I'm made a lot of progress over the past week. About a month or so ago I made a baby quilt as a gift. I posted a pic of it on my blog and facebook. My SIL's mother wanted me to make 2 of them for her as gifts for twins of her niece. They will be 2 yrs old this summer. I added a border on these to make them a little bigger so they could use them for several years.
They ended up being 52" square.
I quilted a simple stipple on them.
I did the binding on them Saturday morning and she picked them up Saturday afternoon. She seemed very pleased with them.
I also made a few pin cushions. :) I did not make the pretty one with the tiny flying geese. That one was a gift from a dear friend several years ago. I use it all the time. I actually made 4 but didn't get a pic of the other one. These were all made from leftover blocks or small orphan blocks. I filled them with crushed walnut shells. I like the weight that it gives to them.
I have a huge jar of vintage buttons that I picked through and used. I want to make several more when I get a chance. I think I would like to use some of them and also put several in a basket to display.
I also started a new quilt for myself. I feel the need to work on a few things of my own between customer quilts. I need this!!! LOL!
These colors are not my usual so it's totally out of my comfy zone! I guess that is a good thing! My plan as of right now is 30 blocks. I was going to do just a bunch of random fabric colors but once I started I wanted to do blues and greens.
By the time that I got ready for bed last night I had 10 blocks pieced. I'll get better pics of it when the lighting is better.
I signed up for the Fat Quarter Shop monthly subscription of reproduction fat quarters a few months ago. It alternates between Civil War and 1930's. This is what I received this time. Love them!!!
This is the line that they are from. It's not the whole line but just 12 each time.
These purples are my favorites! I have been on a purple kick lately. I need to make a purple quilt!
Other life happenings this week...
Andrew's cash offer on the apartment building was accepted!!!! He is very excited and this momma is very proud of all his hard work. I'll post more details as time goes on with it.
I was out shopping with mom and Chantal a few days ago and found a big cactus that I bought! Actually in the cart you can see two but we actually bought three. We each got one. I've been looking for one of these big ones for years and finally found one. 20+ years ago I had one that was over 6 ft tall. I had over 50 houseplants. At that time I was married to my first husband and went back to get my plants about a week after I left only to find that he had poured bleach in every one of them. I lost them all. The huge cactus was my favorite. Anyway...that was a long time ago and I now have another one. :)
Today my niece, Addison turns 4. Hard to believe that. :) Her birthday party was Saturday. She had a blast of course. She owns my heart. :)
Here is a pic of her cake! She had a beautiful Barbie cake and 36 cupcakes. :)
Hunter has been on Spring Break this past week and goes back to school today. I will sure miss him. I have always loved it best when everyone is home with me. That is my "happy time"
Oh and I didn't get pics but Richard and I were able to take another short motorcycle ride on Thursday while he was off and the weather was nice. I think sometime in the near future we are going to get a GoPro to attach to his helmet to video some of the beautiful rides that we go on.
Today I have a customer quilt that I need to do some repair work on and hopefully get it quilted and the binding done as well. Fingers crossed that I get it done. LOL! The top belongs to a coworker of Richard's. Her sister had purchased it for her in PA. It's all squares and hand pieced. Someone has washed the quilt top and it has came apart in several places. The seam allowance is very narrow and the stitches are pretty big. I actually worked on some of the repair work yesterday but I hope to finish it up today. I also need to quilt and machine bind it too. I'll post pics of it tomorrow.
Roughly 6 weeks ago or so my SIL, Kellie found a panel on Ebay I believe that she fell in love with. My brother is a huge Civil War buff and she wanted to piece a quilt for their upcoming 19th anniversary.
She mostly does English Paper Piecing but is really good at piecing on the machine too but she just doesn't have enough confidence in herself. I've quilted her machine pieced quilts before and they are good and square. :) Sooooo....she told me what she had in mind for the quilt that she wanted to make for my brother. I told her that I would help her get it assembled.
I did cut and frame up the panel and attach it to the surrounding tumblers and she pieced and pieced hundreds of these tumblers. She did every bit of those tumblers at WORK! Yep! At work! She is a nurse at a peditrician's office and he is awesome about letting them quilt. There are 3 ladies that work there and all 3 of them do EPP. He says that as long as all the work is caught up and patients are taken care of that he doesn't mind at all. He actually encourages them to be productive with something. LOL!
So we decided to do a fairly loose stipple and not over quilt the panel. I also made sure that I quilted around and not over their faces because I didn't want to distort them.
She has a ton of awesome fabrics in this quilt. Their anniversary is Monday April 1st so I figure she will give it to him this weekend. I told her to video it as I can't wait to see his face.
After I got the center panel ready and back to her she sewed like a crazy lady getting all of those tumblers done and back to me. I then trimmed it up and sewed the outer borders on. Now like I said, it's not like she didn't know how to do it but she also didn't have a place to actually use the machine and get those sewn on without him seeing it.
Oh I forgot it is backed with a brown Minkie and we used Hobb's batting. I will be doing the binding on it today. She is so excited to give it to him.
In the mail yesterday I received this charm pack. I signed up for a monthly delivery at Green Fairy Quilts for a charm pack each month. It's $9.99 and FREE SHIPPING! The charm pack that I got is called Remix. Not really my style but I'll keep them and use them in something. :)
All for this post...
I didn't get everything done that I had planned. LOL! I knew that wasn't going to happen. :) I did get the binding sewn by hand on the cardinal quilt. I also got this queen size quilt loaded and about 2/3 of it quilted.
I'll have to say that I'm anxious to post a pic of the whole quilt once I get it finished. This is a customer quilt that is pieced from 10" squares. The most awesome thing about it is that none of the fabrics go together normally but once pieced together they look awesome! Does that make sense? :) The more that I look at it the more that I love it. The lady's mom is the one that sent it to me and she said that they were planning on making a duvet cover with it. She just wanted a simple stipple quilted on it.
I also made 20 Breakfast Bombs for the freezer before 6:30am yesterday! LOL! Freezer meals changed my life many years ago and I use them a lot. These are for breakfast and consist of hash browns, sausage, scrambled eggs, mushrooms and cheese. I just lay one out the night before to thaw and pop it in the oven while Richard is in the shower and they are done by the time he gets out. Sometimes he puts a little salsa on them and eats. A good filling breakfast that saves me time. I don't eat them because I'm diabetic but Richard and the boys love them.
I mentioned in my last post that Richard was on vacation starting yesterday. He is so bad to just pop it on me and not tell me. He thinks it's funny because I'm a person that has to plan and schedule everything and something like that rocks my world. LOL! So yesterday he tells me that he is actually off for 2 WEEKS!!!! Oh my! That really throws me off. :) I love having him home but it just really throws my routine off. Does this make sense? :) We really don't have any plans, he's just going to catch up on a few things outside.
So this morning I am going to finish quilting this quilt. Then I plan on trimming and adding borders (hopefully) to my SIL Kellie's quilt. Oh I can't wait to show it to you. It is awesome!!!
Yesterday I quilted this beautiful customer quilt. I just love it! She did an awesome job piecing it too. As I was quilting it I kept thinking that I needed one of those Cardinal panels. I may end up buying one but then again who knows when I would have time to sew it up. :) Anyway...I enjoyed quilting this beauty.
We decided to use this quilting design because she didn't want the quilting to compete with the cardinals. That's also another reason that I love Glide thread. It's so fine that it doesn't take away from the quilt.
She also requested that I do the binding for her. She wants it done by hand. I got it all sewn on by machine last night so I will work on the hand sewing today.
Oh I almost forgot... I've used Hobb's 80/20 batting for years and never had any issues but look at this mess that I found today. :( I had to cut around the area because there was no way that I was going to try to quilt through that. It was very hard so I would probably have broken a needle not to mention it would have felt horrible in the quilt. From now on I will double check all of the batting. I buy it on the big rolls and as I said this was the first time seeing this. Thank goodness that I caught it.
A few nights ago I was up late and on Pinterest. Pinterest always gets me in trouble. LOL! I cut and pieced this block just to see how I liked it. It's an 8" block. Right now it's just a block up on my design wall for me to ponder over for a while. It will NOT be a project for the near future as I have too many other things going on right now, but it was fun to make. Maybe someday...
Last night before bed I worked on this UFO. I just pieced a few strip sets. I hope to press and subcut them today. These go into a two color quilt. I absolutely love two color quilts! I have several that I would eventually like to make. :)
So my quilting plans for today are to press and subcut these strips sets. I also would like to get most of the hand sewing done on this customer quilt. I also hope to get another block pieced of the Lori Holt Block Along. We will see how it all goes because Richard is on vacation starting today so who knows.... LOL!
WARNING: Lot's of quilt pics! :)
It's been a few days since my last post so I will get you caught up on everything. I'm finally over the stomach virus and so is Richard. Thank goodness that Hunter did not catch it. Soooo...my last post left off showing this customer quilt that I was quilting. Here it is finished and on it's way back to Texas today. This scrap beauty belongs to the awesome queen of scrap quilts...Julie from JulieKQuilts!!!! She is awesome!
This is a horrible pic because of the bright sunlight coming through my window but this is a secret quilt project. My SIL is making a quilt for my brother and wants to give it to him on their anniversary April 1st. So here is her plan...my brother is a big Civil War buff and loves to metal detect battle sites. So she found this battle scene panel and wants to have it in the center of a bunch of Civil War fabric tumblers that she is sewing together using the EPP process. So while she is working her fingers to the bone doing a bunch of tumblers, I tried to square up the panel, add a small borer to frame it and get the tumblers started around it for her. I'm sure she could do this herself because she is awesome but she just doesn't have enough confidence in herself. So expect more pics on this quilt in the next few weeks.
This was what we woke up to Friday morning. You can see the time there 4:15am. I had just woke up and was being lazy, so I just grabbed my phone and hit the security cam to check for snow that they were forecasting. LOL! We got a few more inches than this but it all melted later in the afternoon. Needless to say that Hunter did not have school but Richard did work. He just drove very slow. His Jeep goes really good. I am soooo ready for Spring!!!
Back to quilts... this was a customer quilt. This little elderly lady is one that I have quilted for before and is a friend of the family. She is a retired teacher and loves to quilt. It is an older top with a few stains and some fullness in the sashing areas but in the end it quilted up pretty good only a few issues. It is a cross stitch quilt. She just wanted a simple stippling done.
Next up was this beauty! She requested stippling also and wanted it quilted with WHITE thread and over the applique. Sooo...here it is! :)
The backing that she sent was this coral fabric. The flowers in the backing fabric are a lot like the Dogwood flowers in the applique.
Here is a better pic of the backing fabric.
A pic of it finished! I got both of those quilts quilted Sunday! Shew...I was tired but I am a little behind after my back issues and then the stomach virus. I so need to get caught up.
Sooooo....Saturday was my birthday. Not a big deal but I feel very Blessed to have another year in the books. :) I got several gifts over the past few weeks. A dear friend sent me some quilty gifts a couple of weeks ago. I file cabinet that I had been wanting for my sewing room to get a little more organized. I also got a super nice makeup case and a few other things but mom got me a mini fridge for my sewing room! I may never leave that room now! LOL!
I know it is full of Diet Pepsi but don't judge! :) Oh and the Reese's Eggs are not mine, Hunter put those in there. LOL!
Probably the most precious gift that I got was from my 3 yr old niece, Addie. In my last post I mentioned that she is obsessed with little pieces of fabric and pretends to make quilts, this is what she made for me. She glued all of those on construction paper for me. She was so proud and I just loved it.
That's all for now...need to catch up on some housework and then get back to quilting.
Felt a little better yesterday so I tried to get in a little quilting. I'm loving this gold thread on this backing.
I still did not get it finished as my energy level is still not back to normal and I also had to do a little housework. :( I only have about 20 more minutes of quilting and then it will be finished and ready to ship out. I am behind schedule now, I had put my back out then this horrid virus so I'm going to have to really buckle down and get some stuff done!
As far as my Block-Along blocks go...in week 4 there are 4 of these cute little star blocks. These are 6.5" unfinished. I only got one finished so hopefully today I will get the other 3 done.
Yes I know I really need to clean the threads off of my design wall. :)
You can see here that it is a lot smaller than the other blocks for this quilt.
So now the stomach virus has moved to Richard. He will not be going to work today. Y'all know that he never misses work.
Since my last post a few days ago this is what I have made. :) These are the first two blocks of Lori Holt's Block-Along. These fabrics are a little different from what I usually go with but it's fun sometimes to step out of the norm. This star block is 12"
This is block #2! This one is 15" and went together pretty quick.
Here they are together on my design wall.
Here is a quick pic of the blocks that I have on my design wall. The purple tulip block is my newest applique quilt. That is the first block of it. The other applique block is my sample block of a Kim Diehl pattern that will be my next applique quilt after the tulip one.
I have this beautiful customer quilt on the longarm. :) It is a beauty! It's been on there for a few days as I haven't been upstairs quilting for a few days now.
I'll post a pic of the whole quilt once it is finished. So many awesome fabrics in this baby.
Now to tell you why that I haven't been upstairs to finish quilting that quilt... I woke up at 4am on Friday morning with a horrible stomach virus. I've lost 5lbs since Friday. :( Need to lose weight but not like that. LOL! My sister had emergency gallbladder surgery last week and I had my niece here while all of that was going on. She was just fine and didn't show the first sign of being sick until she got home that night, then it hit her. :( So since then it has gone through Addie (my niece), BIL, Chantal, mom and me... :( I feel better now than I have for several days so that is a good thing. YAY! Last week I put my back out and then this.... shew.... LOL!
My goal for the day...to get that customer quilt finished and ready to mail.
They ended up being 52" square.
I quilted a simple stipple on them.
I did the binding on them Saturday morning and she picked them up Saturday afternoon. She seemed very pleased with them. 
I also made a few pin cushions. :) I did not make the pretty one with the tiny flying geese. That one was a gift from a dear friend several years ago. I use it all the time. I actually made 4 but didn't get a pic of the other one. These were all made from leftover blocks or small orphan blocks. I filled them with crushed walnut shells. I like the weight that it gives to them.
I have a huge jar of vintage buttons that I picked through and used. I want to make several more when I get a chance. I think I would like to use some of them and also put several in a basket to display. 
I also started a new quilt for myself. I feel the need to work on a few things of my own between customer quilts. I need this!!! LOL! 
These colors are not my usual so it's totally out of my comfy zone! I guess that is a good thing! My plan as of right now is 30 blocks. I was going to do just a bunch of random fabric colors but once I started I wanted to do blues and greens. 
By the time that I got ready for bed last night I had 10 blocks pieced. I'll get better pics of it when the lighting is better. 
I signed up for the Fat Quarter Shop monthly subscription of reproduction fat quarters a few months ago. It alternates between Civil War and 1930's. This is what I received this time. Love them!!!
This is the line that they are from. It's not the whole line but just 12 each time. 
These purples are my favorites! I have been on a purple kick lately. I need to make a purple quilt! 
Other life happenings this week... 
Today my niece, Addison turns 4. Hard to believe that. :) Her birthday party was Saturday. She had a blast of course. She owns my heart. :)
Here is a pic of her cake! She had a beautiful Barbie cake and 36 cupcakes. :)
Hunter has been on Spring Break this past week and goes back to school today. I will sure miss him. I have always loved it best when everyone is home with me. That is my "happy time" 
