I had finished the embroidery for the Happy Little Things embroidery sew along. I trimmed my blocks then sewed sashing to them. I used 2 fabrics, a dark blue and a light blue.
My quilt is going to be finished differently than the original.
I hadn't taken enough of the light blue along to retreat but I've found more in my stash since I've been home. Now I just need to finish that block.
I did strip piece parts of the alternate blocks, just need to get them cut apart and sewn into the finished blocks.
I have plenty of projects to start off 2020.
Linking to Peacock Party, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF!, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished Or Not Friday
I found 25 embroidered blocks in my mother's stash after she died in 2006 . They were old blocks that I had never seen before. They didn't look like the type of embroidery mother did, they were traced onto the background fabric then embroidered with at least 4 strands of thread, maybe more.
I have no way of knowing for sure, but I think my maternal grandmother, Sylvia Jane Miller, embroidered them. One of the ladies at the retreat told me the embroidery patterns were from a newspaper series back in the 1930's. That fits with grandma's time frame.
I've wondered for years what to do with them, how to set them, what fabrics to use; I decided earlier this year that 2019 was the year something was going to happen with them.
Originally they would have finished at 12" but I trimmed them to 9-1/2" so they will finish at 9". This is going to be a wallhanging, the blocks are too special to be a bed quilt.
Friday morning, after finishing the quick & easy crib quilt, I started working. First I bordered each block with 1-1/2" blue sashing (1" finished). Then I figured how many of the rectangles I needed in between each block, cut the rectangles, then cut 4 times that many 1" squares and did flippy corners on the rectangles.
The sashing rectangles are ready to go. Next step is to decide how to arrange the blocks. I won't have this project finished in 2019 but I've made a good start and will see a finish in 2020.
Just in case someone wants to know, Yoder Department Store in Shipshewana, Indiana has quite an assortment of white fabrics, including a white that is an 'old' white'.
Linking to Midweek Makers, Needle & Thread Thursday
I've gotten back into the rhythm of hand quilting again, another row has been completed. Two rows completely finished, five more to go!
These are the left side borders.
This is one of my favorite triangles. Those little grapes are so cute!
I stitched in the ditch around all the applique.
Not much to say about this block, just quilted it.
I've mentioned before that I got tired doing the hexden flowers and used different designs.
This is one of those flowers. Just made a hexie flower. When I quilted, I stitched 1/8" from the seam line. I didn't quilt in the center at all. I quilted in the center on another flower and didn't like the way it looked.
Another hexie flower quilted the same way.
This flower was made from yoyo's. It wasn't hard to quilt at all, just stitched the seam edge where they were stitched together.
The right side border.
I must have gotten the right time of day to take pictures. The green and red thread show nicely, at least I think they do.
Linking to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, Oh Scrap, Bambi's Show & Tell Monday, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, BOM's Away
I needed a quick and easy project after the marathon sewing of the snowballs. This was a last minute just in case project I had stuck in my bag, I was so glad I did!
I don't work very often with panels but my 3 year old grandson spotted this at Calico Point and thought I should buy it. I'm sure he thought it would be for him, wrong! It going to be a cute crib quilt to have on hand to gift to someone who needs it. Don't worry though, my grandson has more than enough quilts for his bed.
This picture isn't the greatest, forgot to take one at retreat so I took a quick picture at home.
You see the narrow green border? I added that and the outside borders too. See, quick and easy, it was fun to make something fast. Right now it measures 45" by 52" but some of that border is going to be trimmed off after quilting.
This little guy will be quilted on my home sewing machine sometime in 2020. I think I know how I want to do the quilting, I'll see if my ideas can happen.
Linking to Peacock Party, TGIFF!, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished Or Not Friday, Let's Make Baby Quilts, UFO Busting
It's been two weeks ago that I left for the Jane Stickle retreat in Shipshewana. I finally have time to write about the various projects I worked on. I'm going to write about each project in a separate post, one post would be too long.
We're allowed in the sewing room at 3 pm Wednesday afternoon. It took a little while for me to get settled and organized but by 4 pm, I was ready to start sewing.
Project #1 was to sew the snowball blocks for Midnight Blues. I needed to make 161 snowballs, each has 4 corners so that means I sewed 644 flippy corners.
They were so boring to sew which means they were a good project to work on at a retreat. Not much thinking was involved.
I sewed all the flippy corners and pressed them. Then I trimmed the blocks and cut the unneeded triangles off the back of the flippy corners.
I finally finished all the processes involved in making these blocks at midnight, Thursday evening.
Linking to Midweek Makers, Needle & Thread Thursday
This was a short week of quilting. I left Wednesday afternoon for the Jane Stickle Retreat in Shipshewana, Indiana and returned home today, Sunday the 24th. Since I knew not much handwork/quilting was going to happen, I wrote a post earlier in the month for today's post.
Every year my guild, the Maple Leaf quilters, donates a hand quilted quilt to the Michiana Mennonite Relief sale which held the 4th Saturday of September.
Elaine and Lynn designed the quilt for the for the 2020. Guild members either pieced 9 patch blocks or EPP'd the hexden flowers. Remember those flowers I made last summer? This is the quilt they were for.
I personally think this is an absolutely gorgeous quilt but then I'm partial to blues. The background fabric is very soft gray.
I don't have any pictures of the whole quilt. Since this wasn't my quilt, I didn't feel right about hanging it on the clothesline, especially with all the mega snow on the ground! This is a king sized quilt.
I was asked to mark the quilt. I took pictures as I marked in case anyone wants to know what I did or what I was thinking.
This is the center of the quilt. I marked the white squares diagonally both ways which should make the blue blocks puff nicely. The diagonal lines flow through the first applique border into the next section of squares.
I marked with a light gray pencil just dark enough to see but you have to look closely.
For the next border, I marked the background with a cable stencil.
First I mark each corner of the border but I left part of the ends off so I could run the rest of the cable into the curves.
A picture of the corner.
All the applique will be stitched in the ditch.
The cable is just to flatten the back ground fabric and highlight the applique.
For the straight part of the border, I measured how many times the stencil would fit in the length. I marked this with yellow headed pins. They're there in the picture but kind of hard to see.
I chose the center oval as my repeat. When I see how much border is left, I slightly move the stencil to add length, adding the additional space in the center of the ovals. (When marking other quilts, sometimes you need to shorten the cables. I do it the same way, shorten a little and it works fine.)
I don't know if that makes any sense to you. I guess it's just one of those things you need to see.
Next is another section with squares and again I marked the white squares diagonally both ways.
For the outside border I used a Baptist Fan design.
Again, I mark the corners first then slide the stencil over to the right since I'm right handed.
This stencil was different than my other Baptist Fan stencils, it didn't have the whole next section. I had to move the stencil every time. So I counted in 5 curves and put that line on the line of the marked curves then marked. This means you won't have the tiniest curves.
Here are some other pictures of the quilt.
Just want to give you a heads up, I won't be posting again until sometime the first week of December, maybe the 5th. We will have a full house this week for Thanksgiving and beyond. I also need to gather my thoughts to write about my retreat projects.
Linking to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, Oh Scrap, Bambi's Show & Tell Monday, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, BOM's Away
