EPP – Kelly's Kwilts

Busy Summer!

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.

I’ll be back soon, I’ll have 2 quilts to show!

Kelly

Cassie’s Quilt Done!

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!

Finishes and Updates

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. 🙂

Updates

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Back soon!!

Pentagon EPP Quilt Update

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.

Whew!

I have finally completed the top for Cassie’s bed quilt. I started this February 3, 2019 while we watched the Super Bowl and 3 years later I get the borders added to the top on Super Bowl day! I have a plan for the back, which requires ordering some fabric – which hubby might not be happy about. I wasn’t too thrilled about how much I had to add for borders, 9″ for 3 sides and 18″ on the bottom, just to get it to the right size for her bed. The pattern says it finishes 60″ x 72″ and if I had been paying attention to that I would have added at least 3-4 rows to the EPP part before adding borders. I have been trying to find the designer but it looks like her site is gone, email doesn’t work and she’s not even on Instagram anymore which is where I originally found the pattern. Cassie thought when I put it on her bed that it was totally finished, she’s not very patient and really wants it done!

I’ve been working hard this weekend to get things accomplished, and I just found out about something really cool at guild last week. There is a product called Free Fuse Powder that you can sprinkle on your top/batting/backing and press it all together. It’s easy to quilt through, there’s no basting pins, and it’s so quick! I used it on a runner I was working on yesterday and fell in love with it! Took me a couple of hours to baste the runner (4.5′ long and 1.5′ wide) and then quilt it. Now I need to make some binding and I can get another UFO off my list! I did finish one of my OMG projects, I’ll be writing about that soon, the table runner will be part of that post too.

Time to get dinner ready so we can watch the Super Bowl. I don’t like them, but since it’s an Ohio team we are rooting for Cincinnati this year.

January OMG – Completed!

Wow, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it this month! I was so close last night after working on it all afternoon and evening yesterday, that I decided that this morning I was working on it until I got it done. Now I need to figure out what size borders are going on this to fit Cassie’s bed. She thought it was going to be 100% done and she’d be able to use it already, she was so very sad when I said it wasn’t done yet. Guess I’ll need to work on it when I’m done with some other items next month.

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts and will be back soon with February plans.

Lots of updates!

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.

OMG – January

Ok, we are going to try this again for 2022. Every year I have the best of intentions of doing one monthly goal (hosted by Elm Street Quilts) and I do ok for the first month or so and then never continue. In the attempt to get my 40+ list of UFO’s down I’m going to try this again! 🙂

This months goal is to get the top of Cassie’s EPP quilt put together. I have the first 4 rows assembled and I’m trying to work on it at least a little each night. 5 rows left to put together and then assemble into a top with border. Tonight I’ll start working on row 5 after dinner as my Sunday slow stitching. Cassie gets more and more excited with every row that gets added, which is making me want to get this done for her before her birthday in mid-March. I’ll be able to work on the quilting while she’s at school so she won’t see it.

Goodbye 2021!

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! 🙂