Stitching in the Barn

Inspired by a quilt by Marti Michell from her Craftsy/Bluprint class Machine Quilting in Sections Fabric is Blast Off! by Connecting Threads and stash fabric. 50 inches by 50 inches. Finished January 2020.   Front     Back  

At some point I bought 2 charm packs of Island Hopping by Connecting Threads that were a group of 16 fabrics and decided to make a baby quilt from the squares. I put both packs on my design wall with the packs split evenly in the middle. I changed the placement for a week until I found one that was balanced and pleasing. Sewed it together and got a couple of fabrics to round it out to a decent size for a baby a long time ago. Meanwhile life happened and this quilt has been intended for 2 babies and will end up for a third being born this week. I'm really happy with it. I quilted it around the beginning of August 2019 with an orange peel motif in the blocks and swags in the first border. I couldn't figure out what to do in the last border that wouldn't be too dense. While I was sick in bed recently, I came across a way to quilt a braid design that was simple, fast and not dense. It worked great! I finished the quilting, trimmed the front and batting, then turned t...

I've finally "finished" quilting the middle of my jelly roll quilt! These are the left, center and right of the last row I quilted. There's still a bit of a gap that I might go back and fill in. Doing the loops in the bottom picture was one of my favorite parts. The center picture shows my ugly starts and stops but it was quick and easy without having to bury threads. The line is the inside of the 1st border and I quilted the outside one too, I just don't have a picture.  I'm stumped a bit on the outer border quilting but I'm sure I'll figure it out by this weekend. I'm a slow quilter but I hope to have this done withing 2 weeks. I think I'm going to end up naming this one "Done is Better Than Perfect" because it's far from perfect! Happy Sewing!

My daughter, MIL & I sew together. The project we chose to do in 2014 was a paper pieced quilt of a tea set. We found the patterns at Piece By Number here: http://piecebynumber.com/grandmas-tea-party-mini-quilt/ MIL was concerned some of the pieces looked small so we enlarged the pot & cup blocks by 150% and changed the setting to only four cups. My daughter is an art major so she helped us pick some coordinating fabric for me & my MIL's quilts, then picked out some others for hers.

So I've been feeling better and once again, because I looked several months before, I looked for a quilt to make from some 5" charms, that I bought from Connecting Threads ages ago, at the end of May. I found what I wanted in Christa Quilts! Charming Chevrons Quilt along. It was simple, modern, used charms, and gave a lot of punch for your effort. I bought some Kona black and worked on it on & off for the whole month of June.  I haven't been 100% so I just worked on it for a couple of hours here and there, otherwise I think I could've gotten the top done in 2 weeks. Then, I thought it'd take another month to quilt but I decided to do the minimal amount I felt I could get away with. So now after about 37 hours of work. Here it is, my first quilt in a year+ 55" x 62" I added a 4 inch border in Kona grey. I like thick 1/2 inch bindings because it frames it. My daughter is an artist/art student and helped me arrange the half blocks into a...

I planned to take some time off the internet, about a week, to finish up a quilt I was close to completing. I got a lot of work done on it and then I got sick. I'm not as sick as I was but now I have a headache that is  the worst I've ever had. The light from the monitor is bothering my eyes so I'm just putting this up here quickly and hopefully I'll get back next week. I had this little quilt me, my daughter and my MIL made together but I knew I still wanted more quilting on it and I finally got it finished.  The quilting in the border isn't so great but sometimes you just have to call something done and hang it up. The quilt I'm trying to get finished is this flannel rail fence. It was previously in 4 sections with only 3 rails unquilted. I've finished the quilting, joined the 4 sections together and added the first border. I was literally in the middle of adding the last border, I already had 2 sides down, when I got suddenly sick, ve...

I've known about this quilt forever. I originally read about it on the Quilting Board way before I'd seen the Jelly Roll Race or the 1600 inch quilt. You can find the original post here: http://www.quiltingboard.com/tutorials-f10/super-fast-jelly-roll-quilt-t44258.html   I recommend you wade through it because there are a lot of nice examples. On page 7 is a picture tutorial and somewhere in there is a discussion of making different sizes and using different widths. She used to have a PDF printout for free but you could just print the first page.  Anyways, I used my JoAnn's, 20 strip jelly roll to try this out.  I wanted to also separate the strips by piecing squares in between them. I really like that look for this quilt so I chose a crazy scrap I had laying around and cut twenty 2 1/2 inch squares. The jelly roll had only ten different fabrics, 2 strips of each, so I pieced squares on one end of each strip. I should clarify, you need to piece strips ...

I was sick last weekend when I wanted to finish this quilt so it had to wait until yesterday. It's about 33 inches square and made from a kit by Connecting Threads that I got for Mother's Day last year. It's made exactly as pictured in the directions but I pieced the blocks the way I preferred. I thought about changing it up some. I wanted to put something in the light print squares other than the letters but I couldn't decide what to do. However, once I traced out the letters and put the fusible on the fabric, I noticed the fabric went perfectly with them. In the end, I'm happy I didn't do something off the wall.  Since this is a wall quilt, I free motion quilted it very tightly. I had so much fun doing it and picking out what I wanted to do in each square. I think my favorite are the pinwheel and the spool blocks. Quilting it around Valentines' Day also influenced my design. In the blue corner squares, I used a red variegated thread and did a sti...

I have a Live Journal account where I'm a member of a community that has a fabric postcard swap. I missed out on the first two rounds, because I didn't really sew last year. They recently announced the third round and I'm ready to participate.  This is a no stress swap which means it's been announced that the postcards will be mailed at the end of February. Near the end of February, a post will be made and you sign up and say how many you already have finished. So if I have 3 finished by then, then I can sign up for 3. The host will gather all the snail mail addresses then divide them out, you get the addresses where to send your postcard and mail them by the due date. If you don't have any ready to go, you just don't sign up, therefore no stress.  Fabric postcards are a great way to make small samples of new techniques that are useful. I made this one after they first announced it.

I finally got back to quilting the borders of my quilt this past weekend. I bought some green variegated YLI machine quilting thread to encourage me. I did some warm up quilting with this thread, pulled it out and got ready to put my quilt under the needle when I saw this: I have never gotten a spool of thread with a tie in it. I'm sure it happens but if I had found this on the top of my quilt I think I would have been upset. The thing was, I hadn't done much quilting before the tie so why include it in the spool. I guess it's because it's machines doing the work and people are not even watching them anymore. This knot wouldn't even go through my needle. I could have had a major thread break if I hadn't noticed this. I finally sat down and free motion quilted some swirly loops in a density to match the rest of the quilting. I gave up after 2 of the 4 borders were quilted because it was boring, really, really boring. I started another project instead. I...

I was happily quilting along when this happened! If you click on the picture you'll see long threads on the back. They snapped and I couldn't see them on top so I kept quilting. When I finished this block I found them. I tied the ones I could find both ends to off and threaded them into the quilt. I re-threaded my machine and still had snapped threads. So I took out the bobbin to check it and that's when I found that I accidentally knocked the feed dog lever up a bit and they were catching the thread and breaking it. This might not happen on a modern machine but I love how it quilts & now I know to check that lever when I put in a new bobbin! Since this quilt is for me and a wall quilt, I'm not too fussed about it. I'm going to leave the over-stitched threads on the back and pretend they're not there.

This is my first WIP Wednesday in a long while at least. I haven't looked back to see if I've done one before. Currently I'm working on a kit from Connecting Threads that I got last Mother's day and is no longer available :o( It's a wall-hanging for my sewing space. I finished the top last week. I've layered and basted it. I've done the SITD quilting around the sashing and I've started to do the individual blocks. Here's a picture of the back and a close up:

It seems I've been on a spending spree on quilt rulers over the past few weeks. I blame my MIL for my recent spending last week but I think it started at Valentines Day when my husband bought me these rulers I had been salivating over. Then my MIL came into town for spring break and decided to buy quilting supplies for her & her sister so they can start quilting at JoAnn's. Shopping with her always makes me want to buy something for myself so I got the Easy Angle because Bonnie Hunter recommended it and a Double Wedding Ring template set that was on clearance from $30 down to $8! I stopped at the checkout to make sure it was complete, the bag was torn on one side. It turned out that one of the small pieces was missing so I got it at 1/2 off so it was only $4 and there was a drawing of the template in the book so I'm not really missing any pieces! I have to tell you I'm glad I started quilting 10 years ago! The prices for equipment seem so hi...

My mother-in-law came to visit last week during Spring Break. It was fun. We had a quilt project me, her and my daughter were in the middle of before she visited. It was great for National Quilting Day. It was like we celebrated all week. We completed them, well mostly. I still need to attach the binding on my daughter's quilt. It was a kit we picked up a while ago called Misty Pines by Jeri Kelly. It finishes at 7.75 inches by 21.25 inches. It came with a paper pieced center and all the fabrics to finish it except batting. We bought three to work on them together. It was my daughter and MIL's first quilt. It was a great idea to buy a complete kit for their first project because we didn't have to spend the extra time debating over choosing fabric and some of the pieces were already cut to size so we could get right to working on them. They came out great. Here's mine: And my daughter's: The kit didn't include a binding so we went out to buy...

I was in the JoAnn's Monday buying grommets when I happened to notice their original model Slice machines were on clearance. I had just seen the new Slice Elite at Hobby Lobby the previous weekend and noticed there was an applique' card you could buy for it. Also, I Have A Notion reviewed the new Slice Fabrique on their blog earlier this month. They will be carrying them & the accessories. The Slice is a die cutting machine by the scrapbooking company Making Memories that is very hard to find info about online, except at their site, even though it has been around since 2008. They are now branching out into the quilting and fabric crafting hobbies with their 2 new models but it turns out the original model  can use the new design cards. The older model on clearance was $80, at my local JoAnn's in Grapevine, TX, while the new models run at $150 and it looks like they haven't gotten the bugs out of them yet. The biggest differences between them that I...

Well this post is going to have quite a few pictures :o) I'll make them thumbnails, some with links to the full size. I finished up the two blocks I needed for blockofthemonth  last week:   These are January and February. I'll make March's block later. While sewing these, I finally remembered my leaders & enders blocks. I got one done but something went wrong with my friendship star. I don't know how this happened but I almost did it on the next one! I left this one alone and fixed the second. It looks funny but not entirely unappealing so I don't think I'm going to fix it.

I call it "Welcome Spring" After that awful cold snap we had here in DFW, I think I wanted something really bright and cheerful. It's 22 inches square, thankfully. I don't think I could stomach these two colors together if it was much larger. This is a good representation of the colors. The blocks are each 6 inches finished. It's basically a sample to try out my new Tri-Recs rulers. I free motion quilted it with Connecting Threads' Essentials in Purple.

Today I stitched & turned it with the batting & the backing and did the stitch in the ditch to prep it for free-motion quilting. I used Purple thread from Connecting Threads and I love how it looks. I used a tip I picked up recently. I used hairspray as basting spray to stick the two layers that weren't getting turned together. Since it was a small quilt & I had an old can of Aquanet hanging around I thought I'd try it and it worked very well. I didn't even have to go outside for better ventilation to use it. I sprayed it on both sides to be sure it stuck and everything went fine. There were no puckers on the back side of my quilt, just on the top that was only pin basted.

I'm suffering from a headache right now but I had to post. I finished my quilt top! I must have been really inspired because I designed & made it in 3 days! I even had work 2 of those days. Of course it's just 22 inches square but it's still complete. Here it is Hmmm, now that I look at the picture, it looks a bit wavy on the edges. I have to admit I practically slapped the borders on. But I love the way it came out! The colors are very loud but I used these in combination with white recently and thought they might lend themselves to a 2 color quilt. Now I wish I put some white in there, at least it's a small quilt. I'm hoping to quilt it sometime this weekend. I'll probably just sandwich, sew & turn it out with the batting & backing because I don't feel like making binding. I think I needed this bright quilt to come out of the cold winter & the hard times we've had lately. I can't wait to use my Tri-Recs rulers ...

Seriously, I just can't get this blogging thing down. I think it would be easy to document what I've been doing at least once a week, but preferably twice. I'm actually doing stuff to blog about but I have a hard time documenting. Right now, I have a horrible cold so I'm sitting back in my comfy chair and finally updating. Nothing like an illness to make you sit back and reflect on what you'd rather be doing. (my sister just Tweeted me they had this last week right before we visited them) Quilting: Now here is where I'm actually making progress. I've worked on it quite steadily for a while but then my allergies started sucking the life out of me. I've been sitting around reading blogs and  message boards for the last week and a half as my allergy medicine just doesn't seem strong enough anymore. I've found a lot of great inspiration and I'll be ready to get back at my current WIP as soon as I'm well from this cold. Here...