Fabric Tuesday

The second round of the second Anna's Garden block is appliqued and the third round is glued in place.

Notes on progress - it so easy to place when you have the outline available.  Label each piece as to where it belong - up, down, right, left on the shiny side cuz that's the side you will see.  Using freezer paper for the templates lets me lightly iron onto the front of the fabric and easily cut out the seam allowance.  Also it's way easier to do a few pieces at a time than try to manipulate around all the pieces as I did with the first block.

I'm linking to Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story and Connie's Linky Party Tuesday.  Be sure to visit and see all the goodies there.

Fabric Tuesday Story

If you saw my design wall yesterday, you know I wasn't too keen on the big block I put on it.  Then I read about Bonnie Hunter's new book, String Fling , and fell in love with one of her quilts.  There's one perfect for my strings and a big block!  So while I wait for the book to come, I've been playing with the block to see if I can figure out how she did it. She is so clever - it never seems to be what you think.  I'm going to be haunting the mailbox until it comes to see if I'm right.  Here's what my block looks like now.

It's not sewn together and I can see that the big strips won't work with this one -but, oh this will use up a lot of those tiny strips and give me applique space.  Woohoo!

I'm linking to Connie's Linky Party Tuesday and Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story - go see what others are playing with.

Fabric Tuesday/WOW/WIP WED

/WIP

blks for 3rd VA quilt

1st VA quilt

It's still tuesday here for a few hours and here's what I have been working on and will be my WIP tomorrow on Wednesday.  I'm assembling another VA quilt.  These have to be around 36 by 42-45" as they will be used on laps and wheelchairs.  Any bigger and they caught in the wheels.  The first one I made was using the tube method.  The second was from a pattern our challenge chair at the LQG gave us (it's at the quilter now).  This third is an adaptation of a baby quilt made by Natalia of Piece n Quilt .  I had to make it differently because I had to cut the fabric in order to get the most pieces out of it that I could.  There wasn't enough of the green,  so I went scrappy.  It looks better with the black - I'll show you some rows tomorrow.

What's your fabric story?  Go over to Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story, Connie's Linky Party Tuesday, WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced, and Esther's WOW to see what others are doing.

Fabric Story on Tuesday

My star is done.  I'm trying to put together twelve wall hangings for my living room above the fireplace, so I can change them monthly.  This practice piece for Judy's Feather quilting lessons is my second wall hanging done this year.  It was scary at first to get that needle going, but with Judy's excellent directions and videos, I got there.  Practicing on paper sure made a difference. I recommend it. 

You can't see them well on the front side, but I did quilt a continuous feather in the outer border.  See the back below.

Now that I've broken the ice on this quilting motif, I'll have to practice, practice, practice to remember it.  I can say my last feathers came out pretty good, but that was after 30 of them beforehand and all the ones on paper.

Go on over to Connie's Linky Party Tuesday and the Fabric Tuesday, by Quilt Story to see more stories.

Fabric Tuesday WOW

It feels so good to be able to sew a little bit again.  Yesterday I got to make 4 nine patchers from the charm pack I created from my stash.  They're going to be a new charity quilt made from this really cute Piece and Quilt pattern at:  http://www.pieceandquilt.com/2009/09/9-birdie-baby-quilt.html   Here are the squares cut into fourths ready to start assembling the top once I find the yard I need to do the sashing and one border. Stash diving here I come!

I'm linking to Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story, Connie's Linky Party Tuesday and Esther's WOW on WIP Wednesday.   Go on over and see what everyone is doing and join in.  We'd like to see what you're doing too!

Fabric Story WOW

Here the last of three charity tops I finished for St. Anne's Sewdality:

This was a pillow panel I picked up at a yard sale for a pretty large pillow.  I used the intended backing material as the first border and then added the lavender border.  My job is to make flimsies and the group does the rest.  That way each quilt is a group effort before they are prayed over by all of us and then sent on to a first time low income mother in our city.

I'm linking at Fabric Tuesday, Linky Party Tuesday and WOW.  This will be my last post for a bit as I have surgery on the 6th.  I'll try to do Applique Thursday before then, so do come back and see what I added to that block.  Your eye candy will be ever so appreciated on that day.

Take care!

Fabric Tuesday/WOW

I helped with our local food pantry's yard sale - and amongst the things there was this:

Yes,  it is a mess - and this is after I washed it once.  But on the other side

 there is a lot of it that is not so bad at all!  It has a lot of interesting fabric. And it has a very interesting border I have not seen before on a Grandmother's Flower Garden.

Now I have to decide if I try to save a quarter of it or just some of the flowers, or if I should save any of it at all.  Some of the flowers seem to have just decinegrate, and the white is thin but holding up somewhat.  I am wondering also if I should salvage this by adding thin fusible interfacing or another layer of muslin.  What would you do.  As for the hexies, I plan to resew some by either ironing a piece of freezer paper to them and then  piecing, or using some of Beth Ferrier's disolvable template material.  What would you do?

Fabric Tuesday - My May Craftsy Blocks

With my Mystery BOM block out of the way, I decided to finish my craftsy BOM blocks for this month.  Have ten done (Amy gives us 2 a month) and am beginning to wonder what the setting for these might be.  All I know is I can't see them as on point.  Are you making these?  What are your thoughts on them?

I'm linking with Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story, Linky Party Tuesday, and Esther's WIP (she's in Australia, so they're a day ahead of us - you'll find all of these on my sidebar. 

Fabric Tuesday 5/8/12

Finished the two charity quilts for the teen girls. Now I can go back to my blocks and added a little more foliage to my applique block, got further around the breadfruit on my potholder, and messed up that 4th charity top. Yes, I'll be spending some time with my seam ripper.  Linking up to Connie's Linky Tuesday Party, Lynn's BOMs Away and Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story.  What have you been up to?

Fabric Tuesday 4/3/12 or Adding a border at the last minute.

UFO #2 for the year is done!  Having tested the quilting motif when I made my last mug rug, I decided to quilt the centers of my blocks with it.  I got ready to bring the back forward to bind my new wall hanging and realized I would like it better if it had a border, but what to do about it now at this stage?  I could have cut off the extra backing and added borders as a QAYG.  Nope, too much work for this one.  I then decided to make the binding wider than normal as I had enough batting and backing to do that.  So that's what I did. 

I turned down the backing to keep it out of cutter's way and cut the batting 1/2" out from the top's edge all the way around.  Then I brought the backing out and trimmed it to 1 3/4" all around the top.

 I then pressed the back by folding the backing to touch the edge of the batting.  This gave me a double edge when I brought it over the batting to form the binding.  But how was I going to align the edge to sew down accurately and evenly as I had forgotten to trim my edges.  Oops.

 After much thought, I decided to draw a 1/4" pencil line along the edges to mark where I would bring the folded backing forward to and sew it down.

 Here's what it looked like as I sewed it.

 The binding did seem much more substantial and wider.  It looked like wide binding so giving me the illusion of a border.

 And here is posey garden ready for hanging over my fireplace once I've added a sleeve and buried threads.  Made all with scraps, blocks from old swaps, and fabric from my stash.  You can find the pattern for this simplified block under my tab:  free patterns.

I'm linking to Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story, Linky Party Tuesday and Judy's 2012 UFO Challenge.  Go on over to my sidebar and see what other's have posted at those buttons.

Fabric Tuesday 3/20/12 and a Demo

Okay, I'm ready to quilt February's UFO, but I needed to figure out how to quilt it.  I decided on a feather circle that to me looks a little like a flower. I want to practice FMQ, but I'm not so hot at it yet.  So I'm going to tinker with using freezer paper and FMQ.  I like using freezer paper to guide me around the motif, but hate removing it, especially in places where I've traveled over the line twice (or more!).  So here goes:

First I chose a motif from Forest Quilting  where you can find 5 pages of free motifs!  Thank you! You can see the motif I cut out under the ruler (so you could see it flat).

I then made a sandwich with an orphan 6 1/2" block.

I ironed on the freezer paper motif to the center of my block. Be sure to pin your sandwich in the corners.

 I then marked with a yellow water soluble pencil where the lines of the petals meet the circle.

Then at one of the v's of the petals I brought up the bobbin thread.  My stitch will go up and toward the right around the top of the leaves only all around the motif and come back to my starting point.

Just before I got to the starting point, I cut along the last line from v to circle.  Here is where I start to FMQ.  I stitched from the v to the circle and then removed the paper.  I used the one curve I had just done as my sample for what the other vertical lines will look like.  Now the needle is at the circle.  So I went along to the next yellow dot in the circle and then went up to the next v, repeating this around the circle til it was all done.

Here is the front of my quilted circle flower,

and here is the back.  Okay my combining the freezer paper method and FMQ worked!  No paper to pull out of double stitches and I can use the motif on another square.  Because I don't want to throw this practice piece away, I am going to trim the sandwich and bind it.

and here it is all done and ready for gifting.                                                                                                     I think I'll give it to a friend who had us over for dinner as a thank you.

I'm linking to Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story and Connies Linky Tuesday Party.  You'll find both buttons on my sidebar.  Off to see what eye candy you post there!  Hope you enjoyed my practice demo.