December Monthly Mini and Gnomes in the Dome

I had thought I had plenty of mini quilts for Christmas decorating, but it turns out I was short a few. Now I am short one less. Linking up with Wendy at The Constant Quilter blog for our Monthly Mini challenge. This has been the 3rd year--can't believe I have kept up. It is often the only thing I accomplish in a month, so I am grateful for the motivation to at least do this!

Just a handful of green scraps, some leftover Marcus Brothers aged muslin, and a chunk of red from the "smaller than FQ" storage, and this little cutie was whipped up pretty quickly.

 

I actually did follow a pattern for this, which you wouldn't think I would need for such simplicity. However, I was fascinated earlier this year when I saw this book from Primitive Gatherings, and the quick way to make a negative and positive 9-patch using two squares of fabric.  I had seen the method before, but had never attempted it.

The mini quilt on page 17 caught my eye and I decided it was time to give it a try. It really is slick, but especially when working this small it is important to get your seams accurate. And I always sliver trim the finished product, to make sure they are all the same size.                                                This little piece finished just under 10x12. That is a hair larger than the pattern, but I cut my borders just a bit wider.  I machine quilted the whole thing. I wanted to do some of the quilting by hand, but there just wasn't time.

I actually had another "keep someone warm" finish this month! On a socially distanced shop hop with a friend back in September, I was taken by the Timber Gnomies fabric line from Henry Glass. My youngest daughter loves the gnomes and I thought this might make a fun throw quilt for her--for Christmas!?! What was a thinking? I swore years ago (after frantic Christmas finishes) never to make quilts as Christmas gifts--save that for birthdays! But how hard would it be to whip up my favorite quick strippie quilt pattern? I must have a very short memory.

But I did it!

This quilt is based on Mary Johnson's "My Favorite Quick Donation Quilt" pattern. I have used it many times, but I always add borders, and sometimes extra rows. Makes a good twin size quilt that way--or a large throw. I am really pleased with the results, and my daughter does love it.

 

I did straight line quilting down each side of the black, inner border. Then using a longarm ruler, I quilted clamshells over the "strippie" portion. The borders got a large swirl, which design I "pounced" using a stencil. Very quick and easy to follow.

 

 

 

 Henry Glass offered a free strippie pattern for this fabric line, and I did download it, but it was a bit too busy for me. However, you could adapt it to your liking, if you prefer this pattern.

 

 

 

 My son was very happy to finally have his college graduation t-shirt quilt--he graduated over 5 1/2 years ago. And I was thrilled to have it finished for him!

And now for one last gnome (as if those Timber Gnomies were not enough). Here you see our resident Dome Gnome with my monthly mini and a nearly empty basket of holiday soaps. I fill a few baskets with packages of my handcrafted holiday soaps for gifting around my community as the holidays get underway. You see there are two lonely packages left. I know the Christmas season is past, but if you wouldn't mind some gingerbread shaped soaps at your house going into the new year, leave a comment that you would like to be included in the drawing. 

Are you a resolution maker, or not? As for me--not so much. I am more of a daily goal maker, working toward larger goals, so I don't make any dramatic changes to my plans for January.

I hope you have all had times of joy through the season, and times of bringing joy to others. I know you bring joy to me!

Until next time,

Janet O.

 

Okay--I have to do a little more weather geek stuff. Three days ago we had such a pretty hoarfrost. It makes the world look like a fairy land. I just want to share a few photos.

 

 

Feathery frost creating fluff on all surfaces.  I never tire of it. Hopefully you can enlarge the photos for a better look.

Drawing now closed!

The Beast Conquered

This quilt was started in the summer of 2015 as my youngest son's college graduation quilt. It has appeared here on the blog many times, but progress was halted on more than one occasion due to shoulder problems, then surgery, and finally a long, slow recovery.

It feels so good to have finally taken the last stitches on this king-sized quilt, and completed the label. It may have been meant to be a graduation gift years ago, but this is going under the Christmas tree this year! 

Below is the glamor shot--at least as glamorous as a t-shirt quilt can get.

The twin to this quilt can be seen HERE. I made that one 9 years ago for my oldest son's graduation.

I have another near finish that I should be able to share at the end of the month, when I also hope to have a monthly mini ready, but here is a sneak peak.

This was Thursday when I was working very hard to get the quilting finished on my HQ Sweet 16. Friday afternoon I attached the binding and got half of it sewn down by hand on the back. Hope to get the other half finished today. To finish two quilts in one month that are large enough to keep someone warm is a very rare occurrence for me. I want to bask in the feeling for a minute. :)

I had a request from someone who wanted to see my tree that only has handcrafted ornaments this year. I have wanted to do this for several years, but I always hate to leave off the ones we have collected on family vacations, or the ceramic ones I painted, or the Matreshka doll ornaments that echo my doll collection. But since we won't be hosting any family gatherings, I figured no one would care if I left those ornaments off this year. You should be able to enlarge the photos to see the ornaments more clearly.

These photos get the tree from most angles. You can enlarge them to see the ornaments. The crocheted chain, large felt ornaments, and most of the counted cross-stitch were all made around 40 years ago, early in our marriage when buying ornaments wasn't an option. Many of them haven't been on the tree in decades. There are ornaments made by my mother and mother-in-law, my daughters, granddaughter, myself, neighbors, and some of you.

You may have noticed a little guy sitting on the window ledge. That is our "Gnome in a Dome." Many of you have an elf on a shelf, and some have a Nisse or two (or more). When hubby and I recently visited a Christmas display at a local garden center we couldn't help but notice that gnomes seemed to be the predominant theme. We decided we could use a gnome for our dome. He is a cute little guy.

We will be having Mom join us for a few days next week. It will be a privilege to have her with us for Christmas this year. There will be precious memories made. She wasn't supposed to live to see last Christmas, so it is a miracle she has made it this long. Though frail and struggling with short-term memory issues, she is still spunky and her dry wit keeps us laughing.

If you are celebrating Christmas, or Chanukah, or any other special traditions in your family, I hope you will cherish those with whom you are able to gather, virtually or physically. Make memories that will be remembered fondly. Choose to set aside differences, forgive past hurts, reach out to those who may be a bit harder to love. See if you can help someone feel valued. Choose to be part of the change the world can use right now.

Until next time,

Janet O.

 

Earlier this week I was walking to my car in a parking lot and was captivated by the view of this sun dog. It is brighter than any I have seen before (does this prove that I am a weather geek?). ;)

Monthly Mini and the Beast!

This is my Fairy Garden Party, based on Bonnie Hunter's Garden Party pattern. You can go here to read how this quilt shrunk when I was making it at a workshop with Bonnie, if you are not already familiar with the story. And here you can see how the top came together back in 2017.

I am linking with Wendy for our monthly minis. She keeps us going with her encouragement and example. Follow the link and check out the wonderful autumn mini she made, and enjoy the links to the other mini makers there.

The quilting of this has had me stumped. It is small--as you can see here, with my hand in the photo. Sometimes I feel like things this small can look clumsy if you put too much quilting in them, especially if you don't use a really fine thread. Hand quilting was not an option, because the back side is wall-to-wall seam allowances.

I finally decided to stitch down either side of the green chains, and around the flower centers, with a little more quilting in the borders. (You can see that I forgot to get rid of the marked lines in the border before taking these photos.) 

When I started trying to stitch straight lines from point to point down the sides of the green chains, I had to keep weaving from point to point--there were no straight lines involved. Oh, well, I am so done with the quilting on this. I had the outer border almost completely quilted when I discovered the tension on the back was off (even though I had tested it before I started), and I had to unpick it all. But it is finished now and I am glad to cross this off the UFO list.

Also in the UFO department, I have made major progress on The Beast, my youngest son's king-sized college graduation quilt. It is all quilted!!

Maybe I will actually have it trimmed and bound in time for Christmas, since I didn't make it for his birthday (2 days ago).

The random number generator chose comment number 26, so my lovely friend Kris (who blogs at Lavender Quilts) will be getting a package of my herbal soap when it finishes curing in a couple of weeks.

Hope you are finding beauty in the world around you.

Until next time, 

Janet O.

The Beast Revisited

It has been a long time since I felt my shoulder could handle pushing this heavy, king-size T-shirt quilt around under Gidget's needle. It feels good to be seeing real progress now, and without shoulder pain.

This is my youngest son's college graduation quilt. He graduated 5 years ago. Do you think it is about time I completed it? When I started the quilting on this a few years ago my shoulder problems eventually brought it to a halt. After finally having surgery 2 years ago I thought I would get back to this quickly. But healing was slow and then other projects had gotten in the way. Now this is my machine quilting priority, and over the past couple of weeks I have quilted 16 blocks. I have four to go, and then I get to start on the sashing.

I am doing some pretty dense quilting, and I am trying to make each block different from any others.

Some turn out well--others, not so well. The block to the left is one of my favorites. The one below is in the "not so much" category.

I have never loved quilting pebbles, hence I don't do it much, so I can't do it well. But by the time I decided I wasn't thrilled with this block, I had gone too far to unpick (I just wasn't willing to do it at that point). Of course, this is the brightest, most fluorescent of all the blocks, which makes it  obvious. So be it.

These photos show a few of the other designs I used in the quilting.

         





















This T-shirt quilt has a twin brother. My oldest son graduated from the local university in 2011, and only 4 months later his T-shirt graduation quilt was quilted and bound. Of course, I didn't do the quilting myself. Here is the twin--and they were only born 4 years apart. How is that for a trick?

Between the two of them, these are the quilts that compelled me to learn machine quilting. When I picked up this quilt from my machine quilter, she told me about all of the problems she'd  had with breaking thread and wacky tension as she quilted it. Then she said that she wouldn't be sad if she never had to do another t-shirt quilt. My youngest son was already in college by then and already had the t-shirts stacking up (my sons were joiners). At that moment I figured I just needed to learn to do it myself, and that very month I was attending my first machine quilting classes (where I was, in all honesty, the class dunce).

One other near completion, my "Mom's Flower Garden" quilt finally got the border attached. Here it is on the guest room bed, making sure it is the size I want before I send it off to be quilted. Yes, there are too many quilts in the queue, so I am quilting this one by check.

Every couple of years I hire a friend that does excellent work and let her finish one of for me, and this is one of those times. I am excited to have her work her magic and get this 22 year old UFO into the "finished" pile!

And lest you think you are on the wrong blog, I do have a couple of small quilts that are in the works. One of them should end up being my mini of the month and will make an appearance here soon.

Our little valley has had an explosion of Covid cases in the past couple of weeks. We went from under 100 to over 700--heavily related to employees at a meat packing plant. Hope you are all able to stay safe, wash your hands, social distance, and wear a mask when you can't.

Until next time,

Janet O.

Hiding in the Closet (projects, not me)

In January, in this post, I showed you several small design boards with the beginnings of little quilts upon them.
This week I found more hiding in the sewing room closet, and a couple of them demanded attention--as if I had nothing else to do. One of the boards had lots of mini charms that had been randomly sliced into three strips. One row of them had been sewn into the beginnings of a mini Chinese Coins quilt. So I finished the other two rows, and found a lovely Betsy Chutchian stripe to fussy-cut for the border.

It turned out more square than I had anticipated. That is what happens when no planning whatsoever is involved in the design process. It is approximately 9".

Another bunch of mini charms that had been sliced up were mostly from Primitive Gatherings Old Glory line. I had originally intended to make rail fence blocks alternating with sawtooth star blocks, as I did in a few pieces shown in this post. I had a couple of the rail fence blocks assembled when the design board got buried in the closet.

The blocks finish at 2" and the whole things is 8" square.

I decided to switch things up. I put good old Abe in the middle of the rails, made  5-point stars, and after attaching the narrow red border, I decided it needed a sawtooth border. One more side to piece and it will be ready to layer and quilt. This may get a combination of hand and machine quilting. I'm trying to decide if this will be what I take to my family reunion auction this year.

A combination of hand and machine quilting is what I had planned to do on my Kim Diehl Porchside Garden, but after hand quilting the center, I just felt compelled to continue by hand, instead of quilting the borders by machine. Getting pretty close to finished.
 




My thanks to my friend, Mary, who has helped prepare me for the classes I am taking from Bonnie Hunter in July. She surprised me with this in my mailbox!


I am plodding along very slowly with the quilting of The Beast. I keep this picture of the blocks pinned to my design wall and whenever I finish a block, I cross it off.  You can see this is moving at a snail's pace, but at least it is moving.

I am quilting them by thread color (am I the only lazy quilter that does not like to change threads?). I started with all of the black blocks. Now I am doing the white ones. Then I will do the green blocks, the turquoise, the gold, and the grey. I will finish with the navy blue blocks. There are bunches of those!!


It will put a damper on anything else being quilted until this is finished. Not that I can't move this out and change the thread to quilt other things, but that is a lot of effort for a lazy quilter. :)

The winner of the "Bee" panel from my last post is Denise. I already had her address, so it is winging its way to her abode.

Until next time, 
Janet O.

In scanning through the photos I have taken this month to find what I needed for this post, I came across this one I wanted to share.Took it on March 1st.
 
We don't have all this snow now, but there is still plenty in the mountains. We are out of a drought for the first time in 10 years!