The quilt has a name, "My Puzzle Quilt"

   It's done!

   I'm done with the quilting, done with the binding, done with getting the marking lines out, done with the label, done with the sleeve, and now . . . done with the pictures. Wow! Doesn't that feel good!

   Back on June11, 2011. I talked about having the piecing all done. The quiting was finished either the end of December or the first part of January. I guess my memory must be getting bad as I don't remember for sure, maybe I should start keeping better notes.

The quilting and the backing fabric.

My Puzzle Quilt
63" x 79"

   The original idea for this quilt came from the book Create A Quilt by Joyce Mori. I took the book home as part of the book challenge for the Maquoketa Town & Country Guild Guild. The scrappy fabric was from a 6" fabric exchange by the same guild the year before. Oh, it is so much fun to combine two projects into one! I cut the 6" squares down to (4) 2.5" squares making them finish at 2".

   Have I told you lately that I don't like making borders for quilts any more. It was so much fun to incorporate a border into the block piecing. I'm going to do this more if it works with the design, either that or I won't put a border on at all, like they used to do.

Have a great day, I'm going back to my sewing machine for a while. 

Jo

My Other January Project

As usual, I had a "Big Stitch" hand quilting project that I was working on. If you know me you know that I like to spend at least some part of each day quilting (not that I always get to). It's my stress reliever. Here are a few pictures to show you what I was doing. Half of the quilt is blue blocks the other half  are brown.

The quilt started out because I came across 22 - 6 inch squares from a collection called Lasting Beauty by Classic Cottons. Now I don't make wallhangings any more because I have no wall space left. I don't make large (king/queen) quilts anymore because I don't need anymore bed quilts. What I like to make are nap/twin size quilts. What I call useful quilts. So the challenge was to make that size quilt out of the 22 blocks. First I added to the squares to bring them up to 11 inches, then I added sashing. The quilt center is 4 blocks wide and 5 blocks long. Two of the 6" blocks got tossed.

Next challenge was to figure out how to make it longer. Well, that was simple, just add some 9 patch blocks and a couple of borders. Next is a picture of the border after quilting.

I accomplished my goal. The finished quilt is 61" x 86". (If I had just sewn the blocks together it would have been 22" x 27-1/5". I must say I am pretty proud of myself on this one.

Now I need to bind it but I haven't been in the mood so we will see when that gets accomplished. After the binding is on I will post a picture of the finished quilt.

Enjoy your day! Jo

The month of January

In the first place, I can't believe that the whole month of January and half of February has gotten away from me and I didn't posted any new blogs.

Then, when I looked back at what I had gotten accomplished it was even harder to believe that I had gotten so little done. Where does time go? I remember as a child that days were so much longer. I can't have slowed down that much in my old age. Or could it?

Anyway, I only have two pictures to post for January. The first are paper pieced log cabin blocks that I volunteered to made for a friend. They are made using the Fossil Fern Collection from Benartex. (Remember, I carry all 100 colors in the shop.) This picture was taken before the papers were trimmed and there are four blocks in each colorway. If my math is correct, that makes 48 blocks.



Now, you're probably saying that I didn't do too bad making 48 blocks in January but the whole story is that most of them were made before January ever got here. I just finished up the last few groups in January.

Then came January 21st, I started feeling a slight burning sensation on my left side. By Wednesday the 25th it was worse so I decided I wanted to go to the doctor, of course I couldn't get an appointment until Friday the 27th, then it finally dawned on me what I had. Yeah, the Doc confirmed that I had Shingles. I really didn't feel like getting much of anything done at that point although I did sit in my rocking chair and do some hand quilting. More on that in the next post.

These are the flowers that were delivered to cheer me up. Thank you Joan T.

One of my old quilts - Waterwheels

This quilt was finished in the year 1995. The quilt guild in Dubuque, Iowa, had a color challenge. My color was peach. My first thought when I saw the color written on the little piece of paper was, "I don't have any fabric that's peach!" Guess what? I found 20 plus pieces of fabric on the shelves that were light peach and on into some pretty rusts.

As always, I had no idea where this quilt was going nor what size it would end up. Believe it or not, the guild had put a size limitation on the challenge and I ended up being a couple of inches too long. No, they didn't disqualify me but for a minute, I thought they might!

54" x 63"

This quilt was designed on graph paper, the greens are all one fabric, it's just the peach and rust that is made up of multiple fabrics. This quilt "talked" to me more than most of my quilts.  I had marked the quilting in the solid border with a water soluble pen in a completely different design. The next morning the quilt said, "No, I don't like what you have marked on me." So I got out a wet wash cloth and blotted all the lines out, waited for it to dry, and remarked this design.

Center upper left corner.

Center lower right corner.

This quilt was made back in the days when I still did the little hand stitches. Today, it just the Big Stitch for me.

This quilt had been hanging in my dining room but I did some rearranging lately and my fabric cupboard have moved into that spot. I figured it was about time the quilt got washed and while it was still flat with no wrinkles, a good time for a picture.



Shhh! It's a Christmas present so no telling!

This summer I had a friend in the shop wanting Fossil Fern flannel from Benartex. She wanted it for backing fabrics and since she was taking over half the bolt I special ordered for her. Add to that, the fact that I have a grandson going to a college that has red and gold for their school colors, my mind went to work on what I could make that would be easy and fast.

Then, there is that box of denim that has been in the basement for what seems like forever and was I ever going to use it for something? Seems to me I had the necessary ingredients for that easy and fast quilt I wanted to make.

45" x 81"

This quilt is intended to be put in the trunk of his car and can be used for eating McDonald's in the park or sitting on to watch a band concert on the lawn. It's nothing special, just two pieces of fabric, one flannel 10" square and one denim 9" square sewn together. Then sew the blocks together using only the flannel pieces, press the seam open and sew down. I used the serpentine stick on my sewing machine. I made the 5 long rows first. Then sewed the rows together, pressing and stitching the flannel down as I went.

As I stated earlier, I wanted an easy and fast project. No spending hours here with scissors in hand trying to cut all those seam allowances for a rag quilt. I have better ways to spend my time.

Doll Quilts

For a few or maybe some years, I have been subscribing to Benartex's Fat Quarterly magazine (club), not sure exactly what it is called but I love it. What they do is send a little 8 page magazine plus 5" squares of one of their new fabric lines that have come out. You get this 4 times a year. I love getting fabric in the mail, always have.

Most of the time I fondle the fabrics for a while and then end up setting them aside. After a while they go into (another) scappy hexagon flower quilt that I have going.

The last set of fabrics I received with my Fat Quarterly magazine were a set of batiks. Now, as a hand quilter, I don't use batiks in my quilts so these got set on the sewing desk in a stack of other things. When I came across them a few days ago I made the decision that they would work for a doll quilt.

22" x 27"

I think it worked out pretty good.

Kona Bay Scrap Bag

A few months back I bought a Kona Bay scrap bag. I really enjoy buying the unknown. Also, I have come to realize that I like a challenge. (Side note: Some of my best quilts have been fabric challenges from the different guilds I belong to.) When sorting the fabrics in the bag I came across some pieces that were more like drapery fabrics so I set them aside (on my sewing desk, of course) to deal with later, meaning, trying to find somewhere else to put them.

Well, the other day I decided that the best way to deal with them was to make a baby quilt top and donate it to a guild. I had 6 different pieces of varying sizes. Mentally I was thinking of making 12" finished squares out of them and just sew them together. Right! First thing I did was to cut the first one at 12" now making the blocks finish at 11.5". Then, one of the smaller pieces wasn't big enough to cut a 12" square so I cut it at 9". Then I started doing some math and figured this wasn't going to work out well.

In the end I cut large squares and small squares out of what was left, I had the medium squares so I cut strips to make the medium squares large squares. I know, I know, I am so capable of mixing myself up but in the end I had a baby quilt, i.e., a very funky baby quilt.

33" x 39"

I really like flowers (on fabric, please note, I am not a gardener) and these large Hawaiian type prints make me smile. I hope someone will be pleased.

Yes, daughters, I can see you rolling your eyes!

2011 MAQ guild BOM

I've made the decision to unclutter my life, I have too much "stuff" laying around on my sewing desk. No room left to work! So, I pulled out the box with the Maquoketa guild Block of the Month to see how far behind I was. It looked like two or maybe three months. I had the directions for two of the blocks so I decided to make one block of each to give to the guild. I didn't want to take the time to make a set for myself.

Then I started thinking, did I really want to make this quilt for myself? The answer turned out to be NO. So the decision was made to not make any more of the blocks and to give the guild the other set that I had made for myself. The guild gets 16 blocks total and I have an empty box. Wonderful!

JoQuilter Fabrics BOM

Let's go back to Sunday, October 3, 2010. That was the post that I showed my JoQuilter Fabrics Block of the Month blocks laid out on the floor. One of the things I worked on this past month was how to make that quilt longer. I had an idea in my mind for a while, but the "box" it was packed into never came up on the rotation. Finally, it did and I put my idea to work.

What I am going to show you today is what I did with the scrappy blocks I used to test the patterns. The BOM was done using Pat Speth (the Nickel Quilts lady) BOM patterns. Since I had never used any of her patterns before, I figured I should "test" each block with scraps before I started in on my real quilt. I did this for 6 months and, by then, figured the lady knew what she was doing.

When I got my quilt done, I used some leftover blocks for a small quilt. Then while digging to the bottom of the box, I found the 6 scrappy blocks. I decided to put them to good use by making a charity baby quilt top.

36" x 44"

This is the result. Nothing special but a finished baby quilt top. I will be giving this to one of the guilds charity groups to finish and give away. I am trying hard to make the decision that I do not have to finish everything I've started. It's a hard concept but I think I will learn.

In a couple of days I hope to have pictures of the BOM quilt and the little quilt from the extras.

Driving in Style

At the end of July I bought myself a new car. It's the first car I have ever picked out all by myself and was able to buy exactly what I wanted.

Then, with the help of my best friend Lorinda and a company called PrimoWrap in Dubuque, we decorated my new car.

I have gotten loads of great comments from people, including being told my car was "sexy".

Pictures were taken by Joan T. on a fun trip to Galena.

And, yes, the quilts are actual quilts that I have made/own.