Chicken Scratch Heart

I'm not exactly sure when I finished working on the actual embroidery on this one.  I'm sure it was several months ago.  I just couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it.  I thought about making it into a pillow, but I figured that in a house with 3 boys who like to throw pillows at each other, and two cats that sometimes knead on pillows, it wouldn't last too long.  My mother suggested that I frame it instead, so that's what I finally did, yesterday.  I went to Walmart, hoping to find a nice white frame, and to my astonishment, I actually found one.

When I was younger, I remember my mother showing me how to do chicken scratch embroidery (also called Hoover lace, among other things) and decided to try my hand at it again.  I could remember the general nature of it, but I couldn't remember all of the stitches and exactly how each stitch corresponded to the squares on the gingham.  So, I did a quick search of the internet and found a great tutorial at Pink Paper Peppermints.  It's not hard to do, especially if you stick to the basic stitch, and you can use it to makes lots of different designs.

I'm planning to enter this piece in the country fair, so wish me luck!

Not as simple fringed blanket

The other day my Walmart had some of their fabric marked down for clearance, including some of their fleece.  I saw this fabric and thought it was really cute and very soft.  I decided to get some to make another fleece blanket, like the one feature in this post to donate to the same organization.  As it turned out, this fabric was not quite appropriate for that application.

Just like with the last blanket, I sewed around the outside of the fabric about 2 inches from the edge.  Then I cut out the corners and fringed the edges.  However, this time, the fringes on two of the sides (selvedge sides, I think) were not stable and just wanted to pull off.  Obviously, that is not good for a child's blanket.  So I went back and cut off the fringes on those two side, almost to the stitching line.  Then I turned under the edges and zigzag stitched it down. 

To my thinking, it is not nearly as cute with fringe on only two sides, but there seems to be no other choice in the situation.  It would have looked neater if I had just left the selvedge edges on, because they were  not white.  But I didn't know it would turn out the way that it did.  I still think it is plenty nice enough to donate, though.  Oh well, I guess you live and learn.  I guess in this case, softer isn't always better.

Pineapples in the Pumpkin Patch - finished!

I finally finished my pumpkin wall hanging quilt that I started last fall.  The first block is featured in this post from November 15.  And it is actually a do-over from the original block posted on October 18.  But at least I got it finished in time for fall (and the County Fair).

The quilt finished 24 inches square.  It is machine pieced, with both traditional piecing and paper piecing, and hand quilted (mostly quilting "in the ditch").  I quilted it in a hoop because it was small.  This was challenging for me, simply because I'm not accustomed to using a hoop, but it was also much more comfortable than sitting at a frame.  I'm very happy with how it turned out.

I added a hanging sleeve to it, which I haven't done with a quilt in a long time.  I also made a decorative label for the back.  A cute little pumpkin, unlike any of the ones on the front, but using some of the same fabric.  The backing is a pretty autumn, pumpkin themed fabric.

Day and Night

This quilt top is made from Eleanor Burns Day and Night pattern.  It is made with strip sets (of course) and it requires a special tool to cut triangles from the strip sets.  I bought the book, because it comes with the tool.  I used the "three strips, two colors" option to make the crib sized quilt. 

She suggests using fabrics with good contrast, so I went with complimentary colors: yellow and purple.  The design makes me think of a harlequin, even though it is a little different.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  I'm not sure what I'm going to name it, or what I'm going to do with it once it is finished.  I've bought fabric to make a sofa-sized quilt using the same pattern, but that one will be in shades of red to match my living room.  I made this crib-sized one as a trial run before I moved onto the larger one made with more expensive quilt shop fabric.

More from Missouri Star

I've done it again.  I ordered more fabric from Missouri Star Quilt Company.  Earlier in the month I ordered an Ellie Ann charm pack and layer cake to make a twin bed sized quilt.  My local quilt shop doesn't carry any of the Ellie Ann line, but I needed some yardage for the borders (the Ellie Ann Petit rose China Blue and Ellie Ann Twilight Cobalt yardage above).  And if you are ordering something, you might as well get the deal of the day (the Snowmen Gatherings Charm Pack).  And if you order $100 worth or more you get free shipping so you might as well get something else, especially if it's on sale too (the Tea House Plum layer cake).  So, you know, it all makes sense if you think about it, right?

Simple Fringed Fleece Blanket

Here is a picture of the fleece blanket that I made for my church's blanket drive this year.  Two years ago we collected blankets for the Child Advocacy Center here in town and we are doing it again this year.  Last time I made several fleece blankets, but this year I only bought fabric for one.  The finished blanket measures approximately 53 x 56 inches, not including the fringe.  I had hoped to make it a little longer, but that was all the fabric that was on the bolt.  It should still be a good size for a child to cuddle up with it.

To make the blanket, I simply evened up the cut edges and trimmed off the selvedge.  Then I sewed a straight stitch about two inches from the edge of the fabric all the way around.  Then I used my trusty spring loaded scissors to cut in from the edge, almost up to the sewing line, at about half inch (maybe 3/4) intervals all the way around.  It is a very easy project that takes almost no time to make.  It took just over an hour from start to finish.  It probably would have taken less time if I hadn't had a fluffy black feline "helper" in my lap.  In fact, if I see some more fleece I like at a good price, I might make more. . .

From Row Swap to Quilt Top

Here are some pictures of my row swap rows sewn into a completed quilt top.  Unfortunately, my design wall isn't big enough to hold the completed top, so I took the pictures with it lying on a twin bed.  The finished top is 66-1/2 inches by 86 inches.

I used all the rows in my quilt top.  Seven of them make up the center of the quilt top.  They are sewn together straight without any sashings.  I then added a dark 3 inch border.  Then I added a light colored 9 inch border.  I took one of the rows apart and used the squares as corners in the border.  (You can't really see them in the picture. You can see a little bit of one of them in the top picture.)  Then I added another 3 inch border of the same dark leaf fabric.  I plan to use the same dark leaf fabric for the binding if I have enough of it.  If not, I'm going to use a different harvest fabric which has a black background.

I'm really happy with how it turned out.  All the rows work together so nicely.  And it goes well with the wall color in the room too.  Now I just need to decide how I'm going to quilt it...

A New Addition

Here is a picture of the newest addition to my sewing room.  It is a Janome DC2013, that I ordered through Amazon.  I haven't had a chance to use it much, but so far I'm pleased with it.  It has a 1/4 inch foot and walking foot, which I really wanted, plus some other feet that seem like they will be useful as well.  I'm looking forward getting good use out of it.  I don't know how many of those fancy stitches I'll be using, but it sure looks like fun.

Precuts from Missouri Star Quilt Company

I don't normally buy precut, except for fat quarters, but Missouri Star is luring me in.  So far I've ordered a layer cake and charm pack of Ellie Ann fabric (by Eleanor Burns), a Starflakes and Glitter charm pack (by Tina Givens), and a Holiday Accents fat quarter bundle (by RJR fabrics).

I've formulated a plan for the Ellie Ann layer cake: a twin sized quilt with four patches and setting squares and a pieced border.  Some of the fat quarters are earmarked for a Christmas quilt, along with the Christmas cat fabric from a previous post.  The charm packs are yet to be determined at this juncture.  I thought I would need the Ellie Ann charm pack for the layer cake quilt, but it turned out that I didn't.  The Starflakes and Glitter charm pack may be used in my next guild project, if we do the charm pack challenge, or it may end up as Christmas gift.  I'm not sure yet.

Intertwined

This is the finished quilt (featured in this post as a quilt top) that I am giving to my son and his fiance as a wedding gift.  The bridal shower is on Saturday, so I finished it just in time.  I decided to call it "Intertwined" because the center panel had the nice intertwined lines and I thought it was a good symbolic name for a wedding quilt.

The quilt is hand quilted.  The center panel is quilted following most of the black lines, which is then echoed in the tan areas, and along each of the concentric rectangles around the center design.  The narrow border strips are quilted in the ditch and the wide border has cables quilted into it.  The corner squares are quilted in the ditch around the brown corner "arrows" and the blue/green patches are quilted a quarter inch in from the seams.

I think the quilt turned out looking very pretty, but I wouldn't recommend this fabric (Stonehenge ginkgo) if you are a hand quilter.  The silvery marbled effect makes it VERY difficult to see the tip of your needle when you are quilting.  It almost drove me crazy.  Well, that not a very long drive, but anyway...

A Fat-Quarter Bag

I finished this project today (I started it yesterday afternoon).  It is a fat-quarter bag made from a pattern in Fat Quarter Quilts by M'Liss Rae Hawley.  It was really pretty easy to make, but it does take a lot of fabric.  It may not be easy to tell from the photograph, but this bag is huge!  To give you an idea, it is made from sewing together six fat quarters.  The lining (including the handles) calls for 2-1/8 yds. of fabric.  So yeah, huge.

The pattern suggests using it for carrying quilting projects or for an overnight bag.  I'm not sure I would use it as an overnight bag, since there is no closure of any kind on the bag, but it works great for carrying larger quilt projects.  I used it to take a sofa sized quilt (that I'm sewing binding onto) to my sewing group today, and there was room to spare in the bag.  I'm sure you could easily carry a twin sized quilt in it, and probably something even bigger than that.

Cat Fabric!!!

I just got this new fabric in the mail yesterday and I absolutely love it.  The little kitty cats make me so happy.  I ordered it from Feline Drive on Thursday, July 11 and received it yesterday (Monday, July 15).  I had never ordered from her before, but I'm sure I will again in the future.  The fabric is good quality, the prices are reasonable, and the service was great. 

The Christmas fabric with the kittens on it is for a Christmas quilt that I am planning to make using the Saratoga pattern.  I'm planning to use this fabric for the larger patches - all or some of them, I'm not sure yet.  The other fabric, all or some of it, will probably end up in a scrappy 1930s style quilt that I've been thinking about, and collecting fabric for, for several years now.

Fresh Blueberries and Lemon Blueberry Bread

This is the bowl of blueberries I picked yesterday morning.  My blueberry bush is producing very well this year.  I decided to bake some bread with one cup of the blueberries.  It turned out pretty good so I decided to share a picture, and the recipe.

Lemon Blueberry Bread

1/3 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
3 Tbsp lemon juice
2 eggs
1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
2 Tbsp grated lemon peel (or 1 Tbsp lemon extract)
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 cup fresh blueberries

Glaze:
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/3 cup sugar

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter, sugar, juice and eggs.  In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.  Stir flour mixture into egg mixture alternately with milk.  Fold in lemon peel, pecans, and blueberries.  Pour into a greased 8 in. x 4 in. x 2 in. loaf pan.  Bake at 350 F for 60 - 70 minutes or until bread tests done.  Cool in pan for 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, combine glaze ingredients.  Remove bread from pan and drizzle with glaze.  Cool on a wire rack.  Yield: 1 loaf

Note:  I added more sugar to the glaze, because it seemed too thin.  I also heated the glaze to dissolve the sugar and then cooled it back down before drizzling it on the bread.

Scrabble

Yesterday I worked on an old project that I started probably a decade or more ago.  Back in the day, when the kids were young, our family used to play Scrabble a lot.  I got the idea to arrange all of our names on the Scrabble board, as if it were a real game of Scrabble.  I then transferred the layout to graph paper, including all the word and letter score spaces.  I wrote down the letter values for all of the letters of our names as well.  I bought Aida cloth and cross stitched all the "tiles" I needed to spell out the names.  I cut out the fabric squares for all the word and letter score spaces.  I cut out muslin for the blank spaces until I used all the muslin I had (which wasn't much).  I started sewing the squares together into 9 patch units.  I got the first 5 units sewn together, but then I needed more muslin.  I bought the muslin and washed it, but for some reason I never worked on it again until yesterday.  It's funny how quilting projects get set aside and abandoned like that.

I still need to decide what I'm going to do about adding borders to it.  I had bought some Scrabble fabric online a while back, but I don't think it really matches the color value of the rest of the quilt.  It is bright fabric and the center is much more muted.  It might work for the back of the quilt, depending on how big of a border I add to it.

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend copying this idea exactly.  The Aida cloth is the problem.  If you were starting from scratch on this one, I would suggest applique for the letter tiles instead.  The Aida cloth is very stiff, so it is difficult to press the seams.  The stiffness of the fabric also causes the seams to be thicker.  I tried to use a scant 1/4 inch seam to allow for it on those patches, but the quilt is still a little drawn-in in the areas where there are a lot of Aida cloth patches.  I also assume the Aida cloth will be difficult to hand quilt.  I may try to straight line machine quilt it, if I can ever get a walking foot that works.

Stonehenge Panel Quilt

This quilt top is for my son and his fiance.  The finished quilt will be a wedding gift.  They chose the fabric and the design.  The center is a printed panel and the corners are 12 inch pieced squares.  The borders are simple strip sets from Stonehenge ginkgo fabric.  I would have liked a little more contrast in the fabric for the squares, so the design would have showed up a bit more, but it is what it is.  They seem to be happy with the finished top, so that's good.  The finished quilt top is approximately 46" x 65".

Memorial Day pillowcases

This year I decided to continue the tradition that I started last year, and make pillowcases for soldier/veterans for Memorial Day.  This year I planned ahead, so that I could actually sew the pillowcases on Memorial Day.  I made a point to buy different patriotic fabric this year, and not just get the same fabric as last year.

I really enjoyed making them.  I hope that whoever gets them will enjoy having them as well.

The final row!

This is my final row in our guild row swap. For this quilt there wasn't exactly a theme.  Her focus fabric was the floral fabric that is in between the Ohio Star blocks in my row and the colors in the fabric were the only theme.  Since most people had done traditional blocks, I decided to stick with that idea.  My row is four Ohio Star blocks alternating with the focus fabric, fussy cut to have the same motif in each piece.  The centers of the Ohio Stars are also fussy cut from the focus fabric, but obviously from a different area of the fabric.

In the picture below, you can see all of the rows for this quilt.  The one at the top is the original row (made by the quilt's owner) and mine is at the bottom.

She said that she wanted the red in the quilt to pop, but since there was already so much red in the quilt, I decided to use only the red that was in the focus fabric itself.  She did the same in her original row, so I thought it would give the quilt a nice balance to have another row with minimal red.  I hope she enjoys her quilt.  I know I'm looking forward to getting my rows back and figuring how to put them all together.

Finally Finished!

I finished binding this one last night.  It is the quilt top that I made back in December featured in the Jesus and Me Take Three post.  It is machine pieced and hand quilted.  It is quilted in the ditch on all the seams, but because the patches are large, I needed to add more quilting.  I quilted suns in the pink squares.  The green half square triangle patches got a diagonal line (perpendicular to the seam) quilted in them.  I also quilted a line perpendicular to the seam that joins the stripe fabric to the Jesus and Me fabric.  The binding is the stripe fabric and the backing is a sunny yellow fabric.  The quilt finished 40 inches square.

It's been a while since I finished a quilt.  Looking back I see that the last quilt I finished was the Snowmen on Parade quilt that I donated to Project Linus back in February of last year.  I've finished some smaller projects (pillows, postcards, etc.) and made some quilt tops, but it feels good to actually finish a quilt again for a change.

Oh, and this was the first quilt that I quilted using my new Ulmer Quilter quilting frame.  I think it works well, and the quilt turned out really nice and square.  But it will take some getting used to because I'm used to an old fashion frame that stretches the whole quilt out at once.

Balloon Postcard

Today's creation is another fabric postcard.  This one features a 2-1/2 x 4 inch hot-air balloon surrounded by cloud fabric to finish 4 x 6 inches.  The quilting lines are intended to mimic the cords on a hot-air balloon.  The edges are finished with a satin stitch.  I'd be happier if I could over-lock the edges, but I don't have a serger, so this will have to do.

Tradition With A Twist

My most recent row swap row is called "tradition with a twist".  The idea is to make traditional blocks using brightly colored fabrics.  My row is the row on the bottom.  It is a Greek Cross block. 

My first attempt was this Day and Night block, which would have been very striking in green and solid black.  But, because the focus fabric (the black multicolored fabric) has so many colors in it, the pattern gets a little lost.  Eleanor Burns specifically warns against using a multicolor as the night fabric, but I wasn't thinking about that when I tried it. 

When that didn't work, I decided to go with a little simpler block instead.  I'm happy with how my finished row turned out.  We only have one more month left in the swap.  I'm really interested in seeing how all the quilts turn out.