Friday, August 15, 2025

Happy Jacks times two

 Oh my gosh I forgot to write a post last night, totally forgot it was Friday today! So here goes a short post for these two Happy Jack wall hangings or use it as a door banner.


This is inspired by a Buttermilk Basin pattern, I enlarged my squares. Here is the backing for the first one. 


And the second one. See my new prop, the Hello Fall truck that I picked up from Hobby Lobby this week. I couldn't resist and it was on sale!


Don't you love the witches and black cat piece for the backing on this, it pays to dig in your stash!! It wasn't quite enough so I added a gold on top and for the triangle hanging tabs. 


A bit late to these parties but never the less I will be there!!



Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Cinderella plus...

 I love the results of the Cinderella pumpkin wall hanging from Laugh yourself into stitches. I just don't care to make the small little brown HST's. But they aren't so bad now that I use the a die to cut larger and trim down. Two of these were pieced over the winter, this is the first to get quilted. I'll soon be doing #2 as this one is already spoken for. People are getting in the mood for fall!


And the backing, I am liking the triangle hanging tabs, so much faster than sleeves.


I enjoy making this scrappy fall table runner. They are strips actually cut from yardage but lots of different ones to look scrappy. The black is the only one that stays the same throughout. This pattern is called Cornerstones by Calico Printworks.

They are longer than the width of fabric so I piece a coordinating strip in the middle. I'll be soon doing another of this. Things are picking up in the shop and I am very happy about that!

                                      


Have you ever seen a striped zucchini? The seeds were all in the same packet, the other three plants are normal looking zucchini, but this plant has the striped ones. We have never experienced that.


I'll be taking the day off from sewing tomorrow as it's our 43rd Anniversary! So I better get cranking out some product today;) Hope to see ya on Friday.

The linky parties you will see me at are Wednesday Wait Loss, and Put Your Foot Down. 



Monday, August 11, 2025

Autumn Greetings

 It's no secret I love working with panels, sometimes choosing parts of one and parts of another to make something new.


For this wall hanging I chose the Autumn Greetings section first.  


Next came the pinwheels which are 4" finished for each pinwheel, more orange sashing was added to the top and bottom of the pinwheel units.


That is when I searched through my panel parts to see if anything would look good with what I had so far. That yielded the leaves and acorns rectangle. I had to trim it a bit to fit. Next was putting these three parts together and surrounding it all with orange sashing. 

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Then came the gold/neutral squares, green border and finally the beautiful orange with metallic gold leave border. After quilting it I went in search of a binding that might coordinate as I didn't have enough of the orange leaf fabric for that.  I might have squealed a little when I discovered the perfect stripe with metallic gold accent in just the right color in my stash! 


The backing with the folded triangle hanging tabs.  This piece was snatched up shortly after I listed it.  That just means I need to move forward with another fall panel:)



My coneflowers are blooming nicely this year, this one was unique in it's downward petals that I thought he deserved a photo.




Friday, August 8, 2025

Three finishes and a start

More fall Rising Star table toppers. This one uses a beautiful fall leaves fabric with a coordinating one in the same colors plus the accent of green. I thought about using an orange accent but thought it would be a bit too much orange and blend in more than I wanted.


A nice homespun for the backing.




Another sunflower one was needed but using a different sunflower fabric. The pattern is from Anka's Treasure in her book Angles with Ease. They are about 27" across.


A gold backing fabric.


And Hello Summer is finished into a little pillow! I have a bin of lace and trims from doll clothes making days so I went there in search of something that might work. This is a design from Primrose Cottage. They used a pink cloth to stitch on, I didn't have any but I had white 14ct. Aida. To make mine magically turn into pink I used a watercolor pencil and rubbed it over the white Aida cloth and wet a stiff brush and brushed it over and over. I had never tried this before, it was an experiment that worked!


And the start is another little cross stitch piece so I have something to work on in the evening while watching TV.

 

Linking with Friday linky parties... 



Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Beatrice is done!

 Even tho' this is a UFO it seems I never even mentioned starting or even working on this quilt.  In May of 2024 this became a flimsy. I am sure I started this around January of 2024 while in Arizona but I can't even find photos to document it except for the flimsy photo in May of 2024. This was a stack of Fat quarters with the addition of the gold for stars and their neutral background. 


The quilting and binding happened last month. Why I waited so long to finish it is a mystery as I really love the finish.  The all over hook swirl design to the rescue. The pattern is Beatrice by Villa Rosa Designs. I love their little card patterns which are pretty quick and easy to whip up. 


I got behind in taking photos because the weather was so icky and I wasn't motivated!! Since being home from vacation I have gotten caught up on photos so there will be more to post as time allows;)


So happy to have another UFO finished!





Sunday, August 3, 2025

Done and Almost Done

 Pumpkin panel is done. This was pieced a couple weeks ago and the quilting and binding done on Wednesday, photos taken and listed in my Etsy shop on Thursday. 


This was all one panel and then I cut it apart and rearranged it, my favorite thing to do with panels. This is what the Benartex panel looked like to begin with.  You see how I cut the center pumpkin panel out, separated the border leaves from the smaller pumpkins rearranged everything and sewed it back together.

From there I added a black border to bring it to a size I needed for the triangle blocks. Easy peasy right? Add some fun quilting and it was done;)


My almost done is the Hello Summer cross stitch I have been working on. I thought I would finish it up while on vacay, but I just wasn't in the mood to really do much so I worked on it when we got home. I just have the bees wings to stitch today for Slow Stitching Sunday.  Maybe I will start the next cross stitch, it's a fall one. 


Also linking up on with Monday Musings, Sew and Tell Monday and Design Wall Monday. I hope to have another busy week of stitching ahead. 




Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Pumpkin Stack

 Looks like I am deep into fall quilting right now, I love it! Lots of little pieces in the sunflower but so worth it :)


The pattern is called Pumpkin Stack from Karen Walker at Laughyourselfintostitches. I found it to be well written and easy to follow. There might have been a couple made last year and I pieced two over the winter. This is the first to be quilted, bound and listed in my Etsy shop.


I tried out a new hanging sleeve technique with less edges to hand sew down. These are 6.5" squares folded twice to get a triangle. Laura from Sew Very Easy showed this technique on You Tube. 


My finished wall hanging is 27"x17". 

We went on a little camping trip last week heading up to northern Minnesota. The weather was hot and humid but thankfully we had electric hookups. We tried out a new to us campground, it was our first time using a COE(Core of Engineer) campground, it was very nice. But it was misleading on their website it stated it was electric and water and showers. We got there with no water on board the fifth wheel only to find out there was not water at each campsite after we got all backed in and set up! Lucky for us we were right next to the camp host who lent us his hose and hooked with ours we could get water from his source.  Very nice camp though, quiet and not full either. And a very good price.  We went there to pick Juneberries and blueberries in the wild out on the ATV trails. Hmmm, we were so disappointed to find they were past their prime and we only got a few.  

After that we went to our son and DIL's for the weekend. We enjoyed seeing them, went for a hike and to the aquarium. The weather was hot and humid there too.  Came home Monday and flipped on the AC and I don't care to go anywhere right now! So I finished the above wall hanging yesterday. While we were gone the cucumber on the deck survived the wind and rain and produced cuc's for us to eat right away. There will be more in a few days. The garden gave forth two zucchini and tomatoes.


I took this stack of 10 quilts to my DIL for her church group to hand out to those in need. A bag of hand knit slippers also went to her. It feels good to help out and she so appreciated each of them. She had to take them out of the bag and look at each one. I love that!!


Enough for today, I need to get back to quilting more:)






Monday, July 21, 2025

Pumpkin and leaves

 What could be better than pumpkins and leaves to represent fall than a wall hanging with both. 


Jedi Craft Girl really put fall into this pattern, gotta love that. It was so fun to make again. 


It's great as a wall hanging, but could also be used as a table topper.


This is the kind of hanging sleeve I do on wall hangings. The split sleeve leaves the middle open so you only have to put one nail in your wall. Sometimes even just a pin or needle will do.







Friday, July 18, 2025

Sunflower and Holly

 Often when I make something with a seasonal fabric, I might as well pick the next season and make one for that also while the pattern is fresh in my mind.  First up is a pretty sunflower fabric with a  coordinating gold and green.


The quilting on the star portion of this table topper was all ruler work with one start and one stop on my longarm.  Next came the smallish stipple in the neutral background and straight lines in the outer border.


And the backing.



Picking out the Christmas fabrics was easy, I started with the holly fabric and added a green and red. This was the first time to use the white with green, red and silver polka dot fabric. I think it came out great.


The quilting is the same as the sunflower one. This is a pattern by Anka's Treasure called Rising Star, in her Angles with Ease book.


Found a piece just large enough in the stash for the backing.  


The cross stitch project has moved along also. Linking up with Slow Sunday Stitching.



Our wild black raspberry season has come to the end, but I sure loved being able to fill 7 sandwich size zip baggies and put in the freezer. But first I made a batch of 24 muffins, yummy!


This year I decided to try planting cucumber seeds in a flower pot of the deck. The three plants are growing really well. I took this a week ago and it has really vined out even more since. And I have several baby cuc's on it, four of them are almost 4" long!  I can hardly wait to eat them:)


It's Friday so you know I'll be linking up with other creators at Off The Wall, TGIFF, Finished or Not Friday and Freemotion Mavericks.


Sunday, July 13, 2025

Summer and Fall

 Hello Summer is a cross stitch from Primrose Cottage, love their designs. Diann and I had been talking of what to stitch next, she mentioned she was going to do this one and I thought it is the perfect timing. So I jumped in fingers first:)  A week ago I picked out the thread and then Monday started stitching and every night since except for last night. I only stitch in the evenings while watching TV.


During the day time I sew.  I figure it is time to work up a few fall panels for the shop.


And the current one I am working on.  I'll go into more detail about each when I get them quilted.



Linking with Slow Stitching Sunday, Sew and Tell Monday, Design Wall Monday, Monday Musings.