Feedsack Patches

This little quilt was gifted to me as a kit last year.  Darlene Zimmerman is the designer.  I have been trying to sew more so grabbed this to use as a leader ender.  I just need to add borders now.  Will post a better picture once the borders are added.

My Rainbow Orca Bay is in 4 sections now.  I will be pressing them tonight and assembling the sections.  Still trying to decide on borders for that one.  I have an eclectic border plan at this point.

Quilts hugs.

Swooze

Design Wall Monday

I have finished that last row since this picture was taken.  I now have four sections and will press them real good then sew them together.  I need to decide if I am going to make the original border from the Orca Bay pattern or if I will make simple HSTs.

To see what is on other people's design walls go to Patchworktimes.

Quilty hugs.

Swooze

Stash Report

This is my mother's stash.  The white 13 gallon trash bag was all her fabric and scraps.  There is a small plastic tote on top that has three jelly rolls in it.  I will be assimilating it into my own stash over time.  I already took a small scrap and used it in my rainbow Orca Bay.  I think I will try to do that with all my future quilts.

The brown paper sack (click on photo to see full picture) contains all her patterns and books.  If nothing else she kept it simple.  When I am ready I will be culling what I won't use but it is too soon right now.  She had only one planned project that she bought for when we were together.  I washed the fabric while I was at my parents house when she passed.  We left sooner than expected and I left that fabric up there.  Oh well, I plan to get it when I go back for a visit later this year.

See Patchworktimes for more stash reports.

Happy quilting.

Swooze

MOM

My world will never be the same.  I received a call last week from the doctor at the hospital telling me I needed to get home to NY and not wait.  Mom went into the hospital on Friday for fluid build up and low blood pressure.  The treatment gave her a heart attack from which she could not recover.  They placed her on a ventilator and heart pump.

My brother and I both left Sunday a.m.  He from Louisiana and I from Texas arriving within 10 minutes of one another on Monday.  While she showed slight improvement it was clear that she would not recover and we removed her from life support on Wednesday.

We buried her yesterday on a beautiful sunny afternoon.  She is just down the hill from her parents and on the same road from her two baby daughters.  I smile when I think that she now has the opportunity to finish raising my sisters.  I will miss her.

If you click here you will find some stories that I wrote about her on my blog.  She was a great quilting buddy.  I always told her I got the best Mother.

A Design Emerges

I decided to arrange my dark stars with the peach so that they would go edge to edge.  I then decided to arrange the colored stars along this row.  Of course now that I have started assembling the rows I thought of another idea for arranging the colors but I don't think I will be ripping back to do the "new idea".

There is a whole stack of 3" string blocks that act as the cornerstones in the sashing.  I think I was gifted all but one that I will need.  There were 4 pink ones.  Guess where those are destined.  Then the rest are almost evenly split between yellow/orange and blue.  I am placing the blues so that they run through the peach star rows.  The yellow/orange will be sprinkled throughout the rest of the quilt.

Can you see the plan?  Pics sure show lots of mistakes I will be fixing!

I am linking up with Judy for Design Wall Monday here.

Orca Bay 2

I have a layout I am going with,  I showed pictures to a friend's grandson and he asked why I didn't put all the color in the center.  I told him I had thought about doing that.  I sewed my color blocks together so that it would be easier to move things around a little.  I have 6 separate "other" color blocks.  Yellow, purple, blue/peach, rust, maroon/batik and orange.  One epiphany I had was to layout the peach and black blocks on the diagonal and then I placed the colored stars on each side of that diagonal.  Can you see the peach going top right to bottom left through the center.

I've had fun playing with this and have sewn most of the star rows together.  I plan to continue sewing those rows together and then I can start working on the "sashing" rows.  The majority of the cornerstones are blue but I have lots of other colors too so that will be the next decision I will have to work on.

Design Wall Monday - 4/15/2013

I did not finish all the wing units but I had enough to play with the layout.  I have several sets of wings that are not red.  There are blue, purple, yellow, and rust.  I scattered the color in this layout only pooling the peach stars that I received.  I had tried putting yellow with peach but it overwhelmed the peach.  Not sure the blue is much better as it lies there quietly. 

I didn't feel like trying another layout at the time but am going to try pooling all the colors together.  I plan to start sewing pieces together that will allow me to have fewer parts to handle while trying different layouts.  Would love to hear your thoughts so far.  Pics below show two of the color spots close up.

For those with eagle eyes this is the alternate layout created ny Laura that is shown here.

Motivation?

Am I sewing because I am blogging or am I blogging because I am sewing?

85 Orca Bay Wing Units complete
23 OBWU half complete
20 OBWU strings awaiting wings

I really want to play with these on the design floor!

More Love

This is the fourth quilt I have assembled for the quiltvillehearts yahoogroup.  I was a recipient of one of their lovely quilts.  This one will be mailed off in the coming days to the quilter for the finishing touches and then sent off to the intended recipient.

I am not sure why but I LOVE red for the borders of these quilts.  One other that I assembled had a blue Hawaaiin shirt border.  Was going for the print but rest assured if I had found a 100% cotton red Hawaaiin shirt it would have been on that quilt.   One other just did not want red no matter how hard I tried.  It got a bright pink border.  I guess I really like red huh?

When I assemble these I normally work on a row at a time.  I decided to have a little fun and sewed 80 blocks into 40 pairs into 20 quads into 10 rows of 8.  At this point the rows were attached to one another at the mid point.  I laid it out on the bed and pinned it in a few places then sat down with it and finished pinning it working with halves of the quilt at a time.  It went together quickly.  I quickly added the borders the next day since I was on a sewing high.

Friday night I sewed with the girls at the church.  I was attaching wings to the string blocks.  These units are shown in a previous post.  60 are done with 68 to go.  I have wings attached to 48 of those.  I'm working on chunks at a time rather than assembly line sewing everything at once.  I find I learn little things on the way and do a better job on subsequent blocks.  I just want to get these units done so I can LAY THEM OUT!!

Hugs all.

Orca Bay and Lazy Sunday

This is the unit that is slowing my progress on Orca Bay.  I have sewn everything else possible, well almost, for this quilt trying to avoid this step.  My "wings" don't fit against my string block correctly.  My string units seem too large.  Many of the components were donated to me premade so I am not sure what the issue is.  I am a "close enough" sewer so I am just mushing them together the best I can. 

I just finished trimming the last of the string blocks so I plan to start sewing wings onto them.  I have 70 more to go and know that I end up ripping some here and there as I don't always get my point quite right.  I'd LOVE to finish these so that I can play with the layout this weekend.  We will see.  Do you see this is just a very fancy "flying geese" unit?  Bonnie called them crabs.  See the white eyes?

Are you making Lazy Sunday?  This is currently running in Quiltmaker magazine as a mystery.  Step 2 brought us one of the blocks completed.  I was fortunate to have taken a class from Bonnie on Nrw Year's for this quilt.  We were sworn to secrecy though.  I am checking in with others working from the magazine to make sure that I don't overshare.  I am going to pick this up again and get all the units of the curernt magazine step made so that I can keep up with the others doing this mystery and then hope to be DONE for the big reveal in September.

Bonnie Washed

Bonnie Hunter that is.  I have two projects that she designed currently in progress.  First up is the second Orca Bay.  I finished piecing the string blocks and am trimming them to size.  Not sure how much of a fan I am of string blocks.  It isn't the string block making as much as it is how this unit is used in this quilt. More on that when I move back to that step.

Untrimmed....

Trimmed....

I was lucky enough to take a class with Bonnie on New Years for her mystery class which is currently running in QuiltMaker.  This is Lazy Sunday.  Here are the pictures of my step 1.  Step 2 was just published.  I am waiting for others to share their pics as I don't want to overshare.  I plan to get each step finished for this quilt between Orca Bay steps.  OB makes me frustrated as I seem to use my seam ripper a bit too much. 

Are you making Lazy Sunday?

Whole Lotta Love Sewing Going On

I am part of a group that makes love quilts for members of a yahoo group when a need arises.  The first one pictured here was topped yesterday and dropped in the mail to the quilter.  I was the recipient of one of these quilts and mine was in pinks and reds.  Not sure what prompted the rainbow color choice for this one but I LOVE it.

I deboned a Hawaiian shirt for the border a la Bonnie Hunter style.  It was a fun new experience for me.  I have to become more of a scapper before I venture into that process more.  I can see how it could be addictive though.

Sadly this second quilt was started because the one above got lost in the process for a really long time.  These blocks were made to replace the above quilt.  Since the first was recovered we now had the makings for another.  A recipient has been identified and is now in progress for that person.

If it were not for these love quilts I don't think I would be doing much quilting.  I have been pushing myself to work on a second Orca Bay but just can't seem to spark to it.  I think it is just too complex, at least in my mind, for me right now.  I am going to see if I can motivate myself to finish the string blocks on that one before I abandon it for now and move onto something else.

Hugs my friends!

Folding Stash

I have been looking for the "perfect" way to fold stash.  Finally accepting that doesn't exist I used Bonnie Hunter's method and have started folding.  I still have a long way to go but it will get done soon enough.  I have cubbies to the left of this cabinet and have been putting FQs there.  Third shelf down contains "kits" that I made myself. 

I decided to work on a second Orca Bay that was Bonnie Hunter's Mystery from 2011.  I was gifted all the parts and ended up with enough for two.  The first is a flimsy at the moment.

What Have I Been Up To?

Last year while I was out of my house I took a quilt from a co-worker and agreed to work on it.  She described it as having a few tears.  When I folded back a corner it did appear to have tears but just a little worse than she described.  I did not fully open the quilt and agreed to take on the job.

When I opened it fully this is what I found.  There were pieces completely missing.  At first I tried whip stitching some of the spots closed but soon realized what an enormous task this would be.  I decided to remove all the quilting and then fix the top.  I soon realized I would never finish the task.  I finally took the entire top apart down to the individual piece and squared everything up.  If you read back through my blog you will see where I built this quilt back up from square one.  Before I did all this work I made sure everything I did was ok with the owner.

Here is the final quilted object waiting for a good wash and "going over" before returning it to it's owner.

 

Glenna Said I had to blog....

So I did....

Wingspan Triangle 2

I started the second triangle of my Wingspan shawl.  This is a free pattern on ravelry.

Go checkout what everyone else has on their hooks and needles over at Patchworktimes.

Basting a King

I brought this king quilt with me to spread out on the hotel room floor and pin baste it.  I didn't have enough pins so I concentrated on the center portion for now and will get that quilted.  Then I will be moving pins to another section so I can concentrate on that.

This is the crochet version of the WingSpan shawl.  You can get the free pattern on ravelry.  I had a big section done but realized I was working the pattern incorrectly.  I was going to frog and redo it.  I forgot it at home and will do that later.  Luckily I had my second skein with me.  I went and bought a new hook and went to work.  It does seem to be going together a lot more quickly this time/

Look Mom! I Sewed Something.

I went to sew at the church last night with my buddies.  Since I found my corners for this quilt I decided I would get that quilt top going again.  I put a quick call into my friend to borrow her featherweight since mine hasn't been unearthed yet. 

Sewed on the corners then went about cutting the borders.  The fabric is a patterned stripe that runs lengthwise.  I looked and measured an fiddled a little bit.  Then I consulted with some of my sewing buddies and set to cutting.  I got all the borders cut and decided that I would sew them on later.  Well that got me into trouble the last time so I went ahead and attached them.  I have to press the borders and then miter the corners.  Everyone was packing up to leave at this point so that WILL have to be done later.  At least I know exactly where the iron and board is!



Is barefoot sewing universal?  Anyone recognize that other set of toes?

Spring Clover

I haven't been very productive in the sewing room but I have managed to make progress with a crochet project.  Does this remind you of the 80's?  Maybe that is because I bought the yarn all the way back then!  This is a combination of clusters and double crochet.

Go visit Judy L to see what everyone else has on their needles or in my case their hooks.

Look What I Found

My corners!!

I put them with the top and border fabric.  Then I put away some PIGS (projects in grocery sacks) and sorted out a few tools and some spools of thread.  Now I just have to carry my mojo in there and start working on it.