OMG! A Glorious Finish!

First of all thank you to Heidi at Red Letter Quilts Sponsoring “OMG A Monthly Goal”. The challenge is to complete a project in one month! Amazing how when you do set a goal you find the ways and means to meet it. This very morning I was up at 5:30 a.m. sewing on the binding and label, the final finishes. Since signing up for the challenge in the first week of February I found a bit of time to free motion quilt almost every day. I have other deadlines (business ones) so I had to find the extra time. Some days it may have been during a break from working on my client’s/employer’s accounting and administrative duties or taking about 30 minutes after working and before dinner to work on it. The biggest chunks of time free motion quilting was done on Sunday afternoons. Confession time – I gave up a lot of facebook time too!!

So to complete February’s quilting project I had to quilt it, bind it and label it, the Heart Swap Block Quilt. We, we being the members of Quilters Passion on Eons, began sewing our 8” blocks in November 2010. The quilt top has been sewn together since 2011, and now completing the quilt in February 2016 has taken over 5 ½ years to finish it. I used an edge to edge design, Covey Stipple created by Mary M. Covey’s collection from “Follow-the Line Quilting Designs” volume 3. It is a 9” border design. I outlined the design on Golden Threads paper and cut enough sheets to cover the size of the quilt. Using the outlined sheet I stacked the other 7 sheets and sewed without using thread in the machine to punch the design in each of them. I hung them on a hangar and pulled a sheet as needed.

I love how the quilt looks with this large size meandering stitch! It has a lot of nice curves and apostrophes that flow. 

The upside of using the Covey Stipple design is that the size is consistent.  I was able to quilt it quicker since it was a larger design. I have a tendency to get too detail when free motion quilting. I am using my domestic Janome Quilters Companion sewing machine which is not a long arm machine.

The downside is tearing away the Golden Threads paper. I used a pair of tweezers to get at some of the tiny pieces that were lodged in with the stitching. Also, my floor was covered in bits of paper and my waste basket needed to be consistently emptied. Would I use the Golden Threads paper again? Yes! because the amount of time to quilt it was reduced significantly!

Here is a close up picture of the block that I made. I love this block pattern!! It was a paper piece pattern.

Partying at:
My Quilt Infatuation
TGIFF - Finish
Crazy Mom Quilts 
Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River


Thank you for visiting and wishing you a great sewing or quilting day!

Taking the Plunge - OMG Monthly Goal

Red Letter Quilts is hosting a Linky Party - OMG One Monthly Goal

Oh how I need something to keep me motivated in order to complete existing projects. OMG fits the bill!

 February will be the first month for me to join OMG and commit to finishing a quilting monthly. I aim to complete my Heart Swap Quilt. Oh what Fun!, and in February where hearts and Valentine's Day go together.

I received the wonderful heart blocks in a group block swap in 2011, and pieced the quilt top in  2012. September 2015 I pieced the backing while at a quilt retreat, and in December 2015 sandwiched the quilt. Also in December, I started the quilt design pattern drawing it on Golden Threads paper. It is a panorama border to border design. Since I ran out of Golden Threads paper the project was held up waiting for the delivery of my order. In the meantime I pieced together my Red Work Winter Twitterings flimsy.

The quilt size is 70 inches x 70 inches with 36 blocks and two borders.

 Wish me well!!  If you need a push or shove to get yourself motivated be sure to connect with Red Letter Quilts. Today is the last day to describe your monthly project. Whew! I noticed it on the last day.

Thank you for visiting and wishing you a great sewing or quilting day!

Winter Twitterings

 
Red and white quilts have always been one of my favorites. And as history would have it, red and white quilts has been a favorite for many others through out the years.  Redwork Winter Twitterings, designed by Pearl Louise Krach, is a pattern that sang to me. The Red Work embroidery designs I followed, but the end design of putting the quilt together has been altered.The most dramatic changes to the pattern are the diamond borders in the center and the square in the square border. Also each red work design was bordered with white on white fabric, a fat quarters bundle that I purchased in Lancaster, PA while on  quilt retreat. Actually most of the red fabric used was purchased in a quilt shop there too. Having added the borders to each Red Work block increased the size of the quilt. Electric quilt assisted me in sizing the square in the square border to fit, as well as the outer border.



















I love the final border with stars and connector blocks. I think the border took the longest to make than the whole quilt itself. Surely my seam ripper got a good work out. I would say 98% of the points didn't get chopped off, but there were a couple where I said "Good Enough" after many attempts of fixing.



Many camera shots added a yellow cast to the white portions of the quilt. The first two pictures are the best ones for showing the actual colors as they appear in person.











Mr. Snowman dressed in his finest with the love of twittering birds, warm scarf, and holly adorned hat with snow on top.

Another camera shot with the quilt on the fence. It was cold outside today but no snow.










Linking up with:

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
My Quilt Infatuation
Lets Bee Social 
Esther's Quilt Blog: WOW 
Linky Tuesday - Free Motion by the River

Thank you for visiting and wishing you a great sewing or quilting day!

January 2016 Musings

January was an extremely busy month mostly due to my accounting business. My clients are non-profit organizations and donors need their annual contribution statements in order to deduct for their tax filing. Also, like any other business payroll tax payments and reports are due along with Independent Contractor 1099s.

So what does that have to do with quilting you might ask?

Nothing! But I am surprised at myself that I have accomplished much on the Red Work Twitterings quilt with my crazy busyness. It isn't finished yet, but it is on the home stretch of being completed. 

The Red Work blocks were made a couple of years ago just waiting to be made up into a quilt. They had been on the design board for about the same amount of time. Inspiration to begin came when having to wait for Golden Threads to arrive in the mail to be used for a recently sandwiched quilt. I wanted to keep the momentum up of completing several of my long overdo UFOs. The Golden Threads paper has arrived but the pinned quilt is still hanging down over the stair rails while I complete the borders on the Red Work Twitterings quilt.

The last four stars are finished, and now the in between blocks need to be cut, sewn and added to complete the third border. I am getting excited!

I have been working on this quilt during the evenings after long days working, many of those days beginning at 4:00 - 5:00 a.m. in the morning and finishing up anywhere between 5:00 - 6:00 p.m. each day. I set up my traveling sewing machine in the bonus room so I can spend the evening with my husband. Sewing helps me to decompress after those long days. We received a gift of Apple TV from my son for Christmas and we have been watching Netflix shows while I sew the evening away. It is so relaxing!


 





Here is a picture with the first 2 borders. I am so pleased how the quilt is shaping up. It will be used as a wall hanging during the winter season.

For closeups of each block go to Pinterest and look for the pins labeled Joanie's Quilts.

 Winter weather with snow and ice made the days perfect for sewing. Though we didn't have the amount of snow that many had throughout the US we were shut down for several days due to ice.


My Cassie didn't care much for the cold ice on her little paws. She was quite stubborn about going outside and had to coax her to make her do what she needed to do. It was like having a three year old.

 I changed my office/quilting studio around again. For the longest time, well over a year to be exact, I had been trying to figure how best to position two large pieces of furniture in my rather small room and be able to looks out the window. The computer screens were blocking my view. Finally one day Mike looked around and said,  "Put your desk over there in the corner." It has been the best set up. By day my quilting table becomes a great place to organize my clients papers, notebooks and files and with easy access from my desk.

Did you notice my quilt hangings on the wall?

  
I now have a nice pathway from my desk to the printer without bumping into the corner of my quilting table. And I can use the backside of my quilting table for organizing business papers by day. Every evening I clear the business files and papers and my quilting table is free to be used for a cutting table or free motion quilting.











 So there you have it my January 2016 quilting journey.



Thank you for visiting and wishing you a great sewing or quilting day!

Drum Roll Please!

Presenting Scrappy Kelly!

Scrappy Kelly has found a new home hanging over the back of a chair in our den. In a distance the many colors surrounded by green and cream sashing shine. I love walking down the upstairs hall way seeing all the colorful 2 inch squares pop out.  

The quilting design is sections of squares with a floral motif inside each. Since it wasn't a continuous design it took much longer to free motion quilt it. Next quilt I will be choosing a continuous quilting design! Scrappy Kelly washed nicely and now has that  wonderful crinkly look. The Shout Color Catcher did its job too. The color catchers as you can imagine picked up a lot of green dye.

The backing is made up of the same green fabric used in the sashing and binding.

Thank you for visiting and wishing you a great sewing or quilting day!

Linking up with Quilting is more fun than housework - Oh! Scrap

Quilt Retreat Fun, Accomplishments and More

Hello! So happy you have stopped by. Messages have been sporadic but at least I have been blogging once a month. Summer is past and Fall has arrived, children (not mine) are back in school and the weather has slightly cooled, but not much in Charlotte. Where has the time gone?

Fortunately, my work schedule slowed in September making it possible to go to a much looking forward Quilt Retreat with quilting friends. Some of us only see each once a year, others more often as they live close. We came from Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and North Carolina. There were 9 of us. Our quilt retreat was held in Mt. Washington, Kentucky where we stayed in a home that was designed for quilt retreats.

Some of us drove and some came by airfare. We are a diverse group, but the one thing we have in common is we love to make quilts. As different as we are in personality so are our quilting styles and preferences. Our show and tell was amazing seeing the display of quilts and other quilty items. Creativity and quilt making experience in this group abounds. We learn so much from each other.


Did I mention that we had fun! Laughter rang out often! I can't remember laughing so much! And of course we sewed, quilted, ate very well (chocolate was plentiful), and visited local quilt shops.








Yes, though we did many other things like talking, eating and shopping I did finish everything that I had intended to complete. The funny side of this is I took what I had planned to finish at last year's quilt retreat to this year's retreat. Nothing exciting, but I am thrilled that I made progress. I was proud of myself keeping to my focus on completing started projects. That being said, I pieced two quilt backs - one was 82" x 82 " and the other was 84" x 78" large bed size quilts.

And!! the bindings to go along with those quilt backs! Yes! I am pleased. Not only did I complete those quilt backs, I completed marking up a quilt for free motion quilting. That took up most of my time. I used 5 EZ International blue washable marking pens and a stencil that I had on hand. Using the stencil will help me not to quilt so densely, a tendency of mine. Less quilting makes a quilt more cuddly, softer and easier to snuggle under.

Today I could pick up quilting the "Kelly Scrappy Quilt" without stopping to mark up the next block.

Quilt back #1 doesn't show all the piecing on the top and bottom. It has  3 inch yellow strips top and bottom. The fabric was leftover from the quilt blocks used in the quilt top. It took many pieces and segments to get the size needed. Lot of math happened in order to make it work. The sun was positioned low that it gave an interesting shadow of the tree on the fabric.

Quilt Back 2

Quilt back #2 is made up of 2 shades of pink. The sun was such that I had a difficult time capturing the light pink. It is a bit darker than what shows in this picture. I had plenty of fabric length so this quilt back went together rather quickly as compared to the other one.

So what is a quilt retreat with out visiting the local quilt shoppes?  I did buy a couple of things. . .  not much as I am trying to limit the number of new projects. But how could I resist? Ellen shared a Mini quilt pattern which was perfect to make with some of the leftover time. As it would be I was too tired to start a block with 64 pieces for a 12" block. Once home, I took the pattern and recreated it on Electric Quilt so I could make it as a paper piece project to work on while watching tv with my husband. I am using Moda Winter's Song Charms and Mini Charms. The red fabric with stars is a pretty Christmas fabric which is not part of the Winter's Song line.

At one of the quilt shoppes we visited I saw this Christmas tree made up. It was love at first sight and I had to have it. It is almost ceiling to floor in length. . .  a big tree. Hopefully, I will get it made up and it will be our Christmas tree in our bonus room. It has miniquilt blocks for decorations, each hanging on a red button. So cute!













The quilt retreat was 5 days including traveling days! My husband and sweet Cassie missed me! The following morning preparing to run errands Miss Cassie saw that I had shoes on my feet and my shoulder bag began continuously and adamantly barking in a very husky tone letting me know she wasn't happy about my leaving. I had to take her with me. Hope you enjoyed reading about my quilt retreat escapades.




Thank you for visiting and wishing you a great sewing or quilting day!

And How Does Your Garden Grow While Quilting?

Impatiens have always done well in my shade garden, receiving enough dancing sunlight during the day to bloom. I enjoy watching them grow until they mound and fall out of the basket. Hummingbirds are tantalized by the bright fuchsia pink flowers.

I love this woven like cement basket planter. The moss growing unevenly on it gives the appearance of antiquity and adds character. I found this gem at the local flea market for a song.

Expecting another year of rabbit invasion I raised all planters, but there has been fewer of those pesky rascals this year.

























If you look closely at the bottom of this photo this stacked planter has been raised by sitting on 4 stepping stones, another means to safeguard my precious flowers from those darn plant eating rabbits.



My clay pot is chipping away in pieces. I am not sure as to why layers are falling off.

   

Can you tell the effects of warring with the rabbits last year has had on my garden design?   

This year the struggle has been drought. I have lost an apple tree, a holly bush and 2 large size elm trees due to the extreme hot weather. 

How do you like my blue bottle arrangement?

That is a rosemary branch that is hiding the pedestal planter. All one needs to do is brush beside the rosemary to take in the fresh aroma of the herb.

My friend and shadow enjoys taking in the scenery and watching the critters. Fortunately the critter population doesn't include rabbits. Cassie would attempt to chase after them, but she doesn't move as fast as she once did having gone through meniscus surgery on her leg.

 Every garden needs a bird bath!

 So while my garden grows, and if  time is available, or I am not too tired I quilt. My tendency is to quilt heavily but not on the Scrappy Kelly Quilt. The quilting design is a dogwood flower.

 
Thank you for visiting and wishing you a great sewing or quilting day!