Weekly Progress

I'm thrilled that I completed my Number Nine this week!

Kim Diehl Table Runner--hand quilted and bound!

 I also got a few other things done on some continuing projects.

Grandmother's Choice Sew Along
Block 28: Ocean Waves
Block 29: Seven Pointed Star
I know Barbara was feeling a little devilish when she decided we should do this block! 

Eight blocks for the second row of Leesburg quilt

Now I'm ready for the next number to be chosen in Connie's Game! 

More Stitch Therapy!

This is as close as I will be able to get to a hollyhock for a long time! 

This coming Monday will be our third Stitch Therapy meeting. I'm so excited to see what everyone has been doing--this is one creative group!! I'm not sure how many years I have been doing this group, but it has been a lot of fun working on different projects and sharing laughs. One year we had a "trunk show" of some of  our member's beautiful projects.

My Winter Wonderland is on the left and my Over the River (still not quilted) is on the right.
I'm not sure what year we had this little show. 

I love Dawn's version of Winter Wonderland with the checkerboard border!
I can't believe I didn't take a close-up photo of the gorgeous basket quilt hanging on the right. 

This is a closer look at Dawn's Winter Wonderland.
She did it in multi-colors on a tan background.
Isn't it fun?

She came up with her own setting too--very cozy!
Wish this photo was better.  

Someone brought in their Over the River to show us--done all in blues--love it!
I looks pretty good with my Winter Wonderland...hmmm....

I don't remember who did this beautiful red work quilt.
So pretty and classic! 

Bunny does this lovely Brazilian embroidery.
The flowers are all three-dimensional and look so real!

She added clear crystal beads to look like snow on the branches
 and red ones for holly berries.

The threads she uses are rayon and have a rich sheen. 

We had lots of embroidered pillows--so pretty! 

Teensy yoyos!

If you haven't done embroidery before or need a refresher lesson, join our Stitch Therapy group at Colorz--it's not too late! Or, if you can't get there, there is an awesome on-line resource at Mary Corbet's Needle 'n Thread website. She has made videos demonstrating tons of stitches that you can watch over and over! Watch the Stitch videos HERE.

Forging Ahead

Since the snow seems to be never ending here, there is plenty of time for guilt free sewing. 

Anyway, it seems kind of dangerous to leave the house with this stuff ready to drop off the eaves at any time.

I took this pic yesterday--today the icicles are fused to the log railing.
It will be a while before Mr. Moosebay can remove those snowflake lights. 

In the meantime, I've been working on my Number Nine Kim Diehl table runner. I'm hand quilting it with a Big Stitch (all of my quilting is big stitch, actually, and not intentionally) using the Valdani pearl cotton and the size 5 embroidery needle that Kim recommended. 

Size 8 variegated Valdani Pearl Cotton color number P4

I have my scrappy binding ready to put on the finished tablerunner. Kim suggested using various short pieces put together with straight seams. She cuts her strips 3" wide so she can turn more to the back and have a chunkier binding on the reverse side. 

I am using left over 2.5" jelly roll strips.

And if I can keep myself from fondling my latest addition to my stash, I may get a few other things done this weekend!  

Jo Morton's latest line: Blue Variety
I wish you could see it in person--gorgeous!!

I couldn't help myself ! The problem is the little button at the top of the page HERE that says: "add a half yard of each fabric to my cart". Yes, please!
Then while checking out, I had to update the cart and get  whole yards of the two shirtings and 2.5 yards of the toile--you know I love toile!!!

 Well, luckily for all of you (or maybe sadly), I see that the pesky "Add All" button is gone since they've sold out of a lot of the fabrics already. I'm not sure how the Old Country Store does it, but these new fabrics are only $8.75 a yard--about two bucks less than I've seen every where else. That means you can buy more, right? 

Winter Wonderland Part Two

Oh my goodness--the snow is just not stopping! 

It's beautiful, but I am ready for it to all go away--soon! 

This is a view to the North.

A view of Moose Bay from our living room-East.

This is a view to the South.

Okay, enough of that!

I checked out the label on my Winter Wonderland quilt, and it was finished in 2008.

This makes me think that I probably worked on the embroidery and blocks in late 2006 through 2007, and quilted it in 2008 so I could put it in the Pinetree Patchworkers quilt show. That seems to be the only way I get most of my quilts completely finished--just in time to put them in the show!

The Snow Angel was my very first block.
It didn't make it into the quilt, though.
After I finished the block, I decided it wasn't the right shade of blue: DMC 798.

This is the same block in the color I ended up using for all the blocks in the finished quilt:
DMC 796

You can see how different they are here.

Never fear!
The orphan block made the perfect center for a little wall hanging that I entered in a contest in 2010.
I won a $25 gift certificate!!

I added a few borders (snowballs naturally!) and quilted little snowflakes in the outer border.
 I made sure not to quilt through the embroidery this time,
so I didn't have to spend ages coloring over the white threads. 

My quilting is really bad--you can see the tension as I try to decide which way to go next! 

I fused clear crystals on the quilted snowflakes for this quilt. 

If you have the pattern for Winter Wonderland,
you know there is an extra block that Meg Hawkey challenges you to use somewhere on the quilt.
My little snowman is sliding out of the center and into the border. 

Winter Wonderland

With all of the snow we had earlier this week, everything looks fresh and new. The trees are heavily covered with snow and it really is a Winter Wonderland. 

Soooo.......

I thought it would be a good time to show my Winter Wonderland quilt

since it is pretty much still winter here. I think I made this quilt in 2005 or 2006. 

The pattern was designed for Redwork, but I had to do it in blue naturally!

It's difficult to make out in the photos,
but I used tiny cobalt blue crystals in place of the French Knots in the snowflakes.
When I quilted it using white thread, I went over the embroidery. Later, I was a little unhappy with how that looked,
so I  used a blue Pigma pen to color the white thread every where it crossed over the blue embroidery. 

In the white areas, I quilted in some snowflakes using iridescent thread. 

You can find the pattern here: Crabapple Hill Studio

What Next?

Before I started working on Number Nine(my Kim Diehl table runner), I figured I should get the Temecula Twelve Days of Christmas quilt finished up. I only had a little bit of hand quilting left to do (and the binding) and I managed to get it done while watching  listening to television. 

I'm keeping up with the Grandmother's Choice blocks. 

I need to  decide on a setting soon so I can start putting some of the blocks together.

Have I said that already? 

Block 27 Grandmother's Dream

Today was the second Prairie Women's Sewing Circle meeting. 

So naturally, there was a huge snow storm! 

There were probably only eight of us crazy enough to drive 30 miles for a quilt meeting, 

but it was still fun.

We are on Journey Three, so we will be making hexagons during the meeting. 

We got our patterns for the end of the year hexagon project, 

Elizabeth's Prairie Garden. Now we know how many hexies we will need to make. 

Elizabeth's Prairie Garden is on the right in the center row.
It has little wool applique flowers on top of the light hexie flowers.

We also got the pattern for Windy Hill Farm (lower left).
It has cute little pinwheel cornerstones.

Martha gave us the fabric and papers for the 1" hexagons (lower right)
to practice on in class,
and Denise demonstrated several ways to make hexies.
The  hexi diamonds (top of photo) that I have been working on  use 1/2 " papers and,
of course, I over did it and ordered 1500 pieces to go with the 125 that I already had,
so......
I'm thinking that maybe I should use my 1/2" papers and make a mini Prairie Garden. 

But......
I could cover a lot more territory (and use more of my stash) by using the one inch papers.
Decisions, decisions...

Since there were so few of us at the meeting,
we were all lucky and got a little packet of  3/4" papers and some fun bright fabrics.

I hope to get the Kim Diehl table runner basted tomorrow so I can do some big stitch quilting in the evenings.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that getting it finished by the end of March!

Clean Up Week

It's amazing what you can come across when you start moving things around in the sewing room! I spent two days cleaning and organizing what had turned into a nightmare.

  I also did some cleaning in the rest of the house, but that's not fun to talk about.

Anyway, now I can move around again and have some empty spaces to work on--yay!

Top priority for this coming week:  recover my ironing board. 

It is truly disgusting! I've had to wash a couple of light fabrics after getting them too moist and transferring scorched starch onto them, so it's way past time for a new cover.

Those threads are actually glued to the surface--yuck!

I found a few things that I wanted to get closer to completion, 

so I made bindings and pieced backs for these four tops. 

Luckily I had stored the binding fabrics with the tops so I didn't have to do any digging for those!

Now I just need to get myself motivated to quilt these.

I also got the back and binding together for this project:

Yes! I got my Temecula rows sewn together and bordered.
I think this will be the first project on the quilting machine--I'm excited to see it quilted.

I set up design boards for the next eight blocks for the Leesburg Sew Along:

These will be fun to piece.....

I may work on them later today. 

I made the March blocks for the Country Threads Sew Along:

My favorite blocks for this project, so far.
I think the tan chicken fabric will be perfect in this quilt. 

And because I did all that organizing, 

I was able to find my Number Nine project for Connie's Game:

Number Nine: My Kim Diehl table runner.
The goal for this month is to get it quilted and bound.

The perfect end to a busy week:
this came in the mail from Andover--so pretty!
I won this in a drawing at Kathy Tracy's blog
A Sentimental Quilter
I was lucky number 17.
(scroll down to the end of her post to check out hilarious Ryan Gosling photos)
The fabric is  Chateau Chambray by Renee Nanneman

I'm off the try out a diabetic peach dessert recipe for Mr. Moosebay--he his really missing  his sweets!