Five more little finishes on a Friday

One of the groups I quilt with has a annual Christmas party and gift exchange.   I received a wonderful bag of goodies. One of the items was a pattern and some fat quarters. The pattern is from June Tailor  and includes a panel of 7 printed inspirational sayings.

 

 Right after Christmas I made two mug rugs with Christmas like fabrics. 

I used scraps from my scrap tub and they both have a gold scroll backing. I posted about these here and noted how I had to use scrap binding and the difficulty I had in joining the short pieces ending the binding.

In February I decided to work on the remaining 5 mug rugs. Using the fat quarters that were in my gift and some of my stash. I pieced this one.

And there it sat, layered but not quilted! As with UFO's, I packed it away in a project box, knowing it was on a UFO list and I would get back to it.

Enter several bags of scraps from some friends that saw me making strip blocks for Covered in Love for donation in February. See my post about these HERE.  I sorted through the bags and started to sort according to color. Then an idea popped into my head. I decided to use the scraps from the four friends to make them each a mug rug. After all it's fabric that they liked!  So I began.

One top pieced for Eileen

 A second one pieced for Carol.

 This little piece is needing some fabric selected from the bag from Lynn.

At my machine with pieces on my small design boards.   This one will be for Maggie

 And now they are finished!  Plus the blue, aqua and green one will go to the giver of the gift, Sandy.  I had so much fun doing these. They each have a backing from my stash and all the other fabric is from each scrap bag.

I am linking this post at Busy Hands Quilts Finished or Not Fridays and also to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. 


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

OMG April final link up

My April OMG was to trim, square up and get the binding on my Snow Flurries quilt. IT IS DONE!

 Plus I added 3 triangles ( 9" squares folded twice and stitched in with the top binding)   This will be the hanging sleeve. You can't see them here, but I use 3 crystal snowflake buttons to hold down the points of the triangles. 

 I haven't decided how I will hang this quilt or just where. I am leaning toward behind the headboard of the queen bed in our guest room. This will necessitate a rod installed as close to the ceiling as Mr Busy will put it. I could hang it with a long dowel and a couple (at least 4) nails.  But I would prefer a pretty curtain rod. I will look to see what is available at Wal Mart or Home Depot. My only options in my small city. 

I will now start to add beads to some of the snowflakes. I have watched several You Tube videos on the technique to add beads to an already quilted item and not have the knots or threads show on the back. I will not use this quilt on a bed, ever!  But I still want it to be attractive and do the best that I can. It will take some time.  

Stay Busy and Stay Happy
Judy B
Elm Street Quilts April OMG Finish

Mid April Friday Finishes or not quite

I've been in my sewing room every day this week. Of course, there were beds to be made, suppers to be cooked, bathrooms to be scrubbed and book club selections to be finished, but I did sew most days. Some days I just petted fabric, looked at patterns and even did some regular ironing!

Last week I came across a post about another zipper bag. I wish I could remember whose blog had the link. I thought I could go right back to it, but I cannot. Luckily I clicked the link to the Moda Bake Shop site and printed the pattern.  It is Vinyl Project Pouch from March 9th. I have been wanting to make one of these for awhile now.  We have 2 small great grandchildren who spend lots of time with us. Of course, I keep spare socks, an extra t-shirt and pants for each of them at our house. The smaller of the two is going on two and just about ready to be potty trained. We keep wipes and diapers here too. And in the car, in the event we are at the playground and in need. So I had a reason for an extra zipper bag.

I knew I had some vinyl in my stash and started looking for some fabric. I found some that I probably would never use in a quilt.  It was just a fat quarter. It is pretty vivid colors and balls of yarn and hearts. Not the best quality, not sure where it came from. I looked for some contrasting fabric and a zipper.

I found this maroon dotty fabric. Perfect.  

I pieced some batting, then pulled my drawer of pre cut 2 1/2" squares and found some that I thought went well. I arranged the squares sort of in a diagonal and added 6 squares of the "yarn and hearts" fabric.  I continued with the instructions. 

I even found a new 16" barberry red all purpose zipper !  Yea!!

 I quilted it with wavy wonky lines using my walking foot and the #4 stitch on my Bernina, set at the longest and widest. I used a old spool of red,white and blue variegated thread because I need to use it up.

I added the contrast fabric to the vinyl. I love the fact that wonder clips work so well on vinyl and there are no pin holes. 

 I have an old rotary cutter that I purchased way back when I first started to quilt. I don't like the way it feels in my hand, and the way the blade collapses , so I keep a used blade in it  just for cutting paper or in this case vinyl.

 Finished!  Isn't it cute?

 Here is the back. I wanted to try binding by machine and decided this was the perfect project to practice. Maybe not, because of the vinyl. I had to use the paper that came with the vinyl, between it and the machine bed. Then of course it had to be torn away from the seam.  It is not perfect, but it is cute and serviceable. When Miss B doesn't need extra diapers in Gwama and Pa's car, I will take it back and keep something else in it.

I found this cute little felt star on a string in my stash, it makes a perfect zipper pull.  It is packed now, with a 1/2 pack of wipes, 2 diapers and a square of plush fabric to put under her "bum". 

A Finish It Up Friday entry at Crazy Mom Quilts link up party!

and a Finished or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts. 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

A Winter Quilt and Two More Snow Friends

Snow Flurries quilt is trimmed, bound with hanging triangles. Thankfully, the weather on Wednesday was partly cloudy and Mr Busy was available to hold my quilt for me, so I could photograph it. 

 This one looks suprisingly like a photo I have of the unquilted top. But as you can see from the next photo the binding is done.  

It looks a little wavy, but it was just breezy and I had my quilt holder stretching up and over the fence top. 

Here is the back, showing the hanging triangles. And a peek at the blue sky and fluffy clouds. 

  There is a sparkly snowflake button holding down the bottom point of the triangle. Do you use these hanging triangles or do you sew a sleeve the whole width of the quilt?
And in the spirit of transparency here is the entire back with the inset white strips to make the backing big enough for my long armer.

Olie and Leena will be joining Sven on my wall next winter. I usually hang these small narrow hangings in the space near my front door. However now with 3 that sort of go together, I'll have to decide just where they will reside. I may have to hang them all in a row and leave them up from November through March or April!!!

I am participating in the APQ 2018 UFO Challenge. You can read about it at their website, All People Quilt.  My UFO for April was to complete SVEN.

He was done early, so I decided to finish his friends Olie and Leena for April.

This is what they looked like the 1st of April. I needed to spray baste the layers together, and really wanted to do it outside. But the weather just did not cooperate. It has been cold, snowy and windy. Sometimes just one of those, but lots of days all three!  Ugh!  So I bit the bullet, covered my cutting table, turned on a fan and sprayed them quickly in my sewing room. Then I set to work to buttonhole all the applique down and get the binding and hanging sleeves on them. And lastly, finish the button eyes, embroider the mouths and add the other embellishments.

Now, meet  Leena and Olie.

Leena has a crazy quilted stocking cap, button eyes and blue and purple fringe on her scarf.

 I may add to her bangs, but I will look at if for awhile before adding anymore stitches.


Olie's top hat has a greenery backed star and some holly leaf buttons, also two color fringe on his green scarf.

The pattern suggested that the leaves should be embroidered. I was not confident in my ability to free hand the leaves, so I raided my stash of vines and silk flowers and found some silk ivy leaves. I think they look fine.

So two or maybe three finishes for this Friday. I will link up with Crazy Mom Quilts, Finish It Up Friday and  Busy Hands Quilts, Finished or Not Friday.


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Sunshine scrappy week one!

I worked on some scrappy slab blocks for April. I did not think I had much yellow, but when I started digging, I found quite a bit. Then add in the scraps from some fellow quilters and Voila!  I had a good assortment.

My blocks looked like this in the middle of the week.

I added a couple of rounds yesterday.....and I decided to join in with Carla's Blog Hop 30 Blocks in 30 Days!  I had the yellow out and I had almost enough yardage of some white on white pin dot. So I picked 2 blocks and cut and sewed.  The large block on the left is Chunky Pinwheel and the middle one is Topsy Turvy.

Funny story: I started to do the alternate method to the Staggered Block. I did not have the blog up on my laptop (it was upstairs) and I thought I had jotted down enough directions that I could do it. Ummm, not so much. When I cut the block at the 5 1/2 mark, I had one set of 5 1/2" strip and one that was only 5" .  So I went back to the blog and looked for a block that I could use the 5 1/2" side in another configuration. I found Topsy Turvy. I could take the strip of rectangle apart at one seam and add 2 5 1/2 " squares.  It worked. See the yellow with red dots! In the middle.  Where there is a will, there's a way!

My plan is to go back and make blocks 1-7 in the other colors of the RSC18. So I will make 2 blue, 3 purple, 2 or 3 lime green , 3 yellow and so on. I have a chart - sort of, so I can make all 30 blocks using the 10 colors in the Rainbow Challenge. I will probably add in a neutral and a dark( black or brown). I'll wait and see how they all play together.

I really needed an extra project/challenge  don't you think?!!!!!

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

I'll be linking this post up to So Scrappy Saturday.

Spinning my wheels

It seems I have been spending lots of time in my sewing room. But nothing completed to show for it. Does that ever happen to you?

This week I finished the piecing on the 5 yard quilt I was working on last week. I added the pale gray 4 1/2 " borders and wanted to decide on the backing. I ordered a wide backing with these wonderful words several weeks ago, not knowing what I would do with it.

But when I finished this quilt for my daughter, I knew that this was the perfect backing. I laid it out and realized that because it was directional, I would have to order more of this fabric . So this week, I ordered more fabric. When it arrives, I will piece the backing and get it ready to go to the long arm quilter.

I got started on my April OMG . I trimmed the batting and backing and tried to square up this quilt. I am not sure what happened, but when I tried to trim it by squaring up the corners as I was taught, some of the edges were way narrow. I  knew it I trimmed them that way, the 1/4" seam allowance would not be sufficient when I attached the binding. I thought, I worried, I weighed different scenarios. I decided to add strips of fabric where needed. Luckily, I still had all the leftover fabric. I was able to cut some 1" strips and add them to the edges of the places it was too shallow. I did not take photos, but it worked. If you look carefully at this corner you will see a tiny sliver of matching fabric that was added to the edge. I wish I knew how to add arrows and such to my pictures!

Wednesday, I got the binding attached at a sew-in with friends. It really helped having 8' banquet tables to lay the bulk of the quilt on. I will continue to hand sew the binding to the back as I watch TV or Netflix or Amazon Prime....actually I worked on it Thursday while stitching with some other friends. We meet every Thursday to do hand sewing. Embroidery, binding, even some knitting or crocheting gets done, while we chat and chat and chat.

And I started on the Yellow or Gold slab blocks for the RSC18 challenge for April. These are in various stages of completion. My basket of yellow has plenty of pieces still in it.

And I cut the setting squares and triangles for Rick Rack Nines from Bonnie Hunter's book, Adventures in Leaders and Enders. Making scrappy nine patches has been my leader and ender project for the last 2 years. My design wall will not be big enough to hold all the blocks. This is the beginning of 8 rows. there are 15 rows. The quilt will be 102 x 102 with borders!

OOPS  the bottom right has too many scrappy squares!  Glad I took this photo!

I have started to put it together. I have the left bottom corner triangle sewed to the first row and the second diagonal row is added to that.
This could be a problem....already there is an error in the lay out! But at least I noticed it before it is sewn. This quilt is put together on the diagonal as you can see.  Bonnie suggests doing 1/2 to the diagonal middle and then the other half, then joining the long seam at the last. It will be a while. I have made a copy of the layout chart in the book, so I can have it close to me at the machine. There is a pattern.

I will be linking this post to Myra's Finished or Not Friday, at Busy Hands Quilts  and
Amanda Jean's Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

I know all of  these are not finished, but I will be done with the binding before Friday is over.

I have to get groceries today, go to the library and I have a hair appointment . I woke up to 3+ inches of snow AGAIN!  Blaaah!

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

April OMG One Monthly Goal

Those of you who read my blog know that I have been working on this particular quilt for a loooong time. It  is a Crabapple Hill pattern, called Snow Flurries. It was a Stitchery Club project hosted by our local quilt store at the time. The owner of that store passed away in June of 2013, her daughter and husband tried to keep it open, but could not make it work. So The Quilt Nook closed in mid 2014. I think I have been working on it off and on since 2009!

This pattern has embroidery, regular piecing, paper piecing. Also included in the supplies was embroidery floss, beads and crayons. Finally all the embroidery was finished, the center was pieced. Then I tackled the large paper piecing border. This should have been easy. My friends all said, " it's a piece of cake!"  Not so for me.........I am not sure why, but I struggled. But I persevered!  Then the top was done. My friend Lynn offered to quilt it for me. Hers is done and I like the way she quilted her own.

Picture taken 7-22-17

I had purchased yardage for the back but had to add a strip of white to give it the extra 4" around that the long armer preferred. Then it sat for a bit. It was the holidays, every one was busy...you understand.

My lovely friend took the time to quilt two quilts recently for me. In between travelling to  Minneapolis to attend her young granddaughter baptism, (for which she had made a christening gown out of her own wedding dress),  buying a new house, selling their old house, and making 2 trips to ND to attend family gatherings. she is a "gem".

The binding is made.

 So my OMG for April is to trim the batting and extra backing, square it up and attach the binding by machine, then hand sew it down. I will add 3 triangular hanging sleeves to it also. I am sure I  will be hanging it , not using it on a bed. After the binding is on, it has to be beaded. But that is for another time!!!

I apologize for the indoor pictures. But I don't have a quilt holder available. And there is brown icky slush outside.  One of my projects this summer, is to get a photo spot set up. 

I'll be linking this with Elm Street Quilts  OMG  April Goal Setting Link Up.

I also will be linking this post to Super Mom No Cape Stitchery Monday  Here is a better close up of some of the embroidered snowflakes. Of course, these are without beads or glitter!

 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy