March UFO report

 

 My March UFO was my Double Duty quilt, a pattern from Miss Rosie's Quilt Company. I had started out doing this as a cross hatch in the log cabin squares. I had the top left hand corner done, stood back and looked at it, and didn't like it, at all. So I ripped out the vertical stitches, and just left in the horizontal straight lines. That I was happy with. I took the last stitches in the binding at 2:10 this afternoon, and took the pictures at 2:25 this afternoon. Considering I had to be at work by 3:00, that was cutting it a bit close. I still have the thread ends of the starts and stops to tie off and sew in, but that is something that I can do while travelling in the car later this month when going up to see Noel and Laurie and Avery again.

Here's a close up of the center of the quilt.

And a closer look at the design in the flying geese portion.

And the backing. 

So far in this year's UFO challenge, I've managed to meet each month's goal. I'm linking up to Judy's UFO Challenge Linky. She's pulled the number 10 for April, which is my Rose Log Cabin. It needs quilting and binding. That should be do-able, I hope. I'm also linking up to Crazy Mom's Quilts finish it friday and Amylouwho's Sew and Tell

There's a time warp in my studio....

I think it goes all the way back to the 70's. I remember these quilts from then. I even had one, once, that I was going to do. It was cross stitched scotch thistles, in shades of blues. Needless to say it never got done. I think I donated it to someone or something.
 This quilt came to me by way of Charlene and her sister Evelyn, both long time customers of mine. The quilt belongs to a lady in her 80's, who now lives in a retirement home. I'm not sure how it happened, but the quilt showed up at the guild that Charlene and Evelyn go to, with the request for someone to volunteer to finish it for her. Evelyn loves to embroider, so she volunteered to do the embroidered part of the quilt, and Charlene took the rest. Those pink squares on there...... they are all appliqued in place, not pieced.

All those edges, turned over, and sewn down, one by one........... They finally got it all put together, and then it was handed on to me to quilt. The lady it belongs to wanted it to be quilted as close to the original design as possible. It really shows how quilting has evolved. All of those open spaces would be filled with background fill, now.
It's really quite pretty, and yet again, an example of how quilting brings it all to life. The feathers around the hearts follow the original quilting design, that was still visible. And then the straight lines accent the Irish Chain of the squares.

Stash report Week 13, 2012

This is the stash report that isn't. I goofed up my dates on my bus tickets. I was supposed to be going home today from visiting with Noel and Laurie and Avery, but instead, it's tomorrow's date on my tickets. Oops. And my book with my fabric usage info is at home, and I'm here. And, since I won't be getting home until after 9 pm tomorrow, I don't think there will be a design wall post, either. Oops. But, it does give me another full day to visit, so that is a good thing, even if it wasn't planned that way....... honest..... it wasn't.
Yesterday, we bundled Avery into the car, and took a drive out to the now very familiar campground near to where they live. It's a 10 minute drive, at the most, away from their house. We bundled him up into his stroller and went for a lovely walk. It was looking so pretty. The leaves are just starting to come out on the trees, and we got to see the campsite we've booked for the weekend of Avery's first birthday.
It's right by the water, with a hydro hook up. Avery's birthday is May 17th, and it isn't always reliably warm yet by that date, so the hydro site was necessary, in case we need to run a heater. And the site is in the radio free area of the park, which is a very good thing, because it also happens to be the long May weekend, when the park tends to be filled with very young, very loud people. We experienced a couple of those last year, and it wasn't a whole lot of fun. I think maybe this summer we will try for trips during the week, rather than on weekends, and then I'll plan on doing my shifts at the hospital on the week ends. So, that is my very un-stashy stash report. (giggle) And, even though this really isn't a true "Stash Report", I'm still linking with Judy's Patchwork Times Stash Report.

Grandbaby days

Thursday afternoon, I hopped on a bus and took the trip up to spend some time with Noel and Laurie and Avery. Scott wasn't able to come up due to issues with his brother, who is ill, and needed him near by. But the bus trip wasn't bad, at all. I had my Kobo ereader with some books from the library loaded onto it, and I was quite content to sit and read. The best part, though, was looking after Avery all day Friday while Noel and Laurie were at work. He is such a fun and happy little guy. The only time he gets grumpy is when he is tired, at which point he goes into his bed, without a fuss, and goes to sleep. I know it took some doing on Laurie's part a few months ago to get him to this stage, since at that time he had a really difficult time going to bed and settling. But she persevered, and it worked.

I have decided that I really need to invest in a new camera. The one I have has a lag time between when I push the button to take the photo, and when it actually does. Any suggestions for a good, inexpensive one without that annoying lag time? Every time I go to get a picture of Avery, by the time the camera actually takes the picture, the picture I wanted is gone. Very frustrating. I seem to do better with using my camera to get videos of him, since that way I don't have to actually try and get a single picture. I got one of him feeding himself his lunch yesterday. And, since I have nothing quilty to show, I'll show him, instead. Besides which, he's an awful lot cuter and more fun to watch, than any of my quilts. But, then again, I'm a terribly biased and proud Grammy.

Out on the clothes line

It was such a lovely day here. Just like a perfect warm, but not too hot or muggy, summer day. I took advantage of it to wash up the winter quilts, and hang them out on the line to dry. They always smell so good afterwards. These are all quilts that I did before I started blogging, but after I started long arm quilting, so I thought I'd take pictures of them and show them.

This one started as a Churn Dash quilt, using 5 inch squares. There were supposed to be an awful lot of them, and I ran out of steam, and got tired of doing them. While browsing through the Quilters Cache website, I came across the block she calls Flies in the Barn. This was one of the first 5 or 6 quilts I did on the long arm, so I'm not going to show any of the quilting. I learned a LOT doing this one. I did a different block inset design in each of the squares, just to try them out, and learn how they worked.

I  totally LOVE the pattern Storm at Sea, and made this one 6 years ago. It is one of the few quilts I have ever put a label, or a hanging sleeve on. This quilt was actually our very low tech solution to a very drafty front door that badly needs to be replaced. Not even weather stripping would help it. So my husband came up with the idea to hang this quilt over the door, with a curtain rod placed up near the ceiling. We were able to pull the quilt completely over the front door, and block all the drafts. It looked pretty too. He's so smart.

This is the back of the Storm at Sea which shows the quilting........... the beginning of my obsession with feathers. I think this is the first one I was truly happy with, and I took it around to various quilts shops in the area when I was first letting them know I was in business, and looking for customers.

This is my version of Bonnie Hunter's My Blue Heaven. I think it was the first time I did an all over pattern in the center of a quilt, and then something different in the borders. This was also one I did while I was learning, before I took in any customer quilts. I was, and still am, happy with the way it turned out. There are baptist fans in the center, and a fun kind of swirly design in the flying geese and the borders around the geese. I actually put on these borders just so I could do that quilting design.

So, between doing all the laundry, and hanging it out, and working on a quilt, that's how I spent my day. And in between, I enjoyed the warm breezes and tried very hard to ignore all the weeds in the gardens. LOL!! All in all, a good day.

Gail's Hexagons

 

I finished this quilt up a week or so ago for Gail, who is a new customer to me. Yay for new customers!!! I had asked for her permission to post pictures of it here, which she granted, with the condition that I wait until she posted about it on her own blog, The Cosy Quilter. She wrote about it yesterday. So I can now show it.

It is a hexagon quilt, using Bali Pops, inspired by the hexagon quilt alongs from the last year or so. There are many things I really like about quilting for other people. One of them is seeing all the different fabrics, and the colour combinations. Another is the challenge of trying new things, which can be rather anxiety provoking as well. We had decided on an all over pantograph for the center of her quilt, and feathers in the border.
With the navy border being a tone on tone, the feathers showed up wonderfully.

The challenge was fitting the pantograph into the irregular edges of the hexagon center. But with the aid of the vinyl cover that goes over the pantographs on my table of the long arm, and some washable crayola markers, I was able to draw the edges of the quilt right over the pantograph, so I knew where to stitch, and where not to. Doing this, I was also able to alter the pantograph a little so that it would flow from one area to another, without stitching into the border.

 Here's the corner turn with the feathers.

And here's the back, which shows the all over pantograph. It is called "Whimsey" by Norma Sharp. Thanks, Gail, for trusting me with your quilt.

Design Wall Monday March 19, 2012

My goal yesterday was to get a NYB block done before I went to work. It only got about half done. Rats. And looking at it now, I'm going to have to replace the grey solid arc with something either darker, or brighter. There isn't enough contrast between the solid grey arc and the grey in the pieced arc. I think the darker brown would work better. I'm still continuing to use the colours from the March colour challenge. I'll probably continue to work on this off and on today. My big job is to get Double Duty finished, or as close to it as I can by the end of the day. One way or another, I'll have to take it off and get started on a quilt that Charlene brought me to do. It has a deadline of the beginning of April, and it is a custom job, with a lot of work to do on it. I'll take some pictures of it, and do a before and after, and tell the story behind it as well, once I get to it. I'm linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday. I'm going to grab my second cup of coffee, and browse through some of those walls, before I get to work on that quilt of mine.