Easter Greetings

Wishing everyone a blessed day!  Hoping that you all enjoy your time with family and friends!  Today my oldest son is bringing dinner to me.  Isn't that wonderful?!  Not your traditional Easter dinner, we're having vegetarian pizza!  But we aren't celebrating Easter, we're celebrating my Birthday a day early.  And then tomorrow I"ll spend my Birthday taking my momma to the doctor for more tests.  Even though the circumstance of us spending my Birthday together aren't ideal, it's still nice to be able to spend it together.  If you haven't put two and two together yet, tomorrow is April Fools day.  Yep I fooled them all and came into this world a few weeks early.  See you in a few days!  Happy Easter!

Lea

Thrift shop

Yesterday I found these sheets at the local thrift shop for $2 a piece.  Don't call the quilt police!  I've been doing this since I started quilting and don't seem to have a problem.

Dug around in the stash to see if I could come up with enough fabrics to match

I'd like to make something like The Rowalong  at Beeinmybonnet blog.  Not any time soon.  I've saved all the steps to making this free quilt a long to an external drive.  

Or maybe something from Quilt soup

This is one of the free patterns from QuiltSoup

The colors are so springy, yes I love my brights! It must be my inner child that can't seem to be quieted....LOL

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!

Lea

 

Mailbox Surprise

Quilty mail is the best!  Yesterday the painting was put aside for a few minutes to childishly rip open THE PACKAGE.  A wonderful box of goodies from the QuiltingGallery.com blog hop.  Too many blogs for me to visit each one, there was  around 200!  Anita over at BedofRosesMQ sent me this box of goodies.  First of all I love Eleanor Burns, such a wonderful teacher.  I record all her shows to watch while doing hand stitching.  Anita threw in a few extra goodies, FABRIC!, and some darling little pins from quiltbug.  I had to check out the quiltbug website, it was new to me.  

OOOH...the yummy purple and yellow...swoon!

 Always interesting personal reads in Eleanor's Books

Hop on over to BedofRosesMQ , there's more than quilting, look at this yummy!  

I've always admired knitters.  All I can say is HOW!? Anita can do it all!  I'm in awe of this sweater...

In high school I took a needle work class(no longer available at schools).  It was an easy "A" because momma had already taught me almost every method this class covered.   Every few weeks we were taught something new.  I aced everything EXCEPT knitting.  Finally after many attempts and failing to make anything that resembled knitting I whipped out my crochet needle and made a grannie square pot holder and turned it in.  Mrs. Coyle pulled me aside and let me know that she knew it wasn't knitting.  My argument...I at least deserved half credit for using one needle instead of two!  Sighing she agreed and gave me a passing grade of C-.  She almost had to.  You see we had a class of about 25 non crafty, non sewist newbies.  So when it came time for a new method I could help instruct in one small group while she instructed another small group.  Maybe someday I'll give it a whirl again..Maybe...

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

Vintage finds

As all of you know I'm not one to stay on task.  Today the unfinished spare bedroom redo is back on the task at hand list.  Painting today..Yeah!  Look what I found in the drop cloth pile.  

This is the good side...

....the bad side

Putting on my Quilt Inspectors Glasses... Fabric looks to me to be from the late 80's early 90's...

Hand stitched...probably by child slave labor, more than likely this was store bought in my humble quilters opinion.  My decision is based upon the poly batting and birthing method instead of binding.  Still its a shame that such a pretty quilt has been treated so poorly.  Yep I'm using it today as my drop cloth.  The damage is already done.

And while digging around for an old sheet I ran across one of my vintage sheets...still in perfect condition...this is an original not a reproduction.

 I must say I don't know my own strength...OOPS!  Broke three pieces of oogie walnut stained trim that was to be painted...darn..

 The view on my back porch, I should be showing you daffodils and crocus but mother nature had other plans

Until next time dear friends "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

Beauty is in the B-Holder

Yes it is!  These little microwave bowl holders are the greatest thing since sliced bread.  How many times have you done the "Hot Potato soup bowl dance"?  Not anymore.  The only thing to remember is that these shouldn't be left in the microwave for longer than 6 minutes.  And to tell you the truth if your microwave can't warm something up in 6 minutes,  ITS BROKEN.   Here's a list of several different tutorials on pinterest.  I've used two different tutorials to make them and they are all about the same.  These 4 will be going to mommas house, she complained that she never got a set when I was selling them.

 And for me...These two cute little pot holders were made from a tutorial at Beeinmybonnett blog.  There's a wonderful Row a long quilt for free on that site also that is calling my name.  Lori Holt(I'm sure most of you know her by her lines of fabric)  gives great instructions.  Very energetic and inspiring.  

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

Yeah Toast!

Lets get up and get moving!  Have little breakfast.... If you click here it will take you to a not so great video but hilarious song about TOAST.    Every time toast is made in my house this is whats running through my brain.  YEAH TOAST!  Takes me back to my younger years.  Funny how I went from listening to the comical radio shows to Political radio.  Yes guys and girls 3 to 6 hrs a day I tune in to political radio!  The TV rarely comes on around here till after 5 pm, and then sometimes it too is on political programming.    Now lets tune into some quilting!...

Here's how the quilt on the frame is coming.  Slowly but surely.  A lot of buried threads tails.  The quilted cross is becoming a headstone for thread.  The evening sun coming through the studio windows really makes the quilting show!

This is a first for me of using one thread color on top and a different color on bottom.  Not as hard as some would lead you to believe as long as you test before stitching.  Here's how I test my tension.  Great video, this guy has tons of good ones to watch.  

 While looking at this picture it hit me that there's a design flaw and I'll need to do some Picking and a Grinning on the threads just above the wings....about 2 ft total..UGGG....back killer...

My youngest son came to visit the other day.  I forgot to take a pic so I had to rummage through his facebook page and steel this one.  He went for a job interview yesterday on his first full time job!  Yeah!  Cross your fingers and toes, and send good wishes his way!  He should find out sometime next week if he gets the job.  Good luck Trever!

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

Bountiful Baskets

She's coming together nicely.  So far no major uh-ohs(crossing my fingers, knocking on wood).  Not sure about the set in fabric and the border. 

So I played around in EQ last night and came up with these.  The lemony yellow is much better than whats in my stash.

 I'm leaning towards this one, which would mean I need to buy more white for the borders.  Now I'm thinking the baskets may need some flowers!  My mind says to use the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) method, but my quilter ego says MORE! MORE!  3-D flowers would add a WOW factor, a bluebird or two...sigh...which is quilting out of my comfort zone?  Its hard to say, am I comfortable adding more?  Or is leaving it simple the one that makes me the most uncomfortable...makes you really think about your quilting process when you start asking questions.  

For those of you that use EQ and are wondering how I got those full cornerstones on the outside sashing,  I used this tutorial.  

 See how the cornerstone below is cut in half, EQ makers need to fix this issue don't you think?

However when you do this it's just for visuals.  EQ will not tell you the correct side triangles.  That's when this handy dandy little tool is helpful.  The regular price is around $40 but if you have a Joann's 50% off coupon it's not so bad. Sure I  could have just worked up another quilt in EQ with the block size the same dimensions as the sashed block but I have this tool so I might as well make use of it.  It stays in my purse most of the time its great for border yardage and cost of fabric.  If you have 100 HST's at 3 inches it can tell you how much of each fabric you'll need!  Great tool once you learn how to use it.  There's a larger book and  there's a small pocket in the back that holds a mini calculations book.  It also comes with a DVD to explain some of the more commonly used functions. 

Well I'm off to my Happy Place

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

Spring has sprung!

Happy Spring!  Today is the first day of spring and its COLD here in Podunk, they're calling for a little snow in the next few days.  That's OK because I know it won't be long till I can sit on the back porch and drink my morning coffee.   Hope where ever you are it's sunny and warm on this first day of spring.  To warm things up and get in the mood for spring I thought I'd share with you some cheery vintage fabrics that were found in my stash yesterday while looking for the perfect yellow fabric to go with my new quilt top.  Just how old and vintage?  Not sure, none of these have salvages or dates, all I can tell you is that they came from 3 different quilters, who have now passed.

So many little surprises hiding in there...where's Waldo?

 This one looks like a 70's calico to me

 A panel print

Possibly curtain fabric from the 60's or 70' 

And this little cutie is my FAVORITE, good quality fabric that is just adorable.  The images on this fabric would make cute templates for applique. 

And my collection of GFG.  Some were thrift store finds but most were given to me by my dear friend Connie, they belonged to her mother in law.  She also gave me about 200 hexie pieces to make more GFG blocks.   There's a lot of poly blend fabrics in these so I'd have to guess they are also between the 60's and the early 80's.  The colors are hideous and don't match but still they would make a wonderful scrappy quilt.  Its a wonderful example of how the older poor folk quilted.   If you look closely there's an odd ball sunflower peaking out!

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

Sashing work

Last night was spent working on the nine patches for the sashing on the baskets quilt.   Here's an EQ snippet of my plan.  The basket and colors aren't the same in the snippet but you get the idea.

This one looks better 

It will take over 3 yards for the yellow fabric.  Here's what I've pulled from my stash that is over 3 yards.  There may be a trip to town for something different.  None of these are saying "I'm the one", what do you think?  

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

A weeks worth

Where does the time go?  I didn't realize it had been a week since my last post.  Time flies when you're busy.  Seems like all last week there just wasn't enough hours in the days.  Yesterday it finally caught up with me, and I crashed on the couch at about 4 in the afternoon.  Slept till 8pm, woke up long enough to feed my hungry tummy, do a little cleaning and crashed again around 10pm, woke up bright and early this morning at 4am ready to take on another week.
So here's some of what kept me so busy.

26- 12.5" Scrappy HST basket blocks, now I just need to decide what type of sashing and borders would look best.  I've narrowed it down to striped sashing with 9 patch cornerstones, or garden maze.  The border is still up in the air, if I go with white I tend to heavily quilt, if I go with color it may change my idea for the sashing.

 These little guys kept me busy for days.  Here's 2 of my favorite blocks out of 13.  

 I've been thinking about sharing my quilt block patterns here on my blog as I make them but I haven't figured out how to do that.  They are 16" finished.   Its not like I can just scan them, some how they need to be spit and put into pdf format. If someone out in blogland knows how to do this let me know.  After I drew these out with permanent marker I figured out how to make the petaled flowers more uniform.  So they will all have the same number of petals evenly spaced.  

 My center design is still up in the air, but for now it's staying as is, might change it later with the progress of the actual blocks.  

My oldest son and his girlfriend came over Saturday evening for super, we had a wonderful time.  I hadn't seen them since Christmas, and have talk to them very little via the phone.  These poor kids have had a heck of a year already but are taking it all very well.  Juggling work, school, her dad past, helping her mom move, they moved....oh my goodness and they still smile...Maybe I'm a little bias but I think they are just the cutest couple.

I've linked up with Judy today, go over and check out what others are up to this monday morning.

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

Design Wall Monday

Did you all have a good weekend?  It was a beautiful spring day here in Podunk.  Sunny and almost 60!  My day was spent at the drafting/cutting table, and cleaning up the studio a bit.   There's now 9 of the 13 blocks for this quilt drafted, lets hope it doesn't take as long to make the quilt as it did to draft.  One or two more today and then its back to actually quilting on the frame.  Maybe tomorrow...because in my efforts to clean I've made a mess that needs to be cleaned....how does that happen?!

Even though the day was beautiful I only made one quick trip around the yard to stretch my legs and see what spring is popping up in the yard.  Well look who I found stealing.  The even funnier picture that I didn't get was Ross chasing the squirrel out of the bird feeder, wheres the camera when you need it....LOL

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea

The Quilt Stare

How often do you start quilting and wonder should I add more detail?  So you stand back and stare for awhile.  If you look closely you can see that I've picked some stitches, just so I could stand back and stare some more.  HUM....

 Maybe if I stare at THIS section for awhile it will help me decide what to do....

The "I have no idea what to quilt" stare

Maybe my brain just needs more fuel

Until next time "Quilt out of your Comfort Zone!"

Lea