Our little Grace had her 7th birthday yesterday.  I think it amazes me more now than when my kids were little at how fast the time goes by.

Another birthday, another postcard.  Sometimes the postcards I make are great and sometimes they are okay.  This one goes in the okay pile.

Front

The cats are cute.  But I do wish I had used the gray thread on both of them instead of the black.  It's just a bit too dark.  Cats do have crooked ears don't they?  These certainly do.  That gives them character. This looked a little better when I drew it out on paper.

Back

Grace showing the bag she made at 4-H

Well, now that is it Friday I'm about as happy as can be.  I'm ready for a Saturday of sewing.  And after seeing a beautiful pink and gray sunrise I'm ready to do some more sewing on the pink "I am" quilt.

It's hard for me to see colors like this and not try to translate them into quilts.  Do you do that too?  There is obviously way too much dirt on my windshield.  I started to write bugs but it's still a little too early for them.

Have a great Friday and an even better weekend.

Julie

Some More Pink

The pink is still fun to work on.  But quite frankly, it's not much fun to post about.  There just isn't much to show that looks like anything is getting done.  I will say that I worked at least 10 hours over the weekend on this top.  This is one where I should have been keeping track of my hours.  It has occurred to me that each of these blocks is ONLY 4" finished. And that a twin size quilt is going to add up to a lot of 4" blocks. But it does seem like it's taking forever.  Even to me.  This time I have some rows sewn together though.  So see, there is hope.

I started and ended the weekend sewing session making more setting blocks.  I've already shown some of the Jack in the Box.  But here are a few again.  I think they are more level than that on the wall. 

There were also some of these Shoo Fly blocks.  They gave me a little trouble since to my mind they are based on a nine patch setting and I needed them to be a four patch setting.  It was a little difficult to figure out the math (even with a calculator).  I just was not getting them to divide well at all.  I ended up cutting my pieces just a little less than 1 7/8".  The way I wrote it in my notes was to cut them just to the right of the 1 7/8" mark on my ruler. 

Hopefully, that makes a little sense.  Anyway, if you'd like to make your own 4" Shoo Fly block then I would suggest you make the 1/2 square triangle pieces a little over-sized and trim them down to just a shade under 1 7/8".  I tried cutting in between the 6/8 and 7/8 marks and that was too much.  My blocks were too small.  There was more time spent on these four little blocks then I'm sure was necessary.  I'm sure it would have been simpler to browse the web until I found a pattern the right size for my project.

Another part of the top I worked on was the sashing in between the rows.  I had started cutting the gray sashing into 1 1/2" strips to finish at 1".  When I sewed the first two rows together I wasn't very happy with the results.

1" Sashing

The way these rows are put together very few of the letters are going to line up from top to bottom.  There are different size strips separating the words and setting blocks on every row.  With the 1" finished sashing it was too apparent that they don't line up.

1 1/2" Sashing

So I ripped out the narrower sashing and made it a little wider.  It was cut at 2" and finishes at 1 1/2".  By the time a little quilting goes in there it will look just fine.

As of right now, I have five rows sashed together.  Using the wider sashing means that I will need at least one less row of words.  And that means I have an extra word.   Oh, well.  Maybe something else to work into the border or on the back.  If you have a strong opinion about the color gray for the sashing please don't hesitate to let me know.  There are several reasons I went with the gray.  One - I have a lot of it.  Two - It makes me think of the words being underlined with a pencil mark.  This quilt is for a almost seven year old that is in the 1st grade.  They do a lot of writing in pre-lined workbooks in the first grade.  And several other reasons could be added.  But it's not too late to make a change if needed.

Another weekend or two and this too shall be in the "to be quilted" pile. Yes, that is me, mocking myself for making a lot of quilt tops and quilting very few.

Have a terrific rest of your day.

Julie

I apologize for using the word "sashing" so many times in this post.  When I hit the spell check it high lighted each and every one of them.  If sashing isn't in the dictionary, it certainly should be.

Pink Progress

Any progress is exciting to me.  And this weekend I finally made some progress on putting together a few of the quilt rows.

Grace's "I Am" quilt progress.

Isn't it coming together great?  This was just what I had in mind when I started thinking about doing this quilt.  I've been calling it Grace's "I Am" quilt.  I started thinking of it as a "You Are" quilt.  But I don't want her to read "You are beautiful.", I want her to read "I am beautiful".

Right now each of the rows finishing measurements are 4" x 60".  I plan to add a narrow inside border and a wider outer border to make it a twin size quilt.

This is what the rows looked like Saturday morning.

See where I had spacers on some of the ends and not on others?  Nope, I didn't like that.  So all of those had to be removed and that amount had to be added in the row.  All of the figuring I had done the week before wasn't going to work.  I did a lot of ripping and resewing.  But it was well worth it to make it look like I wanted instead of just what what was easier to do.

I also made quite a few 4" setting blocks.  So far each of the rows has different setting blocks.  I think I've come up with enough different patterns that none of the rows will be the same.  That means I'll have quite a few leftovers from the little blocks I've already made.  Maybe they can go into the border or on the back.  Since my planning hasn't made it that far there is still time for that decision later.

Here are a few more of the filler blocks I made Saturday.

One row of the flying geese blocks have already been used to the left of the word "Sweet". I'm hoping to fit them in here and there.  Otherwise, I'll just make enough that they will be on their own row with a word or words.  I really like the small block to the right of the flying geese.  It is a "Jack in the Box" block.  I've made quite a few of them before.  This time I just made the sizes smaller to end up with a 4" block.  The butterfly blocks are with the word "Daughter"  That bright pink polka dot was some of the yard sale fabric I found at a church sale a few months ago.  There is only a small piece of it.  The butterfly pattern is all over the web right now as it's quite popular.  My directions for it came from a free pattern Lori Holt had on her blog in a row by row quilt. One of these days I'm going to have enough bright colored fabrics to make that quilt.  The pattern for it can now be found in her book "Quilty Fun".

And there you have my Saturday in a nutshell.  I spent half of it ripping and resewing and the other half making very small blocks.  And to top it off I spent a couple of hours at a Minnie Mouse birthday party for my granddaughter Allison.

Allison at the zoo.

This week I'm going to link up with Judy at Patchwork Times since I haven't done that for a while.  

Have a great Monday!

Julie

Birthday Cards

Last year when my little granddaughter Allison turned one and I stewed and stewed over whether or not I wanted to start making her fabric postcards for her birthdays.  I have been making one every year for her older sister Grace.  But I wanted something different for Allison.  So I had a terrible plan to make her a flower block each year until there were enough to put a quilt together.  Well, that's one way to test whether or not your thread will hold up over the years.

This was from last year.

Flower quilt  block for Allison's 1st birthday.

Over the last year I've regretted my decision to not make Allison postcards too.  After all she can't pick up a quilt block and carry it around.  Or read it, either.

So here is Allison's birthday postcard for her 2nd birthday.

Postcard for Allison's 2nd birthday.

Back of postcard

You should never look too closely at my applique work.  It's usually acceptable, but rarely great.  It is however, done with love.

Now to figure out a postcard for Grace's 7th birthday.  Wow.

Happy Tuesday.

Julie

More of the Same

Yes, today I bring you more of the same.  The pink is even getting a little old to me.  However, I'll be looking at pink for quite some time to come.  It's actually coming together quite nicely.  But I'm pretty sure that it isn't going to be a quilt by the time Grace's birthday gets here the end of February.  This may be one of those quilts that gets drug out until Christmas.  But that would mean I'll have to figure out a birthday present in between now and February 26th.

This is a terrible picture of what I had done as of Sunday morning.

I took this picture before I headed out to work at the college on Sunday.  I wanted to start figuring out the details to put the rows together.

There is a lot of spare time in my work day at the college.  I'm busy first thing in the morning and at the last of the day and in between that I usually do a lot of reading.  This time I was able to put a lot of numbers down on paper.

I counted out letters and added in the 1/2" sashing in between each letter to figure out how much extra space I had to get to the 60" width I want.  I'm planning to add a border to finish out the width.  I'm lousy at math so luckily all of my blocks are the same size.  Just not all of the words are the same length. There will also be more than one word on several of the rows.  Hopefully, my figuring is right and the rows will all come out the way I planned.

The first row sewn together.  Okay, the only row sewn together, so far.  I also made yet another word and have another one cut out.  So a little progress was made.

On to other news.  My sister Cathy tells me that there is a picture of my quilt in the newest issue of Quiltmaker.  It tells about it being a block of the month.  I haven't seen the issue yet.  I'm really excited to see how it all turns out.  Quiltmaker posted a picture last week on their blog but I was asked not to write about it on my blog yet.  They weren't quite ready.  I'm patiently waiting until I can post MY first picture.  I'm told they will let me know when.  I think I'll head to the store a little later and see if the new issues are out yet.  I think they usually go in the stores later than they are mailed.  I'm not a subscriber my Mom is.  We live about five blocks from each other.  She gets a couple of magazines and I get a couple of different ones and then we trade back and forth.  We've done it that way for years.  As of yesterday she hadn't yet received her copy in the mail.  But my sister who lives less than two miles away got hers.  Go figure.

Have a terrific Tuesday.

Julie

This week I have been working on the blocks that will go with my words.

4" Blocks

These blocks will all finish at 4".  So far I have between 10 and 20 of each block made.  The most labor intensive blocks are the stars.  I have the most of them because they've been my leader/enders while I've been working on the words.  The second block down on the left is the only one of those.  I wasn't quite sure I wanted to make more.  But looking at this picture I think it will work out just fine.  It will add good scrappy color.  I have a couple more block patterns in mind but haven't had the time to get started on them yet.

These are the only two words I've done this week.  I've just spent most of my time on the little blocks.  One of these days I have to figure out what size I want to end up with and how to get the rows to that size.  Putting together one row is easy.  Making the rest of them that length - not so simple. The piecing of the blocks is the easy part.

Here's another picture of the rest of the words that are done.  Just to keep it all on the same page.  It doesn't however, all fit on the same wall anymore.  A few more words and a lot more little blocks and I'll be ready to start setting it all together.  That should read - tearing my hair out.

Speaking of hair.  Why don't people who cut hair check the haircut anymore.  I may have just got the worst haircut I've ever had.  And by the time I try to get both sides the same length it really will be a mess.  I should go back and make her straighten it out but the last thing I need is for it to be cut any shorter by a mad stylist.  This too shall grow back out.  Thank goodness.

Have a great rest of your day!

Julie

Thursday Update

My title to this post actually makes it sound like a Thursday update is going to be a regular occurrence.  Probably not going to happen.  I usually don't spend much time sewing during the week.  This week has been a little different.  Maybe because I can't sleep and maybe because these blocks are going together so fast and easy that it makes it a little more fun to spend time at the machine.

So here are the new words I've made.

 

And here they all are together.  I'm running out of room on my wall though.  As you can see I still need quite a few words.  Not a problem.  I have a two page list of possibilities to choose from.  And it seems like I think of more every day.

I still haven't decided for sure how I'm going to sash the rows.  I've cut narrow 1 1/2" strips of gray to put in between them.  It almost makes it look like lines that you would write on.  I'm leaning toward that.

All of the pinks are different.  But I have been using the same background on more than one word.  And I'm running out of background fabric.  I have been working with half yard cuts for more variety and it looks like I'll need a couple more.

Have a great Thursday.

Julie

New Quilt Started

I absolutely can't help myself.  Really.  I don't say that lightly.  I really get my quilting fix by piecing.  And I just can't seem to stop starting new tops.  A design idea or pattern gets going around in my mind and I just can't wait to get started on it.  So - I did - again.  Be sure to biggie size the pictures so you can see the fabrics.

Word Quilt for Grace

This is a quilt that I've started for my beautiful, awesome granddaughter Grace Kaye Ann.  She will be seven on February 26th and pink is her very best, favorite color.  Or so she says.

A couple of weeks ago Thelma at Cupcakes and Daisies wrote a blog post about starting a Christmas quilt using words.  And that one post started my mind thinking quilt for Grace.  I already had the letter patterns from making the Temecula Quilt Company sew a long quilt Little Letters and having the letter patterns was half the battle.  So here is the start of my word quilt.

As I've been making progress on this I've been trying to decide exactly how big to make it.  Do you have any idea how many different sizes are out there for twin size quilts.  I am also figuring out how to make each row come out the same length.  I'll need to put in some filler strips.  I have been making the star blocks as leader/enders.

A couple of the pinks I have won't work for the letters mostly because the print is to large.  The pink with the kids playing ended up in the snowball blocks and were used as filler blocks for the word Friend.

There are a couple of things I've decided as I've been making the words.  One is that I only want to use white fabrics as backgrounds.  I used a light ecru with the word Love and it really doesn't work for me. That word, as it's made, isn't going to make the front of the quilt.  The word Sweet is still iffy.  It's a little dark and busy.  It will stay on the wall until I get some more words made.  I figure there will be other dark words so Sweet may fit in just great.

And there you have it.  I need to decide on a couple more 4" block patterns for fillers and what size it will end up.  I will say that the words are going quickly.  All except for the letter F.  I'm convinced that they gave the wrong cutting sizes. 

If you think about putting together your own word quilt one of the things I did was Google "positive and encouraging words" and believe it or not there are sites that give you lists in alphabetical order.  And not just thesaurus sites either.

Have a great Tuesday!

Julie

I haven't had much time to do any sewing this week.  But I did have a little time on my lunch hour Monday to order some more fabric from Whittle's Fabrics.  This website may be more than a little addicting.  Before Christmas I had gone in and started putting fabrics in my shopping cart but never did place the order.  Since then I've been working up a few designs in my head and decided that I needed to get some more pink fabric.  So in addition to what I already had in the shopping cart I may or may not have added a few more.

This is what came in the mail today.  I love how they box up their fabrics. They are folded so nicely you just have to lift a corner to see what's next.  This stack isn't fanned out very well.  There are 31 half yard cuts of various fabrics.  At least seven of them are pink.  What's a grandma of girls to do but buy pink fabric?

Lunch is over.  So it's back to work for me.  I can't wait to get these home and start sorting them out.

Happy sewing,

Julie

It's time to post my color version of Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion mystery quilt.  I'm quite happy with the way mine turned out.

It's pretty girly. But that's okay with me.

Grand Illusion 2014

It looks very pink in the photos and I guess it is.  But I wouldn't have described it that way until I saw these pictures.

I'm liking this one better than the last couple of mystery quilts I've made.  I suppose it's the colors.  But I also like how busy this one is.

Celtic Solstice 2013

Celtic Solstice turned out great.  I guess I never posted a picture of the finished top.  I'll have to get that done. Maybe I just like the ones with pink and purple in them?  No, that can't be, because Easy Street has a lot of purple.

Easy Street 2012

This one is Easy Street from 2012.  It is my least favorite.  My colors just didn't do the pattern justice.  And I'm not fond of all of the black and white prints in this one.

Orca Bay 2011

My Orca Bay from 2011 turned out alright.  I'll probably end up quilting it at some point.  Jennifer keeps asking for it.  We shall see.

I still need to put the borders on my Grand Illusion.  The pieces are made I just haven't had time to sew them on yet.  Maybe next weekend.  My long weekends are over so I have to get back to business as usual.  Work.

Happy Monday,

Julie

It's New Year's eve. I've been sitting here thinking about all of the things I didn't get done in 2014 and some of the things I would like to do in 2015.  For some reason it's always easier for me to see what I haven't finished then the things I did finish.

Some of the quilt projects I've started and would like to get done are:

Jesse's Orange Quilt

This quilt will be awesome when I get it done!  It's next on my list for quilting.  I'm hoping to get it pinned in the next few days.  After all I can't make an orange one for me until I finish the first one.

Checked Alphabet Quilt

Last weekend I got the sashing done on this one.  Now I'm pondering the borders.  I've got several different ideas and will have to choose just one before I can move forward.  I really dislike making up my own borders.  I'm not good at figuring out the math.  I have several books but apparently, not the right book.  Yet!

5th Clue for Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt

I have made each of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt (tops) for the last four years.  The only one I've quilted and finished is Roll Roll Cotton Bole.  It is one of my favorite quilts.  Maybe this years quilt will get finished too.

Roll Roll Cotton Bole finished in 2011

I'm planning to get some of my tops quilted this coming year!  It's hard to enjoy something you can only see draped over a quilt rack.

Smith Mountain Morning a Bonnie Hunter design

Red, White & Blue Stars

The red, white and blue stars top is done.  And it doesn't look much like that.  It seems that I never posted a picture of the completed top.  As I was going through the old tops the ones I picked out to get to the quilting on are ones for ME.  We'll see how far I get with that.

Have a safe and happy New Year's eve and New Year.

Happy Sewing,

Julie

Back to work! It's Monday.  Christmas week is over. I about put the word "finally" in that sentence.  But I realized that I don't really feel that way.  That the week is - finally over.  Yes, no doubt, it was a busy week.  But it was a good week.  I was able to spend a lot of time with family and that was great.  I also got some of my sewing projects done and wrapped in time for Christmas morning.

Bag Front

Bag Back

 

Lining and Pocket

This is the bag I made for DIL Victoria. I love the way it turned out.  The daisy pattern is from Esch House Quilts.  It was not too bad for my first bias strip project.  It was more difficult to decide how I wanted to put the bag together.  I didn't have a pattern and was having a hard time remembering how I had made one before.  This time I wrote it down.  The bag measures approx. 16" x 16".  The sides and bottom are 3" wide.

I also made two pairs of pajama pants for DD Jennifer.

Pajama Pants

One pair of the pj's has been done for weeks.  The other was waiting for elastic and hems. It's so easy for me to put that stuff off.  So I did.  Right up until December 23rd.

Another thing I had put off was finishing the binding on my version of the Quiltmaker sew-along quilt.

First Take

I called my version "First Take" since it was a sample I sewed before cutting into the Quiltmaker fabric.  Both quilts turned out great!  This one had been waiting for about 3' of binding to be stitched down since September. 

Those are my finished for December.  I also worked on a couple of other things but I'll save those for another day.

And since this is my blog and I like to go back and read things months and months later, I'll put a couple of pictures of Christmas on here.  That way I can smile over them in July.

Jesse and Allison 

Zach (barely), Jennifer and Grace (handing out presents)

Victoria and I are mom's.  We don't often end up in the pictures.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Happy Monday!

Julie

This weekend I was able to finish Step 4 of Bonnie Hunters Grand Illusion mystery quilt.  This one went fairly quick for me.  I had most of the 2 1/2" strips cut that I needed.  And we had already made one of the corners we needed for each unit.

Step 4

These are the steps all together.

Step 1 - 4

I am a bit surprised that I've been keeping up with this.  That and doing a bit of other sewing too.

This is what I started on Sunday morning.  I'm hoping that it looks like a daisy.  It's supposed to.

The colors on the picture above are a terrible representation of the true colors.  These are Kona fabrics - the dark blue and the white is called "snow". 

This picture shows a better representation of the colors but also shows how messy my center was before I trimmed it.  This is my first project making the bias strips.  So far so good.  I may take the time to rip out the center spiral quilting.  I should have done it with my free motion foot instead of the walking foot.  It's pretty rough.  It might also have helped if I had drawn it on there instead of doing it freehand.  This is a free pattern given on Esch House Quilts.  Her directions are pretty clear.  I did watch a couple of YouTube videos on how to make the bias strips.  And luckily I had bought a tool years ago that I was able to actually lay my hands on at the right time.  The outcome of this project is still undetermined.  The original given with the pattern is a pillow cover.  I'm thinking bag. 

Have a great Monday!

Julie