Stitching in the Barn

  Finished August 2020. Inspired by Waves by Jenny Doan here . Appliques available as free clip art here . Fabric from my stash.

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'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.

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...

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 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.

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.

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 so busy with sewing and back to school. I also feel like I can't get enough sleep. The other day I felt like I barely made it back from the grocery store and everyday at work I get worn out earlier than usual. I just keep saying "School starts Tuesday" then I'll be able to collapse without anyone home during the day, or stay up and sew ^_^ My week started out with my mini quilt. I got all the blocks pieced and played around with the setting. I thought I took pictures of different setting but I guess i didn't. The blocks: They are about 3.75 inches square. The last seams went together so fast I was surprised to see it finished. I now see why a lot of mini quilt makers sew a 1/4 inch seam and then trim it to 1/8 inch. My 1/8 inch seams were a bit inconsistent and I had to back a few with interfacing because the fabric was unraveling weird and I didn't want to get a hole. But I'm happy with these.

Here's the 2-patches that have already been paired into 4-patches: The strips were originally cut 1 1/4 inches to make a small coin block, that never got made, long before the BOM, which is what I'm using these fabrics for now. I cut some strips out of the Kona white and tried to sew them with an 1/8 inch seam. It turns out the 1/8 inch mark on my presser foot wasn't accurate and they ended up smaller than they should.  I have carried on though and turned these into 4-patches, which I'll now have to trim to 2 inches square, and make sure my next seams are a true 1/8 inch. The 4-patches will then be turned into 12 16-patches that I'm going to play with to figure out a setting for my quilt. I've been having loads of fun with this! I think a mini quilt is a perfect idea for all the hot weather we've been experiencing here in Texas.

I used Inkscape to make a layout for my BOM quilt: I really liked this one! Maybe I need to make a mini mock up to test out how it looks. (crossposted to my LJ)