Bootiful!

As part of cleaning up old projects I (finally!) finished a small wall quilt called 'Bootiful' based on a pattern by the Big Fork Bay Cotton Company. I won this pattern with some fabric as a door prize at a KAQG meeting earlier this year.

I used this project as practice piece for raw edge applique plus as a piece to try out some fabric painting to try to add dimension to the piece.

I'm pretty sure the applique was okay but the painting will take some more practice.

What do you think?

Good, bad or indifferent, it is now done and hung on the wall.

One project done... 756 still to go.

Wish me luck!

Year-end Resolutions

Yup, that's right, year end resolutuons.

I don't seem to do well with New Year resolutions. I usually fail to follow those for more than a month or so but my short attention span works great for shorter periods.. like about 39 days instead of 365.

So here goes... no new projects unless they have to be done for giving this holiday season.

All other activity will be focussed on getting projects done that have been started already... like the little quilt I started back in September or another one from October or the fabric collage from two years ago or the class project from a year ago or on and on and on.

I had a similar resolution a couple of years ago and it really worked in cleaning up my sewing space.

I hope this plan works again this year or I will have to move houses just to find space for all the unfinished projects around here.

Wish me luck!

Nesting

Every once in a while I get this urge to clean out a closet, empty a drawer, or weed part of the garden. I don't see these urges as necessary cleaning chores but as things I really WANT to do, not things I NEED to do.

I know, I know... I did take my temperature just to be sure that I wasn't running a fever or something.

My accomplishments have been few but have been dramatic.. at least to my way of thinking.

In one case I took down and washed all the washable curtains in the house and hung them back up. The last part is remarkable as it took me two weeks to get the bedroom curtains back up the last time I did them.

In another case, I cleared out and reloaded the coat closet. In the process I found that I had accumulated seven softsided brief cases over my career (like this) and innumerable so-called over-night bags that I have never used for overnight trips. I know someone, somewhere will enjoy most of these.

I also cleared off the top shelf of the laundry room that had become a dumping spot for things that I was sure I would need someday like.... 15 various sized small zipper cases from toiletries purchases and giveaways and some very badly made make-up sized bags. Most of these will also go the way of excess briefcases and overnight bags.

One thing I did find that surprised me was a couple of bags I made years ago in a mini-workshop with the Dallas/Forth Worth American Sewing Guild. At the workshop we made generic tote bags with Hex Frames from Ghee's. The cool part about this project was that the frames could be removed from the tote bag and used with other tote bags. I was intrigued by this project back then and made three different covers. Today they are not something I would use but I have ideas for other covers.

I wonder what else my nesting urge will uncover before this weird urge wears off?

I hope your week is going well and that you don't get caught up in nesting! It can lead to lots of dust in the air and new projects for the UFO pile!

UFO #14

As part of my effort to end the year with a burst of finishing I finally finished up the quilt originally talked about in my 'Tale of Two Quilt Kits' posting just over a month ago. Then I was loving the cheater cloth quilt and hating the Infinity Blocks quilt. I decided last night that I just had to get the Infinity Blocks quilt off the floor and into a finished quilt.

Here's how it came out:

Weirdly enough I am now almost in love with the Inifity Blocks quilt. It's very lightly quilted and I pretty successfully machine sewed on the binding without any hand work. It came out to about 60" x 60" ... agood size for three puppies to suggIe up with their favroite human. must admit though that what really makes me smile with this project is the back of the quilt. I originally planned on just using plain muslin for the back but ended up using a lot of dribs and drabs of sample dyes to produce this:

This has even been through the washing machine and dryer and the gold dye/paint stayed put. I did the dying with the fabric hanging off the metal gazebo in the back yard on one of those windy, sunny days we have a Texas. I guess the sun really can set al kinds of dyes without all that heat setting by an iron.

This project took about four hours to get done. How do I know? I watched two very different movies while quilting it and doing the binding. I watched 27 Dresses for the first half and Rendition for the second half. 27 Dresses is definitely good for this kind of work and is a nice light romantic comedy. Rendition is just too scary and I had to pause my work several times to replay key scenes. Rendition also plays with your sense of time with past and present intertwined seamlessly until near the end when the whole thing straightens out. I had to replay the last half hour before I got it all straight.

Have a great week!

A Tale of Two Quilt Kits

I tend to be a little eclectic in what I enjoy in quilts. I love wild, free form design but also enjoy a perfectly pieced vintage style quilt. I also have wide likes when it comes to quilting cottons....from traditional calicos to more graphic designs. In the past couple of weeks I have had a chance to indulge in both desires and thus 'A Tale of Two Quilts Kits' is born.

A while back I was in Sunflower Quilts and saw the cutest wall hangings. Each had a large picture of kids doing typical kid things like sailing a boat on a pond or walking to school. The style was very 40's looking and I thought they were quite charming. Come to find out most of the quilt was pre-printed with not only the central picture but several borders as well. Among quilters, this is called cheater cloth as the only thing you need to do is quilt it without the hours of piecing little bits of fabric.

A couple of weeks ago I saw that the kits were on sale for half off and I picked up a basic one, without additional borders. Hey, half price and cute... how could I go wrong? Well, I didn't go wrong. What do you think?

I think its really quite cute when finished and, although you can't see it in the photo, I got a chance to quilt with a shimmering metallic on the water part. I have sent it off to a friend for her grandson. At only 36" x 36", its more of a nap or drag-around quilt than a bed quilt. I hope he enjoys it even if it doesn't go with his contemporary themed room.

That was quilt kit number one. Simple, to the point and actually looks good. Quilt kit number two is a whole other story.

After working on the first one I remembered that I had another quilt kit in the house that I had bought several years ago to go with my living room couch. Not a cheater quilt but pretty simple piecing. Here is the cover sheet:

And here is what I produced:

Pretty different right? I learned a couple of lessons on this kit. First of all, when the packaging says similar fabrics to the photo, check carefully that they are even close. Do you see any red in my quilt? Also, don't assume that you can actually produce the picture on the cover when what you are given can't produce the number and type of blocks required. In this case, the cover picture had 49 blocks, 24 of one style of block and 25 of another. The fabric given would only make 18 of one and 30 of another. Such a pain! I have not quilted it yet and that might take a while as I need to find some backing that won't feel like I am wasting it on a mediocre project.

So that's my tale - one cheater quilt that worked that I thought was cute but not in love with, one I thought was a little edgy and I was in love with... now the reverse - the cheater I am in love with and the edgy one is now on my hate list.

Lesson learned - Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, its the flip that can change it ... or the kit makers.

I'm Not Ready

I'm not ready for Christmas. Not that I don't like the holiday but it is way too early for me to start thinking about gifts for others or preparing a meal of some sort. I'm just not there yet. Yes, the temperature this morning was in the 30's, trees are loosing their leaves, the Salvation Bell ringers are out and I have to wear socks all the time but, for heaven's sake, its only November 16th. Thanksgiving for us Americans is not for anther 10 days or so and, although I don't celebrate Thanksgiving in a big way, that's when you are supposed to start working on Christmas. Call me a tradtionalist but the season doesn't start until the big newspaper arrives on Thanksgiving morning with all the ads for sales on the next day.

Having said that, there is one activity that I can embrace before Thanksgiving Day. That is the projects my favroite quilt shop sponsors at this time of year. Sunflower Quilts, in the past, has sponsored a project called 'One Yard Hugs'. Basically you get one yard of flannel fabric, finish the edges in whatever way you like, take your output to the shop and in late December they are taken to Ben Taub, a local hosipital with a large numberof charity admissions. I found some bright plaid flannel at another store and serged the edges with colorful thread. I dropped them off a while ago and on Saturday they were already buried uner a hundred or more donations. The shop expects to be able to donate over 500 Hugs this year. I wish I could see all the babies wrapped in these colorful and lovingly made blankets.

The shop is also sponsoring an ornament challenge this year. I can't remember who will be getting the ornaments but I believe its an Alzheimer's residential facility. Jill, at Sunflower, has asked her customers to make an ornament, hang it on her tree and be in a drawing for a gft certificate to the shop. I was in the shop on Saturday and was amazed at all the ornaments that had been donated already. Although it wasn't ready yesterday morning, here is my contribution that I will get to them as soon as possible:

The hand-painted canvas was purchased by me many years ago and I am really glad that I finally got it made. I finished it off very simply by gluing the edges and backing it with a piece of white felt. I quilted it all together to additionally secure the front to the back. The canvas came with a little resin Santa Claus but it just didn't seem to go with my white and gold stitching. I hope they like it!

Okay, so I am not ready for Christmas stuff but I am ready, willing and able to help others get in the mood for others. Now, if I could only stop cringing every time I see the Salvation Army bell ringers outside one of the local grocery stores.

BTW - Did you notice.... this is UFO #14 for 2008. My goal for this year was to complete at least one UFO every month this year so now I guess I have to go to my strecth goal... that is an average of two UFOs a month. Looks like I have some catching up to do if I want to be boastful on New Year's Eve.

UFO # 13

My younger brother's recruiter in South Korea is now the proud father of a bouncing baby girl. I don't know all the details but she is very sweet looking.

Don't know why she is wearing blue but she really is a she. My brother asked me to make a quilt for her which I was glad to do. My thought was to make something all pink and girly with ruffles and bows that would be cherished for generations. Then reality struck. Fancy, heirloom stuff is all good but real babies tend to have lots of stuff squiting out of them meaning that anything they come near needs to be washed frequently. In addition, much of the squirty stuff tends to stain whatever it lands on. Back to the drawing board and the stash. I finally remembered a kit I had bought quite a few years ago all in pastel flannels. It looked pretty stain friendly and should be nice and soft. So, killing two birds with one stone (gift quilt and UFO busting) I created the following:

The colors are a little washed out in the Texas sunshine so I think it should do the trick. If it becomes a drag around blanket it should be pretty sturdy as I quilted the heck out of it. In total it is about 24" x 24" and I embroidered her name on one of the houses. I hope they like it and that little baby Elianna uses it in good health.

UFOs #11 and # 12

Finally, after a couple of years of the pieces in my stash and months of waiting to actually be quilted, I have finished the second quilt for one of my Dad's friend's daughters. I must say that it looks great even though the quilting was the thing of nightmares. I used a large meandering pattern to quilt it and bound the edges with left over striped material. The binding was a small challenge as well as I had to piece together a lot of little bits to finish up the fourth edge. The whole thing is about sixty-four inches on each side. One more UFO bites the dust - YAHOO! Now into the washer and dryer then off to the post office. Bye, Bye, nightmare!

BTW - the original quilt was taught by Charlotte Angotti in one of her 'let me surprise you' classes at the Houston International Quilt Festival. I made the original quilt for my mother and my father now uses it on his bed at the nursing home. I bought an additional kit from a friend and combined it with my leftover bits and some yardage to create two quilts and two pillows for the daughters of my father's friend.

UFO #11 was a scissors sheath and fob that came in a kit I purchased a long time ago. It took a few hours to get the beading done on the edges and I added a lot of Fray Check to make sure that the edges didn't fall apart. I wonder where and when I actually picked up this kit?

Two more down... many more UFO's to come. Wish me luck!

Avoidence Projects

I have been avoiding finishing the quilting of a project for about four months now. Its not like I don't enjoy quilting, Its just that the quilting of this quilt has become pretty tedious. I stopped working on it when I realized that I had quilted a huge pleat into the backing. I could have ignored it and continued but, as this is a gift, I decided to stop and rip out the pleated portion. I finished doing that the other night and I still have not returned to the quilting. What I have been doing is avoiding it by doing other sewing projects like:

I re-did the dogs' leashes. The originals were getting pretty ratty so I cut off the hardware and re-did the fabric portion out of cotton belting. I also added some trims and some refective tape to each leash. These are probably not as durable as the originals (cotton versus nylon webbing) but I like them. I don't think the dogs care even though they went nuts everytime I picked up the originals to cut off the hardware or measure the length. BTW the leashes are hung from the door stop thingy on the front door - an ideal place to store them between walks.

I made a new everyday wristlet. I got a cute wristlet through the bag ladies swap and have been using it every day. Its pretty bold so I decided that I needed one that is a little less noticeable. In the mail from Craft Leftovers came the makings for my new wristlet. The pattern is called the Temari Ball bag. It came with two fabrics, pre-cut, and a zipper. The zipper was black so I swapped it out for a hot pink that I had in my stash. I also added the riboon decoration. Two other changes I made were to add lavender between the lining and the exterior and some fusible batting to the wrong side of the exterior. Its a pretty good size for me and I have already started to use it for runs to the grocery store and other errand running.

I went to the movies. A real avoidence activity! A friend and I got togeher the other day and we were both felling a little of sorts so we to see Hancock at our local multiplex. Hancock was very enjoyable and it will definitely by in my DVD collection when it is released. The best part about it is that the previews did not spoil the fun. If you get a chance, go see Hancock.. even if you don't like science fiction, I think you will enjoy it. There is one really yucky part, definitely not for kids, but the rest of the movie is a lot of fun.

I picked up a UFO. That's right, UFO number eleven is an hour or so from being finished. It's a beaded scissors' sheath and fob. I don't need either of these but they are elegant. I will post these in an official post later on. I just figured out that if I had just bit the bullet and finished quilting the quilt instead of doing this scissors project, I would be done with it.

I took the girls to the vet. This one is true avoidence! They were both due for their annual exam and vaccinations. I originally stopped by with them to get all of them weighed and ended up wasting about two hours between weighing and exams. I know I needed to get this done but it was quilt or put them through some anxiety. Anxiety won out and they are safe for another year. I'm pretty sure the girls don't blame me as they competed to lay on me all evening.

I have nothing else I can do today in all conscience to avoid the quilting. I have the whole weekend ahead of me with no scheduled events so I should be able to get the quilting and binding done in time to get it packaged for the mail on Monday. Wish me luck!

And to my Canadian friends in Ontario - Happy Civic Holiday on Monday! I don't know when it became Civic Holiday but that's as good a name as any for a freeby in mid-summer.

And, to my big brother - Happy 59th Birthday! And to him and his wife - Happy 38th Anniversary!

Definitely a big weekend coming up. Have a good one!

UFO # 10

On New year's Day I resolved to clear out UnFinished Objects (UFOs) at the rate of at least one or two per month. I have been slowing down on this resolve lately but today I confronted my demons and pulled out a project from about a decade ago. I don't remember how I got started on this sampler quilt but it may have been at the Houston International Quilt Festival where they have a hop shop on the sales floor. I only made nine blocks (typically there are twelve) and decided to put them together in the 'quilt as you go' manner. This method lets you quilt each block and sashing strip together one block at a time. I had already joined three of the blocks and their sashing strips so I thouhgt it would be a breeze to finish it up.

Each block had a sashing strip attached to it so the basic unit should have been a nine inch block attached to a three inch sashing strip for 9" x 12" plus quarter inch seam allowances. That comes out to 9 1/2" x 12 1/2". The unquilted blocks looked a little the worse for wear so I decided to give them all a good press and trim any uneven edges. First of all, none of the pieces came out to the desired size - all were smaller by at least a quarter of an inch. That didn't phase me too much as you can always fudge a little by a good stretching with your steam iron. I trimmed up one block and its sashing strip and ended up only about 1/8" too small on one side. I picked up the next unit and discovered that the closest I could come to the desired size was 11 1/4" by 8 3/4 ". My spirits rapidly plunged to pond scum level as I tried to fudge these blocks up to the correct size. Here is my last look at this quilting disaster:

Pretty colors but a mess!

And here is a close up of the worst block. Can you see how the creamy floral is about half an inch shorter than the white and swirly blue piece?

In my defence I think this is from early in my quilting carrer when I didn't even know about 1/4 inch seam allowances and their importance in the overall construction of a quilt block. Also, this may have been the first sampler quilt I had ever tried and I think it was done using those pesky Marti Michell plastic templates (which I hate with a passion now). So UFO #10 has gone to that charity bag in the guest bedroom in hope that someone somewhere can stop laughing long enough to start a fire with it OR better yet, that they can use these blocks as examples of how not to piece a quilt. For my part, I disavow any knowledge of this quilt and will shoulder on to my next UFO project - to quilt the second blue and white quilt for my Dad's friend's daughter. The first one was finished in March and the second should travel with me the next time I see my Dad.

Have a great week!

UFO #8

As I was looking for a particular piece of fabric the other day I kept finding the same half finished wall quilt. As I tossed it aside for the 45th time in as many days, I realized that it wasn't in the way but it was begging to be completed. I bought this as a kit at the International Quilt Festival and thought it would go nicely in my Asian themed guest room. Well, my guest room still has no theme (the current working theory is that it should be themed as a NYC cool gray, beige, black loft space) but the quilt has been completed.

The pattern was called something like Shanghai Sunset and is primarily done using fusible web. When I decided to finish it everthing had been fused and the red medallion in the lower left hand corner had been quilted down. The final size, after quilting and washing, is about 48" sqaure. I am so glad it is done and that I do not need to keep tossing it out of the way when I look for other things to do. I will be hanging it it the stairwell to help keep some of the air conditioning upstairs during those long and hot summer days that are just around the corner.

BTW - the stairwell has no theme either.. which could be a theme in and of itself.

UFO #7

I finally finished quilting one of the two quilts that I created for the daughters of a friend of my father. It took me almost seven hours to get it done and it has been complete and utter torture. Needles broke, thread broke, bobbins disintegrated and the backing bunched. Even though I was ready to throw in the towel many times I kept going and now I am very pleased with the results. The quilt is the mostly rectangular one and the mostly square still needs basting and quilting. The incredibly weird thing abut all this is that after binding and washing it I think it looks really good. The original post is here if you would like to refresh your memory.

You may remember that I was worrying over whether to call this qult, and the other, UFOs becuase I didn't do all the sewing. With the torture of the quilting behind me on this one I believe both of these quilts will make it on my list of completed UnFinished Objects from previous years. I am giving it away tomorrow with the two pillows I made from the left over blocks. I do feel some guilt over only having one quilt done but there is only so much you can do.

The top sausage shaped one was to go with the quilt I just finished while the other is for the one I have not completed. The top pillow form came from a set of three I picked up somewhere while the square cushion form is a leftover from a long ago failed project.

One UFO down, several zillions to go.

WIP

My current Work In Progress (WIP) comes from a class taught by Charlotte Angotti at the Houston Quilt Festival in 2002. I attended the class and made the basic quilt that was called Moon River for my mother that Christmas. The class was called 'Let Me Surprise You'. Charlotte gave us bags of little peices of fabric to assemble in a specific order. You don't know what the quilt will look like until the afternoon of the full day class.

Fast forward a few years and I am at an American Sewing Guild Retreat. I am talking to some poeple about the Charlotte class and how much I loved the final quilt. Lo and behold another woman attended a different session of that class and still had the whole quilt kit and some additional yardage... and she offered to sell it to me. I purchased her kit for a very reasonable price and went home and started to work on it. I think I spent at least 2 or 3 hours sorting the bits and pieces and actually put together two of the 30 blocks required. I put it away as another priority came up and it has sat in a very nice plastic container since then.

In my sorting and cleaning I came across the container, opened it and realised that I still loved the final quilt. In fact, it is now on my Dad's hospital bed while he is in rehab. I had promised him I would make two small quilts for the young daughters of one of his friends. The quilt kit and the promise came together and I started up again to put the quilt together as two smaller quilts.

I finished all 30 blocks the other night and here's what the pile looks like before I have squared up the blocks to the right size:

I added sashing strips to border each block and then assembled them into two similar but different quilt tops - one rectangular and one square:

The square one will have 4 of the original blocks as part of the borders. That will leave me about five blocks that I will try to incorporate into pillow cases for the girls. I have a lot of work left on these quilts as I am now making it up as I go along. I will be at another retreat this coming weekend and I should have time to get them quilted then if not completely finished.

Since I didn't start the sewing (the original owner did complete some of the work in her class) I wonder if I can count this in my UFO challenge? If I can count it, can I count it as two projects or just one as originally planned? Maybe its only a half as the original owner did do a lot of work? I guess I'll just have to figure this out when I am finished.

Tot Pack UFO#4

One the projects that has been sitting around here is a pattern and fabric for a back pack for a little girl done in pink camo fabric. I saw this at a shop near here called the Quilt Room in Huffman, Texas. This a cute little shop with a nice sized classroom that caters to a very wide audience... from the traditional quilter of calicos to those looking for more arty work. When I saw the kit I just couldn't resist it. It is sized for children between 1 and 4 years old. Although I don't know any little girls in that age range who would enjoy a pink camo backpack I'm sure I'll find one sooner or later.

Note to Paul: this is not a hint that I need a grand-daughter anytime soon.

Last year I fused the pink camo fabric to a solid pink so that the fabric would be substantial enough for the eventual wear and tear this type of carrier would get. Then it just sat around and got buried under other work. I found it the other day while looking for some wool and realised I could finish this off while clearing out the TIVO. Here it is in all its glory, wrinkles and all.

This was designed by Connie Jubitz and is offered on-line by the sewbaby.com website at http://www.sewbaby.com/big/patterns1_/sb-18.html . It comes with applique designs for a child's name and you can use buttons or velcro (my choice) as a closure. This is probably not my best sewing but now that I have made one I think I will be making more if I can find some little kids with funky tastes.

48 Hours

As of this morning we are 48 hours into the new year and what a wild ride it has been. It ended with my furnace conking out just when the morning temperatures were in the 20's... that's Fahrenheit to those of you outside of the states. It was darn cold and, until then, I was pretty proud of knocking off a couple of more UFOs.


First off I got both of the quilts quilted I had been given to quilt for the Quilt Teal, ovarian cancer, project. One of the quilts looks like a standard sample of 12 blocks and I stitched along the lines to hold everything together. Pretty simple quilting but a bear at the intersections where wrinkles kept getting in the way. The other was a much more experimental quilt sampler with hand and machine appliqued blocks along with some others that you need an odd color sense to appreciate. The second quilt I free motion quilted making little designs in each block and stipple quilting the sashing with hearts and loops. This was much easier when it came to wrinkles and went relativlely quickly.


Both quilts were an incredible challenge as the person who basted them together used very few safety pins and some of those were closed so that the bulk of the safety pin was on the back side of the quilt. For quilts this size I use between 100 to 200 safety pins so that there is no chance of the layers shifting while quilting. I counted a total of 40 pins in total for both quilts. Yikes!

Here they are, packed up ready to go back to Sunflower Quilts. The next person in line can sew on the bindings prior to shipping them off for auctioning on Ebay with all proceeds going to ovarian cancer research.

I lied about the NYE mystery quilt. I did not get it done on New Year's Eve but late on New Year's Day. I will be taking it around to the various neighborhood groups so they can all have a good laugh at my quilting misadveture.


Which brings me to my only New Years resolution. I will finish up UnFinished Objects (UFOs) from pre-2008 work at the pace of at least 2 per month for 2008. At a maximum, I will not undertake any new projects this year as the new heating and air conditioning units I am having installed will be taking a lot of my spare cash for the foreseeable future! I really have some wonderful projects here that have not been moving along but I am sure I will be able to get a few new things started and completed in 2008. So let's start counting - one NYE mystery completed (a bit of cheat but true)and two quilts that needed quilting for a total of three so far. Not a bad beginning to a New Year!


I hope the first few days of 2008 have been kinder to you than they have been to me because baby, it's cold outside!