Design Wall Monday - November 27, 2017

Thanksgiving week was very peaceful at my house, and I'm thankful for all of the leftovers - no cooking has been done since Thursday!  Leftovers are a great part of having the dinner at home.  And at 74 years old, I can decide to have a piece of pumpkin pie for breakfast without any guilt at all.  Life is good.

I found that the old quilt squares of "eightish" inches in size didn't get much better with sashing, and to remedy the situation, I added small strips of fabric to some of the blocks.  It is coming along, and yesterday I sewed all the blocks into columns and then sewed the columns together.  Here is a progress picture of the quilt top.  It's about 43 inches square.

Here's a close-up, showing some of the places where added pieces made the blocks more the same size:

I will add simple quilting, and it will be a great wall hanging.  It feels so peaceful and I like the fact that someone else's blocks are now going to be a quilt.  

This time of year, as December nears, I make Christmas plans, and think about the new year.  As we age, hubby and I are less enthused about shopping for Christmas gifts.  Also as the grandchildren are all fifteen years or older, their tastes in presents are more of a mystery to us.  So I've decided to give the gift of money to each grandchild.  There are lots of ways to make a money gift a fun one to unwrap, and it will keep me out of the "hustle and bustle" of the Christmas gift buying scene.  After Christmas I will show you some of the cash gift ideas I am using (Pinterest was a great help).

I hope you find some ways to simplify your Christmas season and find time to enjoy the reason for the season with music and church services and family time.

What's on your design wall this Monday?  I so enjoy seeing everyone's beautiful quilting progress.

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Design Wall Monday - November 20, 2017

Here's my promised post about the November 2017 Jane Stickle quilt retreat in Shipshewana, IN.

Friday night was spectacular.  Many, many beautiful quilts were shown at the Show 'n Tell.  These women overwhelm me with their talent, and I alway come away inspired to do more.

These are just a few of the many intricate quilts I saw there:  The first one is a top that is made of bow tie blocks......lots of them!

Next is a quilt made by Rebecca Windburn, who sat next to me.  I liked her choices of fabrics.

And the overall quilting pano is feathers, which turned out so pretty.  Here's a closer look:

Here's one of the "365 block" quilts shown, and they are so amazing.  The dark blues have enough contrast in them that the pattern shows up because of the contrast with lights she used in the dark blocks.   Mine:  not so much.

Here's a Jane Stickle quilt top. The group is pushing everyone working on this quilt to finish their quilts by 2018 fall, for a Jane Stickle plethora of quilts showing.  When your quilt is completed, quilted, with a label on it, the group brings out a crown and you are crowned a "Goddess".   I aspire to be a Goddess.

The last one is a vintage quilt brought in by Rebecca Haarer (owner of Rebecca Haarer Arts & Antiques in downtown Shipshewana).   All hand stiched and hand quilted.   Isn't it beautiful?

Here are the three doll quilts that I brought to the show n tell.  That's me explaining a little about them.

What have you been working on this week?  With Thanksgiving coming up Thursday, for those in the USA, this will be a slower quilting production week.  Happy Thanksgiving to all.  I am thankful for you!

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Design Wall Monday - November 13, 2017

I've just returned from another great quilt retreat in Shipshewana, IN.  The ladies at this retreat are so talented! I have plenty of pictures to show you, but they will have to wait until next week. 

Today I'm showing you a small quilt that I just bound and finished while at the retreat:

One of the benefits of making lots of small doll quilts is that I get a lot of practice using different bindings.  On this one, I used two inch double fold striped binding, and matched the stripes on the pieces when I joined them.  With a stripe, I sew the "join" within the widest stripe, as it is easier to hide there.  Can you see the join seam?

Also, small quilts give me lots of practice in corners, and they are improving over my first attempts.  In the original quilt, the corners are rounded, but now that I know how to make nice square corners, I like to make them.

I quilted four "petals" into the center to mirror the green applique pieces in the first border:

I don't know if you can see them, but they are there in the red center part.

This quilt is a reproduction of a doll quilt on page 78 of the book Classic Crib
Quilts and How to Make Them by Thos. K. Woodard and Blanche Greenstein.  It's one of my favorite doll quilt books.  Here's the picture of the original from the book:

What's on your design wall this Monday?  We want to see!!

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Design Wall Monday - November 6, 2017

I have the attention span of a gnat!  But you already knew that.  So this week, here are these maple leaf quilt blocks that I found while looking for something else, and they are on the design wall, now getting made into a small quilt.  They were acquired some time ago (I can't even remember where).

The blocks are all hand pieced, and the piecer was aiming for 8 inch squares.  However, they are "eightish" in size (see picture), and I decided to sash them to help square everything up. 

I picked out some solid sashing, and some cornerstone fabric, and began cutting the sashing to 3 inches, to finish at 2.5 inches. 

When I was part way through cutting sashing, I realized there wasn't enough and I would be short on sashing fabric....and I really wanted to use it.    That's when the sashing became 1.5 inches wide, unfinished.

Actually, I like the narrow sashing better.   I picture Tim Gunn from the TV show "Project Runway" saying .........."Make it work!". 

The start of November is when I start thinking about Thanksgiving and all that I have to be thankful for.  For one thing, I'm thankful for all of you, and that when you link with this blog I can see all the wonderful projects you are designing and quilting.  

Another thing I'm thankful for is getting together with some quilting friends for a semi-annual retreat this month in Shipshewana, IN.  Yeah!! We will be together Wednesday through Sunday and it will be so much fun to see my friends again.  I should have pictures to share with you of retreat quilts next week.

What's on your design wall?  

An InLinkz Link-up