Saturday Update

I feel like I accomplished a lot this week with several customer quilts and also quilted a quilt of my own in addition to slowly working on table runners. I now have six of the tops ready to machine stitch around the trees and two more runners in process.


I also started to make our guild's block of the month in Christmas fabrics. Figure I would make a block or two every month to turn in of the required colors and then make another block out of Christmas fabrics to keep. By next summer I will have enough for a sampler quilt.

Another major accomplishment is batting. For some reason I had never pieced batting together. I would save the smaller pieces for runners or wall hangings but sometimes the bin was way overflowing of those. Finally jumped in and pieced together 3 lap quilt sized battings and I have already used one of them. As long as they had one straight edge they really didn't take any time at all to do. I wonder why I had such a mental block about doing that???

We are having company from Virginia today (step-daughter and grandaughter) so won't be any sewing until tomorrow afternoon but thats ok, I am really looking forward to the visit. They live a 4 hour drive from us but we rarely see them as everyone has busy schedules. My husband goes there on business a couple of times a year and he always incorporates a trip to see them so at least he gets to visit more often.

I hope everyone has a cooler weekend. I actually got to sit out on the screened deck this morning drinking coffee. Today was only the 3rd morning in the 5 weeks we have been living here that was comfortable enough to do that.

Kathie

Charity quilting today

I put the third small quilt on the frame from the same lady today so I can deliver all of them to her when I see her at the guild meeting next week.

This one is a charity quilt that she made out of a kit I had put together out of donated fabrics. She supplied the batting and the backing and I quilted it with a variegated teal thread using my version of Dwirling from the Pajama Quilters DVD.


That is usually fun and mindless but for some reason I was having issues of thread breaking today. Guess tomorrow I will change the needle etc. before I start on the next quilt.

I wasn't sure how it would go over when I made up a bunch of kits from some of the fabrics that had been donated. Over the last few months I have made up 19 kits, 16 of them were taken by various people and I have 8 of them turned back in. Several with backings provided also. I think that is doing pretty good.

Kathie

On and Off the Frame

I made the 4 patches for this Christmas quilt out of mostly left over binding pieces as my bin was overflowing.

I made it a couple of months ago at least but just quilted it over the weekend. I used a king tut thread I love that is a variegated red/green and gold and looks great on just about any Christmas project.

I am currently working on the binding in the evening and have about half of the binding done now. I like the handwork while watching TV but enjoy it much more in the winter when you can snuggle under the quilt at the same time.

I did one customer quilt yesterday and will do another today after a couple of errands. The next two customer quilts are small so that is a nice change of pace after the huge one I did last week.

Kathie

Design Wall Monday - July 26, 2010

I was working on some table runners over the weekend. I got borders on two runners made out of various cream strips and have Christmas trees cut out. Once I find some brown for trunks I will fuse one on each end of the runner.

I then quilt and bind the runners and the last step is decorating them with crystals. They really turn out cute and and I always sell out of them at my craft shows.

I have six in the works but will try and make 10 of these.

Kathie

Sunday Stash Report July 25, 2010

Well I could make lots of excuses for buying fabric this week, like I had a coupon that was going to expire, I had to have something to do while my daughter and boyfriend were at the mall and I was waiting around, or my reason for purchases yesterday, my friend that works at a quilt shop emailed me that they had some bolts of fabric at 40 to 45% off!

but....... I won't use those excuses. The reason I made purchases this week was that I was in fabric stores, saw things I liked that I knew I would use up in the next couple of months and purchased them. No guilt, ok not much guilt.

I did use a fair amount of fabric this week also, just not enough to keep up with the purchases. My stats for the week are:

Fabric Used this week: 5 yards
Fabric Used YTD: 148.25 yards
Fabric Purchased this week: 8 yards
Fabric Purchased YTD: 93.75 yards
Net fabric used in 2010: 54.50 yards

Kathie

Fabrics

The other day I took my daughter and her boyfriend to the nearest mall do so some shopping/looking around. Since the mall is over 45 minutes from where we live I had to stay in the area until they were done as it wasn't worth the time or gas to come all the way home.

There just happened (lol) to be a large JoAnns Fabric not to far from the mall so I went in there and looked at all their fabrics. I had just been thinking that I didn't have much fall fabric and ran across these.


So I will have added to my stash again this week but since these fabric are intended on becoming fall table runners and I have already started to cut them out not that much of the fabric is actually going to end up on my shelves.

We are still in our heat wave with an expected heat index of 105 today and 110 tomorrow. I think the only place to spend my afternoons is downstairs in the sewing room. I intend on finishing up a small customer quilt today and then tomorrow working on some of my own projects.

kathie

On the Frame

Well this isn't really what is currently on the frame but was earlier this week. It is a large customer wall hanging that I quilted. Still don't have improved lighting in the quilting room so in this picture the colors don't look that good but it is actually very pretty.

Started quilting the queen quilt yesterday, only got about 3 feet done after some initial troubles. I will work a couple of hours on it this morning and will then be spending most of the day doing things with my daughter.

I do get a lot more done when school is in session but in a couple of years she will be off to college so need to enjoy this time now.

Kathie