Building a Quilt Neighborhood

It was a cold and windy day and my day off work so what’s a girl to do?  Clean or sew?  Well, of course I sewed!  I made 2 more churches and 2 schools for my Around the Block quilt I only have 2 houses and 10 fences left to make then I can put them all together and sew them around the quilt I pieced a few months ago.  This has been a fun project!  The kind you almost don’t want to see end.  I learned a lot from this pattern on the construction of a house block and now I have a project in my head to make a wall hanging of my own house.  I drew it on paper and now I need to put it on EQ so that I can get the measurements right and get to work.  That won’t be for a while though because when I finished playing all day with my fabrics I went through the stack of finished quilt tops I have and matched them up with their backs and battings and realized that I have everything to finish 3 quilts and maybe even 4.  I had been putting off doing the quilting on these because I wasn’t confident in my quilting skills, but I have been doing a lot of practicing and I think the time has come to tackle them one by one.  The hardest part now is to lay them out, sandwich them and baste them.  I usually use a light coat of spray baste then pin and recently I started using wash away thread and basting from top to bottom, side to side, and corner to corner.  Sounds like I am a little paranoid, but it works really well!

I have been watching enviously the group that has committed to making a house a day for the whole year.  These are not quite like my houses, the finished blocks are only 3 inches and that is tiny for so much detail.  So I found a paper piecing pattern and set out to make just one.  The paper made it so much easier, but it took me almost as long as it did to make those 2 school houses you see up there.  I might get faster with time, but for now I am glad that I gave it a try and didn’t write it off as something I just can’t do.  I had intended to use the red for the front of the house but, I got a little forgetful and now my window doesn’t show because it blends in.  I can see that is important to keep contrast so that all your hard work shows.  I think I will put a border on it and I could use it for a coaster in my sewing area!

I like to follow a Yahoo group called Small Quilt Talk.  The group is led by author Kathleen Tracy who has written several books on making small quilts.  She chooses projects each month for the group to do as a challenge and they really have fun with them.  I keep meaning to join in and do some challenges, but have yet to have found the time.  The March challenge is a little quilt with baskets and the handles are appliqué which I always seem to find challenging somehow.  I decided that the handle would be simple enough and I should give it a try.  It was pretty simple and I really enjoyed the hand sewing.  Who knows maybe next I will just hand quilt one of those quilts on my pile.

 

After a day of staying in I got to spend a day out in the yard and look what I found…read more about it on my other blog Growing Thymes.

Thanks for visiting!

Ferne

Quilting Granny Squares

I think I first saw this on Pam Kitty’s blog who got on the bandwagon early to join the quilt along going on at Dana’s Old Red Barn blog.  Dana got the pattern, with permission, from Jolene at Blue Elephant Stitches.  What a fun and addictive block.  I pulled out all my scraps that I had sorted by color and stuffed into bags a few years ago, so glad I did that.  Can you believe I found that I had already cut lots of 2 1/2” blocks in all the colors?  Oh, yeah that was for another unfinished project.  I also found a Jelly Roll for the background fabric, but I am running a little low on that.  I have already made 10 blocks and can’t wait to make some more.  this is also a great block for using that die I got for my Go Baby cutter, it sure makes lots of those 2 1/2” squares in no time.  I am thinking of making these blocks into into 2 table toppers for 2 special ladies that are always doing nice things for us and they have told me that they both love quilts…hint, hint.  I got the hint and have been searching for just the right scrappy quilt that will go with any decor and I think this is it.  If it looks fun to you or something you might want to try doing just one, you know for a hot pad or something,  you can get the tutorial from Jolene and go to Dana’s blog to see what people are posting on her flicker group.  The quilt along was suppose to start today, but there are already lots of blocks posted on flicker.  Fun project girls!  Boy when a few quilters get together it always amazes me what they can accomplish, maybe I should invite some quilting friends over and see if the bathroom would get cleaned.

Oh, the star block is a paper pieced block that I found on Pinterest this week which led me to new to me blog called Six White Horses.  I had a little trouble figuring out how to get it to print, but once I got that figured out printing 4 pages was a breeze, I only wish I had remembered to use my paper piecing paper in the printer.  Printer paper works great if you set your stitch length to a really short stitch so that it perforates the paper more making it come off easily, but I was a little rusty on my paper piecing so these things came back to me when it was a little late.  Needless to say tearing the paper off was a little difficult.  I did take all the paper off from the center before I sewed it thank goodness because where all those seams come together would really be hard to get the paper out.  Being that this was a little more difficult to do I don’t think I will be doing 10 of them, but one was fun and I am really happy with the results.

Quilting and piecing…my favorite ways to pass the time on a rainy day…

Ferne

Quilting Feathers

The quilting challenge for this month was feathers and was taught by Diane Gaudynski.  I really had a lot of fun practicing these on a pillow case I was making for myself.  The pattern was from the most recent issue of American Patchwork & Quilting.  They didn’t quilt it in the pattern, but I wanted a nice fluffy pillow case so I quilted it and used it as a practice block.  I chose not to mark it, but just used my spine as the guide and feathered away.  Sometimes I only feathered on one side and adding feathers to a feather was my favorite part.  This is just my practice, I still have to add feathers to a block on my sampler quilt which I will do as soon as I get more time between working, gardening, upgrading the shed and visiting with family.  Sewing seems to get put aside once in a while for other things, but that gives my life balance and keeps me from getting bored with any one thing.  Really I don’t seem to focus too long on any one project.  I seem to hop from one thing to another and I can say that being bored is never a problem for me.

This is the whole pillow top quilted.  The part I really like about this is that you make the back in an envelope style and it works so perfectly.  There is never an end of the pillow sticking out.  It just looks like a large throw pillow and I am really enjoying laying my head on a quilt each night, it is very comforting.

I will probably be doing another post on more feathers being done on my other project in the near future!  Practicing all this free motion quilting is giving me the confidence I need to finish some of the quilt tops that have been pieced quite a while ago, some even a few years ago.  Funny thing is that as nervous as I was about doing them once I get started it just feels so much easier than I thought and they get done in very little time.  I even enjoy hand sewing the bindings.  I can take a project to work and work on the hand sewing during my lunch and before I know it the whole quilt is done and ready to be washed and enjoyed, the best part!

Tickled by a feather~

ferne

Free Motion Quilting Progress

I have finished my first block on my FMQ Sampler quilt.  The first challenge on Sew Cal Gal’s website was taught by Frances Moore.  The pattern we practiced was leaves.  As recommended by many free motion teachers, I spent a lot of time drawing leaves on paper trying to memorize just how to draw them with one continuous line.  I have trouble with any meandering patterns.  I always get myself into a corner with no way out.  I suppose I just need more practice.   My solution this time was to mark 2” blocks with chalk and make a design using the leaves that I could connect with each block.  I like the tidy organized look of it and because it is a sampler I also added my name and the year.  I was happy with my sample project and it gave me the confidence to move on to the quilt, but working on the larger quilt proved to be more difficult because of the weight pulling things away from where I wanted them to go.  I was fighting the quilt a bit, so I bunched it up and adjusted the weight which helped me a lot.  In the past I have set up another table behind my table to give me more quilting space.  I am trying to think of a something I can do to make my table wider permanently without buying a new table…still working on that!

I signed up for this challenge because I really want to learn to quilt better and I hope that by practicing the exercises and getting more practice I will build up my confidence.  Then I will be ready to finish off some tops that have been waiting a long time for me to get up the courage to quilt them.

It is such an amazing effort that this group of quilters are putting into this project that is spanning through this whole year to help people like me learn this skill.  To be able to learn from so many teachers is such a privilege and all because of the internet.  Another quilter that is putting great effort into teaching quilters like me is Leah Day.  She has been putting together amazing short videos for quite a while now that are free for anyone to watch on her blog, The Free Motion Quilting Project .  If you are wanting to learn this skill be sure to visit both of these websites and practice, practice, practice!  Most of all enjoy the process and the great tool that the internet has made possible for so many great teachers to share in one place.   To top it off they are giving away prizes to a few lucky participants each month and all you have to do is to pledge to give it a try and post your progress.  I am not a total newbie to free motion quilting, but this is definitely going to help me get more practice as I learn new techniques.

Practicing …

Ferne

Constructing Fabric Houses and Barns

I have really been enjoying putting together these houses and barns for my neighborhood quilt.  Today is going to be a cold one and rain in the forecast for tomorrow so there just might be more building in my neck of the woods!  The blocks above the houses are my attempt at deciding whether I would like to jump on the Farmers Wife bandwagon or the Sylvia’s Wedding Quilt group.  Both are 3” finished blocks so I think I will keep doing the blocks I choose from both of them.  It is very fun to make a small block or two once in a while between these bigger projects.  I also have some free motion quilting to practice. 

The hardest part of quilting these days is deciding which project to work on.  For now though I will drink some coffee and see what my blogger friends are doing, that always helps me decide or gives me more options.

It's funny the things you see after you post a picture to the web...there is a tiny square of fabric on that barn that is the wrong background and the hayloft is so light it hardly shows...now to decide if I leave it or change it...

Enjoying my day off!

ferne