Two Small Finishes

These pretty little squares were on my first quarter Finish Along list, and now they are...finished!

They were made by a quilting friend as part of a round robin exchange we were doing a couple years ago.  She made them as cornerstones, set around a medallion that I started.  My intention was to have a mini quilt, but I think that must not have been clearly communicated, as her addition would have made the quilt far too big to be a mini.

The quilt sat around for a while, and I've since lost contact with that friend.  That makes me sad, but I do think of her often as I look around my sewing room and see small gifts and things she made for me.  And now, I have finished her two blocks and they are part of my room, as well.

I used these blocks to experiment with the free motion foot that I recently bought for my machine.  I knew that the quilting on these would be rocky.  This is a brand new skill for me, and in fact this was the FIRST time I had even put the feed dogs down on this machine!  And, I know that it is usually recommended to start learning to FMQ with scrap fabric.  But, I figured I had little to lose.  I wanted to get these off the  "In Progress" pile, and I wanted to play around with the foot, and figure out how it worked.

I pulled Beginner's Guide to Free Motion Quilting by Natalia Bonner from my shelf before I started and read through the first part.  It was helpful in getting set up, and I will return to the book as I continue to learn.  I jumped in, though, a bit hastily I think.  I started with some swirls and probably should have stayed with loops.

I cringe a bit, looking at the quilting. I almost scrapped these all together and tossed them in the garbage.  But, instead, I finished them both with "self binding".  One of them is hanging on my sewing room wall, and the other is there to greet my coffee cup and treats on the mornings that I get to sew.

 I hope that years from now, when FMQ has become natural to me, I will look at them and smile at how far I've come!  For now, I'm happy to have these done and being used!

Project Quilting 10.6 - Chocolate Craving

It's the final challenge in Season 10 of Project Quilting!


 It has been a blast playing along this year and I'm so happy to have completed all 6 challenges! This week's theme was Craving Chocolate - perfect, because think most of us quilters keep a little secret stash that has noting to do with fabric...

Shhh. Don't tell my children...

There were moments when I didn't think this one was going to get finished.  When the challenge theme was posted on Sunday, I was busy wrapping up my daughter's show, and just, in general, exhausted from two weekends of shows.  On Monday I had oral surgery (ouch) and spent the next two days feeling pretty crummy.   The latter part of the week was spent getting my house ready to host my family on Saturday to celebrate some birthdays.  Cleaning and food prep took two whole days out of my quilting time!  At 8:00 on Saturday evening, after guests left and the last of the dishes were washed, I headed to the sewing room.  I almost threw in the towel in favor of a couple hours on the couch in front of the TV,  but, no, I decided that finished was better than perfect and sat down to see what I could do in two hours.

This is my new Easter table runner!  Like several other Project Quilting participants this week, I used the iconic chocolate bunny silhouette.  I'm sure the fact that these guys started popping up at the grocery store before the Valentine's hearts were even gone has something to do with that!

As with the other project quilting challenges, I found that the key to finishing this runner was to not overthink.  I also continue to find that the right tools, fabrics and notions are right where I need them to be, when I need them.  It's like sewing room magic!

After deciding to put the chocolate hoppers on a cream background, I found a runner-ish sized rectangle in my low volume fabric stack.  It didn't even need to be trimmed or squared up, so that became the background.  I had only one brown solid, so these are dark chocolate bunnies, my favorite.  I knew I'd want a border of some sort.  I decided I liked not having to measure and cut the background, so I went to my messy bin of pre cut strips and found four springy colors in polka dots from a long forgotten jelly roll. 

The dots on the strips are in two shades of each color, so that inspired my thread choices for the background quilting.  I actually HAD the right shades of each color!  And they looked so cute on my little cake stand ready to be used!

 Originally I was going to just matchstick quilt with straight lines in all the different colors.  But, then inspiration struck!  I decided to use a zig zag and a decorative flower stitch to make it a bit more Easter egg like.  I'd had so much fun doing raw edge applique on my Abdedarius project, so that's what I went with for the bunnies.   And, guess what?  Right there on the end of the ironing board, was a square of fusible backing that I hadn't put away from last time!!  No hunting or searching or even getting up to get it!  Win!

No way was I going to make binding, so I went back to the pre-cut bin to find strips to bind with.  The was an 8:30 Saturday night decision, and I literally  held my breath, not knowing if I'd find something that would work.  But, look at that!  The right color and shade for each side.  Would you believe it if I told you that the blue one was exactly the right size?  An inch shorter and it would not have worked! 

And finally, those bows!  Each one of them is made from a ribbon scrap that I pulled out of the box of tiny bits that I save for some unknown reason.  Finding just enough in each of the four colors at 9:45 on Saturday night felt like hitting the jackpot!  I love that they are each different, so each bunny gets a bit of a personality.  And I love that the green one says "Family and Fun".  Good words for Easter and Spring Break in my house!

I walked out of the sewing room at 10:04 p.m with this completed table runner.  I'm pretty tickled with the way it looks on my dark kitchen table.  Those bunnies really pop, don't they?  And, my daughters each immediately claimed a bunny to be "theirs", leaving one each for my husband and me.  Four bunnies for my family of four.  Not planned, but perfect.  Just like so many parts of the process. 

I have to admit that I'm not too happy with the corners of my binding.  I truly was in "just get it done" mode at that point,  I tried something new for binding (stitching on the back and bringing around to the front to top stitch, which I will definitely try again, but since I used 4 different colors not one continuous strip, I had to make the corners up as I went.  It doesn't bother me too much, since when I look at this all I see is the FUN I had making it. But, the corners alone will keep me from entering this in the county fair.  That's OK.  Project quilting sparked some new ideas and I have plenty of time to finish some fair project before summer.

I changed thread colors for this project more than I EVER have before.  I will admit I sighed heavily each time I changed it while putting on the binding.  But, I think I'm over my mental block about it now.  It CAN be done, and I won't be so hesitant in the future. 

I just love how this table runner finished up.  I am so pleased with the way it came together and I love the feeling of FLOW I get from all the materials and tools being right were I needed them.  That's been the feeling in my sewing room since I started participating in Project Quilting!    I'm not sure what to attribute this to, but I like to think it has something to do with the collective positive energy that Kim and Trisha and all of the participants put out in to the universe each week!  I can't wait to do it again next year!!

I created this table runner in my sewing room in Slinger, Wisconsin.  I'm linking up for the last Project Quilting Challenge of Season 10.  Don't forget to visit some of the other contestants and LEAVE COMMENTS!  The comments make us all smile, so take a minute and do it!

Project Quilting 10.5 - Abcedarius (Alphabet)

Abcedarius: of or pertaining to the alphabet.  That was our prompt this week for Project Quilting.  I knew right away that I wanted to make something for someone to whom I owe a huge T.H.A.N.K.S! Ms. Christine is our classroom aide for 4K and 5K at school. I am teaching 4K this year.  It's my first year at that level (and, sadly, likely the last as it was a one year position to fill in for someone on leave).  Ms. Christine and I work hard every day to teach the alphabet and a myriad of other things to our 18 little loves.  She has been a lifesaver more than once and helps me keep my cool by making sure everything is prepped and ready to go.  She handles the most difficult kids with a kind and nurturing touch and treats me to surprises and pick me ups on a regular basis.  So. it is only fitting that I express a bit of my thanks with something just for her.

I knew that her word of the year for 2019 is "Breathe."  Well,  I actually only knew that because I texted her to ask if she HAD a word of the year about two hours after the challenge theme was posted.  Flowers for Spring seemed like a good thing to include, especially since she is allergic to many flowers and can't have fresh ones around.

Whew!  This is really a rough little sketch! But it got the job done!

After some sketching, I had a plan.  I dug around for the roll of fusible stuff that I was pretty sure I had...somewhere. And, actually, it was just where I expected it to be! It has been just amazing to find that I have all the stuff I've needed for these challenges. It feels good to know I am prepared to do all kinds of crafting, and I don't feel any urge at all to go and buy stuff!  There's no need!

I prepped little patches of all the colors I needed, mostly from charm squares. I couldn't resist that text print for the background.  Even more letters!  I stuck with my Project Quilting induced mantra - "Just DO, don't think!" - and drew some tulips, complete with the darker color to give them dimension.  This is NOT in my comfort zone, but I think they look pretty good!

This makes me smile.  Stained ironing board cover and all!

Staying in the "do it fast so there's no time for overthinking" mode, I printed out the word Breathe in a font I liked, cut and traced the letters, cut them from prepped fabric and cut some wonky squares to go behind them. Next came my favorite part - fusing everything in place. This is SO fun!  And so quick!  Somehow, I had all of this done by the time I left for work on Monday!

That evening, I dove into stitching around the tulips, stems and leaves.  By chance, I had watched a video tutorial on raw edge applique recently, and was able to apply some pointers it had given.  The stitching is not perfect by any means, but I was pretty tickled with the way it turned out.

By bedtime on Tuesday, everything had been fused, stitched, and I was ready to layer and quilt the next morning.  On Wednesday I tried out a bunch of different binding options.  I decided that the black pin dot would work for the binding and the back.  After just a bit of quilting in the  background areas, I realized that I had enough excess to do a self binding and without stopping to think about it...that was done, too!

On Thursday, I added some tabs for hanging to the back, and gifted it to Ms. Christine, complete with a quilt hanger that I found in the closet while looking for the fusible stuff, which just so happened to be the perfect size.  Oh, and I gave her a couple of Dr. Pepper's, too.

This is, I think , my fastest finish for Project Quilting so far.  I'm so happy with how it turned out, and I hope it brings smiles to Christine, too!

To my future self who will probably come back and read this post someday...It is worth noting that this mini quilt was completed during TECH WEEK!  For those of you who are not or do not have children involved in theater type things...this is the week leading up to a show.  (Sometimes this week is called HELL WEEK...I'll let you speculate as to why.)  Whenever anyone is this house is in a show (and we all are, at some point or another during the year...some of us more than once, one of us 4 or 5 times) I end up doing costume sewing.  Tech week for me, lately, has involved a lot of alterations or repairs.  During the time between  finding out the PQ prompt and finishing Ms. Christine's' mini quilt, I also shortened 12 pairs of pants, replaced two zippers, added shoulder straps to 9 strapless dresses, added 7 inches of fabric to the side seams of two dresses, hand stitched heavily sequined straps to shorten them and keep them on the shoulders (8 dresses = 16 straps) , added a panel to a dress that wouldn't zip up all the way and inserted Velcro to replace a zipper that was far too tricky to take out (frilly, fraying fabric).  And I went to work.  And I cooked.  There's a longer list of things I didn't do, but this post isn't about that.  Yep.  I'm feeling pretty good about this finish and living to tell the story of another tech week!

Finished mini quilt measures approximately 10 x 13 inches and was created by me, in Slinger, WI.
Linking up to Project Quilting 10.5 at Persimon Dreams.