Machine Quilting

I finished another clients quilt yesterday.  When trying to decide what over all design to put on this quilt I took my inspiration from the green sea life fabric.  I wanted to have some wavy sea weed type lines all over the quilt.  So I used a version of the Mud Flats design from the 365 days of Free Motion Quilting blog.

My version doesn't look quite the same as the one the blog, but I am still happy with the results.  I suppose I am use to making freehand feathers, so what was suppose to look more like wavy Vs turned out to look more like half of a feather.  I did end up spending a little more time on this quilt than I normally do because of the density of the quilting, but I wanted it to look a certain way and I accomplished that goal.

Full Bobbins

I have very few bobbins for my sewing machine. 5 to be exact. I did buy a pack of 20 a while ago, but they don't fit my machine. The package said they were for Bernina machines, but I should have read the print on the back that said what specific machines they were for before I bought them.
    I don't really enjoy un-threading my bobbins in order to put a new thread color on them, but I have done it many times as the need arose.  The other day I needed to a turquoise thread in my bobbin in order to quilt a client's quilt.  Unfortunately, all five of my bobbins were full, and not one had turquoise thread in it.  I was definitely not in the mood to change the thread out. So instead, I put my client's quilt aside for the time being and inserted my bobbin full of white thread into my machine and pulled out some of my UFO's.
     My plan was to finish up some peicing until I ran out of white bobbin thread. Then I would have a free bobbin to load my turquoise thread. Since I felt the need to start machine quilting my clients quilt right away, I was motivate to quickly get some of my own piecing done. The first UFO I started on was my two tone purple quilt. I started this one about 8 months ago but then put it aside when I mis-cut all my large purple squares by half an inch. I must say that is how I get most of my UFO's. I screw up during part of the piecing process and then, in my frustration, I put the project down for awhile, sometimes a long while.  But this day I re-cut my purple fabric and finished sewing together the last outer squares to complete this top.

I still had some while bobbin thread though, so I pulled out another project I have been working on for even longer, at least 7 years or more. For this project I was taking scraps of fabrics I had been using for other projects and turning them into 4 patches. I decided a while ago, though, to not make any more patches, I have almost 200, and instead started the process of adding a yellow border on all of them.  I got a few more borders complete, but not all of them since the bobbin finally ran out.

Which is prob a good thing because I am short 1.5 yards of yellow fabric.  I thought, no prob I'll just go to Wal-Mart and get more because all the years I have lived in this town, (12.5 years) my Wal-Mart has carried this same bolt of yellow fabric.  But to my dismay, when I went in, they didn't have any.  They didn't even have a slot on the shelf for it.  I was shocked.  What am I to do?!?  Sure I could border half the four patches with blue.  That would make a wonderful blue and yellow mixed border 4 patch quilt, but that would mean I would have to rip off over 200 three inch side borders.  Not something I am looking forward too.  I have decided to go back to the Wal-Mart when the fabric department manager is working and ask if she can order this particular bolt of fabric for me one more time.

Machine Quilting For Others

I am trying to raise money to finish my quilt studio upstairs and to help with the cost of renovation, I have offered my services as a machine quilter.  Now, I don't have a long arm -yet- so all my work is being done on my domestic sewing machine and a few of the ladies in my quilt guild have graciously offered to let me work on their quilts. So far I have finished two quilts, and have a third in progress.

The owner of this first green quilt specifically requested a very loose meandering.

 On this second quilt I did a swirly meander and then a little leafy swirl on the border.

The quilt I am currently working on is enormous! 130 x 110. I barely had enough room on the hardwood to pin baste this monster. As you can see, I can't even get the whole quilt into the photo. But it is now basted and ready to go. This one will also have a swirly meander on it.    There are a lot of puckers in this quilt though, so I hope it will turn out all right with a loose swirly quilting.

Quiting Gallery Embroidery Mini Quilt Swap

Here is my quilt for the Quilting Gallery Embroidery Mini Quilt Swap.  Everyone had to make a 10" x 12" quilt using the same hand embroidery deign. The design came from the Stitching Cow website.

I wanted to offset the embroidery on the quilt, but it looked kind of blah next to all the squares, so I added some fancy green rick rack to frame it in.  Then I did some close stippling around the design to help it stand out a bit more.

It should have arrived to its new home in Illinois by now so I can post it on my blog now and not ruin any surprises.

You can see some of the other mini quilts here.

Siggie Blocks

These are my first ever signature blocks.  There are 173.  I made 174, but one went MIA and is no where to be found, so I am sending in 173.  They are for the Scrappy Siggie Block swap hosted by the Quilting Board.  The pattern we had to use is the tutorial from the P.S i quilt blog.

Just playing around with layout ideas.

Can't wait to get signatures from all over the US and turn them all into a scrappy quilt!

Iris Folded Fabric Postcard

Last month my friend sent me this special card card for my Birthday.  She made it herself using a technique called Iris Folding.   Since I had never heard of that particular technique before, I decided to Google it and find out all I could.  It is done using small folded strips of paper and placing them around a specific pattern shape.

Since all the designs I found were small enough to fit on my 4 x 6 fabric postcards, I kept wondering if I could make one out of fabric instead of paper.  So I pulled out my left over fabric scraps and gave it a try.  This whale is my first attempt.  It really was quite fun to make it, and I printed out some other free patterns from the Circle of Crafters website to try later on.

More Mosaic Color Play

These are the three latest blocks I have made for the IFQ Mosaic Color Play block swap.  The first two have already been mailed, the brown and gold one will go out in today's mail.  I just have to swap three more times and I will have enough to make a nice sized quilt.

"Remember When" Guild Challenge

Each year the quilt guild I am in challenges us to create a quilt with a specific theme.  Each June the quilts are revealed and displayed in the Hartsville Museum for the duration of the summer.  The theme for 2010 was "Remember When" and all the quilts were unveiled yesterday.

This was my first year participating in the challenge and the theme was really hard for me.  I had a difficult time trying to incorporate "Remember When" into a quilt.  I even had a whole year to think about the idea and still I couldn't think of anything.  I really did want to participate though, so I came up with: "Remember when I had all those one inch half square triangles?  Well I finally turned them into another quilt."  Lame I know, but at least it gave me the opportunity to put something in the show.  Since the scraps were old,  I figured that helped fit into the theme as well.

At the museum yesterday, the guild members all voted on different categories for winners, Best Machine Work, Best Handwork, Best Wall Hanging, Best Appliqué, Best Large Quilt, Best Art Quilt, and Best Use of Theme.  My little quilt didn't win any but I didn't expect it too.  There are so many very talented women in the guild it is hard to compete against them.  The show was wonderful to attend. I loved seeing everyones work and interpretation of the theme. And it sure is nice to have a piece hanging in the museum.  :)

This last photo is my quilt in the museum.  The quilt measures approx. 28 x 32 inches.  I am very excited to have it there for thousands of people to see. (Last summer over 4000 people went through the Hartsville Museum while the quilts were on display.)

To see all the other quilts in the show, you can click here.

Pink Bowl

When I made the previous two clothesline bowls, my son thought they were the neatest thing and he wanted me to make one for his school teacher.  Since I know his teacher loves pink, we decided to make her an all pink bowl.

I wanted to decorate this one up a bit so I took the last bit of the clothesline and swirled it around a few times just for looks. Then I added some very small yo yo's for a more dramatic effect.  I love it!!  I loved it so much I wanted to keep it for myself.  But then again, those are the best items to give away.  If it is good enough to keep it is definitely the kind of workmanship you want to give away.   :)

Clothesline Bowls

I took my first ever sewing class on Monday and it was a class to make these bowls.  I don't normally take any type of classes but I couldn't resist these bowls.  The past two times I was at my quilt guild meeting, ladies kept showing off bowls they made during a class at Beth's shop.  Beth is the quilt shop owner in our guild. So I emailed her in April and asked when the next bowl class would be. She informed me it wouldn't be till May.   As soon as she sent out the new class schedule I had her put my name on the list for this class.  It was a 4 hour class and the time flew by.  It really didn't feel like I was in that room for four hours.  I only made one bowl during class time, the brighter one, but I had enough close-line leftover to make a second one, which I finished this morning.  I love these bowls.  I want to make more and more and more....

Crazy Flowers

This is my newest fabric postcard. The theme was crazy flowers, so I used the crazy quilt technique for my background then added the yo yo flowers. I made a total of five, three for a swap, one my sister-in-law, and one for myself.  Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of all 5 of them before I put them in the mail.  So I only have a photo of the one I kept.

They are not all exactly alike, but they are all mostly similar, the flowers are different colors and some of the big flowers were actual flower shaped yo-yos, and on two of the cards the cluster of small flowers on the left had sequence and bead centers instead of buttons.  Also the crazy quilt themed backgrounds were slighty varied, same fabrics, but different placement.

 I love how the greens pop in my photos right after a rain.  Over cast days are great for taking photos!

Litha Park Quilt Progress

I have all the fabric cut out for the top, 5 blocks ready to hand appliqué, 4 more flowers ready to add to new blocks, 7 more flowers to sew together, and 8 more sets of leaves to paper piece.  This is the only project on my sewing table at the moment, which is an odd thing for me, but I find that I like that.  Keeps the desk clean and I don't slice through fabric I don't mean to, which I have only done once in my life and it was earlier this week!  :)

English Paper Peicing

On March 6th and 7th, my quilt guild was in charge of a booth at the Civil War Re-enactment of the Skirmish at Gamble's hotel in Florence, SC.  Guild members were asked to help man the booth and to bring some hand work to do while we were there.  So I decided it was time for me to start the Christmas present I was given, a quilt kit titled Litha Park from Connecting Threads.  Most of the design of the quilt is done using the English paper piecing method.  I had never tried that before, but as long as it came with directions, I was sure I could tackle it.  The night before the event I cut out all my diamond shapes from the fabric.  That way I could be all ready to sew.  The re-enactment was a lot of fun and I did get a few diamonds prepped, but not as many as I wanted.  I spent most my time chatting and helping some of the kids make fabric yo-yo's, which was also fun.  As of now though, I have all my diamonds prepped and ready to sew into flowers.  I will need a total of 16 flowers, made from 6 diamonds each.

This is what I have as of today.

I did most of them in the car when I traveled places, and a couple more when I watched a few new shows late at night.   (That is probably why my cross stitched cat whiskers got delayed in the previous post. I skipped right over the evening craft project, and went right into the late night crafting project)  :)

I want to have this quilt done by the May quilt guild meeting since that month's program will be all about English paper piecing.  It would make a great item for show and tell that month.  I hope I haven't taken on something too ambitious with such a short deadline.  We shall see....

My Cross-Stitched Cat

It is finally finished. It had been almost finished for weeks. All I had left to stitch was the whiskers. I kept saying to myself, "That will only take a few minutes, I can do that later tonight...." Well later tonight never came, so I made myself sit down this morning and put on the whiskers.

As I was putting on these whiskers this morning, I realized most of my unfinished projects are classified as almost finished.  So if I sit down and take a couple hours on each one, then I will have lots of finishes this year.  Sounds like a good plan, we shall see if I can put it in action.  :)

Basket full of Flowers

My friends birthday is today and I wanted to send her a special postcard to celebrate and I thought what could be better than a basket of flowers that is always in bloom.  I used my newest toys, two small yo yo makers, to make the flowers for this postcard.  My daughter even came over to help make the tiny ones.  They are fun and easy to make with the yo yo makers and I sewed them up while I waited for my turn at Scrabble on facebook.  :)  Then I added tiny buttons, poked some green leaves around the flowers, hand stitched the basket down, did some free motion quilting on the background and put a traditional quilt binding for the edging.  I love it.  It is one of my favorite cards.

I love collecting craft tools just as much as fabric and even though I haven't been collecting as much fabric lately, I still have been collecting tools.  These yo yo makers are my newest collection item.  I bought two larger circle yo yo makers last summer, and this past Christmas I received a flower and a heart yo yo maker - thanks Mom!  In January I bought the two smallest circle yo yo makers when they were half off at Hancock Fabrics.  Clover, the company who makes these tools, still has more for me to collect though:  the butterfly, the shamrock, the very largest circle (the Jumbo circle), and their newest design, the Oval.  You can see them all here.   If you are interested, Lazy Girl Designs has a wonderful pictorial tutorial on how to use these yo yo makers.