The Baby's Room

You never know when a baby will come to visit, and my nursery is ready.  A small room upstairs that the builder meant to be an additional laundry room, is the perfect size for a nursery, and I put a crib in there, and most of the dolls and their beds.  Children love to play in there when they visit, and there is always a place for a sleeping baby when a nap is needed.

Here's the rug on the floor:

I bought an old embroidered "summer" spread for the crib, that has a dog and cat on it, and now I am re-embroidering some of the parts were the floss has disappeared, or faded out.  Here is the summer spread (bound edges, no batting, no backing).

A picture showing one of my biggest dolls in the crib with it.  Doesn't she look cozy?

Here's the full picture of the cat and dog sleeping on the moon, with stars all around.  You can see that the stars on the right side have been redone, and the ones on the left are still faded out.

It's 34 in. by 46.5 inches, and the design is inked on the cotton, probably a kit.  I don't know the time frame.  I really like the expression on the kitten's face, as she looks at the sleeping dog.    

Celtic Solstice - Are You Ready to Rumble?

Bonnie Hunter's 2013 mystery, Celtic Solstice, is about to start.  The day after Thanksgiving, she will be giving her first clue.  I have made the last three mystery quilts, and had a lot of fun doing them together with others all over the world.  

Here's her color suggestions, and the rulers she will be using:

  
If you haven't joined in before, I urge you to give it a try.  Her quilts are a lot
of fun, and most of them use up scraps that are left over from other quilts.  
The instructions are here:  Celtic Solstice

Even though the clues are given during the busiest time of the year for me, it often helps me to relax to just go to the sewing machine and sew some parts of the mystery, and wonder about how it will all go together.

Here are pictures of my versions of some past Bonnie Hunter mystery quilts:

Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll:

I changed it slightly to add a red stripe through the middle of the string pieces.  I liked the way the red stripe seemed to go behind the corners of the squares:

Orca Bay, which I didn't change very much at all:

And last year's mystery, Easy Street, that I changed a lot.  I used different colors in it, and I didn't make it "on point", because it looked on point anyway by just sewing the squares together.  I also changed the squares somewhat.   Other than that, it is just like Bonnie's....lol

This year, I'm starting with Bonnie's color scheme, and we will see where it will take me.  I can't wait to get started!

Package of Scraps that I Won!

Only quilters get excited about a package of someone else's scraps that are sent to them in the mail.  Lori of Humble Quilts (here) send me some, and 
it made me so happy.  I felt like this:

There were three "shirtings" fabrics in the lot, and I am working on an Indigo and shirting Dear Jane.  Here they are in new blocks:

Isn't this one a pretty fabric?

I'm in a group of ladies from Williamsburg that are all beginning the Dear Jane quilt and we meet together once a month.  I'm so happy to be sharing this journey with all of them. Below are the blocks I have made this month:

There are lots of other beautiful fabrics in Lori's gift, and I am closing with a picture of the whole lot, spread out together.  Thank you, thank you, thank you Lori!

I'm linking up today with Esther Aliu's linkup of Works in Progress on Wednesdays.  She is working on a beautiful red and white piece (here)  

Quilting Mojo is Back!

Here is the finished little doll quilt that got my mojo back!  It measures 16x18 inches finished, and Paddington and his friend are enjoying it in their basket. 

The squares finish at 3 inches, and I had fun making the rounded corners for the binding.  I used bias binding, and it went around the curved corners as easy as pie.

Here's the original and the replica together:  Is it real or is it Memorex?

To get a more antiqued look, I tea-dyed it.  I have no formula for the process; I just put 3-4 teabags into a pot with some water, and heat it up.  For a doll quilt, it is easy.  Here's a picture of the quilt in the tea water.

There's a link up (Here) to see what everyone else is working on this Monday morning.  Judy Laquidara has a great blog, and I like to go there to see what other quilters are doing.

Lastly, I'd like to add a post-script to my previous post (Here).  I had titled it "A Visit to A Quilt Show", and at the last minute before posting, I changed the title to "Eye Candy From A Quilt Show".  Yesterday, when I looked at it, I burst out laughing!!  I have a post titled "Eye Candy", and then the first picture is of two quilters.  LOL  To clarify, the eye candy meant the quilts! 

Post-script #2.  I don't mean that JoAnne and I are not lovely, but I'm just sayin, well, you know what I'm sayin.

Eye Candy from a Quilt Show

At the Peninsula Piecemakers Quilt Guild Quilt Show in late October, I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow blogger, and a very good quilt maker, JoAnne McPherson.  Here is a picture of us (JoAnne on the right) in front of one of her beautiful quilts.  

JoAnne's blog is (Here) and if you click on the link, you will go to one of her posts about the quilt show.  It was great to meet her in person, and she is going to join my local guild, so I will see her more often.

Here is the info and a better picture of her wall quilt in the background:  It is named "Dresden Doilies" , a pattern by Gerri Robinson.  The centers have fussy cut flowers, from a French General fabric.    

Next is another of JoAnne's quilts, "Eldon" designed by Edyta Sitar.  The pattern is a log cabin with a 8 diamond strip star in the middle.  The lighting wasn't very good in the area where it was hung, and my picture isn't the best, but the quilt was stunning.  I love all of Edyta Sitar's designs, and JoAnne did a beautiful job on this quilt.  She said she learned how to do "Y" seams very well during the making of it.

Close-up of one block:

Entire quilt, which is 86 x 86 inches:

The next quilt I liked was right next to JoAnne's and was made by Karen Lyon.  It's a Jan Patek pattern, called "November's Song", and is 82 x 82 inches.

The show was very well organized and the quilts were beautiful.  Some of the extra decorations, that I didn't expect, were the little extra things on display, such as the pumpkins between these two quilts.  Have you ever seen pumpkins with such long stems?  And on the plant stands, they looked so great!

During the show, there were demos going on, and I sat in on one that was about vintage quilts, and one of the ladies showing the old quilts was my friend, Nan Losee.  Here she is holding up an old crib quilt with appliqued squares telling the story of the three little kittens.  Very charming little quilt.

There were also books for sale by guild members, at bargain prices, and I came home with a couple of books, and my head full of beautiful quilts.  All in all, a very nice Saturday.

Quilting Mojo - Got It?

It seems like a lot of quilters have lost their mojo lately and I have too, but not on every project.  There is always some project that I can work on, and move along the process.  If I can't figure out something, I tend to stall for a while and work on something else.  

What usually inspires me is a small project.  I started this small quilt Thursday, before I left town for a long weekend, and worked on it more last night when I got home.  It's a replica of an old doll quilt, pictured in the book "Childhood Treasures", by Merikay Waldvogel.  Here's the start of it:

And here's the picture of the old quilt in the book:

If you have this book (below), it's on page 89, and the finished size is 18" by 15 1/2".  I did some math, and decided to make each square finish at 3 inches, which means the corner hsts are 3/4 inch.  I do love blue and white quilts, and this one is fun.  I hope to finish the top today.

The last picture is of the front hall, with my cloth cat silently on watch over another little doll quilt displayed on a doll dresser.  I hope you have quilting mojo, or if not, try a small project to get it back soon.

This blog is linked up with Design Wall Mondays over at Patchwork Times

I'm also linked with WOW - Esther Aliu's Wednesday work in progress linkup at her blog.  (Here)