First Quilt, Last Quilt

First Quilt - 1979

While looking for pictures to update my website, I ran across a picture of my first quilt that I finished in 1979. You know, the one that you make all of the mistakes on. It was definitely a learning experience. We were in upstate (Plattsburgh) New York. 

I had never heard of a quilt shop, no Cloth World or Joann's. I had a McCalls quilting magazine, found a pattern called Aunt Sukeys quilt. The picture at the left shows it shortly after it was finished. It has been washed a gazillion times, and 'does' look the worse for wear. BUT, it was hand-quilted, in spite of having the thickest poly batting that I could find and a 200 thread count sheet on the back.

Last Quilt  - 2014

This next quilt is the last 'big' quilt that I've finished recently. Had it in the Tri-county Quilt show in Feb. 2014. Proud to say it won a ribbon. This one is called Chasing Chevrons, and is done totally in Flannels. If you look through my quilts you will see that I love working with flannel. These quilts end up being the softest, warmest quilts ever.

Just did the math - 35 years! Maybe I know what I am doing by now...

Thanks to my buddy Carla for taking the photo.

UFO Finishes for January 2014

After finishing umpteen hundred T-Shirt Quilts and Machine Quilting for the holiday season, I always take a week or two (or three) and work on 'my' stuff.  So far this year, have several finishes to report - Yippee!

Here are a couple of them.

Batik Jelly Roll Race. 

Batik Jelly Roll Race.  Started 2013 –   62  x 74  8.5 yards 2013.  This is one of those Jelly Roll Race quilts.  SUPER easy to piece, not as easy to finish and quilt.  I did join my strips on a 45 degree angle to give it a little more interest.   However,  I did get it done in January.  Added borders, quilted and binding.

Stashbusting at its Best!

I have been sooooo good the last couple of weeks. Definitly no fabric shopping (Oh, except for some 50 cent Christmas fabric fat quarters from Hobly Lobly) The big news is that I used over 40 yards of fabric finishing up seven lap quilts (approx 60 x 72). Then, I got started on several swaps that are due the first couple of months in 2010. I figure another 3 yards so far on that. Today, I almost put together a whole top for 1 year old grand-daughter from fabrics that I bought in 2008. I guess I can count that as stashbusting as well as working on a UFO! Hope to get it done before we see the kids for Christmas next week. Need a better way to keep track of what I've used and added.

A friend of mine in Colorado sent me a big ole box of Alpaca roving? It has been cleaned and is super soft. I think I still need to card it it make it more like the roving that I have bought for my needlefelting. I asked Santa to bring me a hand weaving Spindle for Christmas, but I don't think the hints (or the list on the refrigerator) helped at all. I might still be surprized. We'll see. It's killing me not to get started working with the wool that Jan sent. I've been doing a lot of reading on the internet. I've decided that the hand spindle is all that I have room for right now. Hubby would probably shoot me if I asked for another room to start another hobby (spinning wheel). As long as I can keep it in the existing rooms, it shouldn't be a problem. (No picture, because it just looks like a black blob. Going to have to try differnt lighting.)

I found a great website for instruction on hand spinning at Joy of Hand Spinning Learned several new terms and found out a couple of other tools that I will need as well.

Week 49 (wow) Stash Report

OK, so I lost track of fabric months ago. But, I have really been going through a lot of it lately. Sometimes it is hard to differentiate between fabric I use for my stuff and customer quilts. BUT, if I use fabric for backings that have I have had for more than a year, that should count as stash-busting. In that case, I have been doing awesome.

I joined a new group with some friends of mine that while we only meet once a quarter, we have really been busting the stash. It is strongly encouraged to use only fabrics from our stash. The first exchange was 6 inch 9 patches, and the 2nd swap was HourGlass blocks to go with the 9-patches. I would have to do the math to figure out how much fabric I used to make 100 9-patches and 80 hourglass blocks, but I did not make a dent in the fabric. . The 3rd swap was with Black on White with BRIGHTs making Churn Dash blocks. Think I made 60 of those.

The fabric stash grew when a friend of mine moved to San Antonio and she passed on a bunch of fabric that she did not take with her.

My Thursday Bee is doing another swap that is not due until after the first of the year, but I have already started on the blocks. (Montana Scrappy from Lynn Roddy Browns 2nd Book - a "Texas 2 Step" variation) These blocks consist of smaller Hourglass blocks and 4 patches.

The Katy Rotary Bee (my Monday Bee) is doing two swaps. One is for the quilt that was on the cover of the June 2009 McCalls Quilt magazine. Then we are also doing a Thousand Pyramids triangle quilt and we are all swapping fabrics so that we can go for each triangle a different fabric (500 lights, 500 darks).

Now, I must brag that at Quilt Festival this year That I only bought 4 yards of fabric. 2.5 yards were fat quarters that were .75 cents each and the other was some woven stuff I bought (and have already used) in some Halloween projects.

Well, after looking at this list, guess I better go get to work on some of these projects!

UFO's, Stashbusting and so on....

Boy, May zoomed by in a huge flash! Got a lot of things done, just not all of what I wanted to get done. OK, that is the same for most of you probably! Recovering pretty well from my arm surgery the first of May. The stitches have pretty much dis-solved, so I can start lifting my arms without worrying about ripping something.

Did finish up a UFO from early last year. This is one that is very hard to admit to. Here I am, a professional longarm quilter, and the quilt that was supposed to be done when Chloe was born last September didn't get quilted. The top was done, but alas, my humble excuse was HURRICANE IKE. OK, no power for 3 weeks got me off the hook for awhile, but really - 8 months????

Like those Kilgore was here fingers at the top? That is hubby holding the quilt.. He hates doing that. ha ha. This little quilt just screams little girl. It has fussy cut images in the corners and soft pinks and whites with nice loud hot pink polka dots on the back. The fabrics are mostly by Lakehouse.

An old quilting friend of mine from Tulsa has moved to north Houston. She is a quilt teacher and speaker and I'm looking forward to having start with her first class to our Monday Bee. This quilt she calls the Texas 2-Step. It uses Sally Sneiders method where you piece the blocks without using triangles! She has a special tool to do this. Well, so much for not buying fabric. I've been picking up the most fabulous oranges (my new favorite color) in order to do this very scrappy. (Have I mentioned that I love SCRAPPY???) . Anyway, the color are kind of like Halloween, and this one has a few pumpkins in there, but I wouldn't consider it a Halloween quilt.

As far as Stashbusting goes - all I can say is that "I've been bad". Take a peek in this bag for the oranges and blacks. There are more than a few yards of fabric in there! But I always figure you can't have too many blacks, and boy did I find some nice black toned fabrics. And Orange. What more do I need to say? Then I was going through my shirtings for a background or light fabrics in the quilt. Most of them were too 'white' . The fabrics I selected have a more yellow cast to them. My buddy Sharon went through her stash and found a few that I could use as well.

Another UFO Finished! Bamboo Quilt

Well, I had such guilt over going into the hole on my Stashbusting efforts, that I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone - as they say. About Festival Time (Houston) in 2007, our Thursday Bee swapped a bunch of Oriental fabrics. From that we made bunches of blocks for the BAMBOO quilt. Well, I've had the top done for some time, and finally got it quilted this weekend. Also used several yards of fabric for the backing & binding, which I will add to my next stash report. I'm just finishing up the binding, so haven't taken a new picture yet. This is the quilt without before I put the borders on it. I quilted it with a gold colored thread (not metallic) but because of all the metallic colors in the quilt, it looks like I used metallic thread.

Did anyone watch Quilting Arts on PBS Saturday? I was glad to see it back on again. Had 3 cool projects, but the last item really got me excited. They used some software (new to me) call Kaleidoscope Kreator. I think this will be fun to play with, as you can take a digital photo or scan some fabric, and then create the kaleidoscope on the screen, then print it out on fabric. No piecing! They have a couple of companion software packages that do other shapes. Definitly think this will be fun to play with.

The other new thing is that I've joined yet ANOTHER Bee. This one is an Art bee, and amazingly there was a huge turnout at the meeting. 17 of us were there with a few more saying they couldn't be there because of Spring Break. We were trying to come up with a name for the group, and from Quilters with an Attitude, Ruth suggested ARTiTude! Next month when we meet, we're going to do some fabric dyeing. Not sure yet what kind, but a couple of the ladies are putting together a program for us and we'll do some hands-on work. At the meeting we talked about doing some resist dyeing, or dyeing with natural elements. Here is a link at Pioneer Thinking that gives all sorts of suggestions of what to use to attain the color you are looking for. Am looking forward to see what we're going to do!

Stashbusting Report -

StashBusting doing pretty good! - Got about 1/2 of that 50 pounds of fabric from last week cut into strips. Then we used a 'bunch' of those strips at our Bee on Thursday making a kind of half log cabin block. (Instead of going all the way around, you just have the darks on one side, and lights on the next side. The 'center' square is in the corner. Clear as mud?

Used a bunch of GREEN yardage to make my 48 5 inch green and off white rail fences that we trade tomorrow at the Katy Rotary Bee for the Around The Block quilt that we are doing as a group. I'll take pictures after the exchange and see what I get back.

Fabric added this week: 0 yards
Fabric added year to date: 3 yards
Fabric used this week: 2 yards
Fabric used year to date: 10 yards
Net fabric busted: 8 yards

Got hooked reading a bunch of other blogs last night. Mostly tutorials. I'm going to have to do some of those, but the problem is sticking with a project long enough to finish it AND to remember to take pictures while doing it! No one can relate to that huh.

I cut out the wool for a journal cover. Started cutting out Poinsettia's then after laying them out, thought maybe I ought to go for a more spring type theme. I do love poinsettia's though. I did get some awesome reds, greens and yellows wool bundles at Houston Festival last November from The Wool Garden . However, I still have a bone to pick with them. They were working on a Poinsettia project, and it wasn't finished, but they had it hanging at both Market and Festival. They put me on the list to get the pattern as soon as they finished it, and I still haven't heard from them or seen it on the website. All those gorgeous bundles just waiting for a project.

Started a couple of other type projects. None of them far enough along yet, but after cutting a bunch of the ugly fabrics into 1 inch strips, I dug out my locker hooking project that I had started last spring, and worked on that some more. I need to finish this piece - it is to go under my bobbin winder that I use to wind those big ole M size bobbins for my longarm. The base to the winder has a tendency to scratch (gouge) the wood cabinet that it sets on. The mat is to protect the finish from being further damaged. That should be enough incentive to get it done.

Then the 1" strips reminded me that I could crochet a rug or something with those sized strips, so I cut some 1/2" BATIK strips and started crocheting a round rag type rug. I'm on round 8 and it is really going to be BRIGHT! The center is red, then a mixed up orange/turquoise/green batik, and I just changed to a rich brown batik. Hmm, forgot to measure that fabric to include in stashbusting...

Only one more quilt to finish for the WHQG Quilt Show in two weeks. The turn in date is this coming Saturday, and the customer still needs to put the binding, sleeve and label on it. I figure I will have it completed by tomorrow afternoon. The quilt show program goes to the printer tomorrow. Had several people proofing it, so hopefully we took care of any glaring mistakes. I got permission from Carla to use one of her cartoons in the program It is so perfect to go with the quilt show and judging.

Stashbusting Report

Finished quilting and binding this quilt today. It is a signature quilt for a young man (age 14) who is going through some serious medical procedures. He is having open heart surgery tomorrow morning, and this is for him to take with him and offer comfort while he is in hospital. Your prayers and well wishes would be much appreciated for Jordan.

That is Shiner (blue healer) checking out the quilt, and wondering who is standing behind that quilt holding it up!

Not sure how to count donated fabric... hmmmm. A friend of mine left 2 boxes of 'pretty good' fabric. She knows I love doing scrap quilts and she was cleaning out to make room for new stuff. Since she is down-sizing, and moving to a smaller place her sewing area is going to be a bit more cramped. Most of the fabric is older, and I have already cut it into smaller scrap size pieces

Fabric added this week: 3 yards (plus 2 boxes - about 50 pounds???)
Fabric added year to date: 3 yards
Fabric used this week: 3 yards
Fabric used year to date: 9 yards
Net fabric busted: 6 yards

Any thoughts on how to count fabric that immediately gets cut into 2", 2.5" and 3.5" strips? Do I count it as incoming until it is cut up, and outgoing when I use it? Do you count strips out of the scrap bins???

Getting Organized

Puttered around in the studio today. Yesterday, hubby built a couple more shelves for me to store some of my bolts of fabric. (That's not really a big mess on the table, I had just cut the batting for a customer quilt and layed it down when the phone rang).

I'm still getting the new studio organized. Yesterday, I turned the sewing area around, and then ended up putting it back again. To finish up, just need to hang quilts, curtains and get the remaining fabric that is still in tubs and onto shelves. Having one of my Bees over later in the month, so that will give me a nice deadline to finish it up.

Been working on UFO's. Got the Fractions quilt quilted, and the binding attached. Will sit and finish that up tomorrow evening in front of the tv. Also, worked on my Bamboo and Pinwheels quilt that our 'sub-bee' swapped blocks for in November. It's a cool pattern, and you end up with two quilts when you are done. One is Bamboo and the other is Pinwheels. Picture shown is the Bamboo quilt. Got all the triangle blocks sewn into blocks. The pinwheel blocks (the other half of the triangle) are in a nice stack for later (oops I mean another potential UFO).

Pulled out another UFO. It is a batik spiderweb quilt that I was going full guns on, then got hung up on the corners of the borders. Decided today that it wasn't that big a deal, so will finish that up first thing tomorrow.

Saturday, several of the girls (sub-bee) are coming over for an impromtu sew-in. Going to pick out the fabrics for our class later in January, and then work on UFO's. We're not buying any fabric, but plan to work on something that is in process and hopefully get finished up.

More Progress - Thread is out of the Bathroom!

Finally got hubby to put up somes shelving that I've had for a little while. Really great as I was storing thread in a box in the shower stall in the bathroom in my studio. (don't generally take showers up there, so it was handy- but not easy to get to).

Anyway, have now emptied 2 mores boxes, and found logical places to put a bunch of other stuff.

The other thing I've been organizing is my fabric. The batiks are all together, but not sorted. The 30's/40's type of fabric are in a antique ARROW SHIRT display chest. (Really cool, about 10 drawers with glass fronts, and about 6 foot tall). The solids and tone on tones (blenders) are stacked on a shelf - by color- in the closet. Batting is easier to get to. (Two most used on the bars under the table), the rest in the closet. Flannels are sorted and in their own area. Projects are all labeled and in plastic see through boxes or project bags and neatly on shelves.

Also extended the anti-fatigue mats under the table, so that I don't keep scooting it back and forth (depending on if I working from front or back of table).

And last but not least, got my design wall up! I think I am most excited about that. It's not exactly where I would have liked it, but it IS up, and I can start using it instead of the floor.

I have the next quilt loaded for tomorrow. So, my reward for all this hard work this weekend is to take at least an hour (rather than 15 minutes) to sew on whatever I want!