Belated Birthday Giveaway

In my last post (over a week ago) I had promised a "little giveaway" on my birthday (which was yesterday). I had planned on just staying home and sewing that day. I do not usually venture out on Black Friday, but DD#2 invited me to meet her at a local craft fair and it sounded like fun--haven't been to one in years. Afterward DH and I went to dinner (though we had gone last Friday since I didn't plan to go out on BF). On top of that, my two sons came over in the evening unexpectedly and brought a friend so we could play some games. What I'm trying to say is that I didn't just sit around sewing all day, so I didn't have time to post my giveaway, but I had a wonderful birthday. When I did get a few minutes to sew I treated myself to a feeling of satisfaction by finally sewing together the center section of my feathered star quilt. The star has been partially assembled and occupying a corner of my design wall since I took the class back in February. It feels so good to get it sewn together. Now I need to play with the borders. Not sure if this is the final choice, but I like it best of what I have tried so far. Once I get the borders and "on point", fussy-cut 4-patches sewn on I will decide if I want to add a final border or two and call it good, or if I should attempt to expand the pattern to a full bed quilt. We'll see.

So here is my "little" birthday giveaway--I meant that "little" literally. There is a Moda Mini Charm Pack, containing 42 2.5" squares of Harvest Moon fabric by Kansas Troubles. Then there is the Primitive Gatherings Tiny Tumblers pattern, which includes the tiny tumbler acrylic template. That is the size I used on the Tumbling Glory flag (see tutorial tab at the top). And finally I have included one of my Tuffet pincushions. The one shown is made in CW repro fabrics, but I can make a brighter one if that is your fabric preference. There may also be a couple of bars of my herbal soap thrown in (not pictured). This is just a "little" thank you to  my readers and friends in blogland who make life more interesting. If you would like to be included please leave a comment.

And speaking of friends in blogland, my birthday has been made a little brighter by some fun surprises that arrived in the mail. Mary sent this fun little bundle. Mary was the first blogger I actually met when she came to Utah a year ago. We met up for dinner and then attended a Jennifer Chiaverini book signing. I recently "won" a couple of batik fat quarters on her blog (it was kind of a set-up job) and she sent along some other goodies as well. There was actually one more candy bar than is shown, but I had no resistance when I opened the package. : ) Thank you so much, Mary!

The other little squishy came from my newest old friend. We live less than 7 miles apart in northern Utah, but were introduced through another blogger in Alabama. (Thanks, Denise!) Kris and I met Monday at her home and got chatting about life and admiring fabrics and talking sewing machines. We probably wouldn't have quit after three hours if it hadn't been for a previous commitment Kris had.  I am so happy to know her. We will definitely be getting together again. This arrived in my mail Wednesday from Kris--a total surprise. She has an ebay store (The Quilting Garden) and a blog (Lavender Quilts), so maybe you already know her. Thanks for the lovely surprise, Kris!


This little quilt finally went in the mail today--off to Randy in California. I know it is going to a good home!

Another feeling of accomplishment (okay, so it takes less for me to feel like I have accomplished something than it probably does for most of you)--I have all of the "units" made for Orca Bay, one year after Bonnie started posting the clues. This is as big as I could make it with the shirts I had. You can see that it is not all sewn together (about 1/2 of it is). Now I need to decide how I want to border it. I probably won't be doing Bonnie's border. Don't think I have the patience for it at this point and I think mine looks even busier than the original, with my stripes and plaids. I want something a little calmer around the edges. I actually found a great shirt that is black with purple stripes and I'm wondering if I can use it somehow.

 And finally, when my two sons came over this evening they brought this bouquet. I love the bright mix of colors. I always gravitate to multi-colored flowers and multi-colored bouquets.

 Now, notice the crocheted doily on which the vase is sitting. I bought that at the craft fair I went to with my daughter. A sweet elderly woman had crocheted these and snowflake tree ornaments, butterfly fridge magnets and a bunch of other things. They are all well done--this doily is gorgeous. She had it priced at $25!! Her snowflake ornaments were $1.25 each. The butterfly fridge magnets were often just given away to children who came by. My daughter and I told her she should charge more. Her husband told us that their daughter told them the same thing. We bought a bunch of the snowflakes, and then I got the doily. It is good sized--about 15" across. I couldn't take it at that price with a clear conscience. I gave her $40 and told her if I could afford more I would pay it because it was worth more.

This is a very long, wordy post. Sorry. I have been trying to make them shorter, but I guess I will let this one slide. Remember to leave a comment if you are interested in the belated b'day giveaway. I will let the RNG choose a winner Tuesday night and post the winner Wednesday.
Until next time,
Janet O.

Progress

I have finished this little quilt and it has gone to its new home.

It was made with leftover Rail Fence blocks from the Little Temecula quilt I copied here.
You can see the quilting a little better from the back.

And I have the quilting done on the first of my four little "Temecula Blessings Baskets" quilt to actually get quilted. I'm trying to decide what color to use as binding. What would you use?

Maybe this angle gives you a little better view of some of the quilting patterns used--the backing on this is that same black fabric as in the border, and I can't get a shot from the back that shows the quilting well. Maybe that is a good thing--I really struggled quilting this one. Sorry, Randy. This quilt will be going to Randy as a "thank you" for the quilts she has donated when my daughter has held her fund raisers for Dravet Syndrome.

I've also made progress on the quilts for my grandsons for Christmas. They don't read my blog and their mother has already seen these photos, so here are the cut pieces laid out ready for sewing.                                                                                                                                                                      

This is for the oldest grandson and big
Star Wars fan. Not happy with it. I have found
another S.W. fabric that I think I am going to be
subbing for the bigger strips. This quilt will
have a "starry sky" print border all around.

This is for the middle grandson who is a
baseball nut. He loves all sports, it seems,
but especially baseball. There will be a border
all around this in the black tonal houndstooth
print that makes some of the narrow strips.

This is a crib quilt for little Ben. He loves trains!
When I get the black binding on it that red
stripe around the outer edge will be covered up.
This one is already partially sewn together.

All of these quilts are made using MaryQuilts.com favorite quick donation quilt pattern, found here. I have made these a little bigger and varied the fabric placement a little. This is a great pattern for a quick quilt, whether a gift or a donation.

I continue to plow ahead with Orca Bay (SOTMD). Hope to have a flimsy by month's end. Now I need to get plowing on the 5 Sow-Along blocks I have yet to make.

There seem to be a lot of November birthdays on the blogs I follow. I was a November baby, too. My friends have long tried to teach me to celebrate all month long, and I am seeing the value--especially when your birthday gets swallowed up in the Thanksgiving festivities. DD#2 gave me tickets  to a Gary Morris concert, which DH and I enjoyed Saturday night. Monday I went to brunch (crepes and hot chocolate made with Nutella) with a friend and DD#2 (DD#1 would join us if she lived anywhere nearby). Later that day I was doing some grocery shopping and I spotted a fall bouquet that I loved. I don't usually buy myself flowers, but in the spirit of celebrating all month, I did. Doesn't it look nice with my Fall table runner (which, by the way, I bound but never quilted)?

So to spice up the birthday a bit (as if having it on Black Friday this year isn't spicy enough), I will be posting a little giveaway that day. Tune in then for the details. Nothing fancy--just a little treat for my quilt blog friends who make my life a little more spicy.

We have had a lot of snow lately. This was the view to the west a couple of days ago.

 And this was the view to the east.

But we are warming back up this week, so it is melting away on the valley floor now. Just so long as it is back by Christmas. : )

Until next time,

Janet O.

Just a bunch of stuff.

Mountain Trail is all quilted and bound!

You can see the quilting pattern better from the back.

I'm going to link this up with Lori at Humble Quilts. I had just checked her blog to make sure I wasn't too late to link and I was surprised there weren't more links. I have seen so many of these around blogland. If you have made one and haven't linked yet, please join in. It is fun to see the unique qualities of each quilt, working from the same pattern.

I decided to get my "Random Roses in Jamestown" block done early this month. One more block to go and then I will make some kind of setting squares. I am thinking chain blocks instead of the log cabin blocks in the pattern. I love chains for tying sampler blocks together. I am so proud of myself for keeping up with this, since I am doing it on my own and there is no group, or link to keep me motivated and on track.

I also got another mini quilt finished. When Cheri posted her "labor of love" directions on Labor Day I made two and gave one to each daughter. But I just kept making 4-patches as leader/enders and finally decided I'd better stop and make something out of them. So I made another, larger "labor of love". As is my recent trend, I made the setting HSTs out of rather similar value fabrics--not much contrast there. The 4-patches save it from being too drab. I also bound it with something rather nondescript. I was determined to make this entirely from the scrap basket, and nothing else worked for me any better than this did.

I continue to plug along on Orca Bay (aka SOTMD). I have 32 more of those rectangle unit thingies to make and then I can stitch it all together and figure out how I want to border it. It will only be about a twin size. That is as far as I could stretch the peach and purple shirts. Even after a year, I still love the movement the string blocks (faux, in my case) give this quilt.

 Next up in the quilting cue are these two minis. Both are gifts and the recipients know who they are. I started marking the basket quilt this evening.

My main project for November will be to piece the quilts for my grandsons for Christmas. I have all of the fabric, but have barely begun to cut and stitch. Speaking of grandkids, some have asked to see the costumes I made for two of them for Halloween. 

Abby was a black cat. I made her skirt, tail, and faux fur collar and ankle and wrist cuffs. The ears were purchased. Can you hear her meow?

Ben was The Cat in the Hat. I made his hat and tail, and stitched a white tummy to his shirt. He was thrilled to be "Go-go", as he calls him, because of something on the PBS Kids Cat in the Hat show.
And lest one of the other two grandchildren feel left out, here they are. Matt's Ninja costume was purchased (and can you tell he took his role seriously?) and Josh's Mr. F. costume came mainly from the thrift store, but my clever daughter created his headgear.

That's enough for now. I'm going to go reset clocks and get ready for bed.
Until next time,
Janet O.

Just under the wire again!

I almost didn't do this months FMQ Challenge at Insights From SewCalGal. I have yet to miss a month (though several times came as close to missing as I could without actually missing). The reason I thought I wouldn't do this one was because it involved using different battings, fabrics and threads. Let's face it, I'm boring. I have no silk anything--fabric or thread. My battings are all cotton or cotton/poly--no wool here. My threads are similarly bland. So I decided right off the bat that I was going to skip this one. Maybe I would make it up with a bonus tutorial, maybe not. Just possibly I would drop out all together. Oh, I was getting drastic in my thinking. But other, more daring souls forged ahead with what they had on hand. Why didn't I think of that? They inspired me. So I am posting my link by the skin of my teeth again. Here it is.

 I usually stick pretty closely to designs I have tried before, but this time I branched out with some new stuff. I had fun, other than the changing of thread. Am I the only one that doesn't enjoy frequent thread changing? Oh, and the feather wasn't fun, either. Feathers are my nemesis. I wasn't going to do one, but I figured I needed to get brave. This is patterned after Sally Terry's hooked feathers. It is better than some I have quilted, but that is still my least favorite corner of this project.
The fabric is cotton, the batting is a scrap of cotton left from a larger quilt. These are the threads I used--a couple of size 30 Poly Quilter's Choice by Golden Threads, size 40 Poly Glide, size 50 cotton Aurifil, size 50 cotton Mettler, size 40 cotton Signature, size 40 poly Isacord, and size 50 cotton Gutermann.

I've also worked on quilting my Mountain Trail today. Hopefully I will get it bound in the next day or two and link it up with Lori at Humble Quilts.

My time is almost up to link this with the FMQ Challenge, so I'd better do it now. 

Until next time, 

Janet O.

Just a little Halloween Humor...

...very little, in fact. In a former life I created rubber stamp art. Challenges are not unique to the quilting world, and one year (1994, to be exact) I took on a challenge to create a scene using the witch stamp, "Mordred" with her book of spells. I don't like anything scary or creepy and don't even include witches in my Halloween decor, so I tried to inject humor into my series, which I called "The Misadventures of Mordred". So here it is for your viewing pleasure (or not) on this Halloween Day. (You may need to click the pictures to be able to read the dialogue.)

In spite of the levity of this post, my prayers are with those who have suffered the wrath of Sandy--including my niece and her family in Connecticut.
Have a safe Halloween!
Janet O.

Pineapples and Poor Lil' Punky ...

... came together to make this. My third and FINAL Halloween mini--at least this year. : )

I think I liked it better the way I imagined it would look than how it actually "materialized", but I'm not unhappy with it. If you enlarge the photo you will see that the little pumpkin centered in the lower right pineapple block is upside down. I don't know how that happened because I paid careful attention to that as I laid out the nine blocks to sew together. But I do know that it is staying that way!

Making the pineapple blocks and dealing with this reminded me why I don't do more paper piecing.

When I made these four Lil' Punkys I did the first one using the foundation paper piecing method as the directions said. I made the next three and the one in the mini above using perforated paper piecing (see tutorial tab at the top).

This is the only mess left from making all four of them. That is also why you may notice that in the photo above, one stem points to the right and the other three point left. As I did my perforated paper base, I didn't realize I was reversing the pattern.

Thanks, Julie, for the fun "Poor Lil' Punky" pattern. I tried to resist it, but it didn't work. (If you missed this pattern, the info and links are in this post.)

Until next time,
Janet O.

Let's hope this one travels better!

This is "Falling Stars 2" and I finished up the label and binding Tuesday evening. It is going to Texas as a "thank you" to my sweet friend Doniene for the quilt top she donated for my daughter's fundraiser in August. A couple of posts ago you saw the original "Falling Stars" that Carla won in my fundraiser drawing. I sent it to Carla (who lives just a couple of hours away) by priority mail on a Tuesday and it took 6 days to get there! (Sound familiar Freda?) So when I go to town and mail this tomorrow I will definitely track it to see what adventures it might have!

 After "Falling Stars 2" was completed I went to work on this. My youngest grandson, Ben, is going to be The Cat in the Hat for Halloween. DD#2 had the rest of the costume under control and I offered to tackle the hat. After viewing a few online tutorials (which were all for hats larger than I needed), I was able to pull this together without too much trouble.
Tomorrow I will be attempting to create portions of my granddaughter's cat costume. We'll see how that goes. : )

This is where I hang my head in shame. I said I wasn't going to do anymore minis until some other projects were completed. I tried, but I couldn't resist. I blame credit Teresa and Kris. Last month Teresa posted some orange and black mini pineapple blocks as part of her Rainbow Scrap Challenge project. She was making these luscious little pineapples each month in the chosen Rainbow Challenge color. The orange ones made me so happy. But I don't paper piece (while I made the Lil' Punkys I muttered that to myself quite a bit!), so I just admired them and moved on. Then Kris just posted some she was making in orange and black for Halloween. She has already tempted me into making two other Halloween minis. What made me think I could resist this? So after the cat's hat was made, I took the little paper pieced pattern I had downloaded, resized and printed--pulled out the orange and black scraps that have seen a lot of daylight lately, and I made a mini pineapple block. This will finish at about 4". It wasn't too terribly painful. So I have a 3rd little Halloween mini in mind to make using a few of these. As I make costumes and finish a couple of gifts in the next week, I hope to be able to squeeze in a block here and there and maybe have it finished before the last trick-or-treat.

I went to bed Monday night listening to the wind and rain. I love to be lulled to sleep by those sounds, and we have not had them often enough this year. But Tuesday morning when I awoke it was quiet. My first thought was, "The rain has stopped." I opened up the window and snow fell in on me. We do occasionally have snow in October, but it usually warms up during the day and all melts off. Not this time. We are under a winter storm watch until Thursday afternoon. Tree branches were down all over town and power was out in some areas. When the leaves are still on the trees and the snow is this heavy and wet it puts too much weight on the branches and they can just break right off the tree, sometimes taking power lines with them. Hopefully it won't be this cold on Halloween. The kids can't show off much of their costumes when they have to be bundled in winter coats.
Until next time,
Janet O.