Snowflakes

 Hi everyone! How are you doing? Friends, the last two weeks have been horrendous. Hellish, even. The less said about them, the better! I have had exactly zero time to sew anything or even think about sewing anything, but I finally escaped to the sewing room and finished something up while the roofers were banging away upstairs. Have you had a roof replaced? Good golly, the noise and the mess! And let's not even talk about the cost. . .

 

The less said the better, right? While I was taking refuge from the roofing and seriously wondering if I could nap on the cutting table, I was looking through the closet and saw today's project hanging with the other tops. Before we get to the story, here is the finished project:

 

 

Okay, it's cuter than I thought it would be. Cross hatching does work wonders, doesn't it? This is a 2-inch cross hatch, which is the perfect size for a small piece. The quilt is straight, I swear, but the edges look a little wavy in the picture because I used a wool batting, which never lies as flat as cotton. It's nice and puffy for a good texture, though.

I really don't know how old this project is. I got the blocks from somewhere at least 10 years ago, probably more. I put them together into a top a couple of years ago, and there it has hung in the closet ever since. I had so many ideas for quilting it up. It has high contrast, which for me meant quilting the darker colors separately from the white. So many ideas, none of which came to fruition. So the question when I saw it hanging there was "do I let this hang here for another winter, or do I just suck it up and finish it any way that works?" The answer was pretty obvious.

 

I grabbed a leftover piece of backing that's a map of Paris, which is awesome, a piece of leftover wool batting, and a pale blue thread and went for the cross hatch. It's easy and meditative, and since this piece was so small, about 36 inches square, it went quick. I bound it in a piece of blue that doesn't match the other blues, but after a decade, does it really matter?

As I feared, the lighter thread, which really does mostly blend all over, stands out like neon on the solid dark blue and shows every wobble. I could rip out those stitches and redo them, but I think we all know I'm not that kind of quilter, right? This is one of the reasons I used wool batting. After I wash it, I'm sure it will shrink up enough that the mistakes will just fade into the quilty crinkliness. (Is that a word?)

Hey look--it's the Eiffel Tower!

 

I'm going to use this as a winter table topper since it's more 'winter' than 'Christmas.' Honestly, though, it's just a relief to see it as a finished piece and not hanging in the closet, mocking me. It's not perfect, but I know the hubs or a four year old is going to spill gravy or ketchup on it, so it's perfectly okay with me. 

Everyone have a wonderful week! Mine is definitely looking up, as we are finishing finals and I'll be done by Friday. Okay, I'll get the grades in on Monday. Tuesday at the latest. Really. My incentive is Christmas cookies. I think that'll work, don't you?

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

Setting the table

 Hello everyone! Is anyone else scratching out their eyes from all the pollen? I look like I've been crying for days. Several days this week, when I left work, my car had turned green because it was just covered in pollen dust. Then it became a very amusing game of "how do I get into the car without actually touching the car?" Spoiler alert: I lost that game.

This was a busy week, and I am behind on everything in my life, but I did manage to at least start a project that includes two small finishes this week. Take a look and then I'll explain:

You can see those cool houses, and also that I somehow never got around to taking out those azaleas last year. I really forgot about them until they started blooming this year. Oh, well!

Here's the story on the houses: have you seen the Rainbow Neighbourhood pattern by Sandra at mmmquilts? She is running a quilt along with this pattern over on her blog, and I knew as soon as I saw it that those fun houses would make great placemats. I know! I feel kind of bad that I thought that, because the two quilts she shows are adorable, but all I could think was "fun placemats."

To be fair, we eat outside a lot in the summer, and the houses make placemats in a great size for outdoors. I made two houses already, and I have an awesome purple one cut out, and I want to make an orange one, but I can't decide what will go with orange. I really need six placemats in all. The pattern has a ton of options for the houses-- different blocks for the side, different window configurations, a porch roof-- so I'm sure I'll be able to get six different fun placemats for our summer adventures.

I quilted these in pale yellow thread with straight-ish lines about an inch apart, which was probably too close. The backs are some brown/ gold fat quarters that actually make awesome backings. No clashing with the fabrics on the front! The pattern went together really easily and I was able to finish these off over a couple of afternoons. 

These finished off at just about 16 by 20, a nice generous size. And if you're thinking, "gosh, Mari, that's too big," take a look at how they are on the outdoor table:

Just the right size to keep all the food and utensils nice and clean! And away from the pollen, too. You can see that the table is glass, and things clatter a lot, too, plus I want to protect the table as much as I can.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and that the scratchy eye thing eases up soon. I might wash the car, but there's that "getting in without getting all gross" thing . . . I should just stay inside, right?

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

Blue times two

 Hello everyone, and happy St. Patrick's Day! Is there green beer in your near future? I can't stand the stuff, but it's my brother's birthday, and he's always loved it. When he was a kid, he thought everyone celebrated his birthday with a fun party. I guess that's a reasonable conclusion. This year, though, I'm feeling a little under the weather so I'll just wave to all you revelers from over here on the sofa.

I have nothing green to show today, but I did finish a couple of fun blue things. I have this pile of quilt tops, see, and it really needs to get smaller. It was easy to quilt some straight lines on smaller things, so that's what I did this week. Check it out:

Well, those look fresh and fun, don't they? This all started with the four blocks in the center of the smaller quilt. I had started another quilt with those blocks, but I got bored and put all the cut pieces away. I pulled it out and repurposed many of the cut pieces into these two quilts.

Let's start with the bigger quilt, shall we? It's not very big at about 44 by 56, but it used up a bunch of those blue print and white squares. It may not be very large, but it is quite cuddly!

For the quilting, I just stitched straight lines on each side of the piecing lines in both directions in a pale blue thread with a walking foot. I have really grown to love that thing. It's simple quilting, but I think it really works.

The front of this quilt may be calming, but there's a party on the back! Check out those happy bees. The fabric is actually a bit brighter than it appears in the picture, and it makes a really fun contrast with the blues on the front. 

The smaller quilt is just about 36 by 36, so a table topper size. It got quilted in a cross hatch, and if you look closely you'll see that I made a measuring error with the lines. Not wanting to rip out quilting, I went ahead and repeated the mistake so that it looks intentional. I marked the lines with a Hera marker, which was pretty unsatisfying. I don't know why, but it was hard to see the lines and made me a bit frustrated. Probably operator error there, don't you think?

This little quilt also has a happy backing! It's a bright green with blue swirls and it works really well with the front.

So hurray! Two more finished pieces out of that pile, done with some pretty simple quilting that was easy to do and fairly relaxing. It feels like a victory to get every piece moved out of there and into the finished pile, that's for sure!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Good thing St. Patrick's is a Friday this year, isn't it? I'm going to try to figure out what to do with the last remaining pieces from the original quilt, dozens of blue prints hsts. Any suggestions?

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

One blue patch, one blue quilt

 Hi everyone, and a happy 2023! I can't believe we're that far into the 21st century, yet here we are, almost a quarter of the way through. Yikes! We had a very exciting holiday without power for three days, but it was festive nonetheless. I hope yours was restful and peaceful.

Before we get too far into today's story, here is a picture of a little blue table topper that I finished this week and am counting as a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project for this year. (Bonus: it's a Project Quilting project, too!)

 

 

Isn't it cute? I am so thrilled with this, not least because it used ALL of my pre-cut blue squares from the 2-1/2 inch bin. Every one of them. I even had to cut a couple extra. There are 144 blue squares in this little topper, which is 24 inches square.

 

 

How did I come to make this cutie? I was looking around the sewing room and considering projects for the rainbow scrap challenge for this year when I took a break to look around at blogland and see if anyone had posted their ideas yet. This is when I happened upon Kim at Persimon Dreams and Project Quilting. I've never done Project Quilting because it goes too fast for me, especially at the beginning of a new semester. This week's prompt was "one," and the idea for this little quilt came to me immediately, all at once. It helps that the blue bin was right there, if you know what I mean.

 

 

 

One patch, one color! It works. Once I started putting the squares together this went really fast, and I found just enough time to quilt it and give it a quick machine binding. And did you notice that it's quilted in concentric squares? Fast and easy, my favorite kind of quilting.

 

 

As I said, all those blue squares got used up and I could not be happier. My goal for the RSC this year is to finally get some of those bins completely emptied. I know that won't happen in reality, but after seeing what I could pull out of the green scrap bin last year I think I have a good shot at cleaning some things out. Some of those scraps are very old and I am just tired of them, so they may make it to a different kind of bin if they don't get used up.

So, I plan to make a bunch of table toppers or small quilts this year, just to use those bits up. I need to throw out some of the smallest pieces. Why do I save the tiny things? I also have a couple of block projects for the RSC this year, but I haven't finished any of those blocks yet. I was cutting diamonds earlier and making a real mess of it, but I'm going to give it one more shot, I think.

Everyone have a wonderful first full weekend of 2023! I will be off to a conference this weekend, so here's to learning a lot to start the year. Happy stitching, everyone! 

Sharing at the Project Quilting linkup at Persimon Dreams, soscrappy for RSC23 (can you believe it?), Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished or not Friday, and the Quilting, Patchwork, Applique.

Radiating stars

 Hello everyone, and happy first real day of fall. The high today is supposed to be below 70 degrees, so I guess someone remembered to flip the switch to make things cooler. I noticed on my way home the other day that there are some trees that are definitely changing color already. Can raking be far behind? 

The family crisis continues, and so does my heavy heart, but it has motivated me to clean the sewing room and pull out a few things. The hubster wishes it would motivate me to install a new mantel for the fireplace, but I'm not that desperate yet. I was poking around in the sewing room closet and found a container of blocks, so I put them together really quick:

It was very windy when I was taking pictures! I tried to get a full picture with everything straight, but it was not happening. I made these blocks for the rainbow scrap challenge in 2020, but somehow never put them together. I think I intended to make more, or add some colors or something, but it was 2020, the nightmare year, and it didn't get done. But now they're saved, so yay!

There are a lot of ways to put these blocks together, and I played around and finally put them in this radiating design. I like it, and when it comes time to quilt it I think a spiral will work really nicely. I could change my mind, and probably will, but it's nice to have a plan for now. 

 

 

These are very simple blocks, just a colored square placed on a plain square and stitched into a flip triangle, but they make such a nice statement, don't they? And there are so many fun fabrics in here, even the darker ones that I don't usually use. I put all the blocks I had together, then added a bright aqua small border and a wider multicolored border. I think they work nicely with the blocks. 

This little quilt finished up at just about 43 by 53, which will be a nice toddler size. I should have made bigger blocks or many more of them, but I'm happy with the toddler size and the empty block box. I now have three empty block boxes or project boxes, so I really should take my temperature or something. Or maybe find a new project to fill them up?

Hope everyone is doing well and has a nice weekend planned. It's my birthday this weekend, so the hubs and I are planning to go hiking and spend the day in nature. Afterward there will be chocolate cake, so that's a happy day, right? Have a good weekend, all!

Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Brag About Your Beauties, and the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique, and soscrappy for RSC22.

Little finishes

 Hi everyone! Has it been a good week for you? It has been okay here. I had a "playdate" of sorts with a quilty friend where we both rented longarm time at the same time and quilted away. It was fun-- and air conditioned, which we all know is vitally important right now. As I say every year, God bless Willis Carrier, and all his fellow engineers. Where would we be without him?

So, how many of you have small pieced bits of things kicking around the sewing room, just waiting to be quilted, but they never get there because there is always something better to work on? I see a lot of hands out there! I think we all have these, and this week I managed to get three of them quilted up at last:

Raining and gross again, so the pictures are a little off. Oh, well! Truth be told, these little things were very annoying to me, because I intended to quilt them for ages. I had quilty plans for all of them. They did not get done. I wanted to try new things with the walking foot on them. I did not do that. Then I took them to the longarmer with me, intending to stick them on the end of a quilt. This did not happen either.

Finally I just got tired of looking at them and spent a couple of hours using the walking foot and finishing them very simply, with cross hatching and straight lines. As always happens, this made me fall in love with them all over again. And now they're usable and cute and not annoying things I keep moving around and feeling bad about.

The smallest one might be my favorite, and I might hang it on the wall in my granddaughter's room. I'm hoping to turn her into a quilter, you know. The others will get used on tables, I think, and the largest of them might become a doll quilt. All better than laying around unloved.

So, crummy porch pictures, but three little finishes to celebrate noneltheless. Mostly scrappy, mostly useful, and prettier than their pictures. Plus a couple of pleasant hours finishing them off, so I'm counting that as three wins.

 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! If you are on Twitter, be sure to check out #clearthelist. It's wishlists for school supplies from teachers all over the country. It's crazy how very basic some of their wishlists are, for things like crayons, pencils, and scissors, so if you can, drop a few things in the cart for a teacher. You can do a lot of good for $10! 

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

Small but satisfying

 Hi everyone, and happy weekend! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here, except for the fact that today it was 55 degrees outside. I feel like I could make do without snow, though, as long as there are plenty of Christmas cookies, and maybe a small bit of mulled wine. Our tree is up and decorated and there are even a couple of presents. Wait, how did those get there? And are they for me?

Back in the sewing room, which is decorated with various fabric scraps and snippets in festive piles on the floor, the repurposing of unfinished RSC projects continues. This week I have a particularly satisfying repurpose to show. Here is a small but happy finish:

 

This is a small doll quilt that was repurposed from an unfinished Boston Common project from RSC19. I had planned to do another round every month, with some white or neutral rounds to separate a few of the stronger colors. I did great until it was time to move to Baltimore! It went into the project box and did not come out, sadly. I really intended to work some more on it, but I never did. I'm blaming the virus, but really, I also lost enthusiasm for the project. You know how that goes, right?

Why do I say this little quilt was a particularly satisfying finish? Because one minute it was a sad, unfinished project hanging on the design wall waiting for some love, and a couple of hours later it was a cheerful little doll quilt. What a transformation! This little quilt is about 20 by 26, a perfect doll size. 

I quilted this in a simple, fast cross hatch with a pale yellow thread, because it happened to be handy, then bound it in some leftover orange, which also happened to be close at hand. I really like the way cross hatching makes a quilt look. It's super-easy, but it always turns out looking great. I'm also really happy with the orange, which I gave literally no thought to at all. It was just a handy leftover, but it gave the quilt just enough zing. 

 

This little quilt is going to live at my house and wait for the time when some small girl (or boy--no fossilized gender roles here!) can come and play again. I have three granddaughters now, and sooner or later this stupid virus will be finished and they will be able to come over and have a tea party with some dolls. I can't wait for that day to come, truly.

Anyway, one more project repurposed and finished. Yay! Now I think I need to get going on some more of those Christmas cookies. It's wet and foggy right now, a perfect day for some baking and stitching. Enjoy the weekend, everyone!

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC20.

Spring into fall

Hi everyone, and happy weekend! We made it through another week. Yay us! Plus, I'm happy to say that I can now do laundry at my house again. It's a small thing, but a really important one. You don't think you'll miss it, but then you run out of clean clothes and all becomes clear. Five hundred dollars later, I have clean socks again. 

And hey-- this week, I finally finished something. Yahoo!

This is the small topper that I made back at the Delaware house. It's small, and it's all scraps, and it's a little bit spring-like for the fall, but I really like it.

The center of this little piece is just a simple cross hatch done with a walking foot. I've really grown to like that look. It's a little old fashioned, but it always looks good.

For the leaves and the sashing, I decided to experiment and use some of the embroidery stitches on the machine.  It's hard to see on the sashing, but it looks pretty good. It seemed like a good piece to experiment on, and I'm happy with how it turned out.

I love the purple binding, which was also a scrap! I went looking for a leftover bit of dark green, but I had just enough of the purple for a single fold binding. Seems like a win to me!

Even though it's a bit spring-like, I'm going to use this on the table anyway. We haven't painted yet (short, sad story) and the colors are still extremely depressing, so I need something cheerful. I could maybe dress it up with a few pumpkins or something, don't you think?

Finally, this is a blurry picture, but it was quite windy when I was taking pictures, so the wind gave us a peek of the backing:

Not a great picture, but I like it anyway!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend! Now that the laundry is taken care of, we may take down a huge mirror in the bathroom. Huge as in covering the entire wall, so you can watch yourself shower, I guess. We have a plan and a hammer, so it must go!