Scrap Attack

     Saturday was a beautiful day in Missouri and I traveled to Brunswick for a sewing day with my Scrap Attack group.  This is sponsored by my LQS, SewSweet Quilt Shop.  It is a great group and this time, several vintage machines came out to play.  Here is a little photo album of our day.

Three featherweights having a play date.

Look at that face plate!

My 301.

An Elna Supermatic.  The sewing surface is also the case for it.  Fun, don't you think?

Cynthia didn't bring a vintage machine, but did bring a gorgeous Quilt of Valor she and Kathy just finished.

Great day!  Can't wait until the next one.  

Judy

February Finishes

     Stacked Squares is done.  I usually prefer traditional quilts, but this pattern really appealed to me.  I love the illusion of depth in it.  These fabrics are also so out of the box for me. 

 A few months ago, my husband told me that all my quilts looked the same.  After thinking about it, I realized he was right.  They are always dark traditional fabrics or Civil War repros.  So, to prove that I can use a different palette, I bought these fabrics.  Most are Sweetwater by Moda.  They were fun to work with, but the dilemma is, I have no place to use the quilt.  Our house has a definite primitive look with antiques and dark traditional colors.  Go figure...I guess thats why I make quilts in those colors.

I quilted it with the walking foot in diagonal lines.

  I recently traveled to my LQS, Sew Sweet, in Brunswick, MO, for my block of the month get together. They had recently added scrap bags and I just had to buy one.  I do love me a good scrap bag and this was a dandy.

It took all of the willpower I could muster to avoid starting a red quilt.  There is even some St. Louis Cardinal baseball fabric in there.  I did put it away after petting it and sorting it.  Now if the RSC scrap challenge will just choose red for the March color, I will have an excuse to get it out again.  

     Here is my other February finish.  

     I have loved this Snowman Gatherings collection since it hit the shops.  I finally gave in and bought a charm pack and some yardage while I was in Florida.  Some Broken Dishes blocks and a little quilting and we have new winter placemats.  The charm pack made six placemats by making a few charms from the yardage.  The HST's are made from the 5" charms by the diagonal line method.  A 2-1/2" border on top and bottom makes a 12-1/2" X 16-1/2" placemat.  I quilted them with an edge to edge swirl.  

     We have a great-niece graduating from high school this Spring and I've been thinking about a quilt for her.  She has been active in choir and theatre, so I've been looking for inspiration in fabrics on this theme.  I think I have found the perfect fabric. 

That wide ribbon in the print is actually a dark red.  The school colors are black and red, so with some black, reds and creams, this should come together nicely.  I will do some embroidered blocks too.  Here are some of the other fabrics I'll be using.

Two of the black fabrics have music notes and instruments. 

      I have three tops which need quilted before I can start on this.  They were all layered and basted this afternoon, so hopefully I'll have them to the binding stage soon. This will be the carrot that keeps me moving along. 

   I hope your day included some stitching.

Judy

Banging out the BOM's

     It seems every blog and shop I know was offering a great Block of the Month in January and I loved them all.  There is a limit, though, in what I can accomplish in any given month.  I joined a BOM in my LQS in September because it was French General fabrics and one of my favorite Missouri designers, Shelly Pagliai.  They are coming along great, partly because of the fabrics and mostly because Shelly's directions are terrific.  I tend to scan directions and am guilty of missing an important point because of it.  It is pretty hard to mess these up, although I managed to do it on this last block.

It is the last one on the right, 2nd row,  and I originally sewed the corner background triangles to the sides.  Something wasn't right and a second glance at the directions soon set me right.  A little un-sewing and all was well.  

     The next one I started was in January.  I have followed the so scrappy blog, www.superscrappyblogspot.com for quite a while, especially liking the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I have designated 2016 as the Year of the Scrap.  January's color was blue and that was fun.  February's color was brown ( I was thinking it would be red or pink and had a plan), so that was a challenge!

Here is January's blue.

This is a charity quilt, all quilted now, that will go to the guild charity project for the year.

I am also doing the month's color in Father's Choice blocks to go into a sampler quilt at the end of the year.  These are great blocks, and go together so easy.  

     

     Once I  got over the whole pink/red idea, I embraced the brown.  I had plenty of scraps, so decided on string blocks.  This will be a small charity quilt using Bonnie Hunter's String X pattern (free pattern on quiltville.com.)  

I'm going to look for some cowboy fabric to put them together.  Some little boy should be very pleased.  

The next BOM to which I succumbed was Westering Women on Barbara Brackman's blog, Civil War Quilts.  You may know that Barbara does great historical research as well as designs quilts and fabric, so this is always a great read.  It just started this month and here is the first block.  

On another subject, here are a couple of pictures from our guild meeting Tuesday night.  Cynthia and Kathy gave a great program on taking photos of our quilts. 

Here we are snapping pictures of each other during our program.

     What's under the needle at your house today?  I'm working on Stacked Squares (Moda Bake Shop free pattern).  I decided it needed straight line quilting, so am doing a diagonal line pattern.  Not sure if that will be all, I'm keeping my mind open to possibilities.

Regardless, I'll keep on stitching...

Judy

Sew-In on the Beach

   

 Every winter I meet a group of friends for a winter sew-in.  We are from several different parts of the country, so it usually involves some travel and new scenery.  The last two years we have met in Atlanta at Julie's house.  This year we met in Seagrove Beach, Florida.  Three of the group have condos there and we used the clubhouse for sewing.  It was a great facility, with lots of light and a good kitchen.  Here are some pictures of the sewing room.

     Here are some of the works in progress:

Here's Laura with her selection of solids.

And the finished block!  Yes, it was paper-pieced, intricately paper-pieced.

Laura also brought this beauty, which needed the binding hand-stitched.  We finished that for her during rest stops.

We had a newbie.  Evelyn had sewing experience, but no quilting in her past.  Sister, Janie, brought her a jelly roll and matching charm pack and introduced her to quilting.

And here is the finished product

I think we have a new quilter.

     Here's Julie and her projects:

Sashing a BOM.

And her Rattlesnake blocks.  You will see several versions of the Rattlesnake.  They were an Arrow Rock Quilt Camp project from last May.

Lola's Rattlesnakes

And on the design wall.

Janie's version of Rattlesnakes.  Amazing how different they all are, isn't it?

     Sandy finished this flimsy during the sew-in.  Several of us bought some of the same fabrics during our quilt shop visit in May.  We challenged ourselves to bring a quilt from them to quilt camp in May, but Sandy is winning this one.  

Teri brought some of her husband's ties, looking for ideas on a way to use them in a quilt.  Here is the finished product.  It will be appliquéd to a backing for a wallhanging.  

Beautiful, isn't it?

     I took several partial projects, mostly blocks cut into kits.  I had one finished flimsy to display.  This is a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.  The January color was blue.  I had a ton of blue 2-1/2" strips, so did some rail fence blocks, then did some slicing and dicing.  

 Here are some more of my WIPs.

A pattern from Homestead Hearth, called Red Cross. 

I had fun sewing on Julie's Featherweight.

Some churn dash and basket blocks from another WIP.

As seen in Bruno's Pizza. 

Our farewell dinner at Salty Sue's.  

Did I have shrimp?  

Of course, I had shrimp!

I'm back home now.  I've quilted and bound that RSC quilt and will donate it to a local group helping families with small children.  They said they seldom have quilts for toddler boys, so I hope it goes to one of those little guys.  All of those other projects await me in the sewing room.  We have snow in the forecast for next week, so I will plan to 

Keep on Stitchin',

Judy

Quilting Season 2016

     Once the holidays are over, I am so impatient to get everything boxed up and stored away so that I can plan my sewing projects.  The first three months of the year are always my best sewing time.  There are fewer distractions, the weather isn't conducive to outdoor activity and our little village goes to sleep for three months.  Sometimes there is a little activity on the weekends, but not much.  Approximately 50% of our residents are weekend people and they tend to stay in the city most weekends, especially when it is cold or snowy.  So, I have plenty of time to sew and tend to burrow into my sewing room and come out only for sustenance and sleep.  Here's what I've been doing.

I finished my blue orange peel.  The appliqué was my deck-sitting project this past summer.  

The photos don't do it justice.  The blues are actually much brighter.

I used unbleached muslin for the backing.  I will have to admit, there is nothing that shows up your quilting as well as muslin.

I joined the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year sponsored by So Scrappy.  The January color was blue.  I had a bursting-at-the-seams bag full of blue 2-1/2"strips, so chose this block, Father's Choice, to make for my year long project.  This will be twelve or so blocks with sashing (I think).  Then, since that didn't make a dent in that bag, I decided to try a new block using more of the strips. 

Someone had given me a gallon zip lock bag full of 1-1/2" white strips.  So I came up with this block, which I'm calling the Binbuster.   

I tried this setting...pretty boring.

Then I sliced a couple of the blocks on the diagonal, in opposite directions, sewed them to each other and lo! a block with a little more personality.  I think this will make a great charity quilt.

Someone in the Stashbusters group posted photos of three quilts done in Jacob's

 Ladder blocks, all using different settings.  So, in December, I pulled some Christmas fabrics from the stash and made this small table topper.  It is 45" square.  

Last, but not least, I have finished the flimsy for Allietare, the Bonnie Hunter 2015 mystery quilt.  I only made 1/4 of the blocks during the mystery,  due to the disappointment in my quilt last year.  Of course, I love this one and wish it was larger.  It is 56"x56".  

I have some other things started, so will share those another day.  For now, 

Happy New Year

and

Keep on stitchin'

Judy