Feline Love Cross Stitch

I spent a few minutes this afternoon working on my "Feline Love" cross stitch kit that my good friend gave me.  I got two window panes outlined and part of the orange kitty done.  It doesn't look like too much right now, but pretty soon items will take shape.  I think it will be fun to watch the progress I make on this project through photos.

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Le Petite for September - Honeycomb

I have made a slightly smaller yet wider version of this month's pattern.  My initial thought was to make it just the right size to fit on my coffee table, but after playing around with these little hexagons, I think I may turn this into an even bigger lap quilt. I think it would be more fun to snuggle under this one instead of putting it on the coffee table. I have some extra 5inch charm squares left over that would make this the perfect size.   I think I will take off the white borders and add more hexagons later on this week.

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Pets On Quilts - 2011

SewCalGal is holding a virtual "Pets on Quilts" Show for 2011.  Anyone can enter photos for the show. To enter a photo and see the rules click here.  




Now on to my entry...

This is my lovely cat Sheen..At first glance he appears quite content watching me quilt but then...

He gets distracted by the shinny pins and tries to eat them....

 In his effort to get at the safety pins, he becomes an extreme sewing obstacle.

 After giving up on trying to get the pins I thought he would get up and go about his business.

 But his business appears to be getting comfortable on my quilt and sewing machine...

and taking a nap.  Needless to say, I was done quilting for the rest of the afternoon.

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Back To My String Blocks

I had some time to work on the string blocks for the quilt I am making for my husband's Aunt.

With 12 blocks complete I am halfway finished.

With the pieces I had leftover from trimming the above blocks, I fiddled around with some crumb blocks.    Hmm, I think I may be a little obsessive with the crumbs.  These blocks measure 4.5in square and the block on the right has 36 pieces in it... 

But, if I have enough crumbs left over to make 61 more of these then I can make a quilt like Natasha made here.

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Quilting Finished for Tish

Here is my latest client quilting project.  The quilt top was made by Tish from my quilt guild.  Tish said I could do what ever I wanted with it so I decided to do some simple custom quilting in each individual block.  I enjoy quilting around the lines of the quilt shapes and coming up with individual quilting designs for each block. I find it mentally easier than doing an all over meander and it is a more entertaining process for me.  I did do a meander for the border though, I can handle meandering small sections.  :) 

A close up of some of the individual blocks.

 A tad bit closer.  :)

Tish asked me to go ahead and sew on the biding so she can hand stitch it down herself.
That is why the binding is unfinished in the photos.

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Le Petite for July - George

Top Finished, Quilted, and Bound this time around.  Yay!  I love it when I have time to do the Le Petite project for the month from start to finish.  Usually I only have time to make the top.

I used two "Canning Day" Charm packs from Connecting Threads for this cutie and then some yardage from my stash for the sashing and yellow border.

I really enjoy quilting feathers.  They are all freehand since I really don't enjoy marking them.  

For each individual center block I used a pre-printed design on tear away paper.  I got the papers years ago off eBay for a great deal, but never ended up having a quilt with blocks small enough to use them till now.  They are wonderful.  I think I will plan more quilts with these size blocks so I can use up the rest of the papers.

I see a lot of quilts rolled up like this on other blogs and I like the look of them, so here is my version.  :)

Can you have too many pictures of the same quilt???

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From This....

To This....

 Today I finished zig zagging the smaller one and glued the swirly part on the big one.

Is it too early to put out fall decorations?

The two bowls combined are made up of 100 yards of cotton clothesline.
My Daughter wrapped all the clothesline for me while she watched TV.  

Below is the fabric we used for both bowls.  I got a lot of it a couple years ago for about $1 a yard so I didn't mind cutting some of it up for these bowls.  It has all my favorite fall colors in it and I was anxious to see how it would look in these bowls.

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Newest Drawing

 I finished the coloring on this drawing today.  
 

This next one is a work in progress.  My recent trip to the marsh inspired this one.

I need to find myself a nice portfolio that is small enough to hold all my drawings.
They are all 8in x 6in and right now they are stuck in the back of my notebook.

I want to be able to flip through them all like an album.

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Found My Machine

After a busy summer spent on the road visiting relatives and playing at the beach I have finally returned home long enough to play around on my machine again. First thing on the list, finish up some client quilts and a donation quilt.

This first quilt wasn't made entirely by me. A guild member donated the top and backing to the guild and asked if someone would quilt it and I volunteered.  One of our members is from Japan and she has set up a project to have a bunch of needed quilts sent to Japan in the middle of August.  So this is my contribution to that cause.  I was going to just meander all over it, but for some reason the quilt just wouldn't let me do that. It begged me to do something different  ;)  So I did some free hand quilting in each block.  It was really fun coming up with ideas for each block.

 This next one is a quilt made by one of my guild mates.  She hand embroidered all the flower blocks and paired them with some nice batiks.  First I did an echo stitch around all the flowers, then I did some swirl meandering around each one.  My guild mate doesn't like dense heavy quilting.  She likes the quilt to feel more soft and fluffy.  So for the rest of the quilt I did a loose meander all over.  Then I trimmed the batting edges so all that she needs to do now is add the binding. 

Next on my quilting to do list is to finish up another quilt for this same client.  It is already basted and ready for quilting.  After that I need to add a sleeve on one of the quilts I made for my neighbor in December.  They want to be able to hang it on the wall instead of drape it over the couch as they first envisioned.  That should keep me busy the next few days.

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Cotton Dishcloths

On my travels this summer I took my yarn with me.  Lots of driving time and relaxing at relatives gave me plenty of time to finish up this set of dishcloths and hot pad.
These are all free patterns I found on the internet.  

Janelle's Star Dishcloth

Double Bump Dishcloth

Starburst Hot Pad

Ball Band Dishcloth

Crochet Flower Dishcloth

Not much Sewing going on

There hasn't been too much sewing going on around here lately mainly because the kids and I have been have been traveling. But today I did manage to make some pickles from cucumbers that came from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's garden.  I added a couple of cucumbers from my own garden, but I didn't have nearly as many as I got from my BIL last night.

The kids and I have really been enjoying the summer. We spent half a week in NC visiting in-laws, then we spent a week at the beach last week.  We came home for a day and then went back to the beach for the 4th and tomorrow we hit the road again and will be gone for a long weekend.  Seems like the days in between trips are spent getting laundry ready for the next trip and other odds and ends that need to get done around here.  That doesn't leave much time for crafting, but it's summer!! Time for other kinds of playing.  :)

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Finished my June top for Le Petite Challenge

Just in time for me to head to the beach for the rest of the week.

:)

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Ric Rac Triangles Cut Out

We were offered a choice between 2 different patterns for the June LePetite Challenge.

I have chosen to do the Schnibbles Ric Rac pattern.
It needs 294 triangles.  I cut them out last night.

Table Setting Finished

The table topper was done this Saturday, and the 4 place mats got finished this morning.

I am one day behind my schedule.  I wanted to have these in the mail yesterday, but we had a bad storm come through and the power kept flickering, so I turned off my sewing machine.  It is plugged into a spiffy power supply, but since the machine costs more than I can afford to replace right now, I decided to not risk it getting fried and turned it off.

But with priority mail, these should still arrive in TN in plenty of time.

These will be going on a white table, and will look way better on that than my wrinkly blue table cloth.

I have an iron, but since I have no plans of quilting the table cloth, it gets to stay wrinkled.  

Besides, with 4 kids and one husband, the table cloth wont stay clean long and will end up back in the wash in a day or too.   

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Jungle Animal's Done

 Yay for Netflix and a Glee marathon.   I finished up this baby panel last night while the Glee kids sang to me.  :)

I put the binding on this morning and snapped it's picture.

I had a lot of fun quilting this.  I outlined the animals and leaves, then did some meandering quilting, some cobblestone quilting, and finished it up with squiggly lines in the sky.  For the border, I went around all the brown giraffe spots.

Panels are great to work with when you want to try new quilting techniques or perfect your old ones.  I always enjoy quilting panels, it gets my creative quilting juices flowing.

Next on the quilting schedule is to finish the table topper and place mats.
Then come Monday I can ship them and this baby quilt to their new home in TN.

(and now I have the "Come Monday" song by Jimmy Buffet running around in my head)

:)

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