Sunday Quilting

This is a picture of my hand quilting frame and the project that I have on it right now. It is the left overs from this quilt that I am attempting to use up by doing the flying geese quilt and the blocks on point. You can see a little bit of two of my other quilts hanging on the wall. These were "Pineneedles" designs by MeKenna Ryan. They are "Petals from the Heart" and "A Season in Time" Lots of fusible fun!

It's snowing a bit here today so it is the perfect type of weather to go quilting! We are working on a quilt for our quilt guild and it is turning out really nice. I love sitting around the quilt frame with everyone just talking and laughing. It's like therapy.

Many people say that hand-quilting is dying off but I completely disagree; in fact, I think that right now it is going through a resurrgance. More and more people are interested in traditional hand work and are amazed by how wonderful it is to do. Granted it does take longer to finish a project; but, when I hand quilt something I usually don't do it to have the finished project but rather to have the experience of the project. If it takes me three years to finish a quilt that's okay. Actually, after I finish hand quilting something I usually find that I miss it and wish that I could quilt on it some more.

It's Friday

Well the guild was fun on Wednesday night. We had a doll maker come to talk to us and was that ever entertaining. I am taking a class from her next month and I am really looking forward to it.

Yesterday and today I have been working steadily on getting a package out for the Smiles for Children project. This is a really great project that sends embroidery paper dolls and games to children affected by hurricain Katrina and Rita and now they are being sent to children around the world. If you have an embroidery machine this is a great project to get involved in and if you don't have an embroidery machine they need 8" bags to put the dolls and games in. You can check out the web site here http://www.button-crazy.com/SmilesForChildren if you want more information. This is a picture of my shipment.

Anyways, it's Friday today so have a great weekend everyone.

Quilt Guild Day!

My oldest son is home sick today. Poor kid he's usually so active and he hardly wants to move today. Needless to say I haven't got much sewing done except that I managed to sew the rows together for my flying geese scrap quilt. You can see them here lying on my hand quilting frame again. There are quite a few of them for a left-over scrap quilt don't you think? I still can't decide on the sashing though. I have the strips on background fabric, orange-rust fabric and red as possiblities. I am leaning towards the background fabric and use the rusty fabric for the boarder.

Today is quilt guild day! I always look forward to this for inspiration and for the community in the guild. We have a doll-maker coming to talk to us tonight so that should be fun and I always love show-and-tell.

My first fabric postcard and layout woes

I laid out all the flying geese units last night and it took over an hour to try and lay them out nicely in rows! I had no idea that it was going to take so long. I still managed to have a couple of like units next to each other but it couldn't be helped. I figure that it is only a scrap quilt anyways.
I still haven't decided on the sashing but maybe I'll just "float" the rows with another strip of the backgroung fabric. Decisions, decisions :)

This is a picture of my first fabric post card! This was so fun to do. I machine embroidered the fish, on my Pfaff sewing machine, right on the Timtex and fabric for stability then couched the yarn down on the side for a nice sea-weed effect. The bubbles have tulle in them with metallic thread for the outline. I like the effect. I hope that my friend likes it! I hope it gets through the mail okay! It's fun to try something new.





This is the block that I did today for my quilt guild "tinners" group. It is like a round robin block exchange and lots of fun. At the end of the exchange everyone will have nine blocks using their specific theme and feature fabric. This theme was autumn. The small dots are green and orange crystals. I machine embroidered the block using rayon thread and the blanket stitch. I hope that she will be happy with it!

Quilting today

I don't really know how to start a blog or if there is a way to start them so I guess that I will just begin. I am working on a bunch of use up the stash type quilts lately. I have felt overwhelmed by my stash lately and the amount of left-overs from projects so I decided that before I tackle my next big project I would use up a bunch of what I have while I make really concrete plans for my next quilt.

I did a lap size scrap quilt set on point to use up some charm squares. These were all charms squares from Benartex so I just sewed them together. It's nothing fancy but I think that once it is quilted it will be nice. I plan of doing some intricate feather quilting in the setting triangles and I will quilt the rest in feathers as well. I always find that you can never go wrong with feathers!












And, now I am working on a traditional flying geese quilt. Both of these quilts are using up a bunch of Nancy Harvelson fabrics that I bought for a quilt and then I kept changing my mind about the sashing. You can see a little bit of that quilt under the audition blocks. Right now it is racked on my hand quilting frame. I have got to learn to buy less fabric for projects (yay right!). And so once again I am stuck on what fabric to use for the sashing. I like the orange-rust-purple plaid but what do you think? This quilt will have 407 flying geese set in straight rows with the sashing between them so there will be quite a bit of the sashing fabric showing.