March New FO Posting

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Today is the last day of March, can you believe it?  I can.  Truly it seems like only a short time ago we were selecting DH's vacation time and April seemed rather far off, sure will be nice having him around more for the next week.

This has been a good month both New FO and FO wise.  I revisited the Hawaiian Applique Turtle Quilt, and decided to scale back.  Instead of it being a Full/Double bed size quilt, I opted for a Twin size instead, and then started and finished up the last two blocks needed.  I also made an entire pieced back and have everything waiting on the frame.  As you can see from the pictures Tiny likes this one and just when I thought I had everything ready to go I found she'd made herself a bed between the rails.  I'll need to fix that before I start quilting.  Someone once told me that's why they use zippers for attaching quilts to the frame, that way when they are done for the day they can just unzip one side of the quilt.  Yet, I was sure it would take her more than 6 hours to find the frame had a quilt on it again...

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Though that wasn't what I'd intended as my March FO.  You see I have long wanted to take apart one of the cat water filters, which I have to buy on a regular basis, make a new one with natural batting and fresh carbon.  Call me crazy but I just had to do it.  I used to know someone who owned an aquarium business as well as maintaining some of the not going to name drop big tanks in Orlando.  Well, I ran my idea by him and the consensus was that my theory was sound - if a bit spend thrift and so after all this time I did it.  I seem to have deleted the picture I took for you though so when I make another one I'll photograph that one.

Hope you had a great March and that April will be even better.  Did you do anything new this month?  Why not take a minute to join us and drop your name in the hat for one of the quilters pins Barbara at Cat Patches is giving away?

Hawaiian Ocean Quilt Back Completed

Well now the last time we talked, I was just beginning to think about how to put the quilt back together for my Hawaiian Ocean Applique Quilt and now here it is all done.  The back is 67.5" x 109" so instead of having a border around my pieced center, the quilt will just flow off the edges.  With a bit of centering I think it will look quite good, giving a glass bottom boat effect.

Now I'm all ready for quilting, well almost, I ordered some larger needles in titanium that I will be trying for the first time together with a thicker thread than I normally give the Janome 1600P, those are all set to arrive on Tuesday and then it will be time to quilt, quilt, quilt.

When I finished the top of this quilt I set two goals; one for DH and one for myself.  My goal was to piece this back and have it ready before the machine quilting needles arrived and the goal for DH was to extend the Inspira quilt frame from it's little size the way we had it for Christmas to the larger size that I prefer.  I think he was waiting to see if I made my own goal before starting his.  Isn't it nice to finish something when you plan to?

Now for the quilting I'm going to quilt this one sideways so that it goes on the uptake roller more slowly and my throat space wont shrink as fast, hence why I need the frame extended.  As a bonus this quilt doesn't have borders on the top nor the bottom so I will not need to turn it when I'm finished.  You can scroll down to the previous post or click here to see the completed top.

This will mean my quilt status is back to right where I like it.  With one quilt on the quilt frame and one quilt at my domestic sewing machine.  Are you wondering which quilt is going to be on the sewing machine?  It's the Lone Star Glows!  I ran into some trouble with the fabric which I will go into later and I'm really looking forward to getting back into the swing of working on that quilt.

Ocean Turtles Flood Living Room: Cat Swims!

My ocean turtle quilt top is done.  Yippie!  This is a twin/twin XL measuring at 62.5" x 100".  I have a really wonderful dolphin print that will make up the quilt back and I'm thinking I'd like to restate the green for the binding.

DH took this picture.  I left the quilt on the floor for him to see when he walked by and it seems Tiny was loving all over it after I left the room.

Of course while I was taking pictures she was much more reserved...

I'm am planning to stitch around the turtles and then to a variation of quilted echos which will ripple over the water.  The variation will allow me to use the mid arm on the frame and will hopefully will work out nicely enough that I can apply it to other quilts that I'd like to echo in the future.

I'm also planning quilt baby turtles swimming up the sides and then a row swimming down the middle, in the spacer strips on the sides as well as the one in the center.  As for thread colors, I believe I will quilt the echos in blue and the turtles in green.  What do you think?  The threads I have in mind to use are a bit heavier so I'll need bigger needles for the Janome, oh darn that means I'll have to go shopping.

Now to figure out how to make my 40" wide novelty print become 60" wide...  Have you been up to anything fun lately?

Foto Finish: Something You Don't See Everyday

This weeks theme at Foto Finish was a bit harder, but I always seem to be to caught up to join in on Quilt-a-long days so I had to show something today.  I found some pictures that I thought you'd like, my DH cleaning the ceiling fan, DH ironing, DH knitting, and you know those just didn't seem quite right.  Then I found one with Sunny licking a spoon.  But I figured that would be a bit much first thing in the morning.
So instead, I'm showing you the one above when she is about 3 weeks old, she's a little bit older maybe two months in the one at the left.  My Tiny Girl just turned seven years old three days ago.  I know some of you have seen her and wonder where her name came from so now you know.  She was such a cute little scrap of a kitten.  Her ears would flick when she would drink from her bottle and I always loved it would she would make nursing motions in her sleep because her own momma abandoned her right after birth, so I always knew those blissful dreams were about me.

Happy Birthday my darling, to the baby I didn't want while I waited for my own, you are truly My Dear Sweet Princess Cat.

Who Remembers these?

These are my Hawaiian Ocean Applique Turtles.  I've decided I'm tired of them being a UFO not to mention being burned out on this method of quilting.  Would you believe me if I told you this is the third quilt I've made with this turtle pattern?  So I've moved them to the WIP pile.  After having them there for a couple of days (a week?) I started thinking that if I downsize this quilt from a full size to a twin size it will match it's reverse applique twin (see below) both in pattern and in finished quilt size.  So I'm going for it.  I finished up block number 9 yesterday afternoon and am ready to begin working on the final block number 10.  Wont it be great to see these laid out as a quilt soon?

Now just in case you were wondering about the third quilt I used this pattern in you can see it below.  It was a reversible lap quilt that I donated to project Linus in 2010.  This was my test quilt for the Ocean turtles and the earth turtles seen above are a happy coincidence of my DH's careful planning and cutting. Hopefully it's seeing plenty of use these days.

It's surprising but after all this time I almost like the back the best.