Feedsack Fabrics and Friends

I'm starting off the New Year with a lot of starts but no finishes.  So far, I'm working on five projects, one time sensitive, three sew alongs and one UFO.  It doesn't help that during all of this creating, I received my copy of Feed Sacks by Linzee Kull McCray which is, as it states on the cover, "The Colorful History of a Frugal Fabric."  It is an absolutely beautiful book, over 500 pages of feed sack history and photos of the many feed sack prints which I just love.  I happen upon this book from reading one of the many blogs I discovered ever since I started blogging and thought I could order it from Amazon.  Much to my surprise, it's not available from them so I had to do a little bit of searching to find it is only available from Uppercase Magazine (here is the link: Uppercase Magazine) which turned out to be a pretty awesome website and I ended up purchasing another book and magazine subscription.

When I started quilting almost twenty years ago, I fell immediately in love with feed sack fabrics which right around that time, feed sack reproduction fabrics were becoming available but in very few prints.  Fortunately for me, I had friends who had original feed sack fabrics in their stash and shared some with me.  Without their generosity, I would have never been able to make these three quilts which I dearly love and to me are my "antique" quilts.

These feed sack quilts and my other projects which are in the works have always been handwork projects done during traveling on road trips.  I realize now that they are all appliquéd or hand pieced which I don't do very often.

I already have the tendency to save all of my scraps especially my feed sack scraps which to me they are like gold.  My friends thought I was crazy to do this but I saved all of the quarter circles that were cut from making the clamshells to make these 2" circles, some of which I happily sent some to Susan Snooks in Australia since I thought she would appreciate them.

And getting back to feed sack fabrics and friends theme of this post, when my husband and I travelled to Oregon several years ago, I went to a quilt shop and the owner kindly gave me some original feed sack fabrics from her stash.  I must have a face that says feed me feed sack fabrics.  Actually I had shown her my photo of the feed sack circles and she knew then I was a feed sack fanatic.  I'm now inspired to start working on one of my Feed Sack WIPs but right now I have to wait for the next road trip which will be traveling to Yellowstone this summer.  I don't know if I can wait that long though.

Now back to an update for this week's activities; they are:

• sewed a backing for an UFO quilt (Just My Type)
• cut fabric pieces for the Smitten Paper Piece sew-along (Five Large Hexagons)
• die-cut or triangle paper  (320) 1-1/2" HST for Country Threads Homey Triangle Sew Along (doing two quilts)
• Baby Shower Favors

My 2017 Minus 100 Yard Challenge Balance so far:  Minus 6 yards

I haven't purchased any new fabric and have been tempted with the new Cotton + Steel lines.  I even placed an order with Missouri Star Quilt yesterday and did not order any fabric, just some notions--totally unheard of, right?  Going to do some housework now so I can continue working on my projects tonight.  Hopefully I will have a finish for next week and adding some more yardage to the challenge log.

Sew strong!

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Planning for 2017 Finished, First Project and Starting at Zero

I have to say I've enjoyed the first week of the year despite the bitter cold we've been experiencing.  Since New Years Day fell on a Sunday this year it meant that my annual tradition of reviewing my prior year quilt activities and planning new projects while watching the Rose Parade was done over two days instead of one day.  I've already did my 2016 review so I spent some time on New Years Day looking over projects I wanted to do in 2017 and writing them in my Quilters Planner.  I watched the Rose Parade the next day on Monday and I have to say I enjoyed watching the parade without the distraction of thinking about my projects. All of the floats were really beautiful and colorful.  It's on my bucket list to go to Pasadena and see the parade live.

Thanks goodness the 2017 Quilter Planner has two pages of project planning which now allows you to list up to sixty; I am at 45.  I have a good mix of projects on my pages, some of them commitments, some UFO's, some machine quilting I have to do or my LAQ, some projects already cut and ready to sew, some projects kitted and room for some que sera sera projects when I get the inspiration the make something I see on Pinterest, Blogs, etc.  I have to say I was pretty excited about these projects and wish I could morph myself into eight persons since there were so many projects I wanted to start working on.  But, my sewing project for my daughter-in-law's upcoming Baby Shower which is later this month is taking priority so I was only able to start one project.

While reading other quilters' blogs I noticed that some of them have a word for 2017.  My word last year was LIMIT which meant I wanted to limit buying new fabrics.  Unfortunately, I subconsciously added the word NO before LIMIT so I did buy a lot of fabric, in fact, way too much new fabric.  I just can't resist Cotton + Steel fabrics and sale fabrics.  And it doesn't help when one of my sewing peeps, Dee, sends me photos of her mail call and Carol buys me fabrics when she's at Jinny Beyer's shop in Virginia.

 So instead of coming up with a word for 2017 I came up with a challenge for myself; the Minus 100 Yards Challenge.  My goal at the end of the year is to decrease my stash by 100 yards which means tracking what I use for anything I make, quilt top, backing, binding, etc.  Since it obviously doesn't work for me to say I can't buy any new fabric,  it allows me to buy fabric but it will offset any reduction I make.  These are my guidelines:

• Any new fabric ordered in 2016 but does not arrive until 2017 does not count.
• Any fabric that is part of a monthly sample box, i.e., Fat Quarter Shop Sew Sample and Pink Castle's Cotton + Steel Monthly Fat Quarter Club does not count since I am currently enrolled in these programs.  Any new program I join will count.
• Any fabric that is given to me as a gift, at no charge or won on a bet or giveaway does not count.  I may start participating in giveaways.
• Fabric donated or given to a friend, organization, cause, etc. counts as a reduction.
• Fabric usage will be rounded up, I am on my honor not to inflate this figure.

I think this goal is pretty attainable since I already estimated my yardage usage for the 2017 projects. Just the twelve baby quilts for my church's Blanket Ministry alone will decrease my stash by 42 yards and when the tops are quilted and bound, another 50 yards.  And who know how many baby quilts I can make for my not yet arrived grand baby.  Also, I could make a fabric donation to help reach my goal or fabric bomb some unsuspecting friends.   I've created my log sheet and as you can see I am starting the year at Zero.  I passed my first big test because one of the first e-mails on New Years Day was from Pink Castle Fabrics informing me that the latest Cotton+ Steel fabric was in and was I tempted.  I just have to wait until March when it will be added to the month's fat quarter bundle which I receive and does not count.  Thankfully, Dee and Carol are aware of my challenge and they too will be limiting their fabric purchases this year.  And I hope UPS, Fed Ex or the mail carrier enjoy their lighter workload.

So this week I started reducing my stash by working on my first project, a sew along which Connie Tesene proposed last year, Red Pepper's Modified Pickle Dish which so happens to be now the first project I changed or as I call it MODI-DIED.  

                  Rose's Flutterby                                                                   Connie's Modifed Pickle Dish

I just wasn't enthused about cutting all the drunkard path blocks and sewing curves and since there wasn't a die that I could buy, I just found a different pattern that I think sort of has the same essence:  Jen Kingwell's Flutterby pattern.  I modi-died the original pattern which was a 10" block and made it a 12" block since I had the dies to make this block this size. This is my first Flutterby block which I wanted to test to make sure the patches were cut to the right size which you should do.  Maybe being a little over-confident that this would work, I have to admit I already die-cut all the pieces and I'm ready to start sewing the rest of the patches.  Once the thirty blocks are made I will add the fabric usage to my log which should be around five yards.  There is another sew-along I'm doing this year with my friend Carol, Lucy Carson Kingwell's Smitten pattern, which we are paper piecing and there is no chance of me changing, and I want to do a test block this weekend.  Who would have thought I would be doing two Kingwell projects after my Gypsy Wife experience which would have been lovely had I been able to use either my shape-cut ruler or die-cutter.

My 2017 projects are off to a good start and the challenge has begun.  There is a TV show that I recently started watching "Two Broke Girls" which at the end of the show they always show a cash balance, the premise of which I don't know why, but I'm going to end my posts for the rest of the year with my current Minus 100 Yard Challenge balance and this post it's ZERO.  Wish me luck or you can send me fabric, no, don't, just kidding.  I wish everyone a good creative year for 2017.

 MINUS 100 YARDS CHALLENGE BALANCE -0-

Finally Finished for 2016; I Have Forty Blocks For My Bible Quilt

I just posted my 2016 review this past Tuesday and mentioned that I only completed 35 out of the 40 blocks for the Women of the Bible Quilt.  I wasn't expecting to finish the final five blocks this year but after I saw an alternative layout for these blocks on Pinterest the other day I was determined to finish them even if it meant some modifications which I'll explain later.

15" Blocks 

10" Blocks

The free block patterns were provided by Stitchin' Tree Quilts and are still available online.  I thought this would be a fun and meaningful quilt to start making at the beginning of this year since I was also going to start my daily reading of NIV's The One Year Bible.  There are twelve 15 inch blocks and twenty-eight 10" blocks, each representing a women from the Bible and the goal was to make one block a week and to be done by the end of October.  My friend, Dee, joined me in this project.  The two fabric lines used in my blocks were Amanda Nyberg's Good Neighbor and Emily Herrick's Technicolor which I thought worked well with each other and I also added some Riley Blake for one happy color combination.

I had thirty blocks done by the end of August at which time my past experience with participating in quilt alongs caught up with me--I didn't want to finish the rest of the blocks.  Some of these blocks reminded me of some of the Gypsy Wife blocks with the odd patch sizes.  I am not a big fan of cutting any measurements in increments that are not whole, 1/2" or 1/4".  If there was a merit badge for rotary cutting, I would not receive one.  I much rather make quilts if I can use my die cutter or one of my many shape cut rulers. Plus, some of the Bible pattern instructions were confusing which didn't help since I'm also not very patient.  So the blocks were put away until the beginning of December and I sewed five more blocks.  I kept thinking of ways of I could finish the quilt without finishing the last five.  Like the Gypsy Wife quilt, I was not excited with the way the quilt was to be finished so my last thought was to turn all of the 10" blocks into 15" blocks by sewing a 3" strips of coordinating fabrics around the block but I didn't like they way they looked.  Thankfully, I found my solution on Pinterest where I saw the alternative layout that Studio M did which you can see here:  Women of the Bible Alternative Layout.  To me, I think it's a more appropriate layout for a bed quilt.  So, I had to sew the last five blocks and wanted to be done by the end of the year so I finished them in three days despite having a cold and working on baby shower invitations and planning.  (I'm going to be a first-time Grandmother in March!)  Since I modified some of these blocks I don't feel right in calling this a Women of the Bible Quilt so for me it's my Bible Quilt and I can add it to my  UFO Project List for 2017.  With the new layout, I'm actually am looking forward to making this top.

Now I ready for my New Year Day project of planning my 2017 activities which I am sure a lot of other quilters will be doing.   I hope everyone has a safe Happy New Year celebration and don't do any crazy rotary cutting.

2016 Was A Very Good Quilt Year

After deliberating for several years, I finally decided to start my blog after hearing on a podcast that a blog was a great way to keep track of your quilting activities and with encouragement from Susan Snooks, PatchworknPlay, who told me it would be pretty easy to build one.  And, surprisingly, it was although I did ask Susan a lot of questions.  Since we are in the final week of 2016 and am pretty sure there will be no more completed projects, I thought it would be a good time to do a Year in Review post.

First, the 2016 stats:

• 13 Quilts Completed (Tops sewn and quilted in 2016)
• 9 Quilts Tops (will be official UFOs in 2017)
• 2 UFOs finally completed
• 5 Tops made in 2015 and quilted in 2016
• 4 Baby Quilts made for family and friends
• 12 Baby Quilts made for my Church Blanket Ministry
• 5 Wall Quilts (Two completed and three to be quilted and bound)
• 35/40 Women of the Bible blocks sewn
• Rug Weaving (Three rugs, one table runner and numerous rug mugs completed

I still feel that I don't spend enough time in my studio but housework, working out, dog walking, volunteering and computer time for Pinterest, Facebook and reading and writing blogs always come first; I am so thankful that my husband does all of the cooking.

And now some photos:

UFOs:

My big accomplishment, besides starting the blog, was finally finishing the Lori Smith wool appliqué which had been waiting for the borders to be added for over five years and the Kaffe Champaign Orange Yo-Yo quilt which was a WIP that lasted almost four years.

Completed Quilts:

Jelly Roll Charm Chase 

Low Volume Wild 8 Coverlet

Judy B Grandmother Log Cabin

Blue Lives Matter (Stacked Squares pattern)

Bits of Sunshine  (FQS Jolly Bar pattern)

Ernie (inspired by Mary Etherington)

Ernie II  

Wild Ernie

Easy Addition Plus 

Unruly (My Quilt Infatuation pattern)

Amy Butler Coverlet 

Story Coverlet

Pinterest Club Gray and Yellow

Out of the thirteen quilts completed during 2016, two of them were quilted by my LAQ, Jan and the rest were quilted by me which was a pretty good accomplishment since I was experiencing problems with doing straight line quilting on my Juki 2010Q.  Thankfully this was finally resolved this past October and am now looking forward to machine quilting the tops I made this year and previous years which may total more than two dozen.

The five UFO quilts from 2015, two quilted by my LAQ and three by me:

Lefty C+S

Righty C+S

Holly Jolly Bar

Gypsy Wife Sampler

Asian Blossom Happy Lappy

Baby Quilts for Friends and Family (all quilted by me)

Two Completed Wallhangings:

I'm happy to say that I won't be photographing any more quilts with the white plastic hangers since I found the perfect quilt hangers for photographing, Boot Hangers with Swivel Hooks.  And I do have to acknowledge that I put my three die-cutters to good use during the course of the year and I received a fourth die-cutter, Sizzix Big Shot Plus, for Christmas.

2016 was a very good year for piecing, quilting, buying lots of fabric, thank-you Dee and Carol, connecting with quilting friends, here, there and down under, blogging, learning new things, Hell-o Pic-Monkey and finding out what I don't want to do.  I have a big challenge for 2017 which I will post the next time along with my future activities.  Hopefully, my creative energies will continue next year.   Yes, a blog does keep you on track.  Thanks again, Susan!

Final Quilt Finish for 2016, I think.....

I made the quilt top earlier this year and recently realized that this would make a nice Christmas gift for a certain someone so I spent this past weekend quilting and binding it.  Since we are experiencing sub-zero weather lately, only a crazy quilter, like me, would go outside to take  a photo of this quilt since I didn't like the way the inside photo turned out.

The top was made from a Pinterest Club kit which was several years old and was purchased from Country Threads.  I added some fabrics to make this quilt which measures 40"x56", a nice size for a lap warmer. To make this quilt soft and snuggly and really warm, I put fleece in the middle, in lieu of batting, and used gray Minky for the back.  I have found from working with Minky and fleece in the past, you don't have to quilt it much since both are synthetic material.

I only quilted the top and fleece together and then added the Minky to the back by tacking all three layers at the block corners.  The Minky is secured further once the binding was sewn on.  When I quilted the top and fleece together, I used Missouri Star Quilt Co. polyester thread with a 90/14 Jersey Knit needle and it turned out beautifully.  Since I started using a Janome Walking foot on my Juki 2010Q, I have been beyond happy with my machine quilting.  As you can see on the photos below, there were no dreaded pinches or puckers where the quilting intersected which happened a lot when I used the Juki Walking Foot.

Lately, I've been basting my quilts with quilters straight pins (they're almost 2" long).  I really like the ease of using straight pins but unfortunately don't like the inevitable pricks and pokes on my fingers, arms and stomach so maneuvering the quilt is done very slow and very carefully.  I think the next best invention would be a combination straight pin and safety pin.  Using Pinmoors would be an answer but unfortunately are way too expensive--$35/100.  I did find an alternative to these which is buying a roll of 20 ft. polyfoam caulk saver for $3.00 which will give you  approximately 240 1" pieces.  I found this idea from the Closet Crafter; here is the link:  Closet Crafter .

When I first made them and used them, I found they were quite staticky and stuck to my fingers and flew around the floor.  So, I ended wrapping each one with 1" blue painters tape which helped.  I do used them but sometimes find it annoying that I first have to pin the quilt first and then go back and add these.  Plus, some of them do fall off during quilting so you still end up getting poked, but for the price I pay for these, it's worth it.  But when I feel like quilting dangerously, I just use straight pins, especially for small quilts.

 So for the remainder of this week I'm going to focus on getting ready for the holidays and when there is a lull, I'l work on my Women of the Bible Blocks which I started at the beginning of the year.  As of yesterday,  I made 33 out of the 40 blocks so there may be a good chance I can finish the remaining seven blocks by the end of the year.  But then I do have other tops laying around that I would love to machine quilt.  I do need to order a roll of batting and am waiting until next month to buy it.  I didn't tell my hubby this because I didn't want it to be my Christmas present.

I hope everyone enjoys their holiday and Santa brings you something special.

Cheers!

Hanging It Up: The Quest for the Perfect Hanger

Ever since I started pinning my quilts on Pinterest around four years ago and posting them on Facebook over a year ago, I've been trying to find interesting ways to photograph my quilts.  I love seeing the photos of quilts hung in beautiful outdoor locations on other Quilters' blogs.  Unfortunately, my house sits on a typical suburban lot with no interesting tree branches or fences to hang my quilts on nor do I have a beautiful garden. Plus, I really don't want the neighbors seeing what I'm doing since none of them are quilters, I don't want to have to explain myself.  So the majority of my quilts have been photographed, using my hand-me-down iPhone 4 given to me by my son when he upgraded to a new one, on my small front porch on the bench or hanging from either the screen room door  or outside patio door.  The bench is a nice place to photograph my quilts but sometimes to get the full effect of the quilt, you need to hang it up.

My quilts were first hung on clear plastic skirt hangers and then I graduated to using white skirt hangers purchased from Wal-Mart but I still wanted a more polished look.  This was a sorry attempt to hang my quilt on an angle and it almost fell off the top hanger.

Always on a lookout for the right hangers, I thought I found my answer when I was looking through my Material Obsessions book by Kathy Doughty and noticed that when she photographed her quilts outside, she used these metals clips with S hooks and the search was on.  The closest that I could get to this was purchasing metal beach towel clips and 3" S hooks.

I  really liked how it photographed but the problem was that sometimes the S hook would fall off of the clips when I was just about to hang it which is annoying when you're standing on your tippy toes.  BTW, this quilt was hung on my garage door which is now a new location for a quilt photo shoot and you should have heard when one of my neighbors was driving by and hitting the car brakes to see what I was doing.

So, again I went searching and finally found what I have been looking for:  Hanging Boot Clips with Swivel Hooks, all one piece, so no falling hooks.  I found these on Amazon where I also found the metal beach towel clips and don't know why I didn't see these boot hooks before when I was searching earlier. Here is the link for these clips.  Hanging Boot Clip with Swivel Hook

Now with the winter weather finally here with a blast, it looks like I'll be taking photos inside the house.  The screen room is too cold so I was noticing how nice the morning light is in the living room.  I started thinking about buying a photo shoot backdrop rack to hang the quilts but at a price of over $200 for a good one or making one with PVC pipes for $10 but with no adjustments for changing width or height, this thought went quickly on the wayside. I did take the above quilt photo on the hanging rack in my studio but since it's in the basement, the lighting isn't so great.  I could get a photo lamp or I could finally take the time to learn how to edit photos on PicMonkey or maybe I should get an iPhone 7 since I heard the camera is really great.  A new search is on!

Trying To Be Good During The Holidays

The most very good thing I've done during this holiday season was to finish the final four baby quilts for the Blanket Ministry at my Church which means I met my commitment of making twelve baby quilts each year.  It's always a good feeling to make these and an accomplishment when they're done.

I thought I would share my favorite patterns which uses just six fat quarters for the top; one for a baby quilt and the other for a lap quilt.  What I like about making these quilts is that you can use six fat quarters from the same collection or mix them from several collections.  For the baby quilt, I tend to pick bright colors based on the one or two focus prints I pick for the quilt and for the lap size quilt, it's a great way to use the large focus prints that you can't bear to cut up.

Baby Quilt

The size I make for the Blanket Ministry is 36" square which is the bottom quilt. I cut, from each of the six fat quarters, four 3.5" strips (3.5" x 20") and arrange them into two sets of three strips to make rail fence blocks.  Once the strips are cut and sewn, I cut 9-1/2" blocks, two blocks from each strip set, a total of 16 blocks, eight of each color set.  I like to arrange all of the blocks horizontally in a four by four layout,  so in order for the seams to nest, I iron one set of strips with the seams going up and the other set with the seams going down.  The top quilt is also made from six fat quarters but I cut five 3.5" strips which will make twenty blocks  for a quilt measuring 36" x 45".

Lap Quilt

I call these lap quilts, Happy Lappy Quilts and is based on the Six and One Half Dozen quilt pattern by Hydee Ann Sews, a tutorial can be found here:  Hydee Ann Sews.  I just love this pattern because it's a great way to use up the large scale prints some of which has been sitting in my stash for a long time.  Again, it is a great way to mix up fabrics from different collection.  It's a nice size for keeping the lap warm, 40"x 54" (approx.) and I like to take one when I go to the movies because my theater has the reclining seats and I'm getting to the age where I'm always cold.  These quilts come together quickly and make great gifts.

As mentioned in my title, I am trying to be good, meaning staying on task which is hard to do especially when all the quilt goodies I purchased on Black Friday are starting to arrive, new magazines purchased  and need to be read because I'm always looking for new ideas, plus I just discovered Kraft-Tex.  I still need to finish decorating the house, buy Christmas gifts (online of course), send Christmas cards (not online), clean my studio, etc.  It's gotten to the point I actually had to make a list and so far only one item has been crossed off.  Thankfully my husband and son are doing the bulk of the decorating.  Meanwhile, cleaning up my studio is going on day four, today's distraction is the new dies and discovering PicMonkey which meant I had to put a photomark on all of my quilt photos and making a photo collage.

Hopefully my plan on finishing everything by this weekend will happen because after all I still have a quilt top which needs to be quilted by Christmas--which isn't on my list.