Column 7 Quilting

 My goal for this afternoon was to quilt one column and four triangles - and it happened, isn't that great?!

These are all just stitched in the ditch with free motion.  I really like how that makes the applique pop up!

For the next three there was some fancy stitching which was fun to do in a small scale, and curvy outlining with some melons added to the center of the star.  With all the applique melons, of couse I'll be adding plenty of quilted ones as well!

More curved outlining, stitch in the ditch and then curvy outlining with some straight lines in the bottom one.  I think I need to come back and outline those tiny triangle appliques.

This one I am not sure if I am super happy with.  The piecing was perfectly straight, but it looks wonky after quilting.  This was the second one I did and I don't think I was as careful about keeping the block straight as I stitched it.  I might take it out and restitch it later.

More melons, outlining and echoing, and I think that top one needs a little more.  We'll see as I go.

Outlining on the triangle.  Not sure if I'll stick with that or add more later.  

And the final two triangles I did with outlining.  I also tried some straight line stitching in the triangles.  I like them!  I might add more lines, later.  I'm happy just experimenting my way through the quilt and making decisions as I go.  The quilting is super fun, the blocks are so small it doesn't take long to do each one, which makes me very happy!  It's so exciting to be at this stage of this project that I'm absolutely falling in love with it all over again - and that is the joy of working on a project that you can pour your heart and soul into.  It's bittersweet knowing it will be done sone, but fear not, I'm already planning my next big finish - I've got plenty calling my name!  

Crazy Jane Update - blocks done in May

I can't remember if I posted these blocks yet or not, but was cleaning out my downloads file and spotted them.  Yes, Crazy Jane is on my list for this year, and I am still aiming to get her finished!  This is the block I was stuck on for way to long.  I ended up machine piecing it, and it came out really well.

Then I got the next one done, just a few tiny appliques.  Not bad at all!

And I enjoyed finding a lighthouse to fussy cut for the center of this one.  With even tinier appliqued melons!

The next block has a whole lot of applique.  I just need to prep it, then I'll get it finished...it's the thinking about it phase that gets me stuck every time.  

I've been working on some other sewing projects this week, but am looking forward to my weekend quilting.  I plan on getting busy with my UFO for the month, quilting a shop sample, and some more Jane.  A good reward for getting my work done!  Let me tell you, sewing a petticoat for square dancing is pretty boring work, and I'll deserve a quilting break over the weekend.  What are you working on this week?  

Shake off those Winter Blues!

It's another Monday, a new week with new challenges, new tasks, and a new blog hop!  The focus is on Blue with the Winter Blues Blog Hop, hosted by Carla of Creatin' In the Sticks.  I'll be posting on that for Tuesday and I can't wait to share my project with you.

Then on Wednesday I'll be sharing what I got in my first Island Batik Ambassador Box for 2020 - so much quilting goodness!

Speaking of goodness I was happy to get an order from Fabric.com this week - it all started with a yard of linen that is going to be made into an artist apron for one of my daughters.  Then I needed a yard of Island Batik for something I'm working on, and then they had a really good sale on some other pretty fabrics plus I found the coordinating fabric for yet another project, and by that time I might as well order one more yard of something for free shipping! 

I think I ended up with a total of 9 yards of fabric for $50.00, so a very good deal, and I will put it all to good use.  I need to keep a list of backings for all my UFO's that I'm working on so I can purchase those when I need to level up an order for free shipping next time.

I didn't do very well last week on working on the projects I planned to work on, but I did get a lot done on some other projects.  This week I'll do better!  I did get one block done for Crazy Jane.  I cut out the templates for another one, but ended up dumping water on them, so I need to make a new set.  Will I ever learn?

I also got a pattern written up last week, so that's one of my goals for the month.  Friday night I taught a class for a friend.  We used Mod Podge to glue fabric on the back of clear plates.  They came out really pretty!

This clever lady brought a sticker to add words to hers!  I'm not much for glue or paint, but this was actually pretty fun! 

This weekend I worked on the sashing for the 2019 Color Challenge - so fun!  Lots of sewing, but totally worth it!

Isn't this sooo gorgeous?  That black and white sashing just takes this quilt to a whole new level, I think!  You can read more about the sashing here.  I used all Island Batik from my scrap bin for this quilt, plus the solid black and white for the sashing - love how crisp it presses for those checkerboards!

Jen is starting a new 2020 Color Challenge this month, so you might want to sew along.  It's really easy, just a block a month and at the end you have a quilt!  Great for using up scraps and just having fun!  This year's blocks are inspired by birds.  I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy playing along with her.

I'll be back on Tuesday with the Winter Blues blog hop - here's the schedule for the week:

Monday, January 20th

Just Let Me Quilt

Bumbleberry Stitches

QuiltFabrication

Mary Mack Made Mine
VROOMANS QUILTS
Just Because Quilts
Kathleen McMusing

Den syende himmel
Beaquilter

Tuesday, January 21st

Quilted Delights

Kathy's Kwilts and More

Farm Quilter

Homespun Hannah's Blog
Elizabeth Coughlin Designs
Quilting & Learning: What a Combo
Life in the Scrapatch
PamelaQuilts
Home Sewn By Us

Wednesday, January 22nd

Little Bunny Quilts

For the love of geese

The Joyful Quilter

Ms P Designs USA
Quilt Schmilt
Karen's Korner
Made By Marney
Podunk Pretties
Sunshine in the Attic

Thursday, January 23rd

Websterquilt

Songbird Designs

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Storied Quilts
Patchwork Breeze
Seams To Be Sew
HeARTsCreations
Becky’s quilts and adventures
DesertSky Quilting

Friday, January 24th

MooseStashQuilting
Selina Quilts
LimeLeaves Design
Karrin's Crazy World
Sew Many Yarns
Domestic Felicity
DayBrook Designs

Creatin' in the Sticks

Have a great Monday!

Crazy Jane - Row I finished!

I am definitely slowing down on my progress, but trying to stay determined to keep working on the Crazy Jane blocks.  Row J had a lot of tough blocks, but it is now finished and added to the rest of the center blocks!

Row J has a ton of applique.  Oh Jane, why did you love making those melons so much?  I think I will take a day and just prep all of them at once, then I can grab a bag and sit down for a bit of applique in the evenings.

When I'm not working on this, that is:

Yes, I've managed to find another person with a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt that needs to be finished!  This one is in reproduction fabrics.  It's queen size and they want each hexagon to be quilted all the way around.  Yikes, I think it's going to take longer than I thought it would.  Last night I found that my thimble had a hole in it and snapped the eye off a needle!  Had to go through my drawers to find a better thimble to use.  I think this is the third one I've worn through now.   

I also have some shirts to finish putting together - I have to put the sleeves on, hem the bottoms and bind the neckline.  They are cute, so I will definitely try to remember to take a picture.

I was trying to take some new quilt pictures yesterday afternoon, but my handsome helper showed up and distracted me - 

He looks really nice on that bright quilt!

Guess I'd better get busy, plenty to keep me busy for a day or two.  Have a happy day!

A good day to stay in and sew!

Brr.  It's cold and nasty out today, wind and sleet - perfect day for staying and and sewing away! I'm staying warm under a couple layers of quilts today, sewing on some overdue labels again - I can't believe I have 10 more that need them sewn on already.

I print the labels on white fabric, then add a colorful border so they look a little nicer.  Then I pin them on and stitch them while sitting and watching TV with my husband.  Nice to have some hand stitching on a stormy day like today!

Yesterday I managed to finish two more blocks for my Crazy Jane -

I had to applique the center on this one twice.  The first time I accidentally sewed it on with the crosses going the wrong way.  Grrr!

This one was a little easier, and just a touch of applique for the center diamond.  Seems like most of these blocks have applique - I think I skipped those and worked on the pieced ones first, so now I have most of those to do now that I'm near the end...shame on me!

Now I'm off to the sewing room to tackle a couple more blocks.  I hope you are having a pleasant day of stitching, too!

Linking up with Kathy Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

More Crazy Jane blocks finished

I realized that we are already more than halfway through the month and I have not done a single block on my Crazy Jane quilt!  I'm supposed to get two rows finished this month, and I need to make about 17 blocks to meet that goal.  So I guess I'd better get cracking!  I managed to finish up four new blocks in the last two days.  The first block is H1 - Peek-a-boo.  I did this one with traditional piecing.  The measurements were just slightly off of your normal even measurements, but I managed and it came out perfectly!

The next block was H2 - Jacob Anthony.  I printed out foundations for piecing the triangles, then used freezer paper templates and sewed the background pieces on traditionally.  Then I appliqued the triangles on the corners.  I was pleased with the results!

The third block was H3 - Berry Basket.  Foundation piecing all the way on this one, and it didn't take very long finish!

The final block is H6 - Pie sale.  12 tiny quarter circles to applique, but after that it sews together easy as "pie"

Tomorrow I am concentrating on seeing if I can finish the rest of row G so I can add it to my top!  At least now I'm just about to the point where a block a day will get me to my goal.

Are you going to get some quilting in this weekend?  I hope so!  Holiday weekends are great for quilting :)

Linking up with Finish it up Friday, and with Finished or Not Friday

Goals for February

I have a long list of things I want to get done this month, but really, my biggest goal is to finish two more rows for my Crazy Jane Quilt.  I started out in January be sewing my completed rows together and finishing two more rows - F and G.

This month my goal is to complete Rows H and I.  I believe I have 9 blocks to make for Row H and the same for Row I, so that's about 18 blocks this month.  February is a short month, so I really need to get going on it!

Linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal.

In January I prepped the last several blocks at one time, so I think I will start taking the same approach, prepping 4 or 5 blocks for one week so that when I have free time I don't have to do as much thinking and am just able to sew.

I am totally in love with how it is coming out, and can't wait to see how the whole thing comes together!  I am leaning toward machine quilting it right now, but haven't ruled out hand quilting by any means.

As for the rest of the month, I have two custom quilts to finish, and several shop samples as well as a challenge for Island Batik.  So I'll have my hands full and the sewing machine will be busy.  Sounds good to me, I'm happy to back in a productive groove with plenty of things to blog about!

Hope you are staying busy and happy as well.

Back on the Dear (Crazy) Jane Wagon

After spending the last several years saying "this is the year I get that quilt finished" I have decided that 2018 is a good year to finally finish it!  The laugh is that when I first started this I thought it would be fun to do in a year's time.  Many years later I am still working away at it!

One of the hurdles for me has been overthinking it.  Because my quilt is blue and white, I started to worry about how the different shades of blue would work together.  Would I have a bunch of lights in one area and darks in another?  I'm also trying to make every block different, but that's a challenge in itself to organize and keep track of.  I was definitely doing everything I could to make this quilt harder than it already is!

To start with, I decided to sew the completed rows together so it looks like I have actually made progress.  I thought that this would actually help me get excited about completing more blocks so that I can sew more rows together - and now that I've added row B to row A, I know I am on the right track! 

Pardon the poor photo, but my design wall is full, so the floor has to stand in.  At least I vacuumed!

Ok, that's pretty darn gorgeous!  I decided that instead of making long sashing rows that I would sew a strip to the side and top of each block.  This helps when sewing them together to keep them even. 

Last night I worked on block F10  It was a bit of a tricky one, but it came out pretty well!  Today I want to finish F11, which is definitely a tough one.  I found a good online tutorial to help me, though.  I still don't know whether I will quilt this by hand or by machine, but I suppose by the time I get there I will know what I want to do.  I'm pretty excited to get this finished, so I am hoping I can sustain that and push through the hard blocks ahead. 

Jane, you were one crazy lady to come up with this quilt, but I'm just as crazy as you and I'll be getting this done this year!  Woohoo!

Happy Leap Day!

It's been a busy weekend!  I managed to finish one lap quilt, got a good start on the final baby clothes quilt (miscalculated the fabric I needed so will have to go buy some more to work on that) basted two other quilts and did finish one Dear Jane block!  That one block took me over two hours to complete as it was all applique, so I am pleased that it is finished at last.  

This is block F-9 Autumn Aster.  I appliqued the blue melons to the background fabric, then appliqued those sections to the blue back ground square and trimmed the background away when done.  Happy to have this one behind me now!

Here is my Honeybee block.  One  down, 11 to go on this one!

And this is the state of my sewing table this morning:

So I suppose you can see what needs to be first on my list today!

Don't forget the Planes, Trains and Automobiles Blog Hop is still going on for this week!  We have two wonderful projects for you today - make sure you stop by the blogs and enter for prizes.

Monday, February 29 – Jersey Shore 
Bea Lee 
Lemon Tree Snippets

Have a happy leap day!

Where Did the Weekend Go?

I can't believe it's Monday again already!  I'm not sure where the weekend went, but I did get a lot of sewing done because we stayed put.  Poor DH had a bit of a cold, so we just took it easy.  I got my quilt ready for this week's blog hop post, but you can't see it yet - you'll have to check back in on Friday to see it.  I also finished a top for a customer quilt, plus got the back ready.  I would have quilted it, but ran out of batting.  Luckily FedEx brought my new roll today, so I can get quilting on the tops I have that are ready to be made into quilts.  I have at least four lap quilts that are in need of quilting.

Yesterday I spent working on Dear Jane blocks.  I got 5 done and one is halfway there!

Notice I have two pictures of one block.  I realized that I had not added the center square after I had it finished.  I was sneaky and managed to add the center by taking out a few stitches and piecing it in.  I've been a slacker this month, so need to do some catching up.  I think I might owe a few from January as well, so I need to get on the ball and get a lot of blocks done this week!

The Planes, Trains and Automobiles blog hop continues this week - here are today's posts:

Mary Mack Made Mine
Purrfect Spots Designs

Hasn't it been fun seeing all the new lines?  Make sure you stop at each blog - there are great giveaways at each one!  

I Feel so Smart - NOT!

I stayed up way too late last night trying to figure out how to add a signature to the end of my blog posts.  Google was of some help, but I didn't have any success until I finally read this article.  I was really delighted when I saw it finally show up.  That is the feeling smart part of this post.

The NOT part comes from realizing about 3/4 of the way through appliqueing the leaf that I had turned my background upside down.  Boo.  Since I was mostly done, I finished, and I am putting it in my finished pile for now.  I might decide to do it over, but we'll see.  Maybe I'll keep it because it adds charm to the quilt.  And only God is perfect.  Yeah, I can go with that one!  With no further ado - here is the 12th triangle in the top row.  I did this one with freezer paper applique and machine stitched the triangle on the top.  I used the triangle template to cut out my background by tracing around it and cutting a bit on the outside of the line to allow for shrinkage due to the applique. (I think this where I went wrong, as I traced the line on the wrong side, then used it for the front side so I could center the applique.) After I finished sewing, I pressed it and trimmed to the correct size.

I also finished G-4.  Foundation paper pieced perfection.  Those center pieces were sooo tiny!  I also realized that anytime I am estimating the size of a half square triangle piece, I should just add 1/4 of an inch to my estimate.  The second row of triangles were barely big enough!

I am looking forward to more piecing of the star blocks for the baby clothes quilt and a nice walk later this afternoon - a pleasant and pieceful day in my home (as long as I don't have to do too much reverse sewing!).  I hope your day is pleasant as well!

This Week's Finishes

I got some good quilting time in this week and have managed to finish quilting the Rainbow Swirls Log Cabin quilt as well as another lap quilt!

This is the only picture I have right now of Rainbow Swirls, but you can see I used variegated thread (Gumballs by Coats & Clark).  The batting is Warm and Natural.  No problems at all quilting this one, it took nearly 4 bobbins of thread.

This quilt is a variation of my Lover's Kiss pattern.  I made fewer blocks and added a piano key border.  The paris fabric was in my stash, and I paired it with strips from a Honey Honey jelly roll. (Kate Spain)

This one was quilted with Aurifil thread - of course it quilted up great!  This one took a bit over 3 bobbins to complete.  The batting is Warm and Natural as well.  I've almost used a whole roll of it this year!  I was really glad to have a chance to catch up on some machine quilting - I only have two more quilt tops in my pile to quilt at the moment.  I guess that means I'd better get to sewing, and I have a bunch of projects ready to be started.  I am really looking forward to piecing up a storm over the next couple of months.

I finished another block for Crazy Jane on Monday - G-3:

All applique, took me about an hour to finish.  Another Island Batik fabric - perfect for applique!  I love that it pressed so nicely and held the edge for stitching.  I'll have a few more blocks to show tomorrow when I can take pictures.  

I feel like I've been a bit more productive this week, thanks to my planner!  Listing three things I want to accomplish each day really seems to help me stay focused and accomplish those things.  I know the latter part of this week won't be quite as productive as I'll be working at the quilt shop while Sharan is away at the Oregon Gardens show.  Rainbow Swirls will be there in the booth as well as a few other samples I've made.  My quilts get to more shows than I do!  I don't mind, I'll be thinking of new shop samples to make while I work - can't complain about that, after all.

Back to my Crazy Jane Quilt

My friend Lee and I are challenging ourselves to finish our Dear Jane quilts this year.  In order to accomplish this we have decided to make four blocks a week.  I have a count of 99 center blocks done at this point - only 70 to go!  I also have the top row of triangles completed, so just three sides and three corners left as well - so that makes another 42, so that makes 113 done, and 112 to go.  In other words, I just passed the halfway point!  28 weeks, if I stay on this schedule, which would put me done right around August.  I started the whole journey of making this quilt in August, so I think that is a super awesome goal for this year!

Here are the four blocks I made today:

They are G-1, G-2, !-7 and I-8

I made G- 1 by appliqueing the center circles onto the side triangles.  Then I machine pieced the triangles together.  I thought about hand piecing the circles, but decided applique was easier.

G-2 was totally traditional piecing.  16 half square triangles sewn together in the proper sequence.  Not too hard to accomplish!

I-7 was also traditionally pieced, then those tiny triangles were appliqued by hand.  One looks a little odd, but I think I'm leaving it!  I think there was only room for about 4 stitches on each side of those.  Kind of a pin, but they do add a bit of interest to the block I suppose.

I-8 owes it crisp appearance to paper piecing.  And the lovely Island Batik fabric that I used in it!  I promise it will be joined by more - I've accumulated a nice amount of blues from my ambassador projects.  Batiks are so nice for paper piecing, they press so nicely.

Here is my progress!  Maybe next week I will figure out how to add the triangles and corner sections.  I'm pretty excited to see my chart start filling up!