Becky's quilt obsession

Where did September go? I’m sure there must be more of it left somewhere! Yes, I finished the monster other person’s UFO. I did the binding by sewing the back from the front. I even glued it down, but I’m still not happy with how it turned out. I still had to do a lot of resewing.  I haven’t found a foot for the Bernina that let’s me open the ditch as wide as I would like on the binding. I’ve tried the new ditch attachment for the walking foot, and it didn’t help. If it hadn’t been so large, I would have turned it by hand. This is as far as  I am on the donation quilt for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad Symposium next week. It only needs a small border – I’m debating between the red and the yellow. The yellow is a subtle tone-on-tone, but the red has trains on it. Every other piece of fabric in it is train fabric, so I’m leaning towards the red. It doesn’t show very much, but each of the railroad crossing blocks have red lights under the white crosses. I’m hoping it is a ...

I’m having an attack of ADD. I have too many projects in process. I kinda like it that way! This is the first project. It needs to be finished ASAP as it is supposed to be auctioned Friday. This was a top donated to my SIL’s foundation, Friends’ United. They provide teaching instruction for teachers and supplies for students in Honduras. This project was a challenge! It started with the backing made out of 3 pieces of the blue fabric. It was sewn together by hand, the shrunken selvages still attached. I sewed them again on my DSM, then trimmed the selvages.  I loaded it, and it was nice and square on Black Bart. Then I started to load the top. It was a very friendly top. The blue border was “gathered” in, and one side was 4” longer than the other side. It had cornerstones that had a cut out corner for the white border. I ended up removing all 4 blue borders and the cornerstones, measuring them by the center of the quilt, then reapplied them. There was enough length that I used j...

Here/s DGD #2 with the first quilt she designed. She loves to play with my scraps, especially cutting them into smaller sizes. I’ve seen several quilts by “modern quilters” where they just lay the pieces of fabric on the background, then sew around them. I had DGD use a glue stick and putting the glue in the middle of the fabric, she glued the pieces she wanted in place. These scraps are mainly from the quilt I’m making my friend’s DIL.  She cut most of them – I helped on some of the hearts and the Coca Cola emblem. With her permission, I added a few pieces that would bridge from one area to another for sewing down all the patches. I went ahead and pin basted the quilt top with just the glued on pieces, with a thin poly batting  and backing (same fabric as the binding). I loaded some light pink Bottom Line thread and started sewing around the patches, I was bored with straight stitches after the first two patches, so I played with a variety of the fancy stitches on my mac...

The blocks are finished!!!! This is the quilt for my BFF’s DIL’s quilt of activities she participated in while growing  up and the present. I haven’t used nearly all of the fabrics she purchased for this. I’m sure it is going to be a scrappy backing as well.   These are some of the latest fun blocks I created. I purchased the embroideries off eBay, and they were done on a thin poly/cotton. I fused them to the interfacing used for t-shirt quilts, and they handled very well. I’m really fond of the double circle around the little dress with the hologram dragonflies. This is the side effect of working with circles. I think I will have to make a bull’s eye quilt with some of the leftovers. There is quite a stack here.       The latest design wall addition is this circle. Last night I just wanted to play a bit, and made this partial block. I ordered the Sue Ross templates from Material Obsessions in Australia awhile back, and hadn’t taken the time to play wit...

There was a request on HeartStrings yahoo group quite a while back for someone to finish up some blocks left after a member’s mother had died. The member felt unable to work on them, as they were the last blocks her mother had made prior to going blind, and then dying. The request was unusual, as they were described as already having batting quilted on them. I thought they were “quilt-as-you-go” blocks, and volunteered to tackle this project. This is the way the box arrived. I laid the blocks out, and each owl was quilted to just batting – no backing. There was a new sheet enclosed to use as backing. My first thought was to just cut off the batting, but then I took time to examine the blocks. Each of the twelve owls were different, and each was quilted in a different pattern. I just couldn’t willy-nilly go at them and destroy that work. They went back in the box for a long time as I thought about what to do with them.   The above is how I finally decided to treat each block. T...

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