assembling the HST Wee Play blocks

I got 3 of the 9-patch blocks assembled before hubby pouted too much that I wasn't paying enough attention to him ::eye roll::  - and now today I have to work on my ''work'' sewing, but I may be able to get back to sewing these tomorrow.  Anybody else have a hard time sewing when hubby is home?  He is SO neeeeeedy, just like a toddler.......I hope I'm not the only 'lucky' one.  I know he does it cause he loves me, but I really shouldn't have to be the 'entertainment'.........

edited to add: since I started with 5'' charms, these HST's are just a bit over 4.5''.  So, the 9 patches are around 12.5'' unfinished.  There will be 36 nine-patches, so it will be approx 72'' square when done I think.

recovering from Christmas with some HST's

Well, I've been working today on my HST's for my WeePlay quilt - and I have all 400 ironed and ready to assemble.  I decided to stop at 5 charm packs worth, and if I haven't figured properly for the amount of each color in specific locations, then I have some extra charm packs if I need to add certain colors.  This is the layout I have chosen though (done in EQ6):

I'm going to sew them into 9patches, then sew rows and columns.  Here I go!.......

a stack of Wee Play

last night while we fretted about the river possibly flooding, I cut some 5x5 squares of my favorite quilter's cotton ''parchment'' and drew diagonal lines for HST's and stacked them together with 3 charm packs of Wee Play.  This will eventually be part of one quilt that will consist of 6 or 7 charm packs done entirely of HST's - I am thinking of adding a couple charm packs of ''Punctuation'' to give it even more of a scrappy feel though.
What's not to love about stacks of fabric ready to be sewn?!!!!

Christmas lovelies

I went to the fabric store for material for my hat orders.  The bad thing was that these lovely Christmas fabrics were 50% off.  Darn things just jumped into my cart! (Almost forgot the hat order material, LOL) Aren't they beautiful fabrics though!?!  I really am having a hard time deciding on what to make with them though.  I got a yard of each, but the stripe on top I think is between 1.5 and 2 yards (got the end of the bolt additional 50% off for the piece that was over a yard).  Anyhow, I'm debating on possibly either a raw edge Drunkard's path or maybe a disappearing 9 patch.  I'm leaning toward the 9 patch since it's a whole lot easier/faster and Christmas is coming FAST!  I think I will browse the Moda Bake Shop and see if I get any ideas there....

the Arrowhead block again

here is another tester Arrowhead block - this one made using 5'' charms.  It finished to 5''.  Not sure I understand why a 10'' charm finishes at 12'' and a 5'' charm finishes at 5'', but oh well!  LOL.  This is a CUTE bock, although I'm not sure I'd make a whole quilt in this small of a block - maybe a baby quilt though :)  I think I'll make this one into a coaster :)

design wall Monday: the block that practically makes itself

The rotary cut Arrowhead block.  It's fun, it's EASY, it's addicting, and it practically makes itself!  You have GOT to try this block!  Two 10'' layer cake pieces make a 12'' block.  These two blocks were leftover from a project I'm working on with a layer cake of ''Dandelion Girl'' (I just LOVE Fig Tree's colors!)  I had insomnia this morning and got up at 4am, LOL.  I wanted to get right to sewing this morning and couldn't because hubby was sleeping still!  He finally got up and left for hunting about 8am, so I whipped this up in less than 10 minutes.    Seriously, less than 10 minutes!  A person could whip up a whole quilt top with this technique easily in one day!
before it was squared up:

after it was trimmed:

 and this is a little peek at the Dandelion Girl project:

and here are some ''mug rugs'' I whipped up yesterday.  The tree I embroidered on my embroidery machine (design is from Embroidery Library).  I'm not thrilled with calling them 'mug rugs' - I think 'cup quilts' better suits them, LOL.

 The black/white damask one I'm keeping for myself, and the green one (I made two like that) is going to go in a gift giveaway with 2 Christmas mugs.  These are a lot of fun to make - a tiny little quilt and you can practice different quilting techniques with them!  The green ones I did a swirly quilt design and I like it a lot!  I went with the old stand-by stipple in mine though.  Gotta love stipple :)

hexagons?

The hexagon is one quilt pattern that I have stayed away from (except for half hexies, which you can strip piece still).  But, this makes me want to try some!  Badskirt hexagon tutorial

and this post on So Happy blog - who could resist those stacks of hexies?   MUST RESIST!

table top cover

I finished a table topper the other day for my cabinet that I keep by my sewing machine.  It's made with 2 1/2'' squares cut from a Moda ''Pampered Pooch'' charm pack (and the border is from ''Happy Camper'').  The backing is from a card table cover that was my grandmothers (probably from the 40's).  I had-sewed the binding with some of grandma's silk thread too - and I am SOLD on sewing bindings with silk thread!  I am happy to have a nice little collection from grandma and I will definitely be using it from now on!

Flimsy finish Friday

I have a finished flimsy to share!  I have the backing ready too, just need to dig out the batting and quilt and bind it!  This is done with 3 charm packs of Moda's  'Lumiere de Noel' by French General.  I really like this fabric a lot, and had fun making a simple quilt of all HST's.  I starched as I went and pressed all seams open, so it took longer to make, but it made up for it with accuracy in the piecing!  That was very nice to have everything line up so well :)  I think I am going to pick up red thread to match the border to do the quilting as the backing is the same red.  I am unsure what to do for the binding though.  I might have to track down enough of one of the Lumiere de Noel prints for a binding, or maybe find a cream/tan solid that matched/coordinates.

  I definitely want to get it finished well in advance of Christmas though, so I'd better get moving on the quilting!  I like quilting smaller quilts like this though, much easier than a queen size quilt!

Blooming nine patch

My next quilt on my 'to-do' list (after I finish a couple other WIP's) is a blooming nine-patch.  I picked my fabrics yesterday and today I fiddled with EQ6 a bit - I couldn't come up with exactly the color choices in the program as I chose, but this is close to what it should look like I guess!

If the quilt turns out anything like the EQ6 picture, I will be ecstatic!  I think it's just lovely!  Here are the fabrics I chose the other day - I decided to leave out the pinky/red one that just to the left of the gold one.

With 4'' finished blocks, EQ6 says it will finish about 90 1/2 x 102.  Sounds about right!  Now I just need to figure out how to make EQ6 tell me how much fabric of each color I need to make sure I have enough of each fabric before I start cutting..........

a mostly finished flimsy

well, I finished putting the HST's of this quilt top together, and now I think it needs borders, it's just too small..... now I have to go find some material to 'go' with this material.  Hopefully I can find some at my LQS that is closing that has flat folds for $2.52 a yard right now!

 

So, off to shopping I go!  Oh woe is me, LOL

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Yaaa, another round of the Blogger's Quilt Festival for Fall 2010!

Here is my quilt to enter in the festival!

The material I used it ''Dandelion Girl'' from Moda by Fig Tree.  I used 4 charm packs and then an off-white quilter's cotton.  I also gave my mom some charm packs of Dandelion Girl for her birthday in August, so we worked on our quilts of the same material simultaneously :)  I chose Hunters Star, she chose to do a Twister quilt.  Hers is queen size though, and mine is 63'' square.  I am very happy that I was able to integrate one of my grandmother's linen's into this - I used it for the backing.  It was a linen tablecloth that she bought that had needlepoint designs printed on it, but she had never gotten around to doing the needlepoint.  I washed the needlepoint out of the material and used it for my backing (although I had to add extra charm squares for the back to make it big enough).  I ended up doing some straight line quilting (a first for me!) and then washed it.  I just LOVE this quilt, and I wouldn't hesitate to do another Hunters Star pattern.  I think it is just so attactive!  I think the next one I'll do will be in Christmas colors :)  Wouldn't that be fun?  Ohh, maybe with the Christmas fabrics I bought yesterday (post below).  That would be nice.......

So, stop by at Amy's Bloggers Quilt Festival and join in the fun!!!

design wall Monday

Well, I finally have something to show.  I sewed like crazy this weekend, but not on quilting!  I had a bunch of orders to sew up from my online store and it took me most of the day Sunday (I went fishing with hubby on Saturday).  This is what I worked on the tail end of last week though.  From 3 charm packs of Lumiere de Noel by Moda.

By the name of the fabric line, I thought it was going to be more 'Christmas-y'.  I guess it can still be a Christmas quilt.......

I have to say though, that I am a starch convert now!  I starched these blocks and pressed the seams open, and I am *amazed* at how flat and crisp the blocks are.  It took a lot longer, but the result is so nice!  The piecing is wonderful and it's so much easier to sew starched blocks!  And the quilting should be really easy too since the seams won't have big bumps.  I really don't like to press seams open, but here it really made a difference!  I will definitely be starching most of my projects from now on, and probably pressing seams open on a lot of them......

HST's

I have a quilt on my 'to do' list that has a lot of HST's.  So, I have been on the lookout for a way to make more of them in an easy way and not have them on the bias when I'm done.  I have a tutorial here for making 4 HST's from 2 charms, but I was looking for something to be made from yardage and I found this great site where I can print templates!  No marking on the fabric, yaa!

design 'wall' Monday on Tuesday again! Oops!

A day late and a dollar short, that's me!

I worked on these little cuties over the weekend (amongst helping hubby work on son #1's truck on Sunday and cleaning the barn on Saturday)

I love the look of a fabric snippet pile - like a little haystack.

And what's not to love about HST's?!!!! :)

Son #2's money quilt

I think I forgot to share the pics of my son's money quilt that I made for him after it got back from the quilters.  Well, here it is - and it definitely is getting used!  He loves it!  Very simple quilt made really fun with a cool pantograph!

Design wall Monday (on Tuesday, oops)

I tried to post this yesterday but my camera wasn't cooperating!  Still didn't get a good pic, but I put them away before I realized it wasn't clear enough.  Oh well!

Grandma's treasures

My mom and I were going though the boxes from my grandmother's sewing room and these are some things I came home with:

Hubby has the ''good'' camera with him at work, so this was taken with our ollllld digi cam, but you can see how lovely this fabric is!  AND, it's FIFTEEN YARDS long!!!!  It's only 35'' wide, I'm thinking she might have been thinking draperies when she got it, not sure.  She didn't quilt a lot, she mostly knitted and crochet'd.  She did do a bit of sewing though (mostly clothing) and a little quilting......

Here are two blocks that I think she intended to make into a pillow.  They are totally ME!  It is a quilt pattern I would choose, and black & white is SO classic and timeless! Plus, they are totally handquilted (and probably machine pieced) and ready to finish. Her hand quilting is awesome too - a million times better than I can do.  I probably wouldn't have chose the clover in the center of the block in the quilting, but after all it IS the triple Irish chain quilt pattern for these two blocks!  The top pic even has little prairie points pinned to it.  I think her plan was to make one pillow, but I think I'll make two pillows and use a black backing with a zipper for the pillowforms.  The blocks are 14'' unfinished, so I hope that they make 14'' pillowforms!  I suppose if they have 15'' ones, I can make that work.  I just hope that orange marking pencil she used washes out.  I'll probably soak them in oxy-clean and wash once I construct the pillow covers from them...... now I will have to go through and see if I have black zippers long enough!  If not, maybe I'll just do ties, I'm sure I have enough black material......

Design wall Monday

Well, I did start the spiderweb selvage quilt.  This is one that I just plan to work on bits at a time between other projects.  It's pretty easy to piece, just a little bit tedious to pick the ''right'' selvages (I want each one to have a bit of words or color dots on the selvage to give it a more interesting look than just a white strip of selvage), and then trimming the triangles afterward, etc.  I picked a white on white for my foundation fabric because I had a HUGE chunk of it that was on clearance at my LQS because it had holes in it - I just cut my triangles and anything that had holes in it where it would not have selvage sewn over it, I tossed, but most have worked out where the holes were where the selvages would be, so that was perfect!  Anyhow, here's a pic of my first blocks.  I have no idea how big I want this to be, I'll just work on it until I'm tired of making blocks and stop I guess! LOL!  Check out the other design wall Monday posts at Patchwork Times!