Amour Cerise or Amour De Cerise?~ UFO Quilt #5 2023

Hello Quilting friends!  Today I'm excited to share my Amour Cerise(Cherry Love) quilt.

Quilted, bound, washed and ready to be stored away until Valentines Day next year. 

The quilting was kept somewhat simple. Lots of stitch in the ditch and free motion feathers. 

The applique is fusible raw edge with 100 wt. thread to hold it into place.

The large crosshatching is spaced every 2 inches and was marked 100% before putting it on the quilting frame.

 I decided to see if I could find some of this fabric for sale online.  There was no plan to purchase it, I was just curious to see if it was still out there.  I thought this line of fabric was called Amour Cerise.  When I Googled Amour Cerise by Moda there was no such thing but I did find the real name of this line is L'Amour or translated LOVE.   Now how did I come up the name Amour De Cerise?  I have no idea what was going on in my head way back then.  But I decided I should recheck my my translation, it could be wrong too.

I'm so confused when it comes to the online translator.  Take a look.  It hurts my brain and I'll leave it at that.

So now I'm faced with the label issue.  Take a look at this...I misspelled Cerise!  UGGG!  It would have been nice to have noticed this BEFORE stitching it into place.  Fiddlesticks!  If I leave it as is, this quilt will survive for 1000 years and with my name in big bold letters after the misspelled word.  How tacky would it be to cross out the H with a marker?...HAHA!  Okay....I'll make a new label, remove the DE and correct my spelling...just not today.  This is going into the needs a label stack of quilts.

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

Here's a video I made about this quilt for Facebook.  It contains a little more information about the quilt.

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Happy Valentine's Day 2023

 Hello Sweet Quilting Friends!  While searching my photo files I ran across this little cutie from when I still had my office.  The office is now a spare bedroom.  The one and only thing I miss about having an office is my quilt displays/staging area for new quilts.  Anyway, I thought it would be a great picture to share on Valentine's Day.

There's not much to share from the Studio.  Last week went crazy and it was a busy week of running here and there and doing very little in the way of quilting.  This week things look like they might be back to normal so I should be able to get my current quilt off the frame and bound.  That's the plan but as we all know plans can change without warning.  Crossing my fingers and hoping for a much needed week of sewing.  See you soon!

Valentine’s Day is not just about love birds but it is also about all the people you love. Happy Valentine’s Day to my family and friends!

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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A Little Quilting Progress and A Lot of Cooking

Hello Happy Quilters!  There's not a lot to share with you today but there has been a little progress this past weekend.  Most of my time has been spent doing those nasty little chores we put off in order to spend time doing what we want to do instead of what needs/should to be done.  Total time in the Studio was about 4 hours over the weekend.  Not much time but there was a lot accomplished in so little time.   The Amour de Cherise quilt is coming along.  Not sure I'm in love with the quilting but at least it's being quilted.  Hopefully I can quilt a row or two of blocks a day.  The goal is at least one row per day.  Anything over that calls for a celebration.

The cheap front porch quilts are slowly progressing as well.  What great little project to get me off my feet for a bit.  Both quilts were cut and pieced at the same time.

Today I hope to get these pressed and subcut into rows.  I think I'll do this before quilting on the frame.  Then I'll choose my next UFO to be put on the frame.  Maybe something springy or that would fit in with an upcoming holiday.  I'm sure it will be a digging through the quilt tops rabbit hole that may take much longer than what my mind thinks.  Maybe I should just close my eyes and grab one.  I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

In between the sweeping, dusty and other nasty chores I also did a lot of cooking.   The way to Mr. Podunk's heart is through his stomach.   We are not big fans of convivence foods like premade meals, you know frozen foods and such.  The occasional can of soup is about as wild as it gets.  So I made him some breakfast burritos for a grab and go breakfast.  A quick chicken salad to work into the mix of leftovers he normally takes for lunch.  And I also made the weekly homemade pizza.  Mr. Podunk wants pizza every week!  He said I just need to keep a batch of dough on hand at all times because it's great for pizza and for baguettes.  It is the best pizza dough I've ever made.  Wish I had known about this pizza dough back in the day when I actually ate pizza.  Yes dear friends I don't eat pizza due to allergies.  It makes me swell up like a bullfrog.  Every once in awhile, like this weekend, I ate a 2" piece of pizza.  By the next morning I had gained 1.5 lbs. in inflammation and my joints were not happy.  Was it worth it?  YES!   Delicious!  But I won't be having anymore for awhile.

If you would like the recipe you can find it in this video.

The second part of this video can be found below.  I know 2 videos seems like a bit much but it's worth it, I promise.  You really only need to watch the first few minutes of this video where he shows you how to form the pizza.  If you don't have a pizza oven or pizza stone you can bake at the highest temperature on your oven on a cookie sheet  bottom rack until done.  You might need to broil on the top rack to brown the top.  I do not need to broil the pizza in my oven.  My oven goes to 500 and it takes about 12 to 14 minutes to cook the pizza.

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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Reading Pillows for the Grands

 The reading pillows are finished and ready to ship.  Of course grannie had to add a few more items to the mix. The candy, meat sticks and small stuffed animals were purchased at the Dollar general.  The books are a mix of new and used.  I'm always on the lookout for kids books to help my daughter build a good library for homeschool.

The pattern I used to make the pillows is from a YouTube video, you can find by clicking here.  They were simple and quick to make. I'm not completely happy with the look of the finished pillows and it has nothing to do with the pattern.  

The pattern calls for a 16" pillow form.  The ones I purchased from Hobby Lobby didn't fill my pillows as much as I would like.  Maybe it just a personal preference.  I like heavily stuffed pillows.  But I don't think the grandkids care about the perfect amount of pillow stuffing.

Both of the girls like unicorns and rainbows but when it comes to color their tastes are a little different.  My granddaughter Alynn loves any shade of blue. She a lot like me, a little bit of a Tom Boy.

Scarlet is 100% girly girl.  She loves Barbie pink and purple. This fabric was perfect for little Prissy Missy.  At 6 yrs old she has to do her hair and makeup everyday.  The make is basically lip gloss and blush, sometime some little girl eye shadow.

I think she's going to love the glittered hooves.

My grandson, Mason is 4 and is all about dinosaurs.  And much to my surprise he can name them all.  Some I've never heard of before.

Here's the gang from left to right...Alynn, Scarlet and Mason. This was taken on a homeschool field trip to The Lost River Cave Butterfly Habitat in Kentucky.  I'm really proud of my daughter for homeschooling the kids.  

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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Throwback Thursday ~ Baby Dresden Quilt

Just thought I would pop in today and share pictures of a quilt I made and gave away back in 2015.  She's a little cutie made for my youngest granddaughter named Scarlet.  Back in those days I didn't name or label my quilts like I do today.  So we'll just call her this baby quilt.  

This baby quilt was my own creation drafted with good old fashion pencil and paper.  If interested you can see more about that process here.  Designing quilts has been a passion of mine since the very beginning of my quilting journey.  The quilting part however is a real struggle.  I did a pretty good job quilting up this little gal.   You just can't go wrong quilting it to death with feathers and crosshatching.

She turned out really cute but she had her issues when making the applique.  I learned a very valuable lesson about shrinking freezer paper applique templates.  Again...if your interested in that story click here.  

Here's a picture of the back of the quilt showing all the quilting.  Taking a look back in time makes me want to make another one for me.  I bet if I dig deep enough in the studio I could find these templates.  Maybe...but not today.  Stay focused on the  UFO plan Miss Lea Anne.

Until next time...

 

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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Planning for February

 New fabrics and two new quilts are in the plans for February.  These red, white and blues were impulse buys yesterday when shopping for pillow inserts for the grandkids reading pillows.

Remember my bright idea to make a small gingham quilts for my rocking chair on the front porch?  Well I didn't get one made in January so why not make two in February.  I couldn't resist the polka dots and cherry fabric.  The gal at the store was looking at me kinda funny when I pulled the bolts of fabric down and walked about 20 feet away to look at them from afar.  I needed to make sure there was going to be enough contrast to make a gingham quilt.  It's not as much contrast as I wanted but it's the best I could do with the options at Hobby Lobby.  No reason to buy quilt shop fabrics for a quilt that will be seeing all kinds of weather.

The blue fabrics have great contrast.

The plan is to cut and piece both of these quilts at the same time.  It'll be a nice quick project to give me a break from quilting the current UFO.

The Amour de Cerise quilt has been giving me a little trouble.  Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come.  The problem is more me than it is the quilt.  Finding the right quilting design is taking far longer than I thought.  The one below requires more measuring and marking than I would like so I decided to try something else.

My brain just couldn't get away from the complex designs.  Again this is too much marking and would be time consuming.

Crosshatching is one of my favorite ways to quilt a quilt so let's go with that.  It's fairly easy to mark a quilt for the lines.  However one inch crosshatching is too much and doesn't leave room for imperfections.

I opted to go with two inch crosshatching.  The imperfections are harder to spot.  The arrow below shows the last line made on this quilt top.  The squares on a couple rows will actually be rectangles. It will blend right in and not be noticeable when the quilt is finished.  The quilting in the quilt blocks will be free motion so there's no need to mark anything.  Now to finally get this girl on the quilt frame.

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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