Mid-Week

With things moving towards a remodel of at least one bathroom, most likely two at the same time, followed by the kitchen, I've been busy trying to get some areas of this long-neglected place cleaned up and organized. I'm normally clean but cluttered but with last year's medical issues, maybe some depression thrown in (self-diagnosis here), and spiritual neglect among other things, what was 'clean' no longer is, and what was clutter, is even worse, so...I'm getting some motivation back, but it's a struggle. Physically I'm not at my best due to lack of exercise and not-so-good eating habits.

On Monday I had had enough of how the front of the house looked with leaves piled up in the planter and at the front door, so I gathered a few garden tools, a broom & dustpan and some paper bags. I cleaned out weeds and trimmed a few plants and swept it all up and ended up with 6 bags that I at first had planned to put on the compost pile but couldn't get the gate open (looks like Marty has some work to do there!). The green-waste barrels were on the side where the compost is and since I couldn't get to them, in frustration, I just tossed them all into the trash barrel and called it good. Was I ever sore and stiff on Tuesday morning!!

Yesterday I started my second day of working in the guest room sorting through boxes that had been moved in there, probably 6+ years ago, when I first started clearing out what is supposed to be my craft room in order to work on it. Other than the fabric closet, I've made no progress in the craft room and have actually managed to add more 'stuff' in here since I still use the room for genealogy and other projects. With the forthcoming bathroom remodel, I need to have organized spaces for the contents from the bathrooms.

And don't forget that awful garage mess that I need to work through in order to be able to store all the contents of my kitchen for the kitchen remodel. I have waited 15+ years for this...but am wishing I had the physical strength and stamina I had back then without a doubt!

It's the 29th of February, Leap Day if you will, but even with the extra day of this month, I didn't get the UFO for the month done, however, I DID make some progress on it, and for me that's equally important since I'd essentially done very little on quilt projects last year.

I leave you with a short video of my sweet fur-babies:

#027 Jack-In-The-Pulpit

In October of 2008, a quilting friend and I were approached by another lady, a non-quilter, in our church fellowship group with the idea of making a quilt for our pastor's wife. The quilt would reflect upon our pastor in that it was in honor of his 40th(?) anniversary at the church, and that his name is John, which is in some circles (as with his father) nicknamed Jack. The block the lady had learned about and wanted, was the Jack-In-The-Pulpit block. The celebration she wanted it ready for was in February of 2009.

So the three of us headed out to a quilt store to choose the fabrics. All we knew, was that their house had some dark woods and blue (vaguely stated as being somewhat teal) walls & carpet and was not at all 'girly' in decor. Other than the block sample, we had no specific pattern so we brainstormed and came up with a rough idea of what might look good and the approximate size and truly guesstimated on how much fabric was needed. In addition, we were going to make a table runner - without knowing the size of their table. The lady fronted all the materials cost, but the labor would be strictly volunteer.

I felt very confident in doing the machine piecing but have never hand-quilted and am not proficient in my machine quilting. No problem. My other friend preferred hand-quilting to piecing and also was not proficient in machine quilting. So we had the perfect team of three, and all three of easily reached an agreement on the fabric choices. We knew the Holy Spirit was with us in that endeavor. When can three women really agree whole-heartedly on anything in a short amount of time, except maybe with chocolate.

I cut out some pieces for the size of blocks we wanted in the various fabrics and met with my friend to come to an agreement on which looked best. These are some layouts of the pieces and the placements we tried. We knew we wanted the multi-color fern in the center, and the blue fabric as the sides, and the tan as the background.

The up-in-the-air choices were the reds and the greens. We liked the red as the triangle. We didn't like the green anywhere and opted not to use it at all, not even as a border.

And we went simply with a straight line set of rows set off with the dark brown sashing, a skinny blue border and repeated the center block fabric in the outer border. We bound it using the dark brown fabric, except with the table runner.


For the table runner, we set the blocks on point and used large setting triangles in lieu of borders and then bound with the center square fabric. And I believe we used the same fern fabric as the backing on both pieces. We had another lady that I knew from the missionary quilts activities do a special label on one of her embroidery machines. It was an honor for us to do this for our pastor and they thanked by having Mrs. (Pastor) invite us to their home for lunch one day where we "re"presented the quilts to her. She was thrilled with them, and the colors were nearly perfect. Her table is bigger than mine which is in the image below, so it doesn't go over the edges, but makes a nice center type table runner on which to have a centerpiece and/or candles.

Quilt #015 Paper Pieced Feathered Star

Having grown up on a ranch in the Northwest, I'm still drawn to things that bring to mind ranch life and earth-tone colors. This is a bit along those lines though probably more Indian in nature. (Native American if you prefer to be politically correct.)

Here is a close-up of the border geese. On the ranch flocks of geese were often seen, and heard, on their migratory trips both in the fall and again in the spring.


This close up is of the center medallion of the Feathered Star. Paper piecing makes things look nice, especially when they're small as this is (quilt measures approximately 34" square non-bound and non-quilted) .

I found that I'm not a huge fan of paper-piecing although I'm not opposed to doing more of it. It just isn't high on the list of future projects. For me it was tedious.

This is how the entire pieced top looks. I really like the feathers in the fabrics, but am not ecstatic about the solid rust color I found for the setting triangles. I felt the color was just a tad off and isn't bad but I couldn't find exactly what I had in my mind's eye; maybe once it's quilted I'll be more in love with it.

It does bounce nicely off some of the geese though. Still haven't decided how I want to quilt it and would need to practice whatever quilting design that might be. I've thought of feathers in the setting triangles. I love the center, especially the dark brown print (it's not solid but reads as though it were) which sets it off nicely, and the scrappy geese, I like the colors I found for them and think they all worked well.

The pattern on the light background fabric almost gives the impression that that area is already quilted. It isn't. This will most likely be one of the 12 to finish in 2012.

The pattern was a tiny little packet of paper and directions folded and stuffed in a little plastic bag, called Little Bits - Feathered Star by Cindi Edgerton.

Quilt #010 UFO Dragonfly

Started 8 April 2003. I just love this dragonfly yellow, green and lavender fabric. Our guest room is yellow. This quilt is for our guest room. The theme in the room grew to become dragonflies (or is it damsel flies?) with green and lavender accents. It started with a mosaic plant stand that had a dragonfly on it. Other items were added over time.

The top is finished. I had trouble finding just the right lavender shades and wasn't overjoyed with the lightest one I used once it was altogether. I had begun with a different one and it was definitely NOT right, but I just couldn't find what I wanted at the time. I think it's too pale a lavender and because of the placement in the blocks, looks too wide overall. I think it might have been better in the place of the medium lavender.

The butterfly fabric is for the backing, and the binding is a dark yellow that I placed under the border to preview. It will be quilted with the variegated thread shown...hmmm, I wonder if there's enough on one spool that size? I may need to locate more. Does my inexperience show? I purchased a dragonfly plastic template that fits perfectly in the blocks for the quilting motif and beyond that...I haven't given it thought yet.

The pattern for this was found in The Quilter Magazine, Sept. 2002 under the design name of Country Charms. I altered the pattern by adding the narrow (1" finished) yellow inner border.

I will be including this quilt in the 2012 UFO Challenge...it WILL get finished; I am determined.

A Magazine, Needlepoint , and the Magi

This magazine was in my mailbox today :)

It has some lovely stuff in it: a 3-part mystery quilt (my subscription expires with the next issue so if I were to do it, I'd have to remember to go buy the last issue), a lesson on tying a quilt...by machine!, a pretty batiks pattern (not my thing, but it is pretty and could be done in other colors/fabrics), a very nice log cabin, an article on color balancing, a valentine's wall art quilt, a blue and cream 'leaf' tessellation quilt (oooh, aaahhh I want to do it), and a whole bunch of other projects :) This magazine is probably in my top three, maybe top two. My favorite-est quilting magazine is The Quilter Magazine.

Many, many years ago, when Victoria was just a little girl in the early 1980s, I thought I'd try working part time as an in-home craft demonstrator/salesperson for Artcraft Concepts. I think I lasted about a year. I found, as maybe others did, that as a 'consultant' I turned most of my profits back to the company by purchasing more and more kits. And it didn't help, that about the time you'd finish making a kit up for demo purposes, the company would discontinue that kit and come out with a new one. Sure, I got them at a deeply-discounted rate from retail, but I still had to make the kit before I could display the product! As far as the kits themselves, I loved them. They were great quality and the company was great at sending out additional yarn or thread or whatever if you didn't have sufficient for whatever reason. I made one of their latch-hook rug kits - a snowy scene that I still use as a cover on an ottoman...even when it isn't winter or Christmas. I was in the midst of a divorce toward the end, and gave up on trying to do this as a business and went to work for a big aerospace firm with a steady income.














This project (below) is called "Magi Christmas Classic". It was first published as a kit in 1978. I bought mine (as a special discontinued offering) in 1983. I didn't begin working on it until Jan. 2006. Until recently I'd been keeping it in the door pocket of my car to work on while I waited for Nick to get out of school and while sitting in the car pick-up line. I don't have to wait in that line anymore, and I get to the school only a few minutes before he's out so thus have no time to work on this there. I decided I'd take it out and work on it while I watch television.

This is the floss that came with the project. I cut slits in a piece of cardboard and numbered them accordingly.














Obviously, this is the color key for the floss, and the color placement chart for the printed fabric. I highlight as I go, it makes it easier.
















The project measures 14"x14" finished. What you see in the hoop (an 8" hoop) is all that was done at the time of this photo. Since then, I have done the upper portion of the robe on the one to the left of this one. It's done in the purple, and is a stem stitch, which is the main stitch used on the characters. I don't think it'll be finished for this Christmas, and then what I'll do with it when it's done has yet to be decided. It was intended to be a framed wall art, but as with a couple other Artcraft projects I did, I may intend to put it as a medallion in a wall quilt and/or table topper.

Did you know that "three" wise men (Magi) is not in Scripture? It's true. There is only the mention of "wise men from the east bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh", and from those three gifts came the errant notion of 3 wise men. There may have only been two, but then again, there may have been six or eight and yes, the possibility of only 3 is still there too. Truth is, we aren't told. And Scripture certainly didn't tell us their names. I'm not sure where the names came from. Regardless of how many or few, it's most likely also that they traveled in a large caravan and maybe not even on camels but swift horses. The route they likely would have taken would have been dangerous with robbers, and carrying an amount of gold - tempting to say the least. Unless one has read and studied Scripture and really paid attention to it, one would blindly go on believing many of the songs composed (with a LOT of error) right along with greeting card depictions of those same errors. Another error is the nativity where we often see the wise men on bended knee with their gifts at the manger. Nope. They weren't there. They likely hadn't even embarked on their journey until after He was born and the saw the star to guide them. Herod met with the magi to determine when Christ would have been born...the magi went to "a house" (not a stable) so the family was already 'home' ...Herod wanted to destroy the Child and thus his order to kill all the male children in and around Bethlehem from two years and younger (Jesus may have been as old as 2 by the time this all happened - remember, Herod inquired of the Magi as to when the Christ was born - Herod issued this order after discovering the wise men learned from God Herod's scheme to kill the Child, which had been removed to Egypt with Mary and Joseph for protection. In Scripture at this point He is referred to as "Child" not "Infant" thus also attributing that He was older than a newborn baby. Isn't Scripture interesting if you dig deep into it? It's fascinating how God's plan unfolds from the first verse in Genesis to the last verse in Revelation.

Quilt #014 "He Knows Them All By Name"

When I did this one, I went to my stash. Not sure why I had these starry, glittery fabrics, but thought they'd be perfect for the Cathedral Windows class with Shelley Swanland. This was only the second class I'd taken and I had a great time. This is a wallhanging that measures 24" square. It hangs in Nick's room...it's part of that space theme (maybe that's why I had the fabric, rejected from Nick's planet quilt).

At JoAnn's I found the cute little blue with silver stars, star-shaped shank buttons which were perfect to cover my, ahem, less-than-perfect centers. I used regular buttons on the back so that the thread used on the buttons wouldn't pull on the fabric. I used a plate to mark the circles for quilting.

The class was on 3/13/2004 and I finished it on 3/25/2004...another one done quickly! I liked this little project; I should do more cathedral windows, but as a larger quilt. Don't look too closely at that bulge in the binding on the top, it could be the bottom, or the side, if I rotated it. I hadn't yet learned how to do an invisible binding connection, and I'm still not proficient enough to not have to stop and really think about and fuss with it to get it right. I'm constantly learning in my quilting journey. And to think how smug I was for not using pins in my very first project, lol.

Quilt #008 Flannel Floor Pillow Covers

For years I had these two really big dark blue floor pillows. Over the years they had acquired some stains that I wasn't able to get off by surface washing and they didn't have removable covers. What better than a quilted pillow cover for them? I found one just the right size...well, almost. It was a little big but that just meant all I had to do was make the borders a little narrower. I left the top open without any closures, yet. I count it as finished because I'll probably never work the patterned closures which were big buttons and buttonholes. One never knows though. I even considered using some Velcro.

The pattern is by DuAnn Wright and was once available through Keepsake Quilting though that isn't where I purchased it from. I started it circa 2001 and finished it in June of 2008 (wow, I don't remember it sitting around THAT long!). Do you see a procrastination thread running through my quilting? If you can't tell by the photos, these are flannel. It was my first experience with flannel since I made a nightgown in high school Home-Ec. I like the one on the left the best, I made it last. I think the border on the one on the right is too light and it makes it look blah. Both have a dark maroon outer border. The back is also solid maroon. To me, these are a little 'Christmasy' but are also 'cabin-ish' and I like that, so they sit out all year fitting perfectly side-by-side atop an old coffee table in front of the fireplace. When winter, and the Christmas tree arrives, the table and pillows gets pushed over in front of the piano (I don't have a piano bench.) and add to the festive look.

Now that it's cooler, flannel sure is sounding cozy. I have a lot of it now, too. Maybe I can make another nightgown or pajamas to match a flannel quilt. I still have that Home-Ec nightgown; it's rather thread bare now, and would never fit on this current body, but it's a reminder of something I made when I was young and first learning to sew and I loved it.

Quilt #013 (Barie)'s Pinks

This is also an Eleanor Burns Quilt In A Day Double Pinwheel pattern. I altered the number of rows, and the size before adding the binding was 67.5" x 78.5". It's shown atop a double bed.

I made the quilt as a Christmas gift for my half-sister whom I hadn't met until she was around 34 years of age. I began the quilt in December 2003 and finished in October 2004. Ignore the date on the photo - that's because I was too lazy to figure out how to change it or remove it. I can be quite lazy at times.

My fabric choices and placements didn't bring out the double windmill pattern as well as with the other one from the same pattern. I opted for a tan background as Barie had dogs and I felt sure the dogs would probably sleep on the quilt right along with Barie. Barie's favorite color is pink. It is quilted in the ditch, and is obviously scrappy pinks.

I probably won't hear from Barie again, nor will I go out of my way to reach her. I had found her after wondering about her for 34 years and having only seen a picture of her at about the age of 1, and we stayed in touch for awhile. Long story short, her brother Mac (from her mother's first marriage) and my sister Marie (from when our dad was still married to my mother) got married to each other within four months of being reunited after we located Barie. They'd first met when my sister Marie was about 14 which is when my dad, and Barie's mother were married and Marie went to live with them for a short while and they'd had a crush on each other. We all told Marie to wait but she didn't and they are now divorced (from a purely earthly perspective, not a bad thing!). Messed up lives create further messed up lives. There's also a half-brother (from yet another mother), somewhere, but this situation has shown me I don't need to find him. Some things are best left behind us. Ok, off the rabbit trail and back to fabric. Really, back to fabric...folding, organizing, deciding. Have a blessed day!

Quilt #012

I love, love, loved this quilt. It looks so-o-o-o complicated, but wasn't! This was also a missionary quilt and was pieced by me but tie-quilted and bound with the help of other 'many hands'. It measured 89" square and looked great on the double bed, even if it wasn't in colors I'd decorate in. This one was started on May 1, 2003, and finished on October 29th of the same year. It was a busy quilt year for me in 2003 :) I believe it was passed on to missionaries in Feb. 2005. The pattern was from the November/December 2000 issue of Quiltmaker magazine under the title of "Prairie Meadows" but in a more earth-tone colorway. I could easily do this pattern again in colors that go with my decor.

Design Wall Monday

I'm new to Judy's Design Wall Monday and don't have anything on my wall at present, but thought this would be a good, if not humorous, way to begin. I have some projects that I need to get back to work on and how many hundreds of ideas that I'd like to start with a stash that'll clearly outlive me. It's a good thing I like scrappy quilts. As recently as last night I was continuing on my organizing of some of the fabrics that have been scattered hither and yon with their respective projects.

The lanyard has that removable section which, instead of scissors, I've attached a needlepoint pincushion I made some years ago. It keeps pins under control at the design wall...when I remember to use it.

Well, my post didn't last long there. My confusion I guess is that the post actually has to show fabric or a design of a project in process or intended, and not what I have (as shown here) on my design wall which is the lanyard. My bad. So, back to the drawing board as they say, and somewhere down the road I'll have a project back on the wall. I don't hold this against Judy, after all - her blog, her rules, and I believe in following rules and if I had rules on my blog and someone didn't follow them, I'd do the same and give their post the boot too.

Quilt #011 Double Pinwheels

Yowsa! This thing is HUGE! It measures 91" x 113". It's another missionary quilt and was started April 17, 2003 and finished June 20, 2003. It is no longer in my possession but I don't believe it's been given out to a missionary yet. This is a Quilt In A Day by Eleanor Burns pattern. Perle Cotton was again used to tie it, and it has a solid light blue backing. I loved how the colors looked together and the white was a geometric pattern that resembled the blades from a pinwheel. I wouldn't mind making one for myself but not so large. The photo was taken with it displayed on a queen-size bed.

Quilt #009

I made this quilts for our Missionary Quilts group. It measures 70" x 82". I believe I did all the work on this from start to finish, but others may have helped with tying and hemming the binding. The pattern was published in the 1999 Better Homes & Garden Sampler under the title "English Trellis". I never think to take photos of the back of my quilts. I chose a sage toile for the backing. I started on 4/3/2003 and finished on 4/19/2003! Are you amazed at that with just 16 days considering all my other projects were years? I think I was trying to prove my skills to the lady (and now friend) who headed up the Missionary Quilts program. Of course, tying is much quicker than machine quilting and all the MQ quilts are tied. My tying preference is to use Perle Cotton when I do so. I do not like using knitting/crocheting yarn, just too bulky and fuzzy. On Sept. 17th of that year, this quilt was gifted to some of our missionaries in India...a nice fit.

Quilt #007

From the "Morning Star Wall Quilt" pattern in Magic Stack-n-Whack by Bethany Reynolds; I chose a gold-painted fabric to make the stars and border. It measures 42.5" x 46 5/8" and is a wall-hanging I display at Christmas. Started in early December 2000, it was finished in late October 2003. I discovered the fabric paint to be a little hard to work with as to the center points but managed and ended up with flat centers :) . This was a much better fabric choice for this technique than was the fabric in "(Nick's) Planets". It was machine quilted and I used tissue paper to design my own 6-pointed stars for the border quilting. Tissue paper doesn't hold up really well though so I did about half of each border at a time, pinning the paper to the border. It was also entered in the local guild's quilt show, but only received a couple viewer choice votes. One fellow guild-member made the comment to me: "It's interesting that a Christian would quilt it with the Star of David." Well, my Saviour was born a Jew, so it shouldn't be seen as odd at all.

Quilt #006

"(Nick's) Planets" In Nov 2006 I took a class through our LQS (now gone sadly) from the book: Stack & Whack by Bethany Reynolds. The fabric I later found for the backing would have been much better for the front, but it is what it is, and Nick loves his quilt. It is tied except along the borders where I stitched in the ditch, and it gets washed every few months. It measures 56"x 64". Nick's favorite color at the time was blue, and he was interested in planets. His now favorite color is black, but he still wants his bedroom painted dark blue...might happen before he heads to college, lol.
One of Marty's relatives was Clyde Tombaugh who discovered the now-demoted planet Pluto.
I enjoyed making this quilt but was disappointed with my fabric selection because it doesn't provide enough "oomph" for the technique. I finished it in Nov 2002 in order to display it in our guilds quilt show. It was not an award winner, nor had I expected it to be.

Quilt #004

I gave this quilt the name "Under The Oaks" because many of the fabric designs are oak leaves, and because I miss the oaks of my childhood. The pattern however, was called "Friendship Quarters" and published by American Legacy Quilts. It measures 56"x 44 1/2". I started it in October 2000 and finished it three years later. I had some struggles with all of those half square triangles. It hangs above our fireplace.
The pattern is fat quarter friendly so when I purchased it at a quilt show, I also purchased a grouped set of eight FQs (at least one is a Moda) that were in a colorway I liked, they became the friendship stars and block corners. To that, I added the background fabric, called 'Moss' and the binding fabric which is a Kona Bay fabric. The top had actually been finished since March 2002, but by then I was finding it hard to find the right shade of brown I wanted for the binding. For the backing (not photographed) I used golden-toned "Fossil Fern" (Impressions by P.B. Campbell & J.L. Jack for Benartex). It was entered in our local guild quilt show in 2003 but alas, did not garner any awards. This is still one of my favorite quilts. It gets laundered on occasion too...about once per year. It's coloring doesn't fit well with Christmas colors, so it comes down to be replaced temporarily at that time.

Week 42 Stash Report

Nothing in, nothing out lol. I'll start adding this weekly Sunday report so that I can get in the habit in order to begin adding my report to Judy's post over at Patchwork Times. Hopefully, I'll be showing something in the "out" category as I get organized, my wrist heals and I get back to working on my UFOs and WIPs...do they count as WIPs if at present not working on them but want to be?

Quilt #005 Christmas Wallhanging

This one with blue, was begun in Nov. 2000, and is complete except for the decorative aspects, so I haven't given it an exact finish date yet. It is machine-quilted and binding is complete. The previous two were both tied using the 1/8" red ribbons that hold the decorations on. This quilt, however, I wanted to do a little differently in order to be able to remove the red ribbons & decorations, so I was adding tiny snaps, or hooks & eyes, or whatever I could come up with that would allow the decs to hang correctly yet be removed. For now, most of the decs are held on with quilting safety pins until I can get each one's attachment mechanism sewn on. This wallhanging is for our home, and we seem to have an incredible amount of dust, so I wanted to be able to launder it on occasion, even though it would only be displayed for a month or so each year.

The first of these three wallhangings, was taught to me by a lady friend at my church. She's a dear quilting friend and mentor as well as a sweet woman of God.

Editing note: I originally had these three on one post, but every time I looked at the blog, it seemed the written content had shifted and my attempts to fix it only made it worse, so I separated them and adjusted the post date and time to keep them at least in the same area with each other. Please tell me I will learn how this Blogger site works!

Quilt #002 Quilted Wallhangings: The Christmas Quilts

This first one is #002 (with the gold star topper). It was begun in Sept. 2000 and finished in Nov. in time to gift my daughter for Christmas. At that time I didn't have a design wall so had pinned it to some drapes so that odd border isn't part of the quilt.

Quilt #003

The one was also begun in Sept. 2000 and finished in Nov. 2000 and gifted to my parents for Christmas. This past summer, my mom decided I should have it back as she's 'down-sizing'.

"Do I Really Want To Quilt?" My First Quilt

From Start Quilting with Alex Anderson, I began this quilt in June 1999, but didn't finish it completely until March of 2003. That looks like 3.5 years doesn't it? That's because I actually wanted to quilt it rather than tie it and I hadn't learned how to do that yet. I didn't track my time on this one. And I don't remember how soon after I began as to when I finished the top. It seems it wasn't 3.5 years, but I was caring for my then-toddler so it might have taken awhile and in the meantime I had started other projects as well. The story about this first quilt is found at http://duckoutofh2o.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-quilting-journey-long.html.

The 'bumps' in the top part of the binding are from the clips that hold it while it's hanging or maybe from the pins holding it to the design wall. Occasionally I'll rotate it and let gravity rearrange those 'bumps', or if it gets too dusty, into the washer, yes, it gets laundered, and also the dryer! and I'll use my iron to press it. Sometimes it's used as a table topper. If you read the story, you know how much fabric I purchased and from some of that extra fabric, I made the additional blocks and turned them into placemats (I had no pattern, just went by the size of some I had.)....12 placemats to be exact. Do we ever have 12 sitting around our table? Not a chance. These days, we don't have the three of us around the table every night :-S.