Design Wall Monday - Halloween

Happy Halloween, are you ready for all the little gremlins to come tonight!!

A couple of works in progress on my design wall. The first is another runner I am making from the hidden spools blocks blocks from the Bonnie Hunter workshop

These are fun blocks to make and I intend on making a quilt using this technique in the future, I will just use a litter wider strips to make it.

For the last three April's our local area has had a Fiber Arts Retreat. The last two years I have given a presentation on tips to prepare your quilt to go to a longarm quilter. I didn't want to do that for a 3rd time so am thinking about doing a workshop making fused wreaths using small pieces of fabric and fussy cut motifs. This is a fall example I have been working on.

Hope to get borders on it and quilted in the next few weeks and then start on another example, either a Christmas or spring wreath.

Kathie

Sunday Stash Report - October 30, 2011

No quilt pictures today, had been working on customer quilts a lot of the week and the rest of the time my daughter had the camera for homecoming week.

I did use a fair amount of fabric this week as I quilted up several table runners for my upcoming craft shows. I also purchased some backing fabric at JoAnns that was on sale. My stats are:

Fabric used this week: 7 yards
Fabric used YTD: 257.25 yards
Fabric purchased this week: 5 yards
Fabric purchased YTD: 188.50
Net fabric used in 2011: 68.75 yards

Here are pictures of lasts nights homecoming, sounds like they had a great time.

Have a great week.

Kathie

Pinktober

Yesterday's theme for homecoming week was Pinktober. Mandy has lots of pink shirts but nothing else to go with it so was very low key. She said even a lot of the guys were wearing pink and some had spray painted their hair pink. I would have like to have seen that.

I did get the customer t-shirt quilt finished yesterday. Here is a pic of just a piece of it.....

There were a few of the t-shirts that had a lot of surface paint on them and that made the machine bog down so had to go very slow in those places. One shirt the paint was so thick that the needle actually put little cracks in the paint.

I can see where preparation of the shirts properly has to be done to have any success at all. All of the t-shirts were adhered to whatever type of iron on stabilizer/interfacing she used.

Two blocks seemed like parts of the shirt were not fully stuck to the stabilizer and when I quilted those sections the top shirt moved around some and caused problems. 90% of the quilt is nice and flat but those two blocks had some slight puffy areas because of the movement but I really don't think anyone else would notice unless you point them out.

Kathie

Rulers and Such

I had several people ask about what ruler I used on the table runner and the purple blocks. It was a Quilt in a Day 45 degree triangular ruler. I am in no way affiliated with Quilt in a Day but if you decide to buy one of these rulers I recommend theirs. At the workshop I took in April there were several ladies that had ordered rulers of other brands and they were off so nothing was fitting together.

Yesterday was back in time (WAY back to the 80's, gee I feel old) for spirit week. I think Mandy was going for the flash dance or Olivia Newton-John look with the slouched socks and the shirt with the neck cut off and the bottom chopped way off. Thank goodness for a Michael's $2.99 shirt!!!

I spent some time with a friend yesterday helping her laying out some blocks so didn't get any customer quilting done. I did quilt up two table runners and got the bindings put on them by machine so accomplished somethiing at least in addition to some household chores.

Today I need to get a t-shirt loaded and quilted. I hear that they are a bear to quilt so wish me luck.

Kathie

Design Wall Monday - October 24, 2011

At the retreat last week Julia refreshed my memory on how to make these blocks (had only one complete at the time) so I completed the other 8 last week. Takes a lot of time with having to make up all the strip sets. Here they all are ready to trim and sew together.

I liked the look and the ruler I used for these but figured I wouldn't want to do anymore of them for awhile untill I found a stripe Christmas fabric in my stash and quickly made up these blocks for a table runner

I liked the look so much last night I made up another set of blocks, trimmed them up and complete two table runner tops.

Lastly and not design wall or sewing related at all but this is Homecoming week at my daughter's high school and today is wacky tacky day. I think she definitely looks way wacky!!!

Mandy's last high school homecoming week, hope she enjoys it all!!!

Kathie

Sunday Stash Report - October 23, 2011

Since I was at a two day retreat this week I spent a lot of time sewing. Hubby was also on travel so I spent extra time in the evenings working on my projects.

I did purchase several yards of on sale Christmas fabric but still sewing more than I purchased:

Fabric used this week: 9 yards
Fabric used YTD: 250.25 yards
Fabric purchased this week: 6 yards
Fabric purchased YTD: 183.50
Net Fabric used in 2011: 66.75 yards

As I know I will be purchasing more Christmas fabric as it goes on sale I am hoping for a net of 75 yards by the end of the year.

At the end of the retreat my Singer 301 sewing machine started acting up and I sent a text to my husband so he would know I would need him to work on it when he got back from travel. Well......... he stopped by a thrift store and picked up this New Home Jem sewing machine for $20 (very much like the Janome Jem). It is very small and light and he thought it would be perfect to take to retreats and workshops. It is missing a spool pin but everything else seems to be in working order.

Kathie

Retreat was Great

Our two day retreat was great. We sew at a little building at the Navy Rec Center right on the water. The first day was sunny and warm and we were even able to sit outside for lunch, nice.

Second day was cooler and raining but no one cared as it was great sewing weather.

Lots of talking, laughing, eating and oh yes sewing. Some of the ladies were doing handwork, several were making spikey paper pieced borders that was learned at last months meeting. Several were making hidden nine patch quilts (from workshop a couple of months ago) and two ladies participated in a jelly roll race quilt. I love seeing all the different project in process and checking out everyone fabrics.

I finished all the hidden spool blocks from my bonnie hunter class and then switched to this project. I took a workshop back in April at a Fiber Arts Conference. I made one block, put it away and promptly forgot how to do it. Wednesday I got some help and made the two additional blocks shown here and then yesterday made three more.

The one on the right the center looks perfect but the others don't. For the class we were told the strips could be a variety of sizes as long as each strip set added up to the same width. Well that is what I did The "perfect" block had all the strips the same width. The others didn't which makes the centers look off. You have two center points of one size and two of another.

At least I have learned the technique and I am keeping this quilt for myself so its ok. When this one is done I am anxious to try another one, but this time with a striped fabric and not with all those strip sets.

This will probably still be on my design wall for monday as I have several other projects to work on so will probably be doing one block at a time till its done.

Kathie