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 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 this quilt top last month and wasn’t planning on quilting this this month. But since I’ve finished my OMG projects for the month (post to come soon) I decided I needed to work on something. I just spent the last couple of hours cutting the batting – of course that had to be done twice because the first time I wasn’t thinking and had it folded in half when I cut for the width and only had half of what I needed! – and then doing the basting with the Free Fuse Powder that I talked about in my last post.
I’m planning on quilting around each pentagon after I stitch in the ditch on the sashing. Not sure what I’ll do in the wider border yet, but it will be something simple. Hoping to get as much of it quilted as I can this weekend, but I’m taking Cassie to the gym tomorrow for a makeup session, and then I’ve promised her we can watch the first Harry Potter movie since we finished the book last night. She’s so excited to watch the movie and she loved reading the book together every night before bed. I think we are starting book 2 tonight, I’ll have to check with her and go find it in the basement. Good thing about watching the movie tomorrow is I’ll have extra time for cross stitch, I’m still working on the Table of Elements SAL plus I started the Heartfelt SAL from Fat Quarter Shop. I’m probably going to be behind on that project since I’m almost halfway done on the ToE SAL for the month.
The kids had a snow day yesterday thanks to Winter Storm Landon. I was pulling fabrics for backings for this month’s OMG projects and borders on Cassie’s quilt and found a bunch of fabrics that were too small to do much with. Scraps from previous projects that just got thrown in the big tub of fabrics that I still need to get put on mini bolts and put away. So I spent some time pressing them and getting them cut into squares – from left to right, 1.5″, 2″, 2.5″. They are now in the tubs and ready to be used in projects instead of buried in a bin.
Hard to really tell from the picture, but we got a bunch of snow. We have a 650′ driveway and I only went out yesterday long enough to drive Alex to his friends house around the corner and pick him back up later. The roads were bad, but I think our driveway is worse 🙂 We are currently waiting for someone to come and plow the driveway, unfortunately the snow blower won’t work very well on this wet snow. Hubby has major issues with the snow blower when it’s wet since it just clogs up everything.
We got the new month’s pattern for the Table of Elements SAL on Monday and I’ve been working hard this week on it. I’m getting about 200 stitches done a day, might get more done this weekend since the kids are going to my sister’s for some fun and we’ll be catching up on some movies that we’ve been meaning to watch. During the day I’m planning on working on some quilting for this months OMG projects.
I finished this months Table of Elements section with plenty of time to spare. It was getting difficult to hold the scroll frame while trying to stitch so I ordered a stand with an Amazon gift card I received. It’s taken some getting used to using both hands for stitching, but it’s made me actually stitch faster since my right hand isn’t going under the frame for each stitch. Right hand now stays on top and left hand stays on the bottom. Now I’m looking to see if I can put some of my other projects in a scroll frame so I can work on them faster. I’ll be able to just switch out the frame on the stand when needed. Can’t wait for Monday to get the next piece of the design, we had 13 elements for the first month and for February we get 20 elements! Since I’m hoping to have other projects done before then, I might actually be able to stay on target with this.
I had to order way too many fabrics to try and get what I wanted for the last border on this quilt and still didn’t get the one I wanted. But after a couple of guild meetings where I asked advice from friends, I picked a fabric and got the borders on this and now it’s ready to be quilted. I talked about finding the pieces for this quilt back in 2020, the post is here. This was a fun quilt to do, and used a ton of my 1.5″ squares, but somehow there’s still a ton of them in the bin. I have another quilt that will use a bunch of those, that will be another post though!
Wow, this 2017 Hexagon Temperature Quilt took 5 years to complete the top! I started part way the year in 2017 and just totally lost the urge to work on it for awhile. The hexagon blocks were done for a long time, I just needed all the sashing pieces completed. I even had the 4 border pieces completed way before I needed them. Thankfully EQ allows me to see how many pieces are used in a quilt, 1,415 2.5″ squares in this quilt. Yet somehow the bin is just as full as it was before! I have 1 little lone hexagon that needs appliqued on and it’s ready for quilting. I have so many ready for quilting!!
So while I was doing some cleaning and putting things away I found a bin of already cut HST pieces that finish at 2.5″. So I decided that would be perfect to use as a leader/ender project while I work on other things. I matched up everything I had already cut – 1 white with 1 color and then found that I had a TON of colored triangles that needed a white to match. Ended up spending an afternoon cutting white-on-white fabrics with the Studio, I needed 356 white triangles cut and then spent time during Cassie’s gymnastics class pinning them together so they are ready to stitch when I need them. Have no clue what pattern I’ll use for these yet, I have plenty of time before that needs to be figured out!
I finally finished the Harry Potter quilt top!!! Well I need to do a border still, but the fabric is sitting here waiting to be cut and sewn on. I am only going to do a small border on the top and bottom since it’s already the right size for our bed. I need a little bit more on the sides though. I have no clue what to do about the backing yet, I have a bunch of different Harry Potter fabrics I’m thinking about putting together for the back, I just don’t know if I have enough or not though.
I’m very excited that I’m making progress on so many things this month. I currently have 46 items on my 2022 UFO Challenge list, and I think about 20 of them JUST need quilted. I’m still saving up to get a long arm and I’m hoping there are some good deals at the sewing expo this year that will allow me to get the one I want for less money. Still not 100% sure where it’d go if I do get one, but man I’d be able to get so many quilts completely finished if I had one! I’ll be back in a few days with more, I have an OMG post to do as soon as I finish the EPP work on Cassie’s quilt and I have a new project to let you know about.
I think I mentioned in my last post that I was going to be starting a new cross stitch piece, and I did start it on Monday. I gotten a few patterns from Pixel Patterns, and found out she was doing another SAL that I wanted to do too, the last one was a crochet SAL and I don’t do that anymore. Details are here, it is the Table of Elements and I’ve gotten some good work in the last few nights. I really haven’t worked with a scroll frame very much so this is definitely new for me. I’m trying to make myself use both hands to stitch and when I do it goes much faster. I think the app said I was just over 25% done with it. This first month we have 13 blocks to do so it’s not too much work. The picture is from last night when I was working on it, Raven is the lap puppy (at 5 years old) and refused to move so I could stitch. I might have gotten a little more done after the picture was taken and I’ll get more done tonight. The next section doesn’t come out until January 31st, so I have plenty of time to get this section done. I’ve already added this to my 2022 UFO Challenge list, I’ll be putting that up soon.
Wow, what a year we’ve had! Lots of camping and family time, some health issues with Raven back in the spring – she’s back to acting like her old self – and not much finishing of projects! I’m determined that 2022 will be the year of finishing projects and I’ve been getting things to the point where I can finish them.
I’ve been working on Cassie’s bed quilt, since it’s EPP I can work on it at night. 3 rows are put together and I have the 4th ready to add on, possibly tonight since we are staying up to see the ball drop.
I’ve been working on cross stitch this year, trading off with EPP and my puzzles. I did a couple of Star Wars planets (patterns from Etsy), did 2 of the teacher pieces in the spring, and lately I’ve been working on the Deathly Hallows that I found on Etsy. Monday I’m starting on a SAL with PixelPatterns and we are doing the periodic table over I think it’s 7 months. I have everything ready to start, except the pattern!
I’m still working on too many EPP projects, but some of them are REALLY long term projects. I have the EPP pentagon quilt top almost done, unfortunately I need to order fabric for the border before I can finish it, the piece I want to use is too small, and it’s pretty small so I should be able to quilt it on my domestic. Haven’t done much on the Dear Jane EPP quilt, but a little bit got done on the Hexie Insanity quilt. I’m hoping that once I get the hand work done on Cassie’s quilt that I’ll be able to get another old EPP quilt put together.
I’m still working on saving the money to get the longarm machine that I want, it would help me finish quilts so much faster! I might see about renting time on a machine and see how much it will cost. I just don’t know if I’d be better off saving the money toward my own instead of renting time. We’ll see.
The Harry Potter quilt blocks have now all been cut out, and like I mentioned yesterday I have only 2 left to stitch. Once I get those done I can start putting the rows together, but I can’t get too much of it done since I need more of the background fabric that I’m using for sashing. I only have a little bit of it left. I can’t wait to get this one done since it’s for our bed. The quilt I have on it now is a queen and doesn’t fit very well on the king bed!
Happy New Year, be safe if you are going out and hopefully I’ll be back soon because something is finished! 🙂
I haven’t been doing much quilting lately, but I have been working to change that this weekend. After I finished making some masks for my sister and finished a small project for my dad, I decided it was time to work on my bow tie quilt. It’s been sitting around since before 2017 and I needed to get more done on it. So I stitched up all the bow ties I had sitting here already prepped and then finished all the alternate 9 patch blocks I needed for the border. I’m trying to do each bow tie block out of a different fabric, so I pulled out a large bag of scraps that I had bought years ago at a guild garage sale. All the squares are 3″ so I have to do some trimming before I can start sewing them together. I also need to cut some 2.5″ white on white squares, I will do that on the Studio once I’ve got the rest of the squares cut up. Hopefully I’ll have some time this week to cut them and get everything paired up so when I have time to stitch I’m ready to go.
I’ve been spending my time after the kids go to bed working on cross stitch. I have 2 wonderful teachers at school that are getting special gifts this year, one is finished and I need to get the second one started soon. I don’t have any pictures of the piece I’m working on right now, but it’s almost finished and I will post about it then. A friend on instagram had posted some Star Wars planets she was working on and she told me where to get them on Etsy. The first planet is almost done and Alex is quite thrilled with them getting done, all 9 will be framed and put on the wall in the hallway upstairs. I’m hoping that I can get the last 2 colors finished off tonight, depends on how tired I get after dinner. 🙂 That will be my Slow Sunday Stitching, check out what others are working on today at Kathy’s Quilts.
Since I got my cross stitching out again I found that there’s an awesome app that you can use to mark off what you’ve stitched. Unfortunately for me it’s only available for android, what’s a girl to do but buy a small android tablet for the app to run on? Pattern Keeper is a great app, but not all charts can be loaded in it yet. So I pulled up my MacStitch app and started putting some of them in myself. I also found that some charts on Etsy are already formatted for Pattern Keeper (PK) and if you ask nicely they might even add that to the download for you. I had one that I asked about before I bought and she saved it in the download for me. I can’t wait to start that one, it’s a Harry Potter Deathly Hallows piece, but I need to get the teacher ones and the Star Wars planets done first.
I need to get back to work on cutting up the 3″ squares, I hope to be back soon with some finishes.
