Five Shadows

I’m late to the party. Jodi Barrows of Square-in-a-Square is hosting a mystery quilt that started in January and ends this week. I have lots of catching up to do! I just started last Saturday when I bought the fabric for the mystery.

I purchased Grunge, Grunge Stars, and Grunge Dots, and one Marble fabric for the quilt. Jodi has designed several lines of Civil War fabric, and used them in her quilt. I think my quilt will be a little brighter. tee hee

Yesterday, I pieced the first set of blocks which will be used in the border.

20 Winged Creatures, according to the pattern.

Today I worked on the second clue, flying geese units, which will be stacked together to make trees.

I still have a pile of Square in a Square blocks to trim down to flying geese units, above.

And since I’m still running late, last week – I finally finished piecing together all the hexies for my 2018 temperature quilt. I pieced a three piece hexie for each day last year. The center piece represents the high of the day, and the two pieces on either side represent the low of the day.

Check out this post for more details.

Personally, I’m tickled to be working on the mystery quilt. Since this quilt has been on my radar since January, it’s like a UFO before I even got started! So far piecing this quilt top has made for a fun week.

How is your week going? Any new or old projects on your to-do list this week?

Last posted to-do list:

1. Sew up backs for the 2 UFO quilt tops. ✗ Guess I’m not going to get to these until I’m actually ready to quilt them.
2. Stitch together hexies for the temperature quilt. ✔️Done! And happy with the way it turned out.

This week’s to-do list:

1. Piecing Square-in-a-Square Mystery quilt.
2. Piece another baby quilt.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday.

This month I plan on sewing up a mystery quilt offered by Jodi Barrows through her Square in a Square website. My husband gave me a membership to Jodi’s Premium Club as a Christmas gift. Jodi offered a mystery quilt to members that I think started in January and ends the first week of March. I’m hoping to stitch up the mystery quilt this month.

I bought fabrics today for the mystery – Grunge, Grunge Dots, & Grunge Stars. Plus one Marble which is the top black. I’m hoping these all work well together to make a nice quilt top.

February Finish!

I missed the cut off day to post my February finish. My 2018 Temperature quilt top is all pieced together. Details here.

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

Done! All the hexies are sewn together from my 2018 Temperature quilt.

Top measures 46 1/2″ x 54 1/2″

I put the hexies with the embroidered temperatures down the right and left side of the top.

This is what the back looks like, some of the papers fell out while sewing the hexies together.

After hand stitching the individual hexie pieces together, I decide to switch to using a monofilament thread and zigzag stitch to attach the finished hexies together. The center of each hexie is the high temperature of the day and the two side pieces are the low of the day.

I embroidery the name of the month on the fabric representing the low of the first day of each month. Placing that hexie in the row then followed by day one. For example, here is October (I need to erase my Frixion pen marks.) The high for October first was a warm 83 degrees and the low was 56 degrees.

This rust fabric represents 81-84 degrees range.

And here you can see the yellow print representing the 53-56 degrees used in the October 1st hexie.

Back of the October 1st hexie.

To piece the daily hexies, I used Presencia Finca Perle Cotton embroidery thread in blue, green yellow, orange, or red to coordinate with the low of the day.

Top is complete. Now to figure out how to sandwich and quilt it.

Let’s just say I threw last week’s to-do list out the window and decided on a bit of Crazy. Happy Crazy.

First, I feel in love with Minki Kim‘s book Diary in Stitches.

Just take a look at this! Or go leaf through it on Amazon.

See her sketch on the left page? And then see how she interpreted it with stitching and fabric on the right page? What a wonderful idea! I love how only bits and pieces of the design are embellished with fabric. I want to play with this idea.

But what I really did was start a new FMQ project sponsored by the Facebook Group Machine Quilting Tutorials with Jeanne. She is teaching a Row by Row quilt this year using FMQ. Here is part of my first row.

This design got me thinking about stencils. And about my friend who gave me a large pile of stencils in all shapes and sizes.

So I dug through them and settled on these,

thinking I could use the stencils and bits of fabric to play around with Minki Kim’s style of design.

I dug out my scraps of already fused fabrics left over from making appliqué quilts.

Then using the stencils and fabric I started playing.

I traced the portion on the stencil I wanted to use on to background fabric. Then traced bits of the leaves, rose bud and flower on the fused fabric. (I use Misty Fuse for machine appliqué quilts, keeping the scraps in ZipLoc bags.) I fused the fabric in place with a hot iron and then had fun stitching around and over the fabrics and along the lines of the rest of the stencil design.

So much fun! And I’m loving the look and results!

Heart stencil and free hand Love.

Flowers and love.

Heart!

But that was not enough Crazy for the week. I had visited a quilting friend. We’ve been friends for 20 or so years. As she gets older, her hands are just not cooperating as they once did. She showed me several of her UFOs she had intended to complete and donate to charities. I offered to take them to complete them for her.

I took 4 sets of 12 blocks each with sashing already cut, which will make 4 baby quilts.

…

You know, not like I don’t have any UFOs of my own! I shared this at my quilting group yesterday and they did think I was crazy! We had a good laugh and I got busy on the first of 4 quilt tops.

Here’s the first completed baby quilt top. 9″ blocks & 2 1/2″ sashing and border. Top is 37″ x 48 1/2″ My friend has a lovely stash of fabric which I’m sure will provide backing and binding. I’ll take this back to her and see if she wants me to finish it, or perhaps she will want to machine quilt it.

That’s my Crazy for the week. It was fun and I hope to be so inspired again! Plans this week will be a repeat of last, temperature quilt, and backs for 2 finished tops.

Last week’s to-do list:

1. Sew up backs for the 2 above quilts.
2. Stitch together hexies for the temperature quilt.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday and Linky Tuesday.

Where did the week go? Or is it weeks?

I did manage to get the borders sewn on to the 2 quilts for my sister-in-law. Sorry, no photos of the tops, but this is the block making up one quilt.

The other quilt was made using these fabrics and the Curve it Up pattern by Sew Kind of Wonderful.

I’ll share photos once these 2 are all quilted.

A now UFO I’m working on in the 2018 Temperature quilt. All the hexies are now made and ready to finish sewing together. Read more about it here.

Last week’s to-do list:

1. work on 2018 temperature quilt. I have some embroidery of dates and temperatures to do by machine. ✔️
2. work on adding borders to SIL 2 quilt tops. I have a quilting sewing day scheduled with friends for Thursday, I plan on working on the borders then. ✔️

This week’s to-do list:

1. Sew up backs for the 2 above quilts.
2. Stitch together hexies for the temperature quilt.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday and Linky Tuesday.

I didn’t get very far on my goal for January which was to work on completing my 2018 temperature quilt.

I did pull fabric for embroidering the name of each month. I used the fabric from the low temp of the first day of the month as the background for embroidering the name of the month. The embroidery is all completed.

I also decided to embroider the temperature range on each fabric used in the quilt.

Small progress for January, but here’s hoping I complete this project this month.

I used a Frixion pen to mark lines. Next step, iron the pen marks off. Then it’s time to piece all the hexies together. That will be my goal for February.

Linking to One Monthly Goal over at Elm Street Quilts.

Once the holidays of Christmas and New Years passed, I switched to prepping for an upcoming event.

My eldest son married his beloved Saturday, January 19!

All the photos I’m sharing are from cell phones of relatives. Professional photos will come later.

My kiddos, grands, happy newly weds, me & my husband, groom’s aunt & uncle.

It snowed all day long, and was so windy. Bride arriving in snow boots and leggings!

My kiddos. Son Luke, Daughter Anna, DILove Alicia, Son Noel, Daughter Charis. Luke was best man, Charis was also on the groom’s side, but what do you call her, a groom’s person? Wish I had a photo of the whole wedding party.

Happy Couple at the reception!

My husband, John and me.

Sunday morning we hosted a brunch in our home for family and friends before they headed back to their homes.

Dear friends, the Roses, made biscuits and gravy for 24 people! We also served quiche, fruit, yogurt & granola, juices & coffee.

Fun facts: the wedding gown was my mother’s. Sadly she passed last February, not living to see her gown being worn in her grandson’s wedding. This is the fourth time for it to be used in a family wedding. My sister and also my cousin wore the gown at their weddings. The fur stoles worn by my daughter and me are from my husband’s grandmother.

As for sewing this week, I’ll be adding borders to 2 quilt tops for my sister-in-law. She commented on all the quilts in my house. I told her to pick one out. Then showed her a few I would part with and she selected one. Then I took her up to my sewing room, and showed her finished tops that so far do not have homes. She selected 2. But she wants them bed size. I’ll be adding one border to each.

And get this! A local quilt shop held a 60% off one item sale yesterday. One item could be up to a 10 yard cut of fabric! We selected fabric to finish the 2 quilts. 10 yards for one and 7 yards for the second, using same fabric for border & back. What a deal!

I’m taking a breather today – we had 7 guests staying with us for the wedding. And yes, each bed had at least one quilt on it! Some had 2! We woke up to -8 degrees Fahrenheit Monday morning! Our first guests arrived Wednesday night, and the last of our guests left 6:30pm Monday night! What a full and fun wedding celebration!

I’d say the New Year is going extremely well for me. How is your January going?

Most recent goals:

1. Finishing Helen Godden’s FMQ Christmas ornaments ✗ I really wanted to finish this one up, but wedding prep happily took up my time!
2. Finish 2018 Temperature quilt (I’m giving myself the month of January to finish it.) ✗ Not touched.
3. Start a new project for my soon to be DIL! ✔️ DIL selected a pattern, I was able to buy a fabric kit, book and ruler at 15% off. I’ll share more about this quilt once I get going on it.

This week’s to-do list:

1. work on 2018 temperature quilt. I have some embroidery of dates and temperatures to do by machine.
2. work on adding borders to SIL 2 quilt tops. I have a quilting sewing day scheduled with friends for Thursday, I plan on working on the borders then.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday and Linky Tuesday.

My goal for January will be to stitch together all of the 365 pieced hexies I made throughout 2018 for my Daily Temperature Quilt.

First I want to machine embroider the names of the months and temperature range on the fabric I used. Then I plan on using a monofilament thread and zigzag stitch the hexies together. Fingers crossed my plan works.

Linking to Elm Street Quilts where Patty hosts One Monthly Goal.

Happy New Year!

Looking back over 2018 and selecting the Best Of for this post, I find I am just as tickled with this Teddy Bear Quilt as I was in April. This was a quilt for a customer who wanted a baby quilt using the grandfather’s terry cloth robe. I paired the robe with Moda Grunge Dots making a 2 sided quilt with a Teddy Bear on each side.

Teddy in the terry cloth pocket.

Pocket & Moda side of quilt.

Teddy peeking out from under the terry cloth.

Terry cloth side of quilt.

Another favorite is this Heart Quilt I made for my nephew’s baby girl.

Quilted using a walking foot in a simple grid design.

Scrappy machine attached binding.

I started a Jodi Barrow’s Square in a Square quilt, not finished, but I do love the blocks.

I’m pairing a lovely Hummingbird print with fabrics from my stash, and using Jodi’s Letters to a Soldier book. These brights look nothing like her Civil War prints!  I hate that this is now an UFO, as I have not stitched on it since the summer. Here’s hoping 2019 will see progress!

A quick project I made for my father when he moved into an assisted living apartment are these orphan block placemats and coasters.

I thought these would be nice and cheery in his little kitchenette.

My last creative juices for 2018 got me going on two Christmas stocking for my two grand children.

The Snowman was for my grand daughter and the Christmas Moose (a moose with a scarf makes it a Christmas Moose, right!?) was for my grand son.

Goodbye 2018 and Hello 2019!

Happy New Year all!

Upcoming To-Do Plans include

1. Finishing Helen Godden’s FMQ Christmas ornaments
2. Finish 2018 Temperature quilt (I’m giving myself the month of January to finish it.)
3. Start a new project for my soon to be DIL!

Linking to To-Do Tuesday and Linky Tuesday.

December Recap

My goal was to make several gifts for Christmas gift exchanges with my quilty friends.

I found several fabric ornament tutorials and made these:

and these

and these which I started after Christmas. I’m jumping ahead for 2019 Christmas!

They need button centers and ribbon for hanging.

Plus I started and completed 2 Christmas stockings for my 2 grand children.

And finally! I bound Chic Country for my grand daughter’s birthday! Which we will celebrating tomorrow. Sew Kind of Wonderful pattern.

With just these bits of sewing completed, along with Christmas gatherings, Church, time with family & friends, I’m pleased with how the month of December has played out. I hope you also had happy celebrations with family and friends and are looking forward to a Happy New Year!

Linking to One Monthly Goal.