What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Good morning, my friends. It looks like we've successfully made it to the final third of the month of April. Sheesh...that Alaska journey is creeping up on us. Recently, I read a question on one of the RVing to Alaska sites that I follow: "Do you ever get nervous when you take your new RV out for the first time?" And my thought was, well, yeah! If it's your first time out in a new RV, then you'd be crazy not to be nervous. But my answer to the question was: "We've been RVing since ...

Good morning, my friends. It looks like we've successfully made it to the final third of the month of April. Sheesh...that Alaska journey is creeping up on us. Recently, I read a question on one of the RVing to Alaska sites that I follow: "Do you ever get nervous when you take your new RV out for the first time?" And my thought was, well, yeah! If it's your first time out in a new RV, then you'd be crazy not to be nervous. But my answer to the question was: "We've been RVing since ...

Good morning to those who are still with me.  As you've noticed, I haven't posted for about 5 months -- writing the posts takes more time and mental energy than I'm willing to use these days.  Nothing is wrong with me, just ageing and slowing down -- that's hard to say, but it's the truth.  I'm still sewing just about every day and finishing projects, both old and new.  

Currently, I'm going through old posts and updating some things.  The primary update concerns the business closure and retirement of Marti Michel.  Because so many of ...

 Another project I worked on at retreat was this Postage Stamp type quilt. The squares finish at 1-1/2" so it's not a true Postage Stamp, but this is as small as I care to work. Here are 32 blocks on the design wall, plus border strips.

Months ago I started this project to use up some of my yellow-green stash. I used my die cutter to cut 2" strips of nearly every fabric in my yellow-green basket, and some true greens. Then I selected some other warm colors and purples for more variety. 

The strips were sewn into ...

Do you know what this is?

One morning, I crept about because a Canada Goose was taking a nap on the far side. Like the little squirrel in the last post, I feared there was something amiss seeing it flat out in the grass like this. 

Spring is trumping winter-at last- as I write this. I saw our first robin on Sunday last. And the little chipmunk has emerged from the underground winter den, the one I imagine lined with my sunflower seeds. 

Just after the snowstorm this guy below appeared acting like this, a sure sign of spring. The flock of females that were with him had wandered off but he hung about showing off, just because he can, I guess. I'm curious about the mechanics of this- being able to lift all these feathers and change certain body bits to different and bright ...

placement decisions, hand embroidered patches

Floating in a stream, moving with the current, just relaxing! That just sounds wonderful.

The edge to edge design Drift is an allover freemotion design that is based on a continuous line with curvy bends. The design looks like kelp drifting in a stream, don’t you think? This FMQ pattern would work great on quilts with themes like nature, water, ocean, sea, river, fishing and meditation.

Pattern Tutorial

The designs based on feather shapes on the inside of a deep curve. The combination of the two feathers looks a bit look an oven mitt too. Depending on the way ...

The weather people certainly called it this weekend. We had lots and lots of rain.  The rain didn't break till mid afternoon Sunday, that probably made for some pretty soggy egg hunts in our area. Sunday was definitely a day for a good nap and lots of sewing room time. When the sun finally came out in the late afternoon, it seemed like a good time to get the documentation shots of the most recently completed quilt top. 

On Ringo Lake was the 2017 Bonnie Hunter mystery.  I didn't use the pieced sashing from the quilt along,  a ...

I love making potholders. Small, satisfying, and useful.

Here is a batch of three I finished this weekend for my own kitchen. I recently did a deep-ish clean on the place, and it wanted some brightening up. The old ones were tired. Looking back, I made them in 2016. See them HERE. Time flies…

A new week has arrived, with both new and continuing goals. 

The new project I've started involves a rainbow of solid colors.  I spent time this weekend cutting strips to make a total of 10 different strip sets for this project.  It's a Lone Star design, and will be a gift for one son-in-law to honor his Native American roots.  My daughter requested it, and helped choose a design for it.  I'm excited to get it going. 

Murphy's thoughts are rubbing off on me! No, I didn't want to throw my sewing machine into the pond so someone could rescue it. But as she and I were walking yesterday, a thought popped into my head, and oh my goodness. I realized that if I added the embellishments in their two separate components, I could stitch them to the wall hanging. No glue required. It means sewing part of it with a sewing machine, which I like, as that's sturdier than glue. The second part of each embellishment can be hand-stitched. 

Thank you, Murphy, for ...

We got some rain yesterday and I didn't get my rain gauge ...

Happy Easter!    

This week has been busy with family and church activities, so quilting has taken a back seat for me.

All I have to show you is a little progress on my redwork Christmas alphabet quilt project.  Here are two completed blocks and a third in progress:

C for Candy Canes

H for Holly Berries

And the one I’m working on now….B for Bells

As I said before, it was a slow week, quilting wise.  As for humor, there was an abundance of that with me, as usual.  Here is one example.  

Every Easter ...

 

I took the Spring Quaker by Primrose Cottage with me to France last week and I actually worked on it. Why is the lighting so poor in hotels? We stayed in four hotels and the lighting was only good to stitch in one hotel. I should learn to take my light that goes around my neck.

I finished the bird and bird houses on Saturday at our stitchy day, I had a quilt to cut out and some flying geese units to trim, but I wasn't feeling the love for that task.

Island Batik's April Challenge requires us to make a lap-sized (or larger) quilt using the timeless Drunkard's Path Quilt Block, making sure that the technique used is curved piecing and not applique.

Naturally, many ideas were considered and discarded. I am saving them to a very long list of possible future quilts.

In the end, I chose the quilt block - Moon Over the Mountain. I have been fascinated by this quilt block for a long time. I looked for tutorials and found few but none of them appealed to me.

It was time to design it myself.

Thank ...

On Saturday was my blog anniversary – I forgot to mention that – I started this blog on April 19, 2007 – 18 years!! wow how time flies – my first post is here.  It was short and to the point – I think the first year was kind of like that, not sure what […]