Four Blocks Finished

In my last post I mentioned being four blocks short

for the Log Cabin Quilt I am making.

Even though I had counted the blocks several times,

I hadn't made enough for the quilt.

After looking everywhere the blocks could have been,

and not finding the missing blocks

I realized I would have to make four more.

They went together pretty quickly, since I was only making four!

They are finished and ready to be added to the rows.

As I was getting ready to sew these blocks into rows,

I was worried about getting them turned or in the wrong place.

I had laid the quilt out on the floor and picked the blocks up in

piles of each individual row.

Then I remembered that I had these pins...

These were purchased years ago and sure come

in handy when sewing big quilts together.

I used pins to keep the squares in the right order

while sewing them into to rows.

I also put a pin with the row number into each 

sewn row, so they won't get in the wrong order.

No one wants a log cabin quilt

with out of whack rows!

Now I can begin sewing the rows together

and finish this top.

Happy Quilting!

Four Blocks Short!

A few weeks ago at Quilt Camp I made all of the blocks

for a Log Cabin quilt.

Or at least I thought I had made them all!

I know I counted the stack at least three times and was sure

I had the 81 blocks needed to make this quilt.

Well,

I finally had time to lay them out on the floor last night.

How did this happen?

I'm four blocks short!

UGH!!

I will have to get out the box of strips and start piecing again.

So close and yet so far.

Hopefully the remaining four blocks will be made soon

and this top will be put together by the end of the week.

Four blocks!

I guess I need to go back to kindergarten and learn out to count.

:( 

Maybe four blocks were left somewhere,

but I've looked through all that I took with me.

Oh well...

Happy Quilting!

I'm Back

July has been a wonderful month,

and very busy travel-wise for me.

While I love to travel,

it is always good to come home

and get back into whatever kind of routine I have.

Plus, I've missed playing in my Hidey Hole!

My husband and I just spent a week in the Bahamas,

celebrating a big birthday for him

and a big anniversary with some dear friends.

It was a week of sitting on the beach,

soaking up the sunshine

and looking at the gorgeous water.

We did read a few books,

drink some adult beverages

and eat some good food, too.

We were on the island of Exuma and

saw the most beautiful beach we've seen.

It's difficult to capture the colors of the water with a camera,

but I tried!

 

And the sunrise....gorgeous!

I did take a little hand work with me to work on while

not sitting on the beach.

This piece of Hawaiian applique was found in my 

Box of Shame and was not half finished.

It's finished now and will be made into a wall hanging or a pillow.

It fit with the tropical theme of the week!

Hopefully I'll be back to full speed soon

and will be creating more things to post.

Happy Quilting!

Pot Holders

In the effort to get things finished out of this

Box of forgotten UFO's I recently found

(called my  Box of Shame),
I am remaking or repurposing a number
 of the found items

just to get them finished.

I had started making these fabric boxes and

had the fabric and batting cut and ready to go.

Some of them had even been sewn and turned

right side out and just needed the opening stitched closed,
before finishing the boxes.

Well, I didn't like how these boxes were turning out,

so into the "Box of Shame" they went.

What does one do with these half finished boxes?

Cut some Insul-Bright

and make pot holders!

The sewn seams were trimmed and removed.

Then the insul-bright was added with another piece of batting,

they were quilted and Voila!

I dug into my left-over binding bin and found

enough binding to finish them all, too.

Nine pot holders finished and ready for use.

AND... another project finished from the 

Box of Shame!

In addition,

I started playing with a charm pack of pastel squares

and some white dotted swiss and have come up with a 

sweet baby quilt.

The colors here are much darker than in real life,

but you get the idea.

There is one more row of chevrons to make

and then the blocks can be sewn together.

It will need a border as this isn't that big,

but it's cute.

The pattern came from a Missouri Star Tutorial.

Have a wonderful Monday!

I'm linking to Design Wall Monday today.

Happy Quilting!

Quilt Camp

For the second year I’ve joined my SIL

and three of her friends in upstate NY for 

Quilt Camp!

We were in a little house set up for 6 quilters

and sew to our hearts content. 

Nothing but sew, eat, sleep and sew some more.

Here we are, all set up in the living room.
There's just enough space for us,
an ironing station and a cutting station.

It was fun to see what everyone was working on
while we were at camp.
The different fabrics and colors were beautiful.

My SIL, Shelly, made these gorgeous blocks for Kim Diehl's
"Pie in the Sky" quilt.
It was so fun to see the blocks added to the wall after she
finished each one.
She thought this pattern would be beautiful in
red, white and blue fabrics.
We all agreed!

(This photo is truer to the colors in the fabrics.)

Missy made this beauty from a kit she'd had for several years.
There are A LOT of flying geese in this quilt.
The top is finished and just needs the borders.
(I didn't get the name of this one... sorry!)

Kathy made this fun quilt for a friend of hers.
(I didn't get the name of this one, either. Sorry!)
Each block was totally different and had to be laid out
individually.  I taught her to "web piece" so she was
able to keep the pieces where they belonged as she was piecing the blocks.
Someone suggested putting a tiny mouse in one corner
and a piece of cheese in another corner.
Wouldn't that be fun??


The fifth camper, Irene, was working on various projects and
for some reason, I never took a photo of her projects.
One thing she is working on is the
365 Block a Day project.
!Wow!

My first project was to make 4,386 of these log cabin blocks.
Actually, it was only 81 but it felt like a lot more!
There wasn't a space large enough to lay them out,
so I will be doing that on my design floor later on today.

Once the log cabin blocks were finished,
I put together one of the blue
Canyon Dance baby quilts..
I need to make one more block for the other top.

The little house is across from this gorgeous view.
There were houses between ours and the lake,
but we could see the sunset between the houses.

It was so much fun and I am already looking forward to next years camp.

Happy Quilting!

Utilitarian Quilt Finish

This quilt I just finished is by no means

one of the prettier quilts I've made,

but it will be well loved, I'm sure.

My sister in law gave me a couple of boxes of

colored jeans a couple of years ago to use in quilts.

I made one for them right away and she loves it.

Her grands can play with it, drag it around,

take it outside, spill things on it

and she doesn't worry at all.

When I had cut apart the jeans, I used my

Accuquilt cutter and cut a bunch of bricks.

Some of these bricks have now been made into another jeans quilt.

It's not a fancy quilt, but it will be durable.

 I just straight line quilted it with my walking foot and used

the blue denim for the binding.

It's the first time I've sewn the binding to the back

and turned it to the front and stitched it down with the machine.

This fun flannel looks so cute on the back and makes it soft.

I did not use any batting as it was heavy enough.

This will be delivered soon and put to use right away,

I'm sure.

Happy Quilting!

Happy Independence Day!

 

Image taken from here.

Wishing all of you a safe and happy day.

Placemats

Last week I blogged about the 

Box of Shame I found in my Hidey Hole closet.

In this box were some placemats I had started years ago for my sister.

She had seen some when she had been on vacation

and had described them to me.

"I can make those!"

Well.....

fast forward a few years

and here they sit.

They were going to have scalloped edges

or pointed edges... I don't even remember.

Nevertheless, they were going to require some work.

 When I found them the other day,

I decided to just finish them

and finished they are. 

They had been sewn together already and were ready

for the fancy edges.  

I thought about practicing some FMQ designs

on them, but in the end just used my 

walking foot with the #4 stitch on my Bernina.

These will go to my sister.

I'm sure she had long forgotten about the ones

she had seen, so these will be fine with her.

:D

 

Eight placemats finished and 

out of the box!

Happy Quilting!

Box of Shame

My daughter and son-in-law moved about 6 months ago

and one of their bedrooms is their
"Room of Shame".

In it are all of the boxes and things they

haven't found places for or are not sure

they are going to keep.

Well...

I have a

"Box of Shame".

In my box are projects started long ago

and forgotten about

until a cleaning frenzy hits

and the box is unearthed and brought to light.

It is truly shameful!

This box came to light as I was taking a break from

window treatment sewing

and I really wish I hadn't opened it up just now.

It's too much of a distraction!

AND an embarrassment! 

Part of a 12 step program is admitting you have a problem

and facing it head on.

So....

here are just a few things I found in my Box of Shame.

Years ago, and I mean YEARS AGO

I decided to make the "Flower Pot" quilt by Kim McLean.

The first side panel is almost finished.

Three circles need to be added to the stems of the flowers.

I have decided that this is going to become a wall hanging as it is.

I'm never going to finish the quilt, as much as I love it.

 

These two panels were also made for the "Flower Pot" quilt.

They will become pillows or little wall hangings.

This is a Hawaiian applique that is finished.

It just needs to be quilted.

Hand quilting is not my thing, so in order to get this out of the

Box of Shame,

I'm going to machine quilt this and call it done.

There are a number of other projects in this box

that will slowly get finished....or given away.

I may or may not share all of the projects in my box.

A girl needs to keep some things to herself.

:)

Phew... I feel better already!

Happy Quilting!

Quilting Time Out

Last week the Quilt Club my friends and I started

(after I taught a couple of them how to quilt) met.

They wanted me to teach them how to make the blocks for the

Canyon Dance quilt I made a couple of months ago.

Since I was going to need pieces and blocks to show them,

I took a suggestion from a blog comment, pulled my blue batiks

and began cutting.

I sewed a few of the blocks together while showing

my friends how to piece the blocks.

That night I kept sewing and finished these blocks.

The rest are cut, but the sewing had to be put on hold for a bit.

I just love all of these blue batiks together.

The Parish Hall at my church is in dire need to some updated window treatments.

I was asked if I would make them and after looking for fabric,

ordering the fabric and waiting, waiting, waiting for the fabric to be delivered,

they were started on Friday.

This is 30 yards of welting ready to be sewn onto the fabric pieces.

This will be the middle section of a simple valance.

The side sections are ready to sew today.

Until these are finished, there will be no quilting going on

in my Hidey Hole.

Hopefully the side sections will go together quickly!

I'm linking to Design Wall Monday today.

Happy Creating!!

99% Finished Tree Skirt

This week has been rather busy for me,

but I was able to sneak in some quilting time

and have the latest Christmas tree skirt almost finished.

The ties need to be added to the back and the label sewn on and then

it will be finished.

 

I made this with 60 degree triangles cut 8" tall.

Using larger triangles made it a quick project

and I like how it really shows off the designs in the fabrics.

 

This is the back.

Several years ago I found a good sale on this fabric and bought

a lot of it. I just love the poinsetta print. The colors are so

vibrant, too.

This one will be finished for the July wedding!

One of my friends, who is also a quilter, has started making Christmas tree skirts

as wedding gifts, too.

She was here yesterday and brought the skirt she is making

for an upcoming wedding.

 Christmas tree skirt made by Lynn.

 

Isn't this beautiful?!?

I never would have thought to use the yellowy/orange fabric

with the burgundy and green, 

but it brings in so much light to the design.

The ties need to be added and then she will be finished.

I need to find this pattern!

Happy Quilting!

New Christmas Tree Skirt

We are invited to a wedding in July

and it dawned on me the other day that

July will be here in just a couple of weeks!

I need to get moving on the Christmas Tree Skirt! 

Fabrics came out and cutting began.

I saw a tree skirt made with triangles here

and decided that would be the design I would use this time.

(It seems I have a "thing" for triangles lately!)

 I cut 60 degree triangles from a stack of Christmas fabrics

and began playing on my design wall.

 This came together so quickly and was so easy to make.

It really shows off the Christmas fabrics.

The colors are more vibrant than the photo shows.

Quilting has begun and will hopefully be finished soon.

It will be Christmas in July!

Happy Quilting!

Patriotic Finish 2018

As I posted before,

I've been making quilted Patriotic items for my 4 siblings and mom

for a number of years.

The table runners for 2018 are now finished and ready for gifting.

I got a little carried away this year with the cutting of the parts!

To make these,

I cut 3" strips of the red and blue fabrics and 2 1/2" strips of the white.

I sewed them into strip sets and then used a 60 degree triangle ruler to 

cut the strip sets into triangles.

Then the fun began...

arranging and rearranging them into the various designs.

These table runners are about 40" long.

This is my husband's favorite,

so it now is on our kitchen table.

The little toppers are about 25" long

and went together so quickly.

After I'd made 8  of the smaller toppers

(I told you I got carried away cutting them!)

I decided to make some larger ones to use up more triangles.

I like these better and wish I had made them all like this.

Oh well....

Here are all of the toppers I've made so far, starting in 2011, but 

skipping 2012 for some reason.

Wouldn't this make a fun collage on the wall?

I already have an idea for next years item. :)

I'm linking to Design Wall Monday.

Happy Quilting!!