Dear Jane – Kelly's Kwilts

November Goals (OMG)

Ok, so I messed up last month! I did my October OMG post – and then I never linked up!! It’s a good thing though because i never finished my projects! I almost have the Dear Jane finished, I just need to do the applique of the few triangles on the back. I will finish it this month!

Since I already have it basted I am going to quilt (and hopefully complete) my Dear Jane Signature quilt. I’m pretty sure I can get this quilted quickly, as soon as I have the time to do it! I volunteer at my son’s school at least 1 day during the week and this month is the book fair so there’s a few extra days I will be at school. I love helping out with the kids though!!

Linking up with Elm Street Quilts.

Back soon!

Slow Stitching Sunday 102917

Wow, I just realized that it’s been a long time since I’ve done an update on my Hexie Temperature quilt. I’m slowly putting the hexie flowers together, appliqueing them to the white block and then putting borders on them. I now have 6 completed, and I have 2 more that just need the borders. I need to decide when I’m going to start putting the rows together, I might wait until I can put 2 complete rows together, which means 12 blocks and 2 blank ones – that I still need to make.

After dinner, while I watch basketball I’m planning on trying to finish the binding on my Dear Jane quilt and hopefully start appliqueing the few triangle blocks I have onto the back. I’m not doing going to do a label, instead I am going to write on the back with a fabric pen so it’s permanent. If I manage to finish that tonight then I plan to work on either more Hexie Temp flowers or my Dear Jane EPP, I’ve been missing that one too 🙂

Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching.

Many Projects

Dear Jane 031217 I’ve been working diligently on various projects today. Some cutting for hexies, some cutting for bow tie blocks and getting them matched up and ready for sewing as leader/enders, commission quilt work (2 tops now ready for basting and quilting), and some work adding borders to 2 different quilts. I’m not showing one of them because it’s one of my OMGs, and I want to save it for the end of the month. I have FINALLY added the borders to my redesigned original Dear Jane quilt. The problem is I can’t decide if I should add another border to it or not. I’m planning on doing a simple meander on this since the fabrics didn’t excite me. I don’t want to spend a lot of time quilting this one. The EPP one that is in progress will most likely get some special quilting – once I figure out how to do it! 🙂 So tell me, what do I do with this? I know I’m going to use the muslin for the backing, but do I add another border or leave it as is? I just can’t decide!

Updates

Oh my have I been busy!! In preparation for working on my UFO list I pulled some backings, batting and did a little bit of basting. I started quilting one of them this afternoon. I’m hoping to get it quilted before dinner so I can work on binding tonight.

New Years weekend I managed to get 2 commission quilts put together and quilted. As soon as I get the pictures needed for the labels I’ll be able to put the binding on and ship them off to my friend. I’ll have pictures after they are gifted.

Last month I noticed that Paperpieces.com was doing an 18 month Dear Jane quilt – all in EPP! Now this is how I’d like to do a Dear Jane quilt! I signed up and they sent me the first 2 rows to get me caught up to everyone else and I’ve already completed 2 blocks and I’m working on a third. I’m using Moda Marbles for my blocks – yes another quilt with Moda Marbles! This will be my third!! I’m hoping to get caught up with all the row A and B blocks before the end of the month, we’ll see if I can make it before the next row gets here!

Over the weekend I pulled out my Civil War Dear Jane that I decided to abandon and figured out what 3 blocks I needed to do to finish off the last row. I found 2 blocks in process that I left as is and then I just needed to do 1 more. I found an alternate block in the Dear Jane software that didn’t take me very long to do, so now I just need to decide on a border and the top will be done. In all likely hood I will do some very simple quilting, I don’t even know what I’m doing with it since the colors just aren’t me. I have all the leftover fabrics ironed and ready for some friends at guild who really like Civil War fabrics.

Hope to be back soon with a finish!!

Dear Jane….Changes

I’ve been working on my Dear Jane quilt for almost 6 years. I really just lost interest when my son was born and I just didn’t have a lot of time for quilting. After teaching last week and talking about it and listening to Lazy Daisy’s podcast the other day, I decided that I lost interest in it because I just don’t like the fabrics. The Civil War colors just aren’t me. So I’ve now decided that I’m going to take everything I have done and put it together into a small quilt (right now as designed it’s under 50″ square). I have 4 blocks I need to make to make this work, and also figure out what to do with the triangles that I already have done. I still want to do a Dear Jane quilt, BUT this time I will do it in MY colors. Might use my equinox fabrics, or Moda Marbles, or just scraps but it will be something that I’ll enjoy making this time. I’m actually debating hand sewing them, and if I do that I can take them camping this summer. It would make a great summer project. I will use up as much of the fabric pieces I have in the backing, binding and possibly the border and then I’ll have to decide what to do with the remaining pieces. Might just take it to guild and give it away.

It’s amazing how making a decision like this is freeing. I’m now excited to start the new Dear Jane quilt! Hope to have some updates soon, shouldn’t take too long to get this top put together since the blocks are already put together!

Slow Stitching Sunday

I spent the week working on basting the stack of hexagons I pulled and prepped. Took all week, but now there are 17 ready for stitching and 2 I completed last night and this morning. I am hoping to get some white hexies basted this week and maybe put a corner together to see how I like it. I created a spreadsheet for this quilt so I can keep track of how many of each color I complete – I’m such a geek! Linking up with Kathy’s Quilts – Slow Stitching Sunday.

I was hoping to get some sewing done yesterday and today, but Alex was sick with a fever yesterday and now today the baby has one. Still not sure what bug they picked up, but Alex is on the upswing and hopefully Cassie will be right behind him.

Daisy (Very Lazy Daisy podcast) posted some of her Dear Jane blocks on twitter this week and is trying to get me into working on mine again. I’m actually debating it! I know I have a few prepped, and if it’s something I can do by hand that would work even better. I’ll have to see what I have and what I can work on while the kids play.

Super Bowl is tonight, we don’t care much about the game, just the commercials! Hope your team wins!

A Dear Jane Finish!

No, I didn’t finish my Dear Jane quilt. But I did finish my Dear Jane Siggie Quilt! It was really nice seeing the piles of blocks before dinner. I was really concerned that I was missing 2 of the siggie blocks so I sent a note to the group this morning and found that there were most likely only 48 sent to us. I’m thrilled! Unfortunately I had to change the design just a little, one less column and 1 extra row, but I was able to use all the 9-patches I had already started. I used the Bonnie Hunter method of joining the blocks into rows and I have to say that sewing them together was so easy! I didn’t have to worry about getting blocks in the wrong place. I had hubby hold it up so I could get a picture, I think something might be wrong with my camera because the picture is a little blurry, but I might have been trying to take the picture too fast. I just know it’s done and I’m almost ready for the meeting tomorrow! Just need to do a sign up sheet and start working on the details.

Blocks waiting to be sewn into rows

Top half completed

Completed Quilt!

Dear Jane Siggie Quilt Update

I have to say that I’m loving working on this quilt. Over the weekend I started cutting the strips for around the siggie blocks and started putting those together, after I cut them all down to 5″. I’m doing a lot of chain piecing on this quilt because it makes it so much faster! On the siggie blocks I put the top piece on (1.25″ x 5″) all of the blocks. Then after pressing I added the next side (1.25″ x 5.75″) – log cabin style. I have the 3rd side cut out already and I’m planning on adding that this afternoon while Alex naps. I hope to cut out the 6.5″ side and get that added on this afternoon too, it’ll depend on how long he naps. Then I’ll need to cut out some more 2.5″ black squares with my Go to finish the alternate blocks. Boy are those easy to chain piece too! I saw on Bonnie Hunter’s site once how she will sew together the first 2 blocks in each row, leave them connected together then add the next piece on. Then everything for 1 block is together. I was flying through those blocks this weekend! I have 15 done and 34 to go as soon as I get the black cut out. I really want this done before Thursdays meeting. If I get enough done I’ll be back later, if not tomorrow!

Blog Change & Dear Jane Siggies

Well, I think I have everything working properly now, if you find anything that seems broken please let me know! Hubby and I decided to move the blog to a server hosted at home instead of on Godaddy in order to save a little money. Just took a little time to get everything working the way I wanted it.

I decided to finally start working on putting together my Dear Jane Siggie quilt and see if I could get the top put together before the next guild meeting. Thinking about seeing if there is any interest in a block exchange in the guild and I wanted to have this done so I could use it as an example of a siggie quilt. Doesn’t need to be quilted, just put together! Other option would be like the one I did with the Quilting Stash Yahoo Group in 2009 (still not quilted!) Still in discussions with the guild president so we’ll see what happens in the next week. In the mean time I am going to see if I can at least get the top finished. I have all the colored squares picked out and I have some of the black ones ready to go. I am hoping to get the rest of the squares cut out this weekend and be able to start working on the strips around the siggie blocks. I will be cutting all the siggie blocks down to 4.5″ and then adding the strips to make them 6″ finished like the 9 patches. I think it looks pretty good, the image doesn’t show the scrappiness of the quilt, I didn’t feel like taking the time to color everything differently.
I’ll be back tomorrow with an update on my newest cross stitch project, time to shut the computer off and get to work on it!

Dear Jane Siggie Blocks

Well I got my blocks done today, they are all packaged up and will be picked up by the mail carrier tomorrow. I love being able to print shipping labels online and have them pick it up, I don’t have to go to the post office anymore! All of mine were done with some form of green outside of the center square. At least I have 50 blocks done and it will be shipped way before the deadline! I did get some more white on white fabric today at Joann’s and I already have them all cut up and in the 2.5″ square bin just waiting to make some more hexis. Planning on work on the beading the rest of the night, I’m hoping I can get the first one done tonight – it is a possibility!