Design Wall Monday

Off my design wall today is the ombré quilt for my sister in law. I spent many hours on Saturday happily stitching to get the top done. 

Not the best pic but I'm pleased with how it turned out. My sister Kathy let me go through her batiks yesterday and gave me a beautiful hand-painted length for the backing. I'll have to add a "frame" around  the piece to make it big enough, which means another trip to the store, but did select a binding from previously purchased batiks. I even have a plan for the quilting. Yay, me!

This happy little grandson is four months old and got his latest shots--see his little BandAids?  According to his babysitter, he's a "rolling machine", practicing all day. Way to go, Cove!  Hope to get some grandson time this week.  

See more design walls on Judy's Patchwork Times. 

Design Wall Monday

On my design surface is the ongoing project for my sister-in-law's birthday quilt.  This design is inspired by the Willow Weave quilt jelly-roll-sew-along that Aunt Reen did last year.  I made a wedding quilt for a nephew from that pattern, and another sister-in-law, Laura, liked it a lot.  However, I changed the size of the pieces to 3x7 finished, in order to get a bigger views of the yummy prints, and probably won't put in the extra "band" section from Aunt Reen's design.

This ombre layout really pleases me and I got a thumbs up from my daughter and sister as well. Some of these are Kaffe Faussett prints, as is the stripe.

Here's a closeup of the purple section.  That zinger print with the yellow got toned down enough to fit in nicely, but the two muddier batiks I showed yesterday were taken out.  Each row will need another background square sewn on to one end or the other to complete the pattern--I left that off until I decided the final layout. The quilt will be 60x72.

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Still Here

Well, that was an unexpected break.  Time passes so quickly!  No good excuses, I'm afraid.  But I do have some quilty stuff to share.

Lots of cutting equals pieces and parts piled next to the needle.  Great way to spend a Saturday, don't you think?  Me, I do some cutting, then some sewing.  It breaks up the tedious part.

Here are the first batch of pieced rows for a birthday gift quilt.  I'm not sure about that second one from the bottom, or the one at the top. Hmm.  After I finished all these rows I cut some more, and then went to an eye appointment.  Do you find the eye tests nerve-wracking like I do?  Though my vision hasn't changed much, it is still a bit of a puzzle to go through. 

My optometrist is very near-sighted, like me, and told me that allows us to have a "superpower" as we age:  We can see tiny details by taking off our glasses.  Most folks our age have to put ON glasses to read and even then can't really see the kind of detail we do.  Not that I felt smug or anything, learning I had a superpower  :) 

Last night we got to babysit grandson Cove while his mom and dad had a much-deserved date night out.  Papa and Cove spent some bonding time together. 

 Chillin with Papa.  He liked going in the backyard and watching the trees and bushes in the wind. Not to mention Scully the Boston Terrier tearing around the yard at top speed.

Cove was fascinated with both the lettering on Papa's shirt, and the cotton print shirt I was wearing, working very hard to make his hands and arms go where he wants them to.  He's almost four months and seems unstoppable--moving all the time.  Mimi, of course, did the dirty work of getting the baby to sleep.  Luckily I was given good instructions by my son-in-law Chris and it only took three tries before he stayed asleep :)  Mimi and Papa were tired by the end of the evening but so happy to spend the time with our precious one.

This morning as I was sitting at the dining room table having my tea, I kept hearing the refrigerator running.  Later I pulled off the vented cover at the bottom of the fridge and removed this:

Four animals and constantly open windows equals hairy dusty yuck. Maybe the fridge will stop running now!

One Word Wednesday

Go Kings Go!

Design Wall Monday

Several things going on in the sewing room this week.  First, I finished the little quilt for my Russian friend, with the help of my sister.  We swapped--I gave her the pink and white floral for a small quilt she is making for a family member, and she gave me some fun fur/minky type fabric that I think a 7-year-old will love.  We used spray baste to attach the batting and keep the fun fur from stretching during the quilt-as-you-go process.  It worked perfectly.

Sewing the strips with the walking foot with ease. Sooo glad a walking foot was invented!

Almost there...

I added some extra lines of quilting in the larger strips with the dolls, and in the side borders.  I didn't have enough to do top and bottom borders so left it just as you see.

This pic was taken at night so the colors are not as true.  A scrappy binding finished it off.  I want to use my machine's built in alphabet stitching to label the quilt but it has been so long since I did it I'm having trouble remembering how to do it.  I decided to tackle it tomorrow! This is a small quilt, only about 3 foot square, I estimate. I hope she'll love it.

Another project got to flimsy stage.  This is the bulls eye quilt made from gifted blocks. 

Borders are all on.  Again, nighttime photo doesn't give true colors, but you'll get the idea, right?

Finally, a shopping trip to Roxanne's A Wish and a Dream quilt shop, just up the coast in Carpinteria (featured in the current Quilt Sampler mag as a re-visit), was successful in the hunt for prints to go with batiks previously purchased for a gift quilt that I need to get started on.

My sister Kathy was a bit dubious about the selections I made, but I think they'll work well. There will be some editing, I have no doubt.  I bought half yard cuts of the prints.  This is going to be a really girly Willow Weave quilt, and the fabrics will be cut into 2.5" strips.  I should have plenty of leftovers to play with as well.  

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TGTO

Meaning, Thank Goodness That's Over. 

The bed skirt beast was tamed, finally, late last night. Here's what it looked like as I stitched the last side. Followed by more measuring (MATH), ironing, trimming, and hemming. 

But even if I do say so myself, didn't the corner pleats come out nicely?  My daughter and her husband didn't want pleats along the sides, so I needed to hide the joins somewhere in the pleat. 

Ha!  Got it done. I did save myself a bunch of time by using the finished edges of the sheet set for the skirt part. 

The couple were very grateful. They promised not to change their color scheme  quite awhile :)

Design Wall Monday

On my design surface today  is a project I thought of starting nearly two years ago, but didn't.  

In July 2012 we had some very special guests from Russia come to stay with us for several weeks: a long-time friend who had moved to and married a Russian lady, and their 5 year old daughter, Alica (pronounced Ah-lisa).  Alica and I instantly had a mutual admiration thing going, and we enjoyed spending time together. She was enamored of the matryoshka doll her mother brought as a gift for me, and which I let her play with when her parents were out of sight.  Shortly after our visitors left, I found this cute matryoshka doll fabric at JoAnn's and always intended to make Alica a small quilt.  Well, her father is in town visiting us again, and I pulled it out of the stash along with some companions.

Alica will be 7 years old soon, and her favorite color is pink.  The fabric above is photographing red, but it is really a deep, bright pink and has cats all over it. 

More like this!  Alica was also fond of my cat, Mini; said cat would have nothing to do with a five year old girl, though Alica kept trying :) .  I'll make a simple strippie quilt, just a nap size, for my dear little friend in Nizhny Novgorod, with love.

See more design walls on Judy's Patchwork Times.