Surprise for my Cousin, Janie!

I finished the binding on these two quilts and sent them to my cousin and her middle daughter.

Lindsay knew she was getting  a quilt and was anxiously awaiting its arrival.

 

 

Janie did not know she was getting a quilt, so it was a wonderful surprise for her.

I enjoyed making the Buggy Barn quilt, called
Crazy Hearts.  My cousin likes red and black so I knew she would like it.

 And her beautiful daughter who requested a black and white quilt, which is actually black and cream.

Last but not least is the lovely youngest, Lauren,  who kept the box hidden from Tuesday through Friday so she would be home to snap pictures of her Mother's surprise and her sister for me.

Hand Applique Projects in the Works

I have several hand applique projects I have been working on.  Please excuse the wrinkles because as we all know projects get crumpled when we are holding them in our hands to work on them and when they are folded up in our project bags.  I will press the heck out of them when I finish the applique.

I am on the last block of Daisy Days, which is a quilt I started for me too many years ago to count. I did prepared applique with liquid starch and templar plastic. I love the pattern and have been working on it off and on. It is one of my travel projects that I carry in the car or on trips to work on. I need to finish the petals on the last two flowers and sew down three centers and then this one will be ready for me to put the top together.

 

I started this morning glory block years ago when I decided I wanted to try my hand at needle turn applique. I had never had a lesson, in fact I had never done applique at all. You can tell that my points are not perfect, and my curves are a little square. I plan to finish this and make it into a small wall hanging, though there were several blocks in the pattern. I consider this my learning block. Since I started this I have taken a couple of needle turn classes and learned a few tricks. I see this block as an educational experience and my flowers near the end will be much smoother on the curves.  I decided to finish it rather than toss it because it shows or will show the progress I have made over the years in needle turn applique.

These blocks are from my first English Paper Piecing (EPP) class. I did all the leaves EPP, and some of the cherries. I did some of the cherries using the liquid starch and templar plastic method. The branches are all machine appliqued down.  The pattern which is below shows an additional leaf on each branch. I have the additional leaves mostly basted using the EPP method, but am thinking I may just add them randomly to the blocks to make it more my own.

I also have to applique all the cherries, leaves, and branches on the border once I get the top together.  This quilt is WIP as it will be a while before I get all the applique work done and have it ready for quilting.

 

I believe this pattern was called Wind Blown Tulips. All layout is my own as it called for you to scatter the tulips on the background. The original pattern had a pieced background, but I wanted mine to me one large piece of fabric.  The tulips are all glued down with Roxanne's Glue.  I made the tulips several years ago and just finally got them laid out the way I liked this last fall. I am trying to finish Daisy Days before starting to hand stitch these down.  I am thinking this is the perfect project to take with me next fall when I go on trip to visit my son and my mother. I am thinking of flying to Seattle and taking the train rather than flying all over, and handwork is perfect for the train. It will keep me busy as there are a lot of stitches needed to finish this.

Last I have Mouse Pad, which I posted in a previous blog, but I did not give any details.  The mouse pads, cords, and mice are all hand appliqued.  I still need to finish the mice, cords, and the outlet.  

All the blue lines will then need to be embroidered.  This wall hanging is on the list tight after Daisy Days, except I can only work on it when my hubby is not home, because it is a surprise.  I also know that being a man he does not read my blog, so I am safe posting it here.

 With summer here my quilting time will be cut back even more as we are doing some work on the house and will be out riding our tandem.  My posts may fall to the wayside for a while, and my projects may sit until I get back to them or we have some rainy weather, but I will still get some things done this summer.

The Sewing Room Closet

I started this post last year when I was working on cleaning out my sewing room closet. I just realized that I had never posted it, so as doign so now.

There is a closet in my sewing room that I have not entered in, oh about ten years. It is crammed full of things and I finally started to empty it and clear it out.  It was scary to open the door as I was not sure what might fall out on me.
A few pieces of fabric fell out, but nothing heavy.  As I started pulling things out I found some things I had been looking for, and lots of other interesting discoveries.

There was a ton of fleece in the closet, in a variety of colors.  Now I know by the size of some pieces that they were bought to make hats, but other pieces I am not sure why I bought.  For the moment they are piled in the living room, waiting for me to decide what to do with them.

I discovered lots of fabric, some that I am giving away, and some that I am keeping, as well as some I wonder what I was thinking when I bought it.  There were lots of cottons, which I use for quilting and shirting fabrics that at some point I must have bought to make shirts, or something. I also discovered a couple of UFQs, one that I have been looking all over for. I started this when my husband was the the technology coordinator at Benny Benson Secondary School. How it ended up in the closet is beyond me, because I was not storing handwork there then, nor do I store it there now.

My thought at the time was it would be a nice wall hanging for his classroom. Now he teaches art, but he still uses computers as he teaches computer graphics class, so I will finish it for his birthday or Christmas. There is still a lot of hand work to be done on it. I have to finish the applique and do the embroidery everywhere you see blue lines.

I also discovered a set of blocks from a swap where my fabric that I sent out was this beautiful Hoffman.  The blocks are all together and I picked up a blue for sashing and binding last night, so will get this one put together at some point in the near future. I have since finished the quilt and am auditioning backing fabric.

I found tons of interesting things in my closed.  I am still working on many of them but one day in the future I plan to have all my UFQs done. This is not to say that I will not be making more UFQs as time goes on, but all the ones from prior to 2013 will be done or passed on to someone who will love them. 

Quilts I Made in in the late 90's early 2000's

These pictures are not the best quality as I copied them from our old website. I do not know where the originals are at the present time, but if and when I find the original pictures I will update them.

The first three wall hanging are ones that I made for Joel to take to Germany when he went to visit our exchange students during his Junior year in high school.

I made this wall hanging for our exchange student Mattias' and his family. They live in Pforzheim, Germany, where several years later we discovered we have family.The pattern was in a quilting magazine, but at the moment I cannot find the magazine to note the title an issue.

I made this one for our first exchange student Jens and his family.

I made this one for our exchange student Axel and his family.

Joel said all the families loved the wall hangings.

This baby quilt was made for Benita who worked with Tom at the Anchorage Daily News.  She was doing her nursery using a farm animal theme.

 

This quilt is one I made for my youngest sister-in-law, Amy and her husband Joe, when they was married, though they did not receive it until their first anniversary due to an accident that resulted in my breaking my right wrist. There are 40 paper pieced birds in this quilt.  The pattern was originally found in a Carol Doak's book and was a baby quilt that I enlarged.  It was also my first experience paper piecing.

I also made this quilt for a friend's daughter when she graduated. Erica was our babysitter for several years.

The three little pigs is a piece I did as part of group quilt that was donated to the Loussac Library here in Anchorage. At the time Tom worked for the Anchorage Daily News and they were doing the quilt to hang in the children's section of the library.

I need to find the pattern and some fabric that would work as I would love to do this one again. I had this one on my school webpage for several years.

Hand and Machine Quilting Projects

I have a couple of tops pinned and either in the process of being hand quilted or ready and waiting for hand quilting.

This wall hanging is my youngest son on his snowboard. It is a modified Pat Loose pattern.  He had a skate boarder and I modified it to make it a snowboarder.  He is a daredevil and ready to conquer the mountain. It is partially hand quilted and will be done someday. 

 

This one is my older son and needs the ski poles embroidered and then will be ready for me to hand quilt. It is also a modified version of a Patrick Loose pattern.

When cleaning my sewing room last year I found this one hidden in the closet half hand quilted and set it aside to finish at a later time. As you can see it is still waiting for me to sit and hand quilt. I think I need to schedule in some hand quilting time.

I also discovered this one pinned and ready to machine quilt, though I do need to adjust a few of the pins and press it before I start quilting.

 

Plus of course I am still working on machine quilting my Kitchen Sink Jacket. I have one side of the front quilted.

I cannot machine quilt for too long of a period when I am doing more than stitch in the ditch because I get too tense in my neck and shoulders. I have tried a variety of things and nothing seems to work to keep me from getting so tense and having my muscles freeze up.  I can't say for sure but I think it is related to when I had open heart surgery and they yanked everything all out of whack. I think some of those muscles will never be back to where they were before the surgery.

TOPSVILLE Post Four

OMG!  I went to pull out tops to box up and send to the quilter and I found more tops that I did not document yet.  Oh dear that brings the total closer to 60.

First is  Lightning Quick, a Debbie Caffrey Mystery that I sent to the quilter along with OFF KUiLTeR.

I have a lovely pale pink for the backing and will dig through my stash to see if I have any of the purple or dark pink left to use as a binding.

Shirley found a great pink to quilt it with.

I also have this beautiful blue California Confusion which is another Debbie Caffrey Mystery. I think I like it the blue better than the brown and red, but I like them both.

Lastly I have Q is for Quilter, a Debbie Caffrey Mystery.  I need to finish the last two borders on it and decide if I want to add an outer border in blue. I have the fabric folded up with the quilt, so will make that decision based on how much I have for the backing which is also with the top.  The backing may determine if I add a second border or not. 
I believe these are all of my tops that are not already quilted or in the process of being hand or machine quilted. I think everything else is a work in progress (WIP) or a PhD, project half done.