Lindsay’s Bear quilt

My friend Lindsay has entrusted me with several of her old quilt tops that needed quilting.  I am using them to help me get more experience on my long-arm.  I finished this quilt today.

My quilting included some bubbles…..

and some ruler work to make straight lines.

All the quilting shows up on the back.

I normally enjoy the hand stitching part of binding, but for this quilt I decided to do the entire binding on the sewing machine and was fairly pleased with the result.

Now the quilt is ready to give back to Lindsay and I have to say goodbye to the smiling frog.

Moving along

Today was a stay-at-home day and I not only stayed home, I stayed in the Quilt Cave.  I practiced on the long-arm,  working particularly on my free-motion skills.  I feel ready to load another quilt tomorrow and start applying some of my free-motion ideas.

I also finished sewing all the blocks into rows of my 20-year old project and only have the last eight rows to sew together.  It is very slow going because my blocks are not always perfect and/or square, so there are minor adjustments to make all the time.

Of course I got weary of working on this project and pulled more fabric for my simple house blocks.

After making three more houses (no picture), I happened upon a mini charm pack and started sewing them together.

The mini charm pack is all wonderful Fall colors so I will just make a simple table mat to put out in September/October.

new toy

My old printer stopped printing, so today I went to Costco and purchased a new printer.  I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the box and found two strong plastic handles to pull the printer out of the tight fitting box.  It was always a challenge to get those printers out of the box, but they have finally made it easy.

The next pleasant surprise is that all the pieces of tape that keep things closed were easy to remove because they all had folded ends where you could pull them off.  Nice.

I was never patient enough to figure out how to print photos on photo paper on my previous printers, but today I took the time to figure it out.  It didn’t happen right away, but I summoned up my patience (a little) and finally got it figured out.

The easiest part though was printing from the iPad where absolutely no set-up is required – it just works immediately.  Very nice.

Slow progress

Little by little I have been working on my 20-year old project.  Today I finished up all 160 blocks.

And then I got six (of 16) rows sewn together.

It did get a little tedious, so to break up the tedium I made three very simple house blocks.

Tomorrow it will be back to the 20-year old project.  I’m determined to get it done this year!

A little finish…

This little six block quilt was made by my friend Betty.  I quilted and bound it for her.

Thanks for trusting me to quilt your quilt Betty.

20 year-old project

In my quest to finish things up in 2015, I pulled out an old project and was dismayed to discover that it is at least 20 years old.  What?  Why?  60 blocks were finished, block parts were cut and sewn, and I tried to think back as to why I put it away.

I wasn’t even certain which quilt from the book “Scrap Mania, More Quick-Pieced Scrap Quilts” by Sally Schneider I had planned to do.  There are many layouts for this block using her method called “Mary’s Triangles”.  I decided I would continue working on these blocks and probably do this layout.

I have about 28 more blocks to make.  Very doable.  The red and green looks Christmasy too, which I really like.  This is probably my oldest unfinished project, but I could be wrong.  Other containers have not been opened yet.

Lindsay’s Quilt

My friend Lindsay asked me to quilt some of her quilts and this is the first one I did – a scrappy quilt.

A close-up of the front…..

A close-up of the back…..

Folded and ready to return to Lindsay.  Thank you Lindsay for letting me quilt and bind your quilt.

Finished an old project

Sighing with relief, I present my finished Comfort & Joy quilt started in 2013 (I think).  I know I quilted it last year and got it bound.  All it needed was the embellishments which I added today.  Because the quilting stands out too much (I think – dark green thread and bubbles), I skipped the embroidery suggestions and went with adding buttons for eyes, leaving it at that.

The snowman got two large black buttons.

And the gingerbread men got tiny little button eyes.

Now I will have a “new” Christmas quilt for December 2015 – and I can mark off this quilt as finally finished.

In the meantime, I am working on the binding of a quilt I quilted for friend Lindsay.

At last……..

At last I can officially announce the completion of my 2013 Designer Mystery Block of the Month from the Fat Quarter Shop.  Pieced, quilted, bound – finished.

It is too big to hang on my hallway quilt hanger, but fits nicely on  a single bed.

My favorite block is this house block.

Pictures of a finished quilt also need the obligatory quilt roll shot.

This was supposed to be a 2014 finish, but I didn’t put the last binding stitch in until 2015 so I will consider it partially finished in 2014 and partially finished in 2015.  (Or a sneaky way of getting two finishes out of one quilt…..)

2014 Puzzles done

My favorite holiday entertainment is putting jigsaw puzzles together.  This year I put two puzzles together – one on December 30th (stayed up late to finish it), and one on December 31st.

This one (below) was a little harder than the one done on December 30th, and I did not finish it until this morning – January 1, 2015.

Then it was time to do some work in the Quilt Cave.  I finished up cutting scraps from the leftover fabric in the monthly packages from the 2013 Designer Mystery Block of the Month from the Fat Quarter Shop.  They were very generous in the fabric provided each month and I have enough leftover fabric to make several more quilts!

And now it is time to write out my long list of projects that I hope to get done in 2015.  Unfortunately the whole list is being brought forward from 2014 and earlier.  Even though I got a lot done in 2014, most of the projects were new and the old UFO’s got pushed aside.  I’m probably the only one in the world that does this.  However, I am very optimistic that my sensible and frugal side will prevail in 2015 and I will get to cross off project after project.  Wish me luck (and time and ambition.)