All people quilt January

Every year All people quilt does a UFO* challenge where you list out 12 UFOs you have, they give you a number each month and you work on that quilt.  I tried to do it in 2021, but moving half way during the year put a damper on getting that done.  I knew I wanted to do it again in 2023.  

So I put together a list of all the quilts I had that still need to be finished.  And January's number was 3, and my number 3 was my pinwheel quilt a long, that I started in 2010.  

I am excited to have the top done.  I knew I wanted to add borders, the issue was, I did not have a lot of the fabrics left.  I like how the borders turns out.

I am not 100% done with it, as I need to quilt it, but I think I have some fabric that will work nicely for the backing, once there's a nice weather day, I think I will be going to the garage to quit this.

* UFO - Unfinished Object - can be a quilt that you started, that you haven't even cut, but it's a project that isn't done!
 

Bow tie blocks - count 587

 I have been trying to keep track of how many bowties I have, because there are too many for my design wall.  Well not too many, but too many I don't want to put them up anymore to try to count them.

This was in May of 22.  I had 339 bowtie blocks and I decided I was not going to put them up and count them there anymore.  I couldn't even imagine trying to do it now!

Last week I made 21 bowtie blocks.

And this week I made 18 bowtie blocks.  My total right now is 587!!! I cannot believe I have made over 200 since May of last year! 

I am so ready to start sewing these into bigger blocks.  But I think I will wait until I have 600.  If I make this as big as my quilt is, it will be 672 blocks total.  

Design Wall Monday

Design Wall Monday! Is a very old quilt.  It's one I started in 2010.

My journey with this quilt is here.  I think the last time I really touched it was in 2014.

I thought I only had one more seam to sew this together, the two on point halves.  I was quite wrong. I did have to sew the two halves together, but I also had to add the cornerstones, and I figured out why I hadn't added those. 

I didn't have enough fabric!  I had to piece them, which turned out fine, but I think that is why it slowed me down.

Now the top is done! I do want to add borders because this quilt ended up square, and I while I don't mind square quilts I prefer rectangular ones.

 I am linking up with Small Quilts & Doll Quilts Design wall Monday.

My Long Arm

Happy anniversary to my long arm!!! Yesterday (January 19th) 4 years ago in what ended up being a snowstorm, we (my husband, teen daughter & I) drove from southern Indiana to northwest Indiana to bring my long arm home. 

We rented a 12 ft uhaul truck. The table barely fit but we got the door closed. The actual machine rode in the car with me. 

I’ve loved having this machine. I’ve finished so many more quilts than I did before. In 2022 I finished 12, that wouldn’t have been possible before this. 

Last finish of 2022

Well I squeaked by finishing this before the end of the year!  I started this as a round robin over the summer.  Then the quilt was sent to two other ladies that added some rounds to it.  Then it got sent back to me, and I finished it with one more round.

I knew I wanted to make this for my mom, and my mom has said she wants a quilt big enough to put on her bed.  So I kept that in mind as I added my final border to the quilt.

Here is the full quilt being held up by my dad and my husband.  I started with the yellow "flower" in the middle.  It was actually a snails trail block that I slightly modified to make it look like a rose.

I chose to do a yellow flower because that has always been one of my moms favorite colors.

And here is a picture of the full quilt on my mom's bed.  I would say that it fits!  She loves it, so that's all that matters.

Because of other Christmas obligations I wasn't able to add the binding until the night before I gave it to my mom! Luckily our friends have a sewing machine I could borrow. otherwise this might have gone into the next year pile!

This was finish number 12 of the year! (I know I haven't shared them all yet, but I will this year).  That might be the most I have finished in one year.  I do know one year I finished 9.  Having a long arm really helps!

It's been a year!

Oh my goodness, I haven't posted in a year! Life has been very crazy.  But I am definitely going to be making a point of posting more things year.  I know I have said it before but I love being able to read back and see what I have been up to.

I made my bowtie quilt, and started one for my friend Christine.  I have been trying to keep track of how many I have, so that I can make sure I make enough!

I am adding 18 bow ties this week.  So that brings my running today to 537.

When I hit 500 I thought that I was almost done, because I knew I needed 600 some, what I did not realize was that I needed closer to 700, 672! So I still have a ways to go.  

I am using this as my leader/ender quilt, so I used it in between other projects I am working on, so I always have something under my needle on my sewing machine.

It's also really good for using up scraps!

Traveling with a Singer featherweight

When I found out my husband's grandma had a singer featherweight, I asked to borrow it as we were traveling for thanksgiving and flying.  I was told yes.  But I knew I didn't want to travel with it in it's black case. 

Well the featherweight fits perfectly into my Vera Bradley Miller bag!!

So I open the bag up all the way, and I put a quilt inside it.  Usually the first time I put the quilt around the machine and then slide it into the bag.

Here you can see how snug the machine fits into the bag.  The best part is, there are pockets, which leaves me room for putting things like bobbins, thread, scissors, pins, etc.

And then it zips up all nice.  And it has nice long (padded) straps so I can easily put it on my shoulder or on top of a suitcase to travel with it.

A few tips for traveling with it (through an airport).  Take it out of the bag when going through security and put the machine in a bin by itself.  Now there have been sometimes they don't care when it's in the bag, but there are sometimes they do.  So it's just easier to put it in the bin beforehand.

Expect to have people ask you about it! I always have good conversations with TSA employees about the machine, they usually reminiscing about a machine someone in their family had.

I have not actually used this to sew at a gate (usually electric plugs are hard to come by) but it would be a possibility.  But once I get to my destination she usually comes out of the bag and is set up.

I don't just use this for air travel, it's handy when I am doing my craft fairs, or sewing nights, because it's easy to take a long.  

If you have any questions about traveling with a (singer featherweight) sewing machine please let me know and I will do my best to tell you my experiences!

Masks

School has started requiring masks again.  And since we moved I don't know where my masks went!  So I needed to make some new ones.  

I might not have known where my masks were, I knew where my cricut supplies were! so I was able to cut out some new masks.  I have very little waste on these, the little squares are part of my leader/enders (yes I am working on more than one!) and then 2.5" squares to keep up my collection (not that it's getting any smaller after all the quilts I feel like I have made with them!

Here are some of the masks I have recently made for myself.

Sewing Room finished

It took a lot of work, but we finished the sewing room floors!!

I love how they look, I loved being able to say that we did it! I also love the color with my purple walls. 

And I created this image with a before & after.

I love the purple so much! I cannot wait to show you how it looks with everything in here!

 

Battery Power

I love my featherweight.  I love bringing my featherweight along to my craft fairs, it's a conversation starter, and I get lots of things done also!

Not every craft fair I attend allows electricity or has it available.  Which stinks for multiple reasons.  But my awesome husband found a cool "gadget".  

We use a Ryobi electric lawn mower at our house.  They have these things that you can plug them into and then use outlets like normal (and USB outlets also).  So I have been able to sew at every craft fair I have gone to recently!

While it was a little expensive at first (we already have batteries) looking at the cost of paying for electric for every craft fair I go to, it should pay for  itself off soon!

And bonus it could be used for other things also! 

 

Carrot Cake

Someone on instagram was looking for pattern testers.  I looked at her timeline and our timeline with moving and thought I would be able to do it!  So I signed up to test Carrot Cake quilt pattern.  she actually released 3 patterns, with different colour ways. 

I really enjoyed the pattern.  It went together pretty easy.  It would have gone together easier if I wouldn't have been in the middle of a move, living in a hotel then a make shift sewing room!

You can kind of see the sizes of the pieces here.  I liked how big they were, it helped it come together quickly.  Although I was supposed to make a queen size quilt, but I did not, because I lost some pieces.  I did end up finding them after I moved into my sewing room.

Here is the quilt 100% finished, quilted, bound and washed.

And here is the recipient of the quilt! It's for my grandson, Kaison.  He didn't get it when he was born, but about a week later when we were able to meet him.

He was making this face when I laid the quilt out on him in the car.  So I turned it into a meme.  So excited that grandma made me a quilt! His mom has been teaching him right, because she already loves quilts! He always wants hers!

 I decided to make this quilt a little bit bigger than a baby size quilt, because I wanted him to be able to have it for a while.  Not that I won't make him another one, but I wanted one that he could use even in a few years!

New sewing room

Since we recently moved, I got to pick a new sewing space!  And since we plan on being here a while, I wanted to put everything I have ever wanted in here.

Here is Earl in the closet.  I am excited to have a walk in closet, it's a lot easier to put things in, so much space!

I chose purple for the walls.  It's actually the same purple as my previous sewing space! I really liked that color!

I wanted to have hard floors, so we took up the carpet.  (After we painted ;) so we didn't have to worry about paint getting on the floors!)

Here is the room all cleaned out, with the box of floor boards on the floor.

And the first few pieces in the closet!
 

Quarantine Quilt 2

In 2020 during Quarantine when I was working from home I wanted things that were easy to sew, that didn't require me to think.  I shared pictures of the start of it (here)

When Christine came out in June she wanted to long arm, but I wanted her to try something out before quilting her quilt on it.  So I thought this quarantine quilt would be a good way for her to practice using the long arm before doing her own quilt.

Once I finished the quilt I decided to bind it and gift it to Christine.  She was about to go on a new adventure in her life and I thought having a quilt might be something nice for her to have.

She also had never received a quilt as a gift.  

Because of the timing of it all I did not get any pictures of the quilt before she left.  But I did get one when we visited her for thanksgiving!

I love how much of a design can be made from just light and dark fabrics.  The HST were light and dark, the 16 patches with 2.5" squares I didn't sew them together in any specific fashion.

Flying geese

I am going to go through a quick tutorial on how I make flying geese (without my accuquilt).  I definitely prefer the accuquilt if I have a choice.  

I used a shape cut ruler to cut strips.  The ruler I used tells you what size to cut the strip.  

Once the strips are cut, you line up the ruler to cut it.  The nice thing is how it lines up, it cuts off the top of the triangle. 

Then you turn the ruler to cut the outside pieces.  

This is the one reason I prefer the accuquilt cut pieces.  They cut off both dog ears.  but I managed to make it through without having any of the triangles get eaten.

and ta-da! a finished flying geese block!  I can't wait to share the whole quilt!

What's your favorite method for making flying geese?

Rainbow cats finished quilt

I had actually decided what I was going to do for this graduation quilt last year, before I had EQ, but I used EQ8 to help me figure out how many blocks to do and the borders.  I knew I was going to use muli colored cats, but I kept them blue for the ease of design.

 

The beauty of EQ8 is that I used it to tell me how much fabric I needed for the borders (I, of course bought a little extra just to make sure), but it was nice that I didn't have to do the math of figuring out how much I needed.  The program did it for me!

Generally I try use as much stuff at home as I can, but we are in the process of moving, so most of my fabric is packed! So I did have to buy some to finish the borders.  But I am glad I did, because I found some CUTE cat fabric.

Here is the finished top! I don't know if you can tell, but the outside border is rainbow cat prints!

I just did a simple meander in grey.  With a wide flannel grey back (which I did not get a picture of).  Wide back fabrics are definitely favorite for quilt backs, although soon I will have to sew them together to use as a backing for a scrappy quilts!

And here is the finished quilt! I am so happy with how it turned out!  And the recipient liked it too, which is all that matters!

Rainbow cats 6

Here is a little time lapse of me putting together one of the kitties.  You can see I have some help from Minnie :) I love doing time lapses like this.  Makes me feel a lot faster than I am ;)

 The grey kitty was the last one I had to make.  Ideally I would have liked to make 3 more, to make it just a little wider.  BUT I just didn't have the time. I was on a time crunch to get this quilt done for a high school graduation.

But I actually think it works the way it is, because the young man this is for, I made a quilt similarly with HSTs & 2.5" squares for his sister (here), and hers had 12 blocks, 3x4.  So while it's not quite as wide as I would have liked, it kid of keeps a theme for the family of graduation quilts.  I will use borders to help make it a little wider.

I am happy with the colors I picked.  And while I would have rather just had one of each color, I don't know what other colors I would have done if I only had one green!

One of the things I thought about after putting it up on the design wall, was that I should have made some of the kitties face different directions!

Rainbow Cats 5

I ended up making 3 green cats, I am not sure why.  Green isn't even the fabric I have the most color of (blue is!). I decided to make the brown kitty even though I don't have a lot of brown fabrics (you can see the amount of repeats in this), but I thought it looked the most like a real kitty.

These have definitely been a scrap buster, but I still have so many scraps left!

Rainbow Cats 4

 I was trying to decide which other colors to use.  While I don't have a lot of yellow, I thought it would look nice.  And even though this quilt is for a young man, I didn't think a pink kitty would be too out of place.

The pink one is definitely one where cutting down fabric can change its look.  If you look at the top left ear, it almost looks blue, because the pink fabric had blue flowers on it.  so when that one was cut and sewn back together it definitely changed the look!  It adds some character!

Rainbow Cats 3

I mentioned that orange was tough because I didn't have a lot of orange.  But I have plenty of purple! I love the purple kitties.  A kitty in a kitty.  The red one was fun to do.  I included dark and light things.

Making the kitties has helped me cut up a lot of my scraps.  I am using my accuquilt to help.  Things that are too small to be put on boards I cut up into scraps with my accuquilt.  

 

Rainbow cats 2

Here are two more kitties finished.  The orange was probably the most difficult for me.  I just don't have a lot of orange fabric.  Nothing against it.  I just don't have a lot.

I love using my accuquilt for the HSTs they go together SO quickly, and I have a large pile of them, some with black and colors and others that are neutral and colors, and even lights and darks.  I have so many ideas of quilts to make with them!

One quilt at a time though.  I need to finish the kitties.  I haven't decided how many there will be.