Sewing Up My Fabric

Sunday, August 14, 2022

REALLY???? Has it been 8-1/2 months since my last post!

Oh yes!

It has been 8-1/2 months since my last post. Oh my!

Why Wait?

Why do some of us wait so long to post our hard work on the blog? I guess it is different for every one, but my excuse is that I was so sure I could just whip up these UFOs in a flash that I kept saying to myself that when I get them all done, I will post! The reality is that sometimes it takes a while to get them pieced, quilted and bound.

What have I been doing?

I have only been working on UFOs. I totally underestimated the time needed to complete them. I have only added three UFOs to my list recently and they are from my big book of UFOs! I have totally resisted new projects. If I see something I really like, I take a note of it, and move on to my UFOs. At the rate I'm going, I don't think I will be able to start anything new until at least 2024!

Below is a list of what I accomplished so far this year. The ones that are not completed, don't like much to be finished.

Applique baby quilt. I started this thing almost 20 years ago. I would have scrapped it but I already had all the fusibles ready to stitch down. I got a little amused at the appliques because one of them was a thermometer. No one uses that type anymore!

Turning Leaves

This was a pattern from Quiltmaker's Magazine Sept/Oct 2002

Well, that only took 20 years to finish!

Shiny Happy Faces

This was a block of the month from Wendi at Shiny Happy World.

I think I started it in 2020. I got all of the blocks quilted and then stopped. This was the first one I started on this year. It took way, way more time and effort than I expected. It's cute, but I don't care for the method, so I won't be using that technique again. I wanted to try it because I had seen it on other posts and wanted to see if I would like it. It's called Quilt as You Go but after you quilt all of the blocks, you have to sew them together and then put a backing on it and straight stitch them down. So there is more quilting in the end.

2012 House Quilt

LQS Saturday Sampler

This one wasn't too intense. I just needed to sash the blocks and make the flying geese. There were a lot of flying geese.

I used my leftovers to make the backing.

Stitch a Year of Stars with Natalia Bonner

Natalia's quilts have a lot of dense quilting. I was a little intimidated as always with her quilts, but I stuck with it and gained more experience with free motion quilting.

Starry Pines

2002 Workshop on "No-Waste Flying Geese"

The Quilter's Attic - Pine Bush, New York

The workshop included the new "tool", instructions, and a packet of fabric to make a small lap quilt. I enjoyed it so much that I went back and bought more fabric to make a biggr one! That was my mistake because it got set aside until this year. I had half of them sewn and all of them cut. There were a whole lot of flying geese! I was really getting tired of flying geese by the end.

I used leftovers for the backing.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I know it was long. I will try to post more often in the future. Now I can carefully move on to the next UFOs!

Saturday, January 1, 2022

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!

Now is the "official time" to start anew with a clean slate!

I am joining Gail with PHDs in 2022 and Karen with Just Get it Done Quilts in an effort to keep myself on track for the new year. I think I have figured out how to handle the squirrels. LOL (maybe)

I had a bit of a revelation a couple of months ago when I looked in my Quilters' Planner to see what I had accomplished in 2021 and what to carry over for 2022.

My reality was that I seem to pay more attention to my squirrels than my intended UFOs! So what can I do? I decided to treat my UFOs as squirrels and I have a place where I will write down all of my "squirrely squirrels" that might lead me down another road and I can take care of them at some later date. I think I can make this work. I really do want to complete all of my UFOs. I pretty much want to complete everything that I have started. Oh my!

So far now, my 2022 list only has UFOs from previous years. I will not add one thing until I finish these and I propose to only add UFOs to my list one at a time so I don't get off track. I highlighted the parts of my UFOs that have been completed so I can tell how much progress I have made in 2022.

Karen with Just Get it done quilts has suggested to take a picture of our sewing room. The pictures below are really just of one my my quilting spaces. There is no sewing machine in this area. I worked on this room in 2021 so I think I have a pretty good handle on it. Karen suggests using a timer and spending just 15 minutes a day on organizing those difficult areas. Well, I haven't gotten that timer yet but the two pictures below show that I took probably 15 minutes or less to clean up what I had left from finishing up a quilt project and the picture on the right shows that it is gone. Now, I could have put up that mess on the left of the table but I figured I might as well start my daily 15 minutes of declutter with those. After all, they are in containers and I could have easily moved them out of the way but I would still be dealing with the clutter somewhere else.

The other pictures are just the rest of the room.

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope this is the absolute best year for all of us!

Friday, August 27, 2021

BATS AND BOOS

Sunday, July 25, 2021

SENSORY QUILT

This is a small post of my first attempt at a fidget blanket. I have a friend whose mother has dementia and I wanted to make her a fidget blanket. I can't tell you how many YouTube videos I watched. Looks simple and straight forward I told myself but it took me a long time to finally get it done. I just didn't feel comfortable putting those gadget type things on there so I finally went with what I call a sensory blanket. She likes to watch Cupcake Wars so I put cupcakes on there. She lives in Texas so I put a few fabrics representing Texas. I found that faux lamb's wool and thought that might feel good and you can see the rest in the picture. It turns out the faux lamb's wool is her favorite part and her daughter says she holds tight to it when she is changing her sheets! The goal was to make her happy, so I think I did ok.

I chose something totally different for the back for variety.

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Fairy Tale Blog Hop

Fairy Tales Blog Hop

Hosted by CalicoJoan at MooseStash Quilting

I am pretty excited to be in this blog hop. There have already been some great interpretations of "Fairy Tales" in the blogs today. Each one so different. Normally, I would not consider myself talented enough to join one of these adventures but I remembered that I had some fabric that I got in Germany about 4 years ago and I really wanted to make something out of it.

Since I was in the land of castles, I just had to buy this fabric. I had no idea what I was going to do with it. And then came along this blog hop!

I tried to make a castle in EQ but I am not that good with it but I did remember that Alice at Blossom Heart Quilts had made a castle pattern. OK, I hate paperpiecing but I did buy the pattern and manage to made the castle. Fortunately, it was large enough that I only needed to make one.

54" x 59"

Back turned out pretty nice.

Laural of Slice of Pi Quilts posted about making quilts which were featured in children's books and I thought maybe I could find one about fairy tales. Well...........you can find anything on Amazon, right? Yes I did. I found the perfect children's book. It tells all about knights and what they wore and about dragons, etc. just perfect! Now I need a little 4 year old boy to read to for nap time! LOL

Thank you for visiting my blog and taking the time to read it.

Below is a list of all of the blogs in this blog hop and the dates they will be sharing their fairy tales. I hope you find the time to stop by and see each one of them.

Sunday, May 30, 2021

Jolly Bar 3 Table Runner Sew a Long Sponsored by the Fat Quarter Shop

So very far outside my comfort zone!

This was a bit of an experiment.

I pulled 42 - 10" squares from what I call "Pam's Vintage Pre-cuts". I randomly chose the fabrics to make a layer cake. Then I cut them in half to make two Jolly Bars. The second Jolly Bar was going to be used with Pat Sloan's Friendship Bracelet QAL using the Jolly Bar 3 book. The reason for the orange background is that I let my husband choose it!

(I take my scraps and cut them into precuts starting with fat quarters, 10", then 5", 2-1/2" squares and 2-1/2" strips. These are all sorted by color family.)

This is a hanging view. I am still working with my lighting.

I feel like I really hit the jackpot with the backing fabric. Matched perfectly and gives me an entirely different look on the table.

Fabric from 2009! Just had to show the selvage. Why did I buy it? Probably because it was on sale. LOL

I figured I should check my scrap bindings to see if I had anything that would go with this group of random fabrics. I couldn't believe my eyes! Perfect. It was even pieced and ironed and rolled up! I had about 18" left after binding the table runner! How many times does that happen?

Just to be sure, I turned the corner to see how it would go with the backing! Another win!

Thanks for your patience. This is my final picture.

I asked my husband to pick up a bundle of cheap flowers when he was at Walmart.

How perfect is this?

Thank you for stopping by.

Please check out the FatQuarter Shop and Pat Sloan's Website to see what others have done with this project.

Monday, May 17, 2021

Born to be Wild

Born to be Wild!!!!!!!

When I saw Carol's invitation for this blog hop, at first I didn't think there was any way that I could do this, and then I remembered that I had a half-yard pack of animal print (bottom of pic from Quilted Twins) and I knew I had some other jungle type fabric. When I saw this print fabric, I opened it up to find that it was blocks. Oh yeah! I think I can do this! So, I contacted Carol to sign me up!

The panel fabric is over 30 years old.

The blocks were about 4"x6". So I decided to cut them up and lay them out on the design wall. I thought it might add a little interest to them if I made the strips around them off-centered. I was getting pretty excited about this. I had been wondering what I would ever do with that fabric so knowing that it will have a purpose made me happy.