Rounding Out the Year with a Mini

 I finally have finished Janet's (Rogue Quilter) fall challenge to take a baggie of saved scraps and turn them into a mini quilt by the end of the year.  I finally located the photo taken of the actual baggie and contents, leftover mini tumbler blocks Janet had sent to me several years ago along with some miscellaneous mini charms that I cut into more tumblers.  

Here is the original mini made with the majority of Janet's tumblers a couple years ago.

And here is the latest mini, just completed last evening:

Janet's "rules" for this baggie challenge included allowing for one additional fabric plus one "neutral" to be added to our baggie's contents.  My "neutral" in this case just happens to be the blue stop border.  This little quilt just wasn't having any of the more traditional neutrals - cream, tan, light gray, etc.   The blue turned out to be perfect, though with less than a fat quarter it was a challenge to create a narrow binding, most of the binding strips were 9-11 inches long - 83 total inches needed.

A piece of blue that has been in the stash for quite a few years was used for the back.

A big thank you to Wendy at The Constant Quilter for rounding up the mini-makers each month, and to Janet for issuing this "baggie challenge."  There are more baggies  and swiffer boxes of scrappy pieces to keep me "challenged" for another year at least!

Wishing you all a new year filled with faith, love, peace, and good health.

Winter Solstice

Today was clear and sunny, and our latest dusting of snow has disappeared.  The five little Christmas table toppers were completed over the weekend, three have already been gifted, the remaining two will be on their way Christmas Day.  A few photos:

All are minimally machine quilted, stitch in the ditch, just enough to hold them together.  So many project, so little time ...

This was a fun little project that used up a lot of 3-1/2 inch scrappy pieces.  

Today is the winter solstice and I've been busy working on my monthly mini, aka Janet's Baggie Challenge.  And I'll leave you with two burning questions:  Is blue a neutral?  and When your quilt screams "NO" do you listen?

Another baby quilt finish

 The baby quilt for the preemie is now finished and ready for gifting when I next see his great-aunt at church.  

I'm rather happy with how this design turned out, kind of modernish but the fabrics give it an old-fashioned vibe.  The quilt is backed and bound with an all-over print of happy children's faces, and you might notice there's a holiday theme involved, which I hadn't noticed for the longest time.  Funny how you can only see one aspect of a fabric, and completely miss the actual theme!   I chose to focus on the smiling faces, and suspect baby will too.

All of the fabrics came from our quilt ministry stash, and a couple readers may recognize some of them, having sent them from New Orleans and California - thanks again Angie and Lynn!

Happily we've had a few sunny days this week, though winter seems to be breathing down our necks with snowy days forecast for the weekend and well into next week.  Our immediate area is forecast to receive upwards of 5-6 inches - yuck.  The autumn oaks are fast losing their remaining leaves, and the larch trees, the last to show color around here, are turning a soft yellow.  

Another family of squirrels invasion, this time of the holiday sort, thanks to Marie at Quilt Bee blog, in the form of Christmas themed table toppers.  She indicated she had seen one on Pinterest.   Here's my first one under construction, awaiting borders

which I'll add later today

Easy-peasy, and will be perfect for a few of those little gifts we all want to have on hand for the season, or for our own use.  I'll make a couple more with the traditional red and green holiday fabrics, but also planning to try a version using some blues with white.  I'll mention here that those folded corners for the stars are SO easy using Doug Leko's Simple Folded Corners Ruler, and so much faster than drawing lines on squares before stitching.  No affiliation, just a happy user.   

Til next time, happy stitching!

Another Finish - or not

 Yesterday the sun finally showed its face again and I was able to take a few photos of the latest finish, the Black and White Triangles quilt.  It needs a better name than that, please chime in with something that seems fitting as my mind is blank!

Not sure why but this quilt is incredibly heavy considering the large piecing, the usual 80/20 Hobbs Heirloom cotton/poly batting, and a one-piece wide backing.  I should have weighed that backing fabric I guess.  It will be a warm one for sure.

I machine quilted it with double lines across each triangle edge, but thinking it might need more.  When my two big hand quilting projects are finally completed I might just get this back out and do some big stitch hand quilted circles in the middle of each triangle.  What do you think?  It is perfectly usable as it is now, and can be pressed into service when the grands come for their next overnight stay in the meantime.  So maybe it's finished and maybe not ...

The backing.  And here is a warning - I ordered this one from a well-known company, it "should" have been plenty large enough for this 80x80 inch quilt.  But, rather than the advertised 108" width the fabric was barely 100 inches in width, and it had been cut 'straight' as it was folded on the bolt, but in fact I lost a good 18 inches of length due to its not being on grain when it was folded right off the loom.   So, when layering and pinning the top, I had to angle it rather than having the backing straight across.  Thankfully it appears fairly straight now that the quilting and binding are finished and it has gone through its first wash.  

As usual my four-legged buddy accompanied me as we wandered around the yard for a few more shots. I think he's learned the art of posing for quilt photos!

Today was the last nice day before our next round of dreary rainy days and colder nights.  Weather forecasters are calling for snow flurries in the higher elevations Saturday and Sunday night. We've had very little fall colors here, many trees just dropped their leaves without changing color at all, others turned brown rather than the typical bright reds, yellows and bronzes.  

Last fall we had bought a bundle of three ears of Indian corn to hang next to the back door on the covered porch.  They stayed there all winter and into late planting season this spring.  Hubby decided to try an experiment and planted a row of the kernels along with some sunflowers along the garden fence.  Well, the sunflowers grew tall but the Indian corn grew taller, with some stalks reaching at least 12 feet high, a couple might have reached 13-14 feet!  The leaves were huge too.  And the stalks bore ears of corn which we eagerly awaited to see if they would have the wonderful colors of the parent kernels.  Checked a few ears in early September and were disappointed to see only whitish  kernels at the top of the ears we tested.  Hubby cooked a couple of those ears and tried eating them - very starchy!  But today, lo and behold, some of the ears yielded pure gold!  What a happy surprise, kind of like opening gifts on Christmas morning.  These are our fall colors blessing this year!

Glistening like agates just tossed by the waves onto a beach .

I only opened four ears today, there are more waiting in the wheelbarrow to husk on another day. Some are quite small and probably won't yield much,  but we're delighted with these and if we can get the kernels planted earlier next year, we may get a much better harvest to share and decorate the porch next fall.

And I'll leave you with the latest photo of Sammy in his favorite napping spot in the 'tent' created under the hoop stand holding my Quilty 365.

Til next time, happy stitching!

One Down and Three to Go!

 "Lady Sings the Blues" is now in the finished column!   This is the quilt slated for gifting to a birthday girl in late November.  So happy to have it completed!

I've been waiting for a nice sunny day to photograph it properly, and it looked like the skies were finally clearing mid-morning.  Though by the time I gathered up the quilt, clothes pins and camera, the skies were again cloudy, which has been our pattern of late.  When it isn't raining that is.  But still, it turned out to be a pretty good day for photographs.

A lot of stencils were used in this quilt for the free motion portion.  All marked with Crayola Ultra-Washable markers, which I've never had an issue with, until this quilt.  After it's first pre-wash bath in plain cold water I took it out to be sure the markings were removed and was horrified to find pink bleeding on the tannish backgrounds of several of the basket blocks.  And this was supposed to be a gift quilt!  The blocks with the creamier background fabric shed the marker with no problem.  Another rinse, the pink remained although slightly lighter.  A third wash with Synthrapol and warm water removed nearly all of the pink leaving only the faintest hint that probably no one else would even notice, but since I knew it was still there ... sigh.  The only thing that comes to mind is that my friend who gave me the pieced blocks (her rejects after making a quilt of the same kit fabrics) never prewashes her fabrics. Perhaps the finish on that one fabric held the color from the washable markers, though I don't know for a fact.  Anyhow, a fourth clear water rinse/dry after the outside photography seems to have removed the remaining pink, for which I'm really thankful!

I hand quilted the baskets with Aurifil 12 wt. thread, while the remainder of the quilt was machine quilted with Aurfil 50 wt.  I like the hand quilted details, plus dreaded forcing the machine to quilt into the multiple layers of all those hst seams, and figured the hand quilting "might" go faster with less angst.

The back:

And the so-called "beauty shots"

Our fall colors are slow to appear and seem much more muted this year, though time will tell when this area finally reaches "peak colors."  So a couple of the porch mums were pressed into service.

And here's our Sammy, now one year old, who accompanied me throughout.  He's such a character, into everything and just as sweet as he can be.  

Hide and seek -

Hope all is well in your world.  Now back to quilting!

p.s.  I'm having issues with comments either coming to my email twice, or in some cases not at all. Please forgive me if you don't receive a response in your email.  Maybe blogger will eventually get it right, or maybe go back to a system that actually worked.  Not holding my breath though.

It's Friday and there's a Finish!

 After finishing the baby quilt earlier this month and perusing the bulging closet and general chaos surrounding me, I decided the next big thing needing tackling is the quilt tops awaiting machine quilting. Not to mention the two bed-size hand-quilting projects still currently underway.  So, the "needing machine quilting" tally was 3 bed size and one toddler/young child size quilt.  Then there's another bed size top approaching completion at quilt ministry.  And all the "wanna do" projects list that keeps growing!  I'd really rather start a few new piecing projects than endure the tedium of machine quilting, don't you know!

That said, my nose to the grindstone for the past couple weeks, I finally finished the oldest and largest of the list, the "Lines and Boxes II" quilt, which is nearly a clone of the one finished around three years ago for donation to the annual camp auction.  This is the latest one, which will stay with us as an additional winter quilt when the snow flies.  Shown here on the guest room queen size bed.  It finished at 86x96 inches.  

Quilting this one was more than a tad tedious and hard on the wrists, as it is quilted entirely with diagonal lines, stitched in the ditch on every stinkin' seam!  Or as close to the ditch as my eyes and coordination allowed, lol.

A lot of wonderfully scrappy pieces went into the making of these quilts, both from a few generous donations and my own stash.  My hubby loves the colors and so this will be "his" quilt. 

It has been way too hot and steamy for outside photos, with intermittent thunderstorms and wet ground, so all photos were indoors before the first wash/dry which is happening as I write this. 

Wishing you all a good weekend, and for those in the path of Ida, please be safe!  Til next time, happy stitching!

An Early August Finish

 Another baby quilt finished yesterday.  This one will go to our young neighbors who are expecting a girl next month.  Much happier with this one now that it's quilted with the binding added.  It never ceases to amaze me how the character of a quilt changes with the quilting texture.  Here it is immediately after the binding was added, before its beauty bath with the stencil markings still visible. I've become a huge fan of continuous line stencils for much of my FMQ, especially in sashings and borders, much easier to see what's going on and where to head next.  

No rain today, so we went outside for a few more photos.  

Tried a photo with both the quilt and this gorgeous hydrangea but the bright sunlight washed out the quilt colors.  

In the shade of the maple tree in the front yard. 

And the purple polkadot back, the free motion quilting in the panel squares is more easily visible in these next photos. 

We wandered a bit more before going back inside to prep this morning's blueberry harvest for the freezer.  A few blooming things:

The dog days of August, lol!

And one last photo of the baby quilt across the thrift store rocking chair I found last winter, it reminded me of a photo of myself in a similar chair at my grandparents' farm when I was a toddler.  I painted this one white to more closely resemble the original.

A long time ago:

Have a great day, and don't let the doomsayers destroy your joy!