Reflections, Looking Forward and First Flimsy of the Year!

The first week of the new year is behind us, and I've read the many recent blog posts featuring a recap of the last year's quilty accomplishments. I dithered a bit about whether to create a similar post.  I finally decided a brief summary would take care of it, and anyone wishing to see photos of all the 2018 finishes will find all of them under the page titled 2015 and Later, the most recent year being at the top when you click on that page.  Here are just three of my favorite finishes for the year.

"Tutti Frutti" donated to local Christian camp benefit auction

"Lines and Boxes" donated to local Christian camp benefit auction

"Autumn Oaks" to be gifted to a family member 

In all I finished 18 quilts during 2018, including 10 donation quilts (3 of which were pieced/appliqued by another quilter and I completed the machine quilting and binding).  In addition were five mini/small quilts (one gifted) and three larger throw or queen size quilts that either have already been or will be gifted.  I also plodded along with the hand quilting on one queen and one king size quilt, hopefully to be finished this year!

I will admit that by the end of August after completing the 10 donation quilts I had pretty much reached burn-out stage, but having the final few months to work on personal (fun) projects  was really rejuvenating.  It's something I want to pursue more of in the new year, and less of the deadline quilting!  Of course there will be some donation quilts for our quilt ministry, but not likely as many as last year.  Sometimes, though it hurts to even admit it to myself, getting older often means a bit of slowing down is a necessary part of the process, as I found out after my recent cataract surgeries.

So, for the new year, it is one day at a time, working on projects I love, and maybe even letting go of some that in all likelihood will never be finished.  More hand quilting, and hopefully getting at least one quilt on the Grace frame found at last September's auction.  I'm also planning to participate in Lori's (Humble Quilts) Stringalong 2019 and also Wendy's (Constant Quilter) mini challenge. Sure hope I can keep up!

A First Flimsy was promised in the post title, and here it is!  A couple years ago my blogging friend Janet of Rogue Quilter sent along a sweet package of small tumblers, which have been waiting for just the right time to begin piecing.  Over the holidays I began piecing them as leaders/enders while working on a couple other projects.  A few evenings ago I decided to just get on with it and get a little top made.  Here they are with rows numbered awaiting final assembly.

The dilemma became how do I add a border without overwhelming this with one of the same colors already in abundance?  Searching the bins, scraps and fat quarter I finally came up with two borders.  I knew as soon as I spotted that small dark purple scrap that it just had to be part of this little quilt, and it took every bit of the scrap for the outer border. 

And though this quilt is small, it's speaking with a mighty voice, demanding to be hand quilted, so it will take its place in the hand quilting line-up, hopefully to appear again as soon as the big basket quilt comes out of the hoop.  Which I'm hoping will happen sometime before ... Easter ... maybe?
Thanks Janet for these sweet tumblers, I had a great time working on this little project!  What a great way to start the new year.

Rockwell Christmas Quilts finished!

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I finished stitching down the binding on these two vintage panel quilts, destined for my son and daughter's families.    After all the years waiting in my Christmas fabric totes and who-knows-how-many years before I acquired them, they are finally about to go to their new homes!

The red

and the green

That vintage red poinsettia yardage had served as our 'tree skirt' for several years and has been washed and dried several times, but you know the story - it bled, just a little - into two of the corner blocks of the first quilt - sigh!  Thankfully though, there is absolutely no pink/red staining in either of the white panel backgrounds or the other corner blocks! 

Two quick and easy gift quilts that ate up a lot of yardage that had been hanging around here for far too long.  Here is a close-up of the quilting and corner blocks for the green quilt.

Working on a few more easy stitching projects for Christmas gifting.  Easy sewing is about all I can do until my appointment for new prescription glasses which will likely take another three weeks or so.

November OMG "Sajou" is a Finish!

Last week, between cataract surgeries, I finished the hand quilting and binding for Sajou, my Humble Quilts little quilt-along for this fall and my mini for November.

After attempting photos on a couple different gray days, this was the best I could do.  Hopefully the hand quilting will show up just a bit on at least one of these.  I did ditch quilt the major sashing and border seams by machine, and then hand quilted the rest.

I'll be linking up with Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal - November Finish  when the linky party goes live at the end of the month.  Now to find a good place to display this little gem.   Thanks again Lori for a fun quilt-along!

An October Mini

I've been collecting bits of 1930s fabrics for quite a few years, collecting fat quarters, yard sale finds, gifts from quilty friends, and even purchased some 2-yard pieces a few years back with the intention of making some aprons.  Have never used any of them, until this month.  There's a little pre-holiday gathering coming up in mid-November that required a hand-made gift.   Browsing some of my older quilting magazines I spotted this, on the very last page of the Spring 2012 issue of Quilt Sampler, designed by Leslie Main.

This looked like fun and completely doable, even noting all those miniscule triangles.  I'm sure you can't miss them - the entire quilt measures a whole 18 inches square.  I thought some of my 1930s repros would make for a fun version, and after several evenings of cutting, piecing, and more cutting and piecing, I had this, all pinned and ready for quilting.

Love this backing fabric

I quilted it pretty much as shown in the inspiration piece, and attempted one of my machine's embroidery stitches in the outer green border.  I used two strands of fairly closely matched 50 wt. Aurifil through the needle to do that part of the stitching.  Had to switch from my usual microtex 70/10 needle to a universal 80/12 in order to get two strands through the eye, but it worked well, and I think there is a little better definition to the stitching, though my green threads matched the green fabrics a bit too closely and the stitching isn't as defined as I'd like.  It shows up best on this fabric:

All finished and bound and ready for gifting. 

It's another dreary, rainy day as we're getting the last remnants of Hurricane Willa (or was it William?) this weekend.  Thankfully not snow, at least not yet, that's coming tonight and tomorrow.  The creek is flooding and by tomorrow the basement will be too.  So, with all the dreariness I played around with a couple new-to-me filters while editing the photos, and will continue the amusement by planning borders for two Norman Rockwell Christmas panels that I'm finally getting around to quilting, hopefully in time for a some family gifts this season.   Oh yes, there's a baby quilt to plan too!

"Icarus" filter

"Sunscreen" filter

"Zeke" filter

I'm easily amused on a rainy day!   I hope you all are having a beautiful warm sunfilled fall day!

Autumn Oaks is Finished!

So happy to have this one in the finished pile, sans label but I'll get to that this week. Warning photo-heavy post coming up!

There was one morning last week that dawned bright and clear, and COLD, with early morning temps in the low 20s. But if I was going to get any outside photos that was the morning! So, shall we venture out the back door?  Please say yes!

Standing in for our lack of colorful foliage this fall, due to all the rain I suppose. We were fortunate enough to find beautiful huge mums at our local supermarket for only $5.  Pumpkins were from our garden, and the little sugar pumpkins were all from one volunteer plant that showed up among the green beans.  Yay for homemade pumpkin pies (and quilt holder-uppers)!

By the time I got outside the temperature had risen to a balmy 35 degrees and the frost had mostly left the lawn.

Behind the barn

Back inside at one of my usual spots for photographing quilts.  I like the outside shots better this time.

A closer look at some of the quilting.  You might be able to see the quilting better in this next photo of the back.

This quilt finished at about 90x90 inches, and the pattern can be found in the Fall 2010 issue of Quilt Sampler.  So now it's on to wash and fluff, and set aside in the blanket chest awaiting a special day in the (hopefully near) future as this one is slated to be a wedding gift.  It had been nagging on me since beginning the applique and piecing over three years ago, wanting to be finished before I get too old to be working on quilts this big!  Have I mentioned recently that there are two king and one queen size waiting in the wings - all hand quilted?
All in due time.

We had our second snow last night, only a trace here in our valley, but several inches just a couple hundred feet up the hillsides.  Two quilts on the bed now, with a third folded and waiting in the wings for those really cold nights coming all too soon!

A happy Monday to you all!

A Second September Mini

It's been a good month for finishing up a few mini and small quilts!  This mini is the second in my "Pieced from Lois's Scraps" series.  The first is yet to be quilted, maybe October will see that one finished.

It finished at 16 inches more or less square, after trimming.  An interesting observation, I usually use a square hoop for hand quilting, but in this case used an older round one since my square hoops are too large for this little quilt.  Generally I haven't had to square up a hand quilted project but the edges of this one were seriously distorted after the quilting.  I ended up trimming a good quarter inch or so on each side to square it up as best I could. 

Trying to find an angle to show the quilting a bit better

The backing is another vintage fabric, the texture of the base fabric looks and feels much like the feedsack I used on the back of Palmateer Point, though in this case the printed flower/dot design appears to be some sort of paint?  I wasn't able to needle through those printed flowers as they were just thick enough that the tiny #10 between needle would veer off to the side everytime it came in contact with them.  It would be interesting to know exactly how the design was printed and what that material is.

This fabric was in the same bundle of feedsack and vintage fabrics I had found at an estate sale back in Oregon.  In its most recent life it had been made into a cafe curtain, with rod pocket and nicely (machine) stitched hem.

This will be my last finish for September, as tomorrow will be taken up preparing for our quilt ministry's second quilt show at the annual fall harvest festival held across the road from the church at the old grange hall grounds.  With all the cool rainy weather we've been having I'm happy that our show will be inside the church building.    I hope to have some photos to share early next week.  

Palmateer Point - Finished at Last!

My latest finish, with the final binding stitch added at 10 p.m. yesterday, is Palmateer Point, the fall 2017 quilt-along hosted by Lori at Humble Quilts.   Though the top was completed last fall, it didn't find its way into my quilting hoop until the heat and humidity this summer prevented hand quilting anything larger in our un-air-conditioned farmhouse.  Without further ado, the finish!

Linking up as my second entry in the Bloggers Quilt Festival, Fall 2018 Edition, hosted by Amy Ellis.  Thanks Amy for your time and effort in providing bloggers a way to meet other bloggers and show off a finish or two each year! 

This little finish measures 32 inches square, and was hand quilted over the past month.  A closer view of the quilting and that buttery yellow border, which made me love this quilt again after not being very thrilled with my choice of the pink and white diagonal units. 

A few years ago I found several feedsacks at an estate sale that have been sitting in a drawer ever since.  I've decided to make use of them as backings for small quilts.  This is the first one to be included as a backing.

This was a developing mash feedsack from the Triangle company, and about as soft and easy to quilt as any fabric I've found.  Here's a closer look at the faded emblem on the sack.

Thanks for visiting my little blog, and I hope you'll use the link near the top of this post to see the other quilts being featured in the Bloggers Quilt Festival!

It's Bloggers Quilt Festival Time Again!

Each year the wonderful Amy of AmysCreativeSide.com sponsors a Bloggers Quilt Festival and this year's festival began today and runs for an entire week.  It's a fabulous show and tell, and a chance to meet new quilters along the way!

My first entry is my recently completed Menorah mini quilt, which actually started out as a practice piece during the 2012 Freemotion Quilting Challenge hosted by SewCalGal.  Somewhere along the line I became a bit discouraged with my effort and it was tossed into the pile of FMQ practice pieces, most of which became kitty quilts at some point.  This one languished in the closet, was packed up and moved across country in 2014, moved again in 2015, and remained sequestered in a dark corner until a couple weeks ago. 

When it emerged into the light of day I thought 'hey, this isn't THAT bad' and decided to finish it up.  Funny how that happens isn't it?  So one more day of quilting the radiating lines around the central area, squaring up and binding attached, here is my completed mini, measuring about 11 inches square.

And the original inspiration for my mini, a concrete garden plaque we found in Oregon a number of years ago.  It hung on the front of our garden shed there, and while it has yet to find a permanent home here, I'm hoping to get it hung soon. 

I hope you'll visit the Bloggers Quilt Festival and enjoy all the other beautiful creations.   I hope to be back tomorrow with my newest finish, just as soon as the last stitch is put in the binding.  See you then!

"Menorah" - a September mini finish

Years ago when we lived in Oregon, we would drive by a garden shop on our way home from work.  We both spied a large nearly 4 foot high ceramic pot that we thought would look great by our front deck.  You've seen that pot in many previous posts with finished quilts draped over it.

While my husband and the shopkeeper were loading said pot onto the back of the pickup, I wandered to the rear of the shop and spotted a concrete cast Menorah that spoke to us, and it also came home to grace the front wall of our garden shed for a number of years.

While we haven't gotten around (yet) to hanging it here, I got it out of the garage this morning so we could take a new photo.

Back in 2012 during the year-long FMQ Challenge hosted by SewCalGal I had the idea of trying to create a quilted version of this piece.  Although I can't recall now how I did it, I managed to sketch a slightly smaller edition of the design and began attempting to freemotion quilt it, and tried a bit of threadpainting.  At some point it was tossed aside, then in 2014 we moved cross country and in early 2015 moved again to our current home.  After coming home from last weekend's auction and starting a little hoe-out of the sewing room, it was rediscovered in a back corner of the closet along with five or six other unfinished practice pieces.  I just couldn't toss it back in the closet and decided to finish it, and here is my September mini (the first completed mini of the year).

It could probably use more quilting in the menorah background, but done is also feeling very good!  I added the radiating lines on Monday, squared it up and found some batik binding that I hoped would compliment the golden light background quilting on the piece.  The finished quilt is about 11-1/2 inches square.

So fun to have this one finished at last!

OMG - Finally Finished!

It appears I've been on an unintended blogging break, not unlike many others this August.  Where did the month go??  Lots of produce coming into the kitchen every day, awaiting canning and freezing.  That and finishing up and organizing the ministry's donations for this weekend's auction have taken up the entire month.

All across quilty blogland folks post about reaching their OMG - one monthly goal.  I don't even know who started this, but it makes sense, set a goal at the beginning of the month and then actually achieve it.  And I finally did - this month - though there's still today and tomorrow to try to complete my second goal.  We'll soon see ...

Well over a year ago Jocelyn of Happy Cottage Quilter donated several tops along with fabric to back two of them to our little quilt ministry.  All but one had been previously completed and gifted to deserving folks, I think most of them went to families who had lost their homes in fires.  This last one, a sweet sampler top I saved to quilt over the summer, and tada, today it is officially finished, and going through its first wash/dry as I write.

Simply quilted with mostly easy flower and leaf motifs, enough to hold the layers together but still leaving the quilt soft and snuggly.  After its wash and fluff, it measures 49x62 inches, a nice throw size.

A favorite block, and my first attempt at Lori Kennedy's Wheat Braid motif in the vertical sashings.  A very fun motif to quilt, though mine don't (yet) look like Lori's examples!

I've set aside the last 4 months of this year to work on personal quilts after an 8 month marathon of donation finishes.  Still one more day after today to complete one last donation flimsy and set it aside for quilting next year.  That's my second OMG hopeful for this month!

Starshine - An August Finish!

It's another collaboration, fifteen Ohio Star blocks were donated to our Quilt Ministry, another member made a 16th block, sashed and bordered this lap or throw size quilt.  I pieced the back from some sweet vintage garden themed yardage in my stash, quilted and bound this one, again destined for the Labor Day weekend benefit auction.

The yard is again soaking wet from an early morning downpour, though I seem to have caught the few rays of sunshine we've had in some of the following indoor shots.  Here it is fresh from its spa treatment in the washer and dryer.

This quilt was 60x60 inches when I began quilting it, but after quilting, binding and a cold water rinse and drying on very low heat it's now barely 55-1/2 inches square.  That is probably the highest rate of shrinkage I've ever seen in one of my quilts, I'm guessing because of the matchstick quilting surrounding the stars.

The sashing and cornerstones Lois added between the Ohio Star blocks created a nice Shoofly block secondary pattern.

A close-up of the back shows the quilting a little better, and also shows the simple border quilting.

I drew most of the quilting designs freehand with a blue washout marker, and used one of my kleenex box circle templates to draw the curves in the border.  Nothing fancy but it gets the job done.

Needing to give my wrist a rest for a day or two before I get back to (hopefully) the last throw quilt for the auction.  Meanwhile there's a bit of play happening on the design wall as I discovered another grocery bag of Lois's scraps in one of our ministry totes yesterday.  Seven completed blocks and lots more strips cut.  Wondering why I never seem to get around to starting a new project from my own yardage totes, only scraps.  How does that happen anyway???

More soon!

P.S.  Yes, I'm aware of the 'humility block' in this finish!  Because I know most of you will see it right off!  It was discovered when we were sandwiching the quilt and we decided to just leave that little quirk right where it was!   Call it character.