Building Fabric Houses

I was ready and willing to jump on the house building bandwagon and sew a little (3”) house block every day for the year, but that is a little unrealistic of a goal for a me and after trying to make just one, I had to give it up.  There must be an easy way to do this, but I haven’t found it yet.  I love house blocks though and remembered that I had a quilt top started last year that had some really fun house blocks.  I have made a few but have about 15 left to do so I pulled the project out during the holiday after all my gifts were made and dusted it of.  After I figured out what I had already done and what I still needed to do I made myself a plan and got to work.  First step is to finish the center section, which I am now more than half done with, then comes 3 borders and finally I can get back to building houses.  The pattern is Around the Block by The Rabbit Factory.  I had admired this on another blog several years ago and ordered the pattern intending to whip it out and hang it on my wall.  Good intentions, but things didn’t quite work that way.  I jumped ahead and started making houses and a church and some trees.  A new project came along and this one got shelved, but I am thrilled with how it is coming out now.  Sometimes you just need some time away to come back with fresh eyes and new ideas.  I believe that having WIPs is beneficial to the finished project.   When you come back to it you have new ideas and more experience, if I push myself to just finish something I don’t put my heart into it I just hurry up and get it done and don’t enjoy the process.   I have a lot of ideas brewing for things I want to do, some are not even sewing projects, where I want to take my time and enjoy the process.  They will get done sooner or later!

Enjoy the process!

Ferne

Advent Calendar with Let it Snow

This is the view I have while working on a little Christmas gift project.  The 2 colors of trim on the shed are me testing paint colors, we will be painting our house this spring and we all know that picking colors is the hardest part.  I love this view especially with the colors on the leaves that are soon to drop, giving me something else to do the next nice day we have.

I am making a couple advent calendars that I thought up in my own little head which means that sometimes things don’t go as smoothly as when you can just follow someone else's directions and there are a few back to the drawing board moments, but this project is making me happy.  I bought a stack of fat quarters of Me & My Sisters fabric line called Ready, Set, Snow and it is such a fun fabric to work with.  I am loving the cheerful colors.

I am also working on a few more of those scarves from my last post and I just keep thinking of more people who would enjoy these so I think I need to make about 6 of them.  I bought 2 yards of Minkee so I might be able to squeeze that many out of them.  I can’t seem to find the directions on the scarf so that I can give credit here, but the original had a zippered pocket to keep your cell phone in and I chose to not do zippers and made a pocket on each end because I found that a 60” scarf put those pockets at just the right spot to put cold hands in.  I lined the pockets in minkee so they were soft to boot.  I have a few more sewing projects for the holidays that I would like to get to, but we will have to see how it goes…everyone knows how the holidays get busy and homemade gifts don’t always get done, but I have some good intentions and if the weather stays like this I will have a lot of time inside for sewing…

Let the count down begin!

Enjoy the process…

Ferne 

 

Piecing with Minkee Tips

A few months ago I bought a bag of scraps at a local quilt shop and it had several pieces of  Minkee in it.  I saw this cute scarf pattern that I thought would be perfect for giving it a try, but I was not prepared for how difficult it could be to sew small pieces of Minkee together.  Suddenly I was having flash backs of sewing some bridesmaids dresses years ago from velvet…not fun.  So I am going to share some tips that I learned as I played around with this project. 

1.  Look closely at the nap.  You need to know which direction it is going and make sure that when you put your pieces together the nap is going the same direction in each piece. I did this by rubbing it and seeing which way was smooth and which way resisted my touch.  No amount of pins will hold it in place if the nap is not going the same direction on each piece.

2.  Use pins.  I don’t use pins very often and when I do I tend to only pin at crucial meeting points because I find I can ease the rest of the fabric in easier this way, but on this project I was sewing a mere 8 inches across and I used 3 pins the first one right in the center and then 2 about 1/2 inch in on each end.  You could do even more, but this worked for me as long as I first made sure the nap was right.

3.  Cut your project larger than you will need it to be by an inch or two.  It is so hard to get this precise so you will want to have room for a fudge factor.  I could have made things easier on myself and just used one solid piece of Minkee, but I really wanted to use those scraps and the colors all went well with my front fabrics.

I am also working on a table topper for the holidays that I bought at the quilt show in Iowa.  The project came in a metal cup with all the fabric, very cute.  I somehow couldn’t wrap my mind around the directions though and it was a simple log cabin, must have been all the excitement of the trip.  I made it at night in my hotel room.  I am playing around with the quilting on this and having some fun.  I need a lot more practice on my free  motion quilting so this is adding to that.  I quilted ear muffs on the snowmen and I will add some buttons for the eyes later.  I have a pattern for free motion that I am practicing drawing first, it has mittens and snowflakes in the design so after I draw them a few more times and practice on my practice piece I will add them in.  I am using a yellow variegated thread because I like the way it shows up on these dark colors, but that also shows mistakes.  I am finding though, that after I wash my pieces the quilting always looks good like it washes out the mistakes and the long stitches.  I am having fun learning this technique and it is helping me to get my quilts done.  This will be the third project I have finished this month and I have 3 more sitting waiting to be quilted.  It would be nice to have everything I have pieced this year finished for the new year and all done by me!  I have a problem sending my tops out to be quilted by someone else, I just want to be able to say I made it all the way from beginning to end.

I ordered some Christmas fabric from the Fat Quarter shop that is coming tomorrow so I will be busy with some holiday sewing that want to share next week I hope.  I have an advent calendar idea that I have been working on in my mind and paper and I can’t wait to share it.

Happily I sew along…

Ferne

Bloggers Quilt Festival Entry

 

I am currently sewing the binding on a special little quilt that will be given to a special new addition to our family.  This little girl will be making the man in my life a Great Grandfather…not sure he will want to be called “Great Grandpa”, but I am sure that all his grandchildren think that he is exactly that A Great Grandpa.
I had a lot of fun making this quilt because it gave me the opportunity to teach a young lady to sew.  The sister of the mother-to-be got to help me piece the half-square triangles that went into the center and she helped me pick out the fabrics.  I also got the opportunity to practice my free motion quilting a little more.  I am not sure just how many hours practice I need to meet my expectations, but my quilting is looking quite a bit better with every quilt I finish.  Working on this was so much fun that I immediately pulled out a quilt that I had put away last year because the quilting was getting too difficult and now I think I can tackle that and actually enjoy the process. 
I am linking this post up to the Bloggers Quilt Festival over at Amy’s Creative Side.  Be sure to check out all the quilts that have been entered, there are some real beauties there!

Thanks Amy for giving us a place to share!

Ferne

Kalona a Friendly Quilting Community

  Recently I spent a week in Iowa at the AQS Quilt show in Des Moines and visiting my relatives in Wellman and Kalona.  I really enjoyed everything about this trip especially walking the streets of Kalona and seeing how this little town has really refreshed itself.  I hadn’t been here in more than 15 years and there was a lot that was still the same, but yet fresh and new.  You could see how the community had gotten together to work on making their town unique and draw attention to a craft that so many there are truly gifted at ‘quilting’.  All up and down the main streets hang flags with quilt blocks on them and under your feet there are quilt blocks embedded in the sidewalk with plaques stating the name of the block and who sponsored it.  As I read the pamphlet that I picked up with a map to where each block is and some other information about each one I realized that many had been designed by people in the community and 2 were done by my Aunt (the block at the right is one of them) who owned a quilt store there which is now being run by my cousins wife, Grace, called the Stitch N Sew Cottage.  It would be so easy for me to just move back here and feel at home, then they all started talking about the impending winter and cutting wood and I knew I would be going home to California very glad to have taken the trip. 

As a child I spent most of  my summers here with my Grandparents, Aunt,Uncle and cousins and Great Aunt and learned a lot about life especially at the little church where I went to Sunday School and Bible School.  This church has not changed much at all, even a lot of the same people still attend.  The Wellman Mennonite Church has been for me, the ideal church, the one I compared every church I ever went to to and none of them ever measured up.  It made me see that you don’t need a big fancy building to reach out and teach the word of God, but kind people gathered in a simple building to open their hearts and souls to each other and God, singing lots of hymns and sharing food while being there for each other in good times and difficult times.  It is a wonderful place with a lot of good childhood memories for me.  The same church pews are still there and the simple altar is still standing and still simple as it should be.  I got to be there for communion and a feet washing ceremony which I had never participated in before and I really enjoyed being a part of it.

I arrived in Kalona on a Saturday evening after visiting with relatives.  Sunday morning I was awoke by the sound of horses clopping down the street as the Amish were all heading off to church and I knew I was in Kalona and felt like I had come home in a way.  The next day I saw the Amish children, not more than 19 years old driving the horse and buggies home from school with their siblings and some were walking on the dirt road barefoot.  It was so nice to see kids with a little different attitude living a lifestyle I thought was forgotten.

My Uncle volunteers at the Kalona Historical Museum and gave me my own personal tour through the 2 quilt museums.  One is all about Amish quilts and the other had an exhibit by Thuy Nguyen both exhibits were really nicely displayed and kept in humidity and light controlled rooms.  I could take pictures as long as I didn’t use the flash and luckily they came out really nice.  Thuy’s applique is amazing, she does such precise work.  I enjoyed seeing this up close.  There were several thread cabinets in the displays that I was wishing I could have taken just one home with me though it would have been hard to choose which one.

 

I think Kalona is doing a wonderful job of showing off the talents of so many of its residences.  There is a big community of Amish and Mennonites and they all make some amazing quilts to share with so many in need.  It was a wonderful thing to see and would make a great destination if you are interested in quilting and the history of quilting all with a small town feel.

There were so many quilt blocks set in to the sidewalks I am thinking that it would be fun to make a Kalona quilt using all the blocks in a sampler quilt…future project.  Some of them are actually pretty complicated and I keep wondering how they ever got the bricks cut so precise and colored nicely too.  Here are just a few more…click on them to see up close just what I mean.

Each of these is about a 3 foot square and set into the sidewalk.  Quite a work of art!

Quilts, family and friends…all beautiful pieces of my life!

Ferne