Quilts

Amish With a Twist 2–progress

July 31, 2013April 27, 2014 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Today I’m all caught up with my Amish With A Twist-2 Block of the Month program with the completion of these four, plus the components shown below.

I think these will eventually become part of the center star.

I’d be lost without my color sample cards–I snip off a bit of selvage and write the name on it (and underneath) along with the color number. It REALLY helps.

I also cut each block’s pieces all at once, then store them inside the pattern, all folded up for when I can get to the sewing. Done in parts, this quilt will be manageable, I think.

4-in-art_3

Check back tomorrow for our Four-in-Art Challenge Art Quilt Reveal! I’m pretty excited about it, having seen bits and pieces of my fellow quilters’ works. In addition, if you are a Schnibbles fan, Sherri and Sinta will have our newest Schnibbles on display, plus let us know what the next quilt will be. (Here’s mine!)

But today, I’m linking up to Lee’s Freshly Pieced for Works In Progress Wednesday.

Quilts

WIP–Bee Blocks (post revised)

June 26, 2013June 26, 2013 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

UPDATE: I’ve revised this post, because this morning I realized that TODAY is Wednesday, not yesterday (when I’d originally written it: we’re a little foggy on life over here), so today I am linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

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I joined a new bee (newby! newby!). I am honored to be included in the Always Bee Learning bee, and the first block’s fabrics have arrived to be sewn (they have different rules than the Mid-Century Modern bee). But Linda’s blocks for the MCM bee still hadn’t been made, and I like to honor my deadlines.

So I gimped down to the sewing room, pulled out a drawer and put a pillow on it for the left foot, got out my portable iron and pad and put it on the table on the right. I figured it was good to be sewing as long as I wasn’t putting any weight on the foot, right? (I’m really hoping that MY idea of “partial weight-bearing” agrees with the doctor’s).

But had to stand for a few minutes on my right leg while I cut the strips, then I sat and sewed. And twisted to iron, but finished up one block before dinner.

After dinner I finished the other one (normally we only do one, but everyone else was doing two and I didn’t want to be a slacker); I packaged it to mail tomorrow, hopefully making it to Florida by July 1st. That small block in the front? We do signature blocks with our Mid-Century Modern (MCM) bee.

This is what Linda is doing with them: using them to border another set of blocks from another bee. She says she’s stuck about what to do in the corner–maybe a rounded version of the stack?–so if you have any ideas, head over to her blog and leave her a comment. It’s always interesting to see our bee blocks being used. Another quilter in this bee finished up her quilt (scroll down to the Mid-Century Modern quilt in neutral fabrics); I hope when it’s my turn I can be as successful.

As I lay in bed yesterday, I did make a button for that new bee:

At least I can be somewhat productive when I lay around here.

What else am I working on? Well, another July 1st deadline is for this month’s Schnibbles quilt. My husband brought up a camp chair (small chair we use when we go camping) and I could slide it in the cubby hole of my sewing desk, and yes, I did get some of that top quilted last night. While I can only quilt for a short while, it feels good to be productive and to see a quilt take shape.

hanging Kaleidoscope Quilt

Thanks, all, for your nice comments about Kaleidoscope (in previous post). My husband hung it up in the hallway this morning. It brings a smile to my face as I slowly make my way up the stairs. Here it is again:

Final thought: Happy Birthday, Rhonda! You are an inspiration, always.

Quilts

First WIP Post of Summer 2013

June 5, 2013 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

It’s the first post of summer–the first Works In Progress post, thanks to Lee, of Freshly Pieced.

I put together the sections for the Schnibbles block, trimming it up as the pattern recommended (we’re doing Dulcina this month–see Sherri’s blog for more info).

Whoa! Big Shrinkage. (The trimmed up squares are on the right.) If I make this quilt in the future, I’ll try to figure out the dimensions so that the trimmed up block doesn’t lose an inch in each direction.

Final center section, all sewn together. Now the borders. Because I have so much going on in the quilt, I’m looking to build some quieter borders than are shown in the design. But I’m putting this aside for now, to tackle my Big Project: Quilting the English Paper Pieced Quilt:

Click back over to Lee’s blog to see other quilts that are in progress. And happy summer!

Quilts · WIP

It’s Wednesday, so WIP on

May 8, 2013May 8, 2013 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Finally! I have a use for my phone app, purchased so long ago and hardly used. Anyone else like that?

Yep, it’s Wednesday so that means I’m thinking about my works in progress.

Well, today, it was Schnibbles. I really had fun making last month’s quilt and although I’m fairly certain I won’t be able to keep this up, winning a prize for my Schnibbles certainly helped my motivation. It hasn’t come yet, so I can’t tell you what it is, but Mr. Random Generator Number HATES me, so I was pretty surprised when Sherri emailed me with the news. But as I lay in bed the other night, listening to the night sounds and thinking about if I should do this month’s pattern, all of a sudden I knew exactly what I wanted to do. It involves old sheets. But not vintage floral sheets.

Long before Martha Stewart ruled the linen universe and long before everyone’s beds looked the same, you could go down to the department store and there’d be all kinds of sheets in all kinds of patterns, mostly percale, but a variety of eye candy for the bed. One day in Wisconsin, in their department store, a set of Porthault knock-off linens were in the marked down bin.

Porthault? I was stunned, and snapped them all up: pillowcases, top sheet, bottom sheet and an extra sheet. The cool part was that the top sheet and pillowcases had a gentle scalloped edge that was taped with blue linen tape. Verrry classy. Well, I wore out the bedding, but still had that extra sheet. Some years ago, I cut it into large squares to use as table decorations for something-or-other, and I knew I still had those lovely lily of the valley pieces of sheets. Somewhere. I rummaged through the boxes in the garage last night and found them (you don’t have fabric in the garage? Really?), and went to work today making my Schnibbles. I have a set of papers coming in on Tuesday when I enter the Grading Galaxy, hoping to return just before my sister and her husband arrive for a week. Now you know why I thought I ought to get busy and get this done.

Here’s the second iteration. The fabric has two-toned blue lilies of the valley and yellow mini-tulips with green stems and little red dots here and there. So I added some red thread and some green thread to two of my spools, along with some yellow spools just for interest.

Here’s a close-up of the fabric. I have my row tag on there, ready to sew up the blocks into the top. I have enjoyed digging into the stash for this quilt, pulling blues from all sorts of different kinds of fabrics. I do like sewing with one line of fabric, I guess, but I always seem to sneak an extra bit from what I have so as to break up the quilt. (I guess that means I don’t really like sewing from just one line of fabric.)

I cut strips of my Porthault knock-off sheets into strips for the first border, and angled the ends to help disguise the seams–I have a lot of seams because I’m cutting from those squares from long ago.

First inner border with cornerstones is on in one of those dreaded nighttime photoshots. I stopped here for the night, and will figure out the outer border in the morning. I was able to slide in three blue blocks made with fabric from my very first pieced quilt (#3 on my 100 quilts list, never blogged about). I like using this fabric in quilts here and there. I like tying both ends of my quilting life together like this.

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced. For sure, I will be at the end-of-the Linky list tonight!

And here’s the only picture I could find of the sheets on the web. Sorry it’s so teensy!

I just went and looked up Porthault *online* and a sheet set is going for about two grand. Yep.
Of course, it is the real thing, and not the knock-off. Makes quilt fabric look like a bargain.