Quilting While on Vacation

Heading to Florida to see my dad and then to my favorite place on earth, Disney World.  I can't take my sewing machine with me so I will switch to hand quilting.

 After my hand applique class I am taking this to work on.  Will also try to start the next block but I will need more instruction to finish it.

This is a yo yo quilt that I am making for my oldest granddaughter, Raelynn.

 

By my calculations I need 1600 yo yos to make this queen size quilt. I cut all of these circles by hand.  I would draw a circle (using a template) onto the fabric and then cutting out each one of the circles.  

Again Martelli has come through with a great invention.  The circle template.  I saw them at a trade show and bought a set.  I am just sorry I didn't find this product earlier.  The rest of the 1600 circles will be cut with Martelli's circle template.

Match Play

Yesterday I played my match play with a friend of mine.  We had a fun round of golf together.  We actually played the 18 holes in less than 3 1/2 hours.  I won the match on the 14th hole.  I know it sounds like a blowout but it really wasn't.  I was only up by 2 at the end of 9 holes.

This is my friend Georgia and me after our round of golf.

I have actually made it to the final round! This is the first time for me to get this far in match play. 

Aunt Grace Block of the Month (2)

Working hard on my Block of the Month quilts.  I love the 1930's prints that this quilt is made up of.  The blocks are a little smaller than I thought they would be, but I am getting the hang of it now.  I think that the blocks are turning out really cool.  I am finding that the smaller the block and the pieces the easier it is for the points to line up.

Tip:  When pressing the small stitched fabric pieces to the dark/printed side, lay the piece with the dark/printed side up and give it a little touch of the iron.

Then lift up the dark/printed side, and fold it over.  Then give it another press with the iron.

Now  your seams are nicely pressed to the dark side.

Lily dress Quilt

I am so excited!  My Lily Pulitzer fabric came today from Hong Kong.  Can't wait to start the quilt for my fourth granddaughter, Charlie.

Dallas Cowboy Quilt

It football season and I love to watch it.  I am a Dallas Cowboy fan. I was born and raised in Dallas so it is only natural that I am a Cowboy fan.  In my family growing up the women in the  were just as much or more of a football fan as the men.  I used to go to many of the Cowboy games growing up in the 70's.  I loved watching Roger Staubach play, and of course our big rival was and is the Washington Redskins.  Now I live in the Washington DC suburbs and my family is a house divided.   My oldest daughter and I are the Cowboy fans and my youngest daughter and husband are the Redskin fans.  It is very interesting in the house when they play each other as they do twice a year.

With football season starting, I decided to make a Dallas Cowboy quilt.  I found a pattern in Quick Quilts October/November 2010 magazine.

The pattern showed the New Orleans Saints, but it was easy enough to change to Dallas Cowboys (my local Joanne Fabric Store had Dallas Cowboy fabric).  I went to Suzzie's Quilt shop to get the other fabrics and I was telling her that I had eyelashes on the back of the Halloween Twister quilt.

Suzzie sell Jonome sewing machines, which is the brand of my machine.  She showed me a different bobbin holder that is supposed to get rid of the eyelashes, so I bought it.  It is the best investment I have made in a long time.  I had no eyelashes on my Dallas Cowboy quilt.

Now I'm ready for those cold winter  days to watch football.

Almost Made a Hole in One

Yesterday I went out to play golf with my husband.  I have been working really hard to lose weight. I have joined Weight Watchers and am really trying hard to exercise more.  With that said, I decided to dust off my golfing push cart and walk nine holes.

I was playing pretty well so when I came up to the fourth hole (a par 3 hole),  the wind was non existent and the pin placement was up front so,  I decided to use my nine iron. I hit it really well and it landed short of the green and started to roll straight to the hole.  It hit the hole, but instead of going in it lipped out.  So much for my hole in one.  Needless to say I made my birdie.  The only downer was that I was playing with three men and I don't get to post the birdie in the LGA birdie book.

Since it was my first time in three years to walk the course I gave out of energy on the ninth hole.  I will continue to walk nine holes and hopefully by the end of the summer I can walk all eighteen holes.

Quilting the Halloween Twister Quilt

Now comes the fun part. Quilting the pieced top.  This is where my new table shines.. I was able to stretch out the quilt top onto the table to make my "quilt sandwich" ( backing, batting, and top).

  I bought two different multicolored threads to pick from. To help make my decision about which thread to use I grabbed some left over fabric and batting and made a practice piece.

 The top piece is quilted with sand color thread and the bottom is quilted with Halloween colored thread.

I stilled wasn't sure so I added a quilt piece and also used some orange thread.

OK, decision made. Sand on the top of the quilt and orange on the back.


The finished quilt!!!

Block of the Month

This is my third Block of the Month.  I have decided this is enough Block of the Months to do at one time.  I am having fun and I have already put two more in my wish list.  I think I will keep three going at all times.

This one is the Cabana.  It will take 12 months to finish.  It actually comes in three different color schemes.  Cabana is mostly blue.  Casino is red, white and blue. And Cottage is red and white. 

I started like I always do by cutting the fabric.  They don't give you much extra in the way of fabric.. That said, I cut some squares wrong and didn't have enough to fix my mistake.  I called Keepsake Quilting and they were very nice.  They told me they would send me some more fabric.  I thanked them and waited for my fabric.  When it came, they had sent me the wrong fabric.  I called them again and they were very nice and apologetic.  Becky (the customer service representative) said she would personally check to make sure that I received the correct fabric.  I did.  by the way, there was no charge for the fabric.  Very good customer service.

Got the correct fabric and finished the block.

Beautiful Quilt

Today I went to Suzzie's Quilt Shop and ran into a wonderful woman by the name of Nancy.  She was showing us a quilt that she just finished.  It was one of the most beautiful quilts that I have ever seen.  I asked her if I could take a picture of it to put on my blog.  She was very gracious to let me do do that. So, here it is.

She has a wonderful story about the quilt. I will try to do it justice.  She made the quilt for someone (I think a family member) who was battling cancer.  The person Nancy made the quilt for is now cancer free and has decided to donate the quilt to the cancer treatment center where she received her treatments so that other people could enjoy the quilt while there at the center.  Nancy made a quilt that would take the patients to another place that was beautiful.  I think she did a wonderful job, don't you think.

Nancy has her own website with pictures of other quilts she has made. Check it out. www.PADutchGirl.com.

Halloween Twister Quilt part 3

When you make a twister quilt, it is a different that sewing a regular quilt.  The deference is that you sew the quilt together then you cut the quilt apart and sew it back together.  Ok, even when I wrote that it sounded strange, but trust me it works and is well worth the effort.


First you sew all the squares together in the order that the pattern gives you.. In my quilt I changed things up a bit but it still looks similar to the pattern.  This was the way the pattern said to lay out the squares.

Can you see a difference in the way I ended up laying out the squares?

After sew all the squares together, you add the border.

Now comes the fun part, cutting up the quilt top.

After cutting each row of new squares, you sew each row together. Then stitch all the rows together.  Pretty cool don't you think?

Match Play

This weekend I played my second round match.  We initially had set it up to play on Thursday but with rain in the forecast we postponed it to Saturday (this round had to be played by August 4).  The ground was wet when I got up on Thursday and I was very glad we had moved it to Saturday.  It never rained any more on Thursday.  On Saturday morning it drizzled for the first 5 holes of the match.  So much for trying to predict the weather.

Good news is I won!  I played a good friend of mine, which is not as much fun when you know that they are out of the tournament for the year.  We were well matched (that is when you add my handicap in.  She is a much better golfer than me, so she had to give me 10 strokes).  We were even for half the match.  We even had to play an extra hole.  Funny thing is we only tied one hole.

Well, on to the next round and I again have to play another good friend of mine.

Martelli Red Line

Just a quick note to let you know Martelli is selling all of their tables at 50% off August 1  midnight to midnight eastern time on line only.  If you were thinking of buying one of these tables, now is the time to buy then.  The promo code is RL1307. Also, if you are interested in this or any Martelli products make sure to sign up for their red line newsletter.  You will get all of their red line notices a couple of days early.

Halloween Twister Quilt part 2

Today I am going to talk about cutting out the quilt blocks.

I have found some great cutting rulers and rotary cutters that I want to share with you.  The great products come from Martelli Enterprises.  First, I would like to say that I think they have by far the best rotary cutter on the market. Next, I have discovered their templates.  They are a little expensive but I signed up for their Red Line notifications and got them for 50% off.

 I highly recommend that you sign up for Martelli's Red Line notifications.  How it works is that they send you  email that lets you know when and what is on sale.  The sales are online and are for 24 hours only (midnight to midnight).

The Martelli cutter is supposed to be able to cut up to 32 layers of fabric at a time, so I laid four different fabrics on top of each other with each fabric folded four ways (this makes 16 layers of fabric).

 Next I used my Martelli strip ruler to cut the fabric into 5" blocks. First I cut off the right edge to even up the fabrics.

Then I put my cutter into the slot that was 5" from the right edge ( I put inch markings on my slots  so it would be easier to know which slot to use).

Next I put the cutter into the slot 10" from the right edge. 

After that I rotated the fabric 90 degrees and repeated putting the cutter in slots at 5" and at 10".

 

Look a the nicely stacked 5" squares that I made with only 12 cuts (six different fabrics, using this method I cut two stacks of fabric). Total came to 96 5" squares.