Pointless Quilter

Finally finished  I had two more to complete by the end of the month.  I did it.  I also finished the Fat Quarter Shops Block of the Month block.  Here are the 9 blocks. And here they are 'in' the quilt.   They are not perfect.  But they are done. I'm heading to Ripon again for the afternoon tomorrow.  My Uncle George and Aunt Sue and cousin Laura are coming to visit my mom and I want to see them too so I hope to get there about when they get there, and come home after dinner. I have completed the top of the little girl baby quilt and just need to pin and quilt it.  It shouldn't take long since I will probably only do strait stitching.  Just need clean floors to pin it so it won't be done until Sunday afternoon.  :) Thanks for looking.

This is a Shabby Fabrics block of the month program except me and two other friends bought the entire kit at one time. We made two blocks each month. I turned the center using Ricky Tim's fusible and I turned using glue. Finished the bead/button work tonight and I can cross this one of my list. I love this quilt. I love the fabrics and the pattern and we are contemplating their new fall block of the month. I quilted each block differently and put some holly leaves in the sashing and feathers in the border but added some holly leaf shapes in the place of some of the feathers. (I can't get a good shot of the quilting.) Now on to cute girls. First... Such a happy pretty little girl. My step-daughter sent this to me just when I needed to smile. And this weekend I went up north to visit my folks. More of that later. But my aunts were staying at my folks so I stayed at the Hello Kitty Tweety Bird Inn (aka my brothers house). My niece made it like a hotel for me. I was...

Yea!!! The first one finished was this little baby boy quilt. The top has been done for a while, I was just waiting for the baby to be born so I can embroider his name and birthdate on the top. It is for one of the guys I work with. He and his wife just had their first baby. This next one started with two charm packs and a free pattern from Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts http://mrsschmenkmanquilts.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/charming-butterflies-tutorial-addendum/  and then I added a border from Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins Aunt Millie's Garden pattern. Would love to say it was all hand appliquéd but I used Ricky Tim's washable stabilizer and turned using school glue stick and then hem stitched it all down. I think it's quite cute. I have a list of things I want to get done for August and this was one of eight items on the list. I did cut all the pieces for the next Farmers Wife quilt blocks which I'll sew together at Party Party Party at Thimble Towne on Frida...

I made this little outfit for Dylan. Kelly sent me the link to the pattern and I happened to have this fabric and thought it would be so cute. I actually used my serger (which hasn't seen the light of day for almost 3 years) and my buttonhole foot on my machine (after watching a video on how to use it). Last weekend I went up north to stay at my folks since I hadn't been there for a month or so. My mom is not doing great and that is a whole blog entry in itself. But it's actually her story and not mine. All I can say is that I am praying for her comfort and that she will get her appetite and energy back. I did take a little side trip to visit my step-daughter and my grand kids. Look how much little Dylan is growing and she is such a happy little girl. And she is going to be a little ginger headed girl. :) And Jack is still a hoot. He is very creative and pretty smart if I do say so myself. I still needed help sometimes from Kelly on translating what he is sayin...

Month 2 of making Farmer's Wife blocks.  We (Jeremy, Becky, Adena and I) are making 9 blocks a month and I got 6 completed at Party Party Party on Friday and finished the last 3 tonight. Here's the latest 9. And here's what they will kind of look like in the final layout.  Since I am not scanning all the actual fabric I'm using, I have selected similar tones and values of fabrics from the EQ library. Blocks 1-18 I have also finished the Thimble Town 20 year anniversary challenge quilt - all it needs is a label.  That quilt and about 10 others need labels.  I will need to dedicate a weekend to that project.  And a little boys quilt that I finished the top needs the baby's name embroidered (he was born today) and then I can finish that one.  Too much to do, not enough time. Thanks for looking.

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." Sir Winston Churchill That is the quote that Loose Threads used as inspiration for this latest challenge. The above mini quilt is what I came up with. It's a pretty literal interpretation of the quote. I used colored pencils to draw and color in and then quilted around it--scribbled the black outline and just scribbled in the background. It measures to 5" x 6.5". Anna made this adorable flying pig. She's not quite done. She wants to add some beads. Barbara Sawyer made this cute little quilt. Pet pig. Sara used a diagram of a pig with all the 'meat' parts. However the nose says oink. Not sure what that means and nowhere did it say where pork chops come from. Karen also made a dimensional pig that will fly by using the balloon. She still will be adding some bling and a tail. This pig needs a tail. Graces PIGS actually stands for Proje...

Me and two other friends headed south for the weekend to spend some quilting time with our friend Anna. She lives in the high dessert in Southern California and lives in a beautiful house and she and her husband were wonderful hosts. I got a lot done. I finished another block to my block of the year project... I finished the appliqué but had to do the embroidery when I got home because I forgot the thread. I then got all the petals and circles for the border of my butterfly quilt. This will be machine appliquéd. And started turning the pieces of the center for my Christmas block of the month. (It will also be machine appliquéd.) Lynn Marie has about 60 blocks of a scrap quilt for her son-in-law done, Anna finished a paper pieced runner top done and some Farmers Wife quilt blocks and a couple pillow cases. I didn't get pictures because I'm a loser and I forgot my phone down stairs and too lazy to go down when I thought of it. Debbie got a couple of her quilt...

I really tried to finish my patriotic quilt on on July 4th.  I did finish the machine quilting and getting the binding on but didn't get the binding down until yesterday.  So much for good intentions. This was our guilds Row Round Robin quilt which only 3 people signed up, so we decided to do 2 rounds each.  I started with the blocks on the 4th row and when I got it back I added the flag row on the bottom.  The ladies (Adena Joseph and Brenda McCutcheon) did great.  I supplied the white fabric and all I asked is that they use only red and blue fabrics. Here is a close up of all the blocks. And a close up of the border quilting. Now I have to get ready for a retreat this weekend.  Going down south to visit with a friend and do some quilting.  I plan on bringing all handwork - I have some applique I want to work on and get started. Thanks for looking.  Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July.  My hubby and I stayed home and indoors...

Cut with no waste. I like scrap quilts. I like Bonnie Hunter because she makes some great scrap quilts. I like Anita Grossman Solomon because she has some great patterns and methods for making blocks. I recently read in Bonnie Hunters blog about making leader and ender block pieces which I have done before but I just sewed squares together. She said in her blog in an answer to someone about what size should they cut their scraps, that they find a pattern they want to make and cut the scraps accordingly. Anyway I've wanted to try this square in a square method of Anita's but all my scraps had been cut into five inch squares and this pattern calls for bigger squares (6") so when I got some new scraps, I got busy cutting them for this block. This pile of block pieces now sits next to my sewing machine and I will sew these as leaders and enders while working on other projects. Just by working on my round robin quilt today I have three completed blocks. They will finis...

I finished this quilt tonight and I decided to call it Go Dutch for obvious reasons.  It's the Xcentric pattern from Anita Grossman Solomons Rotary Cutting Revolution book.  The inside is made from one striped fabric (the stripe I used in the middle border and binding). I straight stitched squares in the 'squarish' blocks and feathers in the other blocks.  I also quilted feathers in the border too and squiggly lines in the striped border. Now I need to work on my Loose Threads challenge, make some more small design boards (a la Bee in my Bonnet's design boards-- like these .  I made mine 10" (and I made some for the other's doing the Farmers Wife with me) and I got a request from 2 other friends to make bigger ones for them since they usually do 12" blocks so I'm thinking 16 - 18" squares for them.  So I'll make one for myself too!  They are pretty easy and I use binding that I have already in my strip bins and I get foam core from old...

I'm taking it off and trying moderation instead.  Apparently a lot of people have trouble with the word verification.  We'll see.  If I continue to get weird emails I'm afraid the verification will be turned back on.

I finally decided to do the Farmers Wife Quilt. At first Adena and I were going to do it together then Jeremy joined since he'd been thinking about it too and he said Becky wanted in, so right now there are 4 of us. This may change i think. We decided to do 9 blocks a month so we can get the top done in a year. We are using templates (freezer paper) which is not as hard as I thought it would be. I decided to do mine using red and whites/creams. And I want to use all shades of tone on tone reds. Here's where these blocks go. My thought right now is to sash in aqua. But in a year I may change my mind. This is what we all got done last Friday. From left to right--Becky, Jeremy, me and Adena. I got my first block of the month from The Fat Quarter Shops designer block program today but since the Loose thread girls met tonight I didn't get to put it together. Had a great night with Loose Thread ladies. We finished reviewing our whisper challenge quilts so we ...

It's a little wrinkly and the binding isn't all the way on in this picture.  It was finished months ago but since it was for our guilds solid challenge, I couldn't show it.  We had the challenge last Thursday.  I really like this, but I really like pink.  I used over 14 different color pink solid fabrics on this.  I kind of made it like the jelly roll race quilts -I cut different lengths, sewed them in one very long strip and started sewing the strip together lengthwise, over and over again until I got to the size I liked. Kind of a modern looking quilt and a modern method of putting it together.  However...this was my inspiration. This is from a magazine from years ago.  Not even sure I was quilting when I pulled this page from the magazine.  Anyway, it's an antique quilt from the 1920's and it says it was red and pink, and a Brick Wall Variation pattern.   We also revealed the Round Robin quilts.  There were only 3 of us so we d...

A month or so ago I made  these  crazy eight runners - three of them.  When you make them you make a bunch of strip sets and cut the triangles.  There is some waste and since I hate to throw anything away, I saved some of the pieces and I made these 2 little runners (and a hideously ugly pillow cover--not shown) from the leftovers.  I will be donating these to our guild's annual boutique. I quilted both of these with metallic thread with feathers in the square top and spikey fern like feathers in the long one. While outside taking these photos, I noticed this pretty little flower on one of our cactus plants.  As many of you know, I do not have a green thumb so any flowers I get are purely accidental. Last night I got this picture in a text from my step-daughter.  She said Jack told her "I hug baby" and started loving on her.   Today I am washing everything in the house that the dogs might have touched.  We have a new flea r...