9 Patches in a Square

In August I finished piecing a quilt I called Scrappy 9 Patches. I didn't use all the 9 patches so I came up with another quilt to use them, 9 Patches in a Square!

The triangles for the patches and the fabric for the alternate squares were in my stash waiting to be used.

This was a fairly quick and easy quilt since the blocks were already pieced. 

I'm going to donate this flimsy to the comforter bash and it needs to be 60" by 80" but was just a little bit less than that. So I added the narrow blue borders on the sides.

There are still some 9 patches left but they're back in a box for now. 

Linking to Charity Quilts, TGIFF!, Finished or Not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Show Off Saturday

Visit to Utah

Earlier this summer, I spent a week in lovely Utah visiting my friend Deanna. Salt Lake City is a HUGE city, rather intimidating to this country mouse. We did fun activities, visited many interesting places, met with other friends who attend the Jane Stickle Retreat but best of all was was sewing with Deanna!

Of course some of our activities included fabric shops and I, of course, made purchases. The shops that stand out in my mind are the following:

For the souvenir of my visit, I purchased this copper thimble at the Quilter's Lodge shop.

I never knew that Utah has a copper mining industry and Deanna's home is located on former copper mine land.

I had trouble taking a picture of the shiny thimble, all my tries were blurry and this is the best choice. 

On the way back from our excursion on the Heber Creeper, we stopped in Midway at My Girlfriends Quilt shop. They were very friendly and had a lovely store. I purchased a 2018 row by row kit, several fat quarters and some yardage.  

Deanna's expertise lies in raw edge applique, something I haven't worked with very often. She also bought the row by row kit and that is what we worked on while I was visiting. 

She talked me through the work on my kit. My wallhanging isn't as nice as hers, I made several incorrect thread color choices for the top stitching. Oh well, I just stitched right over the wrong colored thread with a better choice. 

Another mistake I made was when I marked my pieces on the fusible, somehow several of my pieces turn out backwards!

This year's Row By Row theme was music. The bass clefts are the correct direction but those eighth notes are not!

We had our wallhangings completed before I left Utah.

I brought them back to Indiana and dropped them off at Lori Null's to be long armed quilted. Look at the lovely quilting, those are treble clefts in the background. I love the quilting on this project.

Measuring 21" by 35", this wall quilt is perfect to hang on a wall in my sewing room, a bright and cheery reminder of summer on the dark, dreary, gloomy, sunless depressing days of winter.

Another fabric shop we visited three times (!) was Pine Needles located in Gardner's Village. One of the reason this was a fun shop to visit was because we rode the trax there. My most memorable purchase from there was this lovely embroidered baskets pattern. 

No way am I going to embroider tea towels, I see quilt blocks for these lovelies!

There were several other fabric stores, I don't remember the names. At one of them I bought this Gail Pan book.

This book isn't available in my area, at least I haven't seen it anywhere.

Deanna gifted me Gail's newest book, Patchwork Loves Embroidery Too. I see a lot of embroidery in my future.

I'm attaching pictures of mountains. Very different scenery than we have in northern Indiana, I didn't see single corn or soybean field anywhere.

This first pictures is Bridal Veil Falls and was taken on the drive to Heber.

The rest of the pictures were taken from the Heber Creeper train ride.

The white stuff is snow on the back mountain.

How did they get those electric poles up there?

Linking to Esther's Wednesday WOW!, Let's Bee Social,  Needle & Thread Thursday

Challenge Wallhanging

I'm not posting about my EPP progress this week because I didn't make any. I have something else to show you.

In June I posted about a fat quarter challenge our guild had issued. You can read about the challenge here.

I participated in this challenge and made a wallhanging. A week ago I pick up the wallhanging from the long arm quilter, Lori Null. She did a great job on the quilting. I had told her to quilt whatever she thought would look nice.

After finishing the Wilfred & Cloves flimsy, I got busy and attached the binding by machine then spent time slow stitching the binding to the back side of the quilt. I used fabrics left from the fat quarters for the binding.

The pattern was a mystery BOM with Country Lane Quilts called Friendship Garden. The quilt measures 26" square.

I won't be keeping this wallhanging. I will be donating it to the  Mennonite Women USA Housewarmer Project.

Linking to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, Show & Tell Monday With Bambi, Design Wall Monday, BOM's Away, Moving It Forward, Charity Quilts

Wilfred & Cloves Finish!!!

I've finished the Wilfred & Cloves quilt!! This pattern is found in Creating Heirlooms, One Stitch at a Time by Carolyn Konig. Many of the quilts in Carolyn's book are reproduction of older quilts. There is no information about this quilt, if it is a reproduction or if she designed it herself. 

The pieced border isn't what I had originally planned but I like it. It certainly brightens up all the brown. The quilt flimsy measures 93" by 102".

At the time of writing this post, I'm planning on having the pieced body of the quilt long arm quilted with the Baptist fan design and leaving the medallion unquilted. I'll quilt that by hand.

Wilfred & Cloves was the last project on my list of UFQ's but don't worry about me, I still have plenty of projects to work on. Right now I'm going to enjoy the satisfaction of a finish!

Here is a closer view of some of the fabrics I've used in the quilt.

I think there is one fabric with a light blue background.

Read my last post about Wilfred & Cloves to learn more.

Linking to Finished Or Not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF!, Show Off Saturday, Oh Scrap

Wilfred & Cloves

In Shipshewana, Indiana, there is a fabric store called Lolly's Fabrics. When they have a yard or less of fabric on a bolt, they cut it into fat quarters. They have a unique way of displaying their fat quarters, they place them into a row boat which is  called the boat. If you look at their website you'll see a picture of the boat heaped full of fat quarters. They have benches on the sides of the boat so you can sit and dig through the pile to locate whatever you are looking for.

When I was at a Dear Jane retreat many years ago, Lolly's had fat quarters from the boat priced at 50 cents apiece! That was a definite shopping experience for all the retreat participants. I don't remember if Lolly's refilled the boat 4 or 5 times but the fat quarter sale was one of the highlight of the retreat.

I also bought some of those fat quarters but I decided to select colors different from what I normally use. I looked for mustard yellows, sage greens, teals, pinks, reds and browns. I didn't have a project in mind at the time but I would have the fabrics whenever the time came.

I finally decided Wilfred & Cloves from Creating Heirlooms, One Stitch at a Time by Carolyn Konig was "the pattern". I appliqued the center the fall of 2014. During the 2017 Jane Stickle spring retreat, I pieced the blocks. Now, finally, in late summer/early fall 2018, I'm getting this quilt sewn together!

The pattern in the book is for a smaller project however I don't need little couch quilts, I want bed quilts so I made more blocks to increase the size.

You can see half of the blocks have brown edges and the half half have red. I wanted the red blocks on the outside of the center so there would be contrast with the brown borders but then the quilt is a square. I don't want a square quilt so I'm going to add a pieced border to the top and bottom of the quilt.

I have added the brown borders to the sides of the quilt and a shorter brown border to the top and bottom.

I had figured what the width of my pieced border would be but when I started the piecing, it wasn't turning out like I had imaged in my mind so  rethinking and some unsewing happened. The brown border on the top and bottom will be trimmed to a more narrow size since the pieced border is going to be wider than I had originally planned.  Hopefully the borders will be finished by next week and ready for display!

Linking to Esther's Wednesday WOW!, Let's Bee Social,  Needle & Thread Thursday

Lucy Boston - Patchwork of the Crosses

Several weeks ago, maybe even a month ago, I mentioned that I was prepping an EPP project. I've had the fabrics for Lucy Boston's Patchwork of the Crosses for years and the start has finally happened.

I'm planning on making twelve blocks and making sure I really enjoy EPP'ing these blocks. If I do, then I'll make more. Time will tell if I make all the blocks.

The back ground fabric is this lovely cream with a small dot. It did take years to find a fabric that I really liked. Maybe I was too picky but when working on a project that might take years, I wanted to make sure I really liked the fabrics.

So far I've cut holes in this fabric. 

In real life it is much prettier.

Here is what I've completed so far, the first of the twelve blocks.

I can't believe how red these look. Oh well.

Another center has been completed since the picture was taken. I do have other fabrics but decided to cut several centers out of the above fabric since it was out.

We'll see how much progress I make this week. 

Linking to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, Show & Tell Monday With Bambi, Love Laugh Quilt, Design Wall Monday, BOM's Away, Em's Scrapbag, Esther's Wednesday WOW!

Scrappy Bargello

Scrappy Bargello is a finish! This is a free pattern from Bonnie Hunter's website. The strips sets were sewn years ago so all I had to do was cut the strips apart and sew them back together.

I sewed this quilt in 3 days! This is an easy peasy quilt, wonderful for charity quilts.

Scrappy Bargello will be donated to the upcoming comforter bash in November. They request the tops measure 60" by 80" so that is what she is, actually, she's 84" long but that won't matter.

I'm not really a scrappy quilt person but I do actually like this one. I had wondered if all the various colors would blend together but they do!

There will be more quilts from this pattern coming in the future.

Just one more project left on my list!

Linking to Let's Bee Social,  Needle & Thread Thursday,  Finished Or Not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF!, Finish It Up Friday, Show Off Saturday, Oh  Scrap