New Rag Quilt in Progress

I told my son he could play on my computer today, and since my computer and my sewing machine are right next to each other, I use the same chair for both the sewing machine and the computer.

Needless to say, I couldn't sew since the chair was occupied. So I decided to cut out all the fabric for the rag quilt I have been asked to make. It is for a baby girl that is due in August.

These strips and squares are enough to finish the front and the back of the quilt. Now I just need to get sewing. :)

Months of the Year RedWork

I found these machine embroidery designs years ago on the internet when I was searching for "free machine embroidery designs". Each one symbolizes a month of the year. The set I have stitched out is the little girls, but there is also a little boys set.

In the past I have stitched out the January and February designs and used them for postcards. 

 But for the ones I have pictured at the top, I plan on using them as the centers of a double Irish Chain. I already have them set in the center blocks. I just need to make the 5 patch blocks to go with them. I totally forgot about this UFO so I better add it to my list, which brings the total to 11 unfinished quilt projects. I better get crackin'.

Unfortunately I can't remember the site where I downloaded the designs from, but I do remember they are no longer free to download. A couple months after I initially downloaded them, I went back to the same site and they were then listed as "for sale". I figure I got lucky on these. Unfortunately today, I can't find the web site again where these came from. :( Hopefully they are still out there and I am just not typing the right words in the search engines. So, if anyone knows who the designer of these are please let me know. I would love to be able to link to his/her site.

*UPDATE* - Vicky has found the designer, YAY! Heather's Home Designs. And she sells her designs here: OregonPatchWorks. Thanks Vicky!!

Pinwheels

Today I finally worked on one of my UFOs. I pulled this quilt top out a couple months ago, but that was about all I did with it. Today I started laying the blocks out on the floor to get a view of what order I wanted them, but my puppy decided that he wanted to play with my blocks and just wouldn't let me lay the blocks out at all. So I had to come up with a new way to display them. I remembered reading online about design walls being made out of tablecloths with flannel backs, so I grabbed the only table cloth I owned that had a flannel back and draped it in front of my fireplace. It wasn't quite big enough to fit the whole quilt (the top row didn't fit) but it still was very helpful in getting this top laid out and ready to sew together. It also made me realize that I was 6 blocks short for the outer border, so I worked on those today and added the yellow inner border. Hopefully tomorrow there will be time to finish sewing the rest of the outer border blocks together and complete the top.

Button Flower QTC

These little cards were made for the QTC Button Flower swap I joined. We had to use buttons as part of the flower in some way. First I quilted the red background with some black thread. Then I added the silk flower base and then the buttons. But I felt they needed something else, so I added some colorful beads to spring out behind the buttons.




As I was making the ones with yellow centers I thought to add some yellow french knots on the background to give it a little something extra for my eye to look at and some texture.

Crazy Stiched QTC

These four ATCs or QTC's (quilters trading cards) were made for the Fabricards QTC: #6 swap. We had to come up with any thing that embodies the number six. I had a good phrase in my mind when I signed up for this swap but a couple weeks later I totally forgot what I was going to use....Then I spent weeks trying to remember what it was till I finally decided to just make something different. So here they are. I used 6 Fabrics. Then I embellished them with some hand embroidery and other goodies. I like the look of them. The purple fabrics are leftover scraps from the costume I made for the community play that I participated in not too long ago. I still have lots of the dark purple fabric left so you may see it again in future projects.

Cat postcards

These are two of my long overdue cat postcards. They are now on in the mail traveling to their recipients. When I was making the faces, I put a smile on the first one, but then I didn't like it as much. So I left it off the next one. Later when I came back to look at them again, I realized I did like the smile after all. Go figure...

I am really enjoying paper piecing in such a small format. I just wish I could find more patters that fit the 4 x 6 size. Most of the ones I find are square. Which means I have to come up with something extra to fill the top and bottom of a postcard. This cat one was the first one I have found in rectangle from. Hmm, maybe I can work on making my own PP patterns... that is something to think about.

Spring Daffodil

Spring is here and it sure feels wonderful. The leaves are budding on the trees and the azaleas are blooming all over the place.

The March flower mingle for Fabricards was Daffodil, what a perfect postcard for the season. This is my version. I paper pieced this little flower and then added some beads and some yellow stitches to fancy it up a bit. The blue has very small stipple quilting all around it, but the thread I used blends in very well so it is hard to see in the photo. This will go out in tomorrow's post.

Some ATCs

These top ATCs was made for the QTC: Number series. These are four swaps #3 and #4. We had to make a card that depicts three or four of something. I actually made the #4 one first. I made mini four patches. and with the left over scraps from the four patches, I cut them into Triangles for my three card- "Triangles have Three sides."

This card on the right was made for the Fabricards QTC: Patchwork swap. I used some leftover pinwheels I had sitting in my scrap bin. and the Candy ATC was made for the Art 4 Mail Red and White swap.

Showcasing Stitches

Some of these new sewing machines have some really fancy stitches, so I created a swap in Fabricards just for that. I also opened it up for some hand work too if some were interested in that, but I chose to do machine stitching for mine.

My pink center fabric has free motion quilting all over it and the green edges showcase three of the fancy stitches that come on my machine. I really like the way this one turned out. The colored thread I used for the machine stitches show up nice on the on the green background.

January Flower Mingle

In Fabricards we are doing a monthly Mingle swap that showcases the Birth flowers of the year. This is the card I made for the January flower, Carnation. I choose to print out this lovely yellow one on white muslin, then added some fancy stitches from my machine around it and some free motion quilting on the edges. I also made a couple more of these to mail out to my current Art2Mail group.

Hearts, Hearts, and more Hearts

These are a couple of cards I made for valentines day. The first one was for two swaps one just called Hearts an the other Patchwork Heart. I like to combine ideas when I can, since that is the hardest part for me, coming up with the idea. Most of my time spent making these cards is spent trying to come up with the ideas for them. Once the idea comes though the cards get made very quickly.

This next Heart I made for a swap with the theme of Weaving. The only thing that kept coming to mind for this swap was those woven heart baskets that are around during valentines day, so I made a flat one to mail out to my partners.


This last card is an ATC. I printed this image on some white muslin, I figured it was perfect for this swap. There are all types of hearts hiding in this image. I counted at least seven.

Log Cabin Postcard

This is the postcard I made for the Art4Mail Block of the Month postcard swap.

The block for January was Log Cabin.

I decided to do paper piecing for this one. I have only paper pieced about 4 times before. I wasn't too impressed with the process the first few times I did it, but this time around I really enjoyed it. I guess i just had to do it enough times to enjoy it.

Cross Stitch Snowman

This card is for Angela. We signed up for the Cross Stitch swap together and since it was only the two of us I was able to pick a larger design to cross stitch.

I haven't cross stitched in such a loooong time. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it. I will have to pull out some of my old projects and finish them up. I know I have at least two big ones that I was working on. I do believe they are in my nightstand by my bed. I shall have to go hunt them down. :)

Snowflakes

This snowflake postcard was made for two different postcard groups. I found some fancy snowflake sequence at Hancock Fabrics and hand sewed them down with a white bead center. To me, the white squares in the center needed a little something extra so I did some hand stitching with dark blue thread. I did the edges the same way. I took a strip of white muslin, trimmed the edges with Pinking sheers, and ironed them on the sides with wonder under. Currently, this type of edging is my favorite way of finishing off the cards. It makes the card look really neat without any frayed edges and is slightly quicker than a .02 zig zag stitch.
I saved one of these cards for myself as always. It will be the closest thing I have to snow this year, or any year for that matter. Lately most our weather has been in the high 60's. I can go outside without and jacket on and be just fine. Which is a good thing, because my heater broke! We have had the repair man out three times to fix it, and he said it was fixed each time, but it still isn't working right. It only works when it wants to, then shuts off. Hopefully the rest of the winter will stay this warm. One can hope....

New Year's Resolutions???

Well here it is, the 12th of January and I haven't started my New Year's Resolutions. I did make them. I even put them in a spreadsheet and listed ways to accomplish them, but for some reason I have just been sitting on my butt for the first 12 days of the year. I can still start now though right?? One of my friends made a comment that he didn't like New Year's Resolutions because they only last for a couple months and then people give up on them. But I say, why not become a better person for two or three months? Who knows, if you keep at it every year one resolution might actually stick. I myself made 8 Resolutions for this year - Hopefully one of them will actually last more than two months, but if not, then I will have had two to three months of progress which is better than nothing. :)

One of my resolutions this year is to finish the UFOs on my UFO Tracking list. Right now I only have 10 on the list and they are all quilt related items. I know I have other UFOs that are not quilt related but I'm not sure how many. I won't know that till I clean out my closet. That's a different New Year's Resolution - Become More Organized. But for this resolution, I am only going to concentrate on the 10 quilts on the list that need finishing. The first one I am going to finish is this pinwheel quilt. This is what it looks like now, a partial top and some blocks. I started it in 2006 so it isn't that old. But it is bright and pretty and I want it to be done.

Right now it is pretty small, but I don't have enough of the other blocks to go around the whole quilt as a border. And I can't just add them on and make another row because the center pinwheels are smaller than the others. I think this is the reason this project got put away in a bin to begin with and why it has been sitting for two years. I just didn't know how to make it work. I will have to play around and come up with a good idea to get the top part and the other blocks to play well together.