Sunday, October 23, 2016

A Basket, a Leaf, and a Snowman

Can you believe that this is the second post in a week.  I know I can't since I had a real dry posting season recently.

Yesterday, I made a one hour fabric basket which took me a bit more than an hour to make, but then I took a break to meet up with our Quilts of Valor coordinator to give her the quilt I had made the binding for and sewn on and got three more quilts needing binding from her.  Oh, and I also took a lunch break while making the basket.  I'll take my basket to the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild (LVMQG) meeting on Wednesday night for this month's swap.  I've seen a lot of pictures on their Facebook page of the many baskets being made and I want them all.  The tutorial for the basket is free on Craftsy which you can find it HERE.


The lottery block for this month at LVMQG is a Maple Leaf and it is so fun to create.  The guild provided us with a quick and easy tutorial by Stacey at SLO Studio and you can snag it HERE.  Trust me, you will want to make a lot of these blocks which can be arranged many ways to create a quilt, wall hanging, table runner, or mug rug.  The possibilities are endless. 


I've also made some progress on the Christmas stocking for my new granddaughter-in-law.  If you check out my post from Friday HERE, you'll see that I've gotten the broom finished, except for the backstitching.  I hope to get the mouse on top of the broom stitched today.


What's on my agenda for the next couple of days?  I hope to make a few more Maple Leaf blocks for Wednesday's block lottery, bind three of the Quilts of Valor quilts, and, of course, more cross-stitching. 

We'll be headed for Las Vegas Wednesday and won't come back home until Sunday.  Saturday I hope to attend the Sew Yeah Quilting Club at Sew Yeah Quilting, a new quilt shop which is amazing.  If you are ever in Las Vegas be sure to check them, you will not regret it.

I'm linking up today with Slow Sunday Stitching and Let's Bee Social

Happy stitching,

Friday, October 21, 2016

Projects, Projects, and More Projects

It has been a busy time for me and my energy has been somewhat nonexistent on top of all the project deadlines.

I participated in a Teal Mini Swap in September which was an amazing swap.  Each participate paid a small fee and the proceeds went to support ovarian cancer research.  I will definitely be participating in this again next year.  A total of $4,000 was donated from our swap.


Here is the mug rug, key fob and some yummy teas I received from my swap partner.

 
This is the wall hanging mini that I sent to my partner.  The fabric at the top of the zig-zag was an eight inch square sent to each of the participants and was to be used in either a mug rug or a mini wall hanging.  

 
I had never tried matchstick quilting before, but did on this.  Not sure I'll try it again unless I can go from edge to edge with it as it was not fun burying all those threads.

Last week I was busy trying to piece a top for our local Quilts of Valor group.  They will be gifting several on November 12th. 

 Lola was diligently watching over my progress which was slow. 

Here is a picture of the finished top which has been turned over to our coordinator who will pass it on to a long armer for quilting. 
 
I also bound another quilt on Wednesday and have another one I'll be binding today.  The tops are pieced by one person, quilted by another, and then give to another one to bind.   A label will be put on them and washed with a Color Catcher before they are given to a veteran.
 
For those that have been following my blog for awhile know that when we left on our summer travels, the cross-stitch stocking I was working on did not make the trip with us so I am now trying desperately to get it finished for a Christmas gift.  The first picture is the progress I had made before our trip and the second one is where I'm at now.  There are four pages to the pattern and I'm currently on page two.  As you can imagine, there is a lot more to be done in the next several weeks.
 

 
This past week I also completed the October instructions for the Meadow Mystery Quilt by Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs.  I'm loving how it is coming together.  Many thanks Cheryl for putting out instructions monthly rather than weekly.  Here are the full and half hourglass units that I've made.



These are the many things that have kept me busy lately.  This weekend I'll be working on some lottery blocks for the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild meeting on the 26th as well as a one hour bag for a swap at the guild meeting.  Oh, I also need to get busy on another top for Quilts of Valor's February ceremony.  I won't be as rushed with this one, but want to get it done.  I have a couple ideas for the top, but haven't made a definite decision yet.

I'll be linking up with Can I Get a Whoop Whoop over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finish it up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts

Happy stitching,

Friday, October 7, 2016

Snowflake Shimmer Finish

This is going to be a quick post so I can link up with Yvonne over at Quilting Jetgirl who created this wonderful pattern and ran the Snowflake Shimmer QAL.  It was wonderful.  If you don't follow Yvonne, you need to as she is a fantastic quilter, designer, and hosts a lot of great quilting events.

I wasn't able to get any batting until this past Monday as I didn't want to buy the batting that our local Walmart carries.  Then I spent two days trying to figure out how I could spray baste the layers instead of pin basting.  Never could get that figured out and wasted way too much time thinking about it.  So I set up my two long plastic tables in the 5th wheel and went to work pin basting.

It took moving it three times to get it all basted, but it worked.  Thank goodness.  I didn't really have time to think about how I was going to quilt it, but then it came to me.  


On all the white squares I need my modern version of a snowflake.  In the large light purple stars, I used my walking foot and did three trips around them and then some straight across lines in the middle of them.  The background was just a lot of loop-da-loops.  I had thought about doing something similar to strings of pearls only doing snowflakes, but I really didn't have the time of that, so I didn't.  Maybe another day.

 
Then the binding.  This wasn't a large quilt, but it sure seemed like it this afternoon as I was furiously hand stitching the back side of the binding down.

 
Today was Miles' birthday and I spent the whole day either at the sewing machine or at the table hand stitching binding so not great photo shoots for this one.   We did go out to a delicious steak dinner to celebrate his day.






 
I hope to get back to posting more often.  Since we returned from our summer adventures, I have had no energy and felt that I've had jet lag, only it would be travel lag. 
 
Thanks for stopping by.  Happy stitching.