Hand Quilting Question

I made amazing progress on my hand quilting project during the olympics. I thought I would like to do some hand beading, but I was having too much fun with my quilting and never got the beading out.
And speaking of the olympics, did you see the commercial by RONA? Usually I mute commercials or do errands during them, but I watched every second of this commercial each time it came on! You know it's a very creative commercial if I like it...and post it on my blog!

I just love how it shows so many olympic events, incorporates all kinds of "regular" people, and travels across Canada in 30 seconds...starts on the west coast in Vancouver BC, crosses the forests and mountains, over the prairies, through Toronto, and past the CN tower, some Quebec shots, over to the maritimes, and right to the east coast in St. John's, Newfoundland.
What would make the commercial even better is handing over a quilting tool, like a seam ripper or a rotary cutter! 
Okay...back to quilting. I have now finished quilting ALL the inside blocks...oh yes I have!! Maybe I was obsessed with this project during the olympics because after 4 1/2 years, I am so close to the finish line...it's a marathon quilt!
My dilemma this week is that
I am quilting the outside white blocks with diagonal lines and don't have enough fabric around the quilt to put in the hoop.  My last big hand quilting project was finished two years ago, and I think I just had more backing fabric on it to hold the edge steady in the hoop, because I don't remember struggling with this issue then. 
But on this red and white quilt I guess I trimmed the backing too close...lesson learned! 

One of my quilting friends suggested hand basting a scrap of fabric to the edge of the quilt as I come to each side. She gave me a scrap and showed me how she would do it, and I am trying that. It is so much easier.
Do you have another suggestion about how you would handle edge quilting?
Hop over to Jo's Country Junction and see what other people are trying out today. 
And don't forget the Bowls with Borders blog hop...so fun!

August 14th

Jen Duncan

Sharon D.

Apron Valley Road

Quilts and Quilt Things

Pieceful Life

North Hills Quilter
Vroomans Quilts

Jane's Quilting

Design Wall Monday #30

Today my design wall is a total mishmash of projects.
The bright blocks are from the Tetris Quilt Along, the bottom left star block is last month's Quilt Square Quilt Along block, the long strips are borders for my UFO of the month, and the cute little stars on the right are the Temecula Summer Star Sew Along. 

This design wall is either a testament to my lack of discipline when it comes to starting new sew along projects, and/or proof of my addiction, and/or evidence of my inability to sleep (more time for quilting, and for surfing the internet for more quilty inspiration). Or maybe it is just because I am cleaning up because my sewing machine is broken. It has only been gone a couple of days but I really miss it. I have a back up machine, but it doesn't do as nice a job on piecing, and can't do the machine quilting that my Brother 1500 does. 
Hop over to Patchwork Times to see what other quilters are up to today while I get myself organized over here!
And you better grab a cup of tea because Bowls With Borders Blog Hop starts today...yippee! Hop over to Carol's blog to see the list of blogs on the hop...enjoy!

Slow Sunday Stitching

I have finished my first rug!
It was quite a learning experience and although it's a little ruffly and doesn't lay quite flat, I am happy with it!

It is a great way to use up old scrap fabric, and you can just toss it in the washing machine for cleaning, which is great when you have an old dog (if you know what I mean!)

And speaking of dogs, the Pets on Quilts show is open for voting, so you can go to Lilypad Quilting and vote for Miss Molly - she can win a new doggy toy and I can win some new fabric! She is dog photo #69!

Here is Miss Molly trying to smooth out the ruffly parts of my new rug. She doesn't mind at all that the thing doesn't lay flat, and loves to roll around on it...maybe it's like a doggy massage mat?!?! 

Rugmaking (and life) lessons learned:

1. Regularly monitor the tension. It always looks like you are doing well, but you don't realize until it's done and you stand back to look at it, that there were mistakes made, and big problems that can't be fixed, unless you unravel the whole thing. Not doing that!

2. Figure out where you went wrong and get advice from the experts. I found some advice on Aunt Philly's Toothbrush Rug website and now understand what causes the wavyness and how to even out the tension. 

3. Focus on your effort and be proud of the accomplishment, even if it didn't turn out at all like you had hoped. Be kind and gentle to yourself, say encouraging things, and give yourself an "A" for trying your best.

4. Weigh the pros and cons of another attempt.  Decide whether the agony of the errors and frustration of the process, plus the satisfaction of the final outcome (or lack thereof), compared to the enjoyment of the activity, is worth the effort of another try. 

Can you guess what I decided?  
I have already washed the fabric for my next rug, which will be a light blue and yellow rug for my bedroom. I am hoping that the mistakes I made lessons I learned will make for a better result this time. Now I just need to visit my friend Louise to get help to start me off!
If you are interested in rug making, hop over to Pokey's blog and see the beautiful rugs she crocheted from yarn...I love the funky bright one!

What hand work are you creating this week? What are you learning about your project (and life)? Link up your hand work blogpost and you will be entered to win the August giveaway (sewing theme fabric and co-ordinating thread).

Finished Tshirt Quilt

The giant Tshirt quilt is finished! 
It was a marathon effort, even though I didn't finish it in time for my nephew's birthday.
As experienced Tshirt quilt makers know, it is really tough quilting soccer jerseys...
the fabric is thick and slippery, and your machine puts up a fuss! But it is finished and I am happy with how it turned out. The size is 65" x 95", so that was 316" of binding that was sewn during olympic viewing this week...
that's a gold medal effort I'll tell ya!

Even though the quilt was large, I managed to push it through my Brother 1500 before my machine died...it gave a valiant effort for it's last quilt!            

I machine quilted some free motion loops and stars (that I practiced in March's Free Motion Challenge) in the sashing and border.


I finished it off by quilting my nephew's name on the bottom corner. 

I enjoyed revisiting the memories of his childhood, the times he wore these shirts, and the fun things we did together....he was a real cutie. Here he is on the left in this old photo, sitting with my daughter, his older brother, and my baby boy...good times!
I hope he likes his quilt and uses it until it's threadbare. After all, quilts don't provide comfort and warmth sitting in a bag in the closet, right?!? 
And meanwhile...my trusty sewing machine is having a few issues, so it's in quarantine at the repair shop...cross your fingers that it can be fixed!
I didn't have a chance this week to work on the scrap challenge, but you can hop over to SoScrappy and check in on what the other quilters have been up to.

August UFO Rescue

The UFO number for August is #7, which is my sunflower quilt. 

It would be great to have this one hanging in my dining room in the fall. I don't know why this project jumped into the UFO closet since I really liked it...must have just been the volume of quilts I had on the go at the time. And when was that? 
Well, the last sighting of this quilt was September 2007! OMG! 

The first step in a UFO rescue is to collect up any of the original fabric that is still around, see how much of my original plan I can recall (usually not much!), and make a finishing plan.  This was a mystery quilt posted at Quiltaholics and 
luckily for me, all the required fabric was with the project, and I found the original instructions!  Also some of the pieces for the border have already been cut and sewn, so it should be a relatively easy-to-finish UFO...famous last words?!?!?! 
Especially since my sewing machine is in hospital (*insert sad face*). It appears as though it might need some reconstructive surgery and the mechanic reassured me that he could probably fix it. I will call again tomorrow, ask about the condition of my baby sewing machine and see how freaked out I might be!

Mid Summer Garden Report

I am waving the white flag in the garden! The rabbits win! 
This is what they do to the zucchini!
I have never seen so many rabbits in all my life...they are hopping all over the neighbourhood in the evenings. I was wondering if it is because so many people are trying to grow their own gardens now, and are basically growing the rabbit population instead?!
I tried out the "Hot Hats" from Lee Valley to protect the beans and peas, and they worked great to grow the little plants. But eventually the plants get too big for the container, and the minute you take the hat off, the rabbits are so happy, and they come running into the garden to chew all the new leaves off!

I have managed to save a few cucumbers that were higher on the vines (not so close to the ground), but my thoughts of trying new pickle recipes this year are gone.
The tomato plants are coming along well, and I have a few green tomatoes developing, so time will tell whether the rabbits will leave them alone, or add them to their salads.
Next year if I have a garden, it will only be with a big, big, strong fence around, since the amount of effort I have put in is not worth the amount of food that is left for us to eat!

Tetris Quilt Along - Week #4

The Tetris Quilt Along continues over at the Happy Quilting blog, and I have just completed block #4. I am using 3" squares, so my blocks will finish at 14.5". 
I am so delighted to be using up these old brights from my stash, and although it is yet another quilt to finish, the pace makes it manageable to squeeze in between other projects.

These are the first 4 blocks so far. I am flowing the leftover squares into the blocks above so that every shape in the quilt will look like an actual Tetris piece.
My quilt will likely be 3 blocks across and 4 blocks down, with sashing and border added, it becomes the perfect comfort quilt donation. Melissa is posting 6 blocks, so I will be making 2 of each block (eventually).
To see more Tetris blocks and quilts in development hop over to the Quilt Along Flickr group or to the blog link up at Happy Quilting.

Sweet Treats Progress and Dotty Request

It has been a few weeks since any progress has been made on my polka dot "Sweet Treats" quilt.  
I have the inside of the top pieced and have just finished trimming up all the remaining cornerstone blocks. 
My next decisions will be about the borders, which is usually the "kiss of death" for a quilt at my house...it starts the slow march toward the UFO closet!
You can probably guess that this project is going on the back burner, because I have started another polka dot quilt for the Dot to Dot blog hop next month. I am so excited to be a part of the blog hop and have started to make a new quilt for the occasion. 
If you have a 2" or 3.5" strip of a dotty fabric that you would like me to use in my new dotty quilt, I would love to include it! Just email me for my snail address.
The more variety I have, the better. A big thanks to Janet who has already sent me some of her polka dot scraps, which will be in both of these quilts! 

Design Wall Monday #29 - Tshirt quilt

There has been a box of my nephew's old shirts sitting in my cupboard for a couple of years. His Mom kept saying there were more shirts to add to the collection, so I didn't even open the box until this summer. I realized there were enough shirts for more than 1 quilt in that box already!  
My goal was to finish this quilt for his birthday at the end of July, but that was not possible. I did make lots of progress on this quilt including...
*washed and deconstructed the shirts, 
*bordered and/or pieced together the smaller shirts, 
*ironed a fusible knit interfacing to the back of each shirt  
*cut all the shirts to 13". 

Apparently I didn't trim this shirt to the correct size, because it refused to lay flat. There's no way that bump would "quilt out", so I had to unstitch that block, resize, and try again.
I needed to purchase a lot of yardage for the backing, sashing, and binding, and finally found a perfect blue fabric. The next steps are to finishing piecing the sashings to the shirts, sew all the rows together, add the border, pin baste, machine quilt and bind. No one except a quilter understands how many hours of concentrated effort that list of steps will require!!
Usually I enjoy the quilting part, but my machine is acting up (the hand wheel is slipping, and the bobbin is having trouble winding) and my trusty repair man is on vacation! I will be on his doorstep on his return, and hoping that my machine is not going to need palliative care!
To see what other quilters have on their design walls this week, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Slow Sunday Stitching - August

The summer is half over, and I haven't finished nearly half of the projects I had hoped to this summer. Not just stitching projects, but gardening, canning, cleaning, oh yah...and there was supposed to be some time for relaxing in there. I took my daughter and niece blueberry picking, and we put a few bags into the freezer, but most of the berries were immediately eaten! I definitely will go to the berry patch again this week and hope to get some blueberry jam made.
All leisure time this week was spent watching the olympics, during which I enjoyed a lot of hand quilting. I have been focused on finishing my Capricorn Quilts "Quilter's Blessings" which I started in 2008 and am making great progress this month.  "Much Sewing" is one of my favorite blocks in this quilt, and it is now quilted!
While I have been quilting and watching olympic accomplishments, I have been thinking about an inspiring blogpost I read by Kathy Doughty at Material Obsession. She wrote: "The choices we make become our body of work. They shape us into the quilter that we are."  To that I would add, that our life choices shape us into the person we want to be. I want to be a calm, gentle, loving, positive, focused, creative person, so I need to make choices accordingly. And quilting is such a huge part of how I try to accomplish that. 
That is one of my reasons for creating this Sunday hand stitching link up...to encourage myself to slow down, to spend some time each week stitching, to relax and breathe deeply, and to connect with others in the blogland community of like mind.
A big thank you to those who linked up and shared your hand stitching projects in June and July. Carla was the winner of the draw for the previous linky prize.  Link up your blogpost about hand stitching and get your name in the draw for the next giveaway. 
What stitching choices have you made this week to reach your goals?? 

Scrappy Saturday - aqua

There hasn't been much time this week for sewing scraps. A lot of Olympic watching has gone on at my house, and quite a bit of hand work (check tomorrow's Sunday Slow Stitching  blogpost to see what has been accomplished). 
And there were a few Olympic celebrations...we tried out Barb's new corkscrew and it was so easy to use.

I did corral some aqua scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and here they still sit....not yet sewn into the palm branch block that they will be by next week (hopefully!)
Hop over to SoScrappy to see what other quilters are sewing with their turquoise and teal scraps.

Also I have been finishing a Tshirt quilt for my nephew, made from his soccer shirts. I couldn't find my favorite teflon pressing sheet, so I had to buy a new one. This is the only one I could find in my local quilt store so I thought I would try it. The instructions say you can use either side, but it's not a good idea to switch mid way through the project, or you get fusible gunk on your iron, which is what you are trying to avoid by using the pressing sheet in the first place....ugh! Using a Sharpie pen I  wrote the word "Right" on one side of the pressing sheet to solve that problem.
Also, this sheet get HOT and stays hot, and burns your fingers if you touch it (which my teflon sheet did not do). I'll have to keep an eye out for the June Taylor sheet because I liked it better. 
I'm linking up to Jo's "Try it on Tuesday" linky party...go see what other people are trying out today.

Pets On Quilts 2012

The 2012 "Pets on Quilts" parade has started and there are great prizes to win, for bloggers and blog readers alike. Click here to read all about it, to enjoy the photos of pets on quilts and/or quilts featuring pets, and to vote for your favorites.
This is the most recent photo of our beloved Miss Molly sleeping under my 9 patch quilt.

Miss Molly is a 13 year old ShihTzu, and has recently had some surgery, so she has been slowly recovering.  Molly has always loved quilts and readers of my blog have seen lots of photos of her over the years, as most of the time  she can be found cuddled up on the bottom of whatever quilt I am working on. This is a photo from years ago that shows exactly what she does as soon as I start binding a quilt!
My favorite "Dog Quilt" is the one I made for my nephew Matthew about 5 years ago. The pattern is called "Lucky Stars" and is published by Atkinson Designs.

It was a fun quilt to sew and I used a lot of dog theme fabrics - paw prints and dog bones, bordered around the centre star blocks which feature a variety of cute dogs. I also machine quilted dog words (like 'bark', 'sniff', 'dog house', 'sit', etc) inside dog bones on each of the sashings, but the quilting doesn't show up well on the finished quilt.
This is the photo transfer label I made for the back of the quilt, which shows baby Matthew asleep with his favorite Aunt!
Go check out the Pets on Quilts parade of photos!

July's UFO is finished!

I did a mid month switcheroo when I realized I would not have enough time to finish my regularly scheduled UFO. And in the last two weeks, I was able to baste, quilt and bind the chosen UFO. Phew!
This quilt has a softer colour palette than I usually work with, but I am happy with how it turned out. The fabrics are a combination of my stash and my friend Marion's stash.



This is a photo of the quilt from the back, but it's too dark and you can't really see the quilting. 

This is how the machine quilting looks close up in one of the blocks and in the border.

Did you finish your July UFO? I'm sure you can get at least one binding sewn while you watch the Olympics! 
Hop over to Patchwork Times to see other UFO's that were finished in July.

Quilt Square Quilt Along

It's the end of the month and you know what that means!?! It's time for the Quilt Square Quilt Along Parade! 

I am very happy with how my block turned out this month, even though I ran out of the background fabric and had to mix in a few different light prints. I was also happy to find a couple of fabrics in the sale bin at the Marsh store that I can use for the borders on this quilt.

Get a glass of lemonade and hop over to Jo's to enjoy to the block parade. 

It was interesting that this month's quilt along block is the same kind of star block as I have been sewing for the Temecula Summer Star Sew Along. These are the first 4 blocks posted and I am using up scraps from a finished (kind of!) UFO.

It's been a starry kind of month I guess!?! 

FMQ Challenge for July

July's Free Motion Quilting lesson was by Angela Walters and it was really a challenge for me this month!  There is great information on SewCalGal's blog... if you are at all interested in machine quilting, you need to go and read these great (and free!) lessons. It was interesting to me that Angela learned to quilt from her husband's grandfather!
First I painted a piece of fabric using Setacolor paints, and decided to make this month's design in the larger 8" x 16" size for my sampler. And then I found some Isacord thread that Leah Day recommended in her April lesson and was excited to try it out. I thought the colour contrasted well with my fabric, and hoped that would make it easier to stitch this design. I put my standard Aurifil in the bobbin, and this combination was perfect in my machine.
Next came lots of practice in the sketchbook, and a little bit of swearing!The design Angela taught is called "Tiles", and for me it was a tough lesson in learning how to plan your path in advance. I prefer to wonder around in a more intuitive way when I quilt rather than having a structured plan, so it was a challenge to make a plan and come out on the right side of each tile in order to start the next one...it's harder than it looks! 

Then I started on the quilt sandwich and it was still harder than it looks, but I was very happy that I didn't have any thread shredding, or snapping, and no thread tension issues at all. I had put some sparkly (opaque shimmer) paint on this piece of fabric, which you can't really see in the photo, but it made the fabric thick in some places, so I was a little nervous... but no needle fractures either!

It turned out okay. I wish my lines were straighter (again, it's harder than it looks to quilt a straight line with a free motion foot) and I wish I would have made my lines closer together. But it's done and I am pleased with meeting my goal for another month.
If you want to see how other quilters made this design, hop over to Sew Cal Gal's blog and scroll down to see the links for over 130 quilters!

Design Wall Monday #28 - Raw Edge Applique

Almost a year ago I wrote about the raw edge applique idea I had for using up the scraps from my IOP (Indian Orange Peel) quilt - you can read about post here. On my design wall today is the first 6 blocks. 

 

This is not the first time that the original quilt turns into a UFO, while I became fascinated with making the scraps into a finished project first!  

I am having great fun playing in the scrap bin and think there might be enough bits left to make 6 more blocks.
This quilt has decided to call itself "Shattered". 
To see more design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times.


Oh yah, I almost forgot to mention that the winner of my 1,000th blogpost draw is commenter #44 (as picked by my daughter) which is another quilting blogger named Cathy! 
You still have time to get in on the handwork draw....just post a link to your hand stitching blogpost before tomorrow!

Slow Sunday Stitching - Last July Linky

Can you believe that I have been hand stitching three different quilt bindings this week?!?
Somehow I ended up stitching down two of my sister's bindings recently. 
Hand binding is the perfect project for road trips, and this is one of her quilts I finished while she drove me around on the Yours to Discover shop hop. I guess it's a good trade off... she drives, and I navigate, while I stitching the binding on her quilts (as long as the air conditioning is on full blast!)

As soon as I finished that quilt, she quickly produced another quilt for me to bind...I think I have started a bad pattern here! 
Can you see the lovely thumb nail art that one of the ER night shift nurses painted for me?!?  She used a "Nail Art Pen" and I have been admiring her design every time I did some hand stitching this week. But it wore off too quickly (too much time spent washing dishes!) and I need to work another night shift to get a re-do (or learn to do it myself)!

And the third quilt is my July UFO quilt that I have started binding in hopes of finishing it by July 31st. 
Do you stitch your binding in the same direction as I do? 
I stitch from right to left, but have noticed that many people prefer to stitch from left to right.
This is the last week to enter the slow stitching draw - just link up your hand stitching blogpost below before July 31st, and your name will go in the draw. The draw winner will be announced next Sunday, and there will be a new gift draw starting in August.