I finished the Scrappy 9-Patch

and I love it!  
The quilt finished 66 x 90. 

I just have to pack my bag and I'm ready for the Spooktakular Shop Hop Bus Tour I'm going on tomorrow morning.  I still want to make a list of "want to buy". 

Yesterday and today I worked on getting all our summer clothes away and all the winter stuff out.  I also got the flannel sheets on the bed.
 

I didn't do much sewing today, besides stitching the label to the back of the 9-patch quilt.  I gave the 2 pooches bathes.   They are exhausted.  Once again I look at them and think; if I were a dog, I'd want to be my dog!

 Oh one more picture.  These are 2 little candle mats I made a couple years ago.

A few fall quilts

I've always taken pictures of my finished quilts. I'm getting close to 200 quilts in my 20+ years of quilting. (I'm counting everything here--anything quilted).  And I'll bet there are only 1 or 2 that I didn't snap a photo of.   Now before our house joined the digital camera age, and that was only a few years ago; I would take some pictures of a completed quilt with my 35mm, have to wait until they were developed and then sometimes the results weren't so hot and I'd either say 'oh well' or do it over again. How wonderful it is to take a picture and get to immediately delete a bad shot.  I have 2 photo albums with all my quilts and a little description along with each quilt.  But now I'm trying to get them all in the computer.  I've tried scanning them in but they are so grainy I've never been happy with the results and I don't know if it's my pictures, my scanner, my computer....and frankly I don't have the patience to figure it out.  So what I've been doing is as the seasons change and I rotate the quilts I'm taking new pictures,  I thought I'd just post a little fall quilt show here. I think most were made in the last 8-10 years. This first one is a Little Quilts design.  I think is was called For the Bears.

All the little triangle squares that were cut off from the flying geese on the pumpkin runner I used in the pinwheels topper.  I just couldn't throw them away.

This is from Little Quilts. It's one of my favorite quilts. The colors in the photo are a little washed out.

This is a Pat Sloan "tall and skinny"

This is a Little Quilt as well.

This is a Thimbleberries design. 
I could look at quilts all day.  Not just mine, anybody's!  But I think it's time to start this day.  I'm taking my in-laws to a doctor appointment this afternoon.  I have twin nieces who are graduating from high school in the spring.  They are both excellent swimmers. Their mom gave me all their swimming t-shirts.  They would like quilts.  Just "generous twin-size".  Their mom doesn't want a traditional t-shirt quilt. She's thinking something that looks more like a collage. That's a good thing since there are 2 boxes for each girl and 50+ t-shirts each.  (They've been swimming since birth, well not quite but dang early).  I want these done before Christmas.  I'm very bad at putting projects like this off.  

Waiting...and coughing...

Yesterday, I really tried to take it easy.  I read, I sat around, I brushed the dogs, and thought I was going to go out of my mind with boredom.  Finally, I went downstairs and sewed together these drunkard's path blocks.  They finish 3.5"I love them.  I already had them cut out. They were a charm pack and I can't remember the name right now.  They are going to be my new runner for my china closet. I used fusible batting and just a piece of leftover fabric for the back. After I get the quilt that's on my HQ now done, I'm going to microstipple it.  I like to do that on runners, really flattens them down so the "nick-nacky stuff I'll sit on it won't be sitting crooked.  After it's done, I'll post a picture of it .
Last night, my daughter Meghan was texting back and forth with her cousin, Brie.  She's my sister's daughter.   I had told Brie I would make her a messenger bag, she's a grad student at Pitt.  She was here a month or so ago and Meg showed her the one I had made her with Pitt fabric.Brie picked out a purple batik fabric and I told her to give me a little time.  Well,  I've had the fabric and actually all the pieces pre-quilted and cut out, ready for assembly--just been doing other things.  She was wondering if I had made it yet. (I know, shame on me.)  So I finished it this morning, in my jammies.   I think she'll like it.  The pattern is a Lazy Girl Design called The City Bag.  I made one for me a few years back, as a purse, but it's a little too roomy.  I could fit my lunch bag in it so that was convenient when I was working, but for a regular purse, no.  Their Town Purse  is almost the same design, but it's a wee bit too small, I have made several of them.  So this spring, I tweeked the City bag made it just a tad smaller--perfect. I call it the 'burb' bag.   I love this purse, bag whatever.

  I did have a couple yards of prequilted fabric leftover from a previous project and decided to use it for a new sewing machine cover. (also a Lazy Girl Pattern)  I made that today too, been meaning to make one since I got my new machine, just kept putting it off.  

A New Week

And hopefully the weather will improve here.



I quilted the diamond strings quilt on Friday, I think it was. I quilted it with a baptist fan design, free-hand since I don't use pantos. I like how it turned out. The second picture is of the backing. I pieced together random 'chunks' of fabric I had. I'm trying to get over my need for matchy-matchy backings and use up the stash.
I must say, I think it takes a long time to piece backings like this, it seemed like I'd add a section, measure it and dang, I still need 13" on the length. I'd find a 13" or so piece of fabric, but it wasn't long enough, so then I'm adding a section to that to get the length: trim, press and sew.....boring too. Oh plus more than once I got confused and sewed the length to the wrong edge----agggghhh. But I did feel very good about 'making do' and using up this yardage.

My quilt entry

Today is the last day to enter a quilt in Amy's on-line festival at Parkcitygirl
My quilt is this one:
The pattern, Ships in the Night is from McCall's Quilting October 2005 issue, designed by Kelly Corbridge. I had always wanted to make on Ocean waves quilt. I used all solid "Amish" colors from my stash for this quilt and I used the product 'triangles on a roll' to make the 485 1/2 square triangles. It finished 68" x 82". I started this quilt in October of 2005, according to my notes that I keep, probably right after I got the magazine. But I didn't quilt it until March of this year. The feathers I used in the outside border are from the book Hooked on Feathers by Sally Terry. This was the 1st quilt I used them on. I think it turned out pretty nice.

2 String quilt

tops complete. I was going to wait to quilt them but depending on how the day goes, I could start them soon. I'm really happy with them both. I made the top one first with a dark blue strip for the center and really like that, but I love the elongated look of the diamond one, which has a solid black strip for the center. I really didn't think about the block arrangement, as I made them. I just put them on the wall, I may have flipped a block or 2 but mostly just let it go. I'm almost finished with my Scrappy 9-patch quilt....and I'm thinking I'm going to have a lot of the solid pumpkin fabric I used for the borders and sashing leftover and I may start another one using that for the center.

It's the flu bug that won't go away

and I'm starting to get annoyed! I did manage to get all the rows for my 9-patch quilt sewed together but it's slow going. Yesterday, Paul took me to the BVPiecemakers quilt show. My Folk-art Flowers quilt took 1st place in it's category! I was pretty happy.


When the show was over, we had to wait about 45 minutes for the guild members to take down the quilts before they would let us claim them. Paul and I took a walk in the county park where it was held. It was a beautiful day. On the way home I took these pictures.




The leaves are just starting to look beautiful.
My diamond string quilt is together.