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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At the Speed of a Turtle

 Hi Quilting Friends!  I've been busy as a bee all weekend with not much to show for all the hard work.  Chasing my tail most of the time would be the best way to describe the entire weekend.  But at least there was some progress. Friday was a total bust.  We had a little family dinner here at the house so my day was spent preparing food and killing some dust bunnies.  It was a much needed visit with the family.  Love and laughter always refuels my tank.  By Saturday morning I was ready to tackle every sewing goal set last week.  First on the list was the reading pillows.  They are finished but need pillow forms.

Maybe later in the week the jammies can come off long enough to run into town.  When you live in the sticks you have to make every trip count.  Right now the list of hair spray and pillow forms isn't enough to persuade me out of my jammies.  Anyway....These pillow were quick and easy to make.  The cutting was the hardest part. 

After the cutting it took maybe 45 minutes to complete the sewing, turn them right side out, press and fold.  The tutorial called for interfacing or batting to be quilted.  I chose neither but added a handle to the top.  This might have been a mistake but I didn't think about it until much later.  Lets hope the kids don't use the handle as an awesome tool for a pillow fight. If they do, at least they are having a good time thanks to grannie.  Pretty sure their momma won't be thanking me.

Next up was to mark my quilt before putting it on the quilting frame.  You can see it in the background of the picture below.

And here you can see it as it is this morning.  I did manage to piece together a backing from yardage.  Progress!  But still no quilting plan.  Well there was quilting lines, marks and tons of ideas I did not like.  

I tried may different rulers and ideas but they just didn't seem right.  You see this is how quilt tops become UFO's.  So last night and early this morning I once again took a little trip down the rabbit hole of quilting ideas on the internet.  A few ideas were saved to a Pinterest board so I wouldn't forget latest and greatest idea.  Crossing my fingers and asking you to do the same.  I need all the good quilting vibes I can get!

Once a good quilting plan is made, this stack of batting will be used to make a Franken Batting to use in this quilt.  Do you make Franken Batting?  

And the binding on this quilt was the last of the current projects.  A whopping 18 inches of progress!  Whoo-hoo!  It's better than none. 

Well it's off to the sewing room, gotta make up for lost time.

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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Four Lone Star Quilts Finished ~ UFO Quilt #4 2023

 I'm so excited to finally share this quilt with you.  It is one of four Lone Star quilts I made last year.  When I say last year I mean from Thanksgiving 2022 to December 24, 2022.  The quilt you see below is the first quilt top made.  Over the years I've made several Lone Stars and learned a lot of tricks but you know how it is, you can know all the tricks and things can still go bad.  That's exactly what happened with this one.  It was so bad I told my husband that I was going to throw it in the trash.  He begged me to quilt it up for him.  What you can't see now that it is finished is the star leans to the right. I've never had that happen.  The center has a slight hump/mountain or fullness.  With all its issues I somehow managed to make a perfectly square 90 x 90 quilt.  But oh boy she was a real booger to quilt without puckers.

All four of the quilts were exactly the same except for the red borders.  The bright red and dark red borders looked the best so I decided to make two of each.  

At this point your probably wondering why I made four quilts exactly the same.  It's easier to cut all the quilts at the same time if they are identical.   As you all know my 29 year old son died in an accident on October 2, 20222.  Quilting is my therapy through all of life's up and downs .  When we all came together on Thanksgiving it was hard not seeing my baby at the other end of the table with his wife.  She sat there alone with tearful eyes trying her best to hold them back.  We all would take moments away from the group to deal with our emotions, regroup ourselves and try to be happy.  It's hard to put into words how our family dynamic was impacted by his death.  

Well all I could do is do what I do best, quilt.  Over the years I've made a couple Lone Stars for people who have lost a family member.  One for my dad when my brother died and one for my oldest sons Mother in Law when her husband died.  My heart and soul goes into these quilts.  They are not easy to make due to all the bias edges.  I like to use colors that make a bold and beautiful statement.  I want this quilt to be able to hug the recipient when I can't be there to comfort them.  For this quilt the black represents our loss and the colorful star represents my son Trever.  He was a bright spot in all our lives.  He was a very giving person, annoyingly smart and would let you know the facts on any given subject. But he was also quick witted and loved to make us all laugh even when he was being annoyingly smart.

The four quilts went to my daughter and her husband, my oldest son and his wife, my son's widow and my husband.  I plan to make one more but I can't tell you who it's for until it is delivered. I'm not sure if they read my blog.   It too will be identical to these. 

This last Lone Star quilt will be considered a UFO quilt of 2023 because I started it in 2022 but finished it in 2023.  

Below is Mr. Podunk peaking out from behind his new, fresh out of the dryer, very loved quilt.  What you can't see is his big cheesy grin.  He deserves all the quilts he wants.  Without him none of what I do would be possible.  Thank you Mr. Podunk for supporting me and my craziness.

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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Baby Truck Quilt

 Look what I found last night while searching through my photos.  How could I forget about making this little cutie?  This was a commissioned quilt for a friend of my dad who was expecting a new grandbaby.  I made it last spring.  Do you know how hard it is to make a quilt when you are given only the sex of the new baby.  His friend had no idea my dad had asked me to make this quilt for her grandbaby and he didn't want to let her know by asking a bunch of questions.

My idea for a baby quilt is of course happy bright colors.  However when doing my research for this quilt I found that nurseries/baby rooms are not so bright and happy these days.  The style has changed a great deal since my kids were little.  And my daughter is like me, she doesn't care to much about trends.  She was completely happy with anything I gave her with each of the four grandchildren.  So I took todays trend of boring and bland then added my touch of bright and happy.  

The grandmother and mother loved it or so they said.  No one is going to say they don't like a gift.  I was feeling a little unsure of the real love for my creation until about a month ago. Dad told me of a conversation he had with the grandmother.   She said she was babysitting her grandson for an afternoon when the he became very fussy and would not stop crying.  She became anxious and didn't know what else to do so she grabbed this quilt and and laid it on him as she held him...and like magic he stopped crying.  She said it was the weirdest and thing and works almost every time he's fussy.  My dad being a spiritual man believes in energy, both positive and negative.  He told his friend that quilting is my passion and it mends my soul.  All positive energy goes into my creations.   Does my energy pass through my creations?  We'll never really know but I like to think that it happens.  And I'm glad it gives the baby as well as grandma a little comfort and peace.

So why the trucks?  Simple...I like trucks and trucks are trendy right now.  From paper plates to fabric, you see old truck graphics EVERYWHERE.  It seems everyone loves them, so why not try to take the bland baby look and add a little trendy truck color.  I made it a bit larger than a baby quilt so he could use it longer.   I started with 5.5" squares so that would make this 55" wide but I can't remember the length.  The gray and white fabrics were purchased at Walmart and were prewashed.  The truck fabrics were pulled from my solids stash and prewashed.

I love the truck trend because as a child my dad had an orange truck with white wood rails.  He still has this old truck, it doesn't run and the rails are gone.  He's plan is to restore it with the help of my nephew who you see in this picture.  My nephew's passion is cars, he restores old cars and makes street racers for a living.

As most of you know I've made a few truck quilts in the past. The truck design for this quilt came about a few years ago when my mom was battling cancer.  I didn't have much time back then for quilting.  Being her caregiver and chauffer to all the appointments left little time for quilting let alone designing a quilt.  So the next best thing is to buy a pattern.  The cutest one at the time was a pattern called Vintage Christmas by Confessions of a Homeschooler,   Cute quilt but I would have preferred applique so....

That quilt inspired me to quickly design a simple truck applique  to put on a quick and easy chain quilt I was making.

And then I designed another after mom passed and I started selling patterns....

...and another small project...

...and the final one I designed and made. There are so many more designed but I haven't made.  Maybe next year after all(most) the UFO's have been tackled I can get back to making more truck quilts.  They are all super cute and with each one a little more applique has been worked into the design.  Only time will tell because....SQUIRELL!

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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