Tuesday, December 30, 2014

A few stringy days

Yes I am working with my strings/strips, trying to get this mess controlled (at least a little bit).  It's all Connie's fault!!!!!  She knows I am just kidding her :-)  She inspired me to get them out and use them by sewing them to phone book paper, I have never liked paper piecing just for the fact I HATE tearing off the paper. But I am here to tell you if you have felt that way try this method as it tears off so quick easy and clean.  I used a short stitch length of 1.7 and a Jeans needle.

I drew a line down the middle of the paper point to point, laid 2 ride side together fabrics at that line and stitched 1.4" seam. I like to press after each strip.

Keep sewing, flipping and pressing until you have the paper covered, and trim. I could only get a 7 3/4" sq. from my phone books.  I started Sunday and was able to whip through 11 blocks, I thought I was doing pretty good for an afternoon of work. Monday morning I was able to do 16 more and 12 more in the afternoon!!  I tore off the papers from the blocks last night.  I now have a design in mind and hope to get it all finished up this week into a lap size quilt.







This is how my design wall looks this morning, I am really liking what I see!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, we sure did, our son and daughter in law came down on Christmas(a day earlier than planned) and our daughter and her 2 boys came over. 
And now we are all onto a productive 2015 very soon, right?

Check out the linky parties this week-located on my left side bar.

Editing to say the inspiration for this string quilt came from Quilting is more fun than housework. I just discovered her string quilt and wanted to give her credit.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Stars and more

You might remember these little stars from this post, I used them all up now! Feels good to make something out of leftovers that I really like :-)  As you can see by adding some sashing, corner triangles and borders I have them both pieced. It just took a little playing around and thinking time to come up with settings I liked.


























This little runner got quite long but hey someone might have a longer table since this will go out for craft shows next year.
The leftover triangles is what I had to work with and they needed
trimming to a consistent size and then I added the beige background.
Add some borders and 'tada' all done!










I made this X Block baby quilt back in January and these were leftover cut off's and I just couldn't throw them away! So in a pile they have sat and since I am cleaning up my sewing room they were destined to be in a quilt :-)  After sewing matching pairs together I trimmed into 60 degree triangles.  Added some white tri's orange sashing and borders and another Neonatal flimsy pieced. That 'to be quilted' pile is growing by leaps and bounds. I am planning to spend a lot of time at the longarm in January.

Linking up with Freemotion at the River and Let's Bee Social-links are located on the left side. Be sure to check out all the eye candy this week.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Joining in on Scraptastic!

Over on the She Can Quilt blog there is a Scraptastic event going on. Every month you can link to Scraptastic Tuesday-so I am linking for the first time ever to the December one http://www.shecanquilt.ca/2014/12/scraptastic-tuesday-december-link-up.html. I have lots of scraps to put to wonderful use for some donation quilts. I have finished a few flimsy's this month and lots more to work on. But why I need to join is I have a few tubs that look like this and I need to get them organized. So my plan is after Christmas I am going to pick 5 scrappy quilt patterns out and then start to cutting my scraps according to what I need for those 5.  Since not all quilts require the same size strips I am hoping by picking 5 patterns it won't be so overwhelming-well I can hope anyway, LOL    I am going to bribe a friend to come help me press and cut in exchange for some quilting!

Here is a UFO flimsy I finished up last week.



 This one I blogged about the process on Monday and now it is offically a 42 x 42" flimsy.

I really am hoping to join in the monthly Scraptastic in 2015!!  Wish me luck, haha.


Monday, December 8, 2014

Hats and another UFO in progress again

My daughter wanted me to crochet animal hats for my grandsons-well of course I would do that! I found the cutest patterns on Repeat Crafter Me that she really liked.  A tiger for the little guy and a dalamation for the older grandson. The tiger fit perfectly but the dalmation is a tad big but it still works and he may get to wear it next year too.







And yet another UFO back in the works. Back in January of this year I pieced this X Block flimsy
which apparently I never blogged about. It isn't quilted yet and that might be why I never mentioned it.  Anyways with the X Block you have lots of leftover pieces like this...

 and this...
You are supposed to piece them for borders, but I chose not to, so into a box for a later project they went.  This week is the time to finish it up. So I got 1/2 of them pieced and trimmed. I used my rectangle Bloc Loc ruler to trim, it makes trimming easier and faster. I am not 100% sure of how this is going to look but it will be a quilt flimsy-hopefully before the week is done.

Joining in Freemotion at the River and Let's Bee Social linky's this week-links on the side bar :-)

DRS challenge 151-GLITTER

All things sparkly and glittery is the challenge this week for DRS challenge.  A few weeks ago I was the lucky winner of 3 of their stamps, so I chose to use 2 of them in this weeks challenge(the cabin and the snowy tree line). My glitter is in the Stickles that I put on the trees, roof and snow. The pine spring is another stamp from DRS. I used Tombow markers to color the trees and watercolor pencil for the cabin. Cardstock used-green, white and teal.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Cute little star blocks

This past year I made 3 Day and Night table runners from Eleanor Burns book. There are leftovers that she tells you how to make a bonus runner from. So in the cleaning up of UFO's I dug them out and made the star blocks. Aren't they just stinkin' cute at 5.25"!!

You pair up these slanty pieces'''
 To get this star point...
 Sew four together to get this star

And trim down to 5.25" 

There are leftover triangle pieces and you sew 8 of them together and you get this kaleidescope block, I still need to sew on the outer 4 triangles to finish them up. 
But here is the thing I don't really like the look of the bonus one she shows and I am trying to think of something different-any suggestions?????????
Linking up with Lorna at Let's Bee Social and Freshly Pieced WIP wednesday.

Monday, December 1, 2014

Some new stuff!!

Welcome to December!!  I had to take a teeny break from the UFO world and start a couple new projects. I recently saw a video from Jenny Doan at Missouri Star  for a Tipsy Tumbler. It has a unique construction and I just wanted to have a little fun doing something different. So I created this cute little baby quilt approx. 36" square for a donation quilt for our local Neonatal unit. For now, this will remain a flimsy and be put into the 'to be quilted' pile. I have a orange stripe I will bind it in-the same one as the other quilt below.

I had so much fun with the one above and it didn't take long to do, so I dug in my UFO closet and I had lots of 60 deg. tri's cut from a past QAL. But technically since it wasn't started is it a UFO or maybe it is a WIP-either way it is good to get it done :-)
Another Neonatal quilt is born and it too went very fast. In fact today I will use even more of those tri's in another quilt. Doing only 36" square tops makes you feel really productive since they are so quick to do!! The binding will be the stripe.

Linking up with a few of the linky parties on the left this week. Grab your cup of coffee and go get inspired!!