Finished quilting the purple and blue squares quilt

Sunday morning was my morning to sleep in from doggy duty.  Unfortunately, she got loose and came running up the stairs to leap on my bed.  She was going so fast and I was not fully awake to stop her, that she landed right on top of my face with her front paw landing on the space between my lip and my nose.  With her weight and speed she was going, her nails actually drew blood.   I count myself lucky though, because if she had landed just a 1/4" higher it may have been fatal for me.  It was close enough though, that I felt sick for about an hour afterwards.

Needless to say I took it easy for a while.  Had my tea and caught up on some emails and stuff.  When I finally got going I wanted to make the best of the remaining morning, before having to run around with the kids for various things.

What I did was practice my free hand quilting.   The purple and blue squares quilt was small enough to work with.  I did an edge to edge design using the blocks as my outline and did this curvy line grid design.  I think it is part of or known as MacTavishing, but I could be wrong.  Sorry if I am wrong, but I didn't learn this from a book or online so not sure from what source it comes from.

This is a donation quilt.  I will be giving it to a lady at our guild that looks after Project Linus quilts.  

Sunday mid afternoon, I trimmed the quilt.  It's now ready for the binding.  I plan to use a very soft yellow for the binding.  It will go with both the front and the back fabric.

So, now I have another quilt done from my top 12 list for 2017.  We are almost done January, so I have a head start on a finish for February.

1. Quilting-Lise's Dresden plate quilt (commissioned)....

2. Quilting-Sabryna's yellow nine patch quilt (family)....need to add fabric to backing

4. Main work-Mel's romance & roses quilt (family)....

9. Main work-Purple star quilt (my own)....started sewing the blocks 

10. Main work-Grey, black & bright quilt (charity)....

11. Main work-Log cabin quilt from Sharon (charity).... 

5. Handwork-Reconstructed Dresden plate quilt (my own)....9 full blocks left to appliqué
7. Handwork-Mini pumpkin wall hanging (my own)....

6. Paper pieces-Xmas pineapple blossom quilt (my own)....

8. Leader/ender-Bonnie's mystery quilt (my own)....moving along

Total number of quilts completed - 2
Total number of quilts left to be completed - 10

Completed quilts:

3. Spools quilt (my own)

12. Purple & blue squares quilt from Carol (charity)

Organizing quilts to be quilted

I took some time last week to organize the quilt tops ready to be quilted.  Here are some of them.  

Not much room for anymore and not all of the quilts are there.  I really need to have/find some time to do some serious quilting.  Some of the tops are waiting until I can do some more practice, with free motion quilting.

On another note, I love this block that Bonnie Hunter shared with us.  Her fabrics choices are funky together.  Gorgeous.  I hope she makes this one into a full quilt for one of her future books.  This is one that I seriously would want to make to use up a bunch of my scraps.  All the blocks different colours.  I believe it would be stunning when put together.

I am off to catch up on some reading for the business.

A bit of this and a bit of that

Right now it seems as though I have no real direction.  I have been doing a bit of this and a bit of that. I'm still making progress, but it's scattered.

Though my purple stars quilt is my main work, I haven't worked on it for a while.  I did manage to get the sashing attached to all the completed blocks.  I have a total of six out of thirty completed.

I got distracted by a pretty pile of purple and blue blocks.  Today I did get the top done.  This one is going to be a simple, small baby quilt.  I have a quilting design I want to practice that uses squares.  The backing fabric is already picked out and both top and backing are waiting in line to be quilted.

While I was cleaning up a bit in my quilting room, I went and got myself into some more trouble, with another distraction.  

I pulled out the pretty and bright log cabin blocks that my friend Carol given me to finish.  In the past few days I have been seeing all sorts of inspiration both at the quilt guild meeting and on Pinterest.

I've decided to assemble these blocks in a reversable quilt fashion.  Plus, I am going to set the blocks on a diagonal with the dark sides together and the light sides together to create columns going up and down the quilt.  I am going to use one fabric that contains many of these colours to make a border of sorts, with half squares triangles.

So far, I already have eight blocks quilted!  It's all in my head right now, but I am hopping that the end results will be just an nice when the quilt is done.  You'll have to let me know what you think.

Purple and blue squares quilt

I have again been distracted from working on my Purple Stars quilt.  For some reason I am delaying them.  I don't know why, because I really do want to see that quilt completed.

So what distracted me this time?  Seeing a pretty little pile of nicely trimmed blocks ready to be sewn together into a quilt.  That is what has grabbed my attention, this time.

I have all the pairs sewn together and laid out on my table.  I even have the bottom six rows assembled in rows and assembled to each other.  This quilt is going to be a small, simple baby quilt and is made with all donated fabrics, which will be donated to Project Linus when done.

I am thinking that I have been so busy these days, that my brain was just wanting to have some mindless sewing, or at least that is how I am justifying it!!!  Don't burst my bubble and let me continue to think this way, ok!  ;)

Finished quilting my Spools quilt

I finished the first quilt from my top 12 priority list.  That is one for January.  Eleven more months and eleven more quilts to do.  It may be touch and go, about getting them all done, as some of these quilts still have a lot to be done on them.  I am up for it!

This is my spools quilt.  I really enjoyed making this quilt, with all the variety of fabrics in there.  This quilt I am keeping for myself, for now.  I can't bare to part with it.  It is so cheerful!

I really like how the quilting turned out.  This was quilted on my longarm using a pantograph from Urban Elementz by Tracey Russell and Patricia Ritter called Pergola.  The design has a soft and feminine feel to it.

On the back you can see the texture better, especially because the backing is a soft grey.  The picture almost looks like a black and white photo, but it's not.  That is the backing colour.

I am chugging along....slow, but steady.  Today I had to finish the binding to this quilt, as I am taking it along to the guild meeting tomorrow.  I've been working on something else today too, but that will be for another post.

So here is my progress on my top 12 list for 2017.  

1. Quilting-Lise's Dresden plate quilt (commissioned)....

2. Quilting-Sabryna's yellow nine patch quilt (family)....next in line to get quilted

4. Main work-Mel's romance & roses quilt (family)....

5. Handwork-Reconstructed Dresden plate quilt (my own)....9 full blocks left to appliqué

6. Paper pieces-Xmas pineapple blossom quilt (my own)....

7. Handwork-Mini pumpkin wall hanging (my own)....

8. Leader/ender-Bonnie's mystery quilt (my own)....started sewing on this one

9. Main work-Purple star quilt (my own)....started sewing the blocks together

10. Main work-Grey, black & bright quilt (charity)....

11. Main work-Log cabin quilt from Sharon (charity).... 

12. Main work-Purple & blue squares quilt from Carol (charity)....started sewing rows together

Total number of quilts completed - 1
Total number of quilts left to be completed - 11

Completed quilts:

3. Spools quilt (my own)

Finished quilting the shadow quilt

This is called a shadow quilt.  The strips where given to me by a friend that no longer wanted them.  The strips were sew in groups of five for the whole width of the fabric.  I went and bought some black to go with this.  I cut the half square triangles along the length of the strips and attached them to the black half to make the squares.

This pattern can be laid out in many ways.  I just decided to do it the traditional way.

This is a charity quilt that I will give to my guild at the end of the month.  I tried my hand at doing a pantograph by hand instead of computer.  It turned out good.  I can see some wobbles, but when you look at it as a whole, they are not so noticeable.

I still find it easier to do free motion designs with loops or stippling than I do following someone else's pattern, but that is what practice is for.  I have to get my brain and hand coordinated where my hands and arms go through the motions enough times that it gets saved to memory in my brain.  I think I also need to relax a little bit more too.  That sometimes helps make things smoother.

Here is a close up of the quilting.  The quilt just needs the binding now.  I have it already sewn on by machine and waiting for some time to finish it by hand.

Completed block #1 for my Purple stars quilt

At the end of the year I had decided what I was going to do with my UFOs.  I set a list of my top 12 priority quilts/wall hangings.  I determined that I was going to start with my Purple stars quilt, as my main work and work on my Xmas Solstice star quilt as the leader/ender.

Well......we are now the middle of the month and I finally got started on piecing my blocks.  I finished block #1, seen below, with the sashings attached.  I had about six other blocks completed from before and decided to add the sashings to all of them too.

While working on the blocks above, I also worked on my leader/ender quilt and managed to get all of these done.

I like both these quilts and want to see them done.  I would love to use the Xmas quilt by the end of this year.  It would be nice.  We will see how long I can work on these two quilts before I get distracted yet again with something else.

I do have to make some blocks for the guild.  I have been asked to host a presentation.  They wish me to show them how I do my reversable quilt blocks and how I put them all together.  I will have to make blocks in various stages of completion for the next guild meeting the last Monday of January.

This will be one distraction and as life always does, I am sure there will be more distractions thrown in there.  That is what makes life interesting!