Today

Meghan and I are going to a baby shower.  I posted a picture of the quilt I made before. 

I was reading Amy's lastest post and my eye caught the burp cloth tutorial on the side of her blog page.

 yesterday I sewed all day long and ............are you ready

The 2nd T-shirt quilt is together.......wooohooooo.  It measures 64 x92.  The first was 67 x 92.  Not bad for "winging it" with no pattern. 

Block-a-Days

On the left are Feb 21-28th and alone on the right is Feb 29th.

Yesterday I went over to Libby's (no blog) and we had a 'sew/gabfest'.  Fun, fun.

Wednesday was hubby's birthday.The kids came over for dinner and Meghan was off work!  It was 1st time we've all been together since Christmas!

The M. compass is getting quilted today (or at least a good start on it)! 
Thanks to all for the lovely comments from my earlier post.  I found my information on this quilt and was aghast that I had started piecing this in June of 1994.  OMGosh! In my notes I wrote: "I started this just to see if I could make this challenging block. I'm hand piecing the compass's but am adding the 4 corner pieces to make the compass square by machine.  It is very tricky and I am really excited that I can do it!" 

I remember using what seemed like 50+ pins for each block when I did that step. Here's a picture of the back of one of the blocks.

I finished piecing the 25th block in 1996. In Feb of '97 I started sewing the top together and on 5/13/98 I added the final outside border and I wrote  "it took 4 hours!" to sew that border on. 
I adapted the pattern from the book Scrap Patchwork and Quilting by Marti Mitchell--published 1992.

PS.  It's snowing again...a lot.  I wasn't believing the forecast of 3-6 inches by tonight, but from the looks of things out the window it's going to need shovelling later.  I do believe a couple more weeks like this and I too will be pining for spring. 

Design Wall Monday/Feb. 22 (week 8)

The start of the 2nd T-shirt quilt is on the wall. 

I have the binding on the 1st one and should have that done as well this week.  I bought backing fabric for a Mariner Compass top that I made several years ago and never quilted, I want to load and quilt that this week as well...I don't have a picture, will try to remember to take one before I load it. 

One T-shirt quilt

I quilted #1 t-shirt quilt today.  I loaded it last night, but was tired, wanted to watch the Olympics and frankly was a little concerned with how it would quilt. 
I had no trouble with it at all!  I used
Superior's King tut thread on top and Sew Fine in the bobbin. I just did a big meander on it.  A few of the blocks, I outlined around a motif but not much of that.  The only problem I could say I had was some of the seams were so bulky, I did have to really go slow and push down the top at the seam to get the hopping foot over without causing a wrinkle.  I tried to press all the seams open but some of them flipped during loading (or I sewed them wrong when I was assembling top).

On the snow front, well it finally seems to have stopped. And the sun has come out.  I think it has made the top of the snow nice and crusty and Otis can walk on it, Annie too, but she sinks a bit. 

 It was the first day in weeks that Otis ventured off the deck.  Annie checked out the entire yard and discovered that the snow it piled higher than the fence.  UH-oh.  She tried to jump out but I was watching and growled at her so she backed off.      

Block-a-Day's and BOM

I got my block-a-days caught up.

These are from Feb 10-20th.  I really like all of them. 

I also made the 4th block in the BOM that Shannon is hosting at pieceful kwilter.  I cut the 30.5 background square for the applique center for the quilt; so I don't use it for background in the blocks and end up short. I haven't started on the appliques yet.

Tomorrow the T-shirts..woohoo!

Quiltathon Weekend, Day 2

One down, one to go!   It measures 67 x92.  I think that is good size--better be since I'm outa t-shirts.  

I also finished the block a day blocks I had cut out, I'm still behind. The block in the center of the top row; I added the border strips to-to bring it up to 12.5 inches since I made it out of Christmas fabrics.

The block in the bottom row left---that's the one with the 1" finished HST. 32 of those teeny weeny things-it was just a very time comsuming block....never thought it was going to be done.

 (such drama!)

Quiltathon Weekend

  I decided to use this time to really try and get one of the 2 t-shirt quilts I'm making for my twin nieces for graduation.

 I've been working since 11:30am (1 hour break for lunch, coffee and to watch a little of the olympics).  I did sew one of my block a day blocks first (but forgot to take a picture of it). I sewed that up as it was laid out and ready to go and I didn't want to have to re-arrange it later.  It was an easy block so after it was done, (drum roll, please) ...

I got out the T-shirts and started----woohoo! 

 Here's a picture of the wall after about 2 hours. 

It doesn't look like a lot of progress but if you can click on the photo and get a closer look, you'll see that the center section has a lot of t-shirts that I sewed in randomly (sorta like making a crumb block!)--who knew learning how to do crumbs a few weeks ago would come in handy with this project.

Here is my faithful helper Annie.  She can not be comfortable sleeping on the ironing board leg---but she was there for at least an hour!

Here is where I left the wall for tonight.  I have the vertical rows sewn together.  It's measuring 81" long. I'm pretty sure it's going to be about 70-72" wide.  I think that's ok.   I hope it doesn't pull my flannel wall down tonight. It's quite heavy with that interfacing on it and the blocks won't stay up by themselves to I have to pin them...which is a pain. 

This is all the leftover t-shirts.  I'm thinking after I sew the top together I should be able to add then across the bottom to increase the length to maybe 86-88".

 I'm so happy with the progress so far. Part of my hesitation in starting these, (besides the fact that I am a procrastinator) was that I've never made a t-shirt quilt before.  It's been a learning experience that's for sure and that's a good thing.

 

Friday Post

should be my week's worth of bl-a-day blocks.  But alas, they are still in a nice neat pile waiting to be sewn together. 

This has been my main focus for the week.

Clearing the sidewalk...

clearing the deck...

...not quite there yet. 

And of course clearing the driveway:

Those are my tire tracks.....I got out yesterday....woohoo! I have just enough room to back out of the garage. 

They're calling for more snow on Sunday night....

Today I'm getting out again; while the gettin's good!

   

A Winter Quilt Show

 I got some "new" quilts out to rotate them. 
I'm taking pictures to get everything digital.  So here is my latest batch. 

A  Little Quilts quilt, hand blanket stitched and quilted, made 1/1998.

This is my String Stars. It's a Fons and Porter pattern. I made this in 1996. The fabrics are really starting to fade. 

My Amish Bars quilt, it's 32" x 32".  I made it in 2000. I hand quilted it. I always wanted to make a traditional amish Diamond in a Square bed size quilt.  This is as close as I got.  (so far, I'm not dead yet! -it could still happen.)

I call this one Space Mountains. It is 51 x 51 inches.   I did an invisible machine applique method for this quilt. I made it in 2005. The pattern was in an Amer. Patchwork & Quilting magazine in '04, I believe. This is one of the first quilts I machine quilted on my domestic sewing machine.  I just SID around the shapes and a large stipple in the outer border.  

This is another one of those mystery squares quilts.  I blogged about them before. You cut 120 2.5" squares mix them up in a bag and as you pull them out you have to lay them out.  So hard for me to do. This was made  in May 2004. It's 20.5 x 23 inches. It's hand quilted.

 

This is just a little stitchery I made a few years ago. I added a border and framed it last year.

This is a reversible table runner.  

 

I made this checkerboard table topper in 1998.  The book was called Fun, Fast and Fabulous quilts.  I've never been happy with the background fabric, too dark.  I hand quilted this one too.

This is a table runner made using "Circular Patchwork" templates. It's an amazing technique, no batting inside, it's a finish as you go type thing.  I made this in 2006.

Design Wall Monday Week 6

Here is my wall.  Top right is Feb.5th's Bl-a-day, I have the rest of the blocks for this week cut out just need a few hours here and there to sew them.

The center group are my Many thanks Blocks; about all I did this weekend besides shovel snow, was hand stitch the verses on these blocks.

And the far right is my Misty Pines wall quilt.  I hope to quilt and finish it this week.

  I'm standing at our sidewalk--behind me the longer part of the driveway and around the back is a lovely cake frosting smoothness.  They say we got about 22", that might be the official totals but the picket fence around the driveway is 3 1/2 feet high and you can only see the top 6 inches...2 feet, 3 feet what ever it is-

it's a lot of HEAVY snow! 

Tomorrow, as long as I can move, we will dig out the lower 40!

****** 

I did sew this afternoon and I'm going to do some hand stitching tonight unless I fall asleep. Zzzzzz.


Edit:  Paul did finally get home this evening about 6pm!  He had to work  Friday night and then got stuck there, as the roads were so bad. 

A Snow Day

Where is my sidewalk?   It's there between the lamp post and the valentines day flag.  I shoveled it out last night at 10pm!  This is 7am and it's still snowing.
Here is the "view" out my front door after I shoveled it open. 

And these are out my deck door.

I shoveled a path to the steps, but you couldn't see the steps when I got there.  The snow is still coming down, only 3 more inches before noon. 

I think I'll be trading in my needle for a shovel today. 

Paul had to work last night.  

He just stayed there and slept at his desk. He has to work today too.  Just as well; I don't think he can get in to driveway.

Block-a-Day Week 5

I think I have 7 "christmas fabric" blocks now.  I've changed how I'm storing these--I had them in date order but now they're by size.  

Yesterday my friend Libby and I had a sew/gabfest here at my house.  She got here about 9:45 and we cleaned up a little after 4pm!  It's amazing how much we can get done while talking :)  I worked on Feb. and March's blocks for my Many Thanks BOM quilt. I still need to do the hand embroidery on them so they're not finished yet.

 I also worked on my bl-a-days.  

I started the Misty Pine paper piecing wall hanging I got on that quilting bus tour I went on this past fall.  I finished putting it together last evening. 

And finally, I don't think I showed a picture of February's Monthly Mini. 

Design Wall Monday Week 5

I have crumbs on my design wall!  This is the first time I've ever tried these.  It's fun. I didn't have a big pile of little crumb pieces so I think I'll get a few more made and then they will have to be put aside until I accumulate some more.
I cut each little block to 5".  I think I'm going to sew them together into 9-patch blocks as I have them on the wall now.