Blog Posts

Mom's Modern Sampler Quilt

2/9/2018

Isn't that Dutch Rose quilt block above beautiful? It's my favorite block in the quilt that I finished up on the longarm this week. My mom pieced the top following the Modern Sampler QAL (quilt-a-long) pattern that can be found at Elven Garden Quilts. Some of the gals down at the Little Foot Quilt Shoppe were working on this project. She didn't quite finish all of the blocks there, but the ones she did make fit together perfectly.

I quilted it with a pantograph called Daydream using cream colored thread.

Here are a few other close-up shots of some blocks.

I just love those blocks! They all seem pretty traditional for a "modern" sampler. I think maybe it's just the setting style of the blocks that is modern. Just above on the right side - there's that Cat's Cradle unit that inspired my little wall hanging a few weeks ago.

This quilt is being donated to a fundraiser to help a family in need in our church and community. So Mom is getting the binding on it this weekend. Way to go, Mom, and great job on the piecing!! (Great job rotary cutting, Dad :-)

I'll have to get something new on the quilt frame tomorrow. Hope you get some quilting in this weekend, too! I'll be linking up at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Thanks for visiting!

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New Quilt, Old Mystery

1/26/2018

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Last week I shared my progress on a mystery quilt I'm currently working on. This past week I finished quilting one of my own quilt tops that has been waiting patiently to be quilted for 5 years! This was the Winter Mystery Quilt from (one of my favorite local shops) The Quilt Company in Allison Park, PA, back in 2013. It was meant to be a scrap buster. All of the fabrics in this quilt were from my stash. Even the white is a collection of different white-on-white prints mostly. I love the combination of blues, greens, and sprinkles of yellow and orange here and there.

Above you can see (picture from back in 2013) I had all of my pieces cut and ready to sew - all 1,400 of them!! This is the actual block . . .

. . . and here's the whole quilt.

It was such a nice day today I thought maybe we could get some pictures outside. It was Friday afternoon, and we were all feeling goofy, I guess.

The backing fabric is this great aqua/blue flannel with circles. I love the happy colors in this quilt, and it's great fun to see some of the little prints up close and remember what I made with them. I might bind this quilt with white which should frame it nicely, though I'm not 100% sure.

It was quite windy outside today also, but I'm thankful for my helpers :-)

Don't be discouraged if you have a project sitting around for years! It's definitely possible to get that quilt finished if you still have some love for it.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Thanks for visiting!

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Mystery Half Solved

1/20/2018

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I have been having a lot of fun over the last 4 weeks participating in a mystery quilt project created by Deb Heatherly, the creator of some wonderful Creative Grids rulers. It is a free quilt-a-long for the Grids Girls Facebook Group. It is a private group, but if you are interested, you can request to join. If you are a Creative Grids junkie like me you might want to check it out!

This quilt requires the Pineapple Trim Tool, the Strippy Stars Tool, the Cat's Cradle Tool, and the Ultimate Flying Geese Tool, all from Creative Grids USA. These are specialty rulers, but they all have the ability to help you create many different sizes of quilt block units.

The fabrics that I am using are from my batik stash. I did have to purchase a light background and a dark contrasting constant fabric.

First clue was to make some of these units with the Strippy Stars tool. It's too soon to tell how these will be used yet!

Here are some long rows of Flying Geese. I think I'm going to like this.

There are 4 blocks like this made using the Pineapple Trim Tool. This isn't the usual pineapple block but a variation of it. The top picture is the 4 blocks put together, but this probably isn't how it is going to be. I love a good mystery!

The last unit is the cat's cradle, made using the Cat's Cradle Tool, of course. How do you think this piece of the puzzle might fit in?

In 4 more weeks the mystery will be solved, and I get more curious each week. This isn't genuinely a quilting finish, but I have completed all of the clues. I'll definitely share the real finish with you when it happens! For now I'll link up at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday.

Deb Heatherly has some awesome patterns to accompany the rulers she has created. You can check them out at her site here.

Thanks for stopping by :-)

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The Cat's Cradle

1/13/2018

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Hello, friends. I just finished this fun little quilt that I'd like to share with you. This was an experimental project using a Christmas present that I received, the Cat's Cradle Tool from Creative Grids. I asked for this tool/template because I'm currently working on a mystery quilt that requires it. Though I'm trying to be diligent about finishing already-started quilt projects, I just had to see how this new tool works!

The good news is I didn't buy any new fabric for this quilt! Last year I had purchased one of those scrap collections from Moda (Basic Mixologie) down at The Little Foot Quilt Shoppe, and I decided to see what I could make with that. This was the first time I bought one of those fabric packs, and I didn't know what to expect really. You can see the strips in the pic above. Most of them look about 3" wide, but they do contain selvage edges, so by the time they are trimmed to actual usable fabric, some weren't even 2" wide. I probably wouldn't buy this product again, but, hey, I gave it a try for around $10.

I was inspired to make that quilt block that was part of a daily quilt calendar. Can you see the cat's cradle unit in there? It is made up of 12 cat's cradle units and 4 squares for the corners. I haven't really thought much about this quilt unit before, but it's really quite common in many traditional blocks. That star is a 10" finished block.

My mom is currently working on a sampler quilt that inspired the blocks below. It is a much quicker one to make. I made the biggest units that I could with the size of the fabric strips that I had, and these are 5" finished blocks.

In deciding how to put them all together, I added some strips with cornerstones around the green blocks and sashing with cornerstones to bring everything together. I love it when quilt designs flow like this and it's hard to tell where one block stops and the next one starts.

I even had this backing fabric with the green dots on hand that I decided against using in a quilt a few years ago, and just the right amount! Confession: I did have to buy the binding fabric. There just weren't enough 2-1/4" wide pieces in the scrap collection to make a scrappy binding. I ordered 1/4 yard of matching fabric from another Etsy seller, and it was in my mailbox in just a few days.

There are SO MANY POSSIBILITIES with the cat's cradle tool! It makes various sizes which is great. When you use it, everything is trimmed down to the perfect size, so the units fit together just right, and getting nice points on the triangles and squares is pretty easy.

This quilt is 33" square and will soon be hanging in my house somewhere. Wouldn't this look great as a big quilt with more blocks, bigger blocks? How about setting the whole thing on point like below?

It's a very wintery weekend here, perfect for sewing a lot, which is what I plan to do. Thanks for visiting and reading, and I hope you were inspired to sew! I'm linking up at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. See you soon!

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Dwight the Deer

1/5/2018

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Dwight the Deer is finally finished and in his new home. He was the one thing that I didn't get done for Christmas. Lydia and I decided that he would be a great Christmas present for Aunt Brenda and Uncle Dave. The week before Christmas my longarm machine was out of commission. I ran over a quilting ruler and had to re-time my machine. I never did that before (yes, I was a little sick about it), and it took me a couple of days to get the problem resolved. So instead of being a Christmas present, Dwight was a New Year's Day present.

The pattern for Dwight The Deer is designed by Elizabeth Hartman. She has many pieced animal patterns. I have a lot of fun making them because they aren't typical patchwork. You cut up various sizes of triangles and rectangles - lots of them, and you HAVE TO FOLLOW DIRECTIONS very well. I find them to be a fun little challenge. I have some of Elizabeth Hartman's other animals in the works, too, and I love them all.

Over the years Uncle Dave has hunted many deer and has given us lots of venison for our freezer. So we got to give him a deer for a change. I think this one will look good in their beautiful home.

It's Finish It Up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts where I'll be linking up. Thanks for stopping by. I'm looking forward to a weekend full of sewing in my nice warm house. I wish the same for you, too!

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Mom's Christmas Present

12/29/2017

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This Christmas I finished this wall hanging for my mom. It was probably the best gift that I gave this year. Many years ago (back in the 90s) Mom and I used to get the Piecemakers quilt calendar and dream of making the beautiful quilt on the cover. We decided to make the one in 1994. It wouldn't be too hard if we made one block every month, would it? We would work together and encourage one another so that we would actually finish it, right? We quilters always start projects with good intentions, but we end up with a collection of unfinished projects stashed in a closet somewhere. Mom got tired of stashing this project several years ago and gave her box of stuff to me. I decided that these blocks were too pretty and had too much hand stitching in them to discard, so I would make a wall hanging with the blocks she finished so that she could enjoy them. And boy would she be surprised when she opened this gift!

I couldn't find the calendar cover with the beautiful color photo of the original quilt, but above you can see the drawing on one of the papers. You can actually still find this pattern for sale if you click here.

Mom got 4 of her blocks done - January, February, March, and April. She also made one of the setting blocks. This was all hand applique stitching, and hand embroidery work around the windows and door and other details. It was fun quilting this house!

In the box of "stuff" I also found sheets of plastic from the templates we made. This was before there were rotary cutting instructions for everything. We actually traced around plastic templates, added a 1/4" seam allowance and cut fabric by hand. For most of the applique we used the freezer paper method.

I liked this block better after I added the quilting. Getting the points right on this one was no easy task!.

The cow is SO cute with his 3D ears and braided tail.

And this is the setting block that I included in the quilt backing. Believe me -- making just one of these blocks was enough!!

Are you wondering what Mom's reaction was yet??

The truth is she didn't even remember making these at first! She kept saying, "I made that? Really, I made that?"

"You mean I did all of that hand stitching?"

"I made that?"

Mom did quickly remember and loves the gift. So we had a lot of fun talking about this project and when we bought our fabric and other memories surrounding these blocks. We looked at all of the fabrics we used and talked about how pretty they are and what good taste we have.

I hope to make the blocks that I finished into a wall hanging for myself sometime soon. You know I'll show you when I get it done!

Thanks for bearing with me through this long post. I'm linking up over at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Happy quilting, friends!

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Hello, Mr. Snowman!

12/16/2017

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Winter came to western PA this week, bringing several inches of snow. Snowmen can be so cute, and this is the kind that I like to make now. I'll leave rolling big snowballs to the kids and make mine with fabric!

Over Thanksgiving weekend Aunt Brenda had a sewing project for me, my mom, cousin, and aunts. She even had all the fabric cut out into kits for us. Pretty awesome! We used the Cut Loose Press pattern Snowman Runner by Annette Ryerson and one of those rulers that I love from Creative Grids - the 8" Curvy Log Cabin Trim Tool. Four of the curvy log cabin blocks can be put together to make the circular shape for a snowman head. The hats and noses were machine appliqued on, and I added a narrow zigzag stitch for the mouths.

I have already sewn a lot of these curvy log cabin blocks, and after making 8 of them for this runner I wanted keep going! It was the first time for everyone else making the blocks, and they all caught on quickly. Sewing these really can be addictive - you just won't want to stop :-) ! We didn't put the holly leaf on his hat. Brenda had some other decorative buttons for us to choose from to embellish with.

Thanks, Aunt Brenda, for planning this fun project for us!

I did finish the binding and buttons last night (Friday) while watching The Great British Baking Show. Does anyone else love that one? Though it's Saturday, I'll still link up with Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Keep warm, quilting friends, and thanks for visiting!

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More Christmas Table Runners

12/1/2017

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It's now December, and I've already had customers at work wish me a Merry Christmas! It seems too early for that (though not really). I am still trying to finish up the last of the Christmas table runners to be listed in my Etsy shop.

Both of the table runners in this post are designs by Heather Mulder Peterson of Anka's Treasures. The star runner is from her Little Charmers III pattern. I love everything about this pattern - love the star design and love that it uses a charm pack. The charm pack used for this runner is Holly Night by Sentimental Studios for Moda. It is very elegant with gold in all of the fabrics. I quilted with gold thread, of course :-)

Next is a Christmas Tree runner. The pattern is called Baby Juniper from Anka's Treasures Angles With Ease pattern book and The Triangler ruler. I've made LOTS of these, and they are so fun to make and feature different fabrics in the trees. They can be traditional, whimsical, modern or colorful batiks. This time I used fabrics from Snowfall, a fabric line by Minick & Simpson for Moda. That little candy cane print is so sweet!

I actually made two of these, and you can see that I have some binding to finish up tonight! I hope to be able to take some better photos tomorrow in the daylight and get them listed.

It is Finish It Up Friday, so I'll be linking up over at Crazy Mom Quilts. Thanks for visiting, and Merry Christmas!!

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Alice's Delectable Mountains Quilt

11/24/2017

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This week I finished quilting this gorgeous quilt made by my Aunt Alice. It is the traditional pattern called Delectable Mountains, but she used the Missouri Star Quilt Company's tutorial called Grand Adventures which can be found here. This is a layer cake friendly version.

The edge-to-edge quilting pattern is called Chevron Feather. I haven't used it in a while. It just seemed perfect for this quilt, and I love the way it turned out. My favorite quilt backs are solid or almost solid so that you can see the quilting design. Though it's a little shadowy, you can see it below.

Thanks for letting me quilt for you, Alice!

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving celebration. Family is the best thing about the holidays to me. I'll get to spend time sewing with them over the weekend, too! Thank YOU for taking the time to stop by each week to see the quilty projects I'm working on.

Click over to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday for some more inspiration!

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Sharon's Windmill Quilt

11/11/2017

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Check out this lovely quilt made by my Aunt Sharon that came off the longarm this past week! I don't remember the name of the pattern that she used, but all I can think of are Dutch windmills.

I had some help on this one - Jakob helped me choose the edge-to-edge design. We decided upon "Breath Of The Gods" because we thought it looked like wind blowing those big windmill blades. And a friend Carol helped me with some of the pictures.

Beautiful job, Aunt Sharon! Now it time to get those binding strips together. Thanks for letting me quilt for you :-)

I'm linking up over at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Thanks for visiting!

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