block-a-days

Ok these are 7/30-8/4!  I need one more 12" block in the Morris fabric line and I'll have 20 blocks.  I'm thinking a 4 x 5 setting with some kind of scrappy border, probably a sashing around them in a solid or 'reads solid' to calm the blocks down.  Crappola photographer at work again but when I look at these on my wall I just about drool.  That lonely bright's 9" block, hmmm..not so much. 

I've been busy quilting away on Libby's tres large quilt and if I get my butt from in front of this computer I think I can have it done today.  I'm going to accompany her to a quilt shop tomorrow (I am a good friend, so of course I agreed to go and keep her from buying fabric; she wants to check out sewing machines).

I'm wondering if I should purchase a taser....buwahaha. 

(that's really not funny, so sorry!)

so why am I still snickering...

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and a photo of my new bed quilt

I've always wanted this quilt for my bed but with the light background and Annie sometimes losing her mind and jumping up on the bed with dirty doggie paws, I was hesitant. But she hasn't been jumping up too much, I'm afraid she's starting to have some aches and pains. She doesn't even try to get up on the bed on weekends now when Paul is still in bed (that used to be the norm). Dang, I hate it when you notice them slowing down. 

So I thought.

  It's a quilt, it's made to be used not rolled up to keep it from creasing and brought out to air and re-roll.  

 I still have the 1st quilt I made ALL HAND PIECED & HAND-QUILTED and made with 'non-quilt shop fabric' (gasp) and it's well-worn but still works.  But I retired it from bed service after 10+ years.

(well, crap, I can't find a picture of that quilt, I'm going to have to go find it....)

So, if this one gets dirty, I will wash it and if it starts to wear out in some years I will retire it. But until then I'm going to look at it and smile thinking of all those fabrics that I bought in 3 coordinating fat quarters at a time (because that was all I could afford) and being so excited that I could hand piece a mariner's compass block- way back when I was a new quilter and I had been told Mariners compass blocks were for 'very experienced' quilters!--working on it while the kids played; keeping a little baggie of the pieces sitting around or in my purse. (I think we had doctor appts. on a weekly basis back then, or so it seemed.)  And I'm going to run my fingers over my 1st attempt at "mcwerleying" and smile at how far I've come as a quilter.

 And if the kids don't inherit this one....oh well. 

I think they'll be ok.

Design Wall Monday (Week 23)

Another Monday already!! 

Here is my wall.  I have the leader/ender 9-patch & Snowballs back up. I think a 9 x 12 block setting will give me a good single bed size quilt, with a border or without....we'll see.  So I will need to make 38 more blocks.  I just love the scrappiness of it. 

The batik blocks to the right are 9" blocks the 1st 2 are block-a-days. I'm making the next bunch of 12" blocks from batiks with a black background and 9" blocks from brights...but I got confused and made these 2 from batiks~ The 3 on the far right row are the first 3 blocks for this year's Shop Hop Progressive quilt. I'm using the same batik color-way so the 2 block-a-days will hopefully fit in! I think I like to make things difficult for myself sometimes. 

The shop hop starts this Wednesday through Saturday; 12 shops. Libby and I are going,this is our 5th year, I think.

 I believe this year we finally have the perfect itinerary; efficient while avoiding the city of Pittsburgh during rush hour; which has been our nemesis in the past! Last year was the first year using a GPS--didn't get lost once. Of course, our getting lost, confused and turned around in the good ole days of MapQuest made for some hilarious moments.

Several times we'd be amazed at MapQuest's accuracy and singing its praises only to be cursing it's existence later as we drove on and on looking for "Lovey Lane"...which we never did find.

A few times I thought we were going to end up in Ohio. And actually another year we did. We were on the PA turnpike and were suppose to get off the last exit BEFORE the Ohio line and we were gabbing (I know it's hard to believe!) and missed it. The nice toll booth man let us u-turn at the toll plaza and head on back into Pennsylvania.

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These are June and Augusts'  Monthly minis; they were on the wall earlier for this photo.

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This weekend was a local guild's show. (Blog-less, Libby and I entered quilts. Here are her three entries.  It was Libby's first show, she received 2 ribbons. She was very excited!

 

My Mariner's Compass quilt was voted "Viewer's Choice". I was excited too!

 

The show is held in a little church and it was impossible to get a straight on shot as the rows were so close together.  It was a fun afternoon of looking at quilts, talking about quilts...you know-all that good stuff!

For more quilting 'good stuff'. Visit Judy's.

McTavishing or is it McWerleying?

I've never done McTavishing on a quilt yet.  I've practiced on paper and my white board.  

 So I'm still quilting my Mariner's compass quilt.  I have all the borders, sashing and outlining around the compass done. (that was in blue thread so it matches pretty close...I spent almost all the time quilting it in the dark so I could see the stitching).  I started the background today. I almost chickened out on the McTavishing...I have already done a fair amount of frog stitching before I was happy with the quilting I did on the compass (ended up just SID and had to pick out the "fancy quilting design I though would look so good-not) 

so I didn't want a repeat of that.  But I went ahead and tried it.

I quilted around 2 of the star points and then changed from a regular thread to Sew Fine (which I had in the bobbin anyway). 

I'm pretty happy with it so far.  I'm still getting the feel for the direction changes. So 1/2 a block done...24 more to go.  

I came up from downstairs to get my camera to take the picture above and look what I found.

It's good to be the King.

I made my first block for the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along that I joined.  

I'm using an Evening Mist jelly roll and yardage from Serenity by Diawabo that I already had in the stash.

Design Wall Monday Week 9 -March 1, 2010

Here's my wall: far left 4 of this weeks Bl-a-days, the middle are the start of another Boxed Squares baby quilt and the the bunny on the right is my March Mini quilt. I personalized this choc. bunny by taking a little bite out of his ears....just like I'd do in real life! 

Here's the start of my Boxed Squares quilt.  My second one.  I need this quilt for an April baby due date.

And this is my other "project", not on the wall but on the sewing table. I keep wanting to start a 'leader/ender' quilt...but haven't taken the time to cut out some squares or triangles. So I'm using my small circles for my latest Crazy Curves quilt.  I have all the big  and small circles pieced.The small circle blocks just need to be joined 4 together to be the same size as the big circles and then I can start laying out and assembling the top. So that's what I'm using as leader/enders. It took a little longer to piece the 2nd t-shirt quilt sewing these in between rather than a little triangle or square but I made a lot of progress.  I was amazed.

 

And yep, the 2nd t-shirt quilt is together, I worked on it most of the day and evening Saturday...until the Olympics came on in the evening.

I have my M. Compass about 1/2 quilted  here's a very bad picture (-sheesh the glare is awful-) of the top feather border. I take pictures like this mostly so I don't forget what I'm doing on the top border by the time I get to the bottom border and so I know which direction my feathers are heading....I used to feel like I was the only one who did this until a while back it was discussed in a blog and lo an behold lot's of others have the same "memory" issues.  So nice to know I'm 'normal'.  *wink*

 

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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.