Wow I haven’t finished a quilt I started in the same month in a LONG time! This is Star Shadows that was started at our September guild day (daytime workshop with the Redneck Quilter). I quilted it with loopy stars all over and I love how it looks now that it’s done! At some point I might do another but make it a lot bigger by making more stars, but that’s way down the line.
This quilt was started in 2022 as a block exchange at guild. 8 participated and each made 2 blocks to share. For a while I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with a setting, and then decided to just use white on white fabrics for the sashings and 2.5″ squares of the fabrics I used for the cornerstones. Then it sat because I needed to figure out how I wanted to quilt it. I spent 2 days a few weeks ago in classes for my longarm and one of the things we did was ruler work. I decided this quilt needed ruler work and free motion quilting. It took the equivalent of 2-3 days to get it done, but it was so worth it!
Screenshot
One of the many things we talked about in class was taking a picture and using an app to try out quilting designs before you get to the machine. It came in really helpful on this quilt! I took pictures of the blocks I didn’t know how I wanted to quilt them and I played on the ipad with designs. When I figured out which ones I wanted I just printed them out so I could look at them next to the quilt without the heavy ipad on the quilt. I’m going to continue doing this for anything that isn’t getting an all over design. Our instructor used an app called Whiteboard from Microsoft, but I used an app already on my ipad and Mac Mini called Freeform. It works great, and syncs between my devices perfectly!
Ugh! I swear I had major intentions of doing a lot more posting this year. And I have been finishing projects this summer. However we had a LOT of stuff happening this summer. My sister got married in July and it was a wonderful day! We had a bit of traveling to North Carolina, a bunch of camping trips and then it was time to get ready for school to start again!
So I did manage to finish my plaid-ish quilt the end of June, with a small problem – self inflicted! I was having problems with thread breaking and changed the needle. Unfortunately I put the darn thing in backwards and the thread just kept breaking. Didn’t know I had it in wrong until I called Handiquilter Customer Support and they told me. Once I fixed the needle it worked perfectly again and I could finish the quilt before our July 4th camping trip. The kids used it to sit on for fireworks when camping.
We have various charities we donate quilts to through our quilt guild. I volunteered to quilt 5 quilts for Honor Quilts. We give quilts to veterans in the county where I live. That was fun and good practice my quilting when I didn’t have anything ready to quilt. They didn’t have anything else needing quilted at our last meeting so I can work on some of my own quilts. I have 2 that just need batting cut and they need pressed before they can go on the frame. Hope to get to work on that this week. One of the quilts is from the workshop held on September 12th at our last meeting. We had the Redneck Quilter teaching us how to make a Deb Tucker quilt Star Shadows. It was a great workshop and I already have the top completed and waiting to be quilted. Can’t wait to see that one finished and not joining my UFO list for next year!
I was able to finish the Fall Simply Sign from Fat Quarter Shop, Cassie couldn’t wait to put it up on the door and get the Summer one down. Only 2 more to get done for this series and I don’t know if I’ll get to them this year or not. We’ll see, I might skip Halloween and do Christmas first.
So I know I’ve mentioned in the past my participation in Elise Baek’s groups and SAL’s (sew alongs). Earlier in the year I did a hexagon flower swap and 16 people signed up with only 10 sending in hexagons. It was asked that we do another one and I currently have 74 people signed up! This means since I’m making 1 hexagon flower for each person I have to make that many flowers. I think I have all the petal pieces picked up and grouped and I’m working on basting them. I need to figure out what I’m using for the centers so I can start putting the flowers together. The deadline for mailing is October 31st, so I have time but I don’t want to wait until the last minute!
I’m also working on basting pieces for the Daisy Bloom EPP SAL that is currently happening with Elise. I have 2 basted and the other 14 are in baggies all with the fabric ready to be basted. I’ll work on these when I have time. My plan is to make all of Elise’s flower EPP blocks and applique them all together on background blocks. That will be another long term project and I don’t even have all the templates for the other flowers yet.
While I was waiting for some wide backing to arrive for my plaid-ish quilt, I pulled out my scrappy 9-patch quilt top from 2013 and figured I could get it done quickly. Yep I was able to easily do that! the kids never let new quilts sit for long before they are being claimed. I don’t know what they do with all these quilts but they love when I finish them! Most of this quilt is made from the 2.5″ square bin, I swear that bin just doesn’t go away no matter how many quilts I make from it!
The next quilt to be worked on is plaid-ish, wide backing is supposed to be here today, I can’t tell from the tracking if it will be or not. Since it’s such a large quilt I told the kids it’s going to the trailer and they can use it for picnics, fireworks, etc. Hoping to have it finished by the weekend, we’ll see how quick I get it quilted.
I need to get a little more finished on the hexagon quilt I’m working on so I can get pictures and get everything detailed here. Haven’t worked on it the last couple of days since I was working on binding. So be back soon!
Cassie’s quilt, started in 2019 is finally finished and on her bed! She’s loving it and keeps saying how cozy and warm it is. The backing is totally pieced together from 3 blocks I picked up from the free table at guild, 2 yards of Effie’s Woods by Deb Strain, a couple of mini charm packs of Effie’s Woods and a regular charm pack of Effie’s Woods. Of course that wasn’t close to enough, so I grabbed a couple of Harry Potter fat quarters to fill in where needed. She loves it so much and I’m really glad to have it off the UFO list!
I was looking at my lists to see what I had to work on. I came across my EPP Party quilt. There’s 13 blocks and I only completed 6 back in 2017 when it was released online. This was a SAL done by Mister Domestic and Pat Bravo in 2017, and the paper pieces were and are still available at paperpieces.com. I realized that with all the EPP projects I have in progress and new ones I’d really like to do, I just wasn’t going to get back to doing this one. So I put the 6 blocks together and used some of the 2.5″ batik strips to make a bigger border. It’s completed quilted and bound and ready to be donated to Community Service at the next guild meeting.
With these 2 now completed and off the list, 10 items are now crossed off my to-do list. 50% quilts and 50% cross stitch! I spent the last few days working on a cross stitch for my sister’s wedding. I asked if I could make the ring pillow for her and while it’s not in pillow form yet, she does love it so far! I’ll get the pillow completed in the next week or so, I’m not worried yet 🙂 It’s hard to tell but I did use Kimberly’s Light Pink 14-count aida from Fat Quarter Shop, my sister is a pink girl! Now I need to find the right pink for a little border around the stitching so I have somewhere to stitch a ribbon down for the rings, plus the back of it.
I’ll be back soon, I pulled out an old EPP hexagon project after I finished the cross stitch yesterday. I swear I blogged about it before, but I couldn’t find it last night. So I need to document the project!
Wow, I didn’t realize it had been so long! Let’s see if I can do a life update to explain before I get into the quilting.
Fall of 2022 (back to my last post) changed everything for us. My mom had some medical issues that she couldn’t come back from and ended up going to a nursing home for long term care as we couldn’t take care of her at home any more. All my free time was spent running out to see her multiple times a week along with helping dad out with things at the house. May of 2023, the week after Mother’s Day, she had multiple strokes which the doctors said there was nothing they could do to help her. May 22, 2023 she passed away and we had a lot of things to take care of. Lawyer, bank, cars, etc. It’s been hard to deal with mom not being here the last year, but she’s not hurting anymore and is at peace.
To add on top of the things going on with my mom, my lovely husband broke his leg in January. 2 surgeries and about 4 months later he was back on his feet with a cane and walking. Then over the summer we realized that when he fell and broke his leg he also damaged his shoulder. Surgery for that in October to repair 2 massive tears in his rotator cuff. 2023 was not a good year for our family!
I didn’t have a lot of mojo to quilt the rest of the year, I used to quilt with mom and my heart just wasn’t in it. Oh I still worked on EPP projects, but didn’t get anything close to a finish. I also picked up cross stitch again and spent evenings working on that when I didn’t want to work on EPP. At Christmas, hubby and I decided we weren’t getting each other gifts but did a weekend trip to Kalahari Indoor Water Park as a family gift from Santa instead. To my surprise he handed me a letter basically saying that due to him being home most of the year and not working as much (plus everything with mom) he realized that tomorrow is never guaranteed. We needed to enjoy life more. So he made me a promise that come 2024 we’d figure out how to get me the long arm I’ve been wanting for a REALLY long time. So, April of 2024 I purchased a Handiquilter Moxie XL, the 10′ frame and the overhead light bar. In order to have a place to put it I had to do some MAJOR cleaning in the basement – I had between 15-20 garbage bags, a few things that went on Facebook Marketplace and were sold and a lot of sorting! There’s still a little bit left to clean up and/or sell but the basement is now pretty usable. I also had to call an electrician and get a lot more (and better) lights and outlets in the basement. That turned out WAY better than I expected!
So since the beginning of May I’ve been quite busy working on finishing various quilts. 2 small ones that were donated to the guild community service group, 1 the kids stole almost immediately (waiting since 2013 for quilting), the Pokemon quilt (waiting since March 2020 for quilting) and Cassie’s bed quilt (currently finishing the binding and has only been waiting 2 years for quilting).
In addition to getting all these quilts finished in the last few months, I also got a few cross stitch projects finished. A new line of signs from Fat Quarter Shop that I loved but finished totally differently than they did – of course I quilted them and made them wall hangings for the doors! I finished 3 of them, I have to start working on the fall, Halloween and Christmas ones. I finally finished my quilt-o-logy and stitch-o-logy pieces, instead of buying the wooden spool, my dad made them for me out of wood from our backyard that he’s been making things for us for years. Of course I just realized I haven’t hung them up yet and I don’t remember where I put them after I showed them off at guild! I’ll have too look so I can hang them in my office/sewing room.
Today is the first day of summer break for the kids, they’ve accomplished so much in the last year and a half! Alex is doing great in middle school, Honors ELA and science (8th grade science in 7th grade!), and almost all A’s (a B+ in Honors science). Next year he takes 9th grade science in 8th grade and gets high school credit for it! Cassie is moving to 5th grade next year and is so smart it kills me! She’s been identified as gifted in math and ELA so that should continue into middle school like Alex with honors classes. I’m very proud of both my kids, even though Alex has surpassed my height at 13!
I’ll be around more, I have lots of things to finish and I think my mojo is finally back!
I have finally finished something! I started quilting this awhile ago, got frustrated and pushed it to the side of my sewing table. A couple of weeks ago I decided I just needed to bite the bullet and get it done. While I was quilting it, just one block left to quilt, my machine froze up and wouldn’t make another stitch. So emergency trip the next day, 90 minute drive south, to a quilt shop that I trust to work on my machine and do it while I’m there. I was gone all morning, did some retail therapy, and got my machine fixed up. So that meant this week I was able to get the last block quilted, binding machine sewn on and then was able to hand stitch the binding at night while watching tv.
This quilt is my OLDEST UFO and is now complete! Back in 2007 I was a member of the Quilting Stash Podcast Yahoo Group and we decided to do a block swap. We used the 2007 Hoffman Challenge Fabric (the butterfly fabric) and made blocks – if I remember we each made 2 – and sent them to Annie Smith (Quilting Stash Podcast host) and they were sorted and sent back to us. I finished my top in January 2009, but didn’t get around to the quilting part until this year when I wanted to get something done. I started working on the black sashing, then was going to do ruler work on the blocks and was having problems, hence the reason it got pushed to the side of the sewing table. While I want to do different quilting, sometimes you just have to do the best you can to get things done. Cassie has already stolen it for her bed, since mommy still hasn’t finished her bed quilt!
So WAY back in October 2020 I mentioned that I found some cigar boxes with pieces that were possibly meant for a double wedding ring quilt and that there was no way I was going to hand piece one of those. Fast forward 2 years and now I’m doing one via EPP. We are only doing 2 a month and it’s really hard for me to not keep going and do more at a time. But I have so many other projects to work on, I need to try and stick to the 2 a month rule. Now that I have a ScanNCut, I can cut out all my EPP papers instead of buying them, saves me some time and money. I’m using all my 2.5″ squares in the scrap bin, so I didn’t have to buy any additional fabric for this yet. Not sure yet what I’ll be using for the background or backing, we’ll see once I get the whole thing put together next year.
I’m working on getting my blocks completed for our guild block exchange, I finished my first block a little while ago, I need to work on the other set tonight while I watch Ohio State kick some butt. 🙂
I know, I know….I’ve been missing again! End of the school year was really busy with a graduating 5th grader and 2nd grade field trips and as soon as school was out it was travel time. We’ve had a great summer and now school starts on Monday (8/29). I’ve been spending time working on various projects, cross stitch, EPP and quilting.
Expanding Dresden
This summer I found a new EPP designer, Elise Baek, and have been participating in some of her SAL’s. Yesterday I finished my expanding dresden and just need to applique it to a background and quilt it. It will be finished as a wall hanging. Another SAL from Elise was Dilly Flowers and I did some fussy cutting on some of the flowers. I am planning on using them in a Jack’s Chain quilt – I’ve started putting it together, but I have a lot of 9-patch blocks to put together still.
Dilly Flowers
At the beginning of the year I started a cross stitch SAL with FatQuarterShop.com called Heartfelt. All the motifs were hearts and looked like pieces of patchwork – how could I NOT do it? I stayed on track for the whole SAL and got it finished right on time. I need to work on my finishing skills, but this is the first project I’ve finished in a long time that wasn’t just trimmed and put in a frame. I have a lot more projects coming that will be finished similar to this one that I will be able to practice my techniques on.
Heartfelt SAL
Since I’ve gotten back into cross stitch I’ve started watching flosstubes on Youtube and one of the many I follow is FatQuarterShop. They have so many downloadable patterns and I absolutely loved a set, one geared toward quilting and the other toward cross stitch. I completed the quilting one and at some point I’ll do the cross stitch one.
Quilt-o-graphy
Back in March my father-in-law unexpectedly passed away and while my husband was in California helping his step-mom he volunteered me to make t-shirt quilts with all of his dad’s t-shirt collection. So I’m working on a total of 9 quilts out of 2 large boxes full of t-shirts that we brought home from our California trip in June. First quilt is for his step-mom as I think she needs the memories the most. I have the shirts separated and I’m working on making sure I can fit all the shirts in and I do want to put some pictures in if I can fit them. We’ll see what I can figure out in the near future. The kids start back on Monday and I’m hoping that means I’ll have some time to work on some of the many projects in the queue.
Now that the expanding dresden EPP is done, I’m going to be starting a new EPP project this week. Elise Baek is doing a Double Wedding Ring EPP SAL if you are a member of her EPP Club. We are doing 2 rings a month and it should take about a year to get it finished. Unfortunately I can’t participate in the zoom call tomorrow, kids have open house and orientation, but I’ll watch the replay so I can start basting pieces and start sewing them together.
I didn’t do so well on my monthly goals, while I did complete the quilting and get binding on the front of the pentagon quilt, it’s not stitched down on the back yet. I did not get around to doing the backing for Cassie’s bed quilt so that certainly didn’t get basted. Things got a little crazy this month with school, Cassie’s birthday and an unexpected death in our family. My father-in-law passed away last Friday (3/25) and hubby had to go out to California the same week the kids had Spring Break. This meant I was tasked to distract the kids for the week. 🙂
I may not have gotten enough quilting done, but I did get a TON of cross stitch done! First up is the Table of Elements SAL that I’m participating in. Finished part 3 with a week to spare! I’m really liking how it’s looking and I’m really glad to be done with the yellow sections! Part 4 was released today and I have it on my tablet to start working on today. Not as much to do this time, hopefully I’ll get it done quickly so I can work on my other projects.
Next up is the Heartfelt SAL from Fat Quarter Shop. When I saw the finished piece on their blog I knew I had to do it too. The column was month 2, but I had to go back and finish up all the borders from month 1 – got a little behind on that part last month! Now it’s all ready for month 3 (2nd column) that will be released on April 1st (hope it’s not an April Fool’s joke!)
Since I finished both of the SAL and had time left before the next sections would come out, I started working on Quilt-o-graphy from Fat Quarter Shop. They are doing it as a SAL, but I’m not following that I’m just doing it on my own. There’s a companion cross stitch piece that I’m going to do as well, Stitch-o-graphy. I love the colors, the design and I plan to finish it the way they did on the website. So far this is a pretty easy stitch, I think I’m about 15-20% done with it already after only a couple of evenings of work.
I’ve also been pretty busy this month with orders, it’s time for everyone to start buying graduation gifts and Class of key fobs are my biggest seller every year. I need to find out how many kids are in my son’s 5th grade class, I’d like to make one for each of them and donate them to the school. I’ll have to check on that soon so I can start working on them.
I should be back soon with a finish – that quilt will be bound soon!
I finished last months projects pretty quickly and started working on quilting the pentagon quilt. I just have the border left to quilt and then get binding on it.
That was the easy project this month! I also want to get the backing made for my daughter’s bed quilt and get it basted. I’m hoping to get more done than that – but I will consider my goal met if I can do the backing and basting. It’s larger than the pentagon quilt so it will take longer to quilt. I also have a little girl’s birthday to get ready for, which means party bags and possibly a few presents if I have time to make them. She’s turning 8 this month and is now into Harry Potter which makes mama’s heart sing!
Off to work on a hat order so I can get to quilting! Linking up to Elm Street Quilts OMG.
I knew I’d be able to finish these small projects this month, but I didn’t think I’d finish them so quickly! The first one is a runner for my sister’s makeup table and since there were extra pieces we didn’t need for the runner length, I made a small pillow for her that matches. I even put a zipper in the side – first time for me! – and the pillow insert is a little small, but that’s ok, I think she’ll like it anyway.
The other project was the Valentine’s runner for my island. I’ve made Cathedral Window things before, using the Missouri Star method. The first one I ever made was using 2.5″ squares and that was difficult. It’s pretty easy when you use charm packs. I have 3 more of these runners to make with holiday fabrics, we’ll see if I can fit them in soon.
Since I finished these projects, I basted and started quilting another project, I posted about that last week. House is empty today, I only have a few household chores to do, so I’m hoping to get a lot of the quilting done today. It’s 2/22/22 and my little 2nd grader was so excited to wear 2 different shoes, a tie and I did 2 braids in her hair today. It’s so cool the things they do at school to celebrate these special days during the school year.
I’m determined to get things off my UFO list this year, no matter how small they are! Linking up to OMG finishes at Elm Creek Quilts.
