Five Shadows

For this week’s challenge, using the Birds in the Air block, my mind went to the Beatles song Blackbird.

Here’s my interpretation -

First up, I found a 6″ finished paper pieced Birds in the Air block with a tutorial on Wombat Quilts. I decreased the size of the pattern to 2 1/2″.

After piecing two blocks, I fused them using Misty Fuse along with a blackbird to background fabric. I blanket stitched around the blocks. After sandwiching the quilt, I outlined stitched around the bird.

Then I stitched in wings to represent them broken and needing to heal. I fused and stitched around the heart, and then free motion stitched the words to Blackbird by the Beatles around the edge of the quilt. This is Black History month here in the USA. Paul McCartney said he wrote the song in 1960s, after hearing about the civil unrest in the US.

“Blackbird”

We had another snow and ice day. My Thursday quilting day with my club was canceled, second Thursday in a row. I had planned to work on Bat Moon Rising at the meeting. Staying home, I got busy on other things. We rescheduled for this Thursday, hopefully there will be no weather cancelations this week! I have squares to cut for the background of the Bats quilt before piecing the rows together.

I did make progress on Happy Little Things, which is my One Monthly Goal for this month.

Blocks sashed and ready for borders.

Borders on -

Back pieced, I used leftover pieces from the Fat Eighth pack of Carolyn Friedlander fabric line, Friedlander. Plus one of the whites I used for the background of the embroidery. Quilt is sandwiched and quilting started.

Quilting started in the sashing -

Then I had a little a bobbin problem.  …  Fixed and ready to resume quilting!

I’m still following along with Project Quilting. Sunday the 4th challenge was announced: use the quilt block Birds in the Air in this week’s quilt. I found a paper pieced pattern from Wombat Quilts for the block and reduced it to 2 1/2″ finished to use in my challenge piece.

Here’s a sneak peak.

I hope you are having a productive week, mine was a bit off for accomplishing much in the sewing room.

Last To-Do List:

1. Bats! – continue piecing. ✗ Maybe this week?
2. Happy Little Things – continue piecing. ✔️ Sandwiched and quilting started.
3. UFO – maybe I’ll have time to pull out a quilt started for my SIL lake home. ✗ Didn’t do it.

This week’s To-Do List:

1. Bats! Maybe this Thursday’s sewing day will not be canceled. That’s when I plan on working on this quilt.
2. Happy Little Things is my OMG – finish it and post before deadline Saturday, Feb 29th!
3. Project Quilting  11:4 Challenge – finish before deadline noon Sunday, Feb 23.

Linking to To-do Tuesday hosted by Home Sewn by Us.

A friend made her first ever quilt and asked if I would quilt it for her. She bought glow in the dark Northcott Solar System fabric. She asked for glow in the dark thread, but I just could not find any dark threads to matched her quilt. I bought one spool of Superior Threads NiteLite Extraglow thread in white and used it in the panel of orbiting planets.

I never actually took the quilt into a dark room to see how the fabric and thread glowed. My loss, I’m sure.

After stitching the orbits, I stitched circles in various sizes in the rest of the panel. Then did straight line diamond quilting in the first border.

And then went back to more circle quilting. In the next border I did squiggles and circles.

Here’s the back of the quilt, showing the circles.

I gathered dishes from my kitchen and traced them for the circles using a Sewline white ceramic lead pencil.

I didn’t get a picture of the outer border, but I continued the same circle quilting in a meandering line. My friend is happy! I’m happy!

Next up I worked on my Happy Little Things BOM. I’m attempting to use a Fat Eighth pack of Carolyn Friedlander’s fabric for the BOM.

Doing so, I don’t have enough of any one fabric to complete the sashing on all the blocks as I would like. So it’s getting very scrappy.

Close up of blocks -

The centers are hand embroidery stitched on white prints, which were the only fabrics not in the Carolyn Friendlander line. Next will be a blue border. Then I won’t have enough fabric for the larger border, so I’ll put my thinking cap on for how to change up the pattern and finish this quilt top. Maybe I’ll even buy Carolyn Friedlander yardage? But I’d really like to challenge myself to use just the Fat Eight Pack for the top.

My husband got an early birthday gift!

More Melissa and Doug wooden train pieces! Something he can enjoy with the grandkids!

One last thing

This pretty Africa Violet is blooming again!

Last To-Do List:

1. Keep working on Bat Moon Rising ✗  Thursday quilt day was canceled b/c of weather. I just didn’t get to the bats this week.
2. Get going on Happy Little Things ✔️ Small progress, but progress was made.
3. I have not been listing customer quilts, but I have one to finish quilting. I was hoping to finish it last week. But sometimes family comes first. ✔️ Finished quilting friend’s solar system quilt.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday. Go take a look at what other quilters are working on this week!

Just a little bit of batty.

I managed to rip out bats to reposition them on one of the latest quilts I’m working on.

Here is where I left the quilt, thinking I just had the rows to sew together.

But as I looked at the above picture, I thought the quilt would look better if I did some rearranging. So ripping happened, leaving 3 rows to sew back together.

I think I like the placement better, but might still rip out and move the second bat from the bottom on the right side. I guess there comes a time when you just have to say it’s good enough! Not sure I’m there yet!

I picked out a UFO to finish the top for my One Monthly Goal for February.  It’s the Happy Little Things BOM from last year. I posted about it here.

Last To-Do List:

1. Continue piecing Bat Moon Rising ✔️
2. Select a UFO to work on ✔️

This Week’s To-Do List:

1. Keep working on Bat Moon Rising
2. Get going on Happy Little Things
3. I have not been listing customer quilts, but I have one to finish quilting. I was hoping to finish it last week. But sometimes family comes first.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday. Go take a look at what other quilters are working on this week!

Put a Heart On It!

Here’s what’s up with my challenge for this week. I pulled a few fabrics and a vintage hankie with a lace edge. Next I dug through some hand-me-down quilting stencils finding several with heart motifs.

I settled on a stencil that fit nicely on the hankie.

Using a Frixion pen & stencil I drew the design onto the hankie. With Misty Fuse & pink fabrics, I fused hearts on to the hankie – thus removing the Frixion pen marks for the rest of the quilt! Oops! Have you used Frixion pens for marking your quilts? The pen marks remove with heat. So think through your project first as to when to mark your quilt! After machine blanket stitching around the hearts I remarked the ‘flowers’ on the hankie. Then I stitched the rest of the design out with Aurifil thread, 4020. It’s a simple design, but fits the challenge.

To finish the little quilt, I zigzagged stitched, using Aurifil 2021, around the outer edge of the hankie leaving the lace free flowing. The quilt with lace is 13″ square.

This will be gift for a friend celebrating her birthday, I’m taking her out for lunch Wednesday. So far for all three Season 11 challenges I have gifted the little quilts. I wonder if I’ll be able to keep up this dual purpose with the rest of the challenges?

Linking to Project Quilting Season 11:3

For February, I’ll be working towards completing the 2019 Happy Little Things BOM hosted by Jacquelynne Stevens.

I hand embroidered the flower motif for the center of each of the 4 blocks.

Using Carolyn Friedlaner fabrics, I built the block around the embroidered center.

Each block needs to be sashed. Once sewn together, there are two borders to complete. My plan is to get the top all pieced. If all goes well, maybe I’ll even sandwich, quilt, and bind. This will be a nice quilt to display in my living room this Spring.

What are you working on this month? Check out everyone else’s plans at Elm Street Quilts.

Linking to One Monthly Goal.

Only eleven more months until Christmas!

2017 Christmas Countdown, 21″ x 20″

I am actually very late – as in two and three years. But I finished two UFOs that are now ready for Christmas 2020!

Christmas Countdown 2018, 15″ x 23″

This next one was the Christmas countdown for 2019, which I did manage to keep up with all the daily stitching.

Christmas Countdown 2019, 19″ x 21 1/2″

These are Helen Godden Christmas Countdown wall hangings with a little stitching to be done every day December 1-24th. She demos in a short video which she posts on her Facebook page. I didn’t keep up in 2017 & 2018. They are done now! Helen has lots of teaching videos and online classes. Take a look!

Linking to One Monthly Goal hosted by Patty of Elm Street Quilts.

This past week I did find some time to work at piecing Bat Moon Rising.

I was thinking the rows are done and ready to go together. But looking at this photo, I think I’ll do some ripping and move the bat just off the left of the moon over a few squares. And then on the right of the moon all the bat tips are lined up, so I’ll move one of those over more to the right. Then I might be more pleased with the placement of all these winged bats. Overall, I’m pretty pleased with this quilt. Pattern by Sew Kind of Wonderful from their book Mini Wonderful Curves. I’m making my version wider, thus the need to rearrange the bats a bit.

Project Quilting – I did jump in, participating in this past week’s challenge, Team Colors. Since I’m not much for following sports I decided to honor my DS friend by making her a little quiltie – Team Ruth! using her love of pink and unicorns.

This little wall hanging measures 16″ square. The lettering is fusible appliqué. The Unicorn is colored with crayons and then machine stitched to add to the mane and outlining of the unicorn. It was a fun little project.

Last To-Do List:

1. Bat Moon Rising  - get back to piecing!  ✔️
2. Maybe play along with Project Quilting 11:2.  ✔️

To-Do List:

1. Continue piecing Bat Moon Rising
2. Select a UFO to work on

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Home Sewn by Us.

Go Team!

For the 11:2 Team Colors Challenge I focused on a little quiltie for my friend Ruth.

Ruth is one amazing young lady full of life. Among her many interests are songs, shows and movies by Hannah Montana, cheer leading, finger nail polish, unicorns, all things pink, and a new love for coffee which is mostly milk. Ruth has Down Syndrome. So here is to Ruth and her team of loving supporters and family. Go Team Ruth!

I changed up my plans from doing appliqué to using crayons to color the Unicorn. FMQing outlining, and swirls added to the mane. This little quilt is 16″ square.

This is just my second time to participate in Project Quilting, having just learned about it recently. This was another fun challenge. Thanks for hosting Kim & Trish!  Project Quilting, Season 11:2

This past week I spent very little time in my sewing room. Even so, I did manage to complete the little vintage truck wall hanging for my son and daughter-in-law. They went away for the weekend to celebrate their wedding anniversary, so I didn’t see them to give the little gift. I’ll see them later this week. It finished at 15″ x 10 3/4″ pattern by Buttermilk Basin.

I’ll report back later their reactions!

Happy stitching, All!

Last To Do List:

1. Finish up Vintage Truck for son & DIL for their 1st wedding anniversary on the 19th. ✔️ Finished!
2. Back to Bat Moon Rising quilt.  ✗ Nope, didn’t get to this. Other family needs took precedence.

To Do List:

1. Bat Moon Rising  - get back to piecing!
2. Maybe play along with Project Quilting 11:2.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday.