Festive finale Friday

Hello all!  It's 27 degrees here today, and there has been water running down my street from a broken pipe all day. Not my pipe, thank goodness, but a *lot* of water.  They've sent the salt truck down the street twice, but it's going to be treacherous out there in the morning. And the water is still running! My fingers are crossed for the neighbor with the broken lateral pipe, that's for sure.

Today I am showing off my last finish of 2019! It's really the first in my quest to get all of these unquilted tops out of the closet and quilted up, but it's a finished quilt at last:

It's a winter quilt, just in time for a nice cozy Christmas!  I finished the top for this in January of 2015. Yes, I am deeply ashamed that it hung around that long, but maybe it just needed to age a bit.  It was definitely ready to be quilted up, though.  This was a year-long quiltalong from Cindy at Quilt Doodle Doodles, and you can buy the whole pattern from her.  It was super-easy to make and fun, too, plus it used up a whole lot of my scraps at the time.  (She has a lot of other fun patterns, too, so take a look around.)

This was quilted by Alycia at Quiltygirl, and she did an amazing job with it.  I told her that she could do whatever she wanted and I can tell she had a lot of fun with it.  There are so many fun things quilted in here.  Take a look at the great textures:

A closeup of the trees:

I love all the swirls, and the limbs on the trees, and take a look at the cups:

Isn't that heart cute?  She also quilted in a few snowflakes, and they blend so well on the front that I had a hard time getting a good picture, but here's one on the back:

The backing is a really nice quality flannel sheet from L.L. Bean, and it makes this quilt extra cuddly. For the binding I chose a red dotted print, which gives the edge just a little zip. 

That's probably too many pictures, but I'm very excited to have this out of the closet and ready to keep me warm. It wasn't doing anyone any good in the closet, after all!  I am so, so grateful to Alycia for her great work on this quilt. (I'll bet she'd be willing to quilt one for you, too!)  I could not be happier with the results, even if it was a long time coming.

And with that, I am closing the sewing room for the holiday so that I can bake up some cookies, wrap some presents, and generally relax with the people I care most about.  It's time for some old-fashioned celebration, and I intend to make the most of it. 

I hope that all of you who celebrate Christmas have a wonderful, restful holiday filled with good food, good friends, and family.  If you celebrate another holiday this time of year, or no holiday, I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful end to the year and a nice restful time with people you love.  I have a wrap-up post scheduled for next week, but otherwise I will see you all in 2020!  Happy holidays, all!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or not Friday.

Winter quilt and Blog Hop

Hi all! How is everyone today? I am longing for sunshne. I don't care if it's only 5 degrees as long as the sun is shining. Sadly, it's cloudy again.

Today I am showing off another finished top from the end of last year--the winter quilt!

I think quilts are more tempermental to photograph than children are. Here's another that almost gets the whole quilt:

Where else to photograph a winter quilt but on the snow?

See--totally uncooperative! It was quite windy, so I couldn't really make it stay on any of the benches at the park.

As you may recall, I made this between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was a year-long block of the month from Cindy at Quilt Doodle Doodles, but I made it all at once. This was a great quilt to work on at the end of the year. It was a virtually no-stress project for me, which made it perfect for a high-stress time. My quilt finished at about 70 by 82.

This quilt went together so easily. It's based on same-size squares, so there was no real thinking about the cutting. It was a great quilt to work on a little bit at a time.

Yikes! There's snow on my winter quilt!

 I did change a few things from the pattern. Mostly I mixed the colors a little differently and changed some of the spacing between blocks, and also rearranged the rows. I also cut some of the pieces (like the mugs) in one piece instead of using different scraps. I just liked the way it looked a little better, plus it saved fabric. The only problem I had with this quilt was joining some of the rows. All the matching seams!

I think the thing I like best about my quilt is the background fabric. This was the perfect fabric for me, plus it used up a length of old fabric and a couple of odd half-yards. I had just enough to finish the quilt. Barely a thread left! I love that! I also had the border fabric in the closet, and there is very little of it left too.

I plan to quilt this myself, but there's no hurry at all. Don't tell the quilt police, but I bought a flannel sheet (from L.L. Bean) for the back. I think it will make this quilt extra cozy.

Anyone for tea?

So that's my quilt! Great thanks to Cindy for the terrific pattern and inspiration.  Everyone have a great weekend. I really hope someone somewhere is getting some sun. Be sure to visit the other blogs in this hop to see some fantastic and creative quilts and make some new friends. The schedule is below!
 
As always, linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Amanda Jean at crazy mom quilts. 

Winter quilt blog hop schedule:

January 24th 

LeeAnna - Not Afraid of Color

Liz - Hosted by Quilt Doodles

JoAnna - Needle, Thread, Happiness

Sherri - Sushine in the Attic

 

January 25th 

Dee - deesdoings 

Nancy D - Hosted by Quilt Doodles 

Sharon - Vroomans Quilts 

Leslie - 365 Days of Wonderful
Jules - Quilting with Calicos

  

January 26th

Kathy-Kathy's Quilting Blog

Nicole - quiltinglikeamaniac

Pam - Stitching Between the Lines

Jill - Hosted by Quilt Doodles

Sickness and health

Hi all! I missed you Tuesday! My fault--I picked up a horrendous bug at my conference in Chicago that had me coughing my lungs out. I went to the doctor and she gave me some prescription cough syrup that took care of the cough but absolutely knocked me to the ground. I mean, I really couldn't do anything but sleep. Which was the best thing for me, after all, but it meant that absolutely nothing got done all week. So now that I can think coherently again, I'm behind on everything!

Once I was able to, I did do a little tiny bit of sewing and finished up these two beauties:

These are the last blocks for the Odd Fellow's quilt. When I laid it out I came up three blocks short. One was the reversed-values block and then these two. I think I was counting on having 12 months of colors and thus 24 blocks, but there were only 11 months. Doesn't matter because they're done now! I'm almost going to miss making these every month.

The other thing I did was make some string blocks, which will be one of my other projects for RSC15:

Yep, some of those strings are tiny! I've got to rethink what I save. These were inspired by Quiltdiva Julie and by the overflowing string bin. (Connie also makes a lot of great projects with strings.) If I can make a few a month I can clean out that bin and make some kind of quilt. No pattern or idea yet--we'll see what comes along. These are 6 1/2 inches right now and still have the paper on the back. (By the way, did you know that you can buy newsprint for paper piecing and strings by the ream for about $6? It's true. I bought some and it's just as great as the expensive stuff!)

The last thing I accomplished was to pull out these pieces for the last row of the winter quilt!

These will be a fun row of mugs with steam coming off them. Next week I will be a part of the blog hop for the finished version of this quilt, so I'd better get to putting those rows together!

Hope everyone stays really healthy this weekend. Wash your hands and drink lots of orange juice. I will be continuing to answer all the email that piled up. (I think I have 56 left to go.) And if you're not feeling great, I highly recommend the cough syrup. And lots of sleep!

Happy sewing!

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Amanda Jean at crazy mom quilts and also the awesome Angela at soscrappy.

Sew relaxing

Hi all! How is your Christmas sewing going? I am gradually relaxing. There is still a lot of Christmassy stuff to do (cookies!), but the grades are in and I have a little bit of time to play. Plus, I get to learn some new things that I usually don't have time for. For example, this weekend I learned that I can't watch The Walking Dead. I know a lot of people love it, but it's definitely not for me. Good to know.

Since I finished the candy row on the winter quilt, I started a new row--snowman faces!

Aren't these fun? I haven't decided for sure, but I think I'm going to applique some eyes instead of using buttons. I think it would look better all around, plus no lost eyes, which would make for sad snowmen. I have a few more to make, but this is a fun row.  (Patterns available HERE or HERE.)

I also did a few of step 3 for Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt: 

These were super-easy and I think the colors look really good together.

I'm liking this mystery more and more because I don't think I've seen these units together before. This seems really original and different.

That's all that's happening in my sewing room right now! Well, I'm also working on finishing the triangle quilt, which has been in progress forever. At least that's what it seems like. But it's moving along, which is something. I would have a picture, but we have been socked in by fog for the last several days. Yes, fog!

Hope everyone is holding it together with the holiday projects. I know for sure I will not be sewing for a couple of days because the electric company is shutting off our power all day (really, 8 am to 3 pm!) to replace the neighborhood transformer. In December, in Wisconsin. Nice planning, guys! We'll be hitting the movies and anywhere else that will be warm (and have wifi). Which means no cooking for me, so maybe it's not all bad!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social. And Bonnie Hunter's link-up, too, just for the fun of it. Stop by and wave!

Put your feet up

Hello everyone! Today is a happy day--the last day of the fall semester! Okay, not officially, but it all gets a lot better from here. There is still grading to be done, but this one is just about in the archives. College kids should be arriving home any minute. Bet they'll need a nap!

With all the tumult this week, I only finished this little piece:

Cute, but remarkably hard to photograph!

This little seat is just an unfinished wood piece that I got from the big-box craft store, then painted white. The hexies are made from some scraps I had, then cut and hand-stitched together. I quilted the hexie piece to a muslin backing since that part wouldn't show.

I used almost the same upholstery technique I used on the little pressing station I made. I glued a small piece of 1/4 inch foam to the seat, then covered it with an extra piece of batting and stapled the batting to the bottom of the seat. Then I just tacked the quilted piece on, stretching as I went.

I am pretty happy with how it turned out, especially since there was very little time invested. This little footstool will live in our family room where there are a lot of yellow and blue quilts. It will fit right in.

Herbert seems to like it!

I also worked on the candy pieces row for the winter quilt. I decided to take Rachel's advice and use half-size spacers between the "candies." The math worked out okay; I just had to add one extra candy to make the row long enough.

It's about 4 inches by 58 inches, which makes it really hard to get a picture of the whole row. I promise that you'll be able to see it better once it is sewn to the rest of the quilt.

Everyone have a great weekend. There will be some Christmas shopping on my agenda, plus my local quilt shop is having its holiday open house. Sure to be festive all around!

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Amanda Jean at crazy mom quilts. Stop by and get inspired!

Projects in pieces

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my little corner of the Internet. For today's post, I was going to make a list of the things that are stressing me out right now, but the list itself made me panicky. Instead, how about we ignore all of that and look at pretty quilty pictures instead?

I've gotten started on the next row of the winter quilt, which is a row of candy pieces:

I changed mine up a little bit from the pattern. The pattern has them all in the same fabric, while I just grabbed a bunch of bright scraps for mine. I know I want the pieces to alternate "up" and "down" so that it 'waves' across the quilt, but I can't decide if I should still put the spacer pieces in the row or not.  The partial row on top in this picture has the spacers while the bottom one does not. Which do you like better?

I also made some of step 2 of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt:

I strip pieced these and it went pretty well. (Tutorial with great pictures is HERE.) These are all that I'm making of this step for now as well. (No stressing out over quilt projects, remember? This is my new rule--for myself, of course! Feel free to bask in as much anxiety as you feel comfortable with.) I suspect these pieces are for a border because they remind me a lot of the border pieces in Lazy Sunday (which I haven't made but hope to one day). I guess we'll find out!

Finally, I did work some on the triangle quilt. I decided to make it one row longer, which means more triangles. I swear these are the last of them:

These better be last of them, because I'm starting to be tired of it, even if it is pretty bright and happy. What was I thinking, making 6-inch blocks? Should have known it would take a ton of them to make a decent-sized quilt. Good thing I was never a math major.

Hope everyone gets some sewing done this week! Those holidays are coming, faster than we think!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social. Happy sewing!

No stress Friday

Hi all! Is everyone getting into the Christmas spirit? I am trying hard to be jolly. I am also sticking to my pledge not to be stressed over things, especially sewing. It's kind of working, kind of not. There's just no way to escape all of it.

I had a VERY full week and little time to sew, but I did work some more on the winter row quilt. First, I fixed the tree that I had made incorrectly:

Yes! This one has a snow drift, which is what I left out of the previous one. Easy fix!

With that fixed, I was finally able to stitch the major center row together:

Looks great to me! See, three different trees, like there are supposed to be. This row is the biggest one, about 22 by 58, and is the center of the quilt. All the other parts are smaller rows with repeated motifs. I went ahead and made one this week, the star row:

Long skinny photo!

This row is much more manageable, finishing to about 6 by 58. The winter sunshine keeps bleaching out my yellows. Here is a slightly better picture of them:

Okay, a little better, not a lot better.  But the stars really are yellow, from a marbled fat quarter that I had.

And here are the rows together:

I didn't stitch these together because I'm still playing with the quilt as you go idea. Seems to me that a row quilt is perfect for that, but I haven't found a back that I like yet. Too busy shopping for presents to shop for fabric!

Wow, lots of dark blue in this post!  Don't let that get you down, though. Lots of color yet to come.

This weekend we are putting up our Christmas tree! It promises to be quite a festive time. Hope all of you have a great weekend too!

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Amanda Jean at crazy mom quilts. Stop by and get inspired!

Playing with blocks

Holy cow, it's December.

Anyone else feel a little panicky about that? Just me? Oookay.

So, we are stuck in the deep freeze again. The hubs and I visited our daughter on the East Coast for Thanksgiving, which was fabulous, and then got home to the single digits. Welcome home! It's sunny, though, so it's not all bad. As long as it stays sunny, I'll be okay. No promises for when it snows again.

I have been playing with a few things in the sewing room. Really trying hard not to stress out over any project, so I've done a little bit on a lot of projects. Take a look!

The first 16-inch section of the wintry/frozen Drunkard's Path quilt (which really needs a name if anyone has a suggestion):

Gosh, this will be pretty. I decided to keep the Fairy Frost. And it has my favorite sewing feature--very little matching! (Yes, I see that one block is pressed wrong. I promise it isn't stitched wrong.) For anyone who's interested, the pink and green one went to the quilter this past week. Those last few pieces went together okay. I promise not to make the same mistake again.

(Also, does anyone know anything about the specialty machine foot for piecing curved blocks without pins? I just want to know if it works, because it's kind of pricey. It would be worth it to make this faster, but only if it actually works. Thanks!)

More progress on the winter quilt from Cindy at Quilt Doodle Doodles:

Another tree! I thought this would finish the center row, but I actually messed up and made the same tree twice. Oops. There are three trees, each slightly different, but I lost track of which ones I had already made.

The mistake will be really easy to fix, or maybe I'll just leave it. We'll see how motivated I am. The rest of the quilt is rows of repeated patterns, so I'm not sure which one I feel like making next. I guess we'll find out next time I feel like sewing on this. (Buy the patterns HERE or HERE.)

Okay, I know I said that I was waiting to make Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt, but I was feeling left out after doing the last several mysteries, so I made a couple of blocks for the first step:

They're just so colorful, I couldn't resist! I made ten of these blocks and that's all I am making for now. I figure that this way I can play along without stress and have a start on the quilt if I want to make the whole thing. Worst case, I have potholders or a small table topper. Plus, the colorful blocks really brighten the place up, and who doesn't need that in the winter?

For the rest of the week, I plan to work like crazy on finishing the RSC14 triangle quilt. It really wants to be finished! It's been nagging at me all day. "Put down those curvy blocks and come work on me! I have nice straight seams!"

I may be a little tired right now.

Anyway, hope everyone has a really good and productive week! If it warms up a little, we will be putting our Christmas lights up this week, and I have definitely started shopping. I am starting to get a little holiday spirit!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social. Happy sewing!

Into the woods

Hi folks! Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are not too stuffed to sew! The hubs and I are having Thanksgiving at our daughter's house, which is great for me because it means very little cooking! I didn't bring my sewing machine, but I do have these to show you:

Don't they look festive? These are the next couple of blocks for the winter quilt BOM from Cindy at Quilt Doodle Doodles that I am working on for the next few weeks. This is a very easy quilt and is very relaxing to work on. Seriously, you can grab a few minutes here and there and make great progress. (You can buy the patterns HERE or HERE).

Here are the three blocks I've done for this quilt all together:

I almost have the major center row done! I am considering "quilting as I go," which is why I'm doing them in this order. I've never done that with a whole quilt before, but why not try it on this one?

Since this was a holiday week, that's all the sewing I got finished! Hey, I'm happy I got anything done. Hope you finished something too! I'm going shopping later for a backing for this. I'm thinking flannel. Sounds cozy and fitting for a winter quilt, doesn't it?

Back to our regularly scheduled projects next week, with some of this thrown in for fun. Enjoy the weekend! Happy sewing!

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Amanda Jean at crazy mom quilts. Stop by and get inspired!

Cabin in the snow

Hi all! With this being a holiday week and many, many of us in a cooking frenzy, it's a good time to take a small time out and share my year-end project. I have been looking forward to starting this for weeks!

The end of October until the first of the new year is the most stressful time of the year for me. Really, everything is due all at once, plus there's this major winter holiday that is a lot of fun but requires TONS of preparation. A lot of it is fun, and much of what I have to do is very rewarding, but it's also very stressful. Since the sewing keeps me sane even in the worst of times I need a year-end project that I can work on that won't add to the problem. I know a lot of people will be doing Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt, but that is just too stressful for me to take on right now. Instead, I've chosen to work on this quilt by Cindy at Quilt Doodle Doodles:

This is Cindy's quilt and her picture! Isn't it adorable?

This is such a cute quilt, and it looks pretty stress-free to assemble. Cindy has run it as a quilt-along on her blog all year. I had every intention of working along, but never did. So now that it's all finished, I'm going to do it all at once! You can buy her patterns HERE or HERE, and she has many other patterns that are very easy as well. (Go buy the pattern! You know you want to!)

This pattern generally uses same-sized squares, so I've been cutting some different dark blues to use for the backgrounds for a couple of weeks (a little at a time, you know?):

I cut up several quarter yards of dark blues with stars that I had in my stash, though most of the fabric comes from this:

Let's just call that photo "artsy," okay? This was a multi-purpose Halloween costume--witch, wizard, Merlin, etc.-- from years ago.  I know for sure it's made from quilting cotton because the selvages were still on the thing. I guess it was an emergency costume. Anyway, there were nearly 3 yards of fabric here, which got cut up and is being used as the main background fabric in this quilt. (Let's hear it for recycling!)

 And heaven knows I have a bunch of scraps for all the other colors and parts as well. No shortage of those around here!

So, I started with the cabin block, which is in the center of the quilt. Here it is:

I certainly would be happy to sit in that cabin and sew for a while, wouldn't you? It didn't come through too well in the photo, but the window there is actually yellow. Winter sunshine bleached it out pretty well. The pattern shows a brown cabin with a black roof, but I chose to use red and brown. It's cheerful, and what I had.

Cabin in the snow!

I hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving! I say we all lock ourselves in the sewing room and make someone else stress out over the food. If you're not in the US, I hope your week is also full of food, family, and friends! And maybe a little American football and some shopping, too.

Linking to Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social. Happy Thanksgiving!