Miniature Row Robin

I posted pictures in earlier posts of rows in my miniature row robin group. I have finished the last two rows for the group. This one belongs to Diane and her row is on top and finishes at 2.25" high! Next is Nansi's row, then Candy's then mine which also finishes at 2.25". I really should have put a ruler next to this!
Below is Virginia's grouping. Her fabulous log cabin row is on top and those strips are TINY! Next is Diane's row, then Nansi's string piecing and then Candy's dimensional row, and lastly my row, Dutchman's Puzzle. It finishes at 2" wide, and is paper pieced.This has been a lot of fun and a great challenge!

Fundraiser for a Friend

My friend Jo is raising funds for her husband's heart surgery. Read the complete story here and how you can help and win a quilt! I had a hand in this quilt since I machine quilted it. It is a very wonderful, cheery quilt and I am thrilled to have quilted it for Jo.

Tops from Retreat

My daughter Amy has been here this week and along with self-imposed stress to finish a quilt to enter in the Palouse Patchers show this weekend and doing things with her, I finally got Brad and Amy to hold up some of the quilt tops I finished. The one that is in the show I didn't get a photo of, but I will tomorrow. It is the Prickly Pear from the post here. I had all the blocks done and set it together last weekend and quilted and bound it this week. I tacked down the sleeve on the way to Moscow early Friday morning as Amy drove!
I had Brad's graduation quilt precut and got it all pieced the first evening. It is a bit blurry, but it's a log cabin and you can see the fabrics here. The next quilt was the Canyon Dance quilt that I showed the fabrics on a couple posts ago. This is a large queen size quilt and I got it together on Friday. That's what sewing for 13 or 14 hours will do. These quilts are super easy to piece. I used templates to cut them out and they just sew together quickly and I didn't even pin.
I have another quilt top I pieced Saturday but it's not quite finished yet, it needs borders. Yes, I did get told more than once I was an over achiever!

Back from a Retreat

I left Thursday for a quilting retreat at Palouse Divide Lodge and returned Sunday. My group was small, 11 of us and there was another group in the main lodge. We were there the same weekend last year also and had a joint show and tell Saturday night both years. It's fun watching the two groups intermingle and see all the wonderful quilting and other projects. We have a painter/potter in our group and a jewelry maker. We have the same weekend booked together next year also. I will get pics of the tops I pieced later this evening, but for now I have pics of my walk I took. The retreat center is the former North/South Ski Bowl and when I was there with another group in November I had hiked up to the top of the hill but it was too foggy for pics. I hiked up there Friday in the snow and took some pics. The views are fabulous!This is the lodge. The roof you can see on the right is the old ski lodge and that is where my group was. There is a nice room and rooms to sleep 13 with two bathrooms. The main lodge straight ahead has a large eating area on the left (two meals a day are prepared for you) and the large room on the right is the conference room. Bedrooms are on the main floor and it sleeps 40.Looking east.This is from the mountaintop cabin area, the old chair lift is still there. The cabin on top of the mountain is gorgeous! I went inside and looked around. This is it below, it has two floors of living area.
The view from the deck is where I took the lodge picture.This is the view to the north.

Cutting for a Retreat

I spent Friday evening and Saturday cutting pieces for two quilt tops to take to a retreat this coming weekend. The first one was Brad's graduation quilt. I had posted the fabrics here and decided this would be a great weekend to get the top stitched up. The log cabin strips are cut 2.5" so it will go pretty quickly with only 20 blocks.

The next quilt I cut is a bit more challenging. I am making Canyon Dance in queen size. I had made one in lap size for a friend in a different color scheme shown here. Here is the photo of my selection of fabrics (55 of them needed for this size!) and my piles of cut pieces.

Now I have to get the leftover fabrics put away. It called for FQ's but some of the pieces I had more than a FQ of. My batik containers are already overflowing and I can't figure out how I am supposed to fit more in. I need to stop collecting them I guess. Oh say it isn't so!

I will spend the week working on one of the many commission tops I have here. I am going to spend the rest of the day working on my Prickly Pear quilt and basting one of the commission quilts. I machine quilt them on my Janome 6500 without a frame setup.

Small Project Finished

Friday I am hosting a small group here at my house. Last month one of the members showed us how to do sashiko by providing a piece of fabric with a design traced on it and the thread and needle also. I finished my piece and made it into a 16" pillow top so I have something to show tomorrow!
I chose to NOT take pictures of that horrific snow we have. We had several inches of new snow today again. It's April and my spring break is almost over!

Beat the Deadline!

On one of my yahoogroups I host a UFO challenge and our deadline was March 31 for this round. I finished a project at 9 PM last night! I had gone to Moscow with my son earlier in the day and he drove so I could work on the binding. This was a mystery quilt last year from Cindy in Seattle who has lots of great free patterns. I put a quilting closeup on there. I just wanted to have fun with it and I knew this was going to be a wall quilt. Sometimes quilting can get too stiff. I quilted it in two days. and it's actually one of my own quilts!

Spring Break, Really It Is!

Above is a picture of my poor lilac bushes in my backyard this morning. Below is a picture of my crocuses that were actually blooming earlier in the week. I thought I would be getting my flower bed prettied up during spring break! I think not.

I started off the break by being sick. I came down with a nasty cold virus but I can't complain. I have had a fairly healthy winter and I work at a school! When a kindergartner coughed on me I jerked back and scared the poor kid!
Over the past week I have been working on this quilt top. My friend Cheryl passed away in December and last Friday at my guild National Quilting Day activities her sister Carol showed up and asked me to go to her storage to get "some fabric". She had donated "a truckload" to the Lewiston guild of which Cheryl had been a member and had three boxes left and a bunch of books and magazines. This quilt had six blocks pieced and most of the rest of the pieces cut. I got the urge to go ahead and finish up the quilt and will offer it back to the family. Cheryl didn't finish very many larger projects.

Mini Row Robin progress

I finished my row for Nansi's row robin. She wanted a red, green and white theme for Christmas. Nansi's row is on top, then Candy's and then mine. All the row's measure 2" finished and 10" finished wide. There are five of us in this mini row robin.I didn't get a picture of the last set of rows I had here, but Virginia posted them. My piggies didn't quite show up as I anticipated after they were pieced. I hope you can get the Three Little Pigs idea from them! Diane has also posted some photos. Congratulations to her for having a quilt in the Paducah show!

Pulling off a Surprise

I am terrible at keeping secrets, just ask my kids! I could hardly keep from telling them what their presents were. However, I pulled one off. A couple weeks ago my sister in Scottsdale mentioned coming up here this week. Her boys were on spring break and it would be a good time for her to get away by herself. We decided to not let my parents know she was coming! My other sister was involved and I told my SIL and some friends and even an interent group, but didn't tell my parents!

I didn't lie, but did say I was coming by Sunday afternoon. I picked up my sister at the airport and we came up with a plan, although my dad was napping and mom was on the computer when we got there so it changed a tiny bit. Lori was able to sneak into the house and was sitting in a chair in the family room and mom walked by her and back and forth around and didn't notice her. In the meantime I was totally hysterical and mom thought I was losing my mind! When mom finally noticed her she about went into shock. She was crying and laughing and I was worried about giving her a heart attack. Dad came out of the bedroom and stood there shaking cobwebs out of his head and finally said "What are you doing here?" He wasn't as shocked as mom!

Lori has been doing some work around the house and helping out and my daughter Lisa went down yesterday to help do some deep cleaning. I showed up after work and played cards!

Since I like to have pictures with my posts, here is a picture of my house last week after another snow storm. Come on spring!!!

Some finished projects

This is a "summer stashbuster" quilt from a swap on one of my small yahoo groups last summer. I spent my retreat at Dee's in Leavenworth last June piecing scrappy courthouse steps blocks. They were swapped out and I set it together with a bolt of cobalt blue I have and last Wed. I decided to try to machine quilt it. I had it done and bound (by machine) by the next night and at my guild meeting donated it to the "quilts for chemo patients" project one of our guild members started. Below is a closeup of some of the quilting.

I quilted this log cabin quilt for my friend Jo. I went back and forth on the quilting and finished it awhile ago finally and there is also a picture of the quilting. Jo received it today.
I did the quilting on this baby quilt in between the other two above. I went to a neighbor's who has a Viking Mega Quilter and frame setup and had fun playing with it. I must say I think I prefer my "stuff and fluff" method of machine quilting, but I got a project done! I bound it and have it ready to donate to someone as soon as I figure out who gets it!

My New Quilt Project

I have been doing some machine quilting and miscellaneous blocks. I decided yesterday to start a new project for me just because I wanted to! Yes, I have a large amount of unfinished projects, but they aren't going anywhere. I have several quilts to machine quilt for others (on my Janome 6500) but I needed a me break.

A few months ago I bought the Prickly Pear kit from Bold Over Batiks. I couldn't figure out the directions at first, but finally read them again and it made sense. The designer is Karen Stone and I love her paper pieced patterns but hadn't made any of her applique patterns. I took a before and after picture of one of the blocks and it's amazing the difference the stitching makes.

I am using decorative stitches on my Pfaff 2040 with Madeira Polyneon and Superior Rainbow threads with Superior Bottom Line in the bobbin. It's working wonderfully. Maybe by the time I am done with all 12 blocks I will be able to figure out out to turn corners easier and at the right time!

Webshots Update

I updated my webshots account, will be tweaking it as time goes by, but I put a lot of pictures up there for the last two years of quilting projects!

Giveaway!

Pieceful Afternoon: Drawing Soon - and one more great prize
My friend Jo is having a givewaway on her blog. I am trying to link to it! I just love her hand painted fabrics!

Thread Struggles

I have spent a few days trying to quilt this wallhanging size quilt, or small throw. I was really not thinking and decided to use Superior's Poly Quilter because it had a thickness I wanted to use. However, I didn't have a Topstitch size 16 needle, only a 14 or a denim 16 and really struggled with thread breakage. I think it also had to do with drag on the thread, two layers of batik (and seams also), dense cotton batting and spray basting. I went through all the troublesheeting stuff on the Superior site also.

My kindergarten unit right now is "Stick to It" aka persaverance so did persavere and and finally got the right combination of needles, speed, tension, etc. and finished! I bound it and now have another finished project.

The top is from a "Bag Lady" swap. You send a gallon size bag of fabric/blocks, etc. and get back a finished top. This one was made by Sharon in WA and I love it! I had those two oddball blocks and sent them with a bunch of fabric and I'm thrilled with the results!

I thought this was going to be a quick project in between some commission projects. I have several of those lined up and told myself that I would quilt one of my things in between in each of them.

Happy Valentine's Day

I am actually taking time to post today! It's been a rat race lately it seems with work, meetings, etc. My appointment with the tax man is behind me for the farm and our stuff, I have one out of three kids taxes done. I haven't gotten much in the line of quilting done, but here is what I have accomplished recently.This is a quilt I recently machine quilted for my friend Jo. Most of the quilting is straight lines except for around the motifs in the seed packet blocks. There were some areas left for tying also, which Jo had requested.
Last year my small design group had a UFO auction to raise funds to buy some instructional and technique videos for our group. One member had this walhanging made and even had a piece of batting with it but didn't quilt it. I bought it for $5 and decided to finish it up last week. I added some beads for eyes and lots of fun background quilting and even some metallic thread.
This project has a story. I think I may have posted about it last year, but to save you (and me) the time of digging in my archives I will repeat it! This was a round robin in about 2001. It went missing, supposedly mailed, although the person hadn't done it herself. Early last year the woman who was the last person to see it was home when someone knocked at her door. A woman had been cleaning out her son's bedroom to make a sewing room coincidentally and he was in prison. He had been in a lot of trouble over the years and she found this package in the back of his closet! It had Sue's name on it, so she showed up with it, taking a chance. It wasn't in it's original envelope with my name on it. It turns out the package was in a vehicle and the son had stolen the package looking for something to cell for drug money they assume.

I quilted it several months ago but wanted to add beading and finally finished that up this past week.

My Baby Graduates this Year

My third and youngest child graduates from high school this year. It's also our 25th wedding anniversary three weeks later so it's a milestone year. Brad is following in his sister's footsteps and graduating as valedictorian (how did we get so lucky?) and will be going onto college majoring in agriculture/plant breeding. Doug and I graduated together from the same high school as the kids in the top ten, but we can't remember ever speaking a word to each other and we had a class of 93 students! We met again five years later, courtesy of my sister!

I digress, I stopped in at a little LQS to start collecting fabric for Brad's graduation quilt. We had decided on a log cabin quilt in a "nature" theme. He is an extreme outdoors kid and has studied forestry in 4-H. Little did I know I would walk out of the shop with all the fabric for the quilt including the backing!
Three greens for one side of the log cabin plus the center fabric, ignore my sewing room floor! The carpet was a renmant and is covering concrete!Three browns for the other side of the block along with the center fabric again. Oops this one is blurry, those are pine prints, except the top one which is wheat. The fabrics are in the washer, I will have to replace this photo!The backing. I will be adding a dark green strip and putting the moose piece down the middle and strips on either side of the bear. These are flannel, a request of Brad's since he likes to use my flannel quilt watching TV!

I dug out Amy's graduation quilt photo from 2005. She picked all the fabrics and pattern. I copied it from webshots so it came out small! Amy has already graduated from college and is teaching Jr.High math.
Here is Lisa's from 2006, notice how radically different the color choices are! Smokey the cat loves quilts! Lisa is a college Jr. majoring in Bio Engineering.

I still need to get all my quilt photos off the other computer and onto my thumb drive so I can access them easier.

My other news is there is also a new LQS in my small town of 3,000 people and I also stopped in there and was asked to be featured quilter for March. I am trying to support both shops because I like everybody and I like fabric!

Mini Row Robin starting

I am in a group that is just starting a miniature row robin. I finished my row and will be mailing it off Monday to Virginia. My row measures 3" X 15.5" right now, but will finish at 2.5" X 15". I'm kind of wishing I had made 2" finished baskets but oh well! I am sending along the black and the multi batik. I look forward to working on the other 4 members rows!

Working on another UFO

I set together another set of blocks. They were from a monthly swap group and one was dated 2006. I originally was going to set the with alternate blocks and a pieced border. I finally decided size wise it was going to be big enough with just sashing. The yellow just screamed use me! I will be using that same yellow fabric as a piped border next to a purple binding when ever I get it quilted! Taking a pic on my design wall with a fluorescent light right above isn't the best choice!

A Little Progress

This week I have worked on assembling 18 basket blocks from a monthly block exchange group into a top. I used all my red scraps in the sashings and borders and had to get into my box of reds to cut more. The swap took 18 months, getting one block per month. I underestimated the size and it's just about queen size.
I also put borders on a scrap baby quilt. During Christmas when I was organizing my fabrics I cut up a bunch of bright scraps into 2 1/2" squares. My daughter Lisa wanted to piece something so she got most of it pieced before going back to college. I just had to sew a few more rows and add borders. I finished it up today after the red quilt. I will donate to as of yet undetermined charity after I quilt it.