Five Shadows

My To-Do list was very short this week and will continue to be so for the month of May.

This past week I wanted to finish the quilt top from a BOM I participated in last year.

I surprised myself and actually got the 2 borders sewn on in just one day. I looked through my stash to see if I had something to use for the back. But didn’t find anything, so I stopped in the LQS and found a piece I liked on their discount wall.

The quilt top and fabric for the back will ‘rest’ in my to-be-quilted pile for a while.

How did I do on last week’s To-Do List:

1. Sew borders on last year’s BOM from the Facebook Group: Sit Down Free Motion Quilters.  ✔️ All done!

To-Do List for this week:

1. Machine stitch Dresden Plates in place, table runner project.
2. Sandwich & quilt Dr. Seuss themed baby quilt.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday and Linky Tuesday. Come join the fun!

I accomplished only one little quilt-y thing this past week.

I made this block,

thus catching me up on the FB Sitdown Freemotion Quilting Group BOM. It’s a 9 1/2″ finished appliqué block with a chenille center. I fudged. It was supposed to be reverse appliqué, I just did fusible. The chenille was supposed to be homemade, but since I had some scraps of store bought I just used that. I’m saying Done! and glad to be caught up. Next is sewing all the blocks together. Instructions due to come out on the 15th.

If you are interested in why so little sewing happened here this past week read on. If not, skip to my To-Do list and see ya next week! For those of you still reading, what happened was I came down with bronchitis, and all the coughing wore me out. I thought I was having a bout with Fall allergies, but also had a painful stuffed up ear, so made an appointment to see my family doctor. She said bronchitis. Boy was I surprised. So strange because I was concerned about my ear, thinking the coughing was just allergies. Anyway, coughing is diminishing, but the ear is still stuffed and ringing non stop. Hoping meds kick in soon to take care of that ear! It is very Ear-itating!

Yesterday, I did sandwich the next quilt I’ll be FMQ for a friend. So, I did check that off as progress on last week’s To-Do list.

How are you doing? Staying well, I hope!

How did I do on last week’s To-Do List?

1. Continue with cutting & piecing Chic Country.  ✗ Didn’t touch it, but happy that the fabric came!
2. FMQ friend’s quilts. ✔️ I’ll check this as I’m counting sandwiching as progress.

To-Do Tuesday List for this week:

1. I’m setting aside Thursday to work on Chic Country.
2. FMQ friend’s quilt.
3. Spend some time with my quilty  friends.

I’m linking to To-Do Tuesday and Linky Tuesday.

For the August block in the Sit Down Free Motion Quilting Facebook Group, Jeanne introduced a block made with wrinkled fabric. Her method of manipulating the fabric would take a few days to complete. Being that I procrastinated, I used a product I had on hand called Texture Magic.

Texture Magic is a polyester fabric that shrinks with steam.  I stitched a random meander attaching the TM to the back of the cotton print I would be using in August’s block. Then using my steam iron, I shot the steam out onto the fabric while holding the hot iron about an inch above the fabric.

It is kind of fun to watch the fabric pucker up as the polyester shrinks. I think you can see the nice puckers and wrinkles in the piece above.

Jeanne then instructed us to use our sewing machine’s decorative stitching and stitch away on the wrinkly fabric. (Sorry, I didn’t think to take a picture of the fabrics with out the decorative stitching.)

Then triangles were cut and flying geese units sewn. I do love the texture and the decorative stitching combination. Something I would have never thought of doing. But now I’m thinking up other projects to use this technique.

Above is the finished block. I’m so glad I finally took the time to make this wrinkly textured block!

Below are some of the yellow blocks I stitched up for the Tropical Snowball quilt.

I do like how well these curved pieces are fitting together!

Tomorrow I’m hosting my Curvy Quilters group. I’ll be working on more of these units in other colors for the Tropical Snowball quilt.

What will you be working on this week?

How did I do on last week’s To-Do List?

1. Continue quilting on friend’s baby quilts. ✔️ One quilted, and second started.
2. Got to catch up on the Sit Down Free Motion Quilting BOM – August block. ✔️Finished!
3. Piecing – Tropical Snowball batik units. ✔️ Yellow units completed!
4. Start prepping another planned quilt top. ✗

To-Do Tuesday List for this week:

1. Tropical Snowball quilt!
2. Quilting friend’s baby quilts.
3. Start prepping another planned quilt top.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday and Linky Tuesday.

This past week I fit in two full days of sewing with friends. I focused on completing the Fence Rail Star quilt during those two days. And ta-da! I did complete that quilt top!

Yesterday I made a quick trip to my LQS to pick up a ruler set I had ordered. And while there, I looked through the fabrics in their clearance section and found this piece for the back of the Fence Rail Star quilt.

I just thought the sayings on this piece worked perfectly with the scrappy quilt top!

The print has a saying starting with each letter of the alphabet: Act kindly, Be honest … Jump for joy … Make someone happy … Read good books, are a few of the saying.  Cute, right?! The fabric line is Ron’s World by Buggy Barn for Henry Glass & Co.

I also spent some time catching up on a BOM I’m doing this year. Here are blocks 6 & 7 completed for the Facebook Sit Down Free Motion quilting BOM.

Block 6 has a zipper pocket in the center of the star. I can see this block used in future quilts to tuck little notes in for kids quilts, or maybe wedding quilts. Where would you use a zipper pocket in a quilt?

Block 7 was paper pieced and has those dreaded inset corners and triangles. Our instructor is doing just a bit of pushing to help us all overcome some piecing fears! Have you conquered inset and ‘y’ seams in your piecing?

And I did get a few of the On the Wave units sewn together. This is a quilt-along sponsored by Goshia of Quilts My Way.

Goshia’s quilt-along is called Sew All Around. That may be a clever play on words as both of the quilts she has presented have curved piecing! Have you ever made a quilt with curved piecing?

How did I do on last week’s To-Do List?

1. Fence Rail Star quilt – sew together rows, maybe get to borders. ✔️ top completed and back purchased!
2. Layout On the Wave quilt pieces, start stitching. ✔️ layout ready and stitching started!

To-Do List for this week:

1. Piecing On the Wave quilt top.
2. Piece back for Fence Rail Star

Today I made progress on the Fence Rail Star quilt. The star points are all attached, the 12 blocks are constructed, and some sashing is sewn on. I hope to get this top completed this week!

I have all the corner stones cut, and most of the sashing. Here is a quick peak with a few pieces of sashing in place.

Yesterday I finally sat down to work on the BOM from the Sit Down Free Motion Quilters group on Facebook. I was 2 blocks behind.

Block #5 is now complete.

This block has some dimension because the pink and light green triangles are actually Prairie Points.

New project alert! I have been following Gosia Pawlowska’s “Sew All Around” quilt along on Facebook. She has introduced a new pattern design, On the Wave. I’ve decided to once again play along.

I think she likes curved piecing! This is the second quilt in the series, and both have had curves in the construction. My pieces are all cut and ready to lay out for stitching together.

How did I do the last To-Do List?

Yesterday I picked up the t-shirt quilt I’ve been working on from the longarmer.

Today I squared up the quilt, cut and attached binding.

Above is a close up of the binding at the mitered corner on the t-shirt quilt. I sew the binding on to the back of the quilt, and flip it to the front. Then machine stitch the binding in place using the Flat Fell pressure foot by Janome.

Above, is what the stitching looks like on the back. Sorry that it is red on red, but my client wanted red sashing, border, back, and binding, so I hope you can see the thread. The stitching is just about 1/8″ beyond the binding.

Machine stitching on a binding is my favorite method for attaching bindings. No more hand stitching for me. Too many quilts and not enough time for that hand stitching! Of course, I’m not entering quilts into shows, if so, I would be doing that stitching by hand.

Another little accomplishment was stitching up the April block from the Sit Down Free Motion Quilters Facebook group. This month was paper piecing. Just one block.

Jeanne Harrison of the Sit Down Free Motion Quilters Facebook group has lots of videos for the BOM offered in the group. If you have not tried paper piecing, you might want to join the group and take a look at her paper piecing method.

Have you ever tried paper piecing? Do you like it?

How did I do on last week’s To-Do List?

1. Get back to blanket stitching Fusion Blanket squares. ✔️ Slowly but surely, I’ll get those squares all blanket stitched.
2. Need to work on OMG for April – charity quilts! ✔️ I think my goal was too big this month. But the month is not over yet! I have one charity quilt sandwiched and FMQ almost completed. Then binding, and the 2 more to do.
3. Sit Down Free Motion Quilters April BOM pattern is up and ready. Paper Piecing this month. ✔️ Block pieced!
4. Hexie quilt – borders or not? Figure out a plan for the quilt. ✗

This week’s To-Do List:

1. Finish 3 charity quilts. Tops are pieced. Maybe backs, hope so. Sandwich, quilt, and bind. One is almost complete.
2. Keep plugging away on Fusion Blanket – blanket stitch squares.

I’m linking to To-Do Tuesday and Linky Tuesday.

This pretty bouquet was at the grocery store, and I could just not resist as I do love Hydrangeas. Isn’t it pretty!

I hope you are not getting tired of seeing this next quilt! It is the free motion quilt sampler from the Facebook group: Sit Down Free Motion Quilters. This week I attached the binding, so I wanted to show it one more time. I used scraps of binding leftover from previously made quilts.

And here are the three charity quilts that will go to Veterans. I attached the binding on to them this week, again using binding scraps left from previously made quilts.

Do you have a box of bits of bindings? I do like the scrappy look. Even though it does not show in the above photo, each quilt has at least 2 different fabrics in the binding.

Thursday was my sewing day with my Curvy Quilters group. I dug around for a UFO to work on and came upon the beginnings of a hexie quilt.

I had 3 packs of Moda Honeycomb hexies of the fabric line From Outside In by Malka Dubrawsky. There are 42 hexies per pack. I used the solids and some tone-on-tone line prints for the centers, and cut the remaining hexies in half, then sewed them around the center hexies. Now I just need the right fabric for set triangles. That means more shopping!

I had a simple list for this week to complete as Hubby was home on Spring Break. We had a nice week that passed way to quickly! Yet, I actually got all my little projects checked off the list this week.

Last week’s To-Do Tuesday List, how did I do?

I do like it when my plans for the week come together. And, actually, January has been a pretty good start to the New Year.

Last week I listed the following on my To-Do-Tuesday list

1. Sew back for son’s quilt. ✔️
2. Finish center sofa cushion.  ✔️
3. Working on Leah Day’s 2016 BOM.  ✔️

1.  The back for my son’s quilt is all sewn together and the batting purchased. I even used an extra block to make a label which is sewn into the back.

How about a little Label Making Tutorial for those that do not have alphabet embroidery on their sewing machines?

Here is the extra block I used to make a label.

I had to figure out wording that would fit into the cream diamond shapes.

But first, the block needed some prepping.

On the back of the block I ironed on Reynolds Freezer Paper with a hot dry iron. Shiny side will adhere to fabric.

The freezer paper will give stability to the fabric, keeping it from shifting while writing on the fabric with a fabric marker.

Since I do not have the best handwriting, I used a light box to trace the wording.

I selected a font on the computer and figured out what I wanted to document, and printed out the label spaced for the area I had available in the block.  I used font Symbol, size 36, printed Bold for the label. (above)

Often, I will practice with different size pens to find what is right for the label.

For this label I used Pigma Pen Graphic #1.

Here the light box is on, the printed label is under the block, and the words are being traced.

Once words were traced, I removed the block from the light table and used a press cloth, pressed the writing with a hot dry iron to set the ink into the fabric. Remove the freezer paper and the label block is complete! (Did you notice the date 2012? Yes, I’m that far behind in getting the quilt completed for my son and DIL.)

Now, Back to my other finishes for the week!

2.  I finished the center sofa cushion cover. It just took me a while to get to the store to buy more zippers, which was my only hold up on finishing the cushion cover.

I think covering the cushions will actually be the easiest part of the whole slip cover making process!

3.  My version of Leah Day’s 2016 Machine Quilting Block Party is complete!

I’m happy with how it turned out.

The backing is the same yellow print as the sashing and binding. Leah has a new BOM for 2017, but I’m not particapating this year.

I’ve decided to follow along with the Facebook group Sit Down Free Motion Quilters and their BOM. Yesterday I finished the block for January.

This BOM will have a mix of pieced and appliqué blocks with the free motion quilting part starting up later this year. Jeanne Harrison has posted videos on youtube for constructing this block, and also has many other videos on free motion quilting. Check out Facebook to join the group!

As this month comes to an end, it is time to think of a new goal for the month of February to link to Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal. You can see the goal I achieved for January here. I’ll be posting my new goal later this week.

2017 has started out well for me with my quilting and sewing goals. I have 2 finished quilts, a new BOM under way, baby steps on the slip cover, all are putting a smile on my face!

How about you, has January been a successful month?

Now for my weekly To-Do Tuesday List :

1. Next step in sofa slip cover. Buy muslin to sew up 3 pillows covers.
2. I have so many things I want to get to – I’m a little overwhelmed right now with which to do next! FMQ sampler is one.
3. Start a new quilt? or start quilting a finished top?