First Friday UFO...maybe

Happy First Friday of January. I was hoping to show you the block I made for my All Star UFO and my progress on the quilt I'm making for Quilts of Valor, but Blogger is acting up. It won't let me upload any photos from my computer!

So I'll just tell you that in all the excitement of Easy Street, I was able to make another block for the All Star quilt. If you're new here, I'll give you the background of the "First Friday UFO" posts. A few months ago, a local quilt shop was hosting an "almost free" Block-Of-the-Month (BOM). To participate, you had to buy the fabrics for the first month's block. Then if you brought the completed 1st block back to the store during the next month, you got the 2nd block's fabrics for free. I was thinking of joining, because one of the colorways was patriotic, and I love patriotic quilts. Then I remembered that I had a patriotic UFO sitting in my armoire. So instead of joining that quilt shop's BOM, I decided to do my own BOM and make one block in my All Star quilt per month. On the first Friday of each month, I'm posting photos of the blocks. To see the other blocks in this quilt, click on the "All Star" label at the end of this post or on the left sidebar of the blog.

Since I've been off school this week, I was able to continue working on my quilt for Quilts of Valor. I was hoping to finish it on New Year's Day, but that didn't happen. My kids and husband wanted to eat! LOL. I have finished piecing all the blocks, and I got 4 rows sewn together.

I'll try to upload those photos later today.

Happy stitching!

Quilts of Valor New Year's Day Sit and Sew

Wow, this must be a record for me: three posts in one day!

Yesterday when I was looking at some of the blogs who were linked to Judy's Design Wall Monday, I read about the "1st Annual Quilts of Valor New Year's Day Sit and Sew." This is an invitation to quilters to make a quilt top for Quilts of Valor (QOV), an organization that gives quilts to soldiers wounded in war. Then I saw that Judy had posted a free pattern to make a QOV. I decided at the last minute to jump in, since I have lots of patriotic fabrics which I bought for my All Star quilt. This will be my first QOV quilt.

This large bin is full of my patriotic fabrics. Yesterday I looked through it to find the fabrics I want to use, then I ironed them and started cutting my strips.

Here are my strips sewn together into sets, ready to be cut into units for the blocks.

So far I have finished all the blocks with a blue "frame." This photo is just a representation of what I've done. I'm hoping to get the red-framed blocks pieced tonight also, but I needed to take a little break from the studio.

I'm really liking the way these blocks look. This is a great pattern for this project. Quick and easy and fabulous-looking when you use a lot of scrappy fabrics! I'm so thankful to Judy for giving us this pattern on her blog. This would also be a good pattern for a new quilter to learn some basics, since it doesn't have any angles.

Happy stitching!

January To-Do List

Judy at Patchwork Times is hosting a linky party where you list four quilting things you'd like to get done this month. Technically, you're supposed to write the list on the last day of the month, but I was busy with other things yesterday so I forgot all about it!

So here are the four quilting items I really want to get done this month:

1. Make Judy's free pattern for Quilts of Valor today, during the New Year's Day Sit and Sew.

2. Make 1 block for my All-Star UFO quilt.

3. Finish my Easy Street quilt top.

4. Piece the black fabrics for my CQJP 2013 project.

For extra credit, I have two more things I'd like to accomplish:

1. Quilt my AP&Q Mystery Quilt.

2. Start the Fibonacci's Challenge quilt that a local quilt shop is hosting, using more of the Christmas fabrics in my stash.

You'll notice that these all relate to my 2013 quilting goals :)

Happy stitching!

2013 Goals

Happy New Year!!! I hope you had a safe New Year's Eve. We spent the evening at home, just the way we like it :)

I've decided to create a list of quilting goals for 2013. Hopefully this will help me to be more accountable! Without further ado, here's my list:

1. Make one Quilts of Valor top.

2. Finish 5 quilts made of Christmas fabrics for gifts in 2013 (which are in various stages, ranging from not even started to having all blocks made but not assembled).

3. Finish my American Patchwork and Quilting 2012 Mystery Quilt (quilt, bind, make label).

4. Finish 2 UFO quilts (All-Star and maybe Red and White squares).

5. Stay up-to-date with my CQJP 2013 project.

Do you have any quilting goals for this new year?

Happy stitching!

Winter Wonderland Redwork WIP

Good morning! I woke up at 6:00 on a day off so I could sign up for a half marathon in March, in a town 15 minutes from my house. Last year the race filled up in an hour. So happy I got a spot. Then I checked at Quiltville for Bonnie's latest Easy Street clue. How exciting this is getting!!! Tomorrow she will give us our last clue.

Whenever we go to the Farm, I have lots of time for hand sewing and reading; our trip over Christmas was no exception. Besides finishing my November and December CQJP blocks, I finished up one of the redwork blocks for my "Winter Wonderland" quilt, a Work In Progress (WIP). This block is called "Snowball Fight". I'm a bit frustrated with the creases in the fabric. I have pressed it and steamed it and pressed it and steamed it and I thought having it in the embroidery hoop would help, but it's still there. Hopefully quilting it will get rid of some of that?

Since I haven't shown any other parts of this quilt, here's some background: Two years ago, I saw a quilt called “Winter Wonderland” hanging up at one of my local quilt shops. (Have I ever told you that I’m lucky enough to have 6 awesome quilt shops that are between 5 and 45 minutes away from my house?) It’s a redwork pattern by Crab*apple Hill. Since I love red and I love embroidery, I wanted to try it, with its fun snowmen. This is a great project to take when we travel. I only need to bring the block, one skein of red embroidery floss, and my needle, scissors, and hoop. (No, I do not have any affiliation with the Crab*apple Hill company.)

Since I know the embroidery will take me awhile, I slowly make one or two of the pieced blocks in between other projects.

Here are the blocks I’ve finished so far:

Toboggan Ride

Snowflake verse

Skier

Snowman Family (taken on a different day...bad lighting)

                                     
The three blocks above will finish to 6 inch squares.

These two blocks will be 9 inches finished.

This is a 12 inch block (finished size).

Here's another 12 inch block (finished).

You've seen some of these same fabrics in my Christmas "Easy Street" mystery quilt! I naturally went overboard in buying fabrics for this "Winter Wonderland," so I had plenty to choose from for "Easy Street."

I'm linking up to Judy's "Design Wall Monday."

Happy stitching!

CQJP November and December

 

This afternoon, I went to see the new movie, Les Miserables. It was very good, but you’ll want to bring a few Kleenex when you go see it. Although it is a sad movie, it has wonderful themes of forgiveness and redemption. Anne Hathaway did a fabulous job singing Fantine’s songs.

 
In all the fun of the Easy Street Mystery, I have not forgotten about my Crazy Quilt Journal Project. While we were at the Farm over Christmas, I finished both my November and December blocks. For my November fan block, I got the idea for all of the seam treatments from Carole Samples’ book, Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches, although I altered some of them for my purposes and added beads and buttons.
 

In the center arc, I stitched the city and state where we live, but I’ve blurred that out in photo shop. We have lived in this city the entire 22 years we’ve been married. It’s where Mike was offered a teaching job after he graduated from college.

 

The left seam has silk ribbon flowers with pearl centers. The next seam has two different zig-zag seams, using a thicker velvet thread and a thin embroidery floss, topped with two different sized beads. The lace towards the bottom has gold triangle beads in the bottom holes. Small transparent seed beads attach the top of the lace to the block.

The next seam has a wavy fishbone “vine” with silk ribbon buds made of French knots. The final seam is a zig zag made of chain stitches, topped with mother of pearl buttons and seed beads.

The larger lace around the outside of the fan has cream-colored beads in the little holes near the bottom and transparent beads in the center of the swirl.

My December block is Mike’s and my monogram. I know this doesn’t really look like a crazy block, but it’s going to be the center block out of 25 for my anniversary quilt. In Penny McMorris’ book, Crazy Quilts, there’s a photo of an antique crazy quilt that has a monogram in the center. I like the look. It gives the eye a bit of a rest among all the beautiful busy-ness of the rest of the quilt.

I enlarged the letters from an alphabet that’s in the back of Carole Samples’ book, Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches, making the S in the middle larger than the M and the J. I traced the letters onto dupioni silk using a thin Pigma Micron pen.

Confession time: I started stitching this block back in about January. I find doing this much satin stitch by hand to be rather monotonous, so I’ve been slowly working on it all year. It was a relief to finish it this week!

Head on over to the CQJP 2012 blog to see other eye candy. Lots of people have finished up their year-long projects.

Happy stitching!

Easy Street Mystery Clue #5

I hope you had a merry Christmas!!! Sunday we went to the Farm where hubby grew up, about a 6 hour drive from our home, and we came back today. My in-laws do not own a computer, so of course there’s no internet. We had a very relaxing time.

Glory Hallelujah ~ Bonnie said that we’re done making flying geese. Although I don’t mind them, I’ve definitely had enough of them for now!

I’m quite excited…before we left for the Farm I got all caught up with the Easy Street Mystery Quilt. Clue 5 was an easier one: make“sitting turkey” units, as Bonnie calls them. Since I’m only making 75% of the blocks, I had to make 48.

Bonnie suggested having the needle “kiss” the right side of the drawn line on the smaller square, rather than stitch directly on top of the line. This really worked well for me to get my units the right size.

While I had my camera in my studio, I took a photo of my sewing machine. My in-laws gave it to me (used) for Christmas 21 years ago. Based on the photos in the manual, my guess is the machine is from the mid to late 1960’s, or possibly the early 1970’s. This has been a faithful machine for me through the years, as I’ve made Christmas dresses for my daughter when she was younger, Halloween costumes, stockings for the kids, curtains for our first house, and lots of quilts.

Progress Report

Clue #1: four-patches: 144 of 144

Clue #2: flying geese: 96 of 96

2 X 3 ½”bricks of white background fabric: 48 of 48

Clue #3: Shaded 4-patches: 48 of 48 (see this post)

                 Green 3” squares cut in half diagonally: 2 of 2

 Clue #4: Stacked geese: 48 of 48

                 Green 3 ½” squares: 110 of 110

 

Clue #5: Sitting turkeys: 48 of 48

I’m linking up to Bonnie’s Easy Street Part 5 post. Tomorrow, clue #6 will go up…can’t wait!!!

Happy stitching!