Happy Thanksgiving!

This is our cat, Charlie, reminding you to be thankful in all things!

Charlie came to us the night we moved into our house, a very skinny burr infested stray. Our two other cats were not excited to see him but he made his way into our lives and into our hearts. Although he feels he should get more attention and definitely more tuna, if cats can be thankful I'm sure he is!

The "Be Thankful" quilt is a Pat Sloan design (maybe) from way back when. Because I didn't think my cutting and piecing skills were very accurate, I decided to try making folk art type quilts which I thought would be more forgiving. Instead, I made a lot of mistakes on it and had a terrible time trying not to match things up! I was, indeed, very thankful when this quilt was finished. It usually hangs on our living room wall during this season but this year, it became a couch quilt and we like it there!

I haven't blogged much lately simply because I'm working on some larger projects and not getting anywhere fast. Remember my clamshell quilt? I've been working on it off and on for over a year now but I'm determined to get the top done by the end of the year! I've finished all 13 of the clamshell diamonds and am now hand piecing the side half diamonds.

Last week, a local quilt shop was having a storewide 25% off sale so after doing numerous calculations and rounding up for a little extra just in case, I purchased fabric for the borders and sashing. I hope I purchased enough fabric!

For those of you in the United States, I wish you all a very meaningful and happy Thanksgiving! We are sharing our Thanksgiving dinner with two other families. I'm in charge of making the pies which I enjoy making. I'm planning to make Pumpkin, Pecan and Apple pies and maybe a pumpkin roll. What I'm not planning to do is step on our scale for a few days!

Ta-Da!

Here it is, finally finished!

"The Parlour's Tin Ceiling Quilt",
my version of Jacquie's Tin Ceiling Quilt!
You can get the tutorial and see her quilt here and here.

The quilting design is by Angela Walters. I liked it so much that I asked my machine quilter, Jan, to do something similiar on my version of the quilt. Yes, it does remind me of the tin ceiling in my parents' farmhouse! However, we certainly weren't fancy enough to have a "parlour" so that's a reference to the spiderweb. Perhaps you remember a poem about a spider and a fly, "Will you walk into my parlour, said the Spider to the Fly."

Thank you to everyone who sent me selvages! Some responded from a request on this blog and others heard about it at quilt guild. Even after making the border, which I thought would use almost all of the selvages, I still have some left. Looks like there may be another selvage project for me but definitely not one this large! It began as a throw and ended up Queen sized.

The pictures have been brightened up a little to show the quilting but the quilt is still a little on the bright side. You may have to put on your sunglasses to look at the back! Can you guess that I really like bright pink?

Binding Quilt #2 this week

I finished binding my daughter's 30th. birthday quilt and am moving on to binding quilt #2 - the Selvage Spiderweb Quilt! I have to be in the right frame of mind to make binding. It's not that I dislike binding but I don't like working with long bias pieces of narrow fabric!

I measured the selvage spiderweb quilt top, made some calculations to find out how many inches of binding I'd need. I came up with 400 inches which turned out to be too much but I'd rather have too much than not enough. Extra binding I save to bind scrappy projects.
I find that if I wind it up and then rubber band it, I can control it better as I'm sewing the binding to each side of the quilt top.

Here it is machine sewn on and tomorrow I'll start hand tacking the binding down. I hope to finish it before the weekend, create labels for both quilts and then they'll be done!

Another picture of the beautiful machine quilting done by Jan!

Binding in my future

Can you guess what it is?

Last weekend, I picked up quilts from two machine quilters! Both quilts are beautifully quilted but quite different from each other in pattern and quilting.

You've seen my daughter's 30th. birthday quilt before while I was embroidering the blocks and machine piecing it. It was the first quilt I picked up and was machine quilted by Siriporn Hollar.

I'm in the process of binding it so if you look closely, you'll be able to tell the binding isn't tacked down on three of the sides yet. I like a narrow binding so I usually make a 2 1/4" bias binding. Whenever I make a straight binding, the quilt corners are pointy which is a pet peeve of mine. Even though a bias binding uses more fabric, I stick with what I know.

I was disappointed the large photo didn't show the machine quilting better but you can get an idea of the beautiful quilting on this photo of one of the blocks!

I'm sorry I wasn't able to wrestle this monster up to hang from the top of our bookcases for a better picture. Its the back of my queen sized Spiderweb Selvage Quilt! I'm only showing you the back this week because I haven't even begun to make the binding for it yet. As you can guess, I didn't have enough of the pink floral fabric so had to piece the back with two more blue fabrics and even more selvages. Pictures coming of the front when its bound next week.

Jan did a wonderful job quilting it. She's probably resting her arms this week after quilting all those little swirls! Check out her website for a look at the Prairie Quilt Guild's beautiful Opportunity Quilt. I've been trying to figure out how many tickets I need to buy so that I can win it at the Common Threads Quilt Show in Wichita next June!

Was Granny Smith really a Northern Spy?

It's been a bed sized quilt year for me!

Here are a few blocks from the next bed sized quilt I'm planning to finish. The blocks will all be red and green and after being trimmed and sewn together, the red diamonds should match at the points. I started it months ago but got a little bored with making the same block over and over again so I set a goal of 20 blocks a week. Very do-able and I have only 30-ish blocks left to cut and piece before piecing the top!

This pattern is from Bonnie Hunter's book, Scraps & Shirttails II. She calls it "Criss-Cross Applesauce". I wanted a name with a little more personality so in keeping with the apple theme and with a nod to the Civil War, I'm calling it "Was Granny Smith really a Northern Spy?" Both names will be on the quilt label along with giving Bonnie credit as the designer.

Here's a picture of her version from the book. By the way, I recommend this book for anyone who likes scrap quilts. I try not to buy a quilting book or magazine unless there are 3 or more quilts I want to make in it. This book definitely qualifies!

My Big Fat Pink Life

See this stack of bright pink forms?

These are membership forms for Wichita's Prairie Quilt Guild! This year, I agreed to serve as Membership Chair and for the past month I've been processing forms, over 400 so far. Our guild's membership has been over 700 in the past few years so just a few hundred more to go!

I have to ask you to do this.

OK now, repeat after me:

"I promise to fill out membership forms entirely. Yes, ENTIRELY!"

I feel so much better now that you've promised!

What's that you say? Speak up, don't mumble.

Pink, yes. Big stack, yes. Fat, huh?

Fat is what I'm going to be if I'm not careful.
Here's how I've been coping with the forms.

No indication whether its a renewal or new membership, eat an M&M.
Contact information missing: eat another M&M.
Can't read the writing: have an extra M&M.
Finished processing a membership form: reward yourself with an M&M (or two)!

Help, I've had to buy more M&Ms, the large economy size from Sam's. I'm no longer concerned if I'm eating them in ROY G BB order and very shortly, I'm going to have to spend quality time with the Mr. Treadmill and I absolutely dislike, abhor, dread the thought!

Be kind, fill out your guild's membership form completely, OK?!?
Membership committees everywhere thank you!

Other people's scraps!

Would you get excited about this?!?

I would, I did and I am!

Decisions, decisions.
Those are 1/4 inch and 3/8 inch paper hexagons laying next to the quarter.

I'm going to allow myself to do this because

1. I'm crazy enough to try.
2. I need to get it out of my system.

Things are a little stressful in my life these days and whenever things get that way, I cope by pouring myself into something very detailed. I'll let you know how it goes but I may not be able to start this anytime soon. For now, I'm dreaming and planning!

By the way, the selvage spiderweb quilt is now in line waiting to be quilted by the machine quilter. I still have selvages left but need to work on other things for a little while. So far this year, I've made several bed quilts and several more are in process. Its safe to say that the hexagon quilt I make will NOT be a bed size quilt!