The little Houses Wallhanging is finished and is hanging on the wall! She measures 22" square and was a perfect small summer project.
This was a kit from Rachel's of Greenfield. The instructions were very well written and easy to understand.
A view of my hand-quilting on the backside of the wall quilt. I normally don't add a sleeve to the back of my wallhangings, but I did this project.
Last winter I had pieced a Snowflake Zippy-Strippy quilt and gave it to DIL 1. I started another Zippy-Strippy in June and finished her up in July. This quilt is for DIL 2. She likes red so I choose a jelly-roll from the In Stitches collection designed by Robin Kingsley for Maywood Studio.
I changed up the pattern so she would be longer and not as wide. She finishes at 59" x 84"
She was quilted on my sewing machine. I'm getting more accurate following the marked curves. It helps a lot to slow down the stitching speed. I still did straight line quilting in the center. I have a curvy line stitch on my sewing machine and I had intended to elongate the stitch and use that for quilting. Unfortunately, that stitch did not allow me to elongate so I just went with straight stitching.
Do some of these fabrics look familiar? I'm using fabrics from the same collection to applique the Pastor's Attic blocks.
I've prepped the next block in the Pastor's Attic quilt. The thin stems are supposed to be embroidered using 1 strand in the chain stitch. I decided to go with an outline stitch.
I also decided to not use fabric stems for the other stems. The flower stems are a double row of 3 strand chain stitch. The more narrow stems are a single row of 3 strand chain stitch. I'm liking they way they look.
There is a vase at the bottom of this block with an inset center. I was supposed to applique 1/8th" strips on the red fabric then reverse applique the vase on top. I went with outline stitch embroidery.
I do slow stitching every evening, not just on Sundays.
This is the end of the quilt section so you can quit reading if that is all you want to read about.
My garden is doing well. The broccoli plants have been pulled and fed to the heifers. The garlic and the shallots have been pulled and are curing before being stored away. I picked 2/3-rds of a 5 gallon pail of green beans Friday, the freezing process has started. The new potatoes are delicious and cabbage tastes so much better when it comes straight from the garden.
The above photo was taken on Saturday, July 9th. We harvested the wheat the following Monday. The rest of the week was about getting the straw baled. We did it!
In farming there are really just 2 seasons. Winter and preparing for winter.
My flowering sunflowers have started flowering. Wouldn't a whole field of these be beautiful?
The last of the barn swallows have flown away. These 3 little fledglings were brave enough to make the plunge soon after this picture was taken.
I planted a couple dark purple phlox plants around 25 years ago or so. They crossed with some white phlox and have hybridized themselves into these lovely white flowers with a touch of lavender. I'm so enjoying my summer flowers.
My meat chickens are now residing in the chest freezer. These new chicks will grow up to become laying hens. There are two kinds of chicks; the yellow chicks are Golden Comets and the black/brown/beige ones are Auracanas. The Auracanas lay eggs with blue or green shells. The egg inside tastes the same as the brown shelled eggs.
I'm linking up to - Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, Quilting is More Fun than Housework, Em's Scrapbag, Super Mom-No Cape, Love Laugh Quilt, Quilt Story, Esther's Wednesday WOW!, Sew Fresh Quilts, My Quilt Infatuation, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, A Quilting Reader's Garden, Crazy Mom Quilts.
I've been sewing away since I've returned from Arizona and I have a lot to share with you.
Before I left for Tempe, I had pinned a Zippy-Strippy so she would be ready to quilt when I returned home. I had thought I would try to make all of these quilts from my stash but I took the easy way out and used a jelly-roll to make an easy Zippy-Strippy. As normal I did easy straightline quilting and stitch-in-the-ditch with my home machine. This quilt is for one of the granddaughters.
I pulled some fabric from my stash of mother's fabrics. Yes, I used some of mom's precious Jinny Beyer border print fabric for a quilt back! Let this be a lesson to you, this year's must have fabrics will be the next generations quilt back fabrics. Use those special fabrics now!
The 2nd Majestic Mountain quilt is also finished and will be delivered this week to the NY state grandson. Again, stitch in the ditch and straightline quilting. One of these days I will be brave and try something else, but for now I'm satisfied with easy.
Fabric from mom's stash once again used for backing. I often wonder how she had planned to use the stripped fabric. I know I have a plan for all the fabric I have, I just need to get it sewn.
Last fall I sewed a lot of 4-patch blocks, I didn't really have a plan for them at that time. I pulled that box of blocks out this week and pieced this quilt top for the last of granddaughter quilts. I won't get her quilted before I leave but hopefully there will be time to get her layered and pinned so she is ready to quilt when I return to Indiana. I've named this quilt the Scrappy Rainbow quilt.
Just for fun, while I was piecing Scrappy Rainbow, I sewed 4-patches together and came up with 5 blocks containing 100 1" finished blocks. I guess I've started a postage stamp quilt.
I've put this project on hold for now, I want to make more 4-patches so there is more variety in the quilt. The leftover fabrics from Sweet Surrender will look great in this quilt but I need to finish Sweet Surrender first.
The Sweet Surrender blocks that were on the WOF have been appliqued.
Blogger won't let me put these 3 blocks photos in a single row!
Block 7 in the Pastor's Attic Quilt has been appliqued too. It is so easy to back-baste needle turn these larger pieces.
Yesterday (Saturday) the farmer was gone to an all day dairy meeting so I had the house (and the TV) to myself. I took quilting needle in hand and started quilting on my long neglected Fussy Cut Star wallhanging. It felt good to be quilting again. By milking time I had completed a substantial amount of quilting and I'm ready to roll. The quilting doesn't show except in the white diamonds. I'm actually using 4 different colors of quilting thread; white, cream, beige and black. I want the stars to be the focus of the quilt, not the quilting. It is going to be interesting to see what the back of the quilt looks like when she is completed.
I'm taking a short break from applique until I return from NY. So what do I work on in the evenings? I knit dishrags! I'll be taking this project along to work on while I'm on the train and during downtime in NY.
Linking to -
A Quilting Reader's Garden
Kathy's Slow Stitching Sunday
Quilting is More Fun than Housework
Love Laugh Quilt
Quilt Story
Esther's Wednesday WOW
I've totally finished one of the Scrappy Majestic Mountains quilts (except for the label so I guess it isn't completely finished after all). I had pulled the box of my mother's homespun fabrics and cut everything that was large enough to make an 8-1/2" square. I hope our oldest grandson likes the quilt, it is rather somber. There are some blue homespun fabrics in there which help to brighten it up a little. Those are leftover from the valances I made years ago for the laundry room
There are 100 blocks in this quilt and in a perfect world, she finishes at 60" X 75". The blocks aren't square and finish at 6" by 7-1/2".
As usual, I stitched in the ditch horizontally and vertically using a variegated brown thread.
For the backing, I pulled fabric from mom's earth tones stash. There is a lot of striped fabric in there and it is time to use it. It seems right to use her fabric in quilts for her great-grandchildren.
I've washed this quilt but it seems to have a pink tint in the photo. It doesn't look that pinkish in real life. Homespun fabric bleeds at least the older fabrics do. I've had these fabrics in a box for almost 10 years and who knows how long mom had stored them.
The light colored homespun fabrics were all used, so I pulled fabric of my own I purchased years ago. It never really worked in any of my projects, the background was too beige but it was perfect for the homespun fabrics. This quilt will hopefully look less dreary than the first one. A grandson from a different family will be receiving this quilt so they won't be able to compare them.
There are 80 blocks in this quilt arranged 8 blocks by 10 blocks, there weren't enough blocks left to make it as large as the other quilt. You HAVE arrange the blocks with an even number vertically. It just won't work, trust me, I tried it with 9 in a row. It just won't work unless you want to make the layout called Streak of Lightning which I didn't.
Another Zippy-Strippy quilt top is ready to be quilted. I'm leaving for Tempe, Arizona in a few days and I doubt she'll be quilted before I leave. I might try to get her sandwiched so she is ready to go when I return home.
Two more Sweet Surrender blocks are completed and I've started prepping the next four blocks.
Someone e-mailed me and asked how I am doing these. These blocks are triangles. I am using the same background fabric for all the applique blocks and I can get 4 triangles and 2 half triangles on a width of fabric. I've completed the 4 half triangles and 8 of the full triangles. Now I am prepping blocks 9 - 12 to take along to Arizona.
After I had finished the last block for the Pastor's Attic quilt, I prepped another block to be ready to go. I'm doing mostly back-basting applique on this block. I want to get the back-basting completed here at home so I don't need to drag yardage fabric along.
I've marked the background fabric with a Frixon pen. Please don't e-mail me and tell me the marks will re-appear if I put the quilt in the freezer! Really, how often do you put a quilt in the freezer?
I'm also taking along an older EPP project and yarn to knit a dishrag or two. I doubt I'll complete all these projects, but I don't want to run out of handwork.
Our daughter is taking off several days of work and we will be gone a lot during the day. She lives in a different time zone than we do, so my normal waking will come at 3:30 AM - 4 AM Arizona time. That is when I'll be appliquing!
There won't be much slow-stitching going on here today until this evening during the Super-Bowl. I'm probably the only person in the US who doesn't care who wins. I'll just keep on basting my block.
My Amaryllis have started blooming. I stagger planting the bulbs so the blooms are spread out over several months. These 2 decided not to get as tall as normal. They're still beautiful, but just short!
They are in a south facing window. I've told the Farmer to make sure he rotates the other flowers every day so they grow straight. We both enjoy the color that they bring to the dreary winter.
Linking up to Kathy's Slow Stitching Sunday, Quilting is More Fun than Housework, Love Laugh Quilt, Quilt Story, Mrs Sew & Sow, Esther's Wednesday WOW and My Quilt Infatuation.
Welcome to my new blog, Gretchen's Little Corner which is a continuation of my old Wordpress blog, Gretchen's Little Corner. I decided to go with Blogger for the new blog for varying reasons. If Blogger doesn't work out, then maybe I'll go back to Wordpress.
If you are new to my blog you will find I post about quilting, farming, gardening or whatever is going on in my life. Special thanks to my daughter for setting up this blog way last summer!
I spent most of 2015 working on my version of the Jane Stickle, also know as a Dear Jane. I just completed her and I'm proud to show her off. If you would like to read about my Jane journey, click here.
I quilted her on the old stands and sticks frame my father made for me 40 years ago. The stands have been reinforced, glued and reinforced more. They are not very stable anymore.
During the Jane Stickle quilt retreat in November, I bought a Grace quilting frame at the resale table. I'm the 3rd owner of this quilting frame, but it has never been put together. My SIL started putting the quilting frame together for me while he and our daughter were here the middle of December. He really enjoyed this project as it was a nice change for him from his academia world.
When he removed the pieces from the box, it looked like this:
He completed structure work, but son 2 did the finishing work on her. Now she looks like this. There are 4 pipe rollers. On the sides there are bungee cords with clamps attached. I was concerned about the sides being taut enough, but they are! In fact I had them too tight and needed to loosen them. She takes up less room width-wise than the old frame did.
My DIL and Son 2 helped me load up the frame for the first quilting project. I decided I wanted to do a smaller quilt (I'm kind of burnt out on quilting at the moment!) and pulled out the Fussy-Cut Star wall quilt I hand pieced in 2014. I don't have a specific time frame to have this wallhanging completed. She'll be finished when is finished.
DIL2 started the quilting on the outside border. You can't see it at all on the top but the black thread shows nicely on the white muslin back. Since this is a wall hanging, I went with an easy decision for the backing fabric.
The borders have been sewn on the Snowflake Zippy-Strippy quilt. I'm going to baste leftover batting strips together for batting. Once they are sewn together, I'll start machine quilting her.
Thank you for joining me on my new blog.
I'll be linking to Esther's Wednesday WOW, Freshly Pieced, My Quilt Infatuation, A Quilting Reader's Garden, Quilt Story, Crazy Mom Quilts, Slow Stitching Sunday, Podunk Pretties, Quilting is More Fun Than Housework and Love Laugh Quilt.
