Becky's quilt obsession

I’m creating monsters at my house. Every time I go to the quilt room, someone comes along and wants to make her own quilt. The 6-year-old DGD asked me if she was old enough to learn how to sew – Yep, it’s time. The one in the picture is 4 – almost 5 – and she found a baggie of HSTs, and decided that they needed to go in this quilt! This is the quilt I planned on making “modern style” – just surrounded squares with a small bit of sashing. BORING! Bonnie S left a comment that the star really helped this quilt, then I got carried away. I found a circle cutter that I didn’t remember, then watched a video on how to use it, and just had to try it.  I love the one with the coke bottle in a 4 patch, and stars in circles. Then the zebra, elephant, cats  - okay, then let’s fracture a few blocks. I have the book Thinking outside the block on the table beside me, and just have to try a little bit. The clarinet didn’t stand out in a regular square, so that’s the first one I tried fractu...

Happy Independence day for those of us in the USA.  I had a delightful time yesterday out at my son’s with the huge amount of family and friends, as well as a side trip to have supper with DH’s train friends. A wonderful day! This is my design wall today. These are happy blocks for my BFF’s DIL’s quilt. Ginny came over to cut out the “pictures” from the fabrics she collected that she wants in the quilt – for example, the clarinet from the instrument fabric. Then I build it into a block. At first I was just going to border them all with the straight border, but that was boring, so I had to fuss with them a bit. It isn’t possible for me to make a quilt without at least one star in it. There is a LeMoyne stack and whack star waiting for a small border to put in here as well as the Sawtooth stars. I’ll probably manage a few 54-40 or Fight type stars as well. Enjoy more design walls over at Judy’s blog . Happy Quilting, Becky

I gave away all the placemats and table runners that I finished in time for Christmas, but I also wanted to make us some for the breakfast nook. I finished binding them today, so took some pictures. I used the colors in the stained glass in them. Our placemats reflect some of our eating habits. I love to eat fruits and vegetables, DH can eat a whole package of Oreos in a day unless I hide them from him. I really wanted to make his out of the M&M fabric, but used it to quickly make placemats for my stepson’s family, and since I’m not buying ANY fabric, this had to do. I love my stained glass. There are two more windows that angle back (it’s a very large bay), and I plan to have more of these panels made for them this year. They will be the same as the red one in the middle. There is more purple in these windows, but they look more blue when it is cloudy like today. If they weren’t snow-covered, you could also see stained glass post covers out on the deck. I don’t recommend those ...

It’s snowing in Kansas City. This is the view out the deck door from the kitchen. No DGD today, no guild tomorrow. When the schools have a snow day, guild is cancelled.           This is my table runner from the scraps of the Christmas gifts. My placemat is out of a mixed fruit fabric that is only included in the right star. DH’s is out of the Oreo fabric, so I put a small border of it. The purple in the setting triangles was included because the stained glass windows in the breakfast area contain this color, as well as red and amber. This will be on Black Bart today. UFO #6 is on the wall. I think I am avoiding it, cleaning up the room some. I tried a dark green strip next to the 4th column to use instead of black, but it does disappear against some of the fabrics, so black will be needed. I’m using yellow for the scrolls. Hopefully I will have some progress on this UFO during the snowstorm. Time to finish here and start doing something! Happy quilt...

In an effort to not create any more UFOs, I decided to work on the last of veg/fruit fabric and finish up DH’s and my placemats and table runner. I didn’t have much of the fabrics left, and trimmed them up into mainly 2-1/2” strips. I had purchased Marti Michell’s strip templates, so decided to use them to make up LeMoyne stars for the runner. I cut 3, one is finished. I will put the placemats and runner on Black Bart(LA) together when I finish the runner. Also in this picture is a pot holder made last night with DGD#2, aka “Little Girl” helping pick the colors. We made one for her Mommy for Christmas, and DD was very happy. I used Stashbusters ListMom’s directions, so these are nice and big. I cut enough Insulbright and batting to make a few more – kind of like having kits, and just having to pick the fabric out of the scraps bin. These are leftovers from the Crayon quilt top. For Judy L’s UFO challenge, #6 was these fall-colored Chinese Coins. It was probably good that I put t...

I haven't been sewing very much, waiting for my eyes to adjust after the first two surgeries. I have at least one more to go, next Monday. I decided I could sew on the Stashbusters Sunshine Ugly fabric challenge, since I will be able to discard blocks, if needed. The nine big (12") blocks on the left, and the two bottom right ones were all made before my surgery. I decided to make a few more 6" blocks to use in setting these whenever we finish with the big blocks. I'm sorry about the blurriness of the right picture, but - I'm working on it. I was able to make the 3 star blocks last week. I've always loved making stars since nearly my first quilting class, which was with Alex Anderson, teaching out of her Simply Stars book. I had tried several times prior to her class to make LeMoyne stars, but had pucker problems, even when making them by hand. I learned how to make them by machine from Alex, and have loved them since then. I try to incorporate at least one s...

January has been a quiet month here with not a lot of activity. This aging really slows down recovery from almost everything. DH was rear-ended yesterday, so he's really feeling it now. I hope he can make a full recovery, he's always so active. I did finish up this UFO - the blocks for this one were started 10+ years ago. One of my quilting friends chopped up a lot of fabric for Stack and Whack blocks, and had a bunch of scraps. I ended up cutting out star points from the left-overs and put them in a bag. I periodically cut out the backgrounds, again from scraps of that first quilt, and would make a block or two when I just wanted to do something quick. I have another top that looks about the same, but is 12" blocks. This one is 6". I quilted this using the Circle Lord for concentric circles (first attempt). I like the look, but it is "slower" than an overall. I'm trying to change my thinking around to realizing that I can spend as much time quilting a ...