Design Wall Monday--Catching Up

Design Wall Monday--see more great design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

Well, didn't mean to disappear for so many days!  I've been busy working on projects to enter into our County Fair. Only a couple more days before all entries need to be finalized online. 

I got all the quilting done on this large throw made from long-ago leftovers from another quilt. I abandoned something fancy for the purple/green blocks and kept it simple with a crosshatch. 

Our Nieces crocheted some adorable chickens--and stuffed them, embroidered the mouth and eyes, all while traveling from Riverside County in busy summer weekend traffic while their Dad drove.  I named mine Thimble and she is my new sewing room mascot.  I posed her on the doll quilt just quilted. 

I pulled several repro options before settling on the medium green print--the scale felt right.  I'll hand stitch the binding--it is too tiny to try to machine sew.  Another Fair entry project is nearly done. 

I did simple crosshatching every 2 inches for the quilting.  Sunday I made bias binding and had a heck of a time getting the last join done!  About five tries and ripping later, but finally ready to stitch down by machine, most likely. 

The simple lapped backing has recipes.  I'll end up with "okies and ingerbread" by the time the binding is on, haha. 

On my mind is the end of Picasa, which I have used all these years for the blog.  Google lets you make a copy of your album archive and save it to "Takeout", whatever that is!  Our computer is very old and I don't even know I can save the copy there or if I will have to store it somewhere else.  I only have three days left to solve this issue!  Google Photos is not like Picasa and there will be a learning curve.  If anyone has any helpful hints on this issue, I would be most happy to hear them!

Design Wall Monday--Baby Girl Quilt Finish

 Design Wall Monday--see more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

I meant to link up this morning and ran out of time, then forgot all about it when I came home for lunch, but I have a finish to share. 

Binding now completed. Boy, it seemed to take half the afternoon to go all the way around this small quilt made for my nephew and his wife's first baby--and my brother and his wife's first grandchild.

A wide solid turquoise strip brought it up to size.  I used a leftover light block made from the Meadowbloom jelly roll as a label. 

I'll put the baby's name there, once she arrives and I know what it is! Glad to have this ready to mail, along with some baby clothes.

Slow Sunday Stitching--Another Baby Quilt

 Slow Sunday Stitching--see more projects on Kathy's Quilts blog. 

After I finished the teal border on the Lori Holt Stitch card project,  I decided to add a few tiny strawberries in the corners.  I showed the first on a prior post, but ran into counting issues and it has been in time out the past week.  I think I will just go ahead and leave it be, add the last strawberry and see!

Other hand stitching today is quilt binding on a baby girl quilt made from 2.5" strips.  The blocks finish at 6".  My arms got quite a workout turning this quilt  1000 times to ditch stitch all the shapes. 

I had matching backing from the Meadowbloom line; I previously made quilts for another relative's granddaughters.

For the binding, I saved the light print strips that matched the background. 

All ready to stitch down on the back.  The sun is coming out so perhaps I will enjoy stitching on the patio. 

A Finish and Lost Things

Our next grandson's quilt is ready to go--I got all the quilting done by walking foot, and chose a solid blue from stash for the binding. 

I had a few binding clips loose in my sewing desk, but needed more.  The plastic box of red binding clips was not in its usual desk drawer.  A 20 minute "I just saw them" search then ensued--I looked through every drawer and bin at the messy sewing desk, and then all over the messy cutting table. 

Believe it or not, the binding clips were mere inches from the sewing machine in the photo above...

...under a pile of leader-ender blocks! Mystery solved, I set to hand stitching the binding down. 

The quilt is fairly small, though it seemed to take awhile stitching the binding by hand. 

The binding fabric shade was very close to the solid strip on the backing, a hair of difference.  I love the orange print, there is not much left to put in the scrap box.  As our son and daughter-in-law have not quite settled on his name, I'll make the quilt label after baby arrives. 

In other quilt news, my niece Emma sent a pic of herself wrapped in the Bookshelf quilt.  She was so happy to have it at last :)

There are a lot of tops that need quilting and I'll be constructing backings for them.  Also I poked around the project boxes in the Hoosier cabinet and oh, my, there are a lot of them!  Another "Empty the Hoosier Cabinet" self-challenge should occupy June, for the times when I am not holding our new grandson!

Staycation Sewing--A Finish and A New Start

I'm currently enjoying the second day of a staycation--my doctor boss is out of the office on a real vacation, and I took the opportunity to use saved PTO of my own.  

The long-term project of the bookshelf quilt has reached an end at last!  Yesterday I finally quit dragging my feet on stippling the black background of the bookshelves--and, as one usually finds when avoiding a task, it didn't take very long at all to do!  The quilt has had a bath and lacks only a label to be gifted to my niece, Emma. 

I am happy with the solid black binding and ended up not putting any stitching in the outer quilt borders--I wanted to keep the illusion of a wallpapered backdrop.

Stippling the black background was definitely better than leaving it unquilted--it lets the books and objects stand out more. Finished size is about 5 feet each direction, a nice lap quilt or wall quilt. Most of the ideas for this bookshelf came from the Fabric at Work guidelines I found online.  Pinterest and Instagram also had lots of inspiration input. 

Next task on this staycation is to get a couple of quilts sent out for quilting--and my sewing machine in for a maintenance service!

I've also started a new cross-stitch project. I bought some Stitch Cards at Superbuzzy not long ago; these are Lori Holt designs and are so sweet. 

I had one of these prestretched Aida blanks, so was able to get right to stitching. 

The gingham strawberry is all done now.  I did not have the teal floss color for the border--nor anything that would be close enough, so will just carry on with the leaves, flower and stem until I pick that up. I want to stitch all of these designs!

The new task is to get our next grandson's quilt made--he will be here in a few weeks.  I also have a great-niece due very soon and the rare opportunity to make a girl baby quilt is a nice change!

Sewing, Quilting, Binding

I've spent a lot of time recently sewing, quilting and binding--If only those activities worked off more calories!  

First up, a baby quilt that has been waiting for the already-made binding to be attached and finished. 

Entirely from stash, with a lot of pink fat quarters pulled from the fat quarter drawer. Many of the black and white prints were leftover from the baby quilt I made our now 7 year old grandson. 

The monkey print was also from that baby quilt.  The gray print was leftover from another quilt back as well. Using it up!  I had the measuring tape print awhile too--I thought it was fun for a baby quilt. 

The "Make the Connection" charity quilt was also finished with a white print binding, but this pic is only of the finished top.  Free pattern on American Patchwork and Quilting magazine website, by Jo Kramer. My sister and I are rejoining our local Modern guild and I will donate these two. 

While looking for something else in the Hoosier Cabinet, I pulled out the project box with the Plaidish2 blocks.  The A and B block components were all finished last Fall and I had  sewn together  just a couple of rows.  I think this got abandoned for Sewtopia prep. 

A and B block sewn together. 

As of dinnertime tonight, all these rows are together.  Two more rows to add before the center is done.  I did not cut any of the outer row C blocks yet, wanting to avoid too many repeat fabrics.  The Plaidish and Plaidish2 patterns are free on Kitchen Table Quilting. She has a lot of Freebie tutorial patterns. 

Next project to cut and sew up is a baby quilt for our next grandson, due in a couple of months.  I have a plan and fabric selected.  More on that later...

Mats and Scrappy Piecing

 I've continued to work on the mats I showed last time.  I'm having a great time playing with these scrappy smalls. 

This skinny mini I ditch quilted and gave to my manicurist friend along with the larger mat I cut it from. Stacy liked them both :)

I was able to use batting cuttoffs for all the mats, though I did have to piece some together to bring them up to size.

 I found that using  slightly oversized backing and batting worked best for me in stitching  the layers.  The 1/4" seam didn't try to curl or jam at the corners and the excess was easily trimmed with scissors before turning the sandwich right-side out. 

There was more design work on the scrappy churn dash and cross block top.  More 3.5" squares were sewn up and added all around. 

I'm liking the shapes and colors of this scrappy squirrel. The top measures about 33 inches square at this point.  I'm still thinking about making small star blocks, perhaps just for the corners, and considering a stop border between the patchwork and stars.  I cruised Pinterest for some border ideas, which was fun. A  stop at JoAnn's Fabric resulted in some bargain remnant  white background pieces. I was there primarily to pick up some easy-threading needles, but couldn't pass up the 50% off  yardage price. One piece was an entire yard, whoop whoop!

Getting back to the bookshelf quilt for my niece, which has been on the design wall for months, is February's goal. Since it is a short month, design decision-making needs to be ramped up. I've been stalled for too long!

Color and Pattern Play

Playing with color and pattern is so relaxing and fun for me--it doesn't always lead to a finish, but pieces and parts get saved to play with on another day. I wanted to make a little something for my manicurist friend, Stacy, for her birthday month. I pulled out a little top I made in September from  leftovers from pre-cutting my sister-in-law's mauve solid for her Sewtopia project. 

The scrappy rectangles each have in common light centers and four green rectangles. These were 2.5x2" scraps.  A fat quarter from the stash dresser was brought up to size with some more mauve strips from SIL Laura's scraps. I layered the batting, the backing right side up and the top right side down. I used 1/4" seam and left an opening to stitch and turn.  This is the faux binding method from Crafty Staci again, but  I cut my strips 1.5" wide for this bigger quilted mat (Crafty Staci used this method for her coaster tutorial with 1" cut strips and added a layer of Insulbrite as well).

Stitch in the ditch quilting including around all the mauve strips, and the light center rectangles. 

My ladder stitching was better this time but my corners are kinda pointy!  Oh well. 

It is two sided, in case the front is too loud sometimes, haha!  

The two mini quilts got their binding finished this week, too. It was rainy and cloudy and windy this week, we are over-saturated and have had a lot of damage from high surf along our coast. Today, though, was very sunshiny. 

Some palm trees of the neighbor's were getting trimmed today.  That's probably 40-50 feet off the ground kind of work!  We really wish that a closer back-fence neighbor would trim their huge Pepper Trees that block our view of the mountains...Oh well!  

Slow Sunday Stitching--Binding and Boring White

Slow Sunday Stitching--see more pretty hand stitching on Kathy's Quilts blog. 

I intended to get stitching earlier today, but we had a couple of visitors first--our son and grandson were giving Mama a break.  There was rearranging of refrigerator magnets, pulling ALL the toys out of the toybox, a water break, and of course a snack, while Daddy and Papa watched football. 

Yesterday I got the bindings attached to the two small runners I've been working on.  They are trimmed and ready to stitch by hand.  

Designed by Heather Mulder Peterson, from her Mini Charms2 booklet.  These were sure quick to quilt. 

Stitch in the ditch all the way!  No heavy quilting needed for these little quilts. 

Late in the evening there was cross-stitch while watching Harry Potter. 

Very boring fill-in of the white on white, with a tiny spray of a few green stitches there at the center top. Two or three more flowers to add at the top before beginning on the surface embroidery.  I'll get there, slow stitch by slow stitch :)

Backings and Bindings Continue

 In the neverending queue of tops that need to be turned into quilts, I chose two small ones to work on. They are fairly young projects in my TBQ pile.  

I had already chosen the solid aqua--I think this is Kona Pool, but don't quote me. The binding is made from a fat quarter.  Always patting myself on the back when the stash provides, lol!

Leftover backing cutoffs provided the fabric for Winding Roads mini.  These patterns are by Heather Mulder Peterson from her booklet Mini Charms 2. I made the basket block last year from this booklet.  It is still gracing the wall but I will find a backing/binding for it too. It looks yellowish here but is white IRL.

Okay, off to get ready for work!

Design Wall Monday--Scrappy Small Quilts

 Design Wall Monday--see more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

I played with little quilts all weekend! On Saturday my husband was picked up by our son to play golf in Ojai, so I had hours at home to myself.  I started with the the newest mini quilt I showed last time, first choosing a backing fabric from several options. 

A vintage yellow gingham, a small flower red print, and a plaid fat quarter were my top stash options. The HSTs were made from a vintage green print  from stash, and a mini charm pack of Cheeky by Urban Chiks that I probably got at Sewtopia.

It was a close race, but the plaid Denyse Schmidt won out, as it echoed the plaids in the mini. 

After hand stitching closed the stitch-and-turn opening, the faux binding technique  was the next concern--could I quilt around the edge and make my idea of  putting faux binding strips on the backing work? (technique found on the Crafti Staci website, for coasters). 

I was pretty pleased that the stitching mostly stayed where I wanted it, to create the binding look!  A few lines of ditch-stitching down the center and the quilt was finished. 

All done!  

The next mini quilt was also made from leftovers. 

The pinwheels were made from fabrics in the Greenpiece quilt kits from  the Fat Quarter Shop in 2009, I think!  I had saved all the fabric leftovers from the monthly kits and easily cobbled together a backing for the pinwheels.   The Greenpiece quilt top was finally finished in 2021, but still needs  a backing and to be sent out for custom quilting! 

Small Quilts Under The Needle

I finished the binding on the red and green mini quilt.  It did not take very long to hand stitch the binding. This one I'm keeping :)

I don't think I'll ever tire of red and green quilts!  Having no specific larger quilt to piece at the moment, I rummaged in the Hoosier cabinet for more smalls to play with. I had made myself one of the stitch-and-turn mug mats/hot pads with the faux binding technique from Crafty Staci's website. 

I used the same fabric for the backing as the faux binding and think it reinforced the binding look. 

I previously made a doll quilt from leftover HST pieces and a mini charm pack, and decided to try the faux binding on this size as well. 

My thought is to cut a backing piece the size of the unfinished top and add faux binding strips to it. I'd complete the project by layering with batting, stitching and turning the quilt, then adding quilting.  It should be much easier to stitch and turn this larger patchwork than the mug mats!

If the process is not too painful, I'll try it with these colorful minis from the unfinished block box.

The never-empty scrap drawers keep my mind  twirling!