Quilt tops are piling up around here. Productivity is increasing, and the wheels of progress are turning. What the end results may turn out to be, I don’t really know, just that it feels good to be moving forward and finishing things. Could be the uncertainties in the world lately that are fueling my personal need to get things done, or spring fever or maybe just a way to channel energy and stop worrying about things not in my control.

The winter village quilting is finished, still needs binding. I would do it today, but my current project, Seasons Study is taking up all the work surface. The last two days have been spent making blocks and pieces for this kit. I really like the prints, flowers and mushrooms and forest-y things like twigs and cones. The pop of teal is nice too. The kit had plenty of fabric, so there may be a throw made with the scraps. The kit came with border fabric long enough to not have to piece the four outer borders, and the border print repeats eight times. There are cats cradle, four patches, HSTs, and snowball blocks in this pattern. Today I am hoping to get the larger units together.

I finished a small quilt for my SILs cat this week. I forgot to get a picture of it before I sent it out to her. I used the extra Sparrow block and a scrap of backing/batting to quilt it up. I think it turned out to be about 26 inches square. The cat, Puc, was making himself a bed out of the table runner my SIL got from me in December. This is all fine, except that the runner was on the dining room table. She was amazed that that Puc got on the table, as he never did in the past. I told her about the cat and quilt symbiotic relationship, she probably thought I was a bit weird, oh well. Puc got his own quilt though. *Update* Puc loves his quilt.

I found a nice backing for the Sparrow quilt on sale and I’m waiting for it to be delivered. I ordered three backings, the other two are for the Ellipse quilt and Seasons study. I got the Eclipse quilt top together this week too, it needs ironing/pressing. This pattern was relatively easy and if you are proficient at sewing curves a quick project. There is also very little waste in cutting and squaring up the blocks. I used two 10″ square layer cakes and had two left over blocks. The scraps from the initial cutting of the arcs were not even a good string size piece.

The cushion covers and pillows got finished and sent out too. I tried to order the pillow forms from Joann, but they were out of stock. I ended up getting the same product through Michaels, with a coupon and other discounts, shipped direct. The forms will probably get there before the covers. I am very sad about Joanns closing, I hadn’t been shopping there as much in the past few years. I haven’t been sewing as much apparel or other things, and the store was always such a mess. I just went there when I needed notions or craft supplies when I couldn’t get them online. It’s been a slow weaning, I don’t want to go and participate in the liquidation sales. I certainly have enough fabrics and notions here.

Shabby Fabrics notified me that the first BOM kit for Blooming Beauty has shipped. They are in Idaho, so it’ll be here soon. I need to empty a project box for it, I think I have one somewhere. I like to keep all the instructions in a binder, with all the scraps and finished blocks in an ArtBin satchel. I also need to get the constellation blocks into some kind of container. The backing fabric for it is on a bolt though, so it’s a bit hard to keep it all together.

I started a new cross stitch project. I know I wanted to finish the Fabulous houses first, but I had an idea and I wanted to see if I could make it work with needle and thread. It started with the pattern I bought last year, Miss Bingsley’s Library. I wanted to make it for someone special, who just finished renovating a manor house. I thought I could change the house on the pattern to look like her home. It morphed into a new project, I drew out the house on graph paper and gathered up some threads. I think it’ll work out, so far it looks okay, I was a bit worried about the proportions, but luckily manor houses are pretty straight forward and symmetrical.

The day is wasting, time to get on with todays sew-day.

Be Kind.

I basted a bunch more shapes to the Tilda quilt this week. I think there are maybe ten more that need to go on to this center section. I did appliqué the rest of the green stems, so that was a a start to get closer to the finish. This quilt will be done before the recipients first birthday, really.

The pattern templates for the Eclipse quilt arrived yesterday. I made cardboard templates with them and promptly cut the 81 ten inch squares into convex and concave pieces. Sewing them together will take a bit longer, but the tedium is done.

The zippers and extra 1/4″ basting tape also arrived yesterday, for the two cushion covers. Everything is cut and ready for those to be finished. I also cut four 12 inch pillow covers out, I think I will have enough zipper to finish all of these by this weekend. I am honing my upholstery sewing skills with the very helpful videos on the Sailrite web site. I feel so much more confident in the making of these cushions. Three dimensional things are sewn a bit differently, and the ½ inch seam allowance makes it easier. Maneuvering the bulky fabric however, makes it tough on my hands.

The haunted house is finally finished, it took the longest, not because it was the most dense one of the 12, but because I took a month off from stitching on it. I started on the log cabin, the last one – hooray. I had been shopping for a frame, looking at some of the more decorative moldings. I want to frame this myself, since I stitched it on even weave aida cloth, it should be easy to get mounted straight and square. The finished size is 19″ x 26″, most of the frames I was looking at were over a hundred dollars, and truthfully not that nice looking. I did think of an old poster I had framed in the late 1900’s, that was about the same size. I found it at the back of my closet, and it is 19″ x 28″. I can even re-use the backing board to mount the cloth on for the win!

The Winter Village is slowly getting quilted. I wanted to use a blue bobbin thread, called Hawaiian Blue as it matched the backing very well. There were only two left of that color in my stash, so I ordered another jar of them. That order was canceled (due to no inventory) two days later, so I had to find it else where and order it again. I can sew two rows of the feathers with a full bobbin, which has 135 yards on it. I stopped at three rows, just waiting on the mailman now.

I’m also waiting on delivery of the first installment of the Blooming Beauty BOM, End of the month delivery is okay, since the constellation Starry Signs BOM is the first week of the month. Once these blocks are done, I’ll think about what is next on the to-do list. Looking back to my January 30th post, I have a list, and I don’t think I am going to do the Bonnie Hunter Old Town quilt yet, or maybe not at all. I may start the batik log cabin I have in mind, must stay focused.

Be Kind.

Flocks of sparrows and a peacock too. I finished the Sparrows top Wednesday and the peacock quilt got a binding yesterday. Both projects were supposed to be simple and quick, and as is my “way” neither were.

The Sparrows quilt project is the second time I have worked with this pattern. I remembered all the unsewing I had to do with the first one, and thought the second time would be easier. I got all my fabric cut and labeled, and started sewing assembly line/chain stitching the 36 blocks I needed. The smaller size sparrow quilt, has 24 blocks, 12 left facing and twelve right facing. So naturally I made 18 left and 18 right facing for the larger one. But, not reading through the whole pattern addendum, I missed the part where it states “21 left facing and 15 right facing”. As I was carefully laying the blocks out in a random but deliberate way, I realized what I hadn’t done. There was no way I wanted to remake any of these blocks, so I came up with another setting. Now the birds have friends to talk with and friends to follow or lead. A happy flock of birds ready to quilt.

The fabric backing piece I ordered came for the short peacock backing. It was actually pretty simple to sew them together with the quilt still attached to the upper rail of the long arm. I un-pinned the short backing edge from the leader and flipped the unfinished quilt to the back of the frame. I had to unroll about 3/4’s of it so that it would lay on the frames table in a mostly flat manner. Then I set up my singer 401 on a sturdy tray table behind the frame. I pinned the two fabrics together and carefully sewed the pieces together. I had to move the singer a few times to keep it from pulling on the fabric, but it was manageable. When the seam was finished, I flipped the quilt back over to the front side and re-pinned the backing to the front leader. The last row of quilting was humming along, when I realized that my spool of thread wasn’t going to last. I lost at thread chicken, this quilt was just one thing after another. I didn’t have the same color, but one that was similar enough, that unless I point it out, no one will know. The binding went on with no trouble and thus it is finished.

Next up I seamed the backing piece for the Winter village quilt and both are resting not the frame, waiting for pinning. I am thinking of doing an all over feather design on this one, but maybe snowflakes and swirls.

The Fabulous Houses are being stitched nearly every day. I am seeing the end of the Haunted house nearing. I will admit that this one has been a bit more challenging than the others. There have been a lot of fudges, and almost right stitches in this house. It is a wonky house, so no one will be the wiser, in fact I have forgotten where the flubs are already.

In other sewing news the pattern I bought for the Eclipse quilt didn’t include the templates. I have been working with customer service at The Fat Quarter shop to get them. Apparently it was a printing problem, as the templates didn’t fit on the paper, so the printer didn’t include them. The very kind customer rep at FQS is sending me the templates soon. I wonder how many of the patterns have sold this way, and if any one else has realized it yet? The funny thing is that I thought I bought the PDF version, but accidentally bought not one, but two of the patterns. It’ll all work out in the end.

When I bought the peacock backing fabric I saw that they had two new-to-me Gingiber panels from the Woodland friends collection. I bought them and a pattern and a ½ yard bundle of matching fabrics. Off on a tangent, and more fabric is coming in than going out. What can I say, other than it was a good sale?

Be Kind.

The Winter Village houses have received their borders and all appliqués are securely zig-zagged. Into the TBQ pile it goes (reminder stitch backing together soon). Next up was the Starry Signs BOM blocks, January and February editions. These went together fairly easily, as there are good instructions and cutting lists to follow. I had an oh-no moment when I thought I may have done most of block 1 (Capricorn) on the wrong side of the paper. After checking the video, I confirmed that I was doing it right, and there was a huge sigh of relief. These blocks aren’t the easiest, but not the most difficult either. I have been using the Add an Eighth ruler for some of the inner seams to prevent too much build up of folded fabric. I am using a Riley Blake Blue for the background, a Craftsy Ombre yellow I unearthed recently, and a lighter blue piece of cut off backing fabric. Some stash reduction, but not enough to offset the recently acquired Sparrow quilt fabrics.

I started the bed size Sparrow quilt yesterday, got all the pieces cut and 108 HSTs sew together. Having everything cut and ready to go is going to make this quilt easy to put together. I did use my Accuquilt cutter to get all the HSTs and 2 ½ inch squares cut quickly. Making 36 blocks sounds easy, but each one has about 27 pieces. There is some fold and cut too, but not a lot of waste. There will be a lot of assembly line stitching today, I have to remember that there are left and right facing birds.

With all this rainy weather I have had lots of indoor time to sew and ignore cleaning house, although I did manage a bit of vacuuming and laundry. The Tilda quilt top got a bunch more appliqués sewn down. I am at the point where I need to add more basted shapes. I ended up ordering more backing fabric for the peacock quilt, a quick search found me a half yard of the 108″ wide feather print I used. It should be here this weekend, so that project will move into the binding pile soon. I did purchase a few layer cakes for a quilt wanted to make, from Zen Chic quilt patterns called Eclipse. That fabric is up in the mail box, if the rain lets up a little I’ll go grab it. Hopefully the pattern isn’t too fiddly, curved piecing Yay! – said no one ever.

Be Kind.

This week I am working on the Winter Village quilt kit I bought on sale last year. It was a good deal, as it included all the fabrics and the appliqué cut-outs. The houses went together fairly quickly, although cutting the pieces often took longer than sewing them together. The appliqués are pre-cut and have adhesive on them. It is sticky enough to adhere to the top before ironing it on, which is nice as there are a lot of branches and pieces. The machine stitching part is tedious, a small zig zag, and happily I finished the snowflakes yesterday. I am using non-stick needles as the glue is building up, I also noticed that there is a residue on the bottom of my presser foot. I have been wiping the two periodically, stitches look good though. I would like to finish this today, the two borders are cut and I get extra credit for cutting and ironing the binding. Maybe I can get it on the long arm once I finish the Peacock quilt.

The Peacock quilt was started yesterday, I had gotten it on the frame Thursday, but needed to make a pieced batting for it so it was delayed a day or so. As I started advancing it, I realized that I had put the top on upside down, luckily the panto isn’t up/down directional, just left-right. As I advanced the rows, I saw that my backing was too short, some swearing ensued. I had pieced the backing a few months ago, and didn’t re-measure it before mounting it, because I never make mistakes in measuring . Well, it’s about ten inches too short, and I don’t have any more of the backing used. I “found” a purple print that is going to work. Now I am hoping to keep the quilt attached to the top leader and sew the extra piece on with my small sewing machine. I am thinking I can put the machine on the back of the frame’s table and stitch the pieces together. It will be awkward, but if I don’t have to re-mount the quilt, it will be easier to line up that last row of quilting.

Happily the new lighting system is working out well, I can really see what I am doing. No more “bring the sew head over to provide light” on the quilt. It will be very helpful when I do more design placement and ruler work. Plus I will be able to see appliqué edges easier for stitching around them.

I have been stitching on the Fabulous Houses – Haunted house this week. I would like to finish this whole project soon. It’s been a long year of monogamy, so many other project temptations ignored. I don’t think I will do another giant piece like this for a long while. I will finish up the Consider the Lillies after this is done and then I will try not to be tempted by anything larger than 8″ x 10″. I have already sworn off samplers, especially ones with big red houses. I did buy a pattern for a new baby sampler, but it doesn’t have a house. Maybe my enthusiasm for cross stitch is waning again, it has been five years of stitching since a twenty year hiatus.

The de-cluttering of the sewing room has finished. I made a dent, and lost the mojo when I started sorting fabric drawers. I did get through my large pieces drawers (fabric pieces over two yards) and for extra credit, I marked their sizes on them. Plus I separated specialty fabrics from the quilting cottons. When I got to my main fabric stash drawers, I was done. These drawers of fabrics need to be taken out and re-folded and organized. I’ll revisit in a six months or so.

Be Kind.