Oops I did it again!

I started another project.

Very small.

Valentine theme (timely and appropriate).

Took longer than I thought.

yes that's an Itty bitty twister uses 2.5 in squares to start finish 1 inch.

Crazy.

Cute.

(12 x 12)

now to get it quilted and displayed for this Valentine's Day.

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Now before I started on the baby hearts, I insisted that I finish piecing the Scrappy Happy blocks.

I really don't like this quilt.  Just keeping it honest.

Perhaps I should re-name it "Barfy Happy"...

"Happy Chaos"...

"OMG take the leftover strips AWAY from her"...

perhaps this will teach me to not deviate from the list.

Perhaps.

*******

 And a few finish pictures:

Small Treasures.  It's hanging in the entryway.

(23 x 36)


and TA-DA!

(12 x 18)

Oh I smile every time I look at this!  Twenty years in the making. Yessiree it is hanging up and will stay up for a while.  It's not the greatest  1st rug every made but it's mine and I LOVE it.  His beard was hooked with roving which I was nervous about but it was really easy to do and looks great.

I have two ideas in the back of my little mind for my next hooking project but I really want to get a lap frame for future rugs.  

*******

And finally my dog picture of the week.

(please do notice the dog beds complete w/their own personal quilts)

"Who's house/couch is it anyway?"  OR  "Rise of the Planet of the Dogs?"


Oh these puppies crack me up.


Fun times, fun times. Life is Good.

Works In Progress

Yesterday was a very busy day.

  It was like I drank a gallon of coffee. 

(I did not).

I loaded and quilted a 2nd donation quilt top; the one with the red binding in the picture.  I did a randomly spaced wavy line all the way across, took it off, reloaded and did it again in the opposite direction. 

I've been wanting to try this and think it looks nice. The quilt on the left is the 1st donation quilt-it was the one I did to see how the new poles and track system on HQ work

(Annie wanted in the picture since Otis keeps hogging the header photo.) 

****

I also put the borders on this little spring table runner.  

(22 x 46)

I put the main part together during guild's newbie class, which was all about using pre-cuts.
I used an older April Cornell charm pack I had just sitting around waiting for just such a project.
 I found the yellow (inner border) in the stash but had to buy the outer border.
I have the binding made from the same blue border fabric.

I also made great progress on the OB-Wonder #3

I always am amazed at how a project that hogs the entire design wall shrinks so much as the rows are sewn together.  I have a tremendous desire to move all those un-sew rows on the right closer to the sewn together rows on the left.  It's goofy... and I won't do it.... waste of time... 

but I really want to.

Have you seen the t-shirt that says

yep I get that.

Oh and you might remember my Snow Bound quilt and how I wasn't happy with the quilting.  

Well, I got it out and the quilting is fine. Apparently, it just needed to sit in a dark closet for 6 months.  

I put it up yesterday and just kept looking at it and shaking my head as to why I was so bummed about it originally.

Oh and when I was getting Snow Bound out 

this quilt came out too. 

Remember My Apple Orchard?

 GUESS WHAT???   

The binding isn't sewn down!!!  

I think I must have put this away around vacation time and forgot about it!!! 

****

Oh and I gave both the dogs baths!  

They are very sad to be smellin' all nice and clean....

 but that is the price they must pay to live in the house with us people.

We're in a nice routine

Here's the string blocks on my design wall.

and although I can't get the picture to turn correctly here is Molly on her bed. This is where she stays while I'm quilting!  You might be also able to see that HQ is too close to the design wall for me to use it easily. (as I posted about last time but didn't have pictures)

I need to take some time and seriously figure out this room and the arrangement I want. But too many distractions right now. 

 It will get done. 

I may actually get Evening Shadows finished today or tomorrow.  yippee!

Right now I need to get dressed and go take a walk while it's still cool out.  I was doing really good with the walking routine and then that oppressive heat wave knocked the wind out of my sails. Yesterday and today have been wonderful, in the 80's and low humidity.  I have the windows open for a bit of fresh air, will have to close them up later today. 

We've got it figured out

I think!

Molly's 1st night with us



Molly is a shy, sweet English Setter.  Otis fell in love w/her at first sight. 

Dominate Annie did not share this feeling, she couldn't even conjure up polite hospitality-as her humans would require- or even mild disinterest. Nope, Annie wants to fight.  I understand the dog hierarchy thing. 

 I'm a bossy control freak, I admit it.  Call me the Alpha and I will say 'damn right'.

If my family were behind me right now, they'd be nodding their heads up and down furiously in agreement. But even my alpha-ness hasn't been able to make Annie tolerate Molly. Unfortunately, Otis got in the way and Annie went after him-I didn't anticipate that one! So now Otis is staying far, far away from Annie, which really makes us feel bad. 

So we're keeping them separated. 

It's a pain, yes, but workable. Annie and Otis upstairs and when no humans are around Annie in a bedroom away from Otis, for Otis's peace of mind.  Molly is in the basement.Saturday night and last night she slept there, where we put her bed. 

Happily, I have a working bathroom down there and the priming is done on the walls so I plan on quilting this week, as I normally would and keep Molly company.   I quilted on HQ last night; my Evening Shadows Bl-a-Day sampler, and Molly slept the whole

 time. 

Yesterday afternoon I was down sewing some strings blocks and realized I was bored out of my mind.  So I counted how many blocks I had (35) and made one more. I arranged them 6 x 6 on my design wall and am calling it quits on the string quilts.  (for now anyway)

I realized, while trying to put the blocks on my design wall, my HQ is too close to the wall for me to work comfortably.  So now I need to try to rethink HQ's spot or a new place for the design wall. 

******

Oh man it is getting so dark here and I can hear thunder rumbling.  Otis and Molly are afraid of storms....this should be interesting.

******

Fun times, fun times...Life is Good!

Design Wall Monday (Week 18)

Here is the wall:

At the top are my 9-patch/snowball "leader-enders", I just love sticking them up there as I make them.

The 4 blue blocks on the left are the first Snowbound BOM (button on the side of page). They are this year's BOM from BunnyHill Designs.  I'm trying to use a Blush charm pack for the appliques plus a few green blender type charms from a different line.

The center 12 blocks are BunnyHill Design's 2009's BOM A Tisket A Tasket.  I used  Civil war repo charm and a few other fabrics.  I am loving this quilt.  The embroidery needs done on all the blocks in both BOM's but that should get done in the evenings watching tv or sitting on the porch. Porch sitting is one of my favorite good weather sports. 

4 lonely crumb blocks, and 2 finished FFF stitchey's that are up there while I decide how I want to finish them and on the cutting table my Bl-a-days, which have pretty much become a regular "habit" and I've thought a couple times about what will I do next year when this project is through...oh yeah, I'll be making a gazillion quilts with all these blocks, silly me.

I do think though that in a day or so everything will be off the design wall because of these:

The last 10 sets of triangles for the 2nd OBW! shivers of excitement...

****

And finally, I came up to get the camera to take the pictures for this post and this is what I found.

What is wrong with the 2 matching dog beds right there that they had to walk by to jump up onto the sofa?

They are the best "bad-dogs" I know!

For more design wall fun go here.

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. 

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.      

For your viewing pleasure...

...and the continuation of my documenting my quilts.
 This little wall quilt I made in 1995, it's hand appliqued and the bow was attached after the quilt was finished. This is the 2nd one I made.  The first one my SIL made such a fuss over-I was compelled to give it to her.  This is one of those quilts that never seem to lose its appeal for me. I just love seeing it every fall.

This is an oven mitt.  I never use is, just hang it on a cabinet knob every October and put it away when the Christmas decorations come out. It was a project from a LQS in 2003, called The 3rd Saturday of the Month Club. You paid a small fee in January and got your first little project. Then as long as you brought the completed project into the shop the 3rd Saturday of the following month; you got the next month's pattern free.

This is the quilt on my bed right now, made in 1997.  It's all flannels even the backing.  The pillow panel at top is cottons.  I machine appliqued those using a loose zig zag stitch. This was before I had a machine with the blanket-stitch. There was no way I was doing all that by hand. It's one of the few quilts I've tied. 

This is a lap size 'raggy seams' quilt I made in 2004.  The front is all homespun's, the back is mostly denim from the kids' worn out jeans. It was amazing how little usable denim is left from kids jeans after removing seams and holes in the knees etc.  I had to go to a thrift store and buy some large men's jeans to make up the difference.

This is a Little Quilt (literally and patterningly as well). It is only 13" x 17". I hand quilted it.

I just love this little guy too. As I've started to document these quilts.  I'm finding some of them haven't been labeled... GASP!  Bad, Diane, bad. 

And in this process am seeing first hand why it's so important.  --It's a pain in the butt to go through 4" ringbinders of patterns and notes to try to find the date that I took a class (that quilts further down) or in this little quilts case looking back through my quilting photo albums.

Much easier to just flip the bottom up and read the label. 

This is another Little Quilt, scrappy 9-patch made January 2004.

This little winter door hanger I made in 2005.  The pattern was in Amer. Patchwork Mag. in 2004. 

 He hangs on our door almost all year.  Annie will use her nose to ring his little jingle bell to get our attention when she needs to go out.  Our 1st westie, Haley, taught her that, but Haley rang the sleigh bells  on the hinge side of the front door.  It, too, was a holiday decoration, that stays up year-round.  

Annie will hit the big ones first, but if we don't jump up within 30-40 seconds.....she'll start flipping the snowman.  Sometimes we just watch her do it, cracks us up. 

And finally, my no diamonds Lone Star. It's made with HST.  I think 5/2005 is when I made it.  It doesn't have a label, and the class notes just have 4/29 on the top of one of the pages (in my hand writing).  I don't remember and didn't have a picture of it in my photo album.  Wow, I really dropped the  archival ball on this one.