Tag Archives: quilting

Winter Fun

I saw a fun project last weekend and knew I just had to make these for my grandchildren. I can remember what rambunctious fun I had growing up with two brothers and a sister and my grandchildren can get pretty rambunctious too. So, I started making snowballs–yes, snowballs! It takes about five minutes at the most to hoop my fabric and stitch out these cute little faces. The balls are made in the shape of a baseball, so they’re one continuous seam. These snowballs are made from cotton lycra (dancewear fabric) because that’s what I had in my closet, but I’ve ordered some white fleece from Joann’s. They’re filled with fluffy fiberfill. I think about 2-3 dozen snowballs should be enough for three children. What fun to build forts and have a great snowball fight. (I purchased the embroidery files from http://www.CharmingStation.com.

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And this is the second thing I’m working on–ideas for quilting my candy hearts quilt. There are alternating plain blocks in that quilt, so this is what I’m thinking about doing for the plain blocks. I stitched it out this morning to size the hearts and see how it would look. I’m pretty pleased, but think I’ll use either a wool batting or a layer of Dream Request weight underneath my Hobbs Heirloom batting to give the quilting of the heart shape more definition. This quilting is with only one layer of Hobbs Heirloom.

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Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Stitch Detail

I promised on Monday to show you the stitch detail for the houses. Things turned a little upside down just after I posted that. My husband developed appendicitis and immediately after I posted, he told me we had to go to the doctor right away. We got back home yesterday after a successful surgery and two and a half days in the hospital. Hopefully, things will get back to whatever ‘normal’ actually is.

Now, for the stitch detail. I am always on a quest for an applique stitch that will hold a raw edge fusible applique in place securely enough to be washed over and over (functional quilts are a necessity at our house), that is complementary to the particular applique design, and that is at least a little bit unique. You will see that the blanket applique stitch here has a short leg and a long leg. The purpose was to make it look more like a hand stitched applique edge. The second stitch is meant to look like a free motion machine applique. And these stitches are much lighter than a satin stitch.

house003a_stitch detail001

I absolutely love satin stitch, but find that quilts with  a satin stitch applique will sometimes have a “waffle” edge on the applique after washing. The reason for this is the density of the stitching and the difference in density between the satin stitch, the applique and the background fabric. After washing and drying, the waffle edge is easily smoothed with a steam pressing from the back (yes, I do steam my quilts when needed), but it’s nice to have lots of other stitches in the repertoire for applique.

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

The best laid plans. . .

All that red and black fabric that I thought I had in my stash. . .well, it must have been too tempting for other projects because there was not enough left when I pulled it out to look at it. So, it was back to the drawing board for me. Since I have so many batiks and couldn’t decide on a single color, I decided to try a scrappy look. I played around with it in EQ and came up with this.

I knew babysitting was on the agenda today, so I quickly cut 4-1/2″ x 18″ strips from some fat quarters and half yards so that I could cut the triangles on the Accuquilt GO during baby’s nap this morning. One great advantage of the cutter is that it is so quiet – no motor, no noise at all. I layered several of the strips with the white background strips so the triangles would cut already layered and ready to stitch.

While I was rocking baby to sleep, Ezri (5-1/2 years old) was inside with me. She usually spends a lot of time quietly playing with Legos. After the baby was asleep, I walked into the kitchen and found Ezri cutting all my fabric strips into triangles–even the ones that hadn’t been layered. She had done a remarkable job of it – there were only two strips that had partial triangles – everything else was done perfectly. So, I spent awhile this afternoon layering the single triangles with background triangles. She was not at all interested in cutting white triangles – she only wanted to cut the colored fabric.

There are two t-shirt quilts sitting on my machine that must be pieced – so these triangles are ready to be the leaders and enders for those projects. It will be fun to get a third project out of the first two.

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

UFO Finishes and Quilt Show

What a busy week I had last week. After two months of blogging about Quilts of Valor, I buried myself in other projects for a week and stayed away from the computer. Most of the time was spent with my Mom, my daughter, and my grandchildren. But I managed to get a little stitching time in also.

There were two new grandsons in February and neither one had a single new baby quilt from me. Thus, I made and/or finished four baby quilts last week. My longarm has seen little use the past year, and there’s a whole stack of quilts to be quilted. Someone needs to get busy!

It was so much fun to be actually quilting the tops. Finishing the Quilts of Valor got me started, and now I hope this will be a summer of finishing all those tops. What’s interesting to me after almost a year of doing very little quilting is that it seems that I can now do some of the things that were once so hard for me. Doing freehand continuous curves was almost impossible and now I seem to zip through them with little effort. Not sure what the secret is; maybe I’m more relaxed now than I used to be, not sure why–but I feel as if I can quilt almost anything now.

Here are some photos. I still haven’t done the official photos of the quilts hanging, but you can get a pretty good idea of these baby quilts.

This quilt was made two years ago by my friend Kay. She did the embroidery (because I didn’t even own an embroidery machine at that time). It is finished and will go to a grandson. 

This quilt was made from orphan blocks left over from the quilt I made for my nephew. I added a row of four patch blocks on the far right to make it wide enough. 

The quilting is done with an Aurifil variegated thread. I love the way it looks. 

This quilt is similar to the attic windows quilt. It’s sort of an I spy quilt with the novelty fabrics in the center of each block. It’s a leaders and enders quilt – there are many more blocks just like these. I used a striped fabric around the blocks and for the binding. Have been saving that fabric forever b/c I love it so much. Now it’s all used up and there’s room for a new stripe in my stash. 

I love to quilt freehand swirls and spirals and this border turned out nicely. I didn’t plan it this way, but started out with a swirl and this is what happened. 

And this is the attic windows quilt – in use! Isn’t he just adorable?

 

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day – and Join the Blog Hop Party

Blog Hop Party with Give-Aways

The Quilting Gallery is sponsoring a blog hop party with a giveaway at every blog. On March 17, click the link above to see the list of all the participating blogs and join the hop.

If this is your first visit here, I’ll tell you a little about me. I love quilting and what I love most about it is the ability to constantly challenge myself and others to try new ways to make quilts and to do it better. One of my favorite tools is a die cutting system. But I like Electric Quilt software and other really cool, new tools that are on the market. Click on the free stuff tab above to see some of the patterns and tips for using these tools.

And, what is a blog hop without a giveaway. I have used my Accuquilt GO!™ to cut 36 beautiful 4″ hearts. Each one already has fusible on the back and is ready to be used for quilt blocks or other projects. These would look great appliqued onto potholders, placemats, table runners, aprons, little dresses for little girls–and a thousand other things.

To win this set of hearts, please leave a comment on this blog and tell me how you would use them if they were yours.

 

Thanks for your visit.

 

 

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Adding Hearts to the Bow Basket Block

Here’s another step. Hope you’ve finished your basket blocks. I have done quite a few, but my goal was 18 blocks for three projects and there are still several left to go. I am also going to have to cut and make one extra because my first test block didn’t size correctly because of my uneven stitching. That’s a lesson – always make a test block before cutting them all. How could I have been so sure of myself that I forgot that step?

 

Finished bow basket block

Here’s the first step:
Hoop the stabilizer and stitch the placement lines onto the stabilizer.

Take a finished basket block and apply a fusible stabilizer on the back of the block. I use Totally Stable by Sulky, but I am sure there are other stabilizers that will work. You can see it on the back of the block below. Then find the center of the block on the red/white triangle by folding and matching the red/white line and corners.

Finding the center of the basket block

Put a pin through the center crease at the seamline and match it to the center mark on the stabilizer.

Pin at center crease

Match center to stitched center on stabilizer

Then use pins to match the top center and the lines on the stabilizer.

Center pin matching stabilizer guidelines

 

all points matching stabilizer guidelines

 

Use straight pins to attach block to stabilizer being sure points are matched to stabilizer guidelines as you insert the pins.

Attach block to stabilizer with straight pins

Stitch the die lines onto the block. If, for any reason, the die lines do not stitch in the correct position, take the stitching out at this point rather than proceeding and stitching the hearts in the wrong position (ask me how I know!).

stitched die lines on basket block

Fuse the hearts into place on the die lines and complete stitching on the machine.

completed block

The first couple of blocks I made were just a little off, but I quickly got into a rhythm and am making beautiful blocks. You might want to try the embroidery on a plain block first, just to get a feel for it. The design is in the web store and is included with the center motif design. 
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Candy Hearts for Valentine’s Day

The weather is freezing here – I can’t seem to get my fingers and toes and nose warm today even with layers of clothes. Maybe it’s the dampness outside. I’m finishing up the candy hearts digitizing and they’re on the website and for sale already. All that’s left is to stitch enough of these hearts for a quilt. I sent some of the test hearts to Barb over at Bejeweledquilts by Barb, and she had them stitched into a quilt as quick as a wink.

Here are pictures of some of them (there are 52 files in all):





And later this week, we’ll work on the embroidery for the red and white project for the “GO Ahead and Show Some Love” blog hop. Here’s a peek at some of my finished basket blocks and my heart blocks.

 

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

A few photos of what’s coming next week

For more red and white into a basket quilt

And what would Valentine’s Day be without Candy Hearts?

And a little mug rug to spread the love!

 
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Sewing the Units for the Bow Basket Block

Constructing this block is not difficult at all. I created some diagrams using EQ7 to show how to put this block together. The first thing we’ll do is stitch together the triangles and rectangles to make units that are needed to construct the block.

 

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Cutting Chart for Accuquilt GO! for Bow Basket Projects

This quilt block makes me happy–the red and white is so pretty and the design is simple and classic. Here are the instructions for cutting this block with the Accuquilt GO. Below you will find the number of patches per one block and the possible dies that can be used. The projects for Sew Cal Gal’s “GO! Ahead and Show a little LOVE” blog hop are as follows:

  1. table runner which requires 2 basket blocks,
  2. a medallion quilt which requires 4 basket blocks, and
  3. the traditional basket quilt which requires 12 basket blocks.

I hope you will decide to make one of these projects and quilt along with me. The actual quilt design is still a secret so we can show you during the blog hop. Decide which of the projects you want to make, use the number of blocks (2, 4, or 12) and cut the patches using the instructions below. Remember that when you have the finished size, you will need to add 1/2″ to each measurement so you will have a 1/4″ seam on all sides of the patch. For example, a 2″ x 2″ finished square is cut 2-1/2″ x 2-1/2″.

A  (1 piece light, 3 pieces dark per block) is a 2″ finished half square triangle (HST)

  • 55018 Value Die – use the HST 2″ finished on that die, OR
  • 55063 HST Multiples 2″ finished

B (1 piece light, 1 piece dark per block) is a 6″ finished HST

  • 55001 HST 6″ finished

C (1 piece light per block) is a 4″ finished HST

  • 55031 HST 4″ finished

D (2 pieces light, 2 pieces dark per block) is a 1″ x 6″ finished rectangle

  • 55024 1 Strip Cutter 1-1/2″, and
  • 55000 Square 6″ finished (optional)

E (2 pieces light per block) is a 2″ x 6″ finished rectangle

  • 55014 or 55017 Strip Cutter 2-1/2″, and
  • 55000 Square 6″ finished (optional)

F (2 pieces dark per block) is a 2″ x 2″ finished square

  • 55018 Value Die or
  • 55014 or 55017 Strip Cutter 2-1/2″

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie