Belle Quilts

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Sewing Class

Our Saturday quilting class has a meeting place for next week!. While it's only one day for sure, we are very optimistic that some else's club house will be available for the following Saturday and that meeting places will continue to became available. There are at least two more potential meeting places, so it is looking good.

Here are a few pictures of a few projects been worked on by the students:

Juanita's black & white log cabin

Her Hidden Stars

Lucy's Christmas String/Scrappy Stars:

And my Rectangles, a Gudrun Erla pattern from Fon's & Porter's Love of quilting Easy Quilts magazine

I plan on posting about our weekly classes, it would be nice to kept a ongoing journal to record our groups journey. It looks like great things and new adventures are in our future.

Stash Report Week 24

Let's get the stash report out of the way:

Fabric Added Week 24: 0 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date: 76 1/2 yards
Fabric Used Week 24 : 0 yards
Fabric Used Year to Date: 37 1 /8 yards

I probably should have said nothing in and nothing out, but I thought I needed a reminder, it's been almost half a year and my stash busting is not going very well. There is a need to seriously start busting the stash in the next two months, August is my birthday month and this is when I plan to enhance my stash to my heart's content. Storage space it at a premium around here, so making room is a priority. While there hasn't been any fabric usage, I had a great sewing week. I finished an old, old, OLD project: A string quilt. I can't even remember when I started, but I know it was buried in a closet last summer after pin basting. It is free motion quilted with wavy meandering across the blocks

Had a little mishap with the "quilting" gloves, my machine was determined to sew them unto the quilt:

But I persevered and finished it. Here is it after an encounter with the washer and dryer

There is hope still for my machine quilting skills to get better.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

A month gone in an instant

At least that's what it feels like. I've been busy with family and work and have not taken the time to post, but until I signed in this morning, didn't realize it's been a month. I've been sewing somewhat, just not much of my own projects. My friend Ann needed help with her granddaughter's graduation quilt. I helped her sew the top together, put on borders, backing and pin basting. Great team work!, the binding and label went on yesterday at our Saturday quilting class.

Speaking of Saturday class, our teacher Mickey just gave us some awful news, due to education funding cuts in the State of California, our class has been cancelled for the summer; next Saturday is our last class. The fall session will probably be cancelled as well, even eliminated entirely, but we won't know for sure until August. Most of the students were devastated as this is about the only opportunity we had to interact with other quilters. Maybe the state's economy will get better and our class will be re-opened, but in the meantime, we'll try to organize get-together's somewhere else in a non-school district environment, something will work out.

On the stash report, nothing in and nothing out. I've been just not in the mood to touch my sewing machine until this weekend, my courage just popped in and I started to machine quilt a string top I put together about a year ago. Just quilted in the ditch and thought about leaving it at that, but the quilted rows are 7 inches apart. It has lots of bulky seams.... but I have some ideas that may work, so that's what Im working on today.

Hopefully it won't be another month when I post again.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

The chicken had a Flannel Party

I am big coward, a baby, a chicken! For the last two and half weeks I've been staring at my double delight quilt top, it's all ready for machine quilting but I can't summon the courage to get started. I keep changing my mind about the quilting, what color thread should I use, etc. Then I say to myself, it's just a little too big for my machine and I should sent it out to a long arm quilter. The decision shouldn't have to be this hard but indecision is. It all comes down to I am just a big chicken.

To get myself out of this self pity funk, I started sewing some flannel scraps my good friend Ann passed down to me. Most of them have a baby or child motifs, monkeys, frogs, butterflies, fairies, ladybugs and some sports themes as well.

The colors are softer and with lower contrast than I am used to, but I decided to work out of my comfort zone and use them to make a small baby quilt for practicing machine quilting. I figure if I tackled a small project and relax about it, maybe the bigger quilt will stop being so intimidating. I started trimming the strips last Saturday, most of them were a fraying 3 inch brick of various Lengths that I trimmed down to 2 1/2". Didn't want to work on a complicated pattern or cut down even more, so I decided on a "center medallion" with just rounds of strips sewn together, kind of long cabin style. This is the result:

And a close up of a corner:

I was having so much fun and had enough strips that I continued on and made two tops, I stopped the rounds when the piece measures just short of 42 inches on either length or width, this way I can use a single piece of fabric for the backing. Hopefully the plan will work.

Oh, yeah... stash report:

Fabric Added Weeks 17, 18 & 19: 1 1/2 yards

Fabric Added Year to Date: 76 1/2 yards

Fabric Used Weeks 17, 18 & 19: 0 yards

Fabric Used Year to Date: 37 1 /8 yards

Did not use any stash for the flannel project. A little buying expedition for six fat quarters helped somewhat with the self pity funk.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Stash Report Week 16

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
FabricAdded Year to Date: 75 yards
FabricUsed this Week: 5 4 /8 yards
FabricUsed Year to Date: 37 1 /8 yards

Fabric used this week was for the bears in the farmhouse backing, for some one who doesn't like stripes, I sure had plenty! or maybe it kept cloning itself while in storage. Regardless of how it came to be, I want this particular fabric GONE! so I used it to piece the backing. The centered block was an aftermath of my playing with the 9 patch from last week, I had already cut the background triangles, but they did not work, but they do here.

Since this was spring break for our local school district we didn't have our Saturday morning class this Saturday. I invited myself to a friend's (Hi Ann!) house for a day of sewing and pretended we were in class. Ann just came back from a week long retreat up north in Turlock, CA and had two bags full of scraps. We spilled the contents on the floor and spent the entire morning sorting the scraps and having tons of fun. After a lunch break, we started on ironing, cutting and some sewing on scrappy blocks (forgot my camera for a picture). It was a great therapeutic quilting day.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Stash Report Week 15

NOTHING. Did not use any fabric from stash at all. But, I do have some productive sewing activity to report.

The fabrics from the Bears in the Farm house project were bigger than needed and I had some pieces left. I've seen this material for so many weeks now that I do not want them back in the stash and continued to work with them. I didn't have a particular pattern on mind so I settled on nine patches. They came out cute but looked too simple, What to do?

Maybe they would be happy if I box them in a square-in-a-aquare setting, alternating red and green fabric for an hour glass effect. Unfortunately, (of course) it was late at night and didn't go well. The formula I found for this block said to cut the squares the finished size plus 5/8", well being tired and all (I claim temporary math ammesia), I figure the eighths mesurament was not worth the trouble and upped it to the next increment,I added 3/8" not 1/8" and now the nine patches are floating. trimming them to the correct size was not gonna work and they are staying at 9 1/2" unfinished.

Still not happy, they seems to dark. Where do I go from here? I took my blocks to class and put them up on the design wall.. 95% of the class suggested a cream lattice to tame them down, I think that is a good idea. I'll work on it this week.

While still at class, I pin basted the double delight top and it is now ready for machine quilting. I don't have much experience with machine quilting, but I plan to practice on this top. I am thinking a curvy or meandering pattern, but will probably end up being stiched in the ditch.

I have all week to work on these two projects since the babysitting job is on spring break until the 20th. Making happy blocks is my goal for this week.