Hooray its a flimsy!

What a joy this quilt has been to put together.  I love the colors in the blocks.  The picture makes the background look whiter, it's more creamy with tan print. That border isn't doing much for me now that it's on there.  Guess what?  Its staying.  The rich colors will look fine in the living room where there's a lot of darker wood furniture.   

 A lot of my quilts this year have had cherry themes, so why stop now.  I'm sticking with the name Chocolate Covered Cherries for this one.  

 Hopefully I can get it quilted sometime next year.  For now it will be put in the drawer with the others waiting in line.

 I played around with color placement and found that radiating the colors really wasn't a good idea.  Notice the second row, third block in the picture below.  It really stands out at a distance.  

 Now I can put most of my quilty energy back to what's on the frame. The plan is to have little or now markings while quilting this one.  It's been quite the challenge.  Due to the borders giving me issues, I'll need to turn the quilt in order to do the side borders.  Not fun, but better than picking stitches that don't work.  And in the long run it will be quicker than marking or picking.  

Will it be done by Christmas?  One can only hope.  There's shopping and cooking yet to do for the big day so quilting will take a back seat.  

Need more quilty inspiration?  Hop on over to Judys for Design Wall Monday and see what others are stitching up for the holidays.

~Lea Anne~

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A flock of Cardinals

  I spent the early part of this week recovering from the bedroom redecorating.  Seems my eyes don't like wallpaper dust.  For the first part of the week my right eye was red and swollen, so I thought it was a good time to just sit around and catch up on some applique handwork.   But before I show you that.....

..... At last this is ready to be quilted.  How many times have you thought you did the math only to find that your math skills are fading?  Really it was just an EQ error, no EQ didn't make the mistake I did.  There was supposed to be a flange between the green border and the log cabin border.  The only way to show that in EQ (that I know of) is to add a tiny border and remember that its really a flange.  Well I forgot...OOOPS!  So the flange became a tiny border of pale yellow.  It made me so mad that I made this minor error, so I shoved it in the closet till the mood past.  So it took a couple of months, I never said I was the most easy going person....LOL 

 The applique was designed by me with pencil and paper.  

Okay now here's what I did while in recovery... Block one of the Jingle BOM is complete.  I did a Hungarian chain stitch for the stems.  Might redo this block, this stem has a little wonky under the bottom bird.  Funny thing how Erin chose cardinals....Great minds think a like!  But I was first!....LOL....Actually I think this block inspired me to get out my cardinal quilt and get it done... Thanks Erin!

 This block is from an old BOM that I purchased when our LQS went out of business last year.  There was only 6 of the 12 blocks, but they were 50% off so it was a good deal that will make a cute throw or wall hanging.  

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

Lea

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Yikes! Its glowing!

Yesterday I had an overwhelming urge to rearrange my studio.  Well I needed more space on my piecing machine.  When I was stitching down my applique on this quilt it would fall to the back and onto the floor, causing pulling and uneven stitches. 

So half the day was spent cleaning and moving.  Once everything suited my fancy I plugged in my sewing machine and light in one outlet and my space heater in another.  I didn't move the quilt frame so it was still plugged in a separate surge protected strip.  So I flip on the surge protected strip to my sewing machine and TADA!  Its up and running then I turned on my space heater, started to sit down in my big comfy quilting chair and before my bum could hit the seat "ZZZZZZT!"  LIGHTS OUT!  Of course my sweety was gone for the afternoon so I was left to deal with this issue on my own.  I unplug everything and head for the breaker box.  No switches are flipped, but I flip them off and on, like I know what I'm doing.  Hmmm...back to the studio plugging in only my floor lamp just in case I get another ZZZZT.   Nothing, no noise, but no light either.  On to the next outlet....Nothing...and the next.... Nothing.  Half of my outlets in the sewing room are fried!  Honey came home and was trying to diagnose the problem and the outlet between my sewing table and computer was GLOWING ORANGE!  YIKES!    So this was my fix until sweety could work his magic today. 

While the man works his magic I'm making laundry detergent.  I've been making my own for awhile now and have found that I like it better than the store bought stuff.  Its a quite thin and you have to shake it before using it, but for the price you can't beat it! 

HOMEMADE LAUNDRY SOAP

3/4 cup borax
3/4 cup washing soda
8 TB of dawn dish soap(it cuts grease better than all the rest)
1/2 of the measuring lid of Downy Unstoppables(dissolved in 1 cup of boiling water) (optional)
1 gallon hot of water

use 1/4 cup in every load, high efficiency washer or regular washer

Mix it all together and fill your favorite container.  I just reuse an empty store brand bottle with a spout. 

Shake bottle before every use

I used my coffee pot to pour it into my bottle. 

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

Lea Pin It