Just another long, wordy post!

Haven't posted for two weeks. 
So many things going on, and there hasn't been time for therapy quilting. Finally I just NEEDED to quilt. I grabbed a couple of wall hangings that I started quilting weeks ago and squeezed in a few minutes here and there over the past few days, in between real life. Today I finished the quilting--binding will have to wait.

This is my abbreviated version of Lisa Bongean's 10th Anniversary SAL.
If you want to see details of the quilting, you can enlarge the photos below.
   
I think I dragged my feet on the quilting because I spent too long looking at the one Linda Hrcka quilted. I wanted mine to look like hers. I finally decided that it just needed to be done. 
This will be small quilt finish #45 for this year! 

The next one up was what I had hoped to have finished for Thanksgiving (which obviously didn't happen). This is the Buttermilk Basin pattern, which I reduced so that there would be room to hang it.

I had tossed this aside in disgust last month because when I finally made time to sit down and work on it, the tension went haywire and I had to unpick everything I had quilted. After the unpicking I just couldn't face it again for a while. Now it will be finish #46.

                 
As before, you can click the photos above to see the quilting better, if you'd like. But I can tell you now that it isn't anything fancy.
Had some sweet surprises for my birthday. An incredible package from Doniene (Now it's just quiltsII blog) with a lovely card, two wonderful little quilts and an olive wood nativity. So fun to have those beautiful little creations from her, along with another nativity to add to my collection of them from around the world. 
You can see it all below, along with the "loot" Kris (Lavender quilts blog) brought me. It was fun to visit with her in my kitchen as I was prepping food for the holiday. Look at the pretty dishtowel, the great Primitive Gatherings patterns, the mulling spices, candy, threads, etc. These bloggers are such good friends and know me well. Thank you so much, my dears!!
 
I will admit that there used to be more candy with the "loot", but it keeps disappearing. Curious.
There is also a sweet card from friend Annie (no blog--but I "met" her through blogging). She always writes her cards with calligraphy, and it makes me feel so special. Thank you, Annie.

When I received my pincushion from Kevin in the swap Randy organized, I loved the hefty size he had made.  I make wimpy ones, by comparison.
So I played with bits of scraps left from the "Light in the Window"  I made recently. It is a true "make do" creation, and this baby is big. It could be a weapon in a pinch. Kind of looks like a brick, doesn't it?


I continued my "80 Minutes a Week" challenge by attempting yet another Gluten Free pie crust recipe--this is my 4th or 5th try.
I confess that I am a pie crust snob. Before my celiac diagnosis I had worked long and hard to master light, flaky, buttery pie crust.
This pie crust is not as perfectly flaky as those I used to make, but it is the best I have made without a gluten flour. This was a pear pie for our Thanksgiving dinner. I also made a pumpkin pie for our family birthday gathering. I feel like I can call this crust a success. Not what I am used to, but pretty good.

I'm not finished yet. (I promised something fun, remember? Of course not--it has been two weeks.) It has kind of been my habit to share something with my faithful followers around my birthday. This is a little late, but here goes!
                                                          

Just what is this heap of stuff, and why would anyone want it? Maybe no one does, but FYI, it is a little pack of 60 2 1/2" squares in purple, chrome and cheddar (not everyone's favorites, I know, but it's my blog and I love them).
Then we have a clamp on, rustic  looking pincushion holder, with a vintage jar lid for making a pincushion.


 
This photo shows you how you clamp the thing to your sewing machine table or the table beside your sewing chair. You can glue any kind of pincushion there that you would like. The shop where I bought them had a pincushion in one of the vintage jar lids. (which is why I included one), and it looked really good. You could even glue on a regular old tomato pincushion, if you wanted to (but you wouldn't, would you?).

 


Included is this little quiltlet, along with the hanger and hooks.
The color is really off on this photo because I took it at night. The flash on my camera went out on Thanksgiving Day, and ever since then I have to try and time my photo taking when there is plenty of natural light. This wasn't one of those times. 
I guess that about wraps it up, except I will add in a couple of bars of my herbal soap, too. 
So let me know in your comment if you are interested in this bundle of fabric and metal. I'll give it around a week.
Until then,
Janet O.

Drawing now closed.

Very little to show

How does more than a week slip by with so little time spent stitching? It is never my plan, but we all know what happens with even the best laid plans!

I have completed most of the ditch stitching on my version of the Primitive Gatherings 10th Anniversary SAL from a year ago (was it just a year?).
Mine ended sooner than most. I realized it would be too large to hang in any of the spots I have to hang quilts if I added all of the rows. 
I'm still formulating the quilting designs, but it is coming together in my mind.

Finished up my project from the class with Stacy of Buttermilk Basin.

 Not sure what I am going to do with it, but it was a fun project to make.

 This little pile of scraps is all that remains of a small bundle I received recently from another blogger. A swap is in the offing. Mine is pieced and now needs to be basted for quilting and binding. All will be revealed soon.
In the meantime, have you ever studied the fibers of your fabric up close and personal?

That is as much of it as I will share for now. : )

 When I take down holiday decor my dining room table is the staging area. I gather everything from around the house and then start packing it all away. As I was doing so I remembered that I had posted a photo at this time last year as the red/white/blue all came down. It seemed to me that there was so much more this year--and I was right.

2015

2016

I did kind of get carried away there in the red/white/blue fabrics for a time, didn't I?
 
I guess that is all for now. Maybe next time I will have made some amazing progress on a project or two, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you!

Until next time, 
Janet O.
 

Meeting some goals!

Okay, so they are last week's goals (or last month's), but at least I am meeting them!

 I'm finally caught up on the Primitive Gatherings 10th Anniversary SAL (click on link on her sidebar). I think the next installment will be coming soon, so it was a relief to get the last wool pieces stitched down on this.

"Tiny Nines" is a finish! I machine quilted the center in a simple crosshatch and hand quilted a narrow cable in the border. This finishes at 7" square. The 9-patches finish at 3/4".

 My tiniest ornaments ever are completed (not as tiny as Raewyn's!). The Disappearing Pinwheel blocks finish at 1 1/2", and with the 1/4" border all around, they finish at 2". The ornaments I usually make are 2" before the border, so they finish at 2 1/2". You can see the basket ornie hanging between them in the photo below. Just a bit bigger.

Two more Burgoyne Surrounded blocks have been assembled (that one on the top right would not lay flat--even with that miracle product, Best Press). These blocks are inspired by Lisa Bongean's quilt shown here.

 I have the strips cut to make several more--I plan to make twelve of them. But it takes great concentration on my part to assemble them correctly, and I don't often have the power to think that hard by the time I get to sit down and sew in the evening. Since I am making the golds/oranges scrappy, and the blacks are consistent through each block, I can't just strip piece everything. It is slow going.

Once I have the units for each block made and can lay them out, it is fun to see how much they shrink during assembly. I had mistakenly told some of you that these blocks have over 100 pieces. I must have been half awake when I counted them (that is no surprise), because they each contain 97 pieces, and they finish at 3 3/4".
I've shared this photo before, but it gives you a good size perspective.

A week or so ago we had an amazing sunrise, and I missed it because I had blinds and curtains closed to keep out the cold morning air. Now I check to see what the sky looks like and this morning I caught this.

Sorry about the power lines, but it was rainy (doesn't look like a sky like that could be raining), windy and cold, so I wasn't going to run downstairs and out on the road to get the shot without the power lines. Some days I would, but not today. Besides, color like this is fleeting, and by the time I got out there, it could have been gone. It was gone within minutes, for that matter.
So I will enjoy the view with the power lines and be grateful that I have electricity on this cold, wet morning!

Until next time,
Janet O.

Quilting (Quietly) with Kim

I spent Friday in Rupert, Idaho where my favorite not-so-local quilt shop, The Gathering Place, hosted a workshop with Kim Diehl.

Kim was gracious enough to pose for me in the display of her stuff at the store.

  This was what we worked on. Most of the class time was spent making the Dresden and learning her invisible machine applique technique to attach it to the background. The last 30 minutes of class she demoed her wool applique method and we could quickly try it on a wool penny to see if we had any questions.

This is Dresden Dish Garden. Pattern currently only available at workshops.

There were around 20 women in the class, and they were a focused bunch. This was the quietest group of quilters I have ever heard (or not heard)! There was much of the time that no one was talking at all, we were all concentrating so much on the work at hand. Can you imagine that--quilters not talking?
With all of that focused work, you'd think we would have accomplished an awful lot, but this is as far as I got before it was time to pack up and come home.

I'm auditioning wools to put the smaller penny in the middle.

 Kim is an excellent teacher, and I highly recommend her. She will be going along with Bonnie Hunter on her upcoming Caribbean cruise in November to teach a wool project. She is booked to teach through the end of next year and then she says she isn't planning on traveling to teach anymore. She will focus on her books and fabric lines. So if you have a chance to take a class from her, you might want to grab it while you can.




I was not able to do her Saturday class, but this is what they were going to be working on. I believe she said it is from her Simple Whatnots Club.




















This was something she had prepared for an upcoming class. It is very small, and she finished it with Big Stitch quilting. So cute.

This was what she taught at this workshop last year. This gal brought it back to show Kim and get some ideas on how to quilt it. It is very pretty. I love the darker backgrounds.










Other than this class, I haven't had much time to stitch since my last post. These are the projects that got a bit of attention during the week. My Fall themed "Lamb For All Seasons" is all cut and ready to fuse.

 And I have almost completed all of the square-in-a-square units I need in order to make the 6th border on my Primitive Gatherings Tenth Anniversary SAL project.

Once this border is completed and attached, there will be little wool applique flowers in the corners. This has been a really fun piece to work on. I have enjoyed the leisurely pace, and I always love Lisa's designs.We are supposed to be finished sometime in November, and I am really curious to see where Lisa takes us from here.

This week Carmen Geddes is coming to a LQS to share her technique for making traditional quilt patterns using her Easy Piecing Grid. The idea intrigues me. I've watched a couple of Youtube videos, but I am curious to see how it looks in real life, and since the fee was only $5, I figured it was worth seeing. I'll let you know what I learn.

Until next time,
Janet O.

A Lamb For All Seasons *

I'm sure you are all familiar with the free Old Glory Gatherings pattern from Primitive Gatherings.

After making mine, you may recall that I made a Christmas version for a small quilt swap with Gayle (The Middle Sister blog). This summer I had been thinking I needed to make one of those to keep. Well, that got the wheels in my head turning, and this is what resulted.

This one needs something. I am thinking about brown wool circles behind light ones.

 Nothing is final on these yet--nothing fused or stitched down. The wool pieces are not positioned exactly yet. The little lamb above doesn't really have a leg dragging behind. : )
There may be some other little elements added to these basic designs. I'm playing with some possibilities, but it won't be anything major on any of them--just little touches.

I'm almost caught up on the Primitive Gatherings 10th Anniversary SAL. Just need to stitch around the wool applique in the corners.

I am really liking this so far. I do wonder if I am going to have enough of the coordinating fabrics and wools to keep going as the rounds get bigger. 

Got one more mini Burgoyne Surrounded block made. The little 2 1/2 inch square ruler may help give you the size perspective. There will be sashing and 9-patch cornerstones between blocks.

Went to a sale at an almost LQS Saturday morning and got a few more small print blacks to use in the rest of the blocks. Four down, eight to go! No, Julie, I am not making a bed size quilt out of these little blocks, much as you want me to. : )

This little quilt of 2" pineapples finally got quilted. I made the top for that trunk show in May. It finishes at 9"x11".

The binding is only pinned down on the back. Purple may not have been your color of choice for the binding, but it was mine, and I love it! I've named this Pineapple Tidbits.

I've added another little quilt to my wall of quilts made by friends. I may not have shown the last couple, so I will need to get an updated photo soon. This little quilt was made from a Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses block that is so popular around blogland, so I thought you might like to see how sweet one block looks all by itself.

This was made by my friend, Carole. The colors are much richer (Kansas Troubles fabric), but I took it with the light shining across the surface so you could see the great texture of the quilting. It is beautifully made! Thank you so much, Carole. I love it!

There is more to share, but this was long enough. I'll save some for later. Until then,
Janet O.

*No disrespect intended to the book or movie "A Man For All Seasons." I own both and I really love the message of integrity and commitment in the story. But I couldn't resist the play on words for this title. That may reflect poorly on my integrity.

Progress report of an easily distracted quilter.

Two little quilts are finished.

From a 9-patch SAL at quiltsbycheri blog. I think she called it "Gathering Patches." She made 3 different 9-patch quilts. I only made the first two. This one has been a flimsy for quite a while. I may tea-dye it. Haven't decided yet, for sure.

This was one of the many little quilts I made in my one-patch frenzy earlier this month. Just got it quilted and bound.




















And speaking of the one-patch frenzy--the smaller quilt in this photo is the last of the little one-patch quilts that I had laid out on a design board. Very random scraps. I hadn't machine quilted for a while, so I used this as a warm-up piece before moving on to quilt "Market Day" (the larger quilt in the photo, from Pam Buda's SAL). Yes, Kris, I kept that border fabric on Market Day. After three quilt shops and nothing I liked better than this, it stayed!
Both of these just have the binding pinned down, waiting for hand stitching.

The back of Market Day is a repro of a great old patriotic print that I received from Barb Vedder (Fun with Barb blog), whom I consider queen of the cool backing fabrics!

I am working on getting caught up with Lisa Bongean's 10th Anniversary SAL. (Click the links on her sidebar for the patterns)

I chose to do the light border in one print, rather than a collection of scraps. The flying geese will go all around, eventually. I am just taking one side at a time, doing them by paper piecing. I have a hard time getting  lots of flying geese in a row to end up the size they are supposed to be, so I opted to take this route, and it is slow going. The corners will have little wool appliqued flowers.

And I got one more little block (finishes at 3 3/4") made in my mini version of Lisa Bongean's version of the APQ SAL. I have the strips cut for more. Hopefully I can add one or two blocks this week



















Finally, the big quilt is progressing. (Yes, I do make big quilts, too.)

Three of the rows are made--two more to go. Then a couple of borders and the hardest part of all--how to quilt it? I'm open to suggestions. : )

Until next time,
Janet O.