Design Wall Monday

After showing my jean rag quilt a few times, I began to notice that I had seams coming apart.  I'm not sure if it's because I slightly lengthened the stitch length or if I had a spool of bad thread.  To make sure the entire quilt was in tact, I resewed all the rows.  It has now been washed once.  I'd like to wash it one more time to get the seams to fluff a bit more. 

Saturday we had the first meeting of the scrap quilting club and I posted about it in the previous post.  Here is the project we will be working on as our yearlong project.  It's called Flying In Squares by Melissa Corry and is a pattern on Moda Bake Shop.  Below are my two test blocks.  I also have a few segments of the first block.

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Scrap Quilting Club

Yeah!  We started scrap quilting club for the 3rd year.  We have 5 new members, Cynthia, Kathleen, Darlene, Connie, and Carol.

Congratulations to Kathleen as she won the door prize!  We started our first project of the year, Boxed In, that in Quiltmaker's magazine 100 Blocks Vol. 2.  The blocks were made in 9", 12" and 15" finished sizes.  Next month I'll post photos of the completed tops.  For now, here are a few of the blocks made in class.


















Then for show and  tell, Lee Etta and Carol brought their exploding star top which was last year's "yearlong" project.

The next set of pictures have nothing to do with scrap quilting club, but I wanted to share this birthday cake my daughter had made for her boyfriend's birthday party we had tonight. Unbelievable!

 Here is a photo of her with her friend.

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Design Wall Monday

I haven't had time to post but have been busy working on quilting projects.  I had to do some prep work for my scrap quilting club that's slated to begin this weekend.  In  the process, I've made 12 Boxed In blocks from Quiltmakers 100 Blocks Volume 2.  I used scraps leftover from the Frolic fat quarter packet I previously purchased.  This will be my third quilt top and I still have more fabrics left; seems like the fabrics are multiplying.

Then, I finished cutting jeans I'd purchased from a garage sale about 3 years ago.  Why do we purchase items we already have plenty of at home?  Yes, because it was at a price too good to be true. Well,  I decided that these would not go into my normal denim storage so I took them straight to work where they sat and sat.  Finally, during our craft guild sessions it took me three sessions to get them all cut.  Saturday I started putting the blocks together and then decided that the denim was too boring.  Apparently I need color a lot in my life. So, I added lots of machine embroidered appliqued hearts and other machine embroidery designs.  I got bored again and started combining denim, removing pockets and labels and then sewing them back to plain blocks, using scraps of denim for applique, even basket weaving on one.  I decided ribbon would be good too.  I have no clue what I'm doing but the last two days have been fun!  No worries about mistakes; incorporating them in without a guilty conscious.  Sadly, I can't work on it now because of a lot of reasons.  Hopefully, I'll get Recycled With Love completed by the end of the month. By the way, heart embroidery designs are from a variety of designers. I can't remember them all but do recall Designs by JuJu, Affairs of the Heart, OeSD, and Dakota Collectible.  If you're interested in one in particular, let me know and I'll look in my library for it.

Thanks for stopping by. Visit Patchwork Times to see more design walls.
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Type-u-later,

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Happy New Year

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year.  I was busy throughout the entire holiday season.  I hosted Christmas dinner at my home so I had to clean and cook for the 25 or so guests prior to their arrival.  We had a fantastic time and I just hated for all the excitement to end.  I worked Tuesday through Friday and then spent New Year's eve at my niece's home and we line danced our way into the New Year.

For as quilting, I made a few more quilted wallets; that made the total of 33 wallets in less than a week.  I enjoyed making them and have a few in my stash for myself to use throughout the year.

In addition to the wallets, I made this quilt for my husband who watches television in his "man cave."  This should keep him plenty warm. This was a mystery quilt that's now for sell called Friends and Fellows.

I sewed the remainder of the drunkard's path blocks together from a previous project and then sewed them into this quilt top.  It's not very large so I will need more borders to get it to a decent size of lap or twin size quilt.  We'll have to see how this one plays out.

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Type-u-later,

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Design Wall Monday

I'm back with another design wall Monday.  Yeah!  I still haven't taken a photo of a completed quilt.  Maybe I'll take it to work this week to get that done.  However, I did make the remainder of my drunkard's path blocks and have the quilt top completed.  Now I need to add a few borders.  This pattern is from JayBirdQuilts. Mine is a little different as I added setting triangles all around and of course the borders I'll add at some point.

I finally decided to make a few Christmas gifts.  I made Wonder Wallets by www.LazyGirlDesigns.com about three or four years ago for friends and family.  Last year they started asking for replacements but I didn't get around to making them.  This weekend I made twenty.  They went really fast and would have been faster if  I'd made them all from the same fabric.  I had to constantly change threads to match the wallet and/or Velcro colors. Maybe I'll make a few more if I get a chance.

That's it for me.  To see more, visit Patchwork Times.
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Design Wall Monday

I started a new project yesterday.  I've been wanting to make this quilt since last year.  I even purchased the batik fabrics and had them still stored together in the store bag.  I decided last week to clean my sewing room and guess what I found.  I'm having so much fun with the drunkard's path blocks.  Of course I cut them with my Accuquilt Go! die cutter, 7" finished blocks.  I have over half of them sewn as the sewing is super easy.  All the previous curve piecing experience has allowed me to get a lot done in a short period of time.

To see more design walls, visit www.patchworktimes.com.

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Drawing Winner

Thanks everyone for your wonderful comments.  I have used random number generator for the drawing.

The winner is commenter #3,  Lizzy.  Lizzy, I've already sent a message to your email account requesting your snail mail adderess.

Thanks everyone for playing along.
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A few more finishes

Okay, I forgot to take a final photo of this quilt.  It's a charity quilt for hospital use in the preemie ward.  They need basic quilts that can be washed a lot.  I used my Asian themed charm packs for this one.

I quilted the African Inspired Card Trick quilt.  It was one of the scrap quilting club projects.  The pattern is from All People Quilt. 

Instant Karma was made for a great niece who wanted an orange, pink and purple quilt.  Weird color combination but it does reduce the family quilts I need to make.  It should be less than ten now; I need to check the list.

Made the small tumbler changing pad/quilt for my step-daughter.  She's have a baby in February but the shower was today. Of course the tumblers were cut from my Accuquilt die cutter.  If you need a tutorial, visit my tutorial tab.

And the final quilt in this post is Jitter Buzz, a retreat project I started in February 2009.  I sometimes think of it as the quilt from hell as the directions were not correct when I was piecing the top.  I'm just glad that it's done and I really like it.

Don't forget that tomorrow is the last day to enter the drawing.  See previous post for instructions.  Also, I have one more quilt I completed but need to clip a few threads and sew the label.

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What I've been doing; 2 Finishes, Give Away

I've been missing in action. My life kind of spun out of control.  What have I been doing?  The very brief version:  In September we had our guild's quilt show, in October I went to NYC and in November I helped coordinate a major line dance party.  I wasn't able to work on anymore Quiltmaker's 100 blocks so I didn't complete the goal to get them all done in a year.  I'll make another post about my NY trip, but here are two finishes.

I did a major happy dance when I completed my dear Jane quilt I call Scrappy Jane.  Hey, that officially makes me a Janiac! The fabrics are only used once per block or triangle; no repeating once the unit was completed.  I enjoyed the process of making the blocks and triangles, having fun with the challenging piecing.  What I did not like was binding the darn thing!  I'm glad it's done and I'm so happy that it does have scallops.  My next scallop quilt will most definitely be smaller. I started out hand quiting, then took it to a local church group to do some hand quilting; it still needs more quilting in the triangles but for now, I'm putting it aside.  Oh yeah, it won 2nd place in the quilt show in Bed Size Quilts category.

Here is another finish, cathedral stars, but I named mine Crystal Stars.  I didn't think I'd ever get through making all the units. Another one I'm glad to get off my to do list.

I have some other quilts I've completed but don't have photos of yet.  Let's see, two baby quilts, a quilt I made for a family member and at two more. So, don't go away too long as I promise to be back soon with more eye candy.

I noticed that while I was gone that I now have 100 followers.  If you are a follower and leave a message, I'll enter you into a drawing.  I have been cutting my batik quarter yards into strips.  I'm sending  15 batik strips 2.5" wide to the lucky winner.  You have until Sunday at 8:00 p.m. to enter.

Have a great day everybody!

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Design Wall Monday

I know it's been a while.  I still have a lot of things on my personal schedule with line dancing and providing quilt lectures and workshops.  I'm sorry to report that I haven't had time to work on the 100 blocks in months now. 

I was on the Tim Ezell Show on KTVI as a representative of my line dancing group's work with the Gateway Classic. We taught Tim how to do the Wobble Dance.

Here is my actual design wall with 2 of my 3 current projects.

And this is my other current project.  I'm also preparing for our guild's quilt show the end of the month so the DJ quilt must get the dreaded scalloped border.  It's been sitting for many, many months, almost a year with no work.  The show is definitely my motivation.  By the way, I hate scallop borders!  Maybe because the quilt it so big for my first scalloped border project.  Definitely because I don't really know if I'm doing it right.  I'm using a combination of instructions provided from various sources.  I wish I could have done the faced border but was afraid it would have been very difficult to line up the scallops directly around the triangles.  I have almost 2 borders completed.  I'll post a full photo when it's finished.

Here are the results from one workshop I gave; many different ways to make scrappy stars.

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