WONKY HEARTS

A crazy week again. Lots of fussing with the dishwasher.  It kept coming up with an error E15  which means it is leaking.  Service man out twice can't find the problem, but will not wash the dishes either without flooding the house.  It is only 5 years old and go figure the purchased plan ran out in February.  So yes, had to purchase a new one.  Needless to say I did not get a lot done, other than washing dishes by hand.  

I am still making a few table runners for my guild's January quilt show boutique.  This runner was fabric that was in a scrap bin I was given to sort through.  It is 13 by 28 inches.  I found the wiggly pattern of the fabric interesting.  And the fabric is cut on the straight of grain, the fabric lines are wonky.

I have lots of rulers, in fact I am an admitted tools hoarder.  This little beauty has been in a drawer for years, never used it until I decided to quilt that heart runner.

I am not a free motion quilter, just have never been able to get it.  I use the serpentine stitch for small items on my sewing machine with variegated thread.  Normally I will do straight lines but the wonky lines on this runner just did not seem to look like it would work well at all.  So I figured just to try out that ruler.

The result really looks great.  I plan to remember this trick.

These last two quilts on my agenda are ready to do the handwork on the bindings for my charity group.  This process is that last step for completing them.  They were pieced by someone, quilted by another person and then handed out to others like myself to finish the binding.  The perfect evening TV watching chore.

      

  

   

THE ELEMENTS QUILT AND ROCK GARDENS

 I have been back into the sewing room a bit this week.  We are still doing a major overhaul of the garden.  I have been cutting donated yardage into 1/4 up to 3 and 4 yards of fabric and pricing it for the guild's quilt show as well.  My quilter finished my elements quilt so I want to get the binding on it.  

I love the elements fabric in this quilt, lots of different fabrics went into it.

The back with typewriter keys seemed perfect for it.  

The major part of the backyard garden overhaul is finished.  We carted 2,800 pounds of rock into the planter areas and now the tomatoes, bell peppers, and spinach are in planters with a drip watering system.  We live in a drought area of California and many of us have converted from lawns to rock gardens.  We are only allowed two days a week watering in the fall and winter and three in the summer months.  Neighbors with lawns water bills can easily mount up to $600 a month and higher in summer months as our temperatures often get into the 100's and last summer often up to 110 and one day 115.  Looking forward to lots of fun veggies this summer.  

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THE JELLY ROLL TWIST

These last few days our cold and rainy weather finally seemed to take a break and we have been out in our backyard doing an overhaul of the planting areas and generally just cleaning up and scaling down the clutter.  So I have not had a great deal of time to spend in my sewing room. 

My daughter sent me a pattern and it seemed a really great idea to make into table toppers for our upcoming January quilt show's boutique.  I will measure 17" square when finished.

While the pattern supplied by The Fat Quarter Shop uses Jelly Rolls and Charm Packs I have a good supply of red fabrics that could be cut in the 5" squares and 2.5" strips.

Oh yes, lots of red fabric left overs and yes I did pop in to Hobby Lobby and pick up an additional 7 half yards.  More is always better!

And I have a good supply of blues left over from a Jelly Roll Race quilt top I finished off a couple weeks ago.

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THE WILD ONE AND THE THANK GOODNESS IT IS FINISHED

This last couple of weeks I have been working on two projects.  One for my charity group and one just for fun.  Fabric is taking over the sewing room so I have been trying to get around to just doing something with some of these fabric collections besides them just sitting on the shelves in the closet or wire bins.  

This wild print collection has been hanging around for probably years in the closet.  The idea was to just put something together and give it to my guild's charity group.  Somewhere along I sort of fell in love with it.  Not my normal fabric choices.  The blocks are 9 inches finished, the top three rows are sewn together just finishing up the bottom two now.  At 45" square finished it still seemed a bit small and needing some calming down.  I decided to find fabric for a border and binding and did get that purchased just this past week.  It is going to be a keeper at least until I find another home for it.  Stay toned for its finished over the next week or two.  

Chop Stix5 from last week is finished.  It was somewhat of a challenge for some reason.  There were several trips back and forth laying it out on the bed to figure out all those sides and corners.  This project was a charity group request for me to put together for them.  There were a few days when I bundled it up and set it aside thinking it might go back to them half finished.  In the end it worked out well and will probably quilt up beautifully.

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JELLY ROLL RACING

 This week I decided to tackle my 2.5" strips.  I am in the habit when making bindings, to take the left overs and keep them.  I also when cutting strip for binding find that if I have just a bit of the fabric left over and it is enough to cut just one more strip I do that as well.

My method is this large glass jar.  I just toss them into it.  Sometimes there are even bags with 5 to even 7 matching strips in it.  Those are the ones that I cut for a quilt, and then forgot I did that and cut more later when the quilt returned from my quilter.  Over a period of time the jar has become very full.

And this is what I end up with, except the blue piles were much much lager than shown here.

The end results, it measures 56" by 60" and a binding prepared to go with it.  Off to my charity group and looks like those red, yellow, purple, green, turquoise and yes still some blue strips left over are next.

Yes, definitely need to do something with the other colors and prints.  And I am off to the Jelly Roll Races with 10 rows done and 40 to go.

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WONKY WALL HANGINGS AND CHOP STIX5

 I finished my wonky block wall hanging this past week.  A fun project using left over fabric from the previous week's pleated quilt top craziness.  I gave the pleated blocks quilt top to my charity group admitting to them it was likely to be one big headache to quilt.  Go figure, they loved it and the group had all sorts of quilting ideas for it. 

Quilting the wonky blocks with a straight line diaginal pattern every two inches seemed like the best way to  handle it.

I put a larger binding on it 3" rather than my usual 2.5".

It was finished off with a hanging sleeve on the back.  I think it will make a nice wall hanging next winter for our entry hall.  I was happy to make good use of the fabrics I really liked so much in the pleated quilt.

After turning in the pleated quilt project in to the group they handed me another charity group project.  This pattern and all the fabric to make it in a bag ready to go.

I have had the project home since Wednesday afternoon so decided to start working on it right away.  Fun project with fun fabrics.  the white fabric does have a light gold yellow floral print in it.  Hard to see here.  Should have this ready to return to them by next month's meeting in April all finished and ready to go to a quilter.

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PLEATED BLOCKS OUT AND WONKY BLOCKS IN

After last week's pleated quilt issues, I was bummed out that all that pretty fabric was used up only to discover that I actually had a pretty good supply of left overs.  I happened to have a picture of an interesting quilt idea and thought it might be a fun idea for those fabrics.

These wonky blocks on this quilt out of Circle Play by Reynola Pakusich looked interesting.  There was no pattern in the book so I figured to get on the internet and see if I could find some instructions on making some similar blocks. 

Sure enough several YouTube sites offered help making them.  I did learn that while they suggested using 9 fabrics to make 9 blocks, in the future to get a bit more variety I would increase that by at least another 2 or 3 fabrics.  However, I was limited on left over fabrics.

The top is complete and now just to quilt it and get a binding on it.  Again I wish I had a bit more variety, as only using 9 fabrics you get 9 repeats, but it was a fun exercise playing with the idea.  I think it is something I will revisit with more fabric choices.  I should have it quilted this week and bound.

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SEWING MACHINE CONFESSIONS AND PLEATED BLOCK NIGHTMARES

Having finished most of my current projects I hauled my smaller Bernina 480 sewing machine off to have a good cleaning.  I am ashamed to say time flies and it had not been to the doctor for a good checkup for nearly 5 years.  I do vacuum it regularly and oil it, but that really was no excuse, and the technition gave me a well deserved lecture.  My Bernina 750 needs to see him now too and fortunately that length of time has not gone by that long.

I got my February Sherri McConnell 2025 Block of the Month completed.  I am not sure I am into this project.  I may pass these two blocks on to a friend and let her deal with them.  

I did pull out this project that was started years ago.  I love the fabric choices but the blocks are really odd and they have sat in a drawer now for years.  However, I decided this past week to get them put together and off my TO DO SOMEDAY LIST.  

The twisted  block construction was odd to say the least.  They were a nightmare to sew together and whoever the poor quilter is that has to quilt them I feel sorry for.  I have it all bagged up and it is going to my charity group.  I plan to slip it into the completed quilt tops stack at our next meeting and hope no one knows it was me.

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NEW TABLERUNNERS AND PLACEMATS

 This week after finishing my king size bedspread, shams, and deco pillows has me finally getting into tackling some projects that really need to be worked on.  

I have a quit top all started with these Eclectic Elements by Jim Holtz.  It is just needing borders on it to finish it up.  Hopefully I will have it finished and ready to post next week.  However I ended up with 12 extra blocks left over.  I made two of these table runners with them that are 27" by 18".  Seemed a shame to waste them.

My husband is my color expert so is my shopping sidekick.  He saw this fabric at Hobby Lobby and decided it would be a great choice for placemats at our diner table.  So that is a quick project to get going this week. One done and three to go.

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TWO PROJECTS FINISHED

 I finished the bedspread at last.  A done job.  Hope to get started on some new fun projects and I do have a couple that just need a bit here and there before going to the quilters.  

What an ordeal but so worth the effort.  Fits the bed perfectly and no need to use a bed ruffle any longer.  Will I ever do something like this again Well, probably NO!

I finished Acrobat.  There was a bit of a decision as to whether to use the block on the right side third row.  The stripes do not match.  Many of you bloggers commented and said to leave it in.  Once I also had a second one the right side top row block, I figure why not it is a bit off too.  They seem to fit right in with no real issues.  Nice to have it finished and off to my charity group to finish it.

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THE KING SIZE BED SPREAD PROJECT

A few weeks ago I got my bedspread, shams, and deco pillows back from the quilter.  I got the deco pillows finished with their envelope backs two weeks ago .

Then this past week finally managed to get both shams completed with their envelope backs as well.

I will admit I have been trying to avoid binding the quilt. So I decided with left over fabric to make some table runners for a small table in our bedroom's sitting room, and both night stands and the dresser top.

This is the one that is on the little table in our sitting room.  The others are similar just different sizes to match the night stands and dresser tops.

Well last week I finally had no choice but to work on binding the bedspread.  Binding a 100" by 120" quilt looked like a nightmare.  I moved my machine to the dining room table on Saturday morning and went for it.  I added to the difficulty by rounding the two bottom corners.  I was not going to use bias binding for the entire thing, so only cut two, 24 inches of bias binding and placed that around those two corners and then cut standard binding for the rest of it.  I just joined the bias binding sections to the straight cut binding as I sewed around on each side.  In the end it worked perfectly and was not as awful of a chore as I thought it would be.  Now to finish the binding by hand, a chore I do not mind doing at all.  I don't think I will ever do something like this again, but it really is beautiful and the colors perfect for our bedroom. 

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A FINISH AND SOME NEW STARTS

 I survived the A/C/Heater replacement last week.  Glad that is finished.  Now time to get my bedspread, shams and a scrap quilt finished and start something new. 

I finished my scrap quilt and prepared a binding for it now it is off next month to the charity group for quilting and finishing up the binding process.

Several months ago I started this Acrobatic quilt and decided to play with the blocks a bit.  Not very happy with the one on the far right as the stripes cannot be matched so may toss that one and cut out a different background fabric.  It is to be a charity quilt as well, so have to think about it when all 9 are done and see where I go with that idea. 

Happened on to this block of the month startup and decided to take some of my small scrap fabrics and work on getting them into something fun.  These blocks are supposed to be 18.5" square when done.  I am keeping them at the 10.5" which will make a 36" by 48" quilt which I could add borders to make it a bit larger.  Will see how that goes as I move along through the year.  

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TABLE RUNNERS AND DECORATIVE PILLOWS

 This past week I managed a good deal in the sewing room.  Our heater, AC unit, and ducting for them which is under the house had to be replaced.  We had 3 or 4 technicians for 3 days crawling around in the attic, under the house, and in the hall way closet from 8 until 4:30 and almost 5:30 one night.  With no heat and our temperatures in the high 40's or low 50's and only the two space heaters they provided it was pretty much the plan for us to stay locked up in the living room or the sewing room.  I select the sewing room for most of the days.  I got a good deal accomplished.  

I shopped a week or so ago to find some fabric to make a couple of winter table runners.  A comment from one of my bloggers about blue being a good winter color had me going through my stash and I found some really nice blue prints.  I had a couple of great patterns and whipped up these two in two of the days in lock up.

 Several months ago I embarked on making a new bedspread for our king size bed.  I was determined to do away with the dust ruffle on the bed, which required me to make the bedspread 100" by 120" rather than the normal king size I could have purchased.  I got the bedspread, pillow shams and these two decorative pillows on the 14th back from my quilter.  I started work on these two deco pillows.  Just needed to get the envelope backs on them.  I decided to start small and move on from there.   

I am using the fabric that I backed the quilt with.  So it is now on to the pillow shams.  Once I have the house all put back together I will bring my sewing machine out into the dining room and bind the quilt.  I am going to need lots of space to get that accomplished. 

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