Design Wall Monday--10/7/19

Just under the wire for Design Wall Monday--see more Design Walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.  She gave me a shout-out for suggesting a name for an apple core doll quilt she is making, so sweet.  Thanks, Judy!

I did play with the orange scraps shown last week and made a pumpkin block from the cover quilt of APQ magazine's  October 2019 issue, Fall Dash by Sherri McConnell. 

The brown fabric was from a fat quarter, but all the rest was from the scraps and strips drawers.  I cut out a bunch of small squares to make the other block version of a pumpkin but it isn't finished yet.  

Hubby and I got away for a short vacation last week--a rare occurrence indeed.  We scored a room at a lovely hotel right on the oceanfront in Cambria, CA.  Off season pricing and no crowds, no fog, and no heavy traffic--it was terrific. I brought the never-ending blackwork embroidery to work on, and a free pattern I printed out from Lizzie Kate. With all the embroidery floss I have, none of the charted colors were in my stash. There was a yarn shop in Cambria and luckily they carried Anchor floss as well. 

The pre-mounted cross stitch blanks are so great.  I got a small start on Cozy Christmas Wishes.  Ball&Skein and More is a lovely little shop that has lots of samples and supplies for knitting and crochet, so great to find in this tiny town.

Coming home on a Friday leaves a whole weekend to play before having to go back to work. I did actually finish the Blackwork embroidery!  The four panels are now ready to be trimmed and framed together with CW prints in a small quilt. 

Daughter Elaine asked if I'd like to help her decorate their new home for Halloween after grandson Cove's soccer game on Saturday.

Grandson Hunter started with this box, haha!  We made a trip to Michael's and I bought foam sheets to make googly eyes for the shrubs in front of the house, while Elaine hung cobwebs and ghosts.

Next post, I'll share some of our vacation adventures. Happy October!

Design Wall Monday--last day of September 2019

On my design surfaces are projects in play, and a squirrel or two...  See more Design Walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts. 

The Newlyweds' Dreamcatcher quilt is the project in play in the background.  I completed three more rows and have 13 left to sew, so its halfway done!  There was some surgery and switcheroo needed when I got the squares out of order again, but that was easily repaired. 

One squirrel project is due to the sudden cooler weather, finally below 80s here in the daytime and last night dipped below 60 degrees--I needed a throw quilt over my side of the bed. That brought thoughts of Fall decorating and a quilt by Sherri McConnell in the latest issue of APQ magazine.  She used Fig Tree scraps; I'm pulling from scraps and stash.  I'll make a small wallhanging or mini quilt from one block.  She used triple sashing in two colors for her design and that sounds fun too. 

Obviously I am still stuck on Churn Dash designs :) and have made progress on the baby quilt I've been making 9 patch blocks for as leader-enders while sewing Dreamweaver rows. 

The third row is assembled but not yet sewn to the others.  Good thing I got a start on this, as I received a baby shower invite for October for mommy-to-be.  Two more rows yet to assemble before backing and binding are made.

Another squirrel popped up when I got thinking about a speaker we had a Guild this month. She accepted all the baby quilts made so far, and mentioned a Christmas Shop put on by local government for disadvantaged families.  She noted that handmade items such as quilts are always the first to go from the shop, which is open for weeks before Christmas, and suggested doll quilts.  I had a stack of four patches that finish at two inches and quickly sewed up a bunch. 

I just noticed in this pic that despite my efforts to avoid it there are a couple of "humble" patches that got turned, but they will stay!

Design Wall Monday--9/23/19

It's Design Wall Monday. See more Design Walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

On my Design Floor are blocks from a UFO of several years.  I'm not sure I want to look back and see how long ago I started collecting batiks for the Beach Cottage Quilt! I pulled the box as a substitute for National Jelly Roll Day, since I surely don't need to start something new and this pattern uses 2 1/2" strips, as do most of Kim Brackett's patterns. 

The design from her book "Scrap Basket Surprises" is another clever one.  Four combinations of fabrics are composed randomly.  I chose brown and light green....

..and tan with purple

I had made a bunch of blocks last year but stalled out when I needed more tan and green prints for variety.

Well someone is covering a couple of the new blocks, but trust me, they are pretty :)  Say Hi, Mini.

The blocks are then combined into four patches ABCD and finally into rows.  I am pleased to be finished with all the parts for the quilt center.  Back into the box they will go for now.   I also made progress on the newlyweds' quilt.  

10 rows all assembled now....only 16 to go.  Let's see, that is 320 squares left to sew...

Tuesday's Orts--9/17/19

Tuesdays Orts--bits and pieces of thoughts, happenings, and weirdness that land here occasionally.
 

--X marked the spot on my return to work after lunch one day.

--My doctor boss has been through quite a number of sets of Invisalign trays on his way to straight teeth.  He calls it his "Invisigrill".

--I was scribing a visit with an older female patient with some arthritis in her knees, who said she felt better when she slept with a pillow between her legs....but when I misspelled pillow with one "L" my computer autocorrected this to "Pilot".  My daughters were disappointed I didn't leave that in the record!

--Grandson Hunter tried on my hat at his brother's soccer game and posed when I pulled out my phone. 

Aren't his sun freckles cute?  Then he asked for my phone to take a picture of Mimi. 

...but kept clicking so this was the last Mimi portrait:

Haha! 

--Traffic Rant: Aggressive drivers who zoom up to your rear bumper when there is an open lane to move to. There seem to be so many of these bozos--of every age!
--I'm a big fan of leftovers so try to be cagey at restaurants.  Some salads are huge portions for not much more than the price of an appetizer.  I got two meals out of a salad with crab whereas the three crab cakes appetizer wouldn't stretch far.

--This art installation occurred when I poured clear soap into opaque soap, so weird!

Dreamweaver and Other Progress

It was a very busy workweek--exhausting, in fact--and that limited my stitching time, but I did make progress on the Dreamweaver wedding quilt for our son and daughter-in-law. 

The first 7 rows of 20 blocks each are done--with 19 to go!  I only had to do surgery to one row where there were too many of the same print in a diagonal line.  My efforts at careful and consistent rotary cutting are paying off in the assembly, even if it is easy to get squares out of order :)  My version of Jen Kingwell's Dreamweaver quilt eliminated the disappearing 9 patch blocks, since I greatly enlarged the quilt dimensions to about twin size for a couch quilt.  The squares finish at 3".

Leader-enders formed  9 patches to go with churn dash blocks and I sewed up the first row of the baby quilt I'm making with them. These are 6" finished.

I'm liking it so far and will have a finished top quickly.  Another project moved along is an embroidery for my sister.  I finally got out the lightbox and traced the last panel for the Blackwork Slave Quarters set, not realizing I had the fabric wrong side up until I started stitching the next day. No matter, I used a Pigma Pen which shows through to the front side.  Design decision, let's call it, to reverse the scene!

I also have a correction on my last post: the star quilt from the Quilt Now magazine is not called "A Star is Born", but "Star of the Show".  That may help searches for the pattern! 

The well-worn path from home to work was enlivened one afternoon by a helicopter hovering close by. 

We originally guessed this was a police chopper but I read in the paper that it is the electric company doing surveys and we shall see this scene a lot in the next few months--multiple fires have been blamed on power lines in our state, including the Thomas Fire that burned the hills beyond this photo. 

Soccer season has started and we'll be attending grandson Cove's game tomorrow.  I missed the opening game last week after tweaking my back somehow.  It cleared up in a couple of days but was annoying until gone. 

The other news of the week is that I ended up volunteering for the Treasurer's position at Guild.  No one wanted to be President either--but finally two members decided to co-lead, after a previous president, who is battling cancer and planning to move out of state, said he would do it.   It is sad when always the same folks put their hands up while so many others could jump in too.  I know it is common in any organization, but still disappointing.  So now I have to learn QuickBooks.  I'm sure I've mentioned that I spell for a living and don't do math--but I am assured "it's easy".  We'll see!

Design Wall Monday--Sept 9, 2019

It's Design Wall Monday!  See more Design Walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.   

On my design floor is another project that stalled due to a cutting error...hmmm, I sense a theme in my sewing life!  Our guild has promised 50 quilts by the end of the year for babies and kids and I had started a large star quilt found in this British patchwork magazine I got free in a goodie bag: 

However, in my enthusiasm at the cutting table, I had cut and made the wrong color combination HSTs for my version of "A Star is Born" quilt in the magazine.  So into a Time Out box the quilt went, without even a progress photo taken!  Then , even after carefully checking and double checking the fabrics I needed, I carelessly cut a set of squares for HSTs at the FINISHED size.  I luckily had plenty of the green hand-dyed Rick Tims fabric hoarded since 2006--definitely time to get it cut up and into a quilt. 

My toes matched the center purple :).  The magazine pattern had the corners rounded and finished with bias binding, but I think I'll leave mine square.  If I have enough of the Kona Silver used in the outer blocks, I'll bind it with that, otherwise probably the Kona Prussian blue solid, I love that color.

The project box didn't stay empty for long!

My sister reminded me of the guild monthly challenge due Monday, something inspired from the summer.  It being a variable summer, I pulled out my bin of leftover pieces and parts and sewed together a small table mat/runner.  It looked too regular to be modern, so I sliced and rearranged. 

Much more interesting.  I'll call it Mixed Bag.  The leftover blocks drawer is pretty full, there will be some more small projects in the near future. 

More Pieces and Parts to Ponder

Oh, the trouble that follows when I attempt to clean up the cutting table and put things away!  I came across a baggie of Churn Dash blocks from Barb's swap and remembered an idea I saved for an alternate block.  I have another grandnephew due later this year and thought it would make a good baby quilt.  

The curves that appear with the alternate nine patch block really attracted me.  I pulled a modern white and gray print and solid black and cut the needed squares. 

Lots of different blues with low volume backgrounds.

Not the greatest layout attempt on the nine patches--but enough to show the goal.  These blocks will make good leader-enders as I sew together  some of the 520 3.5" squares the newlyweds helped me layout last weekend.  I failed to get a photo of the layout before we stacked up and labeled the rows.

The Churn Dash theme continued when I got the last three seams sewn for my dad's Chunky Churn Dash quilt--the pic is the before shot...it went together easily and I'm very happy with it.

 Dad was too!  Here's a pic of us working on a jigsaw puzzle last week of a harbor scene painting by Claude Monet.

Very serious work!  My engineer dad sorts all the pieces into groups by type, "one pin", "four pin", "no pin", etc.  Once he shared his secret with me, it made picking out the right piece a lot quicker!  Mom's art studio always has a table set up for puzzles.

Pondering if I want to add borders to Chunky Churndash  or not--a mockup will be necessary for final options. Again, this is a free pattern by Bonnie Hunter on her Quiltville website...which leads to another free Bonnie pattern, My Blue Heaven.  I took Bonnie's class last year with the Camarillo Quilt Guild and called my version My Lupine Heaven, using two colors instead of one. In class I only completed one star block and one puss in the corner block, but cut many pieces.  Here and there I've cut and sewn pieces and parts to use as leader-enders, and finally got to a point where I had enough to construct a bunch of blocks.  The star blocks have 24 pieces each, which makes for a lot of sewing!

Oh my, that is a busy bunch of blocks.  I'm not exactly happy with these, some seem very muddy and the star doesn't really stand out.  Sigh.   My plan calls for a 6x8 layout so there is still a lot of sewing to do.  Perhaps choosing more light backgrounds with fewer prints will help the star blocks.  The neverending scraps will feed the kitty forever, it seems :)