Striing Quilt Finish

Since I didn't take any pictures of me quilting this one, I thought I would at least put a pic of the finished quilt on the blog.  Here it is, my second string quilt:

Whoops!  The pic of the back is upside down!  But don't you just love that print!!  It was quilted with an all over meander, which I think works pretty well with a string quilt.  It's so busy on the front, you don't really need a lot of fancy quilting.  I made that mistake on my first string quilt - not going to do it again!  And since my "strings" are selvedge, it makes it kinda difficult to get a really nice smooth quilt pattern going.

I've got another quilt loaded - a zig zag quilt top that I made during the ice storm (I don't know why I made a new quilt, it's not like I don't have a dozen waiting to be quilted!).  Just waiting to feel better and get inspiration to quilt it.

WOWE Quilt

I have another WOWE Quilt finish to show y'all.  When I was pressing the top, I noticed how out of wack the whole thing was.  I seemed like the outer borders were too small or something.  I ended up unstitching one of the borders, adding a small piece of similar fabric (its a quilt, right?) to lengthen it, and re-sewing it to the top.  Overall, it was still off, but better than it was.  I was hoping that the quilting wouldn't be too difficult.  Well, I guess the old adage, "It'll quilt out", really is true!  It certainly looked better after it was quilted and didn't end up too far out of square!  Amazing.  So here it is:

I quilted it with swirls, fairly tightly, and maybe that's what helped it!  Anyway, here it is thrown over a chair in my sewing room.  I put it there because I found a small stain on one of the light colored blocks and I cleaned the spot and left it over the chair to dry.  Behind it is a small fusible wall hanging of frogs on a sunflower called "Stargazers" that I made several years ago.

Even though I've been stuck at home for the week due to bad weather, I haven't gotten as much done as I should due to a toothache.  Of course it started Monday night, when all the bad weather hit.  I thought it was a sinus infection at first, but that wasn't right.  Then Tuesday I could tell it was a tooth, or even multiple teeth.  So Tuesday pm I loaded up on Penicillin and by Wednesday afternoon I had a case of hives!  I've never had hives!  I stopped taking the Pen and called the dentist on Thursday and braved the ice to get to Dickson.  Definately something wrong with 2 teeth.  New RX and go home to take benydril.  Well, the teeth are better, but the hives are definately not!!  I started on aspirin and hydrocortizone cream today.  Boy do I look bad!  It's all on the right side of my face where the bad teeth are.  Hopefully, it will be over soon.  But I really haven't felt at my creative "best", so very little has gotten done.  I'm going to load a quilt today though.  Really.

Sewing with Friends

Last week I went to a friend's house to sew.  It's always so much fun to go to someone else's sewing room!  Here's a couple of pics of my friend Susan's sewing room:

Susan actually has a 2-room sewing area.  One room has her primary sewing machine, design wall, large cutting table and ironing board.  The second room has a larger design wall and room for 2 secondary sewing machines and a small ironing table between them.  Great place to sew!  Thanks Susan for a great day and sharing your space with me!

Selvedge String Quilt

I had thought I would post pictures of me quilting a quilt on the Gammill.  Ha!  I get so caught up in getting it loaded properly and thinking about how I'm going to quilt it, that I've got it off the Gammill before I remember I was going to take photos!  Here is the quilt I was going to photograph:

It's a string quilt made of selvedges.  I did remember to take a pic while I was sewing the binding on!  I'm in the process of hand sewing the binding to the back of the quilt and as soon as I have that done, I'll get a proper photo made.  This is the first true "quilt" of mine that I have quilted on the Gammill.  I chose this one because a) I love it!  and b) it only needed a meander pattern.  I quilted my first string quilt on my home machine and used a lot of quilting.  It did not look good.  I loved the quilt top, but after I over quilted it, not so much.  Lesson learned.  When I love a quilt top, I want to do a lot of quilting on it, but the top decides how much quilting it needs, not me.

Another WOWE finish

Well, while the girls were embroidering on Friday, I got to work on the Gammill and quilted another WOWE quilt.  I used an overall pattern I like to call "double daisy chain."  I didn't execute the design as well as I would've liked, but I really like the pattern!  I also really like the fabrics in this quilt, the majority of which I think came from Joyce O's stash.  Joyce has an amazing quantity and variety of fabrics!  Here's a couple of pics:

Caution!

I think I mentioned using Caution Tape to help keep me from quilting over the previous row of stitching on my longarm.  Here are a couple of photos of the set up:

This is the first time I've taken photos under the LED lights in the quilting room.  Not too bad.  You can see the tape laid out at the top of the quilt area - I don't sew over that by mistake!  And I don't roll it up on the take up roller either.  This is really a helpful tool for me, especially when I'm using thread of a similar color to the background.

Embroidery Retreat

Our first embroidery "retreat" of 2015 was Thursday & Friday, here at Brown Hollow Farm!  Had a great time and most of the girls were able to come.  Here's a couple of pics:

Remembering Marie Fail

I started this quilt block at a one day class given by Courthouse Quilters in White Bluff, TN.  Guild member Nancy Rutske taught the class.  It was fun and I thought I was doing really well with the piecing part, but boy o boy did I fall down on the completing-it-at home part!  I guess I waited too long between class and completion, because I really butchered putting the pieces together.  And Nancy did such a fine job in class keeping us all on track and all the other blocks I've seen look great.  Just not mine.

here it is:

Wavy, wavy diamond joins.  O well.  It's done and I can move on.  Well, it needs borders or something to finish it off, but it can come off my design wall now.  So sorry Nancy for not completing my block as well as I should have.  I feel I've let you down, but I'll take any other class Nancy teaches as she is a great instructor!  Guild meets Monday and I'll my "Marie" with me, even though I'm kinda embarassed by it.

This one's for you, Judy V!

I finally did it - made myself a big board (with the help of himself).  Judy V will be vey happy.  My lack of a big ironing board has been a disappointment for Judy, but now she can rejoice!  I have a Big Board!  It really is kinda necessary now that I have the longarm machine; it makes it soooo much easier to iron quilt tops.  Here are the before and after pictures:

 My poor old ironing board (40 years old!) before the transformation.

The piece of plywood I found in the barn that was juuuust the right size.  Doug sanded it, rounded the corners and filled in any dips in the surface.

The fabric I chose from my stash of drapery/home dec fabric.

The finished product!  Used it today to iron a WOWE quilt - works great!

Happy Ironing everyone!

UFO

Saw a post on another blog that got me thinking about my UFOs (there are a lot of them!) and then I was wandering around iphoto and found this pic:

I've been working on this quilt for a couple of years, so i guess it's time i finished it!  This was taken at a retreat last Fall at Becky's Barn near Crossville, TN (great retreat location!).  I had brought it along to work on and only got this far.  The applique blocks had been done for awhile, it's really just the HST blocks that need doing.  I had purchased some of those triangle papers (can't think of the name of them off the top of my head) from Diane Parks of Pumpkin Creek Fabrics in Waverly, TN, several years ago and used them for the triangle strips - worked great!  It's definately time to finish this one.  I'll keep you posted on my progress.

WOWE finish

Finished this WOWE (www.facebook.com/wowe2012) quilt on 1/30/14.  Love the colors!

I quilted it with an all over with a meander and then put the binding on by machine.  I used a little "trick" when I was quilting it to help me NOT run into the previous row's stitching - I used caution tape laid over the last row of quilting so I knew how close I could get with my new row of quilting before I got into trouble.  Worked a charm!  I think the caution tape works for me rather than just a strip of fabric because there is no way I will roll that up in the take up roller by accident!
Have a great day!

Tunic

Going to sew with Susan on Monday!  Yeah!  We've been planning this for several months and have finally gotten a date and a project decided on.  We want to make a jacket, so of course, we're making something different - a tunic!  I made one last week from this pattern, and now I know the changes I want to make to it.  The pattern is easy and comes out even better than the pictures (unusual); but i used quilting cottons and I think it needs something with a little more weight; it would be interesting to try it out of a quilted material...something to try later!

Here's the pattern, it's by Indigo Junction, and I bought it up in Ridgefield CT on a trip several years ago.  The quilt shop is no longer there, which is too bad because it was really a cute little shop.  They had samples made up that were just gorgeous!

The tunics on the pattern don't do anything for me.  Here is some of the fabric combinations I'm thinking of using:

The solid teal is a linen type fabric, the others are quilting cottons.  I'd use the cottons for accent fabrics.  Tune in later this week to see what happens!