Comfort

The weather is kinda scary out there today.  Lots of wind blowing.  Earlier it was lightning and thunderboomers were trying to get me.  I’m wearing my ThunderCoat now and I feel much more calm.

 

 

Busy Busy

Between working and trying to clean up the house, I have quilted 3 quilts for Wasted Women, quilted 3 quilts for my friend Sarah, written up instructions for the guild's Christmas lotto blocks, worked on my Modern Cotton Robin, and planted tomato plants.  I'll get here eventually.

More risks!

Well, I quilted my little wheelchair quilt -- all freehand.  I am so proud, I am just bursting!  It came out so cute.

Taking Risks

I quilt for my friend Sarah to help her out and also to make a few bucks.  Her money pays for my quilting retreats.  I generally just do plain old meander, but this time I was feeling adventurous.  I asked her if I could "play" on this quilt and she was all for it.  

I drew up the quilt in EQ the way she had constructed it.  Then I made printouts and I drew on them until I came up with a design I liked and then I drew it a few more times so I could figure out the path to make it all one continuous design.  

Then came the moment of truth.  I really had to gear myself up to take that first stitch but then after that it just flowed along.  Now, I did make mistakes and I did forget my path a couple of times, but it all worked out.  I even did piano keys in the border.  This is also the first time I did the middle of the quilt and came back for the borders.  The overall effect is nice.  Next time I feel like playing, I'm going to make sure there is not a plain white back on the quilt, but oh well.  I sent her pictures and she is thrilled.  I hope she likes it when she gets it up close.

I don't know how much you can actually see here, but you'll get the idea.  

Oh yeah.  I forgot.  I took these pictures before I hid the threads (I was excited!), so if you see any of them, know that I did go back and hide those babies.

My Disappearing Pinwheels

Charlene showed us how to use pinwheels and cut them up to make churn dashes or shoe fly (?) blocks.  

Here's the Wheelchair quilt top I made from my scraps using the technique she showed.  Now I just need to quilt it.

Those diagonal corners at the bottom are so that the quilt won't get caught in the wheels.

Happy Easter!

I am 55 years old and my sweet mom still makes me an Easter Basket.

I do so love those Gold Brick Eggs and Candy Corns are a favorite of mine as well.  I have been trying to watch my weight.  Most of the time, it just does its own thing and I watch, but I've lost 4 pounds in the last couple of weeks.  Unfortunately, I have a terrible feeling that those 4 pounds are hiding right there in that Easter Basket.

I've been working on a wheelchair quilt.  It's for the charity of one of my quilt guilds.  We are making wheelchair quilts for the people at the War Veteran's home.  Here is an example of what they look like.  They are 27" x 36" and the bottom corners are angled so they don't get caught in the wheels. 

Mine will not be Red, White and Blue.  Mine is made from scraps.  I am working on a new block that one of our members showed us at the last meeting.  It's called Disappearing Pinwheels.  You make pinwheels and cut them up and then turn them into Churn Dash blocks with center pinwheels.  It looked so cool, I just had to try it.  Here is what her display board looked like so you can see how it's done.  There are two different blocks to be made depending on how you turn the pieces, but I chose the Churn Dash blocks.  I'll post a picture when I get it done.

Reveal

Today was the meeting where we revealed all of our Triangle themed Challenge Lotto Blocks.  The common fabric was a grey quilter's fabric and the challenge was "triangles" and however you interpret them.

This was mine:

It started out as a grey triangle on a colored background, but it was too boring and then I decided to make a triangle that was 1 1/2 inches in width, but I was short of fabric. Necessity breeds invention, so I ended up with a really wonky triangle because that was the only way I had enough fabric.  I loved the way it came out.

Here are the others:

 

It was a real challenge and I am pretty sure that everybody had a good time participating.

Next time, we are tackling Curves!

Stash Reduction Mode

When your sewing room is so full of fabric that there's just no place to put things, what do you do?  

It seemed like I was forever having to move stuff.  You need to iron, then you need to move the stuff off the ironing board, so put it on the cutting board.  Now you need to cut, so you have to move the stuff on the cutting board.  Eventually stuff ends up on the floor.

So I had to put myself in stash reduction mode.  Mom and I got together and decided that we had to do something.  We went through all of our fabric looking for flimsy stuff, ugly stuff, stuff we thought we'd never use and culled it out.  There were 2 full Walmart bags.  Once I started looking at it, it wasn't that bad and I couldn't see just getting rid of it (Typical quilter), so I took a different route.  I took all the fat quarters and up to a yard pieces out of those bags and ironed them and then cut them into 5 1/4 strips.  Then I took them to work and cut them into 5" squares using the AccuCut Studio.  At least they take up less space.

I put myself in stash reduction mode.  Unless there's a really good reason, I'm not buying fabric, except for neutrals to use with my scraps.

Since then, I've made one quilt from that 5" square stash and another quilt from my 2 1/2" strip stash and one from a turnover stack that I received from my secret pal.  Looking at the piles before and the piles after, I've come to realize that just in those 2 tiny drawers there are more than a few quilts waiting to happen.

As a result of my stash reduction mode, I've actually become more productive and it seems that I've turned into a scrap quilter.  At least for now.

GSQA Quilt Show

Gulf State Quilting Association is made of quilters from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the panhandle of Florida.  They have a quilt show every two years and this was the year.  The quilt show was on March 21 and 22 and I almost missed it.  I didn't get there until 3:45pm and the show closed at 5:00pm.  It was just not enough time to fully appreciate the over 300 quilts that were on display and visit the vendors.  Next time, I'll make arrangements to go much earlier and maybe even volunteer.

I was amazed at how many people from my guilds had ribbons.  There were truly some wonderful quilts there.  Here, see for yourself: