Diamond Challenge Start

I have fussed around long enough with EQ7 working out how I want to do the Diva Diamond Challenge. I bought neutral fabric for the background blocks at the Farnpark Quilt Show on vendors weekend and I have been doing nothing with it since then.

This is the fabric I bought to get started. It is arranged left to right from light to dark; the order of the right 4 fabrics is subject to change.   These colors are all pretty close to the true colors

This is the same 7 fabrics with 2 more darker fabrics added on the right. These are from my stash and I don't have enough of either of them but I added them just to think about what I am going to look for.

This is what I started on today and it is all I accomplished. There is really no yellow in either of these fabrics. I used the first 2 fabrics for these blocks; the true colors show best in the top color run photo. Each set of subsequent blocks will have the darker fabric from the previous blocks in the "4" position and the next (darker) fabric in the "5" position. Think of the blocks as 9 patch blocks with the 4 position as the inner patch on the outside rows and the 5 position as the center and corner patches. I need to do some math before I get started on the other blocks. Each subsequent set of blocks will increase by 4 blocks more than the previous set.

This is the background I have worked out in EQ7 using the fabrics I scanned into the program for this quilt. .  I still have to shop for 2 darker fabrics for the outside blocks. I believe this will be the orientation but I may change my mind and turn the blocks so the width is vertical. I will need to make that decision after 2 more sets of blocks and I should probably decide before I shop for more fabric as the amount I need will depend on the orientation I choose.




























My original EQ version was posted here and I may go back to that one, minus the blue patches

I have made 9 patch colorwash backgrounds like this using square 9 patch blocks and I thought this would be another variation.  The  quilt with the red flowers on the top of this blog has a 9 patch colorwash background done in square neutral blocks.

By the time I am finished with this

 I may be sorry I ever started. 

We'll see!

Neighborhood House

I received this sweet little house block in the mail Friday as a thank you for participating in the Neighborhood Block Party hosted by Irene at  Hilachas and her sister Ida at My Sister Made Me Do It.  

I will be doing something with it but not sure yet what that will be. Right now it is up on my bulletin board.














 In 2011 Beth from Love Laugh Quilt hosted the Neighborhood Block Party. Everyone who participated  received a little fussy cut house patch. I made this one block curved log cabin wall hanging with the little house patch in the center; I hang in in my sewing room in February.

On My Walls

I haven't done any sewing since I made the second Neighborhood house.

 But I did go to the local quilt show during vendors weekend and purchased some neutral fabric for a low contrast diamond colorwash background.
The six pieces along the bottom are arranged in light to dark order and the larger piece at the top will go in between the 2nd and 3rd from the left. I will be adding something darker at the end and some (sky) blue sprinkled around.  We'll see how it goes.

I also changed out the  small quilts on my design wall and bulletin boards. This is the board between the two shelves above my sewing machine. The shelves are 6 ft. long and go from the book case to the adjacent wall.

This is on the adjacent wall. It is a narrow space a few inches wider on either side of the board.I covered these two boards with gray flannel for better color photos. 

I like to change some of the little pieces hanging on them from time to time to brighten up my mostly white space. A few of the pieces stay all the time, the bunny postcard from Annie (Freezeframe) and the "Quarrelsome Wife" proverb. 

.

Below is my dinky 4 x 4 foot design wall

I made the 3 more colorful pieces when the Diva group was working through Ruth McDowell's "Piecing Workshop" book. After I made the pieced leaves I used the same border fabrics to frame a large floral motif and a left over block  from another Diva project. I wanted all 3 pieces to tie together but have different borders.

 I made these to be hung on a wall together but they hang in my closet. I put them up here in a way to fill  the design board but I would probably not hang them exactly this way on a wall. I have a lot of quilts that I made because something inspired me, they do not fit in with the decor in our house or in the homes of anyone in my family. They hang in the closet and I am going to get them out and put them up in my sewing room to enjoy and to inspire me.

The other two finished pieces on the lower left are zentangle inspired circles that I drew on fabric and stitches on a background and the quilted on most of the larger lines. The other little circle on the middle right is just a circle drawn on white fabric. Looking at this, I am wishing I had a white room where I could hang this arrangement and add unquilted small tangled circles in different sizes to fill in the empty spaces.

Hmmm......They are right there on the wall in this mostly white room. The walls, bookcase, shelves, tables, and sewing machine table are white. My office chairs are black and my rug is gray, the closet doors are white, the valence over the window is black and white stripe and the door is orange. Why have I never thought about hanging these in my sewing room before? They will have to come down if I need the design wall for something and I may change them out for other things from time to time. for now I will enjoy them. Yes!

Another Neighborhood House

I finished another house for the Neighborhood Block Party. I plan to get them in the mail tomorrow.

I had great grand kids here Sunday and 3 of them wanted to sew. We were going through all of my boxes of fabric to find something they wanted to use and I pulled out some fabric  for another house. You can check out some of the other houses here

I like making houses but I had trouble getting these houses the right size. I had to redo the left side of this one as it was 1/2 inch too small so now it is a bit offside. I should stick to wonky for improv piecing.

The kids all wanted to make something different so it got hectic. Although I planned to get some photos of them working  I was so busy helping everyone that  I never got even one pic.

House Block

It has been almost 2 months since my last post. I have no excuses; I just didn't do any sewing. I did rearrange my sewing room and that made things a lot better but there was no inspiration or desire to sew anything.  I dragged out 3 fairly large boxes of photographs and took up all the space I might have used for sewing.

In January I made a commitment to make a 12 1/2 inch house block for the Neighborhood Block Party. Beth from Love Laugh Quilt hosted the party for a few years but last year life got in the way and there was no block party. This year Irene, from  Hilachas, and her sister Ida, from My Sister Made Me Do It, decided to start it up again.   I still have boxes and piles of photos all  over the place but the blocks are due in a few weeks.  Time to get started!

I got out my box of "housing elements" and I found a strip of leftover grass and the  Sewing Divas from the Lorelei panel that we used for our Basement Diva Challenge. I cleared a small space for cutting  and pressing, pulled out my large laundry basket of scraps and started playing. I chose one of the smaller single Divas for the occupant of the house and the yellow striped border around the block  reminded me of a door frame. None of my "sky" fabrics rang any bells for me until  I found the raindrop fabric. I would have preferred the blue or gray background raindrop fabric but the raindrops were the wrong direction on the blue and gray strips I found.

 I had fun making this block and the ideas for another project are running around in my head. Sometimes you just have to do something to get the creativity flowing. I had that in mind when I signed up to make a house block. Maybe I will Make one more block to send (just to build up some creative steam).

Happy New Year and 2015 Finishes

Happy  New Year everyone.

I pray in every way it will be a better year for everyone everywhere.

2015 was not a bad year for us personally. Jack had some health issues but he is doing well.
Two grandson's got married and one became engaged, all happy occasions. Our son and his wife moved 3 hours away, which is not too far and we see them often.
I did some gardening and Jack and I did some yard work this fall, I did the raking of leaves and he drove the tractor to the dumping grounds in the wooded area. We enjoyed all of it. I did have a little setback in the summer after I saw 2 snakes where I was working. However, I never saw them again and I got over being afraid of seeing them.  We'll see how that works in the spring and summer; it is easy to be brave when I don't see the snakes.

I didn't make a lot of quilts in 2015 and I didn't keep track of them very well. I don't even have  a picture of the finished quilt I made as a wedding gift  for my grandson and his wife. It was the biggest project of the year for me.

This photo showing the long arm quilting. is the only I have of the finished quilt.

This collage shows blocks on the design wall, the border on the one corner, and the top and backing ready to go to the long arm quilter.

If anyone is interested in seeing more it is all under Fresh Cut  on the side bar.

If I remember right, after I got it back from the quilter;  due to the size, I wasn't able to get a shot of the whole thing without help. I had to get it wrapped and delivered before anyone to help was available.



These 3 quilts are bed and throw size and were unfinished projects from other years. The flimsy on the right was from a friend; she gave it to me when I admired it.

The two on top here are wall hangings and the two on the bottom are baby quilts. The one on the right is the back;  I can't find a photo of the front.

These below are table runners and toppers, place mats and pot holders.

These are the table runners and mats I finished in December.

So.......... here we are.  It is 2016 and I feel as though I didn't accomplish very much.

I am planning to evaluate the options for making my sewing room more user friendly. When using what worked in a previous space, things don't always work out well. I found I lost interest by the time I moved everything around for each step (like cutting and pressing) of whatever project  on which I was working. I may have to replace some of my storage solutions and maybe even some furniture. If I don't find a satisfactory solution I probably won't be sewing much.

Wish me luck

 I am not ready to quit.

Mary`s Boy Child (Harry Belafonte)

And One More

I finished one more small table topper for a small round "catchall" table by the front door. I still have some fabric left over from what I bought the day I got out to Quilts and Sew forth quilt shop. I decided the little table needed to be dressed for Christmas and I had some time to make
something fast.
The table is about 19 1/2 inches in diameter and the topper is 19 inches point to point and 16 1/2 across side to side. It is a perfect fit.

I cleaned up my sewing room when I finished this and  I am done sewing until after Christmas.
















I hung one more little quilt on the narrow wall at the end of the  bedroom hallway.
Just outside my sewing room door is a little shelf, made by our grandson about 27 years ago  It has 4 pegs where usually we hang sweaters or jackets and I put seasonal things on the shelf. I usually put my snowmen out in January but this year we are kind into the snowman theme so I got them out early

The two tall snow men on the right are wood and I bought them as well as the little guy in front of them (he is holding a little bowl of birdseed). The short guy right next to the tall snow man on the left was also a purchase. I made the rest of them using Warm and Natural batting on the outside.
The guy in the blue hat with the "Think Spring" sign and the snow lady with the red hat and scarf represent Jack and I and they used to be on a wreath on our apartment door. This little vignette cheers up our hallway.






The Christmas dishes are out, all the Christmas quilts are out, and I am  done decorating.  It is a good thing too because I am not finished shopping and and have not even started to wrap.

More Finishes

I finished 3 more mats I probably should count this as one finish as it is really one project.
Using the same fabrics  plus one more (with the red birds)as the one for the coffee table, I made this one for the one for the chest in the living room.
















It goes with this one that I finished last week for the coffee table

These 2 go on hutches in the dining room and to them I added a few strips from years past to the fabrics I used in the other 2.

 In my sewing room I hung Christmas wall hangings and set out decorations from other years, some decorations that I made and some that were gifts. I like to use what I have from the past because I like to remember  where they came from and who gave them to me. I have one or two things from my preteen years. (They are really old.)


For many years we had a small tree that hung on the wall above Jack's dresser.  Over the years I changed the decorations several times; I added lights and decorated it with small ornaments.  Jack loved it and we kept it up after we took the other tree down. He always called me Scrooge when I  retired it for the year.
Last year when we moved I threw it away.  Well............. he wasn't real happy about that. After we got the tree up last week he started talking about "his tree" again. So, I started looking for a small tree that could hang on the wall, I don't think I ever saw another one over the years that was like the one we had; I had been looking. We were at Walmart last week and I looked at the small trees; we ruled out a fiber optic tree and chose a prelit tree that was displayed on a very high shelf. I thought is was 30 inches, which was taller than I wanted, but we had someone get a box down for us and we took it anyway as the box didn't seem too long. There 2  parts that fit together and it turned out to be 48 inches. I thought we would return it as it was too tall for Jacks chest of drawers but he was already attached to it. We set it on my dresser and I decorated it with a few shiny ornaments and some of the ornaments from friends and grandchildren and great grand children and children from the preschool room at church. I got to use a lot of personal things that didn't fit so well  on the slimmer living room tree we bought 2 years ago.

Jack is happy and I'm happy. He can look at it when he is sitting at his desk and we leave it on for a while every night before we go to sleep.

A finish

I may not be making anything very large but I am getting around to making things that I want to use for Christmas.
I needed some color in the living room and I wanted something to cover the top of the coffee table.

This  18 x 36  piece started with a block that I made with the intention of making a whole quilt, each block done in different fabrics. After one block I decided it as going to require more fabric shopping and more time than I wanted to spend on another Christmas quilt. The block  went into my odd block box until this week. I finally got out to the quilt shop and came home with 5 one yard pieces to add to the block for a table runner.It adds some needed color to the living room.

 I am making another runner this size for the top of a bachelor chest for the same room. The second piece will not have a block, just strips of the same 3 fabrics that are on the right and  sides of the block. I have another fabric with red birds of which I am adding  wider random width strips. I hope I can get it finished today.

A Finish

I have finished my Triple 4 Patch, binding and all.  I had long strips of the floral striped fabric from cutting the borders from the length of the fabric. I decided to use the lighter blue stripes for the binding.

 It looks darker here but I think you can get the idea. The lighter stripes were about 2 inches wide so I laid the edge of my ruler at the
edge of the lighter strip and cut 1/2 inch into the darker stripe for 2 1/2 inch strips. So my strips were like this on the left.

I folded it in half and pressed it and laid the strip on the edge on the quilt front with the raw edge of the darker fabric face up on the raw edge of the quilt.


After I stitched the binding all around I pressed it away from the quilt. You can see it in this photo
before I pressed it around to the back with only the lighter fabric showing.  I wrapped the binding to the back and pressed it down and secured it with thin strips of fusible web (for me this works so much better than pins); I stitched with the #4 Bernina stitch from the front.






 This is how it looks on the front. I didn't care to have the entire width of the stitches on the binding because it is already stitched on.





I wanted to have the entire width of the stitching on the binding on the back of the quilt, both for appearance and so the edge would be flat and secure. I used variegated thread  so it may be hard to see unless you enlarge the photo.


I couldn't get a shot of the full quilt today because there is no space to spread it out. I got all the the Christmas  quilts and wall hangings and linens out the they were are still all over my bed.

Almost a Finish

I finally had a day to sew all day; they are rare anymore for some reason. I machine quilted the Triple Four Patch quilt and all I have left to do is trim away the excess and sew on the binding. I am contemplating what to do about the binding. I have a lot of leftover binding pieces from years of quilting and I could add some more strips and make a scrappy binding. Another option would be to cut strips of something and make a one fabric binding.

I laid the quilt out on my bed for the photos because it is the best place for lighting and the best for this size quilt.

I also get photos that are pretty much true color.

I used off white/cream thread to quilt through the light colored squares and a multicolor  thread to quilt through the 4 inch squares. I echoed the lines of the light chains.










I used the same multicolor thread with the number 4 Bernina stitch and followed the edges of the floral stripes in the border.

I never noticed this one small 4 patch that is turned sideways until I was quilting through it. At first I thought I was stitching in the wrong direction and when I stopped to look at it I managed to get a bobble in my stitching line.
I thought at first I should fix the stitching because it shows up really well in the dark purple patch. It will be my "humility patch". Keeping it real, I never need to deliberately add a humility patch; there are always plenty of them to be found.

This is the back; I included my hand to show the scale of the print. The colors are brighter in the photo than they really are. I'm not sure why they show up brighter when the other fabric were pretty much true in the photos.

I will probably finish the binding tomorrow and then do some Christmas sewing. I need a few more small pieces for the end tables etc.