An ironing board cover and a horse quilt

My regular quilt group, Northeast Quilting Friends, has expanded.  We have 25 on our roster and from week to week, 15 or so show up.  In our room we currently meet in, this is getting to be a problem, so we've started a second group which meets on Friday in the Lower Level, from 10 to 1:00.

Well, today, there is a wedding reception being set up in the LL and so I set our quilt group up in the room right next door to our regular room.  I had the room to myself, the whole time.  Come to find out, when I returned all the "gear" to the quilting room, that was being used by another group, there were people looking for quilting!

Oh well, it meant I was very, very productive today.  I really get so much more done without all the distractions of home.

I made an ironing board cover, mine old one had holes in it.  If you need to recover anything, just take it apart and use that as the pattern.

Then I started a new horse quilt.  Mom's Closet has an annual fund raiser, the Wednesday before the Kentucky Derby and I'm making a quilt for them to sell raffle tickets for.  This is another one I'll be donating for the fundraiser.  Maybe it's a silent auction item.

My Backyard

It's springtime in Kentucky and it is beautiful.  The daffodils are blooming and the birds are making their nests.  I think this woodpecker is building a nest.  

I've also had time to finish a quilt top, my KINGSIZE 1.5 inch hexagon quilt, Tillie's Mosaic.  That is the name of the pattern.  I changed the quilt somewhat, certainly making it bigger to fit my bed.  So, maybe I should name it something different.  After I quilt it I'll think of something.  Sewing hexagons are the best portable project you can do.  I made this while Jennifer was getting her treatments for cancer.  She is doing so well now, I am so grateful.  Losing a year out of a young person's life, tied up with a vicious cancer and the treatments seems to last so long.  I am glad it's over and she's trying to get back on track with life.  

This quilt I made to enter in the Home quilt challenge at our Quilters Day Out event.  The words around it say "Finish what you start, a quilters dream at heart".  ''

I'm having a heck of a time loading my pictures on my blog.  I keep getting "Bad Request Error 400".  Does anyone else get that message?

Airing of the Quilt, a Quick Fix for Gray Days

I suppose it's gray everywhere there's winter, but it seems more so, living here.  It's not all bad, it makes you appreciate the sunshine...a lot.  But, winter cold days are the best or quilting.  

Here's my solution for waking up with a little sunshine I made myself.  This is a quilt I made for Jennifer when she was 5 years old and sleeping in a single bed.  She liked animals and was very happy and outgoing.  I thought that she'd fly away to adventure in the not so distant future.  Now she's getting ready to move into her apartment and is currently enrolled in college at the University of Louisville.  

I kind of doubt she'll take this quilt to decorate around, but, it does seem to help my disposition when waking up to these cold Kentucky days.   Hmmm, maybe I'll forget to remind her I made it.  It's been in my closet for a few years.  All quilts need airing.  If for nothing else, to keep them from having permanent creases.  

This is the attic windows quilt pattern.  Exotic animals and fish are in each window with some jumping from window to window.  Jennifer is in the bottom window and appliqued where the pillow is.

Trying the New Bamboo Quilt Batting.

I'm all about the inside of the quilt.  It's not a quilt until it's quilted and I'm constantly experimenting with batting.  So far, my all time favorite for comfort and the way it lifts the fabric around the quilt stitches, in my opinion is wool batting.  I don't use it too often, as it is very expensive and you can't find it in stock.  I like to support the local establishments, and using a coupon when I do is a great way to be frugal and support, when it's available.  

That being said, I'm experimenting again, with the bamboo batting.  It feels so soft in the bag, I can't wait to try quilting with it.  It's 50/50, bamboo/cotton.  It's also eco friendly, so if it quilts nicely that's another win, win.

I'm still finishing up a quilt top, the Kitchen Roosters.  It's small, compared to a bed quilt, so I hope to finish it soon.  

Baby Quilt for the new Boomer Sooner

Well, cancer has not completely got me down. I have had a lot of down time, running my DD #1 back and forth to radiation everyday and will for the next 6 weeks, while going through chemotherapy every 2 weeks. This stuff is way not fun. I'm not even in the ballpark of no fun, compared with Jennifer. Ah well, this time next year, it should all be a bad memory.


Someone called from our wonderful church today. They got my name mixed up with Jennifer and said they'd keep us in their prayers. I guess God knows which is which, so it okay. Our church is getting so large, I know it's impossible for someone to remember all however many thousands are now attending. But, I've never met this new minister and have been attending said church for 12 years now. I don't go every time the doors are open, but, I was going every Tuesday to lead our church quilt group, Northeast Quilting Friends. I haven't attend but, once in the last several months because I don't want to be a downer to the group. The last time I came to the meeting I cried. The ladies have managed quite well without me. What did I expect? Helplessness? A complete loss of quilt abilities? Nope, they did just fine, when I came back the one time. Ah well, what will be, will be and the quilting group goes on.

Anywho, here's Jennifer in her radiation session. It's quite the science fiction setting, but, it's no fiction...lots of science. Life does go on, everyone has their own soap operas to manage. Speaking of newest, my niece had a baby boy, Daxton. She sent pictures of him dressing in his Oklahoma State University outfit, of which Boomer Sooner is the mascot. So, in honor of our new Boomer Sooner, here is my original design of an OU baby quilt! Hah! Who needs a pattern. I tried a new boarder technique where I made the center blocks and then laid the border on top of the red blocks then did a raw edge appilque curving to add some visual texture to the straight blocks. And everyone wants to the back, so here it is, flannel.

Quilting, ironing and the Dollar Store

Don't you just love to find bargains? Now we quilters won't skimp a lot on our fabrics, but, finding good quality quilting material on sale is always a good thing. Nope, there was no fabric at the Dollar Store, Dollar Tree to be exact, my favorite of the dollar stores, in this area at least. There was, for me a repurposed item. It's original purpose was for scrap booking, that much maligned big competition for the quilters disposable income. Maligned because there's probably only so much in the way of hobby money to choose by each of us to spend on entertainment. All you scrappers know, you can rack up a lot of expense in the paper products/decorative items to be added to your lovely legacies of albums for the family. Like us quilters, you can drop a small country's national budget on your said hobby as well, but, oh what a legacy we both can leave. Maligned might be too strong a word, maybe to our treasured quilt shop owners, because they wish you were buying fabric instead...smile.

Anyway, this is what I found, a Scrapbook Envelope. It's original purpose I suppose was for holding delicately cut pieces of papers, pictures, or any other paper product so it wouldn't be crinkled-wrinkled..eh?...eh? Do you see where I'm going with this? You guessed it,after doing all that piecing and carefully ironing the seams all in the same direction, there's nothing more irritating than having to do all that work over again, because it got wrinkled while awaiting completion of the other blocks! So, I repurposed, a scrapbook envelope, which is a little larger than 12 inches, which is a pretty common size for a lot of patterns. Besides rigid and clear, it also has about a 3/4 inch depth so you can store several. So I bought several to hold my blocks in the various stages of completion. And it fits nicely in my Elenore Burns' project bag!


One last thing I got was the cute little box to hold my one inch hexagons-not a brilliant find like the block holder/scrapbook envelope, but they were cute and I must have been in hyper organizing mode...smile.

AND THEY ALL COST $1.00...double smile....

Hand sewing and bird nests...smile

The nature experience continues with a daily update. Finally the little bird flew away from my front porch fern and I wa s able to hold my camera high and sneak a picture with the flash on. It looks like we are expecting 2 little babies.

I've still not watered the plant, but, will attempt to do so tomorrow. We spend about 16 days a month for 7 months total in the hospital. My DD #1 Jennifer has Ewings Sarcoma in her right jaw. She gets chemo and on those overnight stays in the hospital and I stay with her. So, needless to say there's lots of down time for me. The good news is we are half way through, 7 out of 14 and so far all the scans indicate that the cancer is local and not spread.

I've found the perfect hand sewing project for me. It's the old grandmother's flower garden or also known, in earlier years as the mosaic pattern. There's no room for an olfa cutting board and I don't think it would be an easy pattern to cut, all the five sides of a one and one half inch hexagon. Karen Witt used a stamp for the

Preview

Preview

hex's and I thought that would be perfect, and it was. Stamp, cut sew, that all there is to it. Then after attending Elenore Burns' Show and Tell at Paducah, I got this lovely clear project bag, in which I can put my fabric and supplies. It really goes surprisingly fast. I've made about 15 blocks and depending how large I make the quilt, I have a king size bed, so it could be large. I think I'll work on it until Jeni is out of the treatments and that's how big it is. At this rate, it might be a really large quilt!