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?

Great Technique for Storing Your Blocks Before You Sew

Ever time consumingly lay out all your pieces for a block or quilt, only to have them haphazardly picked up and YOU FORGET WHERE YOU picked them up from said lay out?  Well, join the club.  This is a little something I learned the other day and I thought it was pretty neat and am passing it along.  

You cut out your pieces, in this case, I'm still working on my KS 1 inch hexagon quilt.  Using a needle you stack the 6 hexes and 1 hex to make your flower and pierce it with needle and run thread up the middle with the knot at the back of the stack.  This holds your stacks of flowers, so they don't go slipping and sliding out of order and you don't end up cutting unnecessarily.  Remove the needle and cut the thread short, but, too short that the flowers slide off the thread.  Do not knot the thread so you can remove the stacks.  

Great tip to use with hexagon quilts!

Quilting In All 3 Zones of My House Today...smile

Zone 1-the bedroom, where I do my handwork...gee that doesn't sound so nice...smile, SEWING THAT IS!  Liverpool played Stokes today and I made a few more hexagon flowers for my Tillies' Mosiac.  Slow progress, but that's what handwork is all about.

Zone 2-the dining room, I'm loading up a quilt top, Kitchen Roosters, from my basket I weighed in with last year and never finished.  I was looking for some backing material in my stash when I ran across this lovely vintage table cloth.  It's quite old and has seen better days, but, maybe on the back of a retro fabric style top, it will find new life.  It's a tad small, but we quilters are good at making things work.  I'll probably cut the wider sides off and sew to the bottom and top.   

Zone 3-the upstairs bedroom/studio/husbands computer room, I'm working on the Flight of Swallows quilt.  

Production feels great.  Idle hands are the devils workshop, or something like that.  Quilters are rarely idle.  

More Progress on Tillie's Mosaic Quilt

I'm still working on a king size 1 inch hexagon quilt with toile "flowers".  It's about 1/2 finished.  It fills my whole foyer so, next picture will have to be outside hanging over my deck to click.  

One of our beloved members, Evelyn,  of Northeast Quilting Friends has become ill and we made a quilt for her.  These are our original patterns.  Joan, one of the leaders, she says we call her Hitler, gets us organized and focused.  In this case, she came up with an idea to design around letters and objects.  You almost can't make a group quilt for a friend without signatures, so we put them all around the boarder flowers.  

Oh well, you can see them, we all used some of that green and the same background, so the quilt came out a success.  Way to go Joan-HEIL!!

Happy Quilting!

Work on Quilt and Volunteering for Public Radio

I've been doing more hand sewing on my Tillie's Mosaic and it's pretty slow looking progress, so I won't take any pictures until I have a noticeable amount of progress.

I got to volunteer for my favorite place to support, besides church/quilting, Wfpk public radio.  Every Friday the program is an all request 3 hours from 9:00 to 12:00.  During that time, people are calling and requesting songs-anything from Neil Young to Billie Holiday.  It's how I first got really excited about the station.  I like variety in music.  I have my old stand-byes, although maybe I don't have any stand-byes, I like everything from Americana to rock and the blues.  

Here's the morning guy, James Bickers and Duke Myers, the mid morning guy.  Marion Dries is the clean up batter, I suppose with the "Rattle the Junk in Your Trunk" show that's a nice pick me up after lunch, called After Lunch.  

Today, I hung around for Live Lunch which showcased the Good Folk Fest with 4 bands.  Being a donator to the public radio stations in town, Wfpk; Wfpl, and Wuol, I get free lunches anytime I call ahead and reserve one.  Here's my lunch, a vegi club with cookie and chips-FOR FREE-well, sort of.  

The Good Folk Fest will highlight Daniel Johnston, who will sell his art and perform at the Mellwood Art Center on Saturday.  This man is a cliche when it comes to tortured genius artist.  He wrote some very beautiful songs, my personal favorite of his is "The Story of an Artist".  He was also on the first year of MTV, so he's been around for a while.  There is a really great biography about him called "the Devil and Daniel Johnston".  

All in all, it was a good day for supporting causes I enjoy without spending much money, and isn't that America's song for the age right now.  

Progress report on Tillie's Mosaic Quilt

Besides my instant gratification project, which is what I consider machine piecing, Flight of Swallows, I also have a hand sewing project.  This is my progress on Tillie's Mosaic.  Nope, that's not a horses head in the bed, it's my wonderful hubby's elevated post for sleeping due to his acid reflux.  I had some arthroscopic surgery on my shoulder a couple of weeks ago and so I've been spending some time recuperating in bed, as you can tell by my progress since last writing.  This quilt is kept by my bed and when I'm watching a movie, being someone that can't sit still for too long, I pull it out and work on it.  

Ain't Life Grand?

Backwards Quilting...Adding the Quilt Borders First...hmmm

If you are not following a pattern, that closely, it makes sense to work within the borders of the projected finished quilt.  That way you have the outline and then you can fill in the middle.  Especially if you have a specific bed or wall hanging area you want to complete.  Food for thought...smile.   The thing you have to understand is you might have to cut somethings off to make them fit.  That's okay, you can use them elsewhere.  Like all things engineering, quilting has a certain method to it's madness.  You have a pattern, you cut the pieces you sew the blocks, attach in rows and then add the borders.  That's not how I'm doing my work on this particular pattern.  It's quilt is based on Karen Witt's pattern, Tillie's Mosaic.  If any of you have attempted any of Karen's patterns, you probably have discovered they are challenging, and I have to say, I like a good sewing/quilting brain stretch, every now and then.  It makes me appreciate the simple things like real patterns that you cut out and you get what you want.  If you buy the pattern, you'll notice it's unfinished on the front, so, I'm not without some leading indicators that, maybe this ain't the easiest thing to finish.  

The pattern as it is, makes a quilt about 60 inches square.  I wanted this for a king size bed quilt. So rather than lay it all out on paper, and I'm sure you can find a hexagon grid somewhere on the internet, I chose to begin making the hex blocks and then laying it out on the bed.  Next I cut my outer borders to fit my bed, thus, you can see by the pics the fill in areas that are yet to be complete.  Believe it or not, I find this to be an easier method for me.  

A quick note, DD #2 was home and she made a purse.  This is from a free tutorial on the internet, with very complete directions and easy to make.  This is Chelsea's second purse and as you can see she's embellished it with flower buttons...so cute!