Bloggers Quilt Festival - A Scrappy Baby Quilt

The Bloggers Quilt Festival is in full swing this week, and I'll start this post by thanking Amy for once again hosting this super-fun event!  I've met so many wonderful quilters over the past few years through this festival, and I'm sure this year will be no different.

If you're like me, when you hear "scrappy quilt" you might think of traditional  dark reds, browns, greens and golds in a star or strippy setting. This would not be that quilt.

This happy baby quilt was made early this past spring for a young woman in our church who was expecting her first daughter who we welcomed in late May. It is composed of 4-1/2 inch squares drawn from my stash and scrap totes. The 1-1/2 inch wide block borders are also from those same scrap totes. I must say this has quickly become my favorite go-to pattern for a quick and easy (and FUN) baby quilt, as the possibilities seem endless - and whose totes/bins/bags of scraps don't seem to be endless!

A frosty early morning photo shoot.

I quilted this on my Janome 7700 domestic machine, quilting in the ditch along each border edge and again around each of the 4-1/2 inch squares, just enough quilting to define the squares yet leave the finished quilt soft and cuddly. The batting is Hobbs Polydown and the quilt was stitched with Aurifil 50 wt. thread. The finished size is 35-1/2 by 41-1/2 inches, small enough for a newborn, and not too large for a toddler to drag around the house.

A closer look

This was a fun, as well as quick and easy quilt to make!

Please check out all the other fabulous entries in the scrappy quilt category and all the other categories of this year's Bloggers Quilt Festival.

Westering Women - Y-Seams and Other Fun Things

Our Westering Women block for August was named for Chimney Rock in far northwest Nebraska along the Oregon Trail.  This seemingly easy appearing block is actually a tough one for many quilters with a multitude of Y-seams.  I've always dreaded avoided blocks with Y-seams but didn't really know what the source of my angst was until fairly recently, when I finally figured out that the issue is spatial dyslexia!  But not wanting to wimp out and choose the supposedly easier substitute version with no Y-seams but a gazillion tiny triangles, once the printer (and operator) finally figured out how to print the templates the proper size, we tackled this block just before supper today.  And, of course, the Y-seams were a piece of cake, but arranging the puzzle pieces with the proper angles facing - not so much!

Anyhoo, after a few minor episodes of frog-stitching, here's the finished block, almost perfectly square and even the right finished size - yay!

And the year's tally to date.

Now, for the real fun part of this post - Kyle Redente of Timeless Reflections blog hosted a blogaversary giveaway a couple weeks back, and I was the lucky winner of one of the prizes - this sweet charm pack of holiday fabrics and a quilt pattern!

Christmas placemats are now on my list of projects for later this year as soon as the two grandbaby quilts are finished and gifted.  This morning I showed the pattern to our quilt ministry group and they are all wanting to try this pattern for some of our comfort quilts! Thank you Kyle!

Another Baby Quilt Started

Yesterday was the first time in almost two months that I had nearly the entire day to spend in the sewing room. Much needed! I've missed my time with the old Singer 301 quietly stitching away, with time to daydream and just unwind from the frenetic pace of late. Today I'll be back in the kitchen again, canning ever-more salsa. The tomatoes are reaching their peak now - late for most parts of the country but here in western New York we're happy just to have the bulk of them ripen before the first frost! We've had an abundant crop this year, so thankful for that as there's almost nothing quite as good as opening a jar of homemade salsa on a January afternoon.

So, yesterday's sewing project was to get a start on another quilt for the new grandbaby. My daughter chose a woodland theme for his nursery, and fell in love with the focus fabric in this quilt. I had exactly one-half yard of this fabric, and every single inch of it was used in the four wide panels. Here's where we are at this writing - the center is completed and the last borders are started but not ready to add to the design wall quite yet.

The colors aren't quite true as it was a dark and dreary evening when these photos were taken.

The pattern named "Ducklets" appeared in a Quilters Newsletter publication last year called Best Kids Quilts. I've modified the pattern somewhat, adding those narrow dark reddish brown strips separating the deer panels from the center block. The strips will make another appearance in the final borders, and I've cut every inch of the half-yard I had of that fabric too!  Funny how these things just work out sometimes.  Hubby's comment on seeing this much of the top "I'll have to get you to make me some targets." Right!

A closer view

I'm dawdling getting started on my Westering Women block this month, but will have to face all those Y-seams eventually!  Maybe next week...

August Quilty 365 and Grandbaby's flimsy

Welcome September and the start of my favorite season of the year!  Cooler days, the harvest season in full swing, the gathering-in of all manner of the season's bounty, crisp clear skies, and the glorious hues of the sugar maples followed by the quieter bronzes of the oak trees, long rides through the countryside -- it just doesn't get better than this.

Grandbaby #8's first quilt top is now complete and awaiting backing and sandwiching, then some time under the needle.  This baby's quilt will be machine quilted since they live in an apartment with shared washer and dryer of unknown quality, and there are also pets in the family who undoubtedly will wrongly assume the quilt is theirs and snuggle into it every chance they get!

I was looking for a simple and graphic design for these fabrics, part of a fat quarter bundle.  I loved the simplicity of this pattern, as it went together quickly in those 10 and 15 minute snatches of time over several days. I found the pattern designed by Vanessa Goertzen in the February/March 2012 issue of McCall's Quick Quilts.

I love the white sashing and border fabric, the texture resembles a beautiful linen.  I hope you can see a bit of the texture in the next photo when it's enlarged.

I believe August 31 marked Day 299 in my Quilty 365 adventure. A little over two more months and the first goal will have been met!  I plan to stop at 366 circles and wait and see if any additional ones will be required to make the quilt top, though right now I'm thinking there may be extras since the plan is to place a narrow sashing around the squares and set them on point.  Haven't had time to do all the math and sketch out this setting option yet.    Anyway, here are the August circles, plus a couple of favorites for the month.

Over the weekend we harvested much of the garden basil and made three big batches of pesto to freeze for the winter months.  I also picked mostof the dillweed, cut and packaged them in freezer bags for our favorite dill bread and dill-mustard sauce for fish.  The tomato canning is in high gear these days, and I find myself wishing there were many extra hands to help with the prepping and processing.  It really has a way of cutting into the quilting time doesn't it?!

I'll be linking up with Audrey at Quilty Folk where other intrepid circlers will soon be posting their progress.

I'll leave you with my favorite tomato pick of the year so far, which alas ended up in a canning jar along with the rest of its less glamorous friends.  I would have taken this one to the county fair had it ripened a month sooner!

Plain and Simple Stitching

With the beginning of the new school year members of our church gather school supplies and prepare school kits that are distributed worldwide by the Mennonite Central Committee to children who might not have the means to purchase these supplies.  They are packed in washable cloth drawstring bags so that the children have a way to keep their school supplies in one place and easily carry them back and forth to school each day.

Yesterday at quilt ministry we cut up a pair of donated tab curtains into ten long rectangles.  The curtains were made of a denim-type fabric, more suited to this purpose than to quilt making.  After cutting and then folding/pressing the edges for the first stitching, the other ladies were working on binding their current projects so I brought the bags home to finish assembling.   Here are the first five, completed last night, minus their drawstring ties.  Another member is bringing her supply of macrame cord and we will string the bags at our next meeting.

Plain and Simple!

The kitchen has been a whirlwind of activity so far this week with the tomatoes ripening at a faster pace than I can keep up. After giving away the first large batch to one daughter who just moved and had no garden this summer, we began canning some for our winter pantry. So far 14 pints of plain stewed tomatoes and 7 1/2 jars of the most wonderful tomato jam. Here's what awaits when I return from my haircut later this morning - today's haul is destined for salsa and we'll try another batch of tomato jam using some of the Lemon Boys.  Thankfully our forecast is for cooler days soon, and I'll be thankful for a cool breeze blowing through the kitchen while we're working on these and the rest of the crop.

The sunflowers are heavy with seeds, some have begun to fall over from the weight, and a small flock of goldfinches have returned to snack on the seeds.  Our sugar pumpkin crop was almost totally decimated by some type of grub, we were only able to salvage three pumpkins from that planting. We also planted a couple varieties of field pumpkins in another field, and after discovering the grub damage in the sugar pumpkin patch also discovered some damage to the others.  All the winter squash are growing alongside the field pumpkins and we feared for that crop, but decided to try setting pieces of aluminum foil under each ripening pumpkin and squash that hadn't already been damaged. Sounds strange I know, but so far it seems to be working as we haven't detected any further grub damage yet.

Catching up with myself .. or trying to!

Good grief, where has August gone?! Seems like summer has barely started and here we are knee deep in ripe tomatoes and green beans whining to be processed every day. Actually, except for the fact that they take away from my precious quilting moments, I love the harvest season and putting up all manner of goodies for the long, cold winter months. So for now, we have put up 8 or 9 jars of mango chutney, about 30 quarts of blueberries from our 6 bushes(!) are in the freezer, a lesser amount of green beans so far, and I'm about to attack the tomato challenge tomorrow. The peppers are finally beginning to perform, and hopefully by next week we will have enough along with the tomatoes to make up a winter's supply of salsa. There's also a luscious sounding tomato jam recipe I'm hankering to make, thanks to some rave reviews by my Oregon quilting buddy Barbara at Cat Patches who posted a link to the recipe she found here.

We've also had lots of overnight guests and kids and grandkids around this summer, plus a wedding in Canada earlier this month, and it's been a good time all around, with the exception of an emergency room visit a couple weeks ago and a couple follow-up appointments now scheduled for the near future. Nothing too serious, thankfully, but it will be good when the offending kidney stone is safely removed and hubby is out of pain and back to his usual cheerful self.

A tiny bit of quilting has even been accomplished in the midst of all the chaos!

I seem to be awash in a flurry of baby quilts these days. First off, our little quilting ministry group has been working on four baby quilts for the newest tiny members of our congregation and one missionary baby recently born in Guatemala. This is the quilt I've been working on, and with only about 5 minutes more stitching the label will be attached and it can be placed in the 'finished' pile. This quilt started with a cut-apart soft book that one of our members began to turn into quilt blocks nearly 13 years ago and then set aside. I offered to take on this project and finish it up, adding borders and machine quilting it with ditch quilting along the blocks and border strips, and some fairly sparse free motion quilting to outline the figures in the blocks. I had planned to take the quilt outside and hang it on the garage door in the morning for some outside photos, but rain is in tomorrow's forecast so tonight it's pinned to the design wall for this make-do shot of the overall quilt.

Quilting should always be fun, don't you think? So just for fun and to keep from being bored to tears while quilting this, I added free motion carrots and onions in the background fabric alongside the book blocks. A little hard to see in the photos, but these were quick and easy to free motion, and I think add a bit of interest to the plain linear design of the top, while adding some nice texture.

It's not densely quilted so it is nice and soft after an initial washing, and hopefully the little guy who receives it will love to drag it around with him for a few years.

Grandbaby number 8 is on the way for us, and my daughter spent a few days visiting earlier this month, taking care of our aging dog while we attended the wedding in Canada. Though she had chosen fabrics for a baby quilt that I had already begun from this recent collection I won a couple months back ...

she also fell in love with a sweet focus fabric a quilty friend had recently given me, and we went through my stash to pick some coordinating fabrics for a second baby quilt!

Since the little guy's nursery will have a woodland theme, I'm betting the second quilt will receive the most use!  She chose a fairly simple whirling square block pattern from a recent Quilters Newsletter "Best Kids Quilts" publication for this quilt and I think there is just enough of the focus fabric for the four wide border panels. The challenge for me will be making her chosen coordinating fabrics play nicely in the pattern - not an easy task for this artistically challenged and spatially dyslexic quilter!

So, that's my August, and needless to say I'm looking forward to the cooler and hopefully slower days of fall and some more time to quilt! Whoever said retirement would be boring anyway?!

Westering Women - Block 7 - July

This month's block is named Courthouse Rock, for the outcropping of the same name in western Nebraska. It is the familiar Log Cabin variation more commonly known as Courthouse Steps. At a distance, my version tends to appear more like a square-in-a-square with the alternating light and dark fabrics.

I was happy for this easy-to-piece block this month. Choosing the fabrics took longer than stitching the block!

We should be entering the mountain states next month. Looking forward to seeing what block Barbara chooses to feature next.  More information on the Westering Women BOM is available on Barbara Brackman's Civil War Quilts blog.

Quilty 365 July Circles

After an abysmal June, I'm happy to report that my Quilty 365 Quiltalong circles are back on track and I'm caught up again!  July 31 marked day 266 in this adventure.

An extended power outage several days ago presented an opportunity to cut circles - lots of circles - and I now have enough background squares and circles to take me through the first week of October. At this point I'm pulling random bins of fabric from the stash closet and cutting a circle out of a corner of everything in the bin.  Sometimes two or three circles from the same fabric if there are multiple design elements that can be featured. I figure with an abundance of circles cut ahead of time I can rummage through the pile each day and find one that calls out to be stitched.

Still mulling over a final layout for the eventual quilt, but right now I'm thinking of windowing each square with a narrow contrasting band and setting them on-point.  Working on the math for this option and I'm thinking the on-point setting will increase the quilt size so much that we will end up with one huge king-size quilt plus some leftover circles for a smaller item or two - perhaps matching table/bureau runners or a second lap size quilt.  Decisions!

My last post mentioned the heat and drought we have had this summer.  Later that very day a line of thunderstorms rolled through our area, leaving us a much-needed 1.75 inches of rain!  We are feeling blessed, the garden is looking reinvigorated, and the remaining blueberry crop is ripening quickly. Life is good!

Linking up with Audrey at Quilty Folk where you can see everyone's progress with this fun year-long circling quiltalong.