WIPs Be Gone Week 24

I'm working on 6 1/2" blocks for two sides of the VA quilt:

And here's that baby quilt all finished:

And that's about it for this week as I've been getting ready for my TX cousins' visit. They arrive tomorrow AM.  Then we head for San Francisco on Monday. We'll fly back later in the week and they leave the 21st.  So I'll probably be incommunicado for much of that time.  But do leave a link or comment or both of your progress. I may just connect with the blog at some place up there and would love to see what you're up to.  Linky below:

An InLinkz Link-up

I'm linking to Sarah's Can I get a Whoop, Whoop?, Richards Link a Finish, and  Lizzie's Free Motion Mavericks. What beautiful quilts will they be showing us?

Applique Tuesday Week 24

or The Madness of Deconstruction - that's what today was. I was working on a VA quilt. I'd made this block. It was easy, came out great. Started on the second one. What a mess cutting one piece wrong can make.

As you can see the corner square was 1/2" too small. It should have been 6 1/2" square. It was 6 by 6 1/2.  So I added fabric to the short side and resewed the corners. Sewd the two squares together and realized that in making the units with the wrong squares I misaligned the points - hence the big space between the star points. Ugh! 

So I took off each unit and was going to fix the points,  but I only had enough to fix the one side of two - no more of that fabric available.  Did that and then realized it didn't help on one side because the points didn't come close to alignment. They were off by 3/4" horizontally!  It looked like I just starting piecing. Turned out the setting triangle was too big. So ripped out that unit again. Took apart the seams around one side of the large triangle. I then basted it with the unit by setting the seam allowance of the star unit 1/4"lower to the edge of the triangle. When I checked,  that seemed to work. So took out the basting, cut off 1/4" from the one side of the triangle and resewed the seam.

Looks much better although the colors are wrong in this photo.  The top colors are correct in the middle photo.  Those two unfixed bottom corners won't be so bad as they don't get connected to another block - they'll just look a little wonky. What a way to spend the day!

In the middle of this chaos, I dropped everything and sat down and did a little hand stitching to save my sanity. My elephants now have eyes - my applique for this day.

What are you up to?  Leave me a comment and I'll come by and see your goodness - quilty or not.

Blessings

WIPs Be Gone Week 23

Made a flower for WIP # 3 and that's about the only work I've been able to do on my works in progress.  I spent a lot of time on the raffle quilt, the B3 quilt for guild and the baby quilt I"m machine appliqueing.  Hope to do better this coming week, but then it will be my busiest week of the month, geesh!

I'm quilting that B3 quilt for the guild:

I'm showing the back as the quilting shows up more there.  The very center was me and my walking foot and no marking except for center tiny block.  The rest will be marked lines.

And I made two quilt tops with some of those blocks the kids colored for our baby quilts.  

These are 36" square and will be tied.  
 How about your WIPs?  How are you doing on those? Hope better than I am.  Would love to see your progress - doesn't have to be a finish, but we'll admire those, too.  Linky below - remember it doesn't even have to be a new post. Ends Monday, midnight.    Have a great weekend! I'm linking to Amanda's Finish it Up Friday, Sarah's Can I have a Whoop, Whoop? , Lizzy's Free Motion Mavericks, Pink Doxies Pet Project Show, Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitiching, and Judy's Design Wall Monday. Check them out.

An InLinkz Link-up

Applique Tuesday -

The paver is finished.  I now wish I'd found a light orange or gold hexie for the center. I don't like how the green obscures one of the points, but that's a print for you.  That's my problem with scrappy blocks - I start to obssess of what goes with what and it can take hours to make progress.  This is going to my design wall.

We had our church festival and had a good time. While we didn't make a lot of money as some other booths, we did get nearly 100 blocks made by the children to be put in baby quilts later in the year.

Here are a few of the cute blocks they made for us.  Some were original designs and the others were designs we provided. Aren't they cute?

Here's our booth at the start of the day.

A Granddaughter of one of our members made the just right sign.

Here's the raffle quilt on display in the booth.

And a bonus for us - a longarm quilter came by and asked us if we could use her batting scraps in the baby quilts.  Turns out she has a pile of squares 40" square that would be perfect for our quilts.  And we were just about to run out!  God is good!!

On the machine applique front  - I pressed all the interfacing to the back of the top I"m working on.

I discovered that if I placed the top, wrong side up, on my light box, I could easily see where I needed the stabilizer, the shape it has to be, and where I could cut out centers.  They are all now fused. I need to keep doing an applique section daily.

What are you working on? Would love to see. Leave a comment and I'll come by and check out your eye candy.

It has begun - WIPs Be Gone

May 27, 2015

(Credit: NOAA)

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season will likely be below-normal, but that’s no reason to believe coastal areas will have it easy.

For the hurricane season, which officially runs from June 1 - November 30, NOAA is predicting a 70 percent likelihood of 6 to 11 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which 3 to 6 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including zero to 2 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher). While a below-normal season is likely (70 percent), there is also a 20 percent chance of a near-normal season, and a 10 percent chance of an above-normal season.

“A below-normal season doesn’t mean we’re off the hook. As we’ve seen before, below-normal seasons can still produce catastrophic impacts to communities,” said NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan, Ph.D., referring to the 1992 season in which only seven named storms formed, yet the first was Andrew – a Category 5 Major Hurricane that devastated South Florida.   (see more at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ )

And already there has been Tropical Storm Alice in the Atlantic and now Tropical Storm Andres in the Pacific.

I'm interested because I have a lot of family and friends in the path of Hurricanes.

In the WIPs Be Gone category, I've spent most of the week busy with Life and trying to bind the Raffle Quilt which must be done by Sunday. So working hard on that.  My two Hexie Stars are the only WIPs work I did.  I madly put together another baby quilt top. On Monday that will have to be my priority, so that I can hand it off to a tester to show for me at the June Guild meeting. I will be in San Francisco that week. Phew. Here's the top:

As usual, this preemie quilt measures 30" square. What color should I bind it with?  I'm linking to Amanda's Finish it Up Friday and Sarah's Can I get a Whoop, Whoop?

What kind of weather are you having?  Show me your WIP progress or your weather in the linky below.

An InLinkz Link-up

Applique Tuesday

Hello.  I used a tiny bit of stash to make another star plus check out a pattern that may be my next hand project.  It's called Garden Pavers.  You can see it here.  Below is my test sample:

It's sitting on a mug rug I made that needs to have the binding stitched down. And as you can see in the photo, I'll be appliqueing the hexie to the center of this sample.  The large hexie is 3" to a side. So probably used a fat eighth of fabric giving me a YTD total of  42.02 yards out. for this week's de-stashing

And here's the star:

Reminds me of a morning glory flower.   Think I'll make one more for my garden.

Coming off my design wall is the Festival raffle quilt. It's all quilted - just needs to be bound.

I did make some progress on my machine applique quilt.  It's just taking a lot more time than I thought.  I'm linking up to Judy's Patchwork Times and Lyn's BOMs Away. See you there.

WIPs Be Gone Week 21

Here's a WIP of a dress -  WIP #12 to be precise.  All it needs is for me to sew on the buttons and hem it.  Why it has taken me 10 years I don't know.  3 of the 12 buttons sewn on.  And I'll have to find a hook and eye somewhere.  I got rid of all my clothes sewing notions in my last purge. Oh my.'

And I made another Hexi - this time a star - for WIP #3.

My first one.  I followed Karen's of Faeries and Fibres blog tutorial and it went together much easier than I thought. She has excellent directions.  I dread paper piecing, but it's getting better each time I do it.  This flower is a little less than 4" across at it's widest points.  I used 3/4" hexagons to make it. 

I'm linking to Richard's Link A Finish, Amanda's Finish it Up Friday, and Sarah's Can I get a Whoop, Whoop?.  

So that's my progress for this week.  How about your WIPs?  How are you doing on those?  Would love to see - doesn't have to be a finish, but we'll admire those, too.  Linky below - remember it doesn't even have to be a new post. Ends Monday, midnight.  Lots of eye candy on the NET.  Have a great weekend!

An InLinkz Link-up

Applique Tuesday

Machine Applique that is.  This is taking me much longer than I thought.  It's those zagged edges to the palm leaves.  Have to be done slow.  And yes, I discovered that it does need stabilizer in the back.

Did one with and one without. What a difference.  I'm using invisible thread and So Fine in the back with a zig zag of 1.0 wide and 1.0 long and a 60/08 needle.  I get these nests of top thread every once in a while in the back.  ??? Don't know what causes this and the top thread isn't broken. Strange.  Has that happened to you?  

On my design wall is the church festival quilt:

I am quilting it now.  Think of it as a square I Spy quilt.  We're going to raffle it at our church festival May 31st.  St Anne members are doing a booth for kids to color fabric squares to later use in baby quilts. Our goal is to show them that they can help others with simple tasks and make a difference. Will also teach them how to make finger crocheted bracelets.

I can't understand how I keep getting sidetrack from my WIPs and applique projects.  Always something. Nothing changed in my stash report.  Still YTD fabric usage stands at  YTD total of 46.39 yards.  

How are you doing?  Leave me a comment and I'll come back to see your endeavors.   And don't forget to visit the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  So much inspiration there. Button on top of sidebar. Bye for now.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Here's the latest.  10 to go.  and here is what our skies have been looking like - strange for CA in May:

So weird to be under a winter storm warning, too, this late in the year. Today it was 29 degrees cooler than the norm. And just two weeks ago this was my view out my kitchen window:

All gone now except for the Primrose.  But we did get an 1.5 of rain in those weeks.  I'm linking to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching. Take a break and do some soothing hand stitching. And for eye candy overload do visit the Blogger's Quilt Festival.   My entry is in the Home Machine Quilted group. There are 11 other categories - not to be missed. Enjoy!

WIPs Be Gone Week 20

Oh-ho!  Almost got away from me. But I have been busy with quilty stuff although not much of it WIPs except for the hexie I made for WIP #3.  Here's what I can show:

 While I have done this quilt design as FMQ on seams for SITD, this time I thought I'd try my walking foot and the S-curve stitch on my Bernina.  I used blue painter's tape to mark my register line - starting at the center. I used the tape to line up the edge of my walking foot and walked down the tape to form the line.  As I finished both sides of the first laid tape, I moved the tape to a new position and continued making lines (one direction at a time).

  This gave me lines about 1.5" apart. I was done in no time.  The advantage of the FMQ it is even faster as I didn't have to keep moving tape, however not as precise, but I got my walking foot quilting practiced.  A great way to quilt for a beginner quilter who wants uniformity.

Here is the finished baby quilt. Measures 30" square.  The block is Album.  I expanded the size.  It's a preemie quilt for our local Neonatal unit. I used Superior's So Fine Thread with a 80/12 titanium needle.  I'm linking to Michelle's Let's Make Baby Quilt, Richard's Link A Finish, Amanda's Finish it Up Friday, Sarah's Can I get a Whoop, Whoop?, and Julie for her Pet Project Show.  

How about your WIPs?  How are you doing on those?  Would love to see - doesn't have to be a finish, but we'll admire those, too.  Linky below - remember it doesn't even have to be a new post. Ends Monday, midnight.  Lots of eye candy on the NET.  Have a great weekend!

An InLinkz Link-up

Spring BQF!

It's time for Amy's Creative Side' Blogger's Quilt Festival. The button is on the sidebar.  Here's my entry:

I consider myself a confident beginner in FMQ and I had fun trying different designs in the rectangles. I used Superior's So Fine Thread in both top and bobbin with a 80/12 needle.  I was so happy with how the Snow (#401) blended with all the colors in the fabrics. This was a quilt I made for my DGD who just turned five in April.  Just took me 2 1/2 years to finish, LOL.

Here's the busy back.  Lol, I'm not yet that confident of how a solid would look with my quilting:  

I'm entering this in the Home Machine Quilted category because I challenged myself to do more FMQ and this was my result of that challenge. Little by little!  Do visit the Blogger's Quilt Festival - you'll find a lot of inspiration there. 

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Applique Tuesday May 12

I was determined to do some applique. I spent a couple of hours working on this quilt. I wanted to use raw edge applique on it.  Now what is the difference between raw edge and broderie perse? Someone enlighten me, please. Here's a corner of it:

There are four pieces added to the border here.  I'm having fun with it. Can't show you all of it as it is a gift.  I'm linking to Connie's Linky Tuesday Party - she's always got some fabulous quilt she's done.

What are you up to?  Leave me a comment and I'll pop on over and check out your eye candy.
Bye for now,
Angie in SoCal

Some of This, Some of That Week 20

First off - the linky party to show your progress or completed project is still on (ends Monday, midnight). Come show us your progress at WIPs Be Gone.

Finished a hexie flower. I deconstructed the flower I used in the tut for making hexie donuts and re-assembled it.

Ten to go.  So that's my Slow Sunday Stitching.

As for de-stashing, I backed a charity quilt and made binding for another yard out.  Then I found a back for the VA quilt - that was anothe 1.5 yards.  I made a baby quilt sample for our festival booth - that's another yard. I'll have to find a back early tomorrow because the top has to be sandwiched Thursday at the St Anne's Sewdality meeting.  So my new total is 4.5 yards out giving me a YTD total of 46.39 yards. 

This week I'm thinking I'll put up my elephant quilt again as that's what I want to work on next along with the Cowboy VA quilt.

What are your plans this week?  Let me know and I'll come by and root for you.

WIPs Be Gone Week 19

Well, I did move #10 WIP along - the top is finished as I made 8 more blocks and was done with it at the retreat.  It is now in the WTBQ pile.  You can see it in my previous post to this one.

I've also finished the first block - and it's a big one - for the next VA lap quilt. I don't have a photo of it finished to show you, but here it is with three sides. 

I wanted to show you how I handle sewing square in a square blocks without marking or cutting the corners of my triangles and getting them aligned.

 This particular example has only two sides to it. Think of it as a flying goose with a tail.  

 What I do to get them positioned right is to press a crease at the center of the square and the triangles.  For the square I press it near the seam line with right side in.  With the triangles I press at the center with the wrong sides in.  

 Above you can see the crease in the square and the crease in the right triangle on right.

 I then nestle the triangle and square (right sides together) at the creases and pin.  I then sew my scant quarter seam and press toward the square.  I then do the other triangle in the same manner, but I press the seam away from the square.  Why?  You can see from the photo of the block that the center square within a square is sewn to flying geese. This places a lot of bulk where the two points of the birds meet in the block. By turning one seam in one unit away from the edge lessens the bulk at the seam.  You just have to be a tad careful that the points  meet when joining the units.

How do you handle this tricky piecing problem?   Would love to hear if you have a better solution.

And how about your WIPs?  How are you doing on those?  Would love to see - doesn't have to be a finish, but we'll admire those, too.  Linky below - remember it doesn't have to be a new post, just one that shows a WIP.  Ends Monday, midnight.  I'm linking to Sarah's Can I get a Whoop, Whoop?, Richard's Link a finish Friday, and Julie for her Pet Project Show. Lots of eye candy on the NET.  Have a great weekend!

An InLinkz Link-up

Some of This, Some of That - May5th

Alas, no appliqué!  But I'm determined to get back to it this week - even if it's only those eyes for the elephants.

Again, I have yardage to report (surprise to me!).  Used 2 yards to finish my WIP #10.  Then I used another yard for the Festival quilt I started. I also began another VA quilt - for another .5 yard. Lastly, I took apart that hexie flower in my tut where I used red thread and resewed it.  So the YTD use now stands at 41.89 yards .  

And from the retreat - finally had a chance to have DH hold the quilt top #10 up for a photo:

VA lap quilt ready to sandwich

On my design wall:

Start of another quilt I saw at Shelly's Prairie Moon Quilts.

Another D9P - busy, huh?

And from my garden:

This plant ideally likes 45 inches of rain - some in spring and some in fall and we had only 4.5 inches so far this year. Our rainy season ends June 30th.

But it fruited for us!

 It is so delicious! Hardly acidic and so sweet. What a nice treat from the backyard.

Here's the next one which should be ready in a couple of month.  And another forming:

All started from a bought pineapple.

So what are you up to?  Would love to see your eye candy - from the sewing room or the garden. Leave me a comment and I'll come by.  Bye for now.