Design Wall Monday 2/11/13

This is my version of Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street.  It's much further along than in this picture but I have it all laid out getting borders measured and there is no good picture-taking light over that table.  Anyone else have this problem??

I elected to go with a straight set instead of the on-point setting because I like the strong diagonal lines that the pinks give.  Whew - that's a lot of pink for me.  I'm the only girl in the house, we don't count Izzy, and there is often debate if we should count me!  I am way more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt than in pink girly things.  But I am liking it and I am sure that if I don't keep it someone somewhere will swoon over all the pink.

Hop over to Judy's blog to see what other talented designers are up to.


Chris

DWM 2/4/2013

I was busy busy busy this weekend.
I finished the center of my Easy Street top and picked out the borders.  I'll show it later when I get the borders on.

I put together almost all the spare parts to make the 12 blocks above.  They will likely become a charity quilt.
I also finished an OLD UFO top and cleaned up a big part of my sewing table.  Whew! 

Hop over to Judy's blog to see some quilt candy. 

Hope your Superbowl Weekend was equally productive.

Chris

Easy Street DWM January 14,2013

These are my first two completed blocks from Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street Mystery Quilt .  She runs a mystery during December every year.  I've made several of the quilts and, while I curse all the fiddly little units, I fall in love with each quilt.  My color choice gave me some pause but after I got all the seams sewn on these blocks I'm starting to really like it.  Each block is a 5-patch, most of those patches have multiple parts so putting together each block feels a little like accomplishing an entire tiny quilt.

I arranged all the parts on my design wall because there are so many opportunities for mistakes and then I debated how to get it transported to my machine without scrambling everything.  DUH!  I do this all the time when I sew an entire quilt together.  So, I stacked all the units just as I would stack all the blocks for webbing a quilt together.  I have a little tutorial planned for tomorrow.

Hop over to Judy's blog and see what everyone else is up to.  Then, go have a productive day.

Chris

DWM 12.31.12

Last one of the year!  These cute little blocks have been floating around my 'piles' for more than a year. I finally put my nose to the grindstone and put them together.  The top measures 17" x 22".  I used all 30s scraps on a WOW background.  I think they're pretty cute.  I'm trying to decide if I should add little black buttons for eyes. 

Check out what's up at Judy's blog. 

Happy New Year!!  Be smart.  Be safe!

Chris

DSW 12.17.12

It's almost the end of the year!  I can't seem to understand how that happened so quickly.
I think it doesn't feel like Christmas because I usually make a lot of Christmas presents.  This year we have chosen to donate to charity in lieu of giving each other gifts so that has freed up a lot of my sewing time.  As a consequence I have jumped, yet again, into Bonnie Hunter's December Mystery.  I have kept up this year for the first time ever!  This is step 4:

128 flying geese sewn into pairs.  I learned that my previous belief that I was a good quilter was completely dashed by these geese!  I cut carefully, I sewed slowly and carefully and STILL they came out wonky.  I made them using quarter triangles and half-square triangles.  Since I sew TONS of half-square triangles, I figured that the bias edges wouldn't give me any trouble.  I was so wrong.  :-(
I know they look right in this photo - they have all their points - but too many of them are just a bit too small or a bit stretched looking.  SIGH.

Tomorrow I'll post about a different method after I make some samples tonight.  All I know is they can't turn out any worse.

Chris

DSW 12.10.12

I find myself in possession of WAY too many medium toned 2" squares!  I've been searching around for how to use them.  I usually make 1/2 triangles but I like to use only very high-contrast fabrics.  I find that when I use medium tones I get a mushy quilt.  Cindy at Quilt Patterns from Seattle posted a very cute Scrappy Heart pattern.  I really liked it but decided I didn't want to make that many more 1/2 square triangles so I came up this big heart that uses only FOUR HSTs  YAY!!  In the test heart I also used 2' background squares.  TOO MUCH WORK.  In the next squares I will use strips.

That's pretty much all I have going on.  OH, I'm also considering making Granny Squares with my mediums. I'm kinda liking the ones I've seen around blogland.

What's on your Design Wall?  Check out a bunch on Judy's blog.

Chris

Design Wall Monday 6/25/12

 As further evidence of my frugal quilting, I present you with exhibit #1,973 - a quilt to which I contributed not a single piece of fabric that I purchased!  It's true, this entire quilt was constructed of fabric that would otherwise have been thrown away.  The large HSTs were part of the largess from June's estate sale.  The 16-patches were made from bits that other people love to give me, "We know Chris will make something with this."  I still have enough HSTs and 16-patches to make at least two more quilts.  Right now this one is about 54 x 64.  I think it needs some sort of borders.  I'll get around to auditioning some after I get the rows sewn together. 

I rather like this utilitarian thing because it is the sort of quilt that can get drug around and used to death.  I think that would make June and I both very happy.

Check out some other design walls over at Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

Well, I thought I might be able to get  back into some more regular blogging but I don't seem to have that sort of discipline. 

This quilt isn't exactly on my design wall, it's on the quilting machine.  It's done being quilted and I actually have the binding done as well.  I will post a full picture of it later.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  I had a lot of fun with the quilting.  Along the outer border, I freehanded some snowflakes - no picture :-( , on the inner border I freehanded snowmen.  You can see what I am talking about in the striped border to the left.  They really DO NOT look like snowmen - more like a series of ovals!!  Oh well, it was a good exercise.   I quilted little packages along the lower border, you can see just the tops of them in  the striped border on the right side of the photo.  IT was fun to make different motifs to fit the different blocks.

Check out Judy's blog to see what others have on their design walls.

Design Wall Monday May 14

I would love to say that this is my quilt.  Alas, it is the INSPIRATION for my next project.  I took this photo at a quilt show and I desperately wish I could give credit to the quilter but I didn't write it down or photograph the card when I took the picture - I'm much better about that now.  In any case, it's an Ocean Waves pattern.  I'm using the instructions written by Bonnie Hunter and I plan to assemble it Leaders and Enders style.  It should take, what, a hundred years or so?

The 1/2 sq tris are mostly done thanks to all the guild members who "gift" me with their unwanted (!) bonus triangles.  I plan to make the HST blocks before I determine the color I want for the solid blocks.

What's on your design wall?  Go check out Judy's blog to see some excellent design walls.

Design Wall Monday 4/30/12

WHEW!!  I DID IT!  My April UFO is Done.

This is possibly the second or third quilt that I ever made.  It has languished in a closet for almost ten years. Thank goodness that Judy pulled the number for the April UFO challenge.

It's twin size so I didn't want to quilt it on my DSM.  I've shared a Tin Lizzie with two friends for about 4 years now and STILL I never tackled it.  I was stalled on how to quilt it.  That is what ALWAYS stalls me.  I lack so much confidence in my quilting except for stippling -- I can do that all day.  This quilt seemed to want some bugs.  It didn't get all the bugs it needed or wanted but it did get a bunch of curlicues and butterflies.

 

There's a big butterfly in the yellow jar.   There are also lots of threads --  OOOPS!

So this post is a twofer:  April UFO and Design wall Monday.   Hop over to Jusy's to see what other's are doing.

Design Wall Monday April 23, 2012

Blogger is doing it again.  This photo should be rotated counter-clockwise 1/4 turn.  SIGH.  This is what has been on my wall for a while now.  It is ready to be quilted.  I even have the backing made.  I know this looks suspiciously like a DSW from a few weeks ago but, really!  it's a different quilt.   Here's the other one:

OK, so it's not really done in this picture and I've never posted a picture of the completed one but it really is a bit different from the one today.  Really.  It is.  I know the same blocks appear to be in both but you just have to trust me.

I'll take a picture of both when this one is done and we can compare side to side.

Hop over to Judy's blog to see what others have on their design walls.

Design Wall Monday

I've been out of the blog-writing loop for a while.  I've been quilting quite a bit but we've had a lot of stuff going on at the house that has kept me away from the computer.


This is a little quilt I made for a friend's baby. Her nursery theme was fish.  These deep sea fishes may be a bit sophisticated but I like the way the quilt turned out.  The pattern is based on a Judy Martin design.

Check out what else is posted at Judy's Blog

Design Wall Monday 2/13/12

I started with this.  I liked it, thought it was done.  So I quilted it and put the binding on and brought it to my niece for her approval.  I let her choose among three quilts.  She liked this one the best (yay!) but deemed it too small.  SIGH.  Since I've made her wait two years for her "graduation" quilt, I decided to accommodate her wishes.


Here is what I have come up with so far:

I removed the binding and added two more borders - another light green and the pink floral.  I'm thinking these HSTs are just what it needs to make it big enough.

I have my week all laid out before me.  Hop over to Judy's so see what's on other design walls.

Design Wall Monday

I needed some mindless sewing so I jumped ahead on my UFO list. So far, I have just been sewing these yellow and blue strings together alternating yellow and blue. Sadly, that's as far as my design plan has gotten.  Any ideas?

Design Wall Monday - January 30, 2012

I went a little crazy this weekend and did a bunch of improvisational piecing.  These are blocks from a class I took a few years ago.  In truth, this is about 300% more blocks than I actually completed in that class.  This is on my UFO list and when I saw that I only had about 15 % done I knew I better work on it before its number gets pulled. 

Surprisingly, The Husband had some design input!  It was good, too!!  He seemed a little excited by them.  I still think they look like an unholy mess but I'm trying to loosen up - apparently, a very hard thing for me- who woulda guessed?  There are still a few blocks that can benefit from more editing.  It's a work in progress, just like me!

Have a great week.  The weather here in San Diego is simply spectacular.  I hope yours is as well.

Design Wall Monday January 22, 2012

 

Well, I finally dove in and quilted this thing.  I used a stencil to suggest where my feathers should go.  The "suggestion" may or may not be due to my skill at following lines.  Overall, I'm pleased with the feathers but I'm not sure it's the best design for this wallhanging.   BUT, it's quilted and that's the important thing.  It needs binding before I can call it a completed UFO.

The design is "Illusions" by Caryl Bryer Fallert.  It looks complicated but goes together super easily.  I think I made the whole top in a four-hour workshop.

Here's a bit of a closeup of the quilting with my chalklines still showing.  I think I'll bind, wash, add a sleeve and block it.  Then it should be good to go.

Hop over to Judy's to see what other quilters are up to.

Have a great week.

Design Wall Monday 1-16-12

My Design Wall Monday post is not exactly something I have designed - at least not in the usual sense.  However, it is about something I have created -- A MESS!!

Since Christmas, my sewing room has been a huge disaster.  I have been wanting to get Orca Bay finished so all the time I spent in here was devoted to getting that done (still not done, sigh).  You know how it is, things get added to the pile, the pile gets pushed aside, more is added.  Soon, there is nowhere to comfortably work.  This weekend was the time I finally set aside to take back my sewing space.

Above and below are the before shots in all their shame:

And TA DA!!  Two days of hard, hard work produced this:

I really wish I'd taken a "before" of the ironing table but I'm sure you can use your imagination

The reason it was so hard is because I didn't just re-shelve things, I took care of them (well, most of them). If I had taken a "before" of the ironing table, you would have seen a pile of jeans.  I cut them apart so they would fit into the proper bin in the closet.  There were six pairs of jeans and two dresses.  Can we say blister on the scissor finger? 

I ironed and trimmed a bunch of HSTs:

I sliced a big bag of scraps into this:

I ended up with this trash can -- it was empty Saturday morning:

Laptop is here for size comparison.

I am now ready to tackle my January UFO.  It needs to be quilted on my DSM.  I'm woefully out of practice so I made that little quilt sandwich so I can practice before attempting the real thing. 

The husband just walked in and said "Whoa!"  I guess he was impressed with the new look.

Check out Judy's blog to see what others are up to.

Design Wall Monday 1-9-12

WHEW! This is the only Orca Bay block that I have completed. We were so busy over the weekend that I didn't get to sew as much as I'd hoped. We got all our Christmas decorations put away and the tree recycled. In the process, we reorganized the storage space and emptied two boxes of things we inherited from DH's parents.

We also had a few people over for dinner - that was the incentive to make us FINISH cleaning up Christmas and return our home to its normal state of "lived-in-ness." One of the couples brought their two daughters, ages 9 and 12. We are so immature here that I had plenty of toys to keep them happy. The biggest hit of the night was the two nerf guns we had put in our grown sons' stockings. The boys very kindly left them behind when they returned to their grown-up lives!!

Back to Orca Bay: I am really liking the blue and brown. I have to make a few more before I am convinced about the pink accent, however.

Check out Judy's blog to see what's on some more design walls.