T.A.N.Q.P.

There Are No Quilt Police! At least I hope not, because I'm sure they'd be after me today.

I'm waiting for some backing to arrive on my doorstep for a client's quilt. I ordered some about three weeks ago, but when it arrived, it just wasn't going to work. It was more pink than I expected, but no problem, I have a quilt of my own I can use it for. I ordered something entirely different and thought it would be perfect for the client's quilt. After waiting for about a week, I received an email that it was sold out and my order was cancelled. Back to the drawing board. I found a pretty good substitute, ordered it, and it's on its way to me. 

While I'm waiting for the fabric to arrive (you probably wondered what my ordering backing fabric had to do with the quilt police, but it really does lead up to today's project), I've been working on a few other little projects. 

Several years ago I made a stained glass wallhanging. It was hand appliqued and hand quilted, but I was never really happy with the look of it. There was just too much fabric around the applique pieces. It wasn't awful, but it could have been better. 

Today's project was to "fix" that wallhanging. I decided to load it on the longarm as is - binding and all. That alone might have brought the QP to my door!

I pinned some strips of scrap fabric to the top and bottom of the wallhanging and used those strips to fasten the wallhanging to the leaders. I had originally echo quilted (by hand) about 1/4" from each appliqued piece, and I left the hand stitching in when I put it on the longarm. I then proceeded to do a small meander inside the hand quilting to take up some of the excess fabric. Again, the QP would probably have been mopping their collective brows. I'm sure they would have told me I should remove the hand stitching and stitch in the ditch around the applique before filling it in. Nah! What do they know?

Believe it or not, it all worked out - the stitching sucked up that fullness in the quilt, and then I decided to attack the borders. Here's how it turned out:

Although I'm not a very good photographer and the quilt may look a little lopsided in the picture, it's really not. It's flat and it's square - couldn't ask for more. The border quilting doesn't show up in the picture, but I did a double line of stitching about 1/2" and 3/4" away from the black border. Between the outer line of stitching and the binding, I again meandered to take up some of the fullness.

I completed a few other little projects during the last week, as well. The first two are doll quilts that will be donated to Toys for Tots through our quilt guild:

The striped one was done using the Quilt As You Go method, and the other has a simple meandering design with loops.

And I finished a fall table topper last night. 

Finished is good in My Pieceful Corner.

I'm back! I really had every intention of posting just a little something every day, but I decided that just doesn't work for me. It's not that I'm all that busy - but most days I'd rather be quilting.

Speaking of quilting, I took Nancy's quilt off the frame last Friday and delivered it to her yesterday. She was nice enough to let me share it with you here.

Here's a picture of it outside on our bright green grass (a week ago it would have been brown, so I had to point out the color, even if you can't see much of it in the picture!).

And here's the back:

I have to show a few closeups of the front. They don't show up quite as nicely as the pics I took outside, but you'll get the idea:

She also made a wallhanging to go with the quilt:

I wish my photography skills were worthy of her work, because she did a fantastic job. I had so much fun quilting this - thanks, Nancy, for giving me the opportunity.

As for current projects, I have a few "in-between quilt" projects to get done while I wait for my backing fabric to arrive for the next one to go on the frame (it's going to be fun, too!). Last night I finished the serging work on school bags our church makes for UMCOR in Louisiana. I still have to press the handles on about 30 of them, and then they'll be ready to be passed on to others to do the final sewing. 

Church bazaar is coming up soon, and I don't have a thing made to donate, so I'm going to work on some little projects for that. I haven't asked the designer for permission to sell them yet, but when I do and when I receive it, I'll post pictures to share. They're really cute. 

We also have a friend who is battling Hodgkin's Lymphoma - it's been a long road to get her diagnosis, and they're incurring medical bills as they go along (they have insurance, but it doesn't pay everything), so a benefit is being held in a couple of weeks. I want to make something for the silent auction.

Wish me luck! I probably have more ideas than I have time. Hmmm, I haven't pulled an all-nighter in many, many years. Maybe now is the time?

Thanks for joining me in My Pieceful Corner,

Louise

It's Been a Few Days . . .

I kind of let the blog sit silent for a few days. My niece came to visit last week, I had a quilt to load onto the frame (pictures in the near future), we went to a wedding and reception on Saturday, and yesterday was spent sitting on the couch watching TV and crocheting crosses (no, I didn't make all these yesterday!).

These crosses are about 4" high and are given out at the time of baptism, along with the baptism certificate. We have a good supply on hand, but I decided that this year I'd make at least two a month - if the call comes from the church that more are needed, I want to be ready. I hadn't made any in July, so that was yesterday's project. I just finished starching them, and when they're dry, I'll glue on the rose. I just love these!

The wedding was a lovely event. The couple requested that we all wear red, white, and blue and they carried that theme out themselves. Female members of the wedding party wore either red, white, or blue dresses; the reception decorations were all in RW&B; and in keeping with a 4th of July theme, the food was hamburgers, brats, hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, etc. It was a wonderful day! The couple is older and they are merging two households. Deciding there was little they needed, I guess, they asked that in lieu of gifts we make a donation to the local food bank. I thought that was a great idea, especially since so many food banks are running low this year.

My next project - before I get back to the quilt on the frame - is to come up with a program for our church circle this month. A few months ago I demo'd the Disappearing 9-Patch and Warm Wishes to show how a simple block can look more complicated than it is. These are patterns I like to use for the quilts I make to be donated to the church or Quilts for Kids or wherever they end up going. We've had programs on binding and on making placemats and table toppers, so I want to find something a little different. Wish me luck!

Thanks for joining me in My Pieceful Corner,

Louise

Happy Saturday!

First, a note about Friday. We had dinner with friends at Kava House in Swisher, Iowa, last night. If you're in the area and haven't been there, please give it a try. They have fabulous sandwiches - and the desserts! Well, we've been known to drive down just for a piece of dessert and cup of coffee. I really should have taken a picture of the pastry cabinet to share with you.


I haven't had anything I didn't like, but I really like the Granny Gobbler (although last night I had a Reuben). Hubby tried the Kava Hot Roast Beef and said it was great. I had to try a taste of the raspberry horseradish that came on his sandwich - good stuff!


So what's on your to-do list today? Whatever it is, I hope you're able to stay cool while doing it! It's another hot one here, but we may be in for a little relief next week (although still no rain). 


I have a quilt ready to be quilted, but I have to add extensions to the backing to give me enough extra to load it onto the quilting machine. That's what I should be doing right now, but I guess I'm procrastinating. It's just one of those pain-in-the-patootie things I don't like to do. 


Instead, I've been looking up recipes on the computer (we're having Baked Parmesan Swai for dinner, in case you're curious), checking Google Reader and Facebook, and generally finding other things to do. 


Maybe I should do laundry. My washer and dryer are in my sewing room, and if I stay in there and sew while doing laundry, I actually get it (the laundry) done in a short period of time. If I leave and do something else, I forget to check to see when a load is done, and it has been known to sit in the washer or dryer for a couple of days. So, if I go do laundry, I might actually get the additional fabric sewn onto the backing. Then I could get it loaded and spend tomorrow quilting. The whole problem is that I wanted to spend today quilting and do laundry tomorrow. 


I think I've talked myself into it! Laundry/sewing room, here I come!


Thanks for stopping by My Pieceful Corner,
Louise

Just Starting Out . . .

I've been thinking about blogging for a while now, but just never moved beyond the thinking stage. Do I really have anything important to say or share? Not really, but I still wanted a venue for sharing my love of quilting. I won't guarantee or promise that my ramblings will be limited to quilting, but you can always skip them if you want. So, with all that being said . . .


As already stated, I do love to quilt. The only part of the whole process I really don't like is basting the three layers together, and that was pretty much eliminated from my life when I was lucky enough to get an APQS quilting machine a few years ago. I don't have a favorite part of quilting - I love the piecing (when it's going smoothly), the quilting, and the binding. And I especially like the part where you get to wrap up in the quilt for the first time!

Since this is my first post, I thought I'd share a couple of recent projects. This first one is a quilt made by Joyce - she made the top and I did the quilting. Joyce is great to work with - she makes a lot of tops, and her instructions for quilting are usually, "Do what you want." It doesn't get much better than that!

This is the back.

And this is the top, of course.

And in this one you can see the quilting design a little better.

This next one was made for my great niece. Sometimes you see a pattern, and you know you have to make the quilt - this was one of those. She had a book about tumbling monkeys that she loved, so this quilt was perfect for her. I hope she uses it until it's threadbare!

Last, but not least, I decided this year was the year to make a table runner or table topper for each season/holiday. Sounds good, right? I missed New Year's/winter, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, spring . . . you get the idea! The 4th of July was approaching quickly, and I was running out of time to do any piecing. I needed to finish quilting a couple of pieces for clients, and then I got to work. I spent a couple of afternoons piecing (the block design is based on the Fireworks block from Quilter's Cache), an afternoon quilting, and an evening binding. At 9:56 p.m. on July 3, the runner was on the table! And we'll leave it there all during July!

It looks right at home on my table.

Here's a closeup of my fireworks quilting design.

I guess that's about enough for my first time out. I really do have good intentions of writing something regularly - maybe just to say hi, maybe to show you a WIP, maybe to share some of my knitting and crocheting projects. So I'll leave now, but I'll be back . . .


From My Pieceful Corner, 
Louise