Friday Night Sew In

Sugarlane Quilts is hosting a Friday Night Sew In. Since I am constantly working on one project or another, I thought "Why not? Sounds like fun". After all, when does getting together with a bunch of quilters to sew not fun?

Well... That depends. I spent the night on a task that some do not find fun and had my first venture into basting. We will see if I managed to maintain flatness. My sewing machine does not do machine quilting, so this is another hand quilting project. The Sweet Pea quilt is temp shelved as I seem to have forgotten to buy backing and that is now on it's way. Connecting Threads thankfully is currently running a backing sale. What perfect timing!

This picture is from the quilt roughly half basted. Ended up taking 3-4 hours total. Currently working on motifs for the hand quilting. Looking at stars and deciding on connections between them. Grateful to have this task out of the way. =)

This quilt is a memorial to my mother who passed away several years ago. She taught me to sew and love fabric when I was 10. She always wanted to ride in a Hot Air Balloon and see the land from the air. She would have loved this quilt. Some elements blend in, for example there is a purple blanket stitch used on the applique kite tail bows and a silver lining on the clouds(also blanket stitched). The rays of the sun are golden glass beads and the basket ropes are brown yarn.

Sweet Pea Quilt

I would love to say that I have made some progress. Mostly experiencing frustration.

This was the starting point. With a few additions over the last few months, I increased the size from 45" to 90"... or so I thought.

 I made a few changes. Mostly to the size of the blocks and the sashing.

I made the assumption that if I took 6" blocks and 2" sashing = 45", then doubling to 12" blocks and 4" sashing would = 90".
Well, I forgot to never assume and always double check your measurements. Somewhere along the line things shrank and now I have a lovely quilt that is only 77" square. I lost 13 INCHES!! Will take a few pictures when I go make the sandwich, currently very unhappy with the shrinkage and do not have an easy way to fix it without changing the pattern.

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Updates

Life got a bit busy around here when school let out. There is no such thing as summer vacation. My Grand mother in law has 1.5 acre of land around a 3 bedroom house. She is 81 years old and well she can still do many things, the house is a bit much for her. So the 3 of us (me, my hubby and my MIL) go up there at least every couple of days to help her with something. Be it dusting, weeding, mowing, etc. So sewing has taken a bit of a back seat to helping her keep up with things.

I did get the baby quilt finished. This one is hand quilted, so it was very portable and often went to grannies to get worked on during breaks.

These are part of the queen size quilt. The bottom 2 are Shasta Daisies, while the top 2 are fussy cut from some stained glass print that I love. The center of the Shasta Daisies are leftover bits from the stained glass print. I adore scraps. I can usually get quite a bit out of what some people will throw away. I have most of the blocks done and once they are completed I will start on the sashing, which is a beautiful brown and cream/pink.

Sorry about the lack of designer names, I don't really keep track. While I sometimes buy because of the designer, often I buy because the fabric works with the other fabric I have for a project, i love the print/color or because I have a project I am starting. I mix fabric collections all the time. Whatever looks good goes.

Lovely Quilts

Summer weather is a pain. We are riding the Hot/Cold roller coaster and it is no fun. I'd love mother nature to figure it out and settle for 60-75 degrees (oh, yeh, i'm in fantasy land).
I have gotten some progress on a few things and another distraction.
My SIL is having her first baby in a few weeks and I got a request to make her a baby quilt. So, of course, all my current projects got shelved.

 I had some cute fabric I was saving and I love the simple stars.
Did a little auditioning for the sashing. The toys fabric ended up vetoed (hubby gets veto power, he knows her better than I do). I had some jelly rolls of 3 Blind Mice, which ended up looking great as sashing. The toys have ended up as binding.

Got a few things done on the Sweet Pea quilt now that this one is at hand quilting stage. [I am using a decorative quilting thread (aka embroidery thread) and this is tough on the fingers, esp. since I do not use a thimble (i just can't get used to them). So, on breaks I work on other things.]

Since I am incorporating a few Shasta Daisies for the center of 3 blocks, I took pictures to keep track of where each petal goes on the flower. (My computer desk is part workbench and is well used)

The pattern I am using is over at Jinny Beyers.

Quiltmaker 100 Blocks Issue #7

Loving Quiltmaker right now. They are having a week long blog hop for their new issue, #7. I really enjoyed #6, so this one will be just as lovely. They always use such pretty colors in their example blocks. There are several block tutorials each day and they have made some really nice blocks.
Clicky right here to go see for yourself.

Things...

Are very busy around here right now. Tis the week before finals...
Sadly, my current quilting projects have sat and sat. Zero progress due to more and more homework projects and presentations as the semester reaches its end. Right before I got deluged in homework, I decided to make an addition to the Sweet Pea Quilt (and up the difficulty level =\).

I am making 3 of the block centers out of the Shasta Daisy Pattern over at Quilters Design Board.

I would post pictures of actual progress, but I have a cutting board piled in pieces, fabric, and snack bags. Not much to see right now. Then to add to the busy and shelve current projects, my sister-in-law is pregnant and my hubby thinks it's awesome when I make things for his family. =) So i'm making her a baby blanket and she is due in June.

In other news: Vroomans' Quilts has won the traveling stash!