Lone Star Top Complete

I mitered the borders and everything. Actually, to be honest, the mitered border part was an accident, but it turned out great. I was worried about the 2 inch border squares stretching apart at the seams, so I put the black borders on both sides of them....then realized that the only way to make a nice box with the colored part would be mitering. Aside from a bit of shock over just how much extra border I needed, I was pleasantly surprized by the whole process and I love the result. Now I need to get something for the back and figure out how I want to quilt it. Playing dogs & playing with Picasa Collage.

Good News

The cable for connecting the camera to the PC re-appeared last weekend while we were frantically cleaning the basement for company on Saturday and even better, I can get pictures off the camera with it even though all our card readers say the data is corrupt. So the camera will work for around the house photos, I will just have to be very careful about taking it places as the shutter is still stuck open.

Here is a picture of the box with the parts for the circle quilt from last week. There are more circles than 53 now as I cut more and pieced a couple more 16 patch sections over the weekend. I also found some fabric in my stash with strawberries on it and added a few bits to the mix, messing with my perfectly counted piles of 16. Progress on this quilt now totals 2 complete 16 patch sections, 2 that need a bit more top stitching when I swap thread colors, all the center fabrics cut & divided into groups of 16 (plus a couple spares) and somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 circles cut.


I left the picture full sized, so you should be able to click on it for a larger copy & under the box you can see a bit of the design for the one quilt I'm sewing for Christmas this year. The test block is made & all the parts cut & bagged up for retreat at the end of the month. The recipient has no internet access, so I'm ok with showing a preview here.


Too much time at the computer & hunched over the sewing machine has caused some swelling in my right shoulder, so I've been poking around folding and tidying in the sewing room rather than jumping in on a big project while I wait for it to heal. I've been trying to pay better attention to my posture & really need to get a sewing table that puts my machine at a better height, but I just haven't loved any that I've seen (unless of course they are way beyond my budget).

Red & Black Hearts Finish

You'll notice on the sidebar that Red & Black hearts are finished. Finished & gone even. I didn't really like this quilt once I got towards finished. My murky hearts are no reflection on the original design. Perhaps if I'd followed the directions better......
Add in the fact that red & black is just not my favorite color combination and you can say I was relieved to take the finishing stitches in this one and send it off to a friend's house for her dog to snuggle with. Camera is still not working, so that's a picture from my phone. Being kinda out of focus was actually good to this quilt!!

Red & Black Hearts approx 40"x44", set in vertical strips with red with white stripes. Background & side borders black with red gingham hearts. Top & bottom borders white with tiny red polka dots. Backed with a cheater quilt fabric in 2 inch squares that coordinate with the printed hearts on black. Quilted in red, diagonal lines 2" apart. Bound with straight strips of red with white stripes. No label .

Mostly working on organizing projects for an end of month retreat this week. How many do I need for 3 days?

Olfa Circle Cutter

I've walked past this thing 16 times at the quilt show with the serene knowledge that "I don't do circles so I'll never need one." But then the internet spit out a circle quilt that's all sewn in straight lines and suddenly I needed 576 circles. I cut the first 48 by hand....then I whined and Don let me buy this and I cut 53 more in less than an hour. (edit: yes, originally this quilt was smaller)

I've also made other progress on the quilt, cutting all the remaining center squares and organizing them into piles of 16 so there aren't too many close together repeats, but you'll have to trust me on that one as I can't get the pictures out of the camera. I can't find the cable to direct connect the camera to the PC, and all 3 of my card readers reject the card. We did have an incident with the camera on the last camping trip, but I thought we had recovered from dropping it to the muddy ground at the lake shore. Darn.

We'll make do with this one I stole from Olfa.

Hancock's Catalog

Just received my first order from Hancock's of Paducah. I hate to order online because a) I can't tell what the exact color or scale will be most of the time b) I'm an instant gratification freak and c) I like to support my local shops. But this time it was discontinued fabric and I already bought out my local shop, so I had to go online. Anyway, the order came and it was perfect......but in the bag with it was the MOST FABULOUS CATALOG. 165 pages of oohh & aaaah and I want that!! I'm sure I'm the last person in the whole world to see this, but just in case I'm not......go online & order this catalog. Quick, before you do your Christmas shopping and run out of money.

New Project & Labor Day Camping

For the last couple of years I have been saving jeans as they are grown out of or have too many holes and I've accumulated quite a pile and thought I had enough to start a quilt with them. I found a pattern online and started. I hoped to kill the pile of jeans and also make a dent in my scrap bin. My circles are fairly small because some of the jeans I'm using are very small, making this project a bit daunting. The idea is to have a picnic sized blanket when I'm done so I'm aiming for 441 circles. After doing that math and counting pairs of jeans.....I don't have enough pants. I have a little bit of new denim, but also am going to need additional pairs from friends and family, so if you have them....send them over. I'll also take 5 inch square pieces of fabric for the centers if you have something you'd like to donate to that.

This is not a quilt. This is my new toy. After years and years of wanting a Jeep we finally bought me one. I wasn't supposed to get this until the Spring, but it was a good deal and we couldn't pass it up. 1973 CJ5, original 304 V8, 3 speed manual transmission and NO BRAKES. We towed it home, but have cruised it around the neighborhood a bit and will work on getting it to stop here in a couple of weeks so I can drive it for the last bits of nice weather.

We picked up the Jeep on our way back from camping over the Labor Day holiday weekend. We got a Colorado State Parks pass this year for the truck, so we've been trying out a new park every month. This was Rifle Gap State Park over on the Western Slope. The weather was lovely, but the fishing not so much and the lake shore very squishy and slimy with clay based mud. The dogs did a little swimming, but no one else really got in the water.

Disgruntled boys in camp chairs.

Cisco does great as long as he has his blankie.

Actual Quilt Content

Two posts in one day, shocking I know, but this one is actually about quilts.

The Kindergarten quilt took me most of my free time in May and is the fastest cut to quilted work I've ever done. That said, there are things I would have done very differently.

The first step on this quilt was to have each child draw a picture with crayons on a square of white fabric. Then they picked strip for the right and bottom sides of their block and I sewed them on there in the classroom. I used the Kona 200 thread count bleached white muslin. I've been using this fabric for my white and cream for a while and really like it.

I started my part with Tonya's free pieced letters. Aside from a few test letters from the scrap bin, this was my first attempt and her tutorial is fantastic. I was really happy with how these turned out. In the second picture below you can see a little bit of the dates that I included in the side borders, just the years 2008 & 2009.

The bottom border with the points made itself late one night. I would do a border like that again, but not the way I did it. I broke every quilting rule there is on that one and had to rip the stitching out twice. In order to make it work, I ended up sewing that section to the batting & backing right sides together like a pillowcase, then flipping it out and putting it on the quilting frame bottom end first.

I also would not use the crayon on fabric technique again. Despite multiple ironings prior to washing, I lost a ton of color in my shortest cold water wash cycle. Despite the potential for drama with permanent ink, I would have the kids use Sharpies if I do this again. I couldn't get a good picture of the whole top, it looks wrinkly instead of quilted, but each square was quilted to coordinate with the art and the sashing & borders have curlicues. I paper pieced the heart for the bottom right since I was short a block with only 19 kids in the class.

It was so neat to work with the kids and they all had stories to tell about their family members who sew or quilt. They were pretty young, but I would hope they all took home the possibility of sewing themselves some day.

Below is the "before" of the Flag Day Farm disaster that is keeping me from the sewing room. I'm going to tackle this now before I let anything else distract me. Well, I might need some coffee first.....and I should run the vacuum......and walk the dogs!!! I don't know what I was thinking, I really DON'T applique.

p.s. Did you know Blogger thinks "sashing" and "Kona" are typos?? Crazy! They need to hire a quilter out there at Google.