The not much post

Readers, my goal is to bring content. In the past several weeks, all I have accomplished is quilt show prep. Sleeves sewn. Quilt labels on. And surviving the heat wave of this summer. That heat wave makes one want to move as little as possible to survive and stay non-sweaty so to speak.

And then there was the quilt hop which I dedicated two whole days too, so not much sewing has occurred.

I did sew a tid-bit on the Farm Girl Vintage baby quilt. After staring at it for weeks on the design wall, I opted to remove the tractor and trailer. It messed with the Feng-Shui of the quilt. I am sick that I spent all that effort and am not going to use it. Without all the “rust” from the tractor, this looks a little more baby friendly. Because it was so large it drastically affected the layout. Before and After photos.

It needed the sparkle of color!

After looking at this a bit more I have also decided to add chenille for the tail, nostrils, and eyes. I want to sew buttons for the eyes, but am more worried about baby safety, so I will just make some eyes with bias.

I will be piecing this and aim to get this done with a nice girly border and hopefully start quilting it next weekend. But gosh, did I tell ya how hot it is here? It is supposed to cool off and not reach a 100 for a few days this week, so maybe that will add energy to my caboose!

I swung by the antique store today on my way home from work. The last time I was in there they had old copies of the workbasket, and because I did not have my glasses with me, I was not able to really see any of the fine print and patterns in the books. So today, glasses on, I enjoyed looking through them specifically for tatting patterns. And I found one that I will eventually make! Along with that I have been collecting old feedsack fabric and found a few of those bargained priced.

And amazingly I found a Jenny Beyer quilt kit (I KNOW RIGHT, at the antique store of all places). The pattern is called tessellating cats and it is no longer offered, but this kit back in 2001 originally sold for $140. I purchased it for 10. It looks like they cut out all the pieces in the correct shapes for foundation paper piecing, which is puzzling. I will attempt to make a go of it one day.

The kit I got seems to go to blue in one corner. The fabrics are rich and beautiful and the border print is gorgeous!

Well, like I said not much happened, perhaps in the coming weeks I will have a little more exciting posts. 🙂 And thank you for reading my blog!

The quilt Hop

Well, it has come and gone. Friday was HOT and rather miserable to hop around from place to place to see the quilts. There was a subtraction this year. Our public library did not participate. They did add a pub. It was oddly out of character and place to wait until 2:00 in the afternoon to see quilts with the smell of beer wafting in the air. I disliked that place the most and wondered why the event coordinator made that decision.

Because a new director to the tourism board was running things this year, changes were made. The flow of things had me scratching my head. But first I have compiled two videos of stuff going on with a gob of pictures of the quilts. Let me share those with you first.

First is the quilt walk in the park. This walk had little kiosks with quilt info about the names of blocks and some history regarding the subject matter in our local park. Again at 7:00 pm at nightit was around 104 degrees. Not ideal.

And below are the pictures of the quilts.

The pros and cons

• Pros
  • The places we visited were air conditioned
  • The quilts were displayed nicely
  • Great networking amongst quilters
  • demos with make and takes
  • very knowledgable demonstrations
  • Scissor sharpening guy

• Cons
  • The heat kept people away
  • Inflation and high prices kept people away
  • Pay for classroom learning was held at the same time as other activities
  • Tags on quilts were to small to read
  • demonstration room was too hot
  • not very many vendors
  • the demonstration schedule was printed before the list was compiled. No one had previous knowledge of some demonstrations (low turn out)
  • Website info was updated only 4 days before the show
  • 300 quilts advertised which was probably inaccurate by 150
  • demonstrator schedules had cancellations, others were assigned to take their place, and then within 24 hours of the demo the cancellations uncancelled
  • People who signed up for demos did not show up
  • having the demos in a different room meant that passers by could not listen and get interested
  • fat quarter bingo area was utilized inappropriately
  • The director that made many decisions about the quilt hop is not a quilter

All my quilts made it back safe and sound. Each year I am a bit surprised by this.

I did go to the Texas historical commission where some quilts were displayed and talked to the staff asking about the quilts. I was horrified by what they told me. The Briscoe collection is located between Austin and San Antonio. Some of the quilts cannot be displayed there because their timeline does not have significance to the historical representation of the display so they are just stored in boxes never gazed upon unless another historical curator asks for them. They are not kept in pull out drawers in textile museums. They are under appreciated. These quilts are not owned by the historical commision but the parks and recreation of the state. That is who the original owners donated them too. *sigh* Here are some of those quilts. The handwork is amazing. For those of you who have never hand quilted, making an arc, a circle, or a curve is not easy with a needle because a needle is straight.

The grid of hand quilting is smaller than my finger tip. WOW!

Doesn’t this look like a more modern Moda quilt kit??? It looks so familiar to me!

Have you ever seen a quilt with a burned edge? So this fabric is handmade. It has foil in it. A block printed fabric. It was interesting, but the burned edge was different. We all know that if your house catches fire, you can wrap yourself in a quilt and escape. Everything is flammable, however cotton’s flammable level is very low so it will singe, unlike polyester which is more of a fuel source for fire.

Just look at that quilting!

The pictures do not do this justice. There actually looked like there was extra batting placed in some of the motifs for a very raised surface. Is that called trumpato?

The starburst quilting is hard to do in modern day with modern tools. This is beautiful!

I told the historical commision employee that I could see that some of these fabrics were velvet. And I also told her it just makes me want to reach out and touch it. This quilt was also a bunch of beautiful silks. So pretty!

Isn’t it a shame that these do not get displayed properly for the public to see? Tsk Tsk Tsk, the bureaucracy behind the story needs a matriarch to take charge of this and do what is right.

But I am thankful that I got to gaze upon them for a few minutes. And I am grateful to be able to bring them into your home.

On one more note, they had set up a game of dice. These dice were about 4 inch square dice, but instead of having numbers on them, the printed off the pictures of the quilt blocks and placed them on the dice. You could play quilters yahtzee with them but they called it Quiltzee. The shaker was a large flower pot. Any of you retreaters or quilt guilds looking for a game to play this looks like it could be fun.

Well, that was a gob of information wasn’t’ it? LOL

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

Busy Busy Busy

I am preparing for two quilty events. As you may already know, I am prepping for a show as well as a hop. The hop may consist of me doing a demo. Covid is rearing its head stronger than ever right now, so I have volunteered my time to take someone’s slot if they get sick.

And due to a very positive response from my last post, I will be having a sew-a-long. No mystery included. For those of you interested I will start this towards September time frame. After all the shows and hops are over, and after two more baby quilts are completed, I will be pattern writing for the below quilt. I will be sewing along with you

My goal is to list fabric amounts/requirements by the end of September. I will use my blog and youtube to show how to make the blocks. One block a week until it is done. Counting these it could be between 8 and 16 weeks. I will probably combine the 3 inch blocks to make a 12 inch block. And the center and corners may be given during the holidays to give you a break and to catch up or not.

The skill level of this is some beginner and some intermediate. I will try to give several ways to achieve the same block.

Those of you who have said yes, helpful tools in your aresenal would be a triangle in a square die for the accuquilt cutting system or the TriRecs ruler. The easy angle and companion templates will have you whip out blocks fast.

Because of the small pieces, it is recommended to pre-starch and iron your fabric before sewing and cutting. This was designed for scraps. I recommend to save your money and use those up. The color way will work best with the primary color being a darker color than the neutral. I have chosen blue, but you could select any primary or secondary color. I do not recommend yellow. And for your neutral palette, try a high contrast. I am going white, off white, gray, and maybe even a little tan. You could certainly use black and grays as your neutrals. I will explain more on this when the time gets closer.

And in the meantime just start thinking about your color ways. Dream your quilt. I will try to also give you a coloring page so you can figure this all out ahead of schedule.

And I will probably ask everyone to chip in and help me name this clever churn dash. In the meantime, happy quilting and thanks for reading my blog!

Electric Quilt 8

Hello fellow quilters, readers, and friends!

I had a recent oportunity to spend free money on amazon. I chose the EQ8 program because there is really nothing I needed or wanted from amazon. (Free spending points were gifted from my employer).

Would anyone be interested in a sew a long? It would be a quilt consisting of 3 inch and 6 inch blocks, churn dash style. Something like the design below? My intention of this design is to use scraps.

Let me know in the comments section. I would have to write instructions, and this would probably be a weekly block pattern.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

Scrap Happy July 2022

This past month has flown by! And in the past month I have gotten much scrap happy scheduled in. First, I have the milk cows quilt that has grown into barns, pigs, sheep, tractors, hay bales, and hay wagons. None of this fabric was purchased, all working with scraps. I found that I did not have very many brown scraps so I opted for more color in the quilt for more appeal to the eye.

I have added very colorful crops to this, but this is now on the back burner, even though the baby has been born (gasp!)

I focused a few weekend mornings while it was cool quilting my embroidery flowers quilt. I was over thinking the quilting for this. I worried that if I did a lattice work, it would X out the design. It didn’t. The tricky part was selecting a thread that blended with most of it. I think I was successful!

As you can see I still have some trimming to do and of course binding. This is on the back burner too.

I am focusing my attention on quilt shows. I have sleeves to add, a description label, as well as some ripping of quilting stitches to remove. I was waiting for my glasses to arrive, it took over a month!) Now I can see very well close up on details that need to be detailed, LOL. I will post pictures at the end of July and then again in Mid august to show the stuff at the shows.

If you are interested in seeing others scrap happy blogs, please click the links below. And I would like to take the time to thank Kate and Gun for hosting this lovely monthly event! It is the wind in my sails. You keep me sailing with my scraps, scrap happy enthusiasts!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, Jill,
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Jule, Gwen,
Bekki, Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera,
Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Bear, Carol,
Preeti, Edith, Debbierose and Esther

And thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

The ups and downs

With last weekend being a holiday weekend, I got so much done! Each of the passes on my longarm I Have timed. To quilt 3 panels is about 4 hours. I have 12 hours left of quilting to achieve a finish! Drum roll please…..and the quilting motif goes to……..CROSSHATCH as a solo.

Yeah I know I said I wanted to do crosshatch only in the negative space. Novel idea, but quilting some of the squares out in no mans land in this quilt, would have been problematic for a different pattern in that area.

So I am whipping out my bearpawquilting ruler and am doing it the long way. If I would have had enough fabric I could have turned the quilt on point on the longarm and quilted it using my lockers. But, glad I did not even attempt that. Oddly enough after getting the top loaded and taking measurements and ensuring it is centered using the centering tape, one end is 60 inches, the other end is 61 inches?????

I attribute this to how I sewed the first panel pieces which seemed to eat up a sliver here and a sliver there. It added up. As square and true as us quilters assume we are, without lack of trying, we are not perfect. So, I will just chalk this up to some “fail” under my belt which equals a better quilter in the long run, eh?

I love how the crosshatch takes the normal square and creates shadows and plays with the lighting to make it seem like they are QSTs. And what is even better about this? I almost forgot to tell you. Bear with me here.

When I purchased my longarm in 2018, I was told by the rep that the only thread the machine would really like was perma core polyester thread. It is cheap thread, I have purchased about $150 worth over the years. It has served me well. I recently recieved a gift certificate and found the perfect thread color for this, but it was 100% cotton, made for longarm quilting. That cone of thread was $24. I would never have gambled my own money on this thread because it is so expensive. So I used the gift certificate and gambled with someone else’s money so to speak. AM I GLAD I DID THIS! I used superior threads king tut Mummie Dearest for quilting of this. That thread blends with every color in this quilt! And my machine loves this thread! I have had no thread breaks! So now I will need to venture out and find other brands instead of the only thread I have used up to this point.

I am kind of sad that I was given poor advice. And when I view the longarm company’s videos, I thought they must have done something special to use GLIDE thread in the video. Why did the rep do that to me? I was naive. I should have known better! So now, I have a new chapter in my quilting life and will enjoy exploring the new options of that door that opened.

I also have been working on some barnyard madness. I was informed last week that the baby I am making this for came three weeks early at 9 lbs 7 oz. So I feel terrible that I have missed the deadline. I reached out to “mom” and she informed me she did not make the deadline either LOL!

This weekend I will work on a better layout and make a gob of crop blocks. And now knowing that it is a little girl, will not feel so bad to put more pink in this!

All of these blocks are different sizes. The barn is 14 by 12. The cows and milk jugs are 12 by 12. The tractor is 16 x 20. The hay trailer is 16 x 22. I will figure out this puzzle. I have enjoyed making this! It is nice to follow a pattern every now and then. I wish I would have made the tractor more girly. But when I was making it, I didn’t know. I tried to make it look like the color of rust, which is not very baby friendly. But the baby won’t care will she?

So you have seen the ups and downs of my needle this week. What you have not seen is the drama that can happen behind the scenes. As you all know I am a youtuber. I have a group of gals in youtube land that I have gotten to know pretty well. This group is very supportive and such a wonderful group of people. I cannot remember if I was watching a live on Saturday or if it was a live on Wednesday, but there was a question posed by one of the gals. It was a harmless question, but it was also a question I wanted to ask, but out of respect for those making the videos opted NOT to ask it.

A moderator on the live chat firmly told the individual to drop it, that is was no one’s business. And the question asker, stated it was their loss, meaning that whatever transpired up to that point, it was a shame that it could no longer be like it was before. I may not have typed those words, but I sure would have thought it. And we all know that words in the form of text are emotionless unless someone reads it differently. The moderator of the channel got very ticked at the “their loss” comment and really got nasty.

And just like that it was dropped. Not sure if it was because one of the chatters left, or just did not read it (because when you are sewing you miss alot of what is written during a live stream). But, it surfaced today. On a completely innocent channel of all of this but with the same moderator.

The youtuber cursed, and I will paraphrase, told people to be nice, and then stopped the live because it really upset her. I can assume if I was in her position I would have been very upset too! And she ended the live. I think she was crying.

Those of you out in virtual land, please be respectful of others. Sometimes keeping your comments to yourself is the best course of action. A completely innocent person got pulled into this. And she is definitely owed an apology. I feel very bad this happened. Even though I was there and not saying anything to anyone, I witnessed it. I feel full of guilt that such a minor thing got blown way out of proportion and escalated fast into anger.

Everyone, if you are having a hard time keeping your inner peace, do not make others miserable. Get yourself some help. And Everyone, please be kind because everyone is fighting a hard battle. No matter what the circumstance, be nice. Try to be respectful more than you have ever been. I am seeing a trend lately where America has completely lost respect for their community even their neighbors.

If someone does something to you that you do not like, be nice. It is so easy to take words out of context. You have no idea what these people are going through, nor what hardships they face. We all are always a few steps from absolute catastrophe. Please be kind. What you put out there is what you get back.

And thank you for reading my blog!

UFOs, Scraps, WIPs

Mid year goal check in. All quilters start every project with good intentions of finishing. I am no different. So far this year I have worked on a couple UFOs.

The 60 degree stars is now finished.

Jack’s chain is now a top.

Baby quilts galore this year. Here are some that are finished now.

And there are a couple more to go. One is in progress, one is in the planning stages.

I have longarmed a large quilt for mom with custom quilting that took a gob of my time.

I have made a few small projects.

And I have written patterns and gave away for free. This is one of my WIPs.

And all the quilts sewn from scraps. I think most of what I have worked on is scraps!

I am trying to grow my youtube channel. The competition is fierce out there! Please visit my channel.

I have taken judges training for textile arts for county fairs.

This will be loaded on the longarm Monday. I have stressed about how to quilt this. I will be custom quilting the #EmbroideryFlowerQuilt.

I am linking up with Quilting Jetgirl in #2022MidYearCheckIn. Make sure to check out her blog with all the links!

TTFN and thanks for reading my blog!

#Ebroideryflowerquilt

Well, I zipped right through this project! Very pleased with how it turned out.

The pattern colors I disagree with at the purple flower. I wish all of that flower was a little more cohesive. (The dangers of pattern following LOL).

Now, how to quilt this?

How should I quilt this, fellow quilters? At first I though the whole thing should get a lattice cross hatch all over, but that would be like placing an X through every square, which I though would be very cancelling. I want to custom quilt this. And idea? Please comment below with all your ideas. Whatever comes to mind would be considered.

The trouble with this quilt? It photographs marvelously about 6ft away. When you are close up, the design is lost. This makes it much harder to quilt. The pattern calls for very modern quilting which is just lines about very half inch all going from left to right across the design. I may have to go with this concept if a good idea is not brainstormed. I googled this design and apparently those who have quilted this have not shared on social media. ????? Why?????? This is the personal spin that each maker can put on this quilt. I really do not want to go with a panto. I think that would take away from it.

The hard part of this quilt, was not the 40 plus color fabric pull from the stash, nor was it the cutting of all 2000 plus squares (I usually deem cutting as the hardest part of the project). The ironing was the hottest part of this project just because it is extremely hot here in Texas. The sewing part was pretty easy. It did get a bit tricky because those panel pieces were so stiff. Quite a bit of wrangling going on!

I would love to hear from you, please leave your feedback in the comment section below!

And thank you for reading my blog!

Vlog #Embroideryflowerquilt

Folks, due to a busy flurry of activity, my blog post is short. I bothered to take some photos and made a vlog from it. For those of you who do not want tips with using grid interfacing, you can just look at my progress in a week!

And if you want the deets on this style of sewing your squares, you can check out my video blog.

I did make a change to the pattern. Where the dark squares were called out that complimented the background fabric, I opted to do the same with mine, but I had to select a lighter color than chosen in the pattern but, obviously it had to be complimentary to my background. Can you see the subtle square color? I probably could have assigned all of those as the back ground color because it makes no difference in the pattern.

And I found out that I ran out of color 11 which was a very light pink. So I went to my 2 inch scrap box, and found about 10 more squares. And ran out of those. So color 11 has many colors and adds to the scrappy-ness I guess.

Gotta run, I have got a lot of sewing to do.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog.

Scrap happy June 2022

Bushels of scraps? Plant those scrappy seeds and make a quilt! I have been sewing from the stash and am happy to report, many scraps have been removed from the pile, yet the pile is still just as big as before. It is scrap happy time again where all of us link one another so we can share all the scrappy love going on. Please visit the links below and delve into their scrap happy!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, Jill,
Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Jule, Gwen,
Bekki, Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera,
Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Bear, Carol,
Preeti, Edith, Debbierose and Esther

In the past month, I have completed a scrappy quilt top.

I have started a new baby quilt called milk cows and milk jugs (this makes me giggle). And a tractor and trailer are planned to make very soon to add to this as well as some crop blocks. Just look how high the alphabet got!

And finally, the biggest scrap buster, the embroidery flower quilt which is a free pattern here.

Weeks ago I cut all these squares. And waited for the bolt of grid interfacing arrive. Unfortunately, they sent the grid on point, not what I ordered which was the normal grid. We reordered the exact same thing. I said it would ship by the 14 of May. The 20th of May came and we decided to cancel that order because we placed it on the 3rd and it had not yet shipped. So we reordered, this time from Walmart, and it finally arrived. Seems like lately customer service is dead, and the minions doing the work have become increasingly lazy. Have any of you noticed this?

So while cutting these squares, I consider cutting and starching the biggest part of the job. Although it is not all behind me. The pattern called for over 3000 background squares. I refused to cut that many. I did cut a baggie full. The rest of the back ground will utilize larger strips. This will not save me any fabric, just time.

Opting for larger pieces does not change the form fit or function of using this interfacing grid. Ladies and gents, do you have a favorite cross stitch pattern? You can easily turn it into a quilt pattern with squares.

And I am certain you would like to see some panels that are done for this embroidery flower quilt.

These panels come together in the form of a oblong 9 patch. There are 9 panels to iron and stitch. I have 4 panels ironed, and 2 completely stitched. I am doing these in random order so, their picture as a whole will not come together until I have the ones out of sync done.

If you are curious about this process I have uploaded a video on youtube.

As you can see above, the background really makes a big difference in how this is going to turn out. Wish me luck! I hope my fabric picker is not broken!

I am participating in the #Scrapathon2023. It is a self paced sew of your scraps. I wonder how many I will complete? I think I am off to a good start!

And a couple of other videos happened. I needed to clean my iron and I always hear people asking how to clean your iron. So I made a video. I hope this helps all of you at some point. Keep in mind this is for base plates that can be cleaned. Do not use this routine on Teflon coated irons.

And some body in the house spilled something (I think it was Ramen soup) on my pressing mat. My mat is an early mat, so it is made very well. (I purchased a new one in case cleaning my mat was unsuccessful and that new mat feels cheap and is not as thick). I had also been starching using the mat. I will refrain from doing that because it builds up on the mat and then over time it caramelizes your wool mat. I wish I had taken a before an after photo, but the brown build up vanished.

The mat took several days to dry. 75% dry from hanging on the line. I had to bring it in because rain was forecasted. The remainder took a couple more days on the drying rack.

And while I daydream about quilting things (usually when I am at work), my mind is made up to make a jacket. I watch Mom and Pop Quilt Shop on youtube and Laura Lynn made a lovely bag all out of various sized HSTs. While I was digging in the stash for a backing, I came across several instances where I had saved HSTs. I went ahead and put them all in one spot and will continue saving until I have more than enough for a jacket.

I have been selected this year for our annual quilt hop in town to do a demonstration. I am excited about that, but it is not until late July.

Summer arrived yesterday and we almost hit 100 degrees. It has been very pleasant so far this year. I hope the heat leaves the area. This may be a long, hot, summer.

My sewing anxiously awaits me…..thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!