Sunday Stitching

I spent the afternoon prepping the next step in one of my many "slow stitching" projects, my compass.  I finally finished appliquing the center - the Broderie Perse is out, replaced by one of the fabrics in the compass - and am now ready to appliqué the compass onto the center square.  This project has been a lot of fun so far because of the challenges it presents.  It wasn't all that easy to appliqué the center on that big piece, especially with all the paper in it, and it was a bit of a challenge to get the circle marked to applique to the center square.  I now have it marked, carefully centered on the background and basted in place for stitching this evening.

The next step is to appliqué circles between all the points.  I decided to play around with prepping a circle using the technique Sara Fielke demonstrated in her You Tube video. 

I cut out a cardboard template and cut the fabric with a seam allowance (a little too small, I think).  I placed it on a square of foil.

 

I then pulled in the edges of the foil and tried to smooth it out.  It's a lot more difficult to get the edge completely smooth than she made it look in her video!  

After getting it as smooth as I could, I pressed it, allowed it to cool, and unwrapped it.  The end result was pretty similar to what I get when prepping using Perfect Circles...not quite perfect.  

I'm hoping that I can take care of the little pokies when appliquing it in place. I think it's a toss-up as to which technique wins as far as prep time is concerned, and really the results for me are equivalent.  I will have to play around with it a bit more, but I think this technique might have a slight edge in that the edges are still soft and there isn't a lot of the flaky, crusty dried starch on my fabric.

Other progress over the week and weekend includes the next guild BOM:

And a few more Quatrefoil blocks.  I am really starting to like how the fabrics are working together - a pleasant surprise!

I definitely need to work on more light blocks!

I'm looking forward to the three day weekend coming up - two day weekends never seem long enough!  Hop over to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching post to see what others are working on this weekend....

Friday Night Sew-in

My Friday night was actually more of a "prep-in" as I never actually sewed a stitch.  I did get a lot accomplished, though!

My evening started with trying a new recipe from Taste of Home.  I like to find things that would work well for my daughter to prepare at school and this cheesy beef tortellini skillet recipe looked promising.

Not sure that it is all that photogenic, but it was delicious!  Quick, simple and made enough to keep me from having to cook the rest of the weekend!

My first project of the evening was to finish the prep for weeks 11 & 12 of my summer block of the week.  I haven't started stitching it yet but at least I have been keeping up with the prep all summer.

My next project was cutting tumblers.  I decided that I really needed to get a handle on how many light and dark I still need before I began tearing into this stack of fat quarters:

I figured I would be short on lights from the jelly roll since KT fabrics are generally mostly dark. After getting an idea of what I needed, I spent a couple of hours pressing and cutting up fat quarters.  

I'm about half way finished cutting the 2,679 tumblers I will need for a queen-sized quilt.

I organized my tumblers by color. Based on the two rows I have done I think it will save time to have them sorted. I am ready to go!

I'm not sure the dogs were as excited as I was about spending the evening on the sewing room. 

I got s smile from Belle (although she looked terribly bored most of the evening) but Ace was too bored to even look my direction for a picture.

I'm back in the sewing room today.  First up is prepping the guild BOM and then I will be firing up the sewing machine to work on the backing for my star quilt.  If I can get my act together I will have three more quilts heading out to be quilted in the next couple of weeks. That's a record for me - seven in one year!

Friday Night Sew-in - I'm Game!

I just read about the Friday Night Sew-in on Kathy's Quilts blog and decided that it would fit in perfectly with my plans tonight! I'm hoping to wrap up work a little early, get my weekend errands taken care of (we're out of dog treats again!), make a quick dinner (new recipe I want to try) and then hit the sewing room,  I have so many things on my list for the weekend - piecing a backing, cutting more tumblers, prepping the September BOM for my quilt guild, prepping another diamond for my Rising Sun.... I am looking forward to a productive weekend!

Join the fun here!

Very Little Progress...and a State Fair Rant

Okay, so let's start with the rant. I won't devote my entire post to complaining, but I just have to point out what to me is quickly becoming an injustice in the quilting world. I have nothing against digitized embroidery and applique - in fact, I own a machine and a couple of patterns and have done a little of it myself. I do believe that the end result can be fantastic and that there are lots of people out there making gorgeous quilts using the technique. The issue I have is when it seems that the workmanship involved in completing a machine embroidered applique project seems to be judged as equal to that of a needle-turned hand applique project. As someone who has done both, I know the difference - and pretty much no matter how complicated the embroider/applique project is, an intermediate to advanced hand applique project is much more difficult and requires significantly more skill. The two should not be judged side by side as applique.

When looking at the ribbon winners at the Illinois State Fair this weekend it became clear that the judges were big fans of machine embroidered applique. Those quilts seemed to take all the first place ribbons and the grand champion.  I recognize that there are several different categories and that I didn't spend the time to figure out which ones were in competition with each other, but this gorgeous hand appliqued quilt received second place.  The workmanship looked excellent (apologies for the glare - they are displayed in a glass case) and was clearly a lot more work and required more talent than some of the quilts sporting the nice blue ribbons. I didn't catch the quilter's name, but in my humble opinion she deserved first place and the grand champion ribbon!

So enough with the fair...or should I post at least one picture of the butter cow?

It was so ridiculously hot on Saturday that I had a tough time resisting the urge to join the butter cow in her display case. But instead I controlled myself and stayed just long enough to take a few pictures and then headed back to the somewhat air conditioned Hobby Building.  

I really haven't gotten much accomplished since my last post. I did make a little bit of progress on my new UFO from the MSQC retreat (the Quatrefoil quilt).  I finished all of the four patches yesterday.

Here are the blocks I completed at the retreat. I'm not entirely sure that the fabric line I selected - this was a mystery quilt involving a layer cake so I was choosing blindly- is going to work out, but I am forging ahead anyway. The color in the picture is terrible - the one above is closer to reality.

I have also done a little hooking on the pineapple rug. I need to cut more background wool to finish off that left side before moving on any farther on the right. I hate leaving all the background until the end!

I have big plans for getting lots of things accomplished next weekend. I don't have anything planned for the first weekend in a long time.  I am looking forward to it!

MSQC Christmas in July

I finally made it to Hamilton to visit Missouri Star Quilt Company!  I had an incredible time at their Christmas in July retreat this past weekend. Hamilton is quite an experience and MSQC definitely knows how to show quilters a good time!  Our hostesses Cindy and Susan were fantastic (and quite the comedic team) and we had a great group of people.

Jenny Doan treated us to a trunk show on the first day. We learned a lot about the family, the business and the quilts. Jenny is an excellent speaker and it was really interesting to see how the designs evolve.  Here are just a few of the quilts we saw.

 

   

This one doesn't show up well in the picture but it is one of my favorites. I've been wanting to make it since I saw it in Block magazine. I am thinking it might be interesting in red and cream...

The MSQC folks went all out on the Christmas in July theme. The retreat center and shops were all decked out for Christmas. Santa and Mrs, Claus visited the shops and handed out presents in the afternoon. Mrs. Claus had ditched her costume by the time of the trunk show but Santa made an appearance at the end.

The agenda for the retreat was a bit chaotic, with demonstrations going on both at the retreat and in the stores throughout the weekend. We saw a demo of the Dresden Tree pattern at the Seasonal Shop.

And Cindy demonstrated all kinds of different projects, including the Orange Peel and a tree skirt.

I  had planned to do the Orange Peel and cut my own charm squares from some batiks I have had around for a very long time as part of a stash saved for a New York Beauty I have never gotten back to.  Sadly I didn't make much of a dent in the stash!  I played around with a few blocks but didn't get very far.  I'm not in love with turning those things inside out - they are really hard to get smoothed out. I had also planned to do the tree skirt but didn't get a chance to start it. I spent the bulk of the weekend putting together my stars.

I didn't have enough room to lay the blocks out and leave them so keeping things in order was extremely challenging. I managed to get things all screwed up and had to make a few adjustments to get everything in the right place. I still managed to end up with too much of the same fabric in one spot so I still need to make a couple of adjustments.

I did finally get started on my leader & ender project. I took along one of my Kansas Troubles jelly rolls and cut the first set of pieces for my tumblers.

I had a lot of opportunity to sew my tumblers in between squares and rows.  I managed to finish the first two rows and get a solid start on a third one.  

One of the many highlights from the weekend were the Amish fried pies from the farmer's market. They were incredible!  Hamilton is such a neat little town. I can't wait to go back! 

Wooly Woolens Fun

I had an absolutely fantastic time in Kansas City last weekend!  Janice & Jim Johnson are always fabulous hosts!  We had a great group of people - some of the regulars and a few new faces.

This was my second workshop with Jayne Hester and I am really thrilled with how my rug turned out. I would have never come up with the idea to run with teal in a pineapple and certainly would not have used teal for sunflowers, but I am so happy with the colors!

I've actually made a little more progress since I got home, mainly filling in background.  This is such a small rug relative to my usual projects - it might actually be finished reasonably soon!

Jayne's specialty is low contrast, old-looking rugs.  I think she stepped out of her box a bit for me (although my colors certainly aren't "bright" relative to a lot of things I do!). Many of my classmates had much more subtle rugs. Jeannette's was very neutral:

And Leah's was done in shades of gray with just a hint of lavender:

Cindy's rug looked amazingly old - and she is a ridiculously fast hooker:

There were lots of other great rugs - I got sidetracked taking a picture of the fabulous lunch Jim was preparing and missed getting pictures of the rest. Lunch was beautiful, too - you can see why I was distracted! 

This delicious lunch came from Jim's garden (he even claims to have grown the sausage!). As usual, all of the food was wonderful.  It was a great weekend!

Something New

It's hard to believe it is already July - and that it's been a month since my last post! I just can't seem to keep up with things this year. I am really ready for things to slow down a bit...I need a "real" vacation instead of these one- and two-day breaks I have been taking.

While I did a pretty good job of focusing on wrapping up UFOs the first part of the year, I fell off that bandwagon somewhere after Paducah and have been starting new projects ever since. There's the new BOM for guild (which really shouldn't count, right?) - I finished the July block a couple of weeks ago. I love these blocks because they are so easy!  This one only took a couple of hours to complete.

I need to decide what my final layout will be for this quilt so that I can figure out which blocks will have laurel wreaths. I would like to start adding those as I go along rather than doing them all at once. I am not good with repetition.  If I wait until the end this will be a UFO forever!

I attended Kansas City Quilt Festival a couple of weeks ago. It was very nice. Quite a few of the prize-winning quilts were ones I had already seen in Paducah, but there were a number of others I had not seen before.  There is a lot of talent in the KC area!  One of the quilts that really fascinated me was made almost completely from selvages. 

I couldn't get a complete picture as there too many people admiring it, but the quilt was large - probably at least 75-80" square - and had the smaller stars all the way around the center star and then selvage diamonds all the way around the outside of the center square. It was unbelievable!  I'm guessing this lady had all of her friends saving selvage for her - there were thousands of them!  

I took a couple of days off last week and got a strong start on a new project I found at Homestead Hearth during this year's Super Bowl sale. I was standing at the register checking out when I looked up and saw this quilt on the wall.  It was published in McCall's Nov/Dec issue (which I had not read at the time).  I fell in love with it immediately and had to pick up some of Edyta's fabrics to make one myself.

I completed all of the star blocks last weekend and cut all of the setting squares this weekend.  I need to figure out the layout before I can start sewing the rows together. The pattern doesn't have a border but I have a LOT of extra fabric (they didn't have kits left, fabric was on sale 25% off with a one yard minimum cut, so why buy a half yard for $5.50 when you can get a whole yard for $8.25...you know how it is!) so I am thinking of piecing a border for it. I have always wanted to do a piano key border. I need to do a mock-up on the computer to see if that will work....I don't want to overpower the center.

I tried my hand at a little paper piecing over the holiday weekend. I have been collecting Judy Niemeyer patterns for years and after seeing a bunch of them at the KCQF I am really wanting to work on one. I have not done any paper piecing in years so I decided to start with something a little less overwhelming than a Judy project. This is the center from a Kim McClean pattern I ordered recently.

The center circle has broderie perse applique. I started on that yesterday but didn't get very far.  I can't say that I am a big fan....

I'm going to stick with it though as it is good practice for my Rising Sun.  I am actually using the same fabric for some of those flowers so I need to figure out how to manage all of those spiky edges.

This week's plan is to choose a pattern for my workshop with Jayne Hester next week. I have so many rug patterns in my stash that I do not want to buy anything new. The trouble is finding one that suits Jayne's style and that I don't already have a plan (and wool for).  It isn't going to be an easy task!