treats about 7:30. They all settle down for the night in our bedroom and they have worked out for themselves who sleeps where. No one sleeps on our bed but Lucy uses it for a jumping off place to the top of Jacks dresser.

Yes, it has been quite a week!

Lucy taking a rest .

A Finish

I finished the Disappearing Nine Patch today.

I spread it out on my bed for a photo shoot and Jack said, "This is our quilt for the bed for the rest of the summer".  Well......OK; it really does look  good in our bedroom. The white background print lightens up the room.











 I never thought about using it in our bedroom until I put it on the bed and saw how well it goes with the curtains. And, how could I not have thought about how well it would look with the "Red Flowers blog banner" quilt that hangs on the wall above the bed? I have a plain green coverlet on the bed and the quilt will go across the long way and just curve over the edges on the foot and sides. I have a little bit smaller spiral log cabin quilt across the foot of the bed now and I need something different to cover the pillows. I know Jack will say what I have on the pillows works fine. It does NOT so I am rolling it around in my mind.


 This is the back of the quilt. I had 6 blocks left over  and used them in 2 sets of 3 to make the backing longer.











No matter how I angled my camera I wasn't able to get a good photo of the quilting. Maybe it will show up if you click on the picture to enlarge it. It is pretty simple, quilting in the ditch around all the 6 inch blocks and then using the #4 Bernina serpentine stitch across all the squares

I did the binding on the machine; arthritis in my hands makes it a long drawn out and  painful process by hand.
I stitch the binding to the front and press it away from the quilt.  I then pull it around to the back to cover the stitching and press with steam. I use 1/4 inch Stitch Witchery to fuse the binding to hold it in place and stitch in the ditch on the front. When I come to the corner miter I stitch along the edge of the miter fold to the point and back and then continue on down the next side.
These next 3 photos show the binding and stitching. The true color is closer to the corner photos.

Binding - Corner front

Binding -  corner back

Binding - along the edge

I am minus Lucy's company today. She is at the vet's today getting spayed.  I can't say I will miss her "suspicious" behavior. We have had 2 separate weeks of her rolling on the floor making sounds that bordered on singing. Oh, and then there is her unusual posture. One of the 9 year old great grandsons asked his cousin what she was doing, the other 9 year old looked at her and said " She's catching mice". I'm glad he didn't ask Jack!

A Finish

I finished the binding today on a set of placemats.  Although I don't usually sew down the binding on the back of anything by hand anymore, I sewed these by hand. It has become increasingly difficult to do any hand sewing but I took my Advil  and bit the bullet and did it.  I wanted them to look good on both sides as they are to be a gift.
It took an hour for each one and I did not do them all in one sitting.

I also made some Log Cabin Hexie hot pads or pot holders or what ever the recipient wants to use them for.
You can find the tutorial  here at Sewshecan blog. the 2 center ones here are finish and will go with the place mats. I used 2 fabrics for the logs and  I like the swirl effect.The other 2 on either end are not finished yet; the one in yellow and green  has 3 fabrics for the logs and the one on the right has six fabrics that set will go with the table runner that I showed in this post.

I will finish the other 2 sets soon but first I  am going  to clean up my sewing space and get ready for company and a trunk show for family.  I am hoping to give away some of my quilts. Once again,there are too  many living in closets and chests and cabinets. I gave away about 20 quilts and wall hangings to my daughter and daughter in law 3 or 4 years ago and now it is time again.

Table Runner

I am taking a break before moving along with my diamond nine patch Autumn Leaves quilt. I am not sure how I want to proceed.
The ladies I have been sewing with decided on another table runner. I took the pattern sheet home and put the basic block in EQ7 and started to play with the way I might color it.Then, I missed the next sewing day because I somehow did not load the information into my memory that the day was changed. After I bought the fabric for it, I couldn't find the pattern. So I played with the pattern in EQ.

This is the 6 inch block and below it is the pattern we were  everyone else was using. It is 2 blocks wide and a border of 3 inch squares on 2 sides that complete the pattern

This is my EQ version with the print fabric that I scanned into the program. I just used the solid looking fabrics in the EQ library that were similar to the fabrics I was using; no need to scan everything just to work out the design.

And this is the one that I made. It worked up really fast. I worked on it Friday when the ladies got together but I got hardly anything done because I wasted a lot of time getting my machine working right. I am unfamiliar with my traveling machine and I had a tension problem; it took me forever to figure out that I had something threaded wrong. I worked on it on Saturday for a couple of hours and  finished quilting it today after church. It is quiletd in the ditch with off white thread and across the squares with primary colored variagated thread using the #4 Bernina stitch.


 Anyone who knows me knows I am not fast; when I say something is fast, it is. It is 42 x 17, so maybe the reason it was fast is because it isn't very big and it was pretty simple and straight forward. A nice change from putting the diamond 9 patch rows together, which really caused a lot of frustration. There was one group of blocks that were similar and in every row, I sewed I had to keep putting them back up on the design board after I sewed the blocks in pairs to get the order right. I had to take a lot of breaks to prevent myself from tearing out my hair.

You might think that I would worry 

about getting the sewing day mixed up

 and losing the pattern

 and getting my diamond  9 patch blocks mixed up

 with each row that I sewed.

 I would worry if this was something new,

 I have been like this all my life.

We are always searching for something I have misplaced. 

Our most used expression around here is.

OH HERE IT IS!!

TA Da!

I finally finished the Fresh Cut quilt top; it is 110 inches square. I have been working on it almost every waking minute for the past week and I am so happy to have it finished. I ordered backing fabric which should be here Monday. I will have to piece the back to make it wide enough but that should be easy compare to the quilt top. I am sending it out to be quilted.
I had a bit of a time deciding how to do the borders. The top without the bordered was 96 inches and I wanted an accent 1.5 inch order. I started to worry that I might get this quilt too large for the long arm. In the end I went with a 3 inch strip in the center and 1.5 inch strips on either side.

 I didn't want to struggle with sewing the border strips on the whole quilt top 3 times so I constructed the borders before sewing them on. I made blocks for the corners to complete the pattern. I probably could have figured out how to use partial seam piecing so that the green strips looked continuous but I gave up thinking about it when I found myself snapping at my husband when he stuck his head in my sewing room to ask me a question.

I did take time out for a couple of days the week before last to make some pot holder/hot pads to exchange at the Basement Diva meeting. It was good to take a break but what was really the best was going to the Diva meeting. Click on the link to see my 2 and  the rest of the pot holders we exchanged. I didn't know how many we were supposed to make so I cut a for a bunch but only brought 2 when I found out we were supposed to bring one. If you know me that makes sense to you. The pot holder that I came home with was the leaf made by Suzie. I can't find the photo that I took of it so you have to see it on the Diva post. That is me with my crown,made by Jan, and scarf, made by Kathy. I missed getting them last month when I missed the Jellyroll Race.

These are 2 of the hot pads, front and back, that I finished from the stack that I had cut. I bought a bundle of fat quarters last fall because they called my name. I had place mats in mind but never got around to making them and they were perfect for the hot pads. For variety, I added a few more left over fabrics from recently completed projects   I found the tutorial here at Sewcanshe blog. They were fun and easy to make and it was a nice diversion. I plan to finish up the rest that I have cut and maybe make some with Christmas fabric.