Small people quilt

 Hi everyone! How is your summer going? Has it been too hot for words? Yeah, same here. We actually spent a couple of weeks visiting our grandchildren, and I hoped that the shores of a Great Lake would be cooler, but apparently that 'lake effect' thing was broken because it was sweltering.

 

Being the amazing grandma that I am, I took a sewing machine and a bunch of scraps and fat quarters with me to fill up some of our time on rainy days. They loved it! I let each of them make a small quilt any way they wanted and it turned out great! They really took to the lessons and enjoyed mashing down that foot pedal. They also showed remarkable color sense! Take a look at the three little quilts:

 

Aren't those great? If they look wavy to you, I swear it's the ground, because there was no way that I was going to let them turn out crummy, you know?

 

This one is from the 6-year-old:

 

The colorful strips are off-cuts from another project that ended up in the bag. She put them together in the order she wanted and used a couple of the white strips after I suggested it. I expected her to alternate the colorful ones with the whiter ones, but you can see she had her own ideas. I did let her 'help' stitch everything together, with her sitting in the chair and me off to the side. Not great for the back, but great for the kid! The quilting is just a few lines of the serpentine stitch. Check out little miss personality's choice for the back: 

 

 

This is the 8-year-old's quilt:

 

Stripes and florals! What great color sense! It's so funny because she was so precise and every square was put together individually in it's own place. A lot of short seams, but by the end I think she could have done it herself. I drew the quilting lines and she mostly followed them. (With lots of help and supervision!) There are a few wobbles, but I believe she may have natural talent. Here is her backing:

 

Those two are doll quilts, already well-used, but my 10-year-old grandson obviously was not going to make a doll quilt, so we're calling this small masterpiece a wall hanging. He and I use the Merlin app together, so he made a bird:

 

This was a blast to make. You'll see that he's quite a literalist, so we had to look up what a cardinal looks like and try to copy it exactly. He was quite directive and it took a little while to figure out how to do the black on the breast and the little cap on top. It took him a long time to choose the beak and the legs because apparently I need more colors. I did the quilting, except for around the green edge, which is all he was really comfortable with. He did give me a LOT of directions, though. It took some convincing, but I did get him to let me put a few 'feathers' on the bird, too. And look what he found for the back:

 

 

Serendipity! This is my favorite bird ever, and it was so much fun to watch him picking fabrics and giving me directions on where everything goes. (If you want to make birds, I used Lynne's tutorial, which is HERE.)  Two suggestions if you're going to sew with kids: use your walking foot, which prevents wrinkles and tears, and set your machine speed to slow, because they really do like to use that foot pedal.

 

But wait, Mari, don't you have four grandchildren there? Yes, but number four, an 8-year-old boy, was so completely uninterested it wasn't funny. Not his thing, but you should have been there to answer all his questions about how the machine works when I was cleaning it! He was amazed that I could take it apart AND put it back together.

 

Now that the scraps and I are home again, I have to finish off an absolute behemoth of a quilt for my nephew and his new wife. It's easy, but it's huge. He's 6'5" and she's 6'1", so it's king size. Huge! I am chaining myself to the sewing machine until it's done. Wish me luck.

 

Since it's still sweltering, here's a nice lake picture to cool you down as we cruise into August:

 

 

Have a great day, everyone!

 

Sharing at Alycia's for Finished or Not Friday. 

Still brown, but bright

 Hello all! How was your week? We had a decent week here. The weather has been more like spring than winter, though you can see from the pictures that we still have that winter landscape. I am really starting to long for spring, even though we have not had a very harsh winter. We're starting to get longer days, though, and the extra light is making me happy. I am looking forward to some serious sunshine not so long from now.

And in this still-brown winter landscape I have a very green quilt to show off! It's a bright spot, that's for sure. Take a look:

Is that not bright and happy? And scrappy as all get out, too.

I made this quilt last year during the purple month for the rainbow scrap challenge at Angela's blog. Just about every bit of it, including the backing, is a leftover or a scrap. I started out with the plan to use up all those leftover purple 4-patches. Long ago, I started to make Bonnie Hunter's En Provence pattern and instead ended up finishing it (much later) as THIS quilt. But it's the quilt project that keeps on giving, because this is the fourth quilt that has used up the pieces that I made for that quilt. Gosh I hope all those pieces are gone now!

If you notice, the green in the current quilt is the leftovers from the backing of the main quilt. I had to stitch some bits together to get it all to work, but it did work! I love this green and I think it works so well with those purple 4 patches. The backing is the final pieces of backings left over from other projects. I did cut the binding from a half yard I had, mainly because I was feeling too lazy to piece one together from scraps. Ah, well.

This was quilted in a nice swoopy design by Alycia, who did a great job, as always. It just ties all those weird bits together in a really nice way. Her blog is really interesting, too.

See that blue tarp on my neighbor's roof? A tree fell on it and there is a ton of damage, as you can tell from the size of the tarp.

So that's my bright spot in a brown, dreary February! I love how this turned out and am happy to have used up those purple 4-patches at long last. Now I can stop feeling guilty about them! That's as good a reason as I've ever heard for making a quilt.

Hope everyone has a lovely, relaxing weekend. I hope I do, too! I'll be packing up stuff and moving furniture so that we can finally have the floors repaired after the roof leak in December. I can't wait!

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday, Brag About Your Beauties, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Quilting, Patchwork, Applique.

A new building project

 Hello all! Hot enough for you? Ha, ha, ha, I crack myself up. I know we're all sweltering. I think my plants are taking the worst of it. This may cook all my tomatoes, and I think the peppers may be done. The petunias, however, are loving it. 

So this week, sitting in my basement sewing room, I decided to get a start on making a pretty quilt for myself. Like all quilts, this has a backstory, but first, look at some pretty blocks:

Scrappy log cabins! Don't they look fresh and clean? I love log cabin quilts but I seldom make them because I get distracted by all the other fun stuff, plus most people I give quilts to want something more modern. Log cabins just scream 'old fashioned.' Plus they can be quite labor intensive to construct, but you know what? I don't care, because I am making this quilt for me. About time, right?

The fabric I'm using here is all Fig Tree fabric, which I love. It happens that I accidentally signed up for a block of the month from Fig Tree, and this is some of that fabric. I thought I was buying a quilt kit, but I may not have been paying attention when I ordered. Probably trying to do four things at once. To be fair, there was a *lot* of fabric every month, and there were also several patterns beyond the primary pattern included. I didn't make the primary quilt, but I may make one or two of the secondary patterns at some point.

One thing I love about log cabins is that there are a ton of different ways to arrange the blocks, almost as many as there are with half square triangles. I'm not sure how I'm going to lay it out yet, but it's fun playing with the blocks.

 

 

These are 8-inch blocks and I cut them all with an Accuquilt die that I bought from a friend a while ago and have been looking to use ever since. It made things almost painless, but I still got confused about how to construct the block. It looks simple but it can get confusing! I had to watch a video to wrap my mind around it. Right now I have about 20 blocks, and I'm just going to keep making more blocks until I run out of the fabrics I chose. There's more fabric, but it's different from these and I like these colors together. I'm hoping to end up with at least 48 blocks, and I think I'll make it.

 

Yikes! Ignore the tiny threads!

 

All of that will have to wait, though, because we are off for the next ten days or so, heading for the lakes and some cooler weather and old friends. Gosh, do I ever need this! It has been a rougher summer than I ever expected, but here's to some relaxation before everything gears back up again. 

Take care, everyone, and I'll see you when we get back! Let the relaxing commence!

Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique.

Puzzle on the front, party on the back

 Hi all! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend. Ours was good, but every time we tried to go outside for a while it rained. And so we went inside, and the sun came out. And of course that meant we went back out, and that meant a short but loud thunderstorm. It was a wild weather weekend, and very warm. But it's July, so you have to expect that, really.

Have you ever had a quilt that you wanted to name "This Took Forever?" That is the quilt I'm showing today, though it does include a fun surprise. Have a look:

Almost all green, finished, quilted, and bound! Hurray! I started calling this the puzzle quilt, which is way better than what I had called it before ("stupid green thing" just doesn't have a good ring to it) and I'm so happy it's all done, even if it took a whole year. Things have to marinate, you know? 

Is the surprise that I finished it almost exactly a year after it was pieced? Nope, it's this:

Definitely a party on the back! I couldn't resist these fun sunflowers. They're a nice contrast to all the dark greens, plus they give it a nice shot of color. And you can use it as a mood indicator, too-- sunflowers up means "let's chat," while green side up means "leave me alone." It's a multi-talented quilt!

If you recall, I made this quilt from a picture in a quilting magazine I saw in the library, using every bit of dark green I could come up with, plus a few blues and blacks thrown in for variation. It just about cleaned out that scrap bin, which is all I can ask for from a scrap quilt. 

 

 

What about "this took forever?" Well, I decided not to take it to the quilt shop and use a panto on the rented longarm and instead used a walking foot to follow all the zigzags in the quilt. It took forever, and was seriously boring, but it worked! The border is a set of straight lines, which also was boring but it got the job done.

I used a dark olive thread on the green parts, which blended with almost everything, and white on the text print parts, and then bound it in yet another dark green. The backing thread is a muslin color-- I think Aurifil actually calls it 'muslin'-- and it blended okay. I wish I'd used one shade darker, but what's done is done. I'm happy enough with it.

So there we are-- another finished quilt! I think I may send this to Quilty Hugs. Can't you see someone being cheered by this? And the 'mood' part could come in handy, too. Here's one last picture, with the tree that is about to come down. It's old and hollow, and it might fall any time, so time for it to go:

Hope everyone has a great weekend. We are seeing the grandchildren this weekend! Hurray! Gee, you have one little life-threatening incident and suddenly everyone wants to show up. . .but I'll definitely take it!

Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique, and Oh Scrap!

Neighborhood table

 Hi everyone! How was your week? Mine was a doozy, and I will tell you all about it at the end of this post. We have to get to the quilty stuff first, right? Today I'm showing the rest of the placemats I made for the Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt along at mmmquilts. Most people made an actual quilt, but these houses just screamed 'fun placemats!' to me, so that's what I made. Here is the whole set of six:

 

It has been raining for the past couple of days (hurray!), so the pictures are a little washed out, but aren't those great placemats? They each finish at about 16 by 20, a very nice generous size for outdoor eating in the summer.

How about some closer pictures? Here are the two that I had finished earlier and already posted about:

Obviously those were photographed on a much brighter day! 

I call this one the party house, and it's my granddaughter's favorite because it's mostly purple:

Doesn't that look like a house that has a lot of fun summer parties? Or maybe it looks like a house of some people you knew in college. You know the ones I mean. . . I love the pink roof and the wild colors of this house.

This is the hippie house, the home of some very laid back people:

If I had had some fabric with a peace sign, I would have found a way to incorporate it, but nothing like that in all the fabric I own. I'm sure the people in this house have no trouble with their very unusual turquoise roof. 

Next up is the birdhouse, which was very, very hard to photograph, for unknown reasons:

As you can see, the birds have a design feature on the front of their home. I added the extra green strip because there was no way for me to match up all the birds, and it just looked too weird when I joined the front pieces together. I love the star on the side of this house, too. 

Finally, there is the garden house, which might be my favorite:

This is probably the house I would choose to live in, if such a thing were possible. It looks so peaceful. And it was a great use of a gray and coral fat quarter, which I got in a kit that I bought a while ago just for the fabric in it.

All in all, a fun project for a fun summer table! The pattern is great and chock-ful of all kinds of things I didn't include, including different kinds of house features, all the different blocks for the sides of the houses, and some trees and flowers, plus two different layouts and instructions for a pillow. You could end up with some fun placemats, too!

So, here's why I had a heck of a week--

Short version: I have a pulmonary embolism. You can read more about what that is HERE. Pay attention to the 'lfe-threatening' part.

Longer version: Last Wednesday, as I was finishing stitching on the binding on one of these placemats, I started having trouble breathing and was sweating and shaking, so I thought I was having a heart attack. That's your first thought, right? Of course we went right to the emergency room, and if you ever want fast service, walk in and tell them you think you're having a heart attack. You'll get four nurses and a doctor to help you right away. It wasn't a heart attack, but hours and many tests later, they discovered a pulmonary embolism. I'm happy to know what happened, and glad that the hospital took such good care of me. I'm taking more (very expensive) medication than I ever thought possible, and I get to have even more tests! Won't that be fun?

So, there's what happened! It was exciting and terrifying, and continues to be so. All of my summer plans are up in the air, so we'll have to rearrange. I gues that means more time for stitching, right? It's a non-stressful activity, isn't it? 

Take care of yourselves, friends, and have a great weekend! If you have trouble breathing or your chest hurts, get help right away. Take it from me!

Sharing at Sandra's quiltalong linkup, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished or not Friday, and the Quilting, Patchwork, Applique linkup.

Scraps all day, flowers coming soon

 Hello everyone! So, have you noticed that it's March now? March! How did that happen? Truth be told, though, our weather is about a month ahead of that. Spring is popping out all over, and bringing with it lots of pollen. Can't even tell you how many times I've sneezed in the last few days, and my eyes are very itchy. But at least it's warm!

I have somehow accumulated quite a pile of tops of various sizes that are waiting to be quilted. I'm embarrassed about what's still at the bottom of that pile, but this week I started tackling some of the smaller pieces in that pile. Happily, I finished two this week. Hey, they're small! Here is one you might remember from last September:

A cute starburst made of scraps! The squares were a rainbow scrap challenge project, then finally got put into a quilt top, and today they have finally graduated to a finished quilt!

I quilted this with a walking foot in a pale yellow thread. and just quilted lines that meet in the center and radiate off in all directions. It was fast and fun, which is the best thing when you're quilting.  The lines aren't evenly spaced or anything, so let's call them organic. Yep, like the lettuce.

The backing for this little quilt is a piece that I bought from someone's destash sale, and the binding came from a half-yard of a snappy coral that I had on the shelf. I'm kind of disappointed in the coral binding, but it's done and it will have to do.

Taking pictures of this was a bear, but above is one last one I was able to get through the gloom. Yes, we're having more rain! But this little quilt is done and ready to donate. Quilt number two is much smaller, and somewhat less cheery, but equally scrappy:

Yes, it's one of the little quilts I made in January to clean out the blue scrap basket. Hey, it was on the top of the pile! 

You can see how puffy this is. I used a scrap of the Hobbs Poly-Down batting, which made it extra puffy. I used a dark blue thread to quilt it in a simple cross hatch and a bit of leftover dark blue binding to finish it off. I think it turned out okay, but the important thing is that it isn't in the "waiting" pile anymore.

I have a few more small quilts basted and ready to tackle, so I may start that this weekend. Otherwise, I'll just be over here, sneezing and planning the garden for this year. And look what's coming up on that front:

A hillside full of daffodils coming soon! Have a great weekend!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished or not Friday, and the Quilting, Patchwork, Applique linkup, too.

Holiday project

 Hi all, and happy Thanksgiving to everyone here in the US! Okay, I know it's tomorrow, but isn't today the day we all start cooking? And if you didn't remember to take the turkey out of the freezer yet, well, I'm sorry about that. We always get the turkey on Monday so it never goes in the freezer and is nice and defrosted by Thursday morning. This year there were only big ones left, so it looks like we will be having a lot of turkey!

Since I have a little time this week with all of my students having run home or someplace other than campus, I finally started a project that has been on my mind for a while. It's slow going, but a nice diversion. Here is my first block:

 

Yes, I finally worked up the courage to cut up the saved baby clothes and start a memory quilt. It was not as hard as I thought and it brought back some fun memories. Anyone else make appliques like that for sweatshirts way back when? 

I decided that I needed some structure for this quilt, so I'm using the Scattered pattern from Connie at Freemotion by the River, which you can get right HERE. It has nice sized pieces, though I have been fussy cutting some of the front pieces instead of following the directions. And yes, the pieces all have interfacing, just like T-shirt quilts. It's kind of a pain, but the results are good.

As you can see from the pile above, I have a ways to go, but I'm hoping to have this done by the end of the year. It's nice to take it a little slow, plus I really need to wash some of those dresses. And sometimes I miss the little kids I used to have, so I need to stop for a bit.

The other thing I've been working on is the Solstice Sampler from Alderwood Studio. Amazingly, I have kept up. The block on the left above took forever, and I cannot read directions, so I might remake it. There are supposed to be rays of a different color surrounding the star, but somehow I missed that. Do you think I could just piece those in without having to remake the whole darned thing?

I took a couple of pictures of those blocks outside, but it was very windy. I put one of the not-too-bad one on IG, but if you look closely at the background of the picture above, you might find a couple of our deer friends, wondering just what is going on, and if the blocks might be tasty.

Everyone have a great Thanksgiving, and be safe if you are going over the river or through the woods. I'm off to make pie!

Sharing at Midweek Makers.

Hiding in the scrap bin

Hi everyone! I don't know about where you are, but we are back to hot and sticky, with thunderstorms every couple of days. It is summer, after all! And hot sticky weather is great for tomatoes and other good things that grow in the garden, so I am looking forward to a good harvest before too long.

Today's theme is: green! If you recall, I cleaned out the green scrap bin and started making a quilt top to use up every bit of the dark greens. Those things have been hanging around for far too long! But not any more, because look:

Yep, they turned into a finished top, just like that! Every bit of this quilt top except the white/gray background is a scrap. The background is a weird text print from Zen Chic by Moda, and I don't know where I got it from. There's quite a bit left, too, so it may turn up as a background in something else. 

Look at those geraniums! This top is all half-square triangles, and I made mine to finish at 4 inches. Every dark green scrap that was big enough got cut up for this quilt. I also threw in some medium greens and a few blues, too, just to fill things out. Really, there's everything in there but the kitchen sink. If it was mostly green and the right size, it went into the quilt.

I saw this block in a magazine I was leafing through at the library. I'm pretty sure it was Quiltmaker, but I didn't take a picture of the magazine itself. Not sure how many blocks were in the magazine quilt, but you can see that I only had enough scraps to make 9 blocks, plus I added the borders. I'm completely okay with this because this quilt still finished at about 60 inches square. This is a great size for something made entirely from one scrap bin!

I was so determined to use up all of the triangle pieces that I had cut that I put the leftovers together and added them to the borders. It works well enough, and it's fabric I didn't have to put back in the scrap bin. Or throw out, you know, because I certainly got a little tired of the dark greens after a bit.

So, there is the quilt that was hiding in that scrap bin! Who knew, right? But there is one more green thing to show off today. Check it out:

 

Yep, we had the house painted! It looks so, so much better and much more modern. The color is actually called Deep Emerald, though it has a lot of blue in it, not just green. We love it and are so happy with how it turned out. There are a lot of painted brick houses around here, but most of them are white, tan, or gray. The dark green looks pretty sharp, I think. Now we move on to some landscaping for the front and a new color for the front door. The hubs wants red, but I'm thinking a bright aqua. I guess we'll see who gets to the paintbrushes first!

 

 

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! It's the Fourth of July weekend here in the US, so I hope your picnics and get togethers don't get rained out, and you get to see a lot of fireworks. It's a frustrating time and an imperfect country, but it's still a great country full of great people. That is worthy of celebration, even if a lot of what's happening now isn't. So Happy Fourth, everyone!

 

Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Brag About Your Beauties, the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique, and Oh Scrap!