Back in July when we were allowed to start having guild meetings again, one of our members – who owns a quilt shop – did a presentation and showed a new MSQC Quilt As You Go (QAYG) hexagon template. Of course I had to buy one! When I got home that night I grabbed a charm pack I had sitting here and some scraps of muslin to see how quickly I could put one together. While you can machine stitch them once you’ve folded the sides over, I decided to hand stitch them all. Because you know I needed another hand project 🙂 I used 3 charm packs I bought from Connecting Threads years ago, Mirage Garden and Mirage Home, for the centers and black and muslin for the backings. I used just enough of the muslin to account for the 6 really dark charm squares that just wouldn’t show up with a black binding/border, of course that was just enough to make a big hexagon for the center. 🙂 I think once I get my dresser in the bedroom cleared off – it’s a mess! – I’ll use this as a cover for it. But I might find somewhere else to use it in the meantime.
I’ve been busy the last few days working on orders – a few HUGE orders came in so it’s been all day with the embroidery machine running. Hope to start quilting the next quilt soon.
I mentioned earlier in the month that I had 2 finishes, I just didn’t have any pictures! So finish #1, last year I picked up a baggie of HST from the free table at guild. I started putting them together slowly as the leader/ender as I was working on other projects. Eventually it took center stage and became a finished top. Then came the part I just don’t like – basting! It was small so I was able to spray baste it before I started quilting it. I decided to step outside my comfort zone and do something different, so I put on the ruler foot and used a straight edge ruler to help me stitch stars in each 9 patch area. Still not sure where it’s going, might just let Cassie have it for a doll blanket 🙂
In 2013 we had a block swap at guild. 6 women participated and each made 2 blocks. I wanted it to be a little bigger so I added the blocks in the corners. I finished the top right away in 2013, but it sat here for a long time because I just don’t like to baste! This year I just had to complete something, so this was basted in January and was just sitting here waiting for me to quilt. Since I had started working with rulers I decided let’s get moving and work more with them. It was so much fun! I did ribbon candy in the sashing, which I’ve never done before. Once I got the hang of the moving the quilt the right directions it wasn’t bad. The picture doesn’t show any of the details of the quilting, it was taken at guild and I don’t feel like pulling it out to get another picture 🙂
So, 2 more finishes for the year, I have another quilt that I basted a couple of weeks ago at guild that I’m just waiting to start quilting. Working on a huge order right now and hopefully I can get to it in the next day or so. I’d love to have 1 or 2 more finishes for the year.
So I’ve been working on cleaning my office like I mentioned in my last post and I’ve been planning this cleaning for awhile now. Back in July or August I ordered another cabinet for in my office. Today my dad came over and put it up for me. A full cardboard box and items from other areas in my office now reside in the last cabinet on the right (in the picture). I still have room to access everything on my embroidery machine, but anything I don’t use a lot is now in the cabinet. Everything in my office feels open again since I put so much away!
I mentioned yesterday that I found cigar boxes with what I think were meant to be EPP projects. My EPP papers should be here Monday and I can start working on putting them together. I need to decide what color fabric I’m going to use for all the octagons, and then the backgrounds. I’ve used all the EPP papers that I had on-hand so that project is in a holding pattern until Monday. I do still need to figure out a setting for these, after I looked at each set I had a handful that did not have enough pieces so I’m down to 21 pentagon sets to work with.
I ordered an entire roll of batting and it just arrived yesterday. I’m ready to baste a quilt and get started quilting it!
How on earth is it already October? The last week has been busy in cleaning! My office has been a royal mess for quite some time and there’s a closet outside my office that has things just thrown in it and not put where they belong. So, the closet is now cleaned and organized, some things going to the basement and some getting tossed. Items from my office that don’t need to be up here are also going to the basement.
While I was working on cleaning off the mess of my sewing table I found 2 cigar boxes that a friend found at a garage sale that had fabric already cut out. Each box had various cardboard shapes for cutting out the shapes. I spent some time this afternoon trying to figure out exactly what I was going to do with these pieces, and looking at the EPP pieces that I have here that I could possibly use.
What I believe I have is 3 different quilts that will be made: Pentagons, bow ties and diamonds. The bow tie quilt will probably be the last one I work on, I don’t have any EPP pieces that will work for that right now, and there’s no cutting template for them either.
The pentagons I’m going to put together in rings with an octagon in the center – EPP papers are on order from paperpieces.com right now. I found 1 pack of papers here so I started glue basting some this afternoon/tonight just so I have a head start on them. Once I have the rings put together they will be appliqued to a background and the blocks then put together. It looks like there are 27 pentagon sets so I’ll have to play around with a setting – might have to make a couple extras in order to have an even setting. I’ll have to wait and see when I get these all together.
The second box had pieces that I think might have been going toward a wedding ring quilt, but there’s no way I’m going hand piece one of those! So I had to figure out something else I could do with all that fabric. 1″ diamonds fit nicely on the fabrics and I’m going to do them like tumbling blocks. I even basted and sewed one block together – this is going to take a LONG time since they finish so small. I had a small package of diamonds I ordered years ago, so I ordered a much bigger package with the rest of the EPP pieces. Not in any rush on any of these projects, because I have so many hand projects under way already!
I have a few finishes to share, I’ll get pictures taken and get a post up in a few days. I also have a roll of batting on it’s way so I can baste another quilt and start working on the quilting, especially since I now have a fairly clean sewing table!
Wow, 5 months without a post! It’s been a whirlwind last 5 months and I just haven’t done a lot of stitching. We finished the school year at home with mommy as the teacher, Cassie did great and Alex just didn’t want to work on anything. Home just isn’t the right place for my kids and school. They just started back this week and we’ve had an eventful first week! Yesterday the phone rang and my heart always drops when it says it’s the school. Yep, Alex threw up at recess and had to come home from school. So I had to run up to school and get him. Let’s hope it’s the only time this year!
It was a busy spring and summer with orders, including one to Germany that took forever to get there! Everyone was shopping online for the end of the school year gifts and it definitely helped me! It’s been a slow start to fall, but that’s ok it will pick up in the next month or so for Xmas. Because I was so busy with orders the sewing machine sat idle for a long time. Plus we were doing a lot of camping and visiting with family in other states. We stayed in the whole time but had so much fun!
Sorting HatQuidditch RingsSlytherin Crest
Now that I am starting to have some time to myself I’ve been working on Harry Potter SAL blocks. Just finished another one today, I only have 9 more blocks and I can get the top put together. Since our quilt show for 2020 was cancelled due to COVID-19 I have time to get this and maybe a couple more quilts completed before our show in September 2021.
I have a lot of projects to work on when I’m sitting in my chair at night, cross stitch, all the various EPP projects, a new knitting project and I picked up a QAYG Hexagon template at a guild meeting a few months ago and have been hand stitching those and will be machine stitching them together when they are all ready. Hope to be back soon with a new update, hopefully it won’t be 5 months from now!
Wow! I can’t believe that I managed to make 100 blocks in 13 days! Laundry Basket Quilts is doing a mystery quilt that started on March 20th, but I didn’t find out about it until the 23rd when I started working on blocks. This was a wonderful stress reliever since the kids started online learning last week. We spent the mornings doing school work and then the kids had the afternoons to play or do whatever they wanted to do. Some of the colors in the pictures aren’t correct, I used all pinks and blues, similar to the pattern. I did change the first one to purples, just because I had those colors already cut in that size.
In the process of working on all of these blocks, I managed to complete 3 bow tie blocks, 2 blocks for a mini quilt I’m working on and 3 blocks for the hexie temperature quilt! If I can applique the last 2 blocks tonight I can finish them and put together the next 2 rows of the hexie temperature quilt. Hoping to work on the Harry Potter quilt this week too, we’ll see what I can get done this week!
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!
Yeah I know I already posted a finish in February, but I actually finished this one the end of January/beginning of February and took it for Show and Tell at Guild in February. Back in 2013, I posted that someone from guild came over and taught me how to hand quilt. Well I started working on a practice piece and it got put away in a basket and forgotten about, you know how these things happen! So I was looking for something else and found the practice quilt with all the 1/4″ tape all falling off of it. So I took it out of the hoop (to be returned to Sue finally!), pulled all the 1/4″ tape off and just started working on it. Took a few nights and a few poked fingers, but I got it done and found some already made rainbow/scrap binding that I could use on it. It’s not perfect, nothing I ever make is, but it’s done and I hand quilted it all by myself! Now the first hexagon quilt I made is basted and once I get a hexie project finished I will start hand quilting it. Besides I need to figure out how I want to quilt it still!
Wow! I spent the afternoon, minus time for a family walk outside on the bike path, working on pulling fabrics for the hexie temperature quilt. Unfortunately for me, I had to do some cutting into fat quarters for a lot of it because I just didn’t have the colors in my 2.5″ square bin. But that’s ok with me, at least I now have ALL the squares for the hexies I need and I can work on basting and doing the flowers whenever I want. I will most likely start working on them tonight, there are 4 weeks already basted and they just need put together into a flower. Then I’ll have a stack ready for applique and borders.
I’m starting to feel good about progress made so far this year on quilts. I have 2 basted and ready for quilting, 2 have been finished and knocked off the UFO Challenge list and I’m making progress on multiple in progress quilts. Hubby just left to pick up our dinner and I’m going to work on ironing the scrap basket fabrics so they can be cut down and put in the correct tubs when I have time. I need to get this office cleaned up and that’s just phase 1!
Amazingly I haven’t had a lot of things that required me to leave the house the last few days. So I decided that it was time to spend some time sewing! Well I did take a nice long walk the other day it was so nice!
So first item up on my list was to get the border put on the Pokemon quilt. This top has been done for almost 2 years and I don’t know what I was waiting for! Not the best picture, kids had things out and I couldn’t get a better one. But the border is now on this and it’s in the to be quilted pile!
Since the top is now done I decided all the solids leftover from this could go into the Harry Potter quilt, since I need more to make it bigger than the original SAL. I think the SAL was for a twin bed size/throw and I’m making it large enough to fit our king size bed and hang over the sides properly – which I can never do for some reason. 🙂 So everything shown in the basket at the top is from the Pokemon quilt. In fact I used some of it already to make my next Harry Potter block! 9 3/4 is finished and I have 12 more blocks to go!
So with that done I decided to pull out my 2017 Hexie temperature quilt (picture from post in 2018) and see where I was with that. Boy did I leave that project in a mess! Back in 2018 I put the first 2 rows together and then put together the blocks and appliqued all the hexie flowers that were completed. It looks like I have 4 flowers that still need to be put together and I can possibly put the next 2 rows together. However, it looks like I never updated my spreadsheet/trello with what was completed AND it looks like I never got the high temp for the day from August 28th to the end of the year! So it looks like I’ll spend a little time today gathering the rest of my data and maybe even pulling fabrics for more hexies. Since we are going on a mini vacation for Spring Break I’ll need a project (or 2) to take with me!
Cassie wants to do some sewing today, we’ll see if she really makes anything!
