Finally...

This quilt had been up on my design wall since before I went to the retreat in February.  I do like the looks of it, but would probably not do another.  I don't love to piece, and this has to be be cut out in its entirety and then assembled in strips.  It was a tedious process and I'm glad to be done with it.  I'm hoping I win something on Festival of Scrappiness!  Lots of good ideas for using scraps.

Now I need to finish enough blocks to make this into a quilt top.  It's been on the design wall, let's see, since October when Pat last visited?  

  We picked up this little cabinet for the sun room.  It was just too hard to pass up at Savers on senior discount day--30% off.  We are now shopping for a some kind of sleeper sofa that will fit, since the space could double as another place to house guests.

Seems like spring is here to stay.  We've had warm, sunny, though windy, days.  A gorgeous sunrise Sunday morning. 

Moving in!

We finally are moving things into the sun room.  March winds have arrived with a vengeance, and I haven't gotten my plants repotted and ready for the sun room.  But I did quilt some decorator fabric and make a new cushion for the bamboo chair we found in a thrift shop in Colorado Springs. 

The chair itself was in surprisingly good shape owing, I think, to the incredibly ugly cushion it was sporting--crumbling Herculon fabric.  Blech!  I kept the cushion only to use as a pattern for the new one. 

The stove is an antique which fortunately comes apart in many pieces which is how it's managed to accompany us through all our moves.  We've never vented or had a fire in it, but it makes a great place to put plants.  We need new speakers which will get mounted on the wall instead of sitting on the old stove.

Delivery day!

I was able to finish up one more quilt.  Yetta made this beauty, which is nice and long and will be good for a teenager, I think.  

 Thanks to a little help lot of help from my friends, I have this nice stack-o-quilts to deliver today. 

 Our weather has been just gorgeous, warmer days with little wind.  We'll have to get busy and start moving stuff into the sun room tomorrow after spending the day in town today.

Fronts and backs

I got two more quilts finished and ready to deliver, but still had enough time to load one more on the longarm and I'll finish it today.

Dee put this top together at retreat.  Some people are all about productivity there...me, not so much.  She is a master of the "I Spy" novelty quilts, and fortunately for me, also generous.  

I used some Tony Hawk fabric for the back, which was just a bit shy of the width of the quilt, but I added some stripes to make it work.  It's nice to have a more boy friendly quilt.

Pat has been cranking out the BQ3s.  This one was with a focus fabric featuring kitties. I used my new Jig Saw pantograph from Dave Hudson.  It's an easy one that flows and I think I'll use it a lot for kid quilts.

 
   Pat also had the perfect backing with this print of kitty words.

 I still have two more BQ3s from Pat, but will be taking a bit of break from donation quilts to get some sewing and quilting done for the new room.

What the heck?!

I was filling a bobbin with invisible thread (monofilament poly) and when I was done, I heard a pop.  The top part of the bobbin blew off!  That's a new one.  This was the result:

 I tried to salvage the thread...thinking I could just rewind it onto another bobbin, but it wasn't happening and instead tangling into a mess.  And of course I haven't thrown it away thinking it has some art potential!

I finished another couple of quilts, and am on target to have six by Wednesday.  This is the appliqued top from Sherry.  I used So Fine on top and this is my first time, as far as I can remember, using it.  I can see why some professionals use it so much.  Although I quilted pretty densely, it is a light thread and didn't make the little quilt stiff.  Added a lot of texture without overpowering the applique.  

 I didn't notice until I took a close-up picture that the little clover block lost it's brown center in the wash.  I used fusible and machine stitched another center for it.  

Pat M. had given this to us a while back, and I got it finished up.  It's such a bright, cheerful quilt!  Thanks friends for all the help!

 

Close to moving in...

Dale sealed the sun room floor, and today he put up the baseboards--although they are not boards but vinyl.  We got a stash of these at a Habitat for Humanity store, and they have been especially good for our irregular adobe walls.  They follow the contours very well.  We would be moving in were it not for the smell of the floor sealer.

After working with the Baptist Fan boards, I needed a change and decided to freehand this small piece that Yetta, one of the retreat attendees gave me.  It was very well pieced by hand, and she had acquired it in the Midwest somewhere.  Nice to get it finished.  

 As usual the hardest part was how to fill in all the space.  I need a class in what to do where.  

 It was good practice as now I've loaded a small quilt with appliqued blocks.  The swapped blocks were given to me by Sherry, a new retreat attendee, to put together for our cause.  I had to take a picture of the back of this applique block. 

These are the most perfect hand stitches I've ever seen, so exact, and if it weren't for the buried thread tails they would easily be mistaken for machine stitching.

Of course I'm struggling with how to quilt the whole thing, and I'll be happy to go back to my pantographs for the next quilts!

Beautiful bag!

Becky at the retreat in Phoenix had a beautiful bag that her mom had made her using a charm pack of squares.  I wanted a pattern, but Karen had just made it up.  I found a wonderful bag of decorator samples that someone was getting rid of at the retreat, and Karen made this awesome bag for me with the fabrics!  It is wonderfully constructed and a perfect size for me.

I haven't gotten too much done on the quilting front since I returned from retreat.  We spent the weekend putting up the ceiling tin in the sun room.  It's done now, and Dale is getting ready to seal the cement floor, the final step before we can move in! 

 I did manage one finish though, and that was a generous queen size quilt that Lucille donated.  I used QuiltEZ boards to quilt a Baptist fan design on it.  I'm not in love with that process.  I find pantographs much easier to use.  The quilt turned out nice though, and I'm sure after washing my all too visible errors will be lost in the overall texture.  Don't know if I'm really up to trying the boards on another quilt.

 

Back home

Did you miss me?  I was in Phoenix for the yearly retreat I attend, if I can.  This was the 10th anniversary retreat.  We all met online on the About.com quilting forum, and I've missed only two retreats...when we were in MN taking care of my mother-in-law and a couple of years ago when they had the nerve to schedule my total knee during the retreat!

I came home and Dale had finished the painting in the sun room.  I picked the color for our heat sink wall, the day I left.  It used to be the exterior adobe wall of the house.  Unfortunately the first gallon of pain was bad, thin and watery and he had to go back and replace it.  I love the end result.  It's quite a change from our usual white, but we wanted something that would absorb the heat, and not reflect it back.

 The rock step is something we brought back from one of our camping trips, which I blogged about here.  I remember pulling off the road and collecting this rock, which was a challenge to load into the truck.  I works perfectly as a step, the color, height, etc. 

The wind has been blowing and blowing.  Our weatherman explained that it's another La Nina year, and we can expect lots of wind.  I'm hoping not quite as much as last year!  Still getting some awesome sunrises.

When I left for Phoenix, I was working on this scrappy quilt.  I had been cutting the appropriately sized pieces from scraps and saving them.  The quilt needs to be totally cut out and then put together like a course of bricks.  I'm not sure I like this method of putting a top together, but I want to get it done and off the design wall.  I came home with lots of donated tops and blocks, and I need to get busy quilting on the longarm.  I'm anxious to try out the QuiltEZ boards I have on loan, and I'm considering buying from a longarmer that has gone computerized. 

 

More thrift shopping

I was on a good thrifting roll.  We went to Santa Fe for a birthday outing and I thought a stop in Moriarty was in order.  

Look what I got:

A three yard piece of the great graphic design fabric, and some wonderful yarns.  The yarns were $1 a skein/ball, and retail for $7-10 each, Hempathy and Tahki Cotton Classic!  They also have just a wonderful feel.

Next week I'll be heading for the yearly retreat in Phoenix.  There's a Savers close to the hotel we stay in, and Phoenix has wonderful Goodwill stores.  It's birthday month celebration!

Also stopped at the new Wal-Mart in Santa Fe and they had a fabric department.  I picked up two 6+yard bolts of great quality cotton that I can use for backings at $2/yd. 

Back to cotton...

When you know better, you can do better.  Saturday at our longarm quilters meeting, I was given a copy of On Track, a quarterly publication from IMQA (International Machine Quilters Association, Inc.).  It's a very good read, but one article made an impression on me, Safe Batting Choices for Baby and Invalid.  Follow the link to read the article online.  

I never considered the flammability of battings, but after reading this I'm going back to cotton.  I had been using an 80/20 blend because of the price, but since I predominantly make quilts for children, I will go back to cotton batting.  Some of the newly diagnosed diabetic kids I make quilts for are unfortunately infants, and I cannot in good conscience continue to use poly blend batting. 

On a more fun note, I stopped at Savers on my way home and scored!  I got the squash colored duvet cover, the buttery colored king cotton sheet, the twin plaid sheet, and the yard piece of striped fabric all for $17.  I love using sheets for backings.  I don't have to piece them have never had a problem stitching through them with even the highest thread counts.

I also finished this little wall hanging from a pattern I won on Painted Threads blog some time ago.  It's for a friend of a friend that loves polar bears.  Nice to finally use the pattern.