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  

I bought these 2.5 inch Urban Odyssey strips from Connecting Threads and sewed them into a quick quilt ages ago. It's like the Jelly Roll Race 2 quilt from MSQC . I used 2 jelly roll packs because they had less than 40 strips but I can't remember how many there were. I pulled out the brown colorway strips and used them for the inner border and the little squares. To use two of the same prints, I sewed them short ends together with a square between to break them up a bit. if you sew them like individual strips, they can fall in weird places in the quilt and sew together in distracting ways. I love how the brown squares are scattered like confetti.

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.

This is my first post in over a year. Hello, again! I'm back to it and this week I made new potholders for my kitchen, from old scraps. I need like a ton of these! I haven't made any in years and my old ones were starting to look very bad last year! I found this quick tutorial on You Tube last week. The original instructions started with 10 inch squares. It made the too big one on the left. I made the one on the right with 8 inch squares and it's the perfect size. Of course, it called for Insul-Bright batting but I just used two layers of Warm and Natural batting scraps I had and it was plenty, in addition to all the layers of fabric, to protect my hands. The last one, at top, I made from a hexagon template but it's just basically a very large coaster. The design is made by weaving together folded squares. On the hexagon, I used 3 hexagons like the wine coasters I've seen on Moda Bake shop . My daughter said they'd be tempted to put their hands in th...

(If you're here from Sew Many Ways FAFF , welcome! If you want to follow me, I'll follow you back.)   So with my top done I decided to use flannel for the batting this time. I basted it on with good old Aquanet hairspray, unscented. I then quilted each hexagon in a different motif. I just made some up while others were inspired by free motion quilt-a-longs online. Then came the hard part, cutting it in half to get two postcards.  This was pretty tough. I realized I should have made it longer in the middle than the ends. I cut it fairly close. I first drew on a 4" x 6" rectangle to get the best parts in then I trimmed them up. Since I'm new to this, I experimented on the finishing by doing binding on one. I made it with my 1/2 inch single fold bias tape maker. I pinned it around the edge and stitched it on by machine through all the layers. The other one was finished with a zigzag stitch around the edges. I liked both finishes but the st...

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:

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 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.