Lone Star Strip Sets

First 3 Strip Sets

Since I flew through the crayon quilt and didn't show very much of my process, I thought I'd try to keep you better up to date with my Lone Star Quilt. Today I sorted all of the fabric strips into strip sets which will later be cut apart and re-sewn to create trapezoids. After sorting, I carefully started sewing. If I've read it once I've read it 100 times that strip patterns require accuracy so I managed to sew together three strip sets today of the eight that I will need. I ironed the first set seams up, second set down, and the third set was up again. Hopefully this will help my seams to lock together in future steps.  

Ready to Sew Strip Sets

There did seem to be a problem with the number of strips required. The pattern I'm checking for you said 16 of the brown and teal swirl but I've double and triple checked them since stacking the strip sets and it looks like it should have said 8 strips of that fabric, but that's okay, it will just mean a bit of extra fun when I go to play with for the borders.

 

What did you do today? Anything interesting? I know some of you are holding off starting anything new this close to the end of the year and I understand where you're coming from. But gee whiz don't you have fabric waiting? :-D  

Sew Happy!

New Project: Lone Star Quilt

Have you ever started finishing a project thinking; I will work on my other quilts in progress, only to finish and discover you've been inspired to start something new?  Well, I sure have.

This time it was the leftover strips from what the class didn't pick at the Teach In.  It has me bean wound up to start two projects.  The first one I've finished cutting and am ready to start sewing whereas the other is still tickling in the back of my head so well talk about the former now and the later another time.

A Lone Star Quilt!  I think as my skills as a quilter grow I have to challenge myself to keep my own interest.  I sure have done it this time.  I think it was within my first year of quilting I alighted on a blue Lone Star quilt kit, it was even precut little pieces can you imagine the horror?  So I did a little research and filed it away and now the time has come.

Fabric For Lone Star Quilt

My Lone Star Quilt is a strip pattern I found - free online (will share the link after I find out if it works).  It uses 8 fabrics to make a 69" star.  My fabric starts with a deep purple and fuschia batik for the center, and then dances out into shades of blue and teal.  What do you think?  I've cut all the fabrics and hopefully I'll be able to start sewing soon.

Christmas Cakes & A Chihuly Kiss

We have a great many birthdays around my house this time of year.  I was the cake maker for two of them. Below my sister shows off with her butterfly cake that had whipped topping for frosting and Funfetti cake mix inside.

My next cake is a black forest cake for my husband.  It is my once a year cake.  Once a year I make it for him.  He never asks me to so it's a good thing I know how much he likes it.  Normally it has a lot more cherries on the top, I must have gone overboard on the lower layers.  Already DD is asking for one for her birthday, I think I can arrange that.

Christmas was good to us.  You can always tell how good Christmas is in a house with a little girl because it looks like the Pink Barbie Isle exploded all over your house.  Silly me, I forgot that I needed to clear out some toys in order to make room for new ones.  So guess what?  When DD's daddy asked her to pick up the living room she brought everything into the sewing room!  LOL.
I love a good surprise at Christmas time.  As a mom it's nice to know that people are thinking of you without having to say a word.  So perhaps the most surprising of all of my gifts was this one from my sister.  It is called a Chihuly Kiss, which my sister picked out for me when she visited our new Dale Chihuly Museum.  Isn't it lovely?  The shape, form, and movement are quite inspiring don't you think?  I haven't found a home for this yet but you can be sure it will be somewhere good.

The Giant OH NO!

Crayon Quilt Revised Finished

Yesterday I received a call from my daughter's teacher.  It started with "The Quilt is lovely,
 but there was a slight edge to her voice and I should have guessed something was wrong.

I missed a child!  How does that even happen?  I was so careful!  I had all the strips folded together in a bag I tied off and I laid everything out on the sewing table in the way it looked best and then sewed it together.  I've checked through the bag of strips that no one picked and everything, but no sign of the missing strip.  

Hand Stitched Spelling Mini Quilt Detail

So I spent the entire rest of the day creating this.  It is a purple piece of paper, the color was selected by the student, and this week's spelling words hand stitched on letter by letter into a mini quilt, complete with a 10/10 and the word Excellent on the paper.  I had the mini quilt nearly done when my daughter came off the bus with my vagrant quilt, and I appliqued the little mini quilt on.  Then I folded it up and off it went back to school today.

I feel so bad.  I tried to be so careful.  We all make mistakes but I never wanted to miss someone.  I was so concerned about making sure everyone's spellings were correct...  In retrospect I should have requested a typed class list "just to be sure" but as the teacher wrote the names on the papers they were all easy to read and I didn't see the need.  I sure hope he likes his addition to the quilt.

Lounge Pants of Two Lengths

My DH dreams of the day I will make silk lounge pants for him.  Trust me this is another year he can keep dreaming.  Instead I found the most beautiful flannel at my LQS, I passed it by the first two visits.  Really I did. Even though I knew better and found myself thinking about it after the first visit.  Well by the third visit the bolt was running low and my LQS does this great little deal that if you buy everything on the bolt you save 20%.  That meant I bought the 2 yards I needed for the pants and got the last 1/2 yard free.  With the way I cut it I was able to make both pants and shorts and had very little scrap leftover.  This is my final Handmade Christmas present this year.  I think.

After the first pair of flannel shorts I made, I now try to always use french seams.  It lets me cheat by keeping my 1/4" foot on and I think it creates a nice finish.  Now after the pair I made something kept tickling in the back of my mind about them - I now make little fabric tags in all of my clothing so that the wearer can know which side is the back. ;-)

Teacher's Crayon Quilt Done!

Crayon Quilt Finished Front

I just finished up the Great American Teach In Crayon Quilt that I made.  I call it Art from the Heart and I will send it to school on Monday for my daughter to give to the teacher.  I really struggled with hand making the label this time as I just didn't feel up to all that stitching, so when a friend suggested I just write the label, I considered it and knew it would get the quilt done.  Which is something I really needed to do so against my own grain I just did it and called it done.

Crayon Quilt On Reverse

The quilting is glitter stitched with each student's name in Superior's Metallic thread, the one they had on sale for $1.50 a spool.  They still have some if you'd like to pick up a spool or 20.  Look under their "Try Me Specials".  I found that when I followed their directions everything worked nicely.  Rick rack runs in two solid strips at the top and bottom which actually helped to bisect the quilt to make the pre-marking easier to gauge.  I also quilted each crayon in the ditch so it appears to pop unto itself.  Then I filled the remaining areas of each crayon with thread matched to each strip in loops and stars to resemble doodling.

The Students names were something I really wanted to make sure were right.  So I left the tags that had each child's name on it from when they selected their strip during the Teach-In, and I kept those tags on until I had completely finished all of the quilting on that strip.  I double, triple, and even quadruple checked and if that's a lot just think of how the child would have felt had I messed up their name?

Crayon Quilt Name and Pencil Detail

The pencil is a point of pride for me and is in the teacher's selected colors.  I did not applique this independently and instead worked with many pins as I quilted it on.  Trust me I was poked enough times to make me question my sanity.  At the tip of the pencil and at the eraser, the pencil is independent and loose from the quilt creating a bit of a 3-D effect. Now if you look you'll see a bit of blue thread , How did that bit of thread end up on that final name?

The Quilt is topped with matching Prairie Points and loops behind them for hanging on the wall.  For some reason it seems  to me that it will be easier for a teacher to hang loops vs. a sleeve. The sides are traditionally bound which created a challenge at the two upper corners but I like the result and would make the same choice if I had it to do again.

This quilt is quilted rather densely so it took me more than my usual time to quilt it.  Also I found the metallic thread to be nearly impossible to "snap" into my self threading needles, so instead I had to work in good light and thread it into the eye myself when tucking the threads ends in.  Good thing it's a single thread instead of a woven one.

Sure hope the class likes it.

Reversible Christmas Capelet

One of my daughter's Christmas presents is a beautiful white organza dress with purple embroidery.  I'm a wear whatever you want type of person.  Maybe that's bad, but if my daughter wants to wear her dresses to school, I say why not?  It's not as though she's bombarded to be a flower girl every other weekend.

Her new dress though is sleeveless, which is a bit of a "no no" for her school's dress code.  What to do, what to do?  Clearly I bought the dress, I knew it would be a problem, but I figured it was so pretty it didn't matter as I'd figure out something.  

Sure enough something hit, ironically a neighbor's niece is getting married this spring.  My neighbor was having a go at making a capelet for one of the girls.  What a pretty little capelet it turned out to be too!  Nice fabric and a beautiful drape.  I didn't make the connection right away, but when I did I started looking for girls free capelet patterns.  My friend Vicki found this one.  Which I love, but it's a bit more of a coat than I was looking for so instead of swinging my circle at 18" instead I checked some of DD's dresses and decided to swing instead at 10".  I left off the collar and instead sewed and flipped like a pillow.  Then I top stitched and added a button.  

Perhaps I should say I added two buttons back to back so that it can be on the pink side or the white side.  The first time I did this (sewing through one button into another) I made it to tight and I could hear the chorus of "the button is to tight" so I cut them off and started again.  This time to ensure I had the space I actually buttoned the button and kept it that way while I sewed through the two buttons - one on each side.  That worked well and I will keep this method in mind for future projects.

This is a super easy project, I think it took between half an hour to an hour, and I had to iron some very wrinkled fabric.  I like the coat part of the pattern too so maybe I'll make a version that way some other time.

Christmas Quilt-a-long 2011 Wrap Up

Shessh 2011 wrap up?  Where did the year go?  Anyway this is just a post to collect together everything I made during the 2011 Christmas Quilt-a-long.  I'm listing everything in reverse order so my oldest projects are first and the newer ones are last.  Note I didn't make all of these things one day a month, instead if I worked on it at all during a QAL day I'm showing you it in it's current state here.

Oh geez I mentioned the Me, the Snake, and the Meerkat Quilt.  That one has it's back all finished and the front is waiting on me to stop being so afraid and applique the organza snake on.  I'm getting better, I've worked with the glitter metallic thread and maybe it wont be to bad.

I made this little-tic-tac toe board for my daughter after seeing at the store for $30 on sale.  She even liked it enough that she took it to school when it was her day to bring in a board game.  

My Dresden Plate Queen/Full Quilt is now Flismy.  I look at fabrics for the back each time I'm at a fabric shop, but so far nothing is quite right.

I made two rice ice/heat bags quilt lead to my Step By Step Tutorial. Which you can find here.

I finished my Twin Size Reversible Tropical Waves Quilt.

I made this camel back kid's sized cover for my daughter.

I finished the Reversible 90" square full/queen 2nd Blessings from Heaven Quilt.  Finishing this quilt was a  real milestone for me as I started it and made the first one 3 years ago when I first started quilting and never wanted to go back and finish the second.  DD was delighted when I tucked this one into fitting on her Twin Bed.  Let's just say there is plenty for her to curl up in.

My Children of the Sea Twin size quilt is a flismy with a pieced backing completed and ready to quilt in 2012.

My Reversible Scatty Stars Lap Quilt is all finished.

My Extra Long Twin Earth Turtle Quilt made it into a Flismy Form for Quilting in 2012.

My Peppermint Pin Cushion, I actually made more than one on that day for friends.

My Peppermint Burst Quilt is 70" square.  It's finished.

That's my Christmas 2011 Quilt-a-long year, no bad for a year. Next year we'll be hopping all over blog land for the QAL. I'll be hosting October's Christmas Quilt-a-long 2012, I hope to see you then.

Foto Finish: Holiday Decor

Today's theme for Photo Finish is Holiday Decor.  I made during one of the 2010 Christmas Quilt-a-long days last year for my cousin Giovanna.  It took all day.  Inset lace, and all kinds of heirloom stuff.  It's not what I'd normally make but I made it because it spoke to me about who she was.  My husband built a handmade poplar box and lined it with felt to keep it in and then we mailed it off.  Boy oh boy did we hear about that, don't do that again - you spent to much to mail it.  And so on.  But still it warmed my heart because I knew we'd made that for her.  She passed away this past summer and I'm glad we made those things and gave them to her and her husband last year.

Crayon Quilt: Name Quilting

Another good title for this post is "The Sweet Spot", you know when you're doing something and all of the sudden everything clicks into place and things start going really great?  That was exactly what happened to me this morning with the quilting on the Crayon Quilt.  WowWee!  When I hit that spot I could see it in the way the thread was sewing.  This is metallic thread and all I've ever heard is bad things about metallics so of course you know how much zest I approached this quilting with.  Yet after the first couple of names I found the right way to thread my machine wrong in order to allow minimum tension without having to little tension and to allow the thread to spool off the spool form the side as directed by the manufacturer.  Sure enough I can see a visible difference in the names I quilted after I hit the sweet spot and before.  Now all the names are done except for those first two or three that I will requilt.

Now I just need to settle on how I will quilt the rest of the crayons...  Hope you've found your sweet spot today!

Foto Finish: Cold

Yes, it gets cold here.  I promise it does.  But showing pictures with dormant grass and people huddled up shivering just doesn't have the impact that a picture of that dreadful cold snow stuff has.  So instead today I'm showing you a picture of Tiny back in her bottle baby days.  She might have been cold and thereby ended up so puffed up and surrounded by love and covers, but more to the point I think it makes you want to curl up with her after looking at all those pictures of cold.  FYI you'll have to be added to her list of approved people before cuddles are allowed, but you'll do fine, after all momma says you're okay.

Cat Patches hosts Foto Finish every Saturday so why not join in the fun?

Beginning Quilting on Crayon Quilt

I told myself when I started working on this quilt that I needed to take many photographs.  But the best laid plans of a quilter will often find you with your lap blouse and even hair full of bits of thread.  Currently I have stitched in the ditch of all of the crayons using the color I plan to quilt that strip with.  I have also handwritten the names of each of the children on their selected crayon strips.  My next step will be to quilt over the names with glitter thread.  I've never worked with such a fussy thread before so I've been planning every last detail.

Of course I didn't plan that we would still be full swing in the process of putting up our Christmas items.  So far we have four days invested.  We're decorated outside with lights, inside the tree is up and decorated, and the stockings are hung but no trace of the holidays can be found in terms of garland nor are the other rooms in the house decorated yet.  I haven't even started on my Christmas cards yet.  What bearing does this have on quilting?  Normally nothing except the boxes are piled up in front of my newly shortened, for the holidays, quilt frame so I can't get at it until some of the boxes...  Yes, I knew you'd get it.

What have you been up to lately?  I've missed you what with all this mess clutter, not to mention holiday deadlines.

Crayon Quilt Piecing in Progress

I've been working on sewing the strips together for the Teacher's Crayon Quilt.  These are strips that the children selected as being their favorites when I went to the Great American Teach In the other day.

 So far I have the strips sewn and pressed.  All of the prairie points are made for the crayon tips and I've started working on the teacher's pencil.  So far I really like the pencil.  I went with a different pink than the one I'd planned as this one matched a bit better and I knew when I turned the tube I'd made the right choice.  Doesn't that pink scream eraser?

For the quilting I'm going to be quilting the students names onto their strips (hence all those bits of paper at the top of the flimsy).  Currently I'm planning to find the center and mark each strip with my Sewline Pencil and then write in the name with the pencil before quilting it. I am considering using gold glitter thread for quilting the students names.  I've never quilted with glitter thread before, but I think it would unite the crayon colors nicely so it's worth the try.

I don't think I will be working on this much more until after Thanksgiving.  DD was firm well over a month ago that we always host Thanksgiving so hence we will again this year.  What are your plans for Thanksgiving?  I think perhaps the best thing would be to simply sit at the sewing machine and give thanks for finding this passion of quilting in which to bury myself in.  ;-)

Peppermint Burst Quilt is Finished!

My Peppermint Burst Quilt

Tiny on the Peppermint Burst Quilt

I just finished tucking in the last of the thread ends, so Peppermint Burst is now officially a finished quilt.  I love the feel of a brand new quilt and I'm clearly not the only one.

Peppermint Burst Shows off its backing

Everyone always wants to tell you how to take a picture of a quilt, and I was worried taking these pictures in the evening but as I spread the quilt out on the couch I knew it would be okay.  Just look how well my quilting pops in the pictures.  When I said densely quilted I really meant it.

I also flipped up the corner so you could see the way all that quilting looks on the back.  As well as a detail pick below.  That with the heart square with the heart quilted into it is 1".  Yes, lots of people have quilted more densely, and that's okay.  This is a cosy quilt, just right for those chill winter nights.

Peppermint Burst Heart Detail

I'd like to offer up a special thanks to my friend Sue who wrote and published Pick Four.  This is my version of her quilt Starburst.  Her directions for making flying geese were easy even for this hardened anti flying geese fanatic.

Art From the Heart

Teach In Quilt Strip Layout

Today at the Great American Teach-In, I attempted to show the first grade students in my daughters class, that art is made with our hands, mind, eyes, and hearts.  To take that one step further is to say that because art comes from your heart it is pure and good no matter what it looks like nor what others might think of it.  I think I lost them a little on that point but guess what?  As I'm making a quilt from the strips the children picked I get to reinforce that point when I make the quilt label.

Teach-In Thanks

I am now I'm the proud owner of a Certificate of Appreciation as well as a school mug.  One of these days I'll hang all these letters and so forth up in the sewing room so that I can marvel at them.  The mug was a surprise as I truly didn't expect anything.  I met a fellow quilter while at the school, and we all know it's nice to meet someone that thinks like we do in our travels.  I also met a mom who had met my daughter, currently her daughter is in DD's class last year, believe it or not she proceeded to tell me about my own DD without knowing I'm DD's mom.  How about that.

I am really looking forward to getting started on this quilt.  As a strip quilt I doubt it will take long and it is sure to be fun so I started laying out the children's fabric strips right away.  I wasn't sure about the layout of the fabric, so of fussing over it to long, instead I went to my leftovers pile and looked for a strip that matched what the teacher told me her favorite color is.  She said blues to greens.  Thereby I picked the strip that runs across the bottom of the upper picture to make the applique teacher's pencil and I think that helped pull the colors together.   I think the appliqued pencil will be thicker than that as I plan to make a tube and then applique it on that way running at an angle over the bottom right corner of the quilt.  No one picked grey so that will be good for making the metal that holds a pencil on and I have a pretty pink polka dotted fabric for the eraser.  I'm not sure about a wood color for the sharpened part but I should be able to come up with something and the lead point should be okay too.

My Visitor Before the Teach-In

The Great America Teach-In is tomorrow and I think I'm ready.  This is how I envision the strips to come together.  The top will be prairie point binding to give the crayons their points.  I will be adding a fabric to the bottom of the quilt of a currently unknown color and appliqueing a pencil in the teacher's favorite color with her name and the class information on it.  It is sure to be a fun time.  The quilting is my favorite part of this quilt as I will be quilting each child's name onto their selected strip so instead of a traditional crayon label it will be the child's name stitched onto the fabric they liked best tomorrow.

This morning while waiting for the bus to come I spotted a visitor on my neighbor's fence.  I think it was going after a snake the way it danced around on the ground.  This hawk stayed long enough for all of the children at the bus stop to see it and better yet long enough for me to run inside after the bus departed to take these pictures for you.  This is a fully mature red shouldered hawk and likely a year round resident here.  Still it is amazing to see such a powerful hunter so close up.  I'm so glad cameras have zoom!

Christmas Quilt-Along November: Evening Wrap Up

Can you work on another quilt?  Those were the words my daughter uttered to me when I came in to call on her Barbie mess, so that she might move it to another room so I could reload the Peppermint Quilt.  Now seeing as she always does everything I ask of her even if I have to ask three times I thought okay, but what else can I do?  That's when I saw Halicha's post in which she made Christmas Tree ornaments.  It sounded like fun and hers were so cute.

I should stop here and say I'm not crafty.  People start talking about glue and scissors and see my birdhouse from sand?  And a part of me freezes over and my eyes glaze.  That's because I'm trying to figure out not only how much I need to pay out to buy the scissors glue and sand but how much I really need to get because I'll have to make it 10 times before it looks half that good.  But I though this would just be a simple bit of sewing and I can do that, right?  Ummm, WRONG.  LOL!

Handmade Ornaments

Firstly I couldn't find a pattern, and then I thought I could wing it.  But I wasn't sure so I started with a 3" square of fabric, and made HSTs of it.  But they looked to big, so I put them back together and made them again.  Now they looked really really way to small, but I was going for small and cute so surely everything was going to be okay. I start sewing them together.  Not to bad, the top part looks okay.   But then came time to cut the backing and deal with the binding.  That's when I discovered my "cute little ornaments" are 2" square.  Not 2.5" but 2" flat.  How in the word do you bind something of that size?

So anyway here they are.  If I bothered to figure out my time on them they would surely be in the top 10 most expensive ornaments in the house. At least they are done and there's no trace over 1/4" scraps left of them to nag me.  

Peppermint Border Quilting

Thankfully around the time I was finishing up the 6th one DD was done and wanted to play on the computer.  Hooray!  So I loaded the Peppermint Quilt back on the frame sideways and set about quilting the side borders.  I made it nearly all the way down the first side when I started having a tension issue.  Rather than deal with it I walked away to make dinner.  That was the perfect choice as I've since realized that when I changed the bobbin the thread much have slipped out of the proper path when I was putting the bobbin case back in.  So now I need to unpick a red stripe.  I started already but the light isn't good enough for that this late at night so I will go back to it tomorrow.  Thanks so much for joining me today, I'm glad to have been able to join you this year and I'm looking forward to a 3rd great year next year.

Now before you go I'd like to thank everyone who stopped by today.  The Peppermint Quilt and I haven't seen eye to eye through it's creation and all of your comments today really helped to bolster my self reflection.  Thank you.