Broken Bricks Flimsy

My lesson has been learned; that "light" blue doesn't quite work. I definitely should have used white for the little blocks, but I had a ton of that blue scrap leftover from the Queen's Jewel quilt I made a couple years ago. I thought/hoped it would work. It looked so light in the original quilt, but next to the yellow and light blues, it looks dark. Oh well. I'll probably go ahead and quilt this one and pass it on to Comfort Quilts via the Northwest Quilters Guild.

I used what scraps I had that went with the color scheme but I did cut a few strips off yardage. And the borders and backing are from stash. It's nice to use some of these fabrics that have been in my sewing room for decades. 

I also made progress on another quilt from my friend who visited a couple weeks ago. She left me fabrics to make another of these Broken Bricks quilts for her niece. It went together quickly, but I set it aside when I didn't really like the arrangement of fabrics. I would have to do a bunch of ripping to rearrange the blocks though, and since I'm only willing to spend so much time on a freebie, I'll go ahead and put the borders on it today for Friday Night with Friends.

Since this is the third broken bricks quilt in a row, I'm ready for something different for the next project. LOL

Linking up with
Finished (or Not) Friday

Friday Foto Fun

TGI Finished Friday

Nov Fri Night w/Friends

I turned my night of sewing into a full day of sewing. I'm so pleased I've finally finished all 144 of the center blocks of the Paducah Log Cabin Quilt!

I also got started on the border blocks.

To see what everybody else worked on during Friday Night With Friends, drop by Gone Stitchin'.

Chocolates and Roses

Like a nice date with Chocolate and Roses, I spent my Friday Night finishing up my squirrel from a couple weeks ago! I have no more flimsies left to finish! It's taken me more than a year, but my closet is now bare. =)

Inspired by the name of the pattern, Chocolate Dip, I named mine Chocolates and Roses. I used the last of my Quilter's Dream Green batting for this quilt and I used inexpensive MaxiLock thread in a dusty rose color for the quilting. 

I chose Donna Kleinke's Carmen's Roses 3A pantograph because that curly tail reminded me of the knots in my quilt. Once I'd started, though, I'd rather wished I scaled it a little smaller. (To be honest, that's my one gripe about Donna Kleinke's pantographs, they are sized so huge that it's hard to know how much to reduce them to make them look good.)

Originally this pantograph had another row on the bottom, but when I realized it was exactly the right size without it, I edited it out with my ProStitcher Design software.

Linking up with:

Brag About Your Beauties

Friday Foto Fun

Off the Wall Friday

Peacock Party

TGI Finished Friday
Whoop Whoop

New Old Project

For my recent Friday Night With Friends project, I chose to work on this month's UFO, which is an Insulated Shopping Tote. For the majority of the project, I've followed these directions, although I made a few modifications: I swapped out the nylon lining for a canvas-type material, and decided to skip the interior pockets. I'm really just aiming for a sturdy bag suitable for carrying frozen goods when we go grocery shopping.

I think I started this project a couple years ago when Jeff asked me to make it for him. However, at the time, I got frustrated because I couldn't figure out the inset zipper panel so I set the project aside.

When I pulled out the project at the start of this month, I found the assembled canvas lining with the Insul-Fleece and the inset zipper unit.

After dedicating tonight to the project⏤mostly rereading the 17 page directions⏤I'm happy to report I've now also put together the exterior pouch fabric. I also began to disassemble my previous attempt at crafting the inset zipper unit, but then realized (again) it was an inch too short. Rather than continue trying to salvage it, I decided to order a new zipper from WAWAK (along with some new colors of serger thread for the long arm).

Having made a solid start, I feel pretty confident I'll be able to wrap up this project before the month is out.

Jun Friday Night w/Friends

My jump into the project experienced a bit of turbulence when I realized my original plan would result in a whopping 99" square quilt! With my 10-foot long arm frame, that size is nothing short of a hassle – imagine wrangling a bulky quilt onto the frame with the long arm in your way. Plus, I don't really have a need for another queen-size bed quilt. So, I decided to downsize.

I devoted 3 to 4 hours to tinkering with different options to trim it down: eliminating rows of blocks, reworking the border, you name it. None of them hit the mark. For a fleeting moment, I even considered changing the pattern entirely. Ultimately, I decided to simply reduce the block size from 6" to a more manageable 4.5".

Of course, this meant all the effort I'd put into devising a Cricut cutting plan had to be scrapped and reworked, leading to a bit more delay. But, after some adjustments, I finally started making headway.

Progress was slower than anticipated, but hey, at least it's a start!

Here's a snapshot of my chosen fabrics. The lighting isn't the best, but they look delightful. 

During my reshuffling of the plan, I reworked the colors. Originally, I had a rust tone in the mix, but it didn't gel with the rest of the fabrics upon a closer look. So, I brought in these rosy hues from my stash, which harmonize perfectly.

Usually, I wouldn't cut out squares with my Cricut, but with the resized blocks, some squares landed at rather awkward dimensions.

Here's the fruit of last night's labor. I'm eager to carry on with the project today. My goal is to complete these checkerboard squares and the nine patches. Then, come next week, I can dive into the sashing and border units.

Aged Elegance Bonus Crib Quilt

I was so sick of cleaning my sewing room (which mostly involves ironing and folding fabric) I decided to take a break and do something fun. So, for Friday Night With Friends this month, I worked on my Aged Elegance Bonus Crib Quilt. I'd found these leftover border pieces when I was cleaning and they were too nice to let them go to waste so I figured out a plan to make a little quilt. For the most part, these are all scraps leftover from the queen-size Aged Elegance quilt I made a couple years ago.

Those blocks are only 7"; the pieces were a bit smaller than I am used to working with, but it was a fun challenge. I changed the plan a little bit from my original because I really wanted to add the sashing around the outside so I needed to piece on a bit more border. Luckily, I had a few more pieces I could add and since I matched the pattern as well as I could, it's pretty hard to see where I added it. The corners, alas, I could do nothing about; I had the fabric that I had and there was no extra to try and match the pattern.

I got it to the flimsy stage at around 9:45PM and usually, I would quit for the night, but I have a long arm now! I was unable to resist the temptation to stitch it up. Now it just needs a label and binding.

I used the Sharron pantograph on this one; it's currently in the $5 section at MyCreativeStitches. It's (almost) my name so of course, I had to buy it.

I'm really pleased with how this one went together. It will be added to the binding queue. I tend to let them build up so I can make a batch of labels at the same time and then bind them all at once.

I'm linking up with Friday Night With Friends and

Finished (or Not) Friday

Friday Foto Fun

Off the Wall Friday

Peacock Party

TGIFF

Whoop Whoop!

Jan Friday Night w/Friends

Last night I participated in Friday Night With Friends again. It was nice to spend a night playing with my quilt projects.

I actually spent most of yesterday finishing the backing for my purple Log Cabin quilt. I was surprised at how many of these fabrics I still had in my stash after 20 years. I did have to add in a couple fabrics that weren't on the front. And I used muslin on the top and bottom because I knew quite a bit of it would be trimmed off when I finish the quilt.

By the evening, I was ready to put it all on my long arm. That was a bit of a production. Ideally, I would have liked to get the backing perfectly centered both side-to-side and from top to bottom. I did pretty well from side-to-side, but not as well from top to bottom. It started about an inch off and by the time I had quilted about half of it, it was off even more. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to align them more accurately.

I got it about halfway quilted before I decided I'd better go to bed at 12:30AM.

Thanks again Cheryl for another lovely Friday sewing night.

Bloom Quilted - FNwF

And just like that, it is quilted! I love my computer-guided long arm (when it works).

I spent a few hours the past couple of days assembling the Bloom blocks with the sashing and adding the outer borders. (These Bloom quilt blocks were designed by Kim Brackett, from her Scrap Basket Beauties book.) The borders were not scraps, they were from yardage, but all the rest of the materials were scraps.

By Friday evening, I was ready to quilt the Bloom lap quilt for my Friday Night With Friends project. I quickly assembled the backing and I even pieced some leftover batting pieces, which I really hate doing, but I thought it was appropriate for a scrap project. I used Quilter's Dream 70-30 Blend because I had a fairly large chunk of it left over.

I quilted it with the Let Love Bloom 1 pantograph, designed by Christy Dillon. I guess given the name, it seemed appropriate. LOL

I will probably wait until the end of the month to finish the binding as I'd like to make a quilt label for it. I may as well see how many more quilts I can finish this month and then make all the labels at once.

This finishes one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects! Next up, Flowers for Nana's Girl. I need four more blocks and a whole lot of sashing units.

Update later in the month: Bloom is bound and finished!

I'll go ahead and link up with
Brag About Your Beauties 
Finished (or Not) Friday and
Scrap Happy Saturday.

Nov Friday Night w/Friends

I can't believe it's already November. It was time again for Friday Night With Friends. This month, I got started on yet another quilt. This one is for my husband's mother's 92nd birthday. I kept changing the plan for this quilt; this was at least my third. Since I'd already cut out a whole lot of 2½" squares for an earlier design, I wanted to come up with a new design that would use many of them.

This is the design I finally came up with in Electric Quilt. This is the Providence block and Double Irish Chain block in an on-point alignment. And it uses a lot of the 2½" squares. Not all of them, but more than half.

I had originally planned to cut Marianne's quilt all out of scraps, but then when I settled on this design, I decided to cut it out with my Cricut. It's just so much faster. I merged together some of the small pieces so I wouldn't have to make all those small hourglass blocks. I still cut out all the 2½" squares by hand.

By 2AM on Saturday morning, I had finished assembling all twelve of the Double Irish Chain blocks.

And I've started assembling the setting triangles.

I won't be surprised to have this quilt finished by the end of next week. And because I would like to get this quilt finished as quickly as possible so it can be mailed to my mother-in-law as a belated Birthday gift, I am going to make this my November One Monthly Goal.

Oct Friday Night w/Friends

For today's Friday Night With Friends, I actually got an early start and spent most of the day on my one monthly goal. I had all of the 100 blocks finished for the Paducah Log Cabin and today I assembled the central block section.

This is not a finish. I still need to make another 44 blocks for the border.

Thanks to Cheryl for hosting FNwF.

Sept Friday Night w/Friends

I got a fairly early start on Friday Night with Friends because today my HandiQuilter long arm was FINALLY fixed. At least it seems better, so far. The store sent out a technician to change out the card inside the machine this afternoon.

That green card was replaced with a new one.

Once the technician was finished, I put the Aged Elegance quilt back on the frame. It is almost finished. It just needs the last two edges of border. But, since it's Jeff's project, it will wait until he has time to work on it. He's really busy with work right now.

Then I turned my attention to a sewing project. Today I was in the mood to play with one of my UFOs. I had a bunch of blocks leftover from my Rhododendron Trail Quilt and I thought I would turn them into a lap quilt. Because I didn't have many of the half-block-triangles leftover, I originally planned to make lap quilts with a horizontal layout, like this.

It definitely would have been easier, but then I decided I would finish the lap quilt as Bonnie Hunter designed the pattern. I had enough blocks to do a 3x3 layout with 4 extra hourglass blocks.

I had to spend a couple hours tearing apart the extra hourglass blocks to get the pieces then I spent another hour or two assembling the missing filler triangles for the offset layout.

Now that all the blocks are assembled, I can cut out the sashing strips and start sewing the center portion. Of course, Bonnie's pattern has a complicated border with a whole lot of geese so I'll have to make those too; I only had a few leftover from my earlier project. 

It would be nice to finish this before Bonnie's next mystery quilt starts, assuming she does another one. 

I'm linking up with 

Friday Night With Friends

Finished (or Not) Friday

Rhododendron Trail Finished

I spent all day wrestling with the Rhododendron Trail quilt to get it trimmed down and get the binding on there. Phew. I don't really like that part, but being so close to the end can usually carry me through to the finish.

I made this quilt with Bonnie Hunter's Rhododendron Trail Mystery Quilt earlier this year. It was really fun, though I will be honest, I followed a different layout suggested by another participant because I really liked it. The quilt is pretty big, about 78"x96" so it's a little big for my husband to hold it up for me. I'll try and get some better photos over the holiday when we visit some friends.

Jeff did a great job with the quilting.

The backing. I thought it would be fun to make one gigantic black.

As I said before, my husband Jeff actually did all the long arm quilting. I had it on the machine and was planning to do it, and I found him in there playing with the computer so I just let him play. I did suggest some blocks but he did nearly all the layout work. He's a mathematician and likes geometric puzzles.

I still need to do some thread clean up, but I wanted to catch the light before it was gone for the day.

I am linking up with:

• Brag About Your Beauties, 
• Finished (or Not) Friday, 
• Friday Night With Friends,
• Off the Wall Friday,
• Peacock Party and 
• TGI Finished Friday.

Apr Friday Night w/Friends

I started my Friday Night with Friends a bit earlier in the day; I was alternating sewing with other projects. I managed to finish nine more of my stained glass blocks!! 

I had a whole lot of chunks already assembled so when I focused on combining them to make blocks, it went fairly quickly. Most of these still need to be trimmed down to the 10½" finished size.

I'm happy, and a little surprised, that I actually managed to finish this goal. 

Now, onto next month's RSC color: Pink. I won't be making any stained glass blocks in pink; they're not needed for my plan.

Drop on by the Friday Night with Friends linkup to see what everyone else is working on.

Now I need to figure out what I want to finish during April.