Ending July

I am ending July with my completed HAD. I finished sewing the binding down last night while watching television. I watched the program 6 degrees of Martina McBride. It was surprisingly a very good show. I thought it was going to be cheesy but I have to admit I rather enjoyed it. I don't know if I agree with the winner but I don't have the musical expertise to choose the final winner, they had professionals in the Country Music Industry choose the winner. I do think the young man from Oregon was the best, and in my thoughts, had the most potential and talent, but they choose the older women from Texas. Oh well, it doesn't affect my life one iota.

I must go have to get to work. I just wanted to post a picture while we are still in July.

Have a great day. Dot.

Nine patches done

The nine patches for my next quilt are done. I don't know why but when I take pictures of the pink it seems to wash out. It is a pretty soft rose pink, much like the color of the RIT dye box I showed in my previous post. I have now to sew on the triangles to make these nine patches on point. I will start that today and complete them through out the week.

I am still working on ripping out the stitching on my other quilt. It is a slow process, I only work on it while watching television, which is only in the evenings. I will get there hopefully this week. I so want to get that quilt done, and out of the way. I will most likely do a pantograph on it instead of custom work. The quilt would be beautiful with custom but I am so done with it I don't think I have it in me to do that anymore. Do any of you quilters out there ever feel that way?

I am done with quilting the July HAD. I have to trim and put the binding on. I am going to cut the binding and sew that on when I am finished with this post. I am going to do the binding with strips of the colored fabric. I think it will be a fun binding to go with the bright quilt. I am also tired of stitching down one continuous color binding and this will be nice for a change.

Have a good week. Dot

Look whats going on the machine..........

I have completed my HAD for July. I has actually been done for about a week now but I am loading it tonight on the machine to quilt it. I liked making this quilt as I have all the HAD quilts. Judy does such a great job with her patterns and instructions. I know most of you have followed or watched many of follow her patterns but if you haven't I would suggest you try one. They are fun and really nice quilts.

Not much else to report on. The week has been pretty normal, work and playing in my sewing room each night. I am still practicing the guitar mostly each evening. I have started cutting out the new quilt I will be working on and I am ripping out the stitches on another quilt I started and don't like the way I was quilting it. It will take many evenings to rip that out. Lesson learned, don't, I mean DON'T keep quilting when you don't like it thinking it will get better the more you quilt. A very time consuming ordeal. Oh well, what else would I do with me evenings while watching the mindless television. Well the sooner I get to my sewing the sooner I will get it done. Good evening to all.

Completed

Just a quick post of the completed quilt. I don't have an official name for this one. I will just call it unusual snowball for now. I like how it turned out. I do think maybe the background fabric should have been a wee bit lighter but this is what I have.

As you can see I once again made a mistake. The block in the bottom left is turned on end. Oh well, keeps me humble and lets everyone know I am not perfect.

Now on to the cleaning and starting on the next quilt. Yes this was part of the cleaning. Taking the necessary pictures to get the quilt out of the way to move on.

Have a great afternoon.

The Outcome

Well, as you can see it doesn't show very well. The pink did take, some fabrics better than others , but it is what I want for what my idea is.

Now just to get other things done so I can work on this. What other things you may ask, well I want to get my quilting machine cleaned, a backing for another quilt made, and the quilt loaded. Then I need to sweep and mop the floor in my sewing area. There are many little scrapes and threads on the floor and the residue from the spray starch. Then get my embroidery machine set up and ready to stitch out patterns while I am quilting. Why not multi-task? I have to grocery shop sometime in this process and hopefully will have things in line that I can begin the cutting while listening to American Routes this afternoon. I really don't like to sew during this time, the noise of the machines makes it very hard to hear the music.

Have a great afternoon.

A Quilter's Sin

Well, I am about to start a new quilt and I want the fabric to be black with pink. Yes I do believe there is a difference between pink/black and black/pink. This is how I distinguish the difference. Pink/black would be with the background of the fabric being pink and the print in black. The black/pink would be the opposite, the background black and the print pink. This maybe just a technicality but it is what I think sooooo, the reason for the dye.

I have a lot of black/white fabric. I don't want to buy any more fabric soooo I am going to dye the fabric with the Rit dye. I know this is probably a quilter's sin because it isn't hand dying but I don't care. I want it done, I want it easy, and I want to do it this way. I have used Rit many times in the past with no problems. Not that I have a problem with hand dying, I actually like the outcome of the dying, but like I said, I don't want to take the time. I want a uniform dye job and I do think it will be a more uniform dying with the Rit. I guess I am justify my laziness.

Well I best be getting started. I will post a picture of the completed dye job when completed. I hope it turns out the way I want for this project.

Look what I found

I was sweeping the floor and out of the corner of my eye I see something bright greenish white. I wonder what that was, so I look and here is what it is. Mushrooms growing in with my house plant. I can't say if I have ever seen this before.

OPPS!!! I did it again

Well I did it again. Here I am at the last row on the quilt and guess what, one of these blocks is not like the other. I am beginning to think this is my trademark. The funny thing is the pattern in the book warned of this, the original quilt had the whole last row done with the blocks different. I thought I was being so diligent about not having this happen but I guess it was meant to be. I am almost done quilting this, it sure has taken a lot of time and some of my wreaths are good others well............... Practice, practice, practice. Here is the final instalment of the Sisters quilts. This one I liked because of the western theme. I can just picture it on a bed in a cabin, preferably in Montana.

I liked this quilt. The colors and placement is wonderful. Simple but elegant. I might have to try my hand at this one.

I took this picture because it reminded me of a quilt that Dianna at Quilting Spirit had made. She actually made two of them and sold both.

I took this picture because, well the story is, a few years back my hubby wanted to buy a water color painting of a trout. I felt it was way over priced and wouldn't let him buy it. I told him I could paint one for him, well guess what, it is still to be painted. He does remind me of it from time to time, so maybe I should do something. In time. These fish are done in fabric, not painted on the fabric. Really cool quilt.

Well that's it. I hope you all enjoyed this little quilt show. Enjoy the day and week-end. Dot.

Sisters Part 4

Well here is today's installment of quilts. These are just the ones I liked or thought of different bloggers while looking at the quilts. I have never made a basket quilt but this one sure looks like fun. I liked the corner idea on this red and white quilt.

Here is a nice purple one for the purple lovers out there.

This is for our cat lovers.

Wonky trees, makes me think maybe it needs Tonya's letters wishing all a Merry Christmas.

I thought this one would make a great breast cancer quilt, using different shades and values of pinks. Maybe along with some blacks and grays. Anyone game???

I like the bear paws in this quilt. I can't say I have ever seen any like this before. I might have to try it. I have never made a bear paw quilt, Maybe!!!!!!!!!

That's it for today, more quilting, still working on the feathers. It is a good thing this quilt if mine. Some feathers good, some feathers good for a laugh. Oh well, we all start somewhere. Practice, practice, and more practice.

I will say I am starting to play some Christmas songs on my guitar. See what a little practice will do, I should say a lot of practice. Almost every night for 30 minutes and when I miss I try to do 1 hour the next night. I will give it a good year.

Sisters Part 3

Here are a few more pictures of the show. This picture and the next one are a couple of the quilts by a featured quilt artist. Here name is Barbara Olson. The quilts are beautiful.

Here is a Scottie dog quilt. The placement of the dogs and blocks is intriguing. A very nice quilt.

I liked this log cabin stars. Black and red was the theme in this section.

This is a really cute art quilt, any way that is what I would call this quilt.

That's it for today. I really don't know how many quilt pictures to share as I noticed others are sharing also and I don't want to bore everyone with the same pictures. I will check other blogs before posting so we don't see to many duplicates.

Have a great evening. I am going to quilt a bit before I start making dinner.

Sisters Part 2

This is an addition to my original post, just in case it doesn't make sense when you start reading my post. I am practicing my feather wreaths on this quilt. This is a quilt that I will keep for myself and I have never made feather wreaths before, (I make very few feathers) because I don't think I am very good at feathers, but I decided I best practice on something other than paper. The reason for the dark circle is it is wet from where I sprayed it with water to remove the blue marking pen. Here is another, don't laugh to hard, these are all done free hand. You can see the blue ring marking I put down to help with making it look circular.

Here are a couple shots of the edges. Just thought maybe you would like a good laugh before you look at the Sister's pictures. Dot

Just some more pictures of quilts from the quilt show. I just took pictures of quilts that caught my eye. This one I thought of Starfishy with her Shakespeare in the Park quilts. The turtles certainly add a different feel. I don't really remember what I say in this quilt but I have the picture. Maybe it was for someone out there in blog land and not especially for me.

I took this one because daisy is my hubby's favorite flower. I think the concept and execution is clever.

Holly and I figured this quilt must have been a kit or maybe a class project because there were 3 or 4 of this pattern, same colors and all.

This was unique as it depicts African lifestyle. The quilt was done very nicely.

More to come later. Have a good evening.

What a fun day!!!!!!!!

Last Sunday I received an e-mail from Holly over at And Sew it Is, asking me if I would like to go with her to Sisters quilt show. I said yes I would be interested. During the week we e-mailed each other many times figuring out what time to leave so we would be there before the traffic and crowd got to much. We settled on 6 a.m. at her house and we would go from there. I was up at 4:15, left my house at 5:00 and arrived at her house at 5:45. We meet for the first time. What a nice lady, of course she is a quilter, why wouldn't she be nice. Holly showed me her sewing room, beautiful and very clean. If you remember when she showed us her view a few months ago, well let me tell you she has a wonderful view. She can sew and watch the world go on around her. She is a very lucky lady. Oh yeah, what a clean sewing room, I could only wish mine was that clean. She shared with me many of her beautiful quilt tops. Maybe I can convince her to post a picture of her wonderful miniature tumblers quilt. The quilt isn't miniature but the tumblers are and it is HAND quilted. She is a wonderful hand quilter.

We say many many beautiful quilts at the show. I took 54 pictures, had to delete one as someone walked in front of while taking the picture and I had a great picture of the side of her head. I will share more pictures as the week progresses but here is my favorite.

I really liked this quilt. I might have to figure out how to make one, next in line with about 5 or 6 others I have simmering on the burner.

I am going to close now, take a shower, and sew. It was so hot. I am very glad we were there early in the morning so we did most of viewing before the weather got to hot.

I am thinking maybe I will enter a quilt or two next year. I have about 6 months to decide before entry forms are available. Hopefully Cathi O'Neil from Celtic Knots will have her Dear Jane in the show also. We can meet up for lunch and celebrate.

TA DA Finished

Here it is, the completed Citrus quilt. I like how it turned out. As I stated in my last post I don't really know what I was aiming for, other and a quilt with citrus fruit on it. This is the concept I came up with. It is kinda mish/mash, with no rhyme or reason, but done and I am happy with it. I like how it feels summery to me. I know most of the words I am using are probably not real words but they are the words that come to mind as I try to describe this quilt.

We are having hot weather here. I shouldn't complain, not as hot as other parts of the country, but to hot for me. We hit 102 today and they are predicting about the same for tomorrow. It was a bit hot sewing the binding down but with air conditioning and plenty of ice tea I got the job finished.

Let me know what you think, I look forward to your comments.

I have started the Hour a day quilt. I have all my black/white blocks done and all the fabric cut. I am using 36 different fabrics so none of the colored patches will be the same fabric. Many are in the same color group but not the same shade, tint, or hue and/or print. I think it will be nice when completed. I look forward to seeing how they all turn out.

Enjoy your day and week-end. I probably won't post again until after the week-end as I won't have anything to share. I will be working on the Hour a day and doing housework. I don't want to show any pictures of my messy house or the progress on the cleaning. It is a slow pace and many messes in the process.

A sneak peek

I am done quilting . Remember when I posted a picture of the different fabrics? The date was June 20th. Well this is the quilt I was thinking of making. Not really knowing where I was going to go with the concept but wanting to make a citrus quilt. I used the kaleido-ruler and this is what I came up with. I guess for not knowing where I was going with the concept, just knowing that I wanted to make a citrus quilt, I will say I am happy with the outcome. I had fun quilting this quilt. I think this is the first time I have quilted and not been nervous about the outcome. I just played and it was GOOD!!!!!!!!!!

When I have the binding on I will post a picture of the whole quilt. I used 7 pre-wound bobbins and somehow exploded two needles in the quilting process. I don't really know what happened. Might be a bad batch of needles. I have not had that happen before. I am glad I was wearing my really sexy reading glasses at the time. I was a bit scary but fortunately nothing was harmed in the process of the explosion. Nothing in my eyes, or my face at all and not holes in the quilt.

Well I best be getting to bed, it is 1:00 a.m. I am a night owl, the music on the radio is getting really good, but my husband thinks I am crazy staying up all night. I don't get up at 3 a.m. like he does, nor do I fall asleep on the couch at 7p.m. Oh well, opposites attract. Good night or should I say morning.

Onto to next top

Well with the 4th of July over it is time to move on. I have an idea for my next years Independence quilt but that will go onto the back burner for now. I hope I don't forget what my plans are when the time comes in put it together.

We had a really good celebration of our Independence day. Hubby and I just relaxed and puttered around the house, had barbecued Kabobs and some salad, then went for a motorcycle ride. What would be more American than riding your Harley on an American Holiday? We went to the home of a very dear ex co-worker of mine. We had lost contact with each other in the past few years but now I hope that changes. She is a dear to me and I enjoy her company very much. She certainly has her hands full, raising 4 beautiful children. Her faith is very deep and it shows in her love and devotion to her family. It was refreshing to see such a strong family and so much love between family and friends during our visit.

I did not work the last two days. I did housework, very little, and a lot of sewing. I completed the top I was working on before I took the brief pause to make my 4th of July quilt. I have it loaded and started to quilt. I hope to have it completed this week-end. I want to get things cleaned out of the way, so I can get prepared to start on Judy's Hour A Day quilt for July. I am very excited to make this quilt. It is the pattern I was so desperately wanting it to be. I have to get the fabrics out and cut so I can jump in on Monday when she starts posting the instructions. I might have to fall behind on the first week as I will be working 5 days next week. I figure if I get started with having all the fabrics pulled and cut maybe I can keep up. Oh well, its not a race and if I fall behind I can always catch up on the week end.

I best get to sewing so I can get done with the top this week-end. I will post when completed. Good evening or should I say morning as it is past midnight.

HAPPY 4th Of JULY

Well here it is, just in time for the celebration of our nations birthday. I have completed my patriotic quilt for the year. I just finished stitching the binding on it.

I like it. I might try again with a different concept but I must say I like how this came out. Keep in mind I had no pattern, just a picture I saw on someones blog and the picture was on just one of the star blocks. I don't draw my patterns out first, I just go from what I see in my head. As my daughter says I would probably be better off if I sketched the idea first but I don't know if I would follow it any way.

Well I best be getting in bed. Good night or morning and have a Happy and safe 4th of July celebration.

Keeping it square

Finished the quilt. I decided to keep it square, after reading the comments on my blog and having a conversation with my daughter , it will remain square. I auditioned borders and didn't like any of the ideas, not wanting to buy any more fabric, I didn't have enough of the white star print so I had to go get more of that, and we all know what happens when you go in for one thing. Well, I succumbed and bout a few rems along with a nice orange print at 50% off. I really need to stay out of the fabric store.

Anyway, the quilt will be square, without borders, and the binding will be navy blue. I am quilting outlining with white thread. I hope to have it done by the fourth but we will see.

I guess the quicker I get to it the quicker it will get done. Have a relaxing Sunday.