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!
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!
Well with all the top finishing I’ve been doing lately I decided to try and figure out one of the quilts that’s been on my to-do list for a LONG time. Really a bucket list quilt. I found instructions on how to design it in EQ, got that done in a couple of hours and started looking for the fabrics I needed. The triangles were the easy part, used up just about all of a half yard of fabric I had sitting here from another project. I need to figure out what I’m going to use for the hexagons, not sure if I want white or something else. I’ve started going through all my 1.5″ squares and separated all the whites from the colors and started making piles for each 9-patch. I’ll start working on those until I figure out what I want to work on next. Here’s my EQ design – the 9-patches will be scrappy both color and the white-on-white squares. This one will be a bit of a challenge to put together, but I’m up for a challenge!
Looking forward to start putting this together, once I figure out what those hexagons are going to be!
Oh my goodness it’s been a busy couple of days of cutting. In an effort to start cleaning up the mess in my office and have enough walking space, Sunday I started working on pressing and cutting up all the scraps that accumulated in a basket. It took a long time, but it’s done and now the 2.5″, 2″ and 1.5″ bin are totally full and ready to be used. Cassie has already pulled a number of 1.5″ pieces out, she wants to make a pillow for one of her dolls. We started stitching them together the other night, but she got bored after getting 8 pairs sewn together. Now I have a tub FULL of fabrics that need to be put on the foam core board that has been cut and waiting for months now. I’m hoping to get it done by the end of the month, we’ll see if that can happen!
Here’s what I’d like to get done in September – I have 1 large-ish quilt I want to get basted and I have a table runner that I really want to get quilted.
Back in 2015 I finished putting together a scrappy top with some hexies appliquéd on the alternate squares. I think it’s time to pull this out and get it done so we can use it on the couch this winter. Not yet sure how I’ll quilt it, maybe while I baste it I’ll think of something!
Way back in 2008 I made a table runner using my favorite fabrics – Equinox which isn’t being made anymore. I’ve basted it and started quilting it, but I’d like to get all the quilting done this month.
Here’s hoping I get it all done this month! Linking up to Elm Street Quilts.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on Hexie Insanity. I’ve been working on getting the white on white pathways attached to all my diamonds that were already put together. I have about 7 left (I think) that need the pathways and then I can start making more diamonds! I have all the single hexies completed (in the small container in the right corner) and ready to be put to use in the pattern. I really want to get all the diamonds completed before I decide how I want this to look, follow a pattern, rainbow, random? I’m sort of thinking a controlled random – so the same colors aren’t near each other but we’ll see. I still have 103 diamonds left to make! I also have 42 flowers left to make for the border, last summer I started putting the first border together, only to shift focus to the diamond pathways instead. It will get finished eventually, I knew it would be a slow, couple year project when I started it.
I enter giveaways all the time and while I can’t say I never win, I hardly ever win. Last week I got an email saying that I had won a giveaway for some fabric scraps and she needed my address to send them. I thought it was a hoax! Once I searched on the email address and found the blog again, re-engineered, I remembered entering the giveaway. I love all the purples! I’ll have to keep them in the bag so they don’t get mixed up with my stash so I can make something with all of them.
Hope to be back this week with another finish, I have a table runner that I want to see if I can make and finish!
I really wanted some mindless piecing this week and decided to make a scrap quilt from a design I did in EQ7. It’s just a mixture of small and large four patch blocks. I used a lot of 2.5″ squares, and used 1 and a half of a batik charm pack for the 4.5″ squares. I finished it up Sunday afternoon, but there were too many toys on the floor to get a picture. I wanted to get pictures yesterday but Alex somehow managed to catch strep throat and we spent all morning at the Dr’s and I just didn’t have the energy to do anything in the afternoon! I still need to find some backing and batting so this can be quilted, but it will make a nice quilt for in the trailer this summer. Unfortunately this hasn’t made a single dent in my 2.5″ square bin!!
So I finished a quilt this week, that means I can start a new one right? LOL. I have 2 small quilts sitting here basted and ready to be quilted and another that’s been quilted and just needs binding. Do I work on either of those today? Heck no! I started a new quilt that I designed in EQ recently. These are all the 2.5″ squares I need to do the 84 small 4-patches and I need to decide what I’m going to use for the 21 4-patches made from 4.5″ squares. I’m thinking I might use a charm pack I have sitting here, I’ll think about it for a while since I need to finish putting these together first. I pulled 108 white and 108 colored 2.5″ squares from the bins to put these together and would you believe that I had very few duplicates in the colored squares? The whites I don’t have a lot of, but I don’t mind duplicates in those since it’ll be spread out and they are white on white so the texture is all the same. Hoping to get all the small 4 patches done tonight while I watch the Cavs game – after the kids go to bed of course!
I’ve had the embroidery machine going all day stitching out some new lace designs I bought. It’ll be another banner/bunting for my etsy shop that I’d like to get posted tomorrow. The last design is on the machine now – for the fourth time! I think I need the machine needs a tune up, but I’d have to pay to have someone come to the house to do it, I can’t get it out of the room anymore! I need to do some research, maybe I can do it myself.
It’s finally finished! I started this quilt in January 2010 and was able to keep up every month with the blocks even though I was pregnant. July 2012 I started working on borders and managed to get 4 of them completed. Last month I decided it was time to get this off the WIP queue and into the to be quilted queue. I had ordered fabric thinking I could try and match it to the 3 borders I had already sewn on, but it just didn’t work. Instead of spending a lot of money trying to match it, I decided to just take them off and use one of the new fabrics I ordered. Last border is now on the quilt and it’s ready to go to the “Quilt Me” pile! The fabrics are all Moda Marbles and one constant white through the whole thing. Now I have a bunch of Moda Marbles left over that can go to Hexie Insanity or to another project – I haven’t decided yet!
I saw a link the other day in one of my Facebook groups and decided that I’d try a mystery sampler quilt from – The Splendid Sampler. You get 2 block a week for a total of 100 blocks. I haven’t decided fabrics yet, I could use the extra Moda Marbles, or my Equinox fabrics that I’ve been hoarding…or just go totally scrappy for each block. Sounds like there’s going to be a mix of piecing, applique, EPP, embroidery and paper piecing. Pat Sloan and a bunch of her quilty friends have created the blocks and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
In June 2012 I finished my first hexagon quilt and started the next one – Hexie Diamonds. It was supposed to be finished in 2013 and used as a quilt for the bed in our trailer – but I worked on it slow and didn’t finish it when I thought I would. In July 2014 I finished the center – all 2,473 hexagons! It’s taken me another 17 months to put the borders on! I’m happy to say it’s now a finished top, not the best picture but the best place to take a picture is the living room floor and the kids have toys all over the place still! With all my top finishes I’m up to 16 that need quilting – so I guess 2016 will be a year of quilting!
My brother-in-law got my name this year and got me The Big Bang Theory Lego set (we love that show!) and the Hunter’s Star Go die. I made one block last night after we got home and I THINK I have enough of the same fabric to make another. I’ll turn it into a table runner if I can find some fabric that matches it. It’ll be cute for Valentine’s Day!
My fabric is on it’s way for Star Crazy, I’m not seeing a tracking number but it’s coming USPS Priority Mail and it’s only a few hours south, so I’m hoping it will be here Saturday. We have no plans for the weekend and I hope to spend as much time as I can in my office sewing!
I hope to be back later and do a year in review post, might not get to it today though we are heading back down to my mother-in-laws to spend time with family before they leave tomorrow.
