Good News Thursday: Sunshine!

Judy at Patchwork Times encouraged us to share some good news or a gratitude today.  That is such a nice idea so I’ll share some good things from the past week.  First of all, we have sunshine today and the temperature seems to be moving a little higher.  I think the snow will be gone soon even with the prediction that we’ll get another inch or two on Saturday morning.  Everyone I see is so ready for spring to be here and to be able to get outside.  Right now I’m just thankful for bright sunshine. 

I’m grateful that both my kids are doing well as they approach the end of their school years.  My son will take his first round of boards in medical school a couple of months from now and so far he isn’t in a panic over it.  My daughter has an internship set for the summer and she’ll be living at home (I’m REALLY happy about that!!).  This week she was elected as an officer in her Food Science Club and she was very excited about that.

I’m also glad that I don’t have to work tomorrow so I am planning a quilting marathon. There are several quilt tops ready to go and I received a box with six more to quilt for Quilts Beyond Borders.  Later today I’ll cut batting and piece backs so it will be quilt, quilt, quilt tomorrow!

Really, there’s so much I’m thankful for, but those are the highlights of the week.  Click here to visit the links at Patchwork Times with more good news from others.

Two more Applique Affair blocks

Last week when I was stitching around the Applique Affair blocks I realized that my stitch length and width were a little different than my other blocks.  I thought I’d written down what I had been using but couldn’t find it anywhere (sound familiar?).  After adjusting the stitch to where it looked correct I hit on the idea of taking a picture of the machine settings.  I can’t believe it took so long to come up with such a simple solution.  Now when I stitch this week’s blocks I’ll know exactly how to set up the machine so my blocks will be consistent.  Woo hoo!



Two more blocks completed!

Pineapple Blossom Quilted

I loaded the Pineapple Blossom quilt on the frame but couldn’t decide how to quilt it.  Lots of people have made this quilt so I did a Google image search to see if I could get any ideas on how to quilt it. I thought I might try a new freehand technique but it looked like most people quilted an overall meander or a pantograph.   I’m not very good at using pantographs.  I think it is hard to follow the lines with the laser light and my curves aren’t as smooth as they could be.  I’m pretty sure this would improve with practice but I’ll often go months between panto quilts. 

I bit the bullet though and ended up using Deb's Swirls on this quilt.  It’s an easy design but very pretty and I thought the curves would soften the sharp points of the design.  It’s also scary to use light thread on dark fabric because every mistake shows up.  It turned out pretty nice.  Here’s a close up of the quilting.  I’m hoping to get the binding on right away so I can hand stitch it down while watching basketball this weekend.



While quilting this quilt I listened to The Red Thread on my Ipod.  It really helps to have a little distraction so I’m not thinking so hard about staying on the lines of the pantograph.  This book was somewhat predictable and melodramatic but was great for quilting since I could follow the story without having to concentrate too much.  It is a novel that follows several American families as they go through the process to adopt Chinese babies and several Chinese mothers who give up their daughters for American adoption.  Overall it was pretty good--I would give it 4 out of 5 stars!  I really like listening to books while I quilt.  My local library offers them free through Overdrive Media.  It's simple to download them and you can catch up on your "reading" while quilting.

Bonus Triangle Project

In an earlier post I mentioned an idea I had for using the bonus triangles leftover from my Pineapple Blossom quilt.  I had 96 half-square triangles to use and came up with this.



I debated whether or not to add a border of the print fabric on the top and bottom but this was already kind of long and skinny so decided the border made it look too disproportionate.  Anyway, this meets the size requirements for Quilts Beyond Borders and would make a nice donation quilt.

It was very easy to make.  I simply sewed the triangle squares together in a zigzag strip.  To make the piecing easier I sewed the aqua border strips to the print strips before sewing them to the zigzag strips.  The aqua strips were cut 1-1/2” wide and the print was cut 3-1/2” wide.



The half-square triangle blocks were an odd size since they were cut from the corners of the Pineapple Blossom blocks.  It didn’t matter what size they were because they were all the same.  I explained how I cut them here.  I laid all three strips out and they were within 1/8” of being the same length.  Yaay!

I then matched and pinned the cut end of the sashing strips with the zigzag strips



and cut four of them the same length.



It was then a simple matter to sew the sashing strips to the zigzag strips.  After pressing toward the sashing strips I measured the width of the quilt top and cut two more 1-1/2” strips of the aqua to this measurement and sewed them to the top and bottom.

Voila!  This easy project is now in the queue for quilting!

Applique Affair Block 6

On Wednesdays I go to my two volunteer jobs so don’t have a lot of time for sewing.  Yesterday I had even less because it was book club and I had to finish reading the book.  This month’s book was Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth.  This is the book upon which the PBS series Call the Midwife was based. 

It was a great book and an easy read.  It was arranged in stories about people the author knew while she worked as a midwife in London’s East End slums during the 1950’s.  The stories were funny, sad and poignant.  It is amazing how times have changed regarding childbirth.  At that time the midwife delivered most babies at home then made follow-up visits 2-3 times a day for a couple of weeks while the mother stayed in bed “recuperating.”  This book, though, showed how hard most of these mothers’ lives were.  Money was very tight and living conditions were often deplorable but they still welcomed their babies as if they had no worries.  It was inspirational to see the love in these families despite hard times. 

After finishing this book, I’ll be reading the other two in the series, Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse and Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End.  Season 2 of the PBS series starts March 31 so set your DVR’s!

It really helps to have my sewing machine set up in the dining room so I can work if I just have a few minutes to spare.  I managed to finish Block 6 of Applique Affair with odd bits of time yesterday.

The blocks are all fused down and I’m just stitching around them now.  I used to finish these with a blanket stitch in black thread but now I use a little zigzag stitch in colors to match the applique.  The blanket stitch was good for more primitive style applique but I think the zigzag looks better for this more “formal” style blocks.  Block 6 is now finished—only 19 more to go!

Design Wall Monday-Applique Affair

A couple of weeks ago I started linking posts to Design Wall Mondays at Patchwork Times.  It was great motivation to work on those projects.  The first one, Pineapple Blossom is now on the frame for quilting and last week’s More Geese on the Ridge is a completed top that’s next in line for quilting!  So this week, I pulled out a project that’s more than overdue for some attention—Applique Affair, a beautiful quilt designed by Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts. 

The blocks are raw-edge fusible applique that I started about five years ago.  Most of the center blocks are fused on and about half have been stitched down.  I need to finish those and make the rest of the border blocks.  There’s also a pieced border.  For awhile I had my Bernina set up in the dining room so whenever I had a few minutes I could stop in and stitch a bit on these blocks.  That seemed to work pretty well so I’ll give it a try this week to see if I make any progress.

Design Wall Monday-Pineapple Blossom Blocks

I've been following Judy Laquidara's blog at Patchwork Times for quite awhile and thought it would be great motivation to show what I'm working on for Design Wall Mondays.

It took awhile but the blocks are finished and I just auditioned a layout on my design floor.  I think I’m really going to like this quilt. This week I have quite a bit of time for sewing so I hope to finish this quilt before my sewing group meets next week. I’m still quilting the rail fence quilt that’s on the frame and need to quilt and bind the last two for Quilts Beyond Borders so it may not happen. 

There’s also the bonus triangles to deal with.  I’d like to get those into a quilt right away.  Otherwise they just languish in the sewing room and I’ll probably never use them.  Here’s a sneak peak of my idea of how to use them.