Month: October 2021

The Ginger Cookie Quilt is here

A special Christmas project with the AccuQuilt GO! Gingerbread Cookie and decorations dies and the Reiko Kato Small Houses die.

Finally I can show you the fun project that Sherry Gray and I have been working on all summer. We are so excited about it. With the beautiful AccuQuilt Gingerbread cookies and cookie decorations, we thought it would be fun to build a Gingerbread village – and so we did. Using the die for Reiko Kato’s small houses, I digitized a set of Gingerbread houses to use in this quilt. Here are those adorable houses.

Gingerbread Houses

And then we made a quilt using the houses and the cookies. The houses are set on point on a gray background and the Gingerbread Cookies are on a full size 6″ square. The connector blocks are made with the 4″ Mix & Match Qube as a 9 patch for a finished 6″ block and the border is made of the same units in the connector blocks but with the 6″ Mix & Match Qube.

Ginger Cookie Quilt

The quilt is for sale in the web shop or you can purchase the houses or the gingerbread cookies separately.

Here are some closeups of the embroidery and the border.

  
 

Reusable Napkins for School Lunch Boxes

A fun lunch napkin project and new fabric

Some of the grandchildren are older now (middle school) and decided they really didn’t want Superhero napkins for their lunch boxes. So the request was made for new napkins. It only took me 3 weeks to get them made and shipped. It takes less than 15 minutes to make one of these from start to finish – cutting to final press. I made these 13″ x 13″ just because I could get three out of a width of fabric. 14″ square would probably be a little better, but economy won. And in the end, there were 11 of them. I think these colors work fine for boys. UPS will deliver them today – I’m sure they will call. Last night they called because they won 2nd and 3rd place in Cross Country at their school which just goes to show how overall athleticism in soccer and tennis translates to another sport as this was their first Cross Country endeavor.

And I found a new place to buy fabric. It was just by chance. I googled a fabric that I needed to match something that was in progress because I was afraid there  wouldn’t be enough and wanted some insurance. Have you ever done that? I found the fabric at Old Country Store Fabrics and of course they started sending me email. They are located in Pennsylvania and have wonderful fabrics at reasonable prices. They carry a lot of Moda fabrics which I like and haven’t found anywhere else except in limited selections at small quilt shops that are in Raleigh which can be a 40 minutes plus drive depending on traffic.

I needed a few pieces – some grays and a good medium blue and some Christmas pieces to add to what I already have for a Christmas crazy quilt and thus placed another order. This is what I got. They are all just beautiful and have such a wonderful hand.

It’s Wednesday – hope you have a wonderful day! The sun is shining here and the morning air is crisp. 
 

About That Leftover Fabric and Scraps

A scrappy baby doll quilt.

In the last post I showed some blocks I’ve been working on that use up scraps from the Sampler QAL. And the one I made last summer for the Qube Workout QAL was a scrappy one using the 8″ Qube. Of course there were some extra HST’s left from that too. So my granddaughter (the one with four older brothers) is getting a quilt for her baby doll with some of the extra HST’s. She plays and dresses like a real girlie girl but becomes a rough and tough girl when it comes to her brothers. This is her baby doll quilt that was quilted yesterday. I laid a strip of the binding fabric on one edge so you can see how it will be bound. It’s definitely bright.

Scrappy Baby Doll Quilt

And here’s a picture of that cute little one. I think the scrappy quilt will match her sunglasses perfectly.

 
 

Orphan Quilt Blocks and a little leftover fabric

Just a little post about how I used the leftover quarter square triangles from my sampler quilt. What do you do with leftover scraps from your finished projects?

Have I mentioned the loaves and the fishes? The New Testament story of Jesus feeding the masses is the way I feel about fabric when a quilt is finished. There’s always fabric left that needs purpose – or at least in my mind it needs purpose. And after quilting for 40 years I still am trying to decide what to do each time.

After finishing the Sampler quilt, there were quite a few quarter square triangles left from the 4″ Qube as well as many from the 8″ Qube. What else would one do with them except make a Star in a Star block. Believe it or not, I was able to make 12 blocks. They’re not all finished, but they are well on the way.

And while I was doing the side project of the star in a star block making, there was a red quilt to bind so I changed the thread on my machine and when the top thread was changed, the bobbin somehow didn’t get changed.

The red stitched pieces sat beside the machine for several days. And then during the weekend, I decided to take out the red stitches and restitch them together. Unstitching doesn’t bother me – maybe because when the girls were in 4-H, I took out stitches for a lot of the sewing group so they wouldn’t be discouraged by their mistakes.

Here are the “in progress” star in a star blocks – two are finished. They finish at 8″, but will likely get a border of some sort to make them bigger since there are only 12 of them.

Hope you have a happy day and can do a little quilting for fun.

Oh, and by the way, what do you do with the leftover scraps from your finished projects? 
 

Sampler Quilt Finished with Pictures

I’ve been working on a new project and trying to finish the Sampler Quilt from May for awhile now. Finally, this past week, I hand stitched the binding and yesterday I was taking pictures when the grandchildren stopped by. The pictures were quickly taken and the quilt is ready to find a home somewhere in this house. I think it turned out all right. Can you see Lucy, our Great Dane puppy, walking and sniffing the ground behind the quilt. She has to be right there with us no matter what we’re doing.

If you’re interested, the patterns are still posted. Just click the QAL menu at the top of the blog.

There were enough scraps left over that I have already made twelve more blocks for another quilt and twelve more blocks for a third quilt. Will show you those in the coming days. As always, fabric is like fishes and loaves. I’m a little tired of this fabric for now but will keep plugging along.

Just to give you a glimpse of the new project, it’s embroidery and it’s Christmas. And it’s finished and almost ready to show.