Design Table Monday

I have been busy canning and juicing grapes.  Takes a lot of time away from quilting on my days off work but it's worth it throughout the year!  I have lots of canned tomatoes now, I made a lot of salsa last year and have plenty left.

I did finish the borders on my Crown of Thorns, I need to get that photo taken, but I don't have the space at the moment.  The same two projects are on my design wall and I have an extra table set up for basting.

We are going to a wedding in less than two weeks and I decided to give the couple a quilt I already had the top ready for.  They will be living in a small pole barn and I thought this quilt would fit the bill.  Even though some of the blocks were made by friends, I am just not a scrappy quilt person and with over 250 quilts in the house I thought I could part with one!  This is a pattern from Quiltville called Sister's Choice.

When I pin baste for machine quilting on my Pfaff Grand Quilter, I lay the backing out on a banquet style table (the heavy brown ones) and clamp the backing to the table.  I then lay out the batting and quilt top, over that and baste the center, then move it over the table to do the rest.  This quilt is just full size, but I have a six foot table end to end with another table and it gave me room to get the quilt laid out lengthwise.  After the quilt is moved to one side or the other I just clamp on top to hold it in place.

Hooking up to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

September is Flying By!

Wow, I do not know where this month has gone and I haven't posted a thing!  I was so busy going back to work on Sept. 2nd, the fair and getting ready for and going to a quilt retreat I didn't blog.  I didn't have anything to show really.  Now I do! 

I was trying to come up with a retreat project and found a Judy Niemeyer pattern called The Crown of Thorns in my stash from 2004.  I had almost all the fabrics, just bought two lights.  I had it all cut and I spent the entire retreat sewing on this quilt top!  I need to cut more strips for the border.  It is very definitely my colors!  It finishes at 70 X 70.

 The retreat in McCall, ID was sponsored by Quilt Taffy .  It was a lot of fun and I especially enjoyed my friend Valerie flying in from Colorado.  I took my featherweight for her to use, I honestly have never used it!  I bought this grouping of fat 1/8's.  I don't normally buy a grouping with the same prints just in different colors, but the modernness and graphics really grabbed me.  On an outing to Huckleberry Patches quilt shop I found a pattern to use with them.  That will be a surprise for later. 

 This is not a great pic, but this is the queen size quilt I made for Lisa and Kevin's wedding.  I finally finished it and they took it home a couple weeks ago.  The background is dark brown and the outer rings are hand appliqued to the background.  I was changing the pattern from curved edges to straight and this is all I could come up with to do.

Linking up to Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday.

Design Wall Monday, August UFO #31 and it's September!

I so can't believe I forgot to post to my blog yesterday, after being so good about posting every day in August except the power outage day.  I was so gung ho on machine quilting (I will show that quilt later in the week) that it slipped my mind.

My design wall has not changed from the last two weeks, but my design floor has changed.  I will be going to a retreat in mid September and was trying to decide on projects and I have had the Crown of Thorns pattern for 10 years.  I pulled all the batiks from my stash except for a couple light ones.  Gee, the pattern was in my colors, imagine that!  Now to get the pieces all precut before I go and have our county fair and going back to work for the school year in between!

My last UFO of the day for August is at the bottom, a row robin top.  It was from my guild several years ago and I didn't end up with enough rows so I made some checkerboards to fill in.   I will have to decide what I'm going to do for September.  I am actually getting low on showing UFO's after showing 31 of them!! Linking up to Design Wall Monday.

Row Robin top