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.