Handmade gifts galore!

This year the majority of my gifts are handmade.

For the littlest grandkids...quilts.

First, Fancy Forest by Elizabeth Hartmann for the baby.

My youngest granddaughter gets Le Jardin by Bunnyhill.

 

I even wrote her name in the corner. 

Both of these quilts were hand guided free motion and ruler work 

with Le Jardin having some computer borders.

The baby also gets this quilt from my daughter. 

She designed, drafted and pieced it using a purchased pattern for the fox.

And details of the quilting I did.

My daughter's family will receive this cuddly quilt backed in minky.

Quilted it using one of my favorite edge to edge patterns.

                                   I made two of these collage quilts from Laura Heine

...one for my sister and one for my DIL.

The hardest things I made were these pencil cases with a pattern ByAnnie called Flipping Out.

I am still working on charity quilts; but alas, with the pandemic, no one will accept them.

 I will hold on to them to gift in the future.

So what is next...

I am piecing a sampler quilt using stash fabrics for 

A Year of Stars,

a year long tutorial on free motion and ruler quilting by Natalia Bonner starting Jan. 1st.

I'll have a red and green quilt to gift next year!

Wishing you all a happy holiday season! 

Stress Free Sewing in Colorful Colorado

After a week of house cleaning and gardening,

I think we are finally settled into the cabin for the summer. 

Usually, it takes 9 hours to drive to the cabin, 

but a wildfire in Mancos created a backtracking detour.

Nothing like a 12 hour car trip to get some stitching done!

 Finished the last block for Le Jardin. 

My goal is to get into flimsy form next week.

Then Crimson Tweed got it's binding sewn down.

Now, each afternoon, I spend a few hours working on WIPs and UFOs.

My current WIP is Botanical Sketchbook

by Dawn Heese.

I only have the last block to stitch. 

I have this horrible habit of getting a project to the last block

and then it becomes a UFO. 

I brought 4 or 5 of these projects with me to finish this summer.

Of course, I continue to stitch on my Sue Spargo Toned Down Circle Sampler.

Here are a few of the latest ones.

 This one is not her design.

 I stitched it after seeing a similar one on Pinterest.

Wanted to experiment with ribbon embroidery.

 Of course, I loved doing the Octopus.

He looks so cute in my under-the-sea section.

Being at the cabin sure has reduced my stress level.

There is no TV,

so no repetitious news broadcasts full of doom and gloom.

Tomorrow, we will hike my favorite mountain trail!

Cannot wait.

Thanks for stopping by.

Be healthy, be safe and hug your love ones often!!! 

Bee's a Buzzing!

A real finish that was started in this calendar year!

Buzzing by Heart to Hand.

I love the messages in the 4 corners of the quilt. 

The other corners say bee happy, bee sweet and bee strong.

Sue Spargo did a bee skep circle this week too.

Then my focus shifted to the undersea world. 

 My pufferfish/blowfish.

Looks like me since I cannot seem to stay out of the refrigerator.

And then a sea anemone.

Followed by a kelp forest with sea urchin and sea star.

Here is my sampler so far.

Progress on Le Jardin.

Just one more block!
I will prep it this week in preparation for the drive to Colorado.

Something to listen to on Audible and
something to stitch makes the trip bearable.

Marching Along!

I have somewhat accomplished my February goals.

The next Le Jardin block.  

I chose this one because there were very few pointy leaves!

A Rainbow Garden is half quilted and my hope is to get it finished this week.

Another row is done for my red and green quilt.

I do have another pile of blocks made for Christmas Magic, but they do not make for an interesting picture. 

I did not make any progress on my red and white quilt, but...

worked instead on the long overdue wedding quilt. I also added a dozen or so of the joining hexies to the pile. Hoping this quilt will become my summer finish.

It is not too late to enter the drawing for the Easter Baskets kit.

Just head on over to The Olde World Quilt Shoppe blog and leave a comment.

And remember, if you are a no-reply commenter, there is no way I can notify you if your name is drawn, so your name is not in the drawing.

I am in LOVE!

And the object of my affection is my new Sashiko machine by Baby Lock.

You can find out more about them here.

My good friend, Lin, and I drove up to Prescott last Friday to check them out and I came home with one.  Lin's comes in next week.  Needless to say, I came home and immediately tried it out.

I had made this little 6" block to demo a Tri-Rec ruler and thought it would be perfect as my first subject.  I used a 30 wt. Aurifil cotton thread in a golden brown hue.  I was so excited I just could not wait to quilt something else, so I rifled through the now infamous closet and found a UFO that would be perfect for this style of quilting.

Count Down to Christmas, a Monique Dillard pattern, I had pieced last year.

Here is a close-up of the stitch.  It looks like hand quilting on the front and a straight stitch on the back of the quilt.  I am fascinated by how it works.  The only thread is in the bobbin, and a ingenious industrial engineered combo of a hook and needle pull the thread to the front to look like hand stitches.

Needless to say, I am itching for another project to quilt.

So, I searched my bucket of future quilts and found the fabrics and pattern for a darling small quilt called A Rainbow Garden, designed by Glenda of Liberty Homestead.

You can see her designs here.

I forget that a small quilt can take as long as a full sized quilt to construct, so it will be awhile before I can use Sashi again.  

The pattern is from her book, Farmhouse Quilts, The Scrap Basket.

You can find it here.

It is the quilt in the center at the bottom of the page. Oops, it is the one in the top left corner!

Here is my first block:

Only 46 of those little 2" finished pinwheels to make!  And then there are the 6 baskets, the embroidery and then the wool applique. It will be awhile before I am back with a flimsy.

I have kept up with my monthly goals.  My pile of flying geese is growing, another set of blocks for my red and white quilt are done and my Le Jardin block is close to completion.

This one has been hard for me to keep on task with.  It is not my favorite block in the quilt from a design standpoint and all those tiny leaves!  Only 4 more to sew down.

Finally,

the beginnings of my red and green quilt.

Yes, I have been a busy bee.

Between the Australian Open Tennis Tournament and football playoff games, I have had a lot of time to sew!  Very sad my 49ers did not make it to the Superbowl, but I am a chameleon who now wears the Seahawks colors!

Back to making pinwheels. 

 Hope I can keep up this productivity with all the projects I have in the works.

A Few Finishes and I am a Blockhead!

It's A Grand Old Flag is an official finish.

As I was putting on the binding, I noticed the machine quilter had missed one of the leaves.  Then I noticed she was not the only one...

I had not blanket stitched around 4 of the red stars!

I had a good laugh and will try to correct my error...some day.

Anna, over at The Woolie Mammoth, came up with a great motivational idea...Blockheads.

I don't know all the details, but I decided to use her idea to help me finish up some WIPs. 

If I understand the approach correctly, once a month I will work on just one block each from the projects I want to complete. So my projects are Le Jardin, my red and white quilt and the hexie quilt.

Here is my progress.

Block #7

I am doing them in a strange order, AND I made a mistake on this one too.  After I had the house appliqued down, I figured out I had cut the background the wrong size.  No way was I going to start over, so I cut the side strip a little wider.  Hopefully, I will not notice it too much.

Wish I had drafted this one as a full size quilt.  I will finish it off with a wide solid border of either the red or the white and applique some birds and berries on it.  Like Le Jardin, it is definitely a long term project.  Working in just two colors and repeating the same block over and over again is not my favorite type of piecing!

Unfortunately, I did not get a hexie block made today.  Ah, but the month is young!

Fall Decor, finishes and...

YES, a new project.

My version of Kim Diehl's 'A Delightful Pairing' as seen in

American Patchwork & Quilting

December 2013

I actually tried my hand at machine applique with this project.  It went fast and looks pretty good, so I might use it more often since there are just too many quilts I want to make and I cannot do them all by hand.

I have so enjoyed seeing everyone in blogland decorating for what seems is a universally favorite season, Fall.  So here is a peek of a few of the fall quilts that adorn my home.

These wool pumpkins, a pattern by Little Bits by Joan, cheer up my hall tree stand.

My original pattern, Autumn's Bounty, looks perfect on our kitchen table.

The following two embroidery projects were so generously gifted me in 2011 by my friend, Debbie. I finally finished them both, although O' Pumpkin Tree is patiently awaiting its prim frame that my hubbie is making for me. As soon as he finishes with it, it will hang in a special place in my sewing room. Debbie did the handwork and all I did was the quilting.

I am making progress on both my applique WIPs.

Here is my progress on Snowbound by Pat Wys.

And,

another block for Le Jardin, by Bunnyhill.

I am trying to get one block completed a month.

Last week, my mom came to visit for a landmark birthday.

I turned the big 60!  It was a lovely visit and my DD gave me a great party.

They went home today and now I am celebrating by sequestering myself in my sewing room

...my idea of a good day! 

Le Jardin and an updated WIP list

I hit a small setback with Snowbound in that Steam-a-Seam Lite 2, the product I use to adhere my wool applique, has still not arrived at the shoppe.  It has been on back order forever, it seems.

So, while perusing my blog list, I came upon Wendy's post over at Snippets of a Quilter.  She is on her second block of Le Jardin, by Bunny Hill Designs.  And I am embarrassed to say, I purchased all the French General fabrics and got started on the very same quilt quite a few years ago. I only got as far as the first block...something about all those pointy leaves! Or maybe it was another 'cannot pass up' project that diverted my attention.  Seeing her block motivated me to get mine out.  I have added it to my WIP list and since I cannot work on my highest priorities, I decided to at least finish this block up and then I will be prepared to make it my next applique project.  

Unfortunately, my WIP list is just as long as it was at the beginning of the year due to the fact that just as many projects have been added as were finished.  It is a common trait among many of the quilters I know and bloggers I follow. Oh, well, I will just keep plodding along. I have to admit though, only the newest projects on that list have made it to completion...sigh.  I should keep a list of completed quilts, so I can see what I have accomplished and stop focusing on what I have not finished!

On the positive side, It's a Grand Old Flag is a flimsy in the queue for the quilter and I have Izzy's I Spy quilt basted and ready to quilt myself...simple stitch in the ditch.  So I am making progress, no matter how slow and convoluted it is. It is quite miserable here, hot and humid, so I expect I will be getting a lot more done this next month and will make some headway on that updated WIP list.