Fresh Sewing Day April

A new month, a new fresh start, a chance to look back and see what progress I made.

Express Your Love quilt - channel quilting, geometric braids, my world
Queen of Hearts purse
Easter Egg potholder
My Grandmother's quilt top
YA YA's machine embroidery
Bad to the Bone towels
Baby Wrenly/fleece quilt

I'm linking up with Lynne at Lily's Quilts for Fresh Sewing Day.

 

 

Color Me Quilty!

 

Pat

Easter Egg Potholders

The other day, while out perusing Pinterest, I came across the cutest Easter Egg shaped potholders. They looked so cute and when I clicked on the link, there was a tutorial at Miss Mary's Sewing Classes on how to make them. Pattern included. Sew, you know I had to give them a try.  Here is my first attempt.

Not quite as smooth and even as I'd like, but not bad.

It kind of looks like I took a bite out of the egg. It's where I hand stitched it closed after turning it.

This really is the perfect size potholder

I added an extra layer of plain batting on top of the Insult-Bright for a little more protection. I plan on using the potholder and just using Insult-Bright usually isn't enough. I hope this one turns out a little smoother and egg-shaped.

 This only took an hour, that included printing out the pattern, cutting enough for two potholders and finishing one potholder. I think they will look really cute for Easter (and beyond).

I did work on my Express Your Love quilt and embroider a set of towels. My big find this week, was a quilt top that my grandmother made. It will definitely go on my WIP list. Hopefully, it gets done faster for me that my grandmother or mother!  ;)

Here are this weeks stats:
In-process: (4)
Elephant quilt
Express Your Love
Layers quilt
Grandma's Quilt

New projects: (1)
Easter Egg Potholders

Finished (1)
Embroidered Towels

I'm linking up with  Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday

 

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Bad to the Bone!

I've been doing a little machine embroidery lately. I needed something to give my stepdaughter, to thank her for making and canning a plethora of stock for me. She's an absolute wiz at it. Yummy! So when she said she needed some new towels, I set out finding just the right design to embroider. I think I found it!

 Violet (one of my stepdaughter's dogs) posing next to one of the towels. She looks so innocent, but she's "bad to the bone"! No, not really, she is VERY sweet, but she does love to chew on a bone.

The embroidery design is from Urban Threads: "Bad to the Bone"! I embroidered a wash cloth, hand towel and bath towel. The bath towel gave me some trouble, it took three tries to get it done. It was so heavy is kept pulling it out of register. I ended up having to hold it up the whole time it was stitching. But I think it was worth it!


I'm linking up with A Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday. 

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

YA YA's

I really love my day job, it's all about the people who work there. The are just like family. A couple of years ago, a co-worker gave me the most incredible hand knit scarf for my birthday, really out of the blue. I have been looking for a way to repay her generosity, so when she asked if I could embroider a small saying for her, I jumped on it.

Prototype for her review - I really should clean up the jump stitches between the words.

Now I just need her to point me to the right fabric color, thread color, size, etc. I really like this little saying, it fits her to a tee.

I did finish a project this week, my Wrenly/fleece baby quilt. To say I'm thrilled with how it turned out would be an understatement, considering how simple it is. The back seemed to just "puff-up" after it was washed. A lot of people have asked about how I made it. Basically it is just quilters cotton front and fleece batting/backing (just 2 layers). I pin basted it, careful not to stretch the fleece. As a matter of fact, I didn't even tape the back down, just laid it flat on the table and smoothed the cotton down on top. I quilted it on my domestic machine (Pfaff QE 4.0). I was careful with my hands, not to let the fleece stretch. Really quilted pretty easy. I did use my Supreme Slider to make the quilt glide better while I was quilting it and stitched it using Aurifil 50wt thread. I did NOT pre-wash my fabric (I'm lazy that way), but I washed the quilt after it was done. Washed beautifully.

I also did a small amount of quilting on my Express Your Love quilt, quilted my world.

So all in all, it wasn't a bad week, especially considering how busy I've been at work (which tends to leak over into my "free-time").


Here are this weeks stats:
In-process: (3)
Elephant quilt
Express Your Love
Layers quilt

New projects: (1)
YA YA's embroidery

Finished (1)
Wrenly/fleece baby quilt

I'm linking up with  Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday

 

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Prince William is Gone...

...And Miss Frances is back. Miss Frances is my Pfaff Quilters Expression 4.0 that has been in for service. Prince William was the loaner machine from the store's classroom.

I haven't even had a chance to set Miss Frances back up!

But there is a new Royal in the house; meet the Queen of Hearts!

Urban Threads has a whole series of Alice in Wonderland machine embroidery designs. I love them all and have been looking for a place to use them.

I'm going to use a pattern I made up quite a while ago and I've made several purses using it. I'm modifying it a bit this time with an outside cell phone pocket. I think this will be a fun purse for spring, and I am so ready for spring!

I did get a bit of FMQ done on the Navy panel of my Elephant quilt, but other than that it has been a slow sewing week. Hopefully it will be better with Miss Frances back home.












Here are this weeks stats:
In-process: (3)
Elephant quilt
Express Your Love
Layers quilt

New projects: (1)
Queen of Hearts Purse

Finished (0)


I'm linking up with  Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday

 

Color Me Quilty!

 

Pat

Third Time's The Charm!

FMQ Koi

  The continuing saga of Koi for my Koi Pond quilt. With the two previous attempts with machine embroidery the back of the quilt had nasty knots. I think that I have found the solution, free motion quilting. I'm really love how this fish turned out.

The two to the left are machine embroidered. The one on the right was marked, then free motion quilted

The back is one of the biggest differences, no knots in the FMQ fish.

The other good part of the FMQ koi is that I was able to enlarge to a better size for the quilt. Machine embroidery is limited to the size of the hoop. I FMQed the koi with polyester embroidery thread (Iris), but yesterday I ordered 28wt Aurifil in bright orange and tangerine. Hopefully I get the thread quickly so I can use it in this quilt. I'm planning to get the quilt basted this weekend and I would like to start quilting soon.

Today I'm linking up with Leah Day at the Free Motion Quilting Project for FMQ Friday. Can't wait to see what everyone else is quilting today!

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

UFO and USO's

Last year I really worked hard to clean up some UFO's (UnFinished Objects). I did such a good job, my list is gone. Well, there are a few more UFO's in my stash, deep down. But what I want to work on this year are USOs: UnStarted Objects. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a quilt shop, bought fabric for a quilt I just HAD to make right then and the fabric is still sitting in my stash. I'm not talking about the odd fabric I've picked up to go into my stash, I'm talking about whole quilt's worth of fabric. Anybody else do that???

So this year's goal is to make some of those quilts and UFO Sunday will be my push to get going on some of them.

My current project, the koi pond quilt, is one of those quilts. I picked up this fabric last summer on a trip to Keepsake Quilting. I mean, how can anyone go to Keepsake and not buy fabric??? Well, I digress. So I've started this quilt to use this fabric, no new fabric was purchased in the creation of this quilt. I have the top completed, now onto the back. Again, I had the backing fabric in the stash, although not purchased at the same time. I wanted something to reflect the koi theme on the front, but more abstract.

 I'm kind of liking the the simplicity of the back. I have more of the navy fabric to add on to the top part.

Front

Back

I also tried another sample of the machine embroidered koi. I used the Quilters Dream Puff batting, which worked just fine, but still had a knotty mess on the back. So my next step will be to mark a sample and FMQ it.











On another topic, today is our third meeting for the Ithaca Modern Quilt Guild. I'm pretty excited how well this seems to be going. We are going to set a schedule for projects and demos we want to do.  Yippee, Skippee!!

Linking up with Leah Day for UFO Sunday!

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Fresh Sewing Day December

Wow, last month of the year (and last month forever, if you believe the crazy Mayan Calendar interpretation). I wish my November work was a little more impressive, if that's the case, but at least I finished a quilt this month!

1. Flag/Buffalo Bills pillow
2. Storybook #2 quilt
3. Embroidered Towels (with cool spines)
4. Expanding Possibilities quilt - Yippee, it's done!
5. FMQ in pods for my Pods Pillow

I'm linking up today with Lily's Quilts for Fresh Sewing Day December!

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

P.S. For those of you in the Ithaca area, we have our second Ithaca Modern Quilt Guild meeting tomorrow at Quilters Corner from 1:00-3:00 p.m.

Finally Getting A Little Back Bone!

I'm not sure why I have been so nervous about embroidering on fluffy towels, but I have totally avoided it. The problem is that it is almost impossible to hoop, if the towel is thick. I know that everyone says to just stick it to the top of the hoop and go, but I was afraid it would shift. So last night I got a little back bone and decided to get it a try!

Design from Urban Threads

I love these spines. One thing you should know, if you don't already, I work at a Chiropractic College. And these spine towels are going to one of the best (probably the very best) student intern I've ever had. She's graduating this weekend and moving to Tennessee to practice (Folks of Tennessee, you are getting one FINE chiropractor and I DON'T say that lightly!!!)

Anyway, here's how I embroidered them, easy as pie!

Hoop water soluble stabilizer and spray it with 505 adhesive spray

Carefully center your towel in the hoop and press it down into the adhesive

Top with another layer of water soluble stabilizer - this helps smooth the top to better embroider.

Insert the hoop into your machine, be careful that the towel does fold under the hoop and get stitched where you don't want it to get stitched.

Start embroidering!

Remove the hoop when your done. View from the back of the hoop

Cut away the excess stabilizer

Rinse to remove the rest of the stabilizer

 Voila! Two towels ready to gift! Happy Graduation Marlee, you ROCK!

I'm linking up with the fabulous Making Rebecca Lynne for TGIFF!


Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Tell Me A Story From The Storybook Quilt

Storybook Quilt # 1 - Approximately 70"x 85.5"

Sometimes the universe brings together all of the elements to create a beautiful story and I think that's what happened with my storybook quilt. This quilt demanded my attention and demanded to be made. It all started with inheriting some orphan blocks from my mom.

Inherited orphaned blocks

I knew that she hadn't made these blocks, none of these fabrics were in her stash. With 7 blocks, it was difficult to see how they could make a quilt, especially since I knew I would never make more of them. To my surprise, one of the blocks was signed and dated (2004) on the back. I found out that mom's sewing group members each made a block and my mom won them.

At home in the library

The next element came into play when Hawthorne Threads had an awesome cyber Monday sale on Lizzy House's fabric line 1001 Peeps. I love that fabric, so of course I bought it with no particular project in mind.  

In the same vein, I had purchased some cool storybook machine embroidery files from Embroidery Library. Why, because one step-daughter is a librarian and the other is a school teacher, did I have a choice???

Mosaic of embroidered blocks

Last element happened last year too, I acquired two adorable granddaughters, ages 5 and 8. I mean, don't they deserve quilts to make them feel part of my blended family??? 

My step-daughter Beth is the Director of Geneva Public Library

The rest of the fabric all came from my mom's enormous stash, including the borders and backing.

Quilt back

Librarians at Geneva Public Library give my storybook quilt a thumbs up!

I constructed the quilt as a QAYG (quilt as you go). I was amazed at how easy it went together. It must have been "meant to be"! I will be making a second storybook quilt. I'm hoping they will give the girls years of storybook inspiration.

I'm thrilled to be linking up for my second Bloggers' Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat