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.

Happy Thanksgiving

Almost Finished

I was ready to layer up this quilt October 22 and I posted that I thought it would take 2 weeks if all went well. On my October 29, post I showed the 2 sections of the layered quilt folded up on my sewing table all ready to quilt.
Well it is quilted and the sections joined and the prairie points and the facing/binding is sewn on. I have started hand stitching the facing to the back of the quilt. There were a few bumps in the road. Besides Jack being in the hospital 4 days, there was a follow up doctor visit, which took another whole day out of my quilting time. There were leaves to be raked and hauled to the wooded area. We also went shopping for a more comfortable chair for Jack (and a bonus find of a chair for me). That led to time spent rearranging furniture. There were many distractions dealing with Lucy and a few timeouts along the way for me and vertigo episodes. All things considered, I guess that getting it this far in a month isn't too far off the mark.

Here it is spread out across my bed for a photo shoot

 There seems to be a mystery lump here. I wonder what who it might be.

Mystery solved, it's Lucy. One of her favorite things to do is to burrow underneath something. She suddenly appears whenever I make the bed in the morning or when I lay something out on the bed to photograph it or when I dump the laundry basket of clean clothes on the bed to sort and fold them.








Another thing she likes to do is remove the pins from my pincushion and even from the seam that I had pinned on the back of the quilt where the sections are joined. I am now much more diligent about putting the loose pins in the pincushions and putting the pin cushions away.

This photo on the left shows the back of the quilt with the prairie points and binding/facing stitched on but not yet turned.



On the right are the prairie points, shown from the front, after the facing has been turned and stitched.

Below  is the facing stitched on the back at the corner. I used 2 1/2 inch scrap strips, mostly bias, because I wanted bias when going around the rounded corners.

The edge finishing was much easier this time because I knew I would be trimming the corners round. On the last quilt I tried to have square corners but because of a seam at the corner of the block there was too much bulk. It required the use of my seam ripper and there was much frustration.


I have my needle,thread, scissors  and the quilt ready by my chair with my Ott light and I am going to spend the rest of the evening hand stitching the facing.

Life Happens

I said sometimes life gets in the way of our plans. I thought I would get started quilting the other HST quilt but that didn't happen. I no sooner got the last basting pins in than we had a medical emergency and Jack was in the hospital for 4 days. He is home again and after sleeping 12 hours last night he is feeling pretty good.

Here are the 2 sections of the quilt, all folded up and ready to quilt. I had to be sure to fold the quilt sections so no batting was exposed. Lucy will not leave the batting alone. I had to shut her up in another room when I was pin basting so she wouldn't tear pieces out of the exposed batting.

Here she is  on an old quilt on my cutting table, hanging out with me and napping guarding the quilt sections.

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!

WHAT ! The Middle of October?

The middle of October already, WOW! I didn't accomplish much in September. As the saying goes "life happens" and there was a lot of that happening in our family. It wasn't all bad, our grandson got married in Missouri and it was a lovely wedding. Half of our family didn't make it to the wedding because of our great-grandson's ruptured appendix and two separate stays in the hospital. Great grandson is finally doing well.  After coming home with a rash, nausea, and not eating much for 3 days he told his mother that  he felt amazing and couldn't wait to eat scrambled eggs and sausage for dinner.

Just before the end of September, our granddaughter and her 10 year old son moved in; we are now a 4 generation household. We are all in the process of adjusting.

This is a photo or all seven great grand kids; there are 2-10 year olds, 2-11 year olds, 2-13 year olds, and one 14 year old.  Last weekend we had a birthday party for 5 of them.  In the past we were having a birthday party every 2 weeks through September and October and then one more party combined with Thanksgiving.  Maybe next year we will have one party that includes the 2 summer birthdays as well. As they get older it has become increasingly difficult to get them all together at one time.

I did have some time to quilt.

I quilted this quilt in 3 sections and joined them together. It has been a while since I did it this way and I was surprised that the hand sewing on the back at the joined seams went as well as it did. I took my Advil ahead of time and my hands were not so stiff, though it was slow going.



I did not use a border but finished with prairie points. ordinarily that is fairly easy to do but the edges of the quilt were already quilted and I planned to add the prairie points and then the folded binding as a facing. That did not work well at the corners, too much bulk. After much fiddling and fussing, I ripped out the (several layers of) stitching and cut the corners round. I am still working on fixing the next 2 corners before I sew on the rest of the binding/facing.
I will keep this in mind when I work on the other HST quilt.

I sew several stings of prairie points together and adjust the spaces between the strings as necessary when I sew them to the edge of the quilt.
As usual Lucy settled down for a nap on the quilt as I was working. You can see her at the center top of this photo. I wasn't working on the quilt body at this time so I left her there but sometimes I have to remove here from my sewing room and close the door.

She likes to hang out with me and she sometimes watches what I am doing intently

 as though she was learning how to do it herself.

Other times she just settles down and purrs herself to sleep.

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 .

Changing Over for Fall

When I woke up at 5 AM this morning I knew I would not to back to sleep. I got up but I didn't want to make a lot of noise and wake anyone else. I decided to change out the little quilts on my boards in the sewing room.

This is the shelf and the flannel covered board just above my sewing machine.

 This is the board on the adjacent wall. The pumpkins above and the top harvest quiltlet on the right were both made to fit over one of those 8 x 10 clear plastic standing sign holders.  This year I pinned them up on the boards instead.
The little colorwash is 5 x 7 and made with 35 - 3/4 inch squares. I made several of them years ago when I was playing around with the little squares. The hand was one given to me by my friend Lynn the year I asked all the ladies in the Friendship block exchange to give me a block with their hand traced on fabric. This was an extra hand that she traced and I love looking at the fabric.
The floral square was a piece of fabric that I layered up and free motion quilted around the shapes for practice and later my friend Jan showed me how to apply piping inside the binding. I had won a basket with notions in it and there was a tool for "Piping Hot Binding".
Hanging on the side is a Name tag I made with a little block I designed in EQ and then printed on Fabric. (I did not sew those tiny flying geese in the border). I put it on a ribbon to hang around my neck instead of pinning it on my clothes.



This is what the whole corner looks like. The shelves both extend another 18 inches on the left to the bookcase. Next to my sewing machine table is a 4 foot table along the adjacent wall.  Right now it holds a little waste basket of scraps that need to be sorted by color and added to my scrap stash. The other basket has stuff to put away where it belongs. Right now I have 3 various sized baskets that are similarly filled.
Baskets work well for keeping things together  while I work on something but  putting things away keeps getting put off; I seem to just buy another basket.

I have pretty much accomplished cleaning up  my sewing room and I am ready to get some quilting started.

I hope everyone has a nice Labor Day weekend.

Last 2 Blocks

I finished he final 2  blocks for the HST quilt I have been working on for over a year.

 I had planned on adding  one row of 7 blocks to both sides, to complete the pattern, and to add one row of 4 blocks on the bottom to the 4 blocks by 6 blocks section I had already sewed together. I have a slight change of plans.
Instead I will sew a row of 4 blocks to the bottom but I will sew the other 2 rows of 7 blocks each to together and sew them on one side. I am going to quilt this in two sections; my original plan would have had 3 sections making one more seam to sew. The new plan will still complete the pattern with less work.

I ordered fabric for the backing and it should arrive tomorrow. So.......... in the meantime I am going  to clean up my space which is so bad that I am not even going to show a picture of it.  Then, I am going to get my space set up to quilt. There are the 2 HST bed quilts to quilt and this 24 inch square table topper that is layered up already so I will probably quilt it first.

That's the plan for the next few days but you know what they day about the best laid plans.

Two More HST Blocks

Almost all quilting and sewing has been on hold this past week. When I  wasn't picking produce from the garden or cooking I was shopping with my DIL(clothes) or Jack (chair) or dealing with vertigo.
I did have a nice relaxing time when we went out to lunch on Thursday with Jack's sister and her husband. so I am not feeling sorry for myself.

I still have this quilt up on the wall and it is 6 blocks by 6 blocks. I decided to make 6 more blocks for the bottom edge to complete the pattern. Idon't really care if the pattern is complete at the top as that part will be under the pillow which will have a cover to go with the quilt.
















These are the 2 blocks I started and finished today. Only the blue one is sewn together in this photo.

Lucy likes hanging out with her people and I guess it was my turn this morning.
She has to inspect everything and she had a good time hiding behind my small design board and attacking various pieces of fabric, scissors, seam rippers and other objects; she can make a toy out of anything. She will also eat tiny shreds of fabric, causing me to become more careful to clean up small shreds of fabric and string.

Before we went to the sewing room this morning she managed to sneak out the door and she wore herself out tearing around the yard like a streak  of lightning. I caught her when she plopped down to rest.

So here she is ready for a nap. About two minutes after I shot this photo she was out like a light and I was able to sew the block behind her without interference.

Progress

Today is Wednesday and this is the post  that I thought I published on Monday. Not sure what happened; nothng much has changed except I decided on the red border and cut the strips in readiness to sew them on at our quilting get together today. I was all prepared to go but woke up late not feeling good. I will probably leave it all  packed up and ready for next week.

Monday, August 14, 2016
I made the rest of the blocks for the little piece I am making with the block of the month project with my small group  of quilting friends.  I finally got 9 blocks finished and sewed together. Making 6 inch blocks from this pattern was a lot  more fussy than fun.

This is the EQ  version that I had planned. After I made the center block I didn't like it. I  played with the layout in EQ using different color placement and combinations.
















This is the fabric versions that I decided on. Most of my points are sharp but it wasn't easy and it isn't perfect, however it is acceptable. I will not be making anything again soon that is small and fussy.



















I am ready to add 3 inch borders when I decide which fabric I like. Initially, I planned on the green print (on the left) but I am leaning toward the red print (on the right). With 3 inch borders this will be 24 inches.  I like it well enough to keep but I really don't need another table topper or small wall hanging and that is a good size for a gift.

I will put this off until tomorrow when the quilting friends get together. I can get my backing ready and get some feed back before I cut and add the borders. If I get the rest of my stuff together for tomorrow, for once I can be ready to go before the last minute.

Not Much Sewing Going On

There has not been much sewing going on here in the last two weeks.

This 6 inch block is my rather pathetic accomplishment. The small group of ladies I have been sewing with is working on  block of the month.  I am not going to make the BOM quilt but will use some of the blocks for small projects. I bought some red and green fabric and a light background and will make some Christmas things.













These next photos show some components ready to sew. they have bee sitting like this for almost a week.












I am surprised that Lucy has not knocked them on the floor or played with them. When I sew on the machine I have to shut her out of the room. She is very interested in the moving parts and she gets right up on the sewing table to have a close look.








One of the things keeping me busy is the garden. my daughter and SIL planted vegetables this year and everything is growing well. The cucumbers and zucchini are ready to pick, more EVERY DAY. would you believe that we have more cucumbers than zucchini. Daughter and SIL  are  in Montana hiking for 2 weeks and I have been busy, busy, busy keeping up with the garden. Now the peppers and eggplants are becoming ready to pick.
The 24 tomato plants are huge and heavy with tomatoes, that are mostly green yet, but every day there are more and more that are red. The weeds have also been doing well and I did have some help with pulling them. Some of the weeds in the Butternut squash patch are taller than me and not easy to reach. We were ahead of them for a while but we missed a few that were hiding and the squash just keeps growing all over the place and there is no place for me to step. Because I have a balance problem due to Meniere's Syndrome I use a hiking pole for stability on the rough ground when I go out to the garden; I am not the most agile person getting into the squash patch.

For 3 days I worked to clean up the 12 foot diameter flower garden. It was overgrown with weeds. My daughter in law was here over the weekend and she was a big help doing that.  She dug up some yucca plants that keep coming back and we moved some large rocks that outline the flower garden. We moved them in toward the center 1 to  2 feet to shrink the garden circle. We left the crab grass that was growing there, outside the rocks and it got mowed last evening by another grandson in law. We have had grandchildren stopping almost every day for some  reason or another and our son and DIL were here for 4 days over the weekend. I have come to the conclusion that there was some arrangement to keep an eye on us. Probably a good idea but I am not sure I like it.


My agenda for today is making pickled beets and pickled cucumbers. Oh, and doing the laundry; working in the garden has me wearing 2 or three sets of clothes a day.

Maybe some sewing tomorrow.