What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I took a few breaks from cleaning and straightening the basement and started sewing the red One Block Wonder blocks.  I pinned the half blocks together for easier designing on the wall later.

My art quilters group should be here today.  Our group is getting smaller.  Otis, age 87 passed away in December.  You might remember I showed him with his Trip Around the World quilt here.

Spring is officially here -- the robins were all over my backyard flipping up piles of leaves looking for a meal.  It is still a little cool but we should be above normal temperatures ...

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I'm so close to the finish of this OBW quilt top but it got too late last night to do that last seam.  I'll do that today and then the staystitching around the edges.  I had 3 half blocks left over and I had to take 2 apart to have enough pieces to fill in the ends of rows for a straight edge on top and bottom.






Here is one of the photos that Blogger wouldn't let me load for yesterday's post.












And here is the other photo taken Tuesday, my old faithful pale pink Christmas ...

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I was the winner in a giveaway on Instagram by Brenda.  If you don't read her blog here is a link.  She posts often and makes lots of interesting things.  This is a needle book which I have never had the pleasure of owning before.


There are pockets front and back for needles and scissors.  I'm always misplacing the package of needles so they are safe here now.  There are 4 pages inside for needles and pins.



I hate it when my needles get buried down inside of a pincushion so now I have a place for them ...

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I changed some of the corners of the blocks at the transition point.  Since light blocks have light corners and dark blocks have dark corners, where they meet is high contrast and not blend.  I changed some of the dark corners to mediums and light corners to darker lights.  I think the blend is much better.  Visualize this on a twin bed and almost a row and a half will be hanging off the sides and end of the bed so what you will see on top of the bed is half dark and half light.  The part that hangs ...

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As I was walking into my studio yesterday afternoon I saw my dark pineapple log cabin blocks (needed just 2 more for a quilt of 35 blocks) and next to them the light blocks waiting for 14 more blocks.......and thought what if I have the light blocks at one end and the dark ones at the other end and merge them with an irregular line of the 2 kinds mixed.  It would be a twin size quilt if I do this and I had made the resolution to do smaller quilts this year.

I have 8 more blocks made ...

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I have 27 pineapple log cabin blocks in progress, 4 different stages here.  I will have enough dark ones to sew the dark blocks into a quilt (35 blocks).  I have 12 light blocks started.



I put the rest of the Kaffe 6" bow tie blocks up on the design wall and it is filled so it is time to move them to a double wall.  This wall has poor lighting so these blocks will look a lot better in a different spot.  I will make one more batch of blocks and then try some different layouts.


I bought this ...

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I had pressed my yellow batik scraps last week and yesterday was finally the day to make some crazy pieced blocks.  I cleaned out a scrap box last week too and there were some black and white batik pieces in it.  I decided they would look great with the yellow.
I used my 10.5" ruler to trim them.











So much better trimmed but the camera wants to blue-tone the photo.









And then I trimmed the second one.












Much better.












Sunlight through the branches.

I have a pile of yellow batiks I pulled last year about this time to make ...

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Usually I work on a variety of projects at a time, but this past week I have just been knitting on a sweater I am making with some yarn that I spun.


I love how it is knitting up and I can't wait to see how this sweater turns out.

We have also been spending lots of time outside, mainly shovelling snow.



There doesn't seem to be snow in the forecast, and the weather is getting better, so we finally cleaned off the pond to skate.


The cat joined us on the rink today, but she was mainly ...

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I think it is only fitting to have a finished red quilt on Valentine's Day.




I have to admit that I wasn't feeling the love for this quilt in its unfinished state.  Crazy piecing is always so unfinished looking with all of the seams that come to the edges of the blocks and bias edges included.
Once the binding is on the quilt it is so nice and straight and elegant looking.  It really needed that nice dark binding to finish it off.  It ended up at 55" x 79".



This is my view as I'm approaching ...

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Ice can be pretty if you don't have to go out and slip on it.  There was a light snow already on the sidewalk and driveway so that got the icy crust on top of it.



I have a few branches down on my Redbud trees and it got quite windy last night so there might be more down today.  Everything is coated with the ice.




It looks like fringe on the squirrel baffle that hangs above this feeder.  This red headed visitor came just as I snapped the photo.









I have this quilt 3/4 basted now and ...

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as a guide where to serge the edge to finish it.


For this one I added a layer of wool batting for a bit of extra padding.


I whipped stitch the hem in place through the batting and in to the back of the punch needle.


After I stitched a backing on to the ...

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I loaded the flannel baby quilt after lunch and quilted it later in the afternoon yesterday.
The batting was pieced so I wanted a little closer quilting and did a small meander.  I have Hobbs 80/20 batting in this one.





It is 37" square, just perfect for a floor quilt for baby to play on.












The front is mostly yarn dyed woven flannel plaids and stripes with print flannel center squares.  The back is a print flannel.  I did the binding all by machine so it is really sturdy.






There is just one more bud to open on the ...

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I finished sewing the red and white quilt top last night while watching TV.  There were lots of questions about what pattern this is.
I found the pattern in a McCall's Quillting magazine, Jan/Feb 2011.  Here is a photo of one  20" block and one 4" x 20" sashing strip as Nancy Rink designed it for the magazine.  I made 6 of the 20" blocks for my quilt.

  
One of my readers mentioned she had made this quilt too and that next time she would make the 2 alternating 12" blocks which I didn't see until she ...

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I have the last block laid out on my sewing table so I'm hoping for a top sewn together by tonight.  I really like this one and it accomplished many things.  I had been wanting to do a red and white quilt for Valentine's Day, wanted to use the less than 1/4 yard pieces of reds, wanted to do another quilt with white and black as the light color in a quilt.



For those of you without an email link that asked about the fabric in the OBW blocks yesterday, this fabric was purchased on sale 3 ...

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I finished all twelve 16" blocks of Marcia Derse fabric and this is layout one, the same layout I have been showing each day.











This is layout 2 which is the one I ended up with on my Stonehenge fabric quilt.












Here is layout 3.

So which one did I end up sewing?











I decided on layout 3.  In this photo I have 2" strips of the background fabric hanging on both sides of the quilt.  I had overcut  on the 2" strips and hoped that they would work.  I think that is enough border to make the blocks float ...

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It was 1 degree last night at 11:30 when I started typing this post.  -3 was the prediction by 3 a.m. today.

I was nice and warm in my studio sewing the first 4 blocks of the coral and green quilt of Marcia Derse fabric.  The background print is gray with a dull gold print on it.  I wasn't sure if I was going to like it but now that I have some blocks done I can say that I do like it.  I am only making 12 blocks in my effort to make smaller quilts this ...

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The sedum flower heads outside my dining room window.  We got about 4" of snow and it is going to be in the single digits today.  Yesterday morning I went out to shovel the sidewalk for the mailman but that was enough of the cold for me.   

I went through a bag of red pieces of less than a quarter yard and pulled all of the ones that read similar in color and value.  I need to cut 4.5" squares from these and from some of my red yardage.  It is hard to photograph red and they are all ...

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If I would get busy earlier in the day I would get more done.  I thought maybe I had a chance of finishing this quilt but only got the quilting and trimming done.  It is the largest colorwash I have quilted for quite a few years.
I love this backing fabric.  I knew I would never cut it up in little pieces so it might as well go on the back of a quilt.

I have been devoting the first half of this month for finishing.  Now the fun will begin as soon as the binding is done on this ...

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I'm having too much fun sorting through things and didn't do any sewing yesterday.  I did find a binding fabric and cut the strips though.





I took a picture of my winter garden on the kitchen table last night.  The red Amaryllis is in full bloom and the next one in line is going to be white flowers again.  It has 3 bud stalks started.  This one was marked Stargazer too, a red and white mix just like the other one that turned out to be white.  The one in the center has 3 buds started too.  The ...

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I finished the quilting on this Kaffe colorwash last night but haven't trimmed it or chosen binding fabric yet.






The white blooms are almost done and the 8 red ones are just opening.  I have 2 more growing plus I got some Paperwhites for $1.50 and started them too.




Two people yesterday asked in comments how much fabric do I buy for backings when I find fabric on sale.  I knew I had addressed that issue on my blog before and in searching found it in 2007.  That was the year before I got my longarm so some ...

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