Monday, February 25, 2013

Sew Along Progress

I sewed all weekend and now I have to pay the price--
Monday will be cleaning day (and it's way overdue!).
Maybe Tuesday too. ;-(
Grandmother's Choice
 Block 26: Ladies Wreath
Row One of the Leesburg Sew Along
at the Jo Morton Yahoo Group
The rows will be set with a strip of border print between them,
so I am trying to decide if I should use this dark navy part of my border print...
Or this lighter blue section of the border print. 
Yippee! The Easy Street blocks have been put together and bordered!
I like this so much on our bed,
I am considering adding another border to make it larger
 (there isn't much hanging over the far edge).

I'm thinking maybe some flying geese to make points on the blue blocks of the border.
Can you see the stars now?
Here they are!

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Weekly Roundup

I had a couple inquiries about the Wish Quilt. I should have posted a link for those that hadn't known about the free pattern. You can print out all the embroidery patterns and instruction HERE courtesy of Bronwyn Hayes.
red brolly free christmas patchwork quilt pattern
This is a part of Bronwyn's original quilt
I didn't have a lot of time to work in the sewing room this week--don't you hate it when life gets in the way of your quilting? I managed to stay on top of the Temecula Sew Along and finished row four:


 One row to go! 
Friday was our second long-arm machine quilter's meeting, so I hope to get Row Five done this weekend. Maybe I will have a finished top by next week!?!

I had to pop into the quilt shop to buy fabric for the inner border of Easy Street. I felt that the quilt was pretty busy and needed one solid fabric as a space between the busy blocks and the leftover blues I am piecing together for the outer border. Denise helped me find the right red--whew! 

Just a little peek at the Easy Street progress.
I pulled some of the fabrics from my Indigo Crossing bundle and started figuring out what I will make out of them.

Then I realized that I have enough fabric to make all of my choices--I just have to decide which one to start first!
I also decided to make these....

...into these.
I will need to make a few of these "make do" since I have used up all the fabric I used for some of them. 


And you know I just couldn't throw away all those triangles from my reverse sewing adventure!
I pulled a bunch of 2" squares from my scrap box and will make these into half square triangle
s.
No plan for putting them all together yet, but I have a couple ideas from Edyta Sitar's book
Friendship Triangles.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Wish Quilt Eye Candy

Warning: Lots of pictures ahead!

Monday was the second Stitch Therapy meeting for 2013. Wow! So many creative versions and so many over achievers (I can relate to those)! We talked about reverse applique that could be used for some of the blocks and also some different options for the satin stitched areas.
Enjoy!

Over Achiever Number One--first block finished! 
I wish this hadn't blurred--dark charcoal on cream--cool! 

The dreaded satin stitch--but she is using up thread fast!


Such a sweet block!

Not everyone is doing the Wish Quilt. These are designs from an on-line German stitchery group.
In order to get the next month's pattern, you must send a photo of the previous month's design finished. 

Okay, she isn't making a lot of progress, but it's because she's been knitting beautiful scarves!

Another sweet one!
Teapots instead of Santa--very pretty!


I had to make this one larger so you could see the tiny stitches.
Denise is using printable Tranfer-eze because she has such a dark background.
 After stitching, it will rinse away with warm water.


I'm loving all the different background choices! This guy's a cutie!

Tinting instead of satin stitch and ready to embroider.

On to block two!

All the components to Block One are pieced and ready to put together--you can see a peek of them under Santa.

The variegated thread has a cool effect here. 

Over achiever two--she's on to her SECOND set of blocks!!
The fabric in front is a white on white that has been antiqued. I am going to be trying this!

Nice satin stitch using the variegated thread.

Over Achiever number three--check out all those blocks!!

Sorry--another blurred one, but a fun idea. The beard and fur are done with white floss-clever!

These will be a set of Christmas dish towels!

One foot to go! 

I had to show a close-up of this one--all tinted with different colors!
I can't wait to see all these quilts come together! It's amazing how many different versions there are going to be made from the same pattern--it's going to be a fun year at Stitch Therapy! 

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Sunday Dilemma

Wow! We are already half-way through the Grandmother's Choice blocks. 
Block 25 Carrie Nation's Quilt
I was thrilled to see that my first 14 blocks were posted on Barbara Brackman's website earlier this week HERE. I'm Breezy Point, by the way.
I took an updated photo of all 25 blocks today.
 This week's Sunday night TV schedule is going to be a tricky one. With the finale of Downton Abbey and the Killing Lincoln special on NatGeo, as well as my other faves, Revenge and Walking Dead, I am going to have to do some creative DVR-ing. It's a good thing that a lot of these programs will be rerun at various 
times.

And it's a good thing I'm not hooked on the Good Wife too!
I'm really looking forward to Killing Lincoln on NatGeo since I read the book by Bill O'Reilly . It stars Billy Campbell as Lincoln and Tom Hanks does the narration. You can watch a trailer and find tons of  info on the program HERE.
Product Image
 I'm not a big fan of Bill O'Reilly,
 but Killing Lincoln was a very good, fast paced read. 
My friend Sandi and I have been going to lectures with the subject of Abe Lincoln at the Central Lakes College. The first two lectures were given by my ex-boss, Karen DeVries and her husband John. Karen showed examples of Civil War era quilts and talked about the woman's role during the war and John filled in a lot of the history. It was so interesting to see the quilts and quilt blocks tied to that era. 
I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't seen the movie Lincoln, though.
 
I'm going to work on my hexies while I'm "watching" television Sunday night. I finally have a plan on how I will use them--can't share what it is yet! 

I'll be using my newest pin cushion.
How adorable is this felted wool ball that Sandi gave me? I love it--my colors for sure!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day!

I was planning to post some photos of my meager Valentine decorating that I usually have out, but I never got around to do any decorating. I finally had to stop everything I've been working on and do some cleaning and organizing. It just wasn't possible to do a thing in my sewing room until I made some working space. I'm sure you can relate!
Cute idea--on my maybe list. 
Mr. Moosebay and I decided that we would not exchange gifts for Valentine's Day since we pretty much buy ourselves whatever we want AND candy is forbidden in our house now that he has been diagnosed with diabetes. Well, he can still have a little, but it's less dangerous if we don't have any around the house--for me as well as Mr. Moosebay!
I do love these--only once a year though.
                                                                     
Since we were both shopping together and ended up in the greeting card aisle, we chose our respective Valentine cards, showed them to each other and replaced them on the rack. Is that wrong??
                                                     
                                                      

I found  a few Valentine related projects that I bookmarked around the web though-- I hope you enjoy them!

A very pretty applique heart design from Laundry Basket Designs (Edyta Sitar)can be found here:


I've made similar hearts like these for my Scandinavian Christmas tree.

Some very cool woven heart designs--I've made the plain strip ones but have never seen anything like these. I think they would be fun to make with the kids: HERE

I found the above paper heart link through Barbara Brackman's post about pieced woven hearts HERE


Pinned Image
I've had this on my Pinterest board for ages--so cute!