Sewing Retreat with Mom

When I was at my folks last summer Mom and I went to a quilt store and got a free pattern for a flag wall hanging. It was to promote using Thangles. Mom bought a pack and split them with me then never did anything with them.

She and I have been sewing like crazy people for 4 days now. I asked her since it was my last day with her was there anything she wanted to do. She said she wanted to learn to use Thangles. I thought no problem. We stopped what we were doing and dug through her stash and pulled out scraps and yardage. I cut the strips for the Thangles and pinned them to the paper. She sewed them and subcut them.

While she sewed I decided to cut some of the other pieces. I don't think we intended to make the entire project but as you can see below that is exactly what we did. She will have to hand sew the binding on and sew and hanging sleeve to the back but all in all not bad for a few hours of work.

I will be going back and will have lots of memories of sewing with Mom this trip. See you back in Texas!

Walking the Dog

When I first got to my folks my mother asked me to come look out the front door. This lady was walking her dogs. I thought...ok...what about it. She said wait and watch. The next thing I saw was someone tagging along.

The first time I saw him he was following on the road. Of course when I have the camera ready he decided to take a little more scenic route. Do you see him? Up by the porch? It was very entertaining to watch.

Rows of Blooms

I am assembling rows now. Will press them all really well before final assembly. I want this done before I leave for home. I have a great shot I think!

Bloomer's Progress

Here are the completed blocks for the quilt my mother and I are working on. We started assembling the top last night.

Sewing in NY

I arrived in NY this past Monday and am staying at my parents house. I will be here for 2 weeks and hoped to get some sewing time in with Mom. I had cut these quilts out in Louisiana. I have sewed a little on them for the past three days and we topped them today. Thanks Mom!

These are the BQ pattern by Maple Island Quilts. They are gifts for my best friend's kids. They are not needed until the end of August and September but I plan to see my LAer the weekend after I return and want to get them in queue to avoid last minute rushing.

I am not adding borders and am thinking about making a scrappy binding from the animal prints. What do you think?

The red is for the boy.



















The green is for the girl.


















Doesn't my folk's backyard look pretty?



















The animal prints came from my stash and I newly purchased the rest. Almost three yards out of my stash. I hope to find the backings in my stash as well.

Happines Is...

Finding just enough pieces of fabric in my scrap bin to make the binding for my Saratoga Lights.

Coping


I am leaning toward a coping strip aka innner border.

Strip Stacks


Remember that bag of something I showed? That was a pieced backing that was made for a love quilt that the LAer rejected because it wasn't flat. She donated another and gave that one back to me. I have had it for at least 2 years now. In that time my scrap stash has grown and I have accumulated FQs with no real purpose in mind and no idea how I plan to use them.


I found this pattern at the Dallas show a few weeks ago and thought it would be perfect to use up scraps and FQs. I stripped down that backing and threw in some 30's FQs for additional variety and present to you a finished top. It finishes rather small at 31 x48. I will be adding borders to make it bigger. So far I have enough for 3 quilts of this size and there is enough for the borders as well. I consider my journey a sucess!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...not necessarily in that order

The bad. My friend noticed a turned block....then I noticed a second.....third...and fourth......


























The ugly. Ripped those blocks out of the top....






















The good. The top is done...again.....well just needs a bit of pressing.

Transformation

How do you think we are coming along?

Saratoga Lights is Topped

I finished the top. Thanks for another great pattern Judy Laquidara! I tried and tried to take a picture outside but the wind was not cooperating. That seems to happen a lot when I want to take pictures of my quilts.
























Here is a close up. Everyone seems to think I used solids. This will be DS' birthday present this year.

Special Project

Do you remember us?? She added friends!

Quilters ADD and Stash Possibilities

Last weekend I was preparing to embark upon my venture into using my scraps and other cast offs to make a quilt. I readily go to the yardage in my stash to make something, usually resorting to a trip to the LQS because I don’t have that perfect match. I want to learn to make it work.

I went to my cutting board and cleared off a spot. I realized I needed to press the fabric and went to clear off the ironing board. In the process of doing that I spotted a pile of FQs and remembered that I had bought a box to put those in. I went and fetched that box and started loading the FQs into it. I decided to go through the stash cabinets to get more FQs.

While I was digging through there I found a piece of fabric I had been looking for. This also reminded me that there were two other pieces of fabric that I had been missing for close to 1.5 years. Back into the stash cabinets pulling FQs, finding asian prints that I wanted to put with the rest of my asian prints. I found one of the missing pieces of fabric. This spurred me to lift each pile on each shelf and go through it because I knew the other piece HAD to be in there somewhere even though I had been through this exercise before. I found it! I am so happy.

I look around and see that I have all these little stacks of things that I want to use soonish or pieces that I want to group with other pieces and so on and so forth. Because I have touched almost all my fabric again I remember what is in there and remember intended projects or remember a special piece of fabric I wanted to use one day once I found the perfect pattern. Now they are all fresh in my mind. My urge to go fabric shopping is suppressed because I have fresh projects at least in my mind. I have lots of STASH possibilities.

You can probably guess that I did not cut scraps nor cast offs. So this weekend I am preparing to embark upon my venture into using my scraps and other cast offs to make a quilt………

Playing In the Stash

I made 7 of these in less than 2 hours. They are made from the Almost Free Tissue Holder pattern on Ami Simm's site. Some of these are to be gifted to some special ladies tomorrow.

Design Wall Monday

Here is my expanded Saraoga Lights designed by Judy Laquidara. I added a row and a column at ds request. Just two more seams to have the center together and on to the borders. Hop over to Judy's to see what is on everyone elses design wall.

Percolating Project

I bought this fabric a number of years ago. I held onto it looking for the perfect project to showcase it. I think I have found it and will have to check the size of the focus square to make sure it will show it off and not chop it up too much.

The background is a nice deep purple and then all those gorgeous pinks, greens, blues and golds.

The project is Ann's NYE mystery that can be seen here. The purple will go where Ros has orange. I am going to use a solid black where she has her patterened black. After that I am undecided. I welcome your input.

A Dozen Kits

Back in this post I talked about 12 kits that I had put together and wanted to make up next.

• There is a bolt of red, white and blue. I made a QOV from that.
• Pampered pooch fabric and pattern. Just topped that
• OU fabric. I don't know if there was fabric for one or two there but two were made and delivered
• Black and yellow purse. Still a kit.
• Red white and blue split decision. Still a kit
• Red White and Black Spring Breeze. Done.
• Pink and Brown quilt. Still a kit.
• BQ Quilt. After a year and a half I finally found the missing fabric tonight...still a kit.
• Red and White Irish Chain. Still a kit
• 3 Giant Ninepatch quilts. Topped
• Chevron Daisy - done
• 1 more but I can't see it. Probably not a quilt.

So from my dozen I have 5 completed quilts and 4 quilt tops. That is from 6 of those kits. In that timeframe there have been more quilts completed or topped. I have been very productive and am quite pleased.

I will have to set goals around these remaining kits and see if I can get them done within a set timeframe.

Design Wall Monday

What is that in the bag?




















What is this thing?






















Stay tuned! Hop over to Judy's to see what is on everyone else's design wall.

Dallas Quilt Show

I went to the Dallas show last weekend. I had some issues with my camera but managed to photograph all the quilts that I wanted to. I really liked this first quilt because the fabrics really enhanced the pattern adding interesting detail and movement.


























This close up shows the print on the fabric. Lovely.



















I liked this quilt and did a double take when I few quilts later I found it in red. It is fun to see the same quilt done in different colors.

I couldn't help but smile when I saw this one.

Spring Has Sprung

What an interesting thing to wake up to in North Texas on the first day of spring. We got 5" overnight. It is all gone now. We will be in the 60's and 70's the rest of the week.

Monroe Quilt Show

I went to my guild show a few weeks ago. I really thought this quilt was so unusual and wonderful. Notice the flip flops in the border match the swim suits. So adorable.