Isis's Quilt

Well the top is done and quilted :) I finished up the last little bit of quilting on it today, I even got around to making the binding. Tomorrow I will sew the binding to the quilt and start hand stitching it down. She is going to be so happy - she's been waiting on me to finish this off for quite awhile now and I figured I had better get my butt in gear before she outgrows the darn thing LOL :)

Here you can see a close up of it. It looks so much better in person. As soon as I get it finished off it will be put back to go under the tree for Christmas. Christmas is going to be very slim this year so I hope that I can get a quilt finished for each of the kids as their big gift. In a couple of days I'll be pulling out Cheyenne's Sampler quilt and finishing that off. The string quilt will go to Wade and the Orphan Block Quilt will go to Phoenix. I don't know what else I'll give the kids this year but I'll figure something out :)

Here you can see the binding, I didn't have enough of one fabric so I made it scrappy. I hope it looks alright on the quilt, I didn't have any of the fabrics that I used in the top available so I just used some that I thought would look good with it. Well I have a bunch of homework to do and it's all due by the morning so I guess I better go get it done and quit playing on the computer.

A New Respect

I have a totaly newfound respect for those quilters who are so talented that they can hand quilt ! I am having a heck of a time learning how to do this :( My poor Sunbonnet Sam quilt is suffering dearly from my attempts to learn how to hand quilt and my November mini is also suffering . Ugg I love how hand quilting looks but I may just give it up after these two projects are done. I can load my needle with the stitches to save my life , all I can manage to do is a stab stitch and it never looks nice on the back.

Well enough moaning and groaning I have some wonderful news my ALQS 2 quilt arrives today in the mail !! Oh it's so pretty, I had fallen in love with it when I had seen it on the group blog and I can't belive that it's mine :) :) It is from Debbie in Canada - here is a link to her blog

http://www.makinquilts.blogspot.com/

The photo is from the group blog, as soon as I get a minute I'll post some photo's of it and the wonderful extras that Debbie sent !

Swap Bag Partner Assigned

Partners for the Swap Bag Mini Quilt Swap were assigned yesterday and I think I have the most wonderful partner :) Her name is Bea and we have exchanged a couple of e-mail. Oh I am so happy, Bea is just the sweetest lady ! This is going to be so much fun, I don't think I could have been assigned a better partner !!! The photo above is a pic of the fabrics that Bea is sending to me to make her a mini with. It's out of my normal colour scheme but I have a few ideas floating around in my head. I'll pull out my sketch pad while my client is taking his nap and try to put on paper what is floating around in my head. I think that it will lean more towards the art quilt side than the traditional side though.

Antique Quilts

While cruising Ebay this morning I ran across 3 wonderful Antique Quilts. Being broke I decided that since I can't own them I will reproduce them in miniature. This first one is from the 30's/40's, I love the combo of pink and brown. I think I will redo this one in Civil war era fabrics.

I have no clue when this one was made as it didn't say in the auction. I love the pattern of the blocks, it one I have never seen before - does anyone out there in blogland know what it is called??? I think the border fabric makes the quilt look a little busy so I'll change it to a soild.

This one is from the 40's . I though it was so pretty :) I have a ton of blue fabric that would go wonderfully into a repo of this quilt. I need to get some red soild before I can start it though. Keep an eye on the blog over the next couple of weeks as I'll be posting some more mini quilt tutorials on these quilts as I make them :) Have a great day !!

Come Make a Mini With Me

Are ya'll ready to have some fun with me today ? Ok, step 1 - if your like me you have a bin of 2 inch strips ( if not you'll need to cut a bunch) Here I randomly pair 2 in strips from my Civil War collection and sewed them together.


Step 2 - press them open , pressing towards the darker of the two fabrics.



Step 3 - Sub cut you strip sets into 2 inch slices and pair them as these will be little four patches.




Step 4 - chain piece all your little 4 patch units :)






Step 5 - Press all your 4 patches open

Step 6 - Pick out 2 colours of fabric and cut 6 3 7/8 squares from Each fabric. Now sub cut these squares on the diagonal .

Step 7 - Pair 1 of Each fabric and sew together, press open and cut off the little bunny ears :)

Step 8 - Layout as seen above. Be careful of how you place the 1/2 squares otherwise it won't look right :)

Step 9 - Sew together in rows and you have a wonderful little mini quilt. Now you can add boders to this to make it a bit larger if you like but me I like it this way so tomorow I will be quilting it and adding the binding :) Hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and please if you make one comment on this post with a link to the picture as I'd love to see yours !!

Brrrrrrr

I am so proud of myself :) i got a good bit of my short list done yesterday. I got this chinese coin quilt sandwhiched and quilted and I also made the backing for it. I used up a fair amount of scraps in the backing and also a orphan block :) I still have to stitch on the binding, which is srappy also, but I'll save that for another day. Also yesterday I finished the Redwork on the November swap quilt and I have picked out the fabric for the border, I'll sew that on a diffrent day. I got my room almost all the way clean and I'll finish that up today before I go to work. I still have a bunch of clothes that I need to sort through. I started hanging up a bunch of my mini quilts and as soon as I get them all hung I'll show ya'll a pic of my mini's wall.

I got most of the yucky stitching ripped out of Isis's quilt , only about 12 more inches to go. I'll finish the ripping tonight at work while my client is asleep. I got almost 90 charm squares cut, packaged and ready to go and I'll go by the post office today to mail them.

Man it's cold outside today. It was very cold last night, normally I sit outside and stitch all night while my client sleeps but last night I stayed in his house and cranked up the heater :) It's looking like tonight will be the same.

A New Love :)

I have fallen in love with another designer :) These three quilts are now very high on my wish list !! They are from http://www.quiltsbycheri.com/home.html
I am going to beg DH to let me buy them as soon as he wakes up this morning :) She has alot more great quilts on her site and a ton more that I wish I could buy !!!

I have a idea :)

I have signed up for the November swap over on the flickr group Swap til' you drop. The November theme is 2 colour quilts. I think that I will do a Redwork mini for this one. I went through all of my patterns last night and I have found the perfect one :) It's from an Antique Redwork quilt. I still have to decide what I will be doing for the other November theme which is Anything Goes, I think I will wait until they hand out partners before I start on that one.

I mailed out my October quilt for the swap group on tuesday but it has to go all the way to Canada so it will still be a little while before I am able to show ya'll a photo of it. I can't wait to see what my partner made for me :)

Well I have all my squares cut for the Spare Change swap and now I'm just waiting on an e-mail to find out where I am supposed to send them.Today I have to cut 86 more 5 in squares for 2 private swaps that I am in. I think these 5 in charms will be wonderful for making mini's with. I need to go by Hobby Lobby the next time I'm in Lake Charles to pick up a little basket to keep them all in.

I will post progress pic's on my mini Redwork quilt tonight. Well a sneek peek anyway :o)

A Mini Finish - Teaser

I finshed my little Fall Swap quilt last night. I am very proud of myself, from start to finish this little mini was finished in one day :) This little quilt measures about 9 1/2 inches square . I just love the back of it - I wish that I had more of the orange acorn fabric but I only had this itty bitty piece left so I placed it onto the backing instead of cutting it up.I will show a full shot of it as soon as my partner recives it so for now all I can show is this little teaser photo.

It feels so good to finally finish something :) I'm having to change directions on my ALQS quilt as I was almost done with the buttonhole stitching on it and my poor little quilt has an accident. I had left an ink pen sitting by it and the darn pen leaked ink overnight so my pretty little quilt now has a huge yucky black stain :( I am going to put together a "just in case" top. I plan to try to get out the stain but in case I can't I need to have a back up plan.

Wanted to give ya'll a heads up Tonya of Lazy Gal is holding a stitch along and if it is going to turn out like the last 2 stitch alongs it will be really neat :) Please go have a look ---

http://lazygalhousehomepantry.blogspot.com/

Fall Scottie Dogs Mini Quilt

I had orignally planned this mini for a swap over on a flickr group that I am part of. However it turned out alot bigger than the guidelines called for. I love it though so I'll work up something else for the swap. I still have the buttonhole stiching to complete on this, I figure that I'll hand quilt this as I'm really wanting to practice my hand quilting. This will be a great winter project :)

The two bottom phot's show the colors alot better than the top photo. Here is a link to the flickr group if any of ya'll are interested in joining.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/877639@N22/

Antique Mennonite Fan Quilt

I LOVE this antique quilt that I ran across on Ebay several months ago. However it had a 1400.00 $ price on it so sadly it couldn't come home with me. I am a huge fan of Fan quilts and also of Amish and Mennonite quilts. Oh if only I was rich LOL :)Maybe this upcomming summer I will have time to do one that is similar to this.

Busy Stitching Away

I am busy stitching up the mini redwork months blocks that i posted about a couple of posts ago. They are working up super quick and way to cute - I like them so much I may have to make a couple of these mini quilts for a couple of very special blog buddies of mine :) I will be back to post photo's of the 3 that I have completed when I get home from work as this morning I rembered the camera but not the dang cord - grrr -

A mini chinese coin

I put this one together a couple of days ago. It's a repo of a full sized quilt that I saw several years ago at an Antique store but the orignal had a huge price tag on it so I walked away with just some photo's of the quilt. I have put this top up for sale on Ebay as I really need the $$ right now.I have it up to auction for 11.99 or buy it now of 18.00 . Do ya'll think that's to much money? I am working on a couple of more tops to put up and then I can start some to keep.
*** Edit to add - all these fabrics were from my stash , I wonder if it'll count twoards the Stash Challenge ? *****

Free Summer Workshops

Are you looking for a new project <> I know like we all don't have enough on our plates already. But anywho, over at Cotton Spice the are hosting 14 days of free workshops from some simply wonderful designers including Laughing Cat, Plumcute Designs and a bunch more . Go check it out here to read more about it :

http://cottonspice.com/CSblog/?page_id=722#comment-57091

I will be adding a button to my side bar at some point today. And also I will be back soon to show ya'll a couple of things that I have manged to put together the last couple of days.

Sunbonnet Sue Update

Here is Sunbonnet #1 finished and Sunbonnet #2 is done also I just need to get her pic on here. The blocks are so much fun to do. I think though that I am going to stop at these 2 and put them with some other blocks to make a sampler. I really want to try out my hand at hand quilting. This past summer I got 3 lap quilting hoops at a yard sale for cheaper than dirt and I really want to give them a go :) I have 4 more blocks that I know will match these little sue's. I think I will play around with some graph paper tonight and figure out just how big I am going to go with this. My first thought is 12 blocks + sashing and boders to maybe make a cuddle quilt . We'll have to see.

Worst Luck Ever

So I must have the worst luck ever with Ditial Camera's. I have had this one less than a year and tonight when I went to go upload the progress pic's on my Sunbonnet Sue's I realized that the darn thing was broken. Isis is the culprit I believe as the part that you plug into the computer looks as though it has been chewed on. So I'll be off to Walmart to spend only who knows how much on a new camera.Needless to say I am NOT impressed but where she is only 5 there's not much I can do about it other than to give her a stern talking to about touching things that don't belong to her :(

However on a much brighter note Cheyenne has decided to help me reduce my fabric stash. Today she pulled out a ton of fabric and announced that she was making a Wall quilt for her new room. She spent awhile hunting through my quilty mags and found a pattern that she liked ( with some tweeking of course ) . She spent the afternoon fusing, tracing, cutting and ironing ! She has 2 of the 4 needed blocks together but decided that the blocks were lacking something. It took her a wee while to figure out what it was, then she took a look at my Sue's and decided that she wanted Momma to add some buttonhole stitching to her blocks. So I guess I'll put my Sue's on hold for a couple of days to do the buttonhole stitching on her blocks. I will have some photo's of both mine and Cheyenne's progress for ya'll as soon as I get another camera up and going.I feel very lucky to have such a sweet and talented daughter like Cheyenne!!

Sunbonnet Sue

I put these little Sue's together yesterday at work. I am useing some of the fabric from the stash challenge. These block will become a baby quilt. I am doing a buttonhole stitch around the edges in black DMC. In the last photo you can see a bit of the buttonhole stitch that I did on the purple Sue.I am going to try to finish her up today and then if I get lucky I'll be able to get to the red Sue today. I'll post some more photo's tomorrow of my progress. I'm off to go stitch now :)

Antique String Quilt

I just love this quilt, I saw it a few months back on Ebay. Sadly I wasn't able to win it. One day though I would like to try to reproduce it. It might even be really neat to do a crazy quilted version of it :) So many projects , so little time LOL :)

What I am doing

I have been asked what I am planning to do with the orange scraps. I am working on an insane project LOL :) I am making a mini flying geese quilt, the blocks are only 3 inches x 1 1/2 (finished size ) , I have 2 of the blocks finished already and I will try to post a photo tonight of them - granted if I can find the misplaced ditial camera. I decided that I needed to finish something because I was getting a wee bit depressed with my larger projects. It seems like I have been working on some of them forever but still haven't finished any of them !!
As a heads up over at the Yahoo group Miniature Quilts there is a new block swap fixing to start - it for 3 inch ( finished ) Stars ( any star pattern is fine ) in blue and white. If anyone is interested here is the link :

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MiniatureQuilts/?yguid=113606948

I joined in and went to Walmart last night to pick up some white fabric and was told that they are for sure shutting down their fabric department. This really sucks as the closest place now for me to get fabric will be Lake Charles and I don't go there but once a year :(

Sally Post Floral Sampler

For any of you who missed these free patterns Sentimental Stitches is posting all of them for free from today through the 9th. Here is the link :

http://sentimentalstitches.net/free-stuff/block-of-the-month-quilt-designs/sally-rides-civil-war-sampler/