3 quilts done :| WOW

Here I was thought I was being slick and ready by getting bindings on the doll quilt, Seascapes, and my Spats Kitty quilt to have hand work ready so I can watch baseball or any TV. What i didn't count on was sitting down to watch a movie and being on a stitching tear that I got it all done :S .. well that's good as I have now have 3 quilts off my projects list, but I don't have hand work .. well I do, those little hex coasters that I'm doing by hand - but just not in that mode last nite. Don't get me wrong, I am sooo happy to have these little things done, but now what am I going to do when I watch tv???

This quilt is one that Joy made for me. It measures approximatly 24 x 24" and is the cutest thing. We had been talking about sea critter quilt blocks so that inspired me for the quilting on this one. I quilted in fish, seaweed, shells and waves in this one. I originally planned to a pieced binding for this, but the idea of seams in my corners had really put me off .. (I got that with the other 2 I finished yesterday), so I dove into my stash and came up with a dark blue with purple flowers and green leaves motif fabric and it accented it just right.

This is a panel that I can't even remember where I found it at or even if I bought it, I've had this in the works that long. Measures 14 x 17". What I did with this one was use a thin low loft quilt batting and hand quilted it with pink thread. Originally this was supposed to be a gift for a friends little girl for her dolls, but we fell out of touch YEARS ago .. i didn't really do anything special with this one, just outlined the 'boxes' and the borders. I did a single-fold binding on this and the binding is finished by hand. The binding and the backing are the same material; pink "stitch" lines on the diagonal, with country pastel stars with buttons sewn into the middle of them. Can't remember where I got it from, but it does match the quilt colours almost perfectly. I think that I'm going to sell this on my website - even tho it's small .. it is 100% cotton and hand quilted and finished .. so not sure on the price - maybe $15 - $20????

This is my first attempt at watercolour quilting .. I did this before I had any wc stash to speak of so the effect isn't quite what I envisioned. I had kitty fabric (shock suprise) that had a cat that looked almost like my Spats!! I cut out the kitty head and appliqued it down with roses near the bottom. I first named this quilt Kitties, Bugs, n Bears Oh My, but as I was working on it, it took the name Spats Kitty Quilt in my mind .. It's a nice memorial to him me thinks. I hand quilted this with butterflies, flowers and a cable design in the border with peach coloured thread. I used fabric that I had hand-dyed for the borders.

I almost had a serious issue with this quilt that nearly devasted me. I have kids markers that I use for quilt marking as they are all water soluable, but this quilt had been marked 8 years ago! Well yesterday my washer finally got fixed and when the guy hooked it back up, he got the hot and cold water hoses mixed up (not his fault - plumbing here is interesting to say the least), and before I realized that it was HOT water in the drum, the quilt was already soaked thru - the lines came off a bit in the first washing, but I think that can be attributed to the fact that water doesn't come out hot instantly. I washed it 3 more times and the lines had faded a LOT, but I could still see them. What I did was soak it over nite in a bucket of cold water with an oxidizer and that seemed to fade the lines a LOT more. I ran it thru the washer one more time and while I can still see the lines, they aren't near as bad as they were, and only in 2 or 3 spots, not the whole quilt.

You can see in the close up the kitty the lines I am talking about. Those are the worse lines in the whole quilt - just wished that it wasn't in the spot it was ..

Ah well .. now to figure out what to do for hand work while watching tv, but before i do that .. I'm off to pick my fabrics for our civil war quilt :D

Machines n kitties and cranky OH MY!!

It's been a few days since I posted to my blog - and actually been a few since i've really done anything really quilt-like. I did finish the one block I wanted to for the scrappy red swap; packaged it up and will be sending it out in a week or so. I've also packaged up 2 other squishies for fabric that I'm trading :). Monday Kyle had a basketball game and I went to that. Spent the time before and after just spending time with Reg. Heh .. in my days of basketball widowship I grab my time with him when I can ;). Kyle then had a basketball tourney on Tuesday. He did pretty good and that took the afternoon .. by the time we got home and dinner was done, I was just to bloody tired to much of anything else.

It's not been a total write off the past 3 days;

1. I've been plotting my civil war quilt in the back of mind as well .. researching blocks and habits of quilters back in the 1800s . I'm learning a LOT and having fun!!


2. I've also started to hand sew down the binding of Reg's quilt .. one side down .. 3 to go!

I had a machine 'die' on me on Wednesday .. bloody thing .. was piecing a block for a swap when suddenly my machine sounded like a train .. Clickety clack .. Clickety clack .. I slowed down trying to pinpoint the location of the noise (could have hand sewn faster at that point) I figured I would finish that seam and then stop and look under the machine .. It stopped dead 4 stitches later .. I wasn't going fast at all . The needle did not break - didn't even bend. .. The bobbin case was secure and not lose, I removed the bobbin and casing, the needle was hitting the disc that is UNDER the bobbin case. It almost seems to me that a screw got loose and it spun (!) .. I've joined a few machine groups hoping that someone might have an answer for me .. i've research a lot of possible causes, but none yet .. I'm guessing that this really put me off my stride as I was really cranky for the rest of the day. The above is a copy and paste that I sent to the list.

This is the machine that my mum bought me and while it's not a top end machine, there is sentimental value to it. It is also my only zig zag machine and the one I did all my quilting on. I don't like this for free motion as it skips stitches, but for regular quilting it's just fine. Now I do have my mum's touch n sew, but that machine and don't have any sort of common ground between us ... on one of my lists, someone referred to it as a touch n swear .. I believe it! This machine is also a slant shank machine and all mine are short shank .. feet are not interchangeable.

I have finally done 3 more blocks for my kitty quilt .. I was rather putting these off as they are paper pieced and I've had enough issues with them LOL .. And these were a wee bit different as the lines aren't sewing lines, but guidelines .. well I finally bit the bullet and started them .. I got 3 done and they do go pretty quick .. once you get the hang of pp'ing this way, it is actually pretty easy! I only have about 5 more to go, then the fish, mice, yarn, and milk jugs .. altho, I just might do them for the border instead as this is going to balance out just nicely me thinks. I've not updated the scrapsnclaws webpage yet as I'm going to make more blocks and will update them when I get the set of 8 done I think.

This one's feet are backwards .. I didn't notice it until I took the picture - I just may leave him like that

This one i reversed the fabric for the tail to make it stand out more .. should have been the other way around, but didn't occur to me until AFTER I had him more than 1/2 way done

I really like how this guys face worked out just right! Altho I think that this fabric is a wee bit to busy for the size of this block

A sort of 'eh' day ...

Today was 'eh' day. I spent most of the day doing list mail as I didn't do it the day before. One grea thingis that the fabric to trade all has a new home now .. Judi will be using it for her charity quilts! I get to increase my 1800 repro stash :) This is going to be GREAT!!

I did cut out blocks for the scrappy red swap, but after looking at them I want to be a wee bit more rested before I sew them up. There is a LOT of inset seams, and I don't want to be doing to much frogging on these. I'm using the Cornucopia block from Quilt Mags Stash Blocks page. They have some gorgeous blocks here in various sizes.

I'll sew those up tomorrow and then cut out some more blocks. I checked to see if the blanket i was going to use for batting for kyle's quilt is big enough and it's not. I have some warm and natural batting, but the way he treats quilts, I'm not sure I want to put really good batting in it. I'll have to see what I can dig up. since there's no football this weekend, not sure when i'll be doing the binding on reg's quilt. I have to get used to the fact that it's not going to be on anymore .. there is tennis .. oh wait.. that's over now .. **sigh**

The Brat Prince Strikes Again

Welp - Pix did it again .. he always manages to know when I can't easily chase him to create mischief.

I didn't get as far last nite as I wanted to with Reg's quilt, just ran out of steam. When I woke up with a headache today, I knew it wasn't going to be a high quilt volume day for me today. heh .. i've not even read my list mail yet .. At any rate, I wanted to quickly attach the binding to the quilt and then watch a movie with reg .. well i realized that i hadn't even prepared the strips yet .. i'm like .. oh blech .. i do not want to do that right now .. so I worked on some hand quilting for a little while and watched the movie anyways.

Later I started to feel a wee bit better and decided to tackle the binding of reg's quilt. Got the strips sewn together, pressed and had just situated myself with the quilt on my lap and all set to get and the binding trailing off to my right on the floor - Good thing that I had already stitched a bit of the binding to the quilt .. from out of nowhere, this blasted blonde bombshell strikes out at my binding and starts to take off with it .. Thank God he just ran under the dresser and NOT out of the room .. I'm like "PIXEL!! you BRAT .. let that go you bad cat!" .. trying to speak in such a way he would listen, but not wake the whole bloody house up .. wishful thinking .. i woke up the dog and shadow decided to come and see what all the ruckus was about .. so I'm trying to get the dog out of here who's wagging her tail thinking this is all great fun (!), rescue my binding from under a dresser held hostage by a very tenacious 10lb cat, and shoo off Shadow who is trying to get under the dresser with Pix all while being buried under 20lbs of quilt that is still attached to the sewing machine .. Blasted Cat! I did manage to recover my binding and got it on with minimal harassment by he natives. Only had to chase it about 2 more times **bloodycat!!**

It's all trimmed and ready and waiting for me to do the binding now. Shouldn't take to long .. but not going to do it tonite, I still have my headache and I just want to curl up with my book then fall asleep

I left this picture larger, so you should be able to click on it to see more detail with the quilting that I did .. altho you aren't likely to see the sport motifs :S

Reg's Quilt is almost done!

Well Reg's quilt is almost totally quilted. I've done almost all of the top; criss-crossed through the squares, 3 lines per section; and put in football, baseball and basketball equipment quilt motifs in the 'blank' spaces. Here's a shot of the back of the quilt, I ruffled it a bit so you could get more of an idea of with the shadows for the overall quilting patterns.

I'm not sure if you remember but when I did the logos for this quilt, I had an inspiration that made doing them a whole lot easier. I created outlines of the images, converted it to black and white then printed it on paper. I used my sullivan's to tack the paper onto the quilt for stability while zigzagging (for the logos, not the motifs) and that gave me the idea for EASY quilt marking without marking my quilt! Again I created the outlines, printed it out, and tacked it on .. then I freemotioned and put the motifs in the blank spaces.







It went VERY quickly, no shifting of my pattern and since i just did a light mist, no residual stickiness. Worked like a charm.

For the borders, i'm thinking of diamonds .. but that's not what they are called, it will be a rectangle with a triangle on top and bottom of rectangle. Then I put the binding on and voila! time to hand sew it on, wash it and reg can have his quilt :D

I decided to try my 15-91 for the quilting - the feed dogs seem to want to sleep on the odd occassion and the quilt stopped moving (!), but I was ready for it after a few times and it went well .. Freemotion quilting on this machine is a DREAM .. not once did my thread break!! It was great!! Since i didn't have a cover plate for the feed dogs nor can I lower them, I used a mccain pizza box to cover the dogs .. worked like a charm!!

This gives me all the confidence I need for the freemotioning that I am thinking about for my kitty quilt .. I'll be getting back to that one soon .. but first swap blocks, and kyle's quilt :S .. poor kid, his isn't even basted yet!