Progress!

Last year I participated in a QAL called Oh Say Can You Sew. Clue 5 ask you to make 128 blocks which were made from 9- 1" HST. That meant I needed to make 1152 - 1 1/2" unfinished HST! That is a LOT of very small HSTs! 

After making 80, I put the project aside and forgot about it. Well sort of...it was in one of my project boxes just looking at me...reminding me that this UFO needed attention. So this week while I waited for the backing fabric I ordered for the mountain adventure quilt, I picked it up and took some time to figure out where I left off. Instead of making more HSTs right away, I decided to make the ones already completed into 9-patch blocks. Here is my progress.

I also cut more tumbler blocks for my EPP project so they would be ready to come on vacation with me.

I finished the binding on the quilt I made for a wedding gift! I love how it turned out! Shh! It is a surprise but I don't think anyone involved reads my blog. 

The bride wanted muted greens and my daughter picked the pattern. I did make slight changes in the pattern. I haven't yet found a name for it. A couple ideas are 'Agave You' (I love you) or just 'Agave'. My daughter thought the quilt reminded her of an agave plant hence the names.  Any suggestions are welcome! Help me decide!

The backing is all one piece.

Linking to Monday Musing @Songbird Designs, To-Do Tuesday @For the Love of Fabric, Design Wall Monday @Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, Sew & Tell @Melva Loves Scraps

I also finished piecing this little baby quilt and I now received the backing I order so I need to get started on sandwiching and quilting!

Hopefully I will get started on this soon!

It has been a while!

       It has been a month since I have had a chance to get back here for an update!         June was a very busy month and July is proving to be just as busy! It is all good summertime fun!

Both my husband and I retired in June...me at the end of the school year and my DH on June 30th. Yesterday our daughters gave us a celebration dinner party with some close friends. We had a wonderful dinner and a beautiful evening with friends!

Today we continue celebrating with a close friend's HS graduation party!

I have had some time between spending time with my grandkids to sew! July's color is RED and I was able to make my button blocks for RSC. Linking to Scrap Happy Saturday @So Scrappy

On my last post I gave a sneak peek at a quilt I was making for a wedding gift. It is now all quilted and the binding is stitched on! I am in the process of hand stitching it down. I should be able to post a picture soon. 

In the meantime, I have designed an mountain adventure quilt for a baby shower coming soon! I will not be able to attend as we will be on our retirement trip!

Here is a peek at my process.

designing with paper and pencils

First 3 sections

The 4th and start of the 5th sections

I will leave you with a couple of picture of my grand kids!

RSC and something new

It has been a while since I have been able to sew anything significant much less post. The end of the school year and teaching (yes, I've retired!) has been incredibly busy this year.  Only thing left is a luncheon on Monday.

I finally finished 2 more orange buttons, and since June's colors are light blues and light greens, I went ahead and finished 4 of each. 

3rd and 4th orange button block

All 4 orange button blocks

light green buttons

light blue buttons

All the buttons so far! Reminds me of my grandma's button box! Linking to Scrap Happy Summer @SoScrappy, Off the Wall Friday @Creations-Quilts, Art and More, Finished or Not Friday @Alycia Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop @Confessions of a fabric addict, and Link Party @Quilting Patchwork, and Wednesday Wait Loss @The Inquiring Quilter 

I will give you a sneak peek at what I have been slowly working on! It is a gift so I may not reveal it for a while. We will see. I don't think anyone involved reads my blog so I may be able to do a reveal once it is finished!

That's it for now! Happy stitching!

I Got a New Finish, Update on H2H and RSC

 I am so excited for my latest finish! In April I finished this quilt to the flimsy stage but then I wasn't sure about how to quilt it. I felt that it would be a good candidate for an all-over design. The only all-over design that I have previously attempted was a meander. I decided to try the lilypad design by Christina Cameli of @afewscraps. 

I practiced a bit on this piece of glass with a dry erase marker. Once I was pretty comfortable, I started on my quilt...not totally confident...but I went for it.

I was surprised about how easy it was and the overall effect of the design. 

(I quilt on my domestic machine)

I put the last stitches in the binding last night and put it through the washer and dryer before going to bed. This morning I took it out of the dryer. Here it is textured with all its crinkly goodness!

This pattern is Sparrows by @penandpaperpatterns. It is all machine pieced and free motion quilted. 

All of the solids fabrics are Kona cottons. The small accent triangles, the backing prints and binding are purchased coordinating prints. 

I really wanted the floral print for the backing but all that was left was just under 2 yards. So I found a geometric print that coordinated and pieced the back. 

My newest favorite finishes at 65" x 70"

Linking to Off the Wall Friday @Creations-Quilts, Art, Whatever, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop @Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or Not Fridays @Alycia Quilts, Link Party @Patchwork and Quilts, Wednesday Wait Loss @the inquiring quilter and Favorite Finish Monthly Link Up @Meadow Mist Designs

Tomorrow is check in for the Hand2Help Challenge @Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Right now, I have 2 quilts that I have ready for this challenge that I will send to Little Lambs Foundation for Kids.

This is my Squiggles quilt that I made as part of the RSC in 2022. You can read more about it here.

This quilt is Play Nice quilt and it was made as part of the Stash Buster Challenge in 2022. You can read about it here.
I'm super excited to be participating in this wonderful charity quilt drive hosted by Sarah from Confessions of a Fabric Addict. I hope to be able to add one more quilt to this group!

I will link to H2H check-in.

I also worked on my button blocks with the new May color-ORANGE

Here are my first 2 blocks.

Linking to Scrap Happy Saturday @SoScrappy

I'm also excited to say I earned another badge from Wednesday Wait Loss for my mini quilts! 

New finishes and RSC update

 Last Saturday I took a class hosted by Rachel Pierman of #craftymonkies. This was the second class I took taught by the talented @victoria_vanderlaan. Her technique is called intuitive stacked forms. The results are unique and amazing! You can read about the 1st class and my finish here.

This 2nd class was a follow-up class - Explore your Intuition Further. I started several quilts in the class and here are 2 that I recently finished. 

This mini I'm calling 7, 8 Lay Them Straight

It was inspired from Victoria's blunt edge quilt that she showed in the class. It was inspired by a pile of sticks she found on a walk. 

I choose a plum fabric I had in my stash as my background and scraps of light gray and a bright orange from my scrap bins. It is intuitively machine pieced and densely straight-line quilted every 1/4". It finished at 14.5" x 18.5"

This mini is called Disconnected

The forms in this quilt mini are cut-offs from the wedge table topper I made. You can see it here. I chose Kona butterscotch as the background. Butterscotch was also one of the colors in the wedges so after sewing them into this piece, I realized that the middle disappears into the background creating a disconnected look. I was pleasantly surprised how this piece turned out. 

When you sew intuitively, what you think the finished piece will look like doesn't always happen!

It is machine pieced and densely straight-lined quilted about every 3/8". It finishes at 14.5" x 16.5" 

Both of these quilts are faced as the finishing. 

I'm linking to Off the Wall Fridays @Creations-Quilts, Art and More, Finished or Not Friday @AlyciaQuilts, Linky Party @Patchwork and Quilts, Wednesday Wait Loss @The Inquiring Quilter

I also want to mention that I was featured on Wednesday Wait Loss last week. Thanks Jennifer!

April RSC color is purple and I have made all 4 button blocks. Here are the 3rd and 4th blocks and all 4 together!

Linking up to ScrapHappy Saturday @SoScrappy

Next up is ORANGE!

A finish and RSC and Sparrows QAL

 This week I finished the quilting and binding on the second quilt from last year's Stash Buster Challenge. The original quilt was so big that I wasn't comfortable quilting it. I intended to send it out to charity as a flimsy but the postage was so much. I ended up taking it apart and making 2 quilts instead. The first (larger) quilt was gifted to friends. This quilt will be sent to charity as part of the Hands2Help 2023 campaign hosted by Sarah @Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  

I changed the layout to a 4 x 5 grid and quilted vertically in straight lines about 1" apart.

I used a piece from my stash for the backing and a coordinating piece for the binding. 

I'm calling this quilt Play Nice!

Linking to Finished or Not Friday @Alycia Quilts, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop @Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Linky Party @Patchwork & Quilts, and Wednesday Wait Loss @The Inquiring Quilter

I also finished 2 of the purple button blocks for this months RSC.

2 more purple buttons to stitch! Linking to ScrapHappy Saturday @SoScrappy.

My Sparrows top is all put together! I'm loving it. More to come soon!

Wearable Art

 I have a lot to show today! 

I can finally share a commissioned project that I finished. It is not a quilt per se but does involve quilting. My Music teacher/colleague asked if I could make a banjo for the back of her jean jacket. I showed her this quilt I found on Pinterest and she loved the idea! So the design process started! I didn't want to applique the banjo (as the quilt inspiration) but wanted to piece it. She plays a 5 string bluegrass banjo which has a longer, thinner neck. We decided to let the arm just run off the top instead of trying to fit the whole banjo on the back. I also needed the head to be big enough to stitch the chorus of a song she chose.

Once the design was finished, I shopped for 14 different rainbow colors of fabric.

 I stitched the bottom right first.

After I made the bottom left but I didn't want a seam in the larger white piece because I would be FMQ words on it. So I figured out how to keep the white intact while still piecing the rainbow head. I was happy that it worked out! I continued with the top right and then added the rainbow strip to the right of the white for the remainder of the neck. The piecing was a bit tricky but it all worked out!

Next I added the chorus to the white head section. I used a fusible woven interfacing to stabilize the block before FMQing. I wrote the chorus in water erasable ink and I stitched using 40wt navy blue Aurifil thread. On the left side, I stitched the same chorus in larger font twice to fill the space. 

I stitched the piece onto the back section of the jacket and between the colors. I stitched 2 rows with white between the chorus on the left to keep the large sections secure. 

It was fun to create this wearable art piece! My friend was thrilled with it as she stated "Even better than I imagined."

Linking to Off the Wall Fridays @Creations-Quilts, Art, Whatever and TGIFF @Tamarinis