Apron

I'm making an apron tonight for a friend who has a birthday this weekend. As soon as I get it done, I'll post a picture. I got the pattern free at Prairie Star Quilts www.prairiestarquilts.com when I bought 1/2 yard of fabric and a dish towel. It's a pretty slick apron and I love making them as a gift for friends.

Friends With Fabric

Isn't it great to have friends who love fabric as much as you do? My friend Leona gave me some pink fabrics tonight to use on my king-size quilt. Thanks Leona! Cut those chunks from the big chunks that Leona had, so that was my 15 minutes for today.

Eighth Strip

I'm working on the 8th strip of my king-size quilt. I just have the 3 inch squares to pick out and sew and I'll be half way done!!!!!

Spider Web Quilting Design

I'm working on a table topper that I got at Prairie Star Quilts a couple of years ago. I decided to do a spider web design on it. First I did a big X then a big +(plus). I thought I would just wing it on the connecting lines and then thought better of it. First, I know me and I wouldn't be able to handle the wonkyness of it. Second, marking it made it so much easier to quilt.

I marked the X and the + every 2 inches as you can see with the yellow headed pins. I then took a fabric marker and a ruler and drew lines between each arm of the X and +. Much happier. The picture on the right and below shows how I had to go beyond the edge of the quilt in spots in order to get the lines I wanted. The corners just have parts of the connecting web. I'll show you another picture when I'm done.

Three

I forgot to show you my king-size quilt yesterday. I could only get three strips in the hallway, but it gives you a pretty good feel for what it will look like. Finished the 3 inch squares in another strip so now I have 6 of these done. (At 8 I will have 1/2 of the quilt done.) My sister gave me some fabric for this at the Quilt Retreat. So I have some fabric from her and a friend. And it all looks good together. Scrap quilts are AMAZING!

September UFO/WIP

This is my September UFO/WIP. A friend called it cheating but I call it convenience as this is a reprinted panel. I basted this last Fall before Halloween and had hoped to get it done in time for Halloween that year. Alas, it didn't happen. I did machine quilt it and then decided to do some hand quilting. The hand quilting got done this summer, the binding last weekend and the tabs for hanging this weekend. So even if I did use a "cheater", it still took me just as long as if I had pieced it myself. What's up with that?

More Cutting

Still cutting up my fabrics for the quilt. I stopped at a friend's house after work and she gave me some of her Valentine stash to use in my quilt. Thanks Naomi! It's fun to add variety to your quilt with someones fabric since their taste is a little different than yours, even if you like the same things. I'll take a picture tomorrow of the rows I have done. I think I should be able to fit them all on the floor of the hallway.

Tired

I did some cutting of the new fat quarters I bought for my king-size quilt. Uploaded pictures of the Retreat on Facebook. (That took forever.) I still have more to add so I'll be working on that tomorrow. I think the lack of sleep over the weekend is catching up with me. I'm really tired tonight. Looking forward to working on my quilt some more this weekend. Don't have a lot of plans (just housework) so should have time.

More Retreat

I tried last night to get more pictures of the Retreat and I was having computer problems, really slow. So I'm going to try again tonight. I did run out of the larger background pieces for my Valentine quilt. I knew I should have done some counting. I did pick up some more fat quarters when we went to "Seams to Be" quilt shop. The web site is http://www.seamstobequilts.com/ I washed them on Monday so I'm ready to cut.(Yes, I'm one of THOSE.)

This is Anna. Her mom bought the old quilt blocks at a garage sale. Anna chose the sashing and corner stone fabrics in order to get this quilt set together. I love her choices. I never would have thought of using the stripe or orange gingham, but they pull this quilt together. I would have gone with a solid, seeing this is going to help me to think outside of the box and grow more.

The Retreat

Our Retreat was held at the "Camp of the Good Shepherd" located in Louisville, NE. This was our bunk house. There is air conditioning and heat in this building. The first day we were there we had the a/c on and the second day we needed heat. Weather in Nebraska!

Penni cooked all of our meals. I didn't get a picture of Friday's dinner, but we had a pasta salad and bread. This is dinner on Saturday, chicken pot pie, green beans, pumpkin muffin and fruit for desert.

This was brunch on Saturday morning. Hugh cinnamon rolls and quiche. Yummy.
Brunch on Sunday was french toast, fruit and orange juice. Tomorrow I'll show you the projects that people worked on. A number of projects were finished. It is amazing how much you can get done when you don't have to stop and cook, clean, do dishes, run errands or children to games.

Quilt Retreat

The Retreat was wonderful! I have lots of pictures and will post more tomorrow. Tonight I have to unpack and get things ready to sew tomorrow. Have a good evening!

Misc.

I should explain that the plain white squares on the design yesterday are for the place mats. I just realized that might be a little confusing.

I'm packing my sewing machine tonight for the Retreat. Tomorrow will finish up the last of the packing and making sure I have all the things done that I need to do before I leave my husband to hold down the fort. He does well without me, but always tells me how much better it would have been if I had been home. :-)

I can hardly wait to start sewing without thinking about housework, meals and laundry!

Outside The Box

I'm trying to design my own quilt using these placemats as inspiration. These placemats were embroidered by my father and mother when they were first married in the mid 1940's. They didn't have much money for entertainment, so this is what they did in the evening. (This was in the days before TV.)

So here is the design, pretty simple. I thought I needed to keep it simple for my first time out. I did this yesterday afternoon. Tonight I have been working on the number of pieces and the seam allowance.

King-Size Quilt

I started this King-size quilt in February after seeing a quilt at www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com It's the ragged squares quilt and she has it listed under the tutorials. I fell in love with it and decided that I wanted to make one like it only I thought instead of sewing the squares on top of each other and then quilting, I would have the adding of the squares be the quilting for each.

Decided I would do it a strip at a time and then seam the strips together using a french seam. I have 2 strips done out of the 16 and this is the project I am taking to the Retreat. All of my squares are cut out, hope I have enough. I used up most of my valentine fabric and pulled from my red and pink stashes. I'm excited to have a chunk of time to work on this as this is one of my goals for 2010, to make a King-size quilt. Now I have to go get the last 2 strips of batting cut and I'm ready to pack this for the Retreat. (By the way, my husband isn't really excited by the colors, but was glad I used fabric I already had. I'm sure once he finds out how warm this is, he won't mind the pinks.) The backing is 4 different batiks in pink or lime green with pink. You could use the quilt either way, but not sure my husband will be any more thrilled with that. ;-)

What's Up?

I know, where have I been? I had the last committee meeting Thursday night for our quilt Retreat next week. So there went that night. Last night I worked on the secret project for the Retreat after work. We then went out to eat and met up with some friends and didn't get home 'til late. So I didn't blog last night. This morning I finished up the secret project! Now onto getting things ready to take to the Retreat. I have a list and I'll be checking it twice to be sure I don't forget anything important. I'm working on my King size quilt.

Mission Quilt

This is the quilt we've been working on at church every Wednesday night for the last 2 months. It's a nickel quilt from one of Pat Speth's books. The pattern is called "Delta Star" (I'm not sure which book it is from as I don't have that book.) It turned out wonderful. The fabric was donated by church members and we have fabrics from small calicos to batiks to more modern fabrics. They all blend so well together. This is what I worked on today, we got the last two borders sewn on and it's ready to go to the quilter. In November it will be auctioned off to raise money for missions.

Secret

I'm sewing on something tonight that is a secret for the quilt retreat on Sept 16,17 and 18. I'm taking pictures and will share after the retreat. I'm so excited for this retreat. I'm going to work on my King size quilt that is a quilt as you go. I'd love to have that big project done for the year. And having 2 full days to work on it will make a lot of progress.

Fear

Fear is such a paralyzer. I have been afraid to start these curtains for the skylights on the west side of the house, for fear of messing them up. I know where this fear started. I have made curtains for years for all of the places I have lived. So when my grandson needed some curtains, I volunteered to make them. They were navy blue in color so I knew they would need a lining. No problem.

First thought, layer the 2 pieces and handle the way I would a quilt. Wrong. The white lining showed. Did some research and read that if you make the lining 1 inch smaller than the curtain, it will be fine. So I did. And it was fine. Finished off the curtains and took them to my grandson's room. One panel is 2 inches shorter than the other panel. Darn! Left the curtains and proceeded to buy some for his room. So you can understand my fear when my husband asked me to make curtains for the skylights in the family room.

It only took 2 trips to Hancock Fabrics (sounds like my husband when he's doing a home repair project) and ripping out only one casing. I think they came out pretty well, so I'm now ready to THINK about the lined curtains for my husbands home office.

I also finished the pieced binding for the quilt at church.

Binding

The binding is coming along nicely. I'm not sure how much I need, but we can always make it shorter, so will keep going. I just measured the binding and I have 16 yards. Think I'll make 4 more yards for 20 yards, 5 yards a side. That should do it.

Charity Quilts

I got half of the strips sewn together for the pieced binding. Now I'm starting on the second half. I think I'll need to cut more 5 inch squares in half in order to finish.

Today was "Quilts from the Bluffs" day. I worked on a quilt for Project Linus, got all of the blocks sewn. Now they are ready to be squared up. If it isn't completed by someone else, I'll do that next time we meet. The weather was beautiful today!

Binding

I volunteered to make a pieced binding for the mission quilt at church. Tonight I spent 15 minutes cutting 5 inch squares in half so I can sew them end to end for a very scrappy binding. (OK, I did spell checker on scrappy and it still looks wrong to me, so if it is wrong, I'm sorry, I tried!) I think the binding is going to look pretty cool, I've never done a binding like that.

More Circles

I got the gold circles cut out this evening, so my 15 minutes for today is done. Not sure what else I'm going to do. I still have sashing to cut and background fabric for the flowers. Think I work on one of those.

Quilting at Church

Tonight my quilting was done at church. We are working on a quilt to be auction off with the proceeds going to help missions. We finished sewing the last two borders and will add them to the quilt next week. I'll take my camera so you can see the quilt we made, it's beautiful.