Year in review

such as it was…I actually tried to write a post a while ago, but could not get my account to save a draft.  But now, after thinking to change browsers…here I am!  I organize my pictures by month, so here are my major makings…

February – DCMQG did a swap with the Ottawa MQG, and my swap person really liked the upcoming Ottawa anniversary logo, so that is what I based her mini on.  It took me a while to figure out the piecing and to think about how literal to be, but I was pleased with the outcome.

In March I finally finished my daughter’s holiday gift of a place to put all of her Junior Ranger badges and other travel patches. The national park snow globe fabric is from Spoonflower.  I did finally get the patches sewn on and a few pins, but apparently never took a pic of that.

I also went to a DCMQG retreat and made a Sewtogether bag.  I used an Alison Glass motif for the main panel.

Not too much sewing this summer due to some disruptions…but in July I was in a pillow swap and my partner really wanted a Halloween themed pillow.  I don’t usually applique and decided to quilt, then applique and was pleased with the results.

 

August brought a few more disruptions, but I had this stack of wonky star blocks from two rounds of the DCMQG Bee, and managed to get them sewn in this improv layout.

I was in a winter/holiday pillow swap and was partnered with someone who loves grey.  I took a bit of liberty with that and wandered into silver, but all was good.

So, those are the big things that I made this year.  So, what are the not big things?  Blocks for the DCMQG Bee, monthly blocks for the Serenity Circle of do.Good.Stitches, and lots of little things, mugrugs/hotpads, small zip pouches, and the such.  Currently I seem to have lost my sewing mojo, but hopefully it will return tomorrow, just in time for 2017!

 

 

 

 

 

#dcmqg2016qal

Yup, that is the hashtag for the DCMQG’s quilt along this year.  Anna of LifeSewCrafty designed it for us and sets out great instructions  for each block.  Go check it out – anyone can follow along.  We all started out strong and there were a number of snow days that we were all home sewing, so that helped.  We have all slowed down on this, but as soon as school was out I decided to get caught up.  Blocks 1 – 13 were already on my design wall.  As you can see, this is another Kaffe Fassett quilt.

Here is what I finished up in the last week or so…

Block 14  I debated on using white as the solid, but there is so much white in some of the other blocks that I decided to try another color.

 

Block 15  This one is huge (24.5″ square) and I relearned how to make quarter-square triangles.  Anna had great instructions and pictures for this.

Block 16  Another huge block and quarter-square triangles too!

Block 17 – This involved half-rectangle triangles.  I have done these before  but it was good to revisit them before I totally forgot how to do them.  Plus I was in the background color quandary again.  More white?  Nope, went for that soft green instead.

Block 18  This was the second theme block.  For the first one I substituted two of my favorite leaf blocks and so for this one I wanted a different leaf block.  I saw a picture of this block that was named Vintage Leaf block and it had a stem in the lower right hand corner.  There were no instructions, but it was easy enough to draft it.  I am not sure if I will embroider a stem…for now I like it as it is!

Now I am ready to move on.  Block 19 has not been posted. I guess I will need to work on something else…as if it would be hard to find something to do!

Easy Does It

After the first week in January I had such good intentions for blogging again.  Well, obviously that did not happen.  However, there is something that I would like to share.  Not a big thing for most of the quilters that I read about, but big for me.  I have a quilt in a museum.  Yes, a museum.

So, here is the back story.  Back in 2014 I volunteered to be a tester for Sherry Lynn Wood for her new book.  I signed up, was sent my marching instructions and I set off.  If you have seen her book, you would know that it is basically a set of techniques, definitely not step by step instructions to make a quilt.  I jumped in and played and by the due date I had a completed, quilted, 36″ square quilt.  Now, of course, my quilt was not chosen for the book, but I am pretty fond of it anyway.  It also does not hurt that it was all made from stash, in case anyone wonders about my color choices.

Last year the Modern Quilt Guild put out a call for modern quilts for a juried exhibit at the Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange, Texas.  The exhibit which features 25 quilts is called “Modern Quilt Guild at the Texas Quilt Museum.”  Read about it here.  I was in La Grange once very long when I was in grad school in Austin, but will not be able to see my quilt there.  If anyone is near there, I would love to hear about the whole exhibit.

The quilt you ask?  Well, here it is.  And the title?  This is how I learned to become really good at making curves.  What do I need to do…take it easy, because “Easy Does It.”

My thanks to my colleague Michael for taking high quality pics of my quilts…look how nicely this close-up shows my quilting.

Yes, that was done by me with my bestie, my walking foot!  So there you have it, my quilt in a museum…a little woo hoo for me!

How to Wrap a Bee…

I promised a blog post about the first DCMQG bee…and I did write it, but not post it here, but over on the DCMQG blog.  So, if you want to read about it, click on over there to see what we did.

Yes I am still here…

This year I dropped back to three-quarter time at school so that I would have more time to care for mom and generally be less stressed.  Apparently that did not translate into more sewing or blogging.  It is near to the end of the year and I am on break for 2 weeks and somehow there now is the urge to write an enormous post with everything that happened since July.  That really is too bit of a goal for me this morning and it would then never get posted.  So, I am going for little bits here.  I did get some sewing done this fall…so let’s see…  I made these two blocks for Heal Circle of do.Good.Stitches. 

Unfortunately this fall Heal Circle folded.  I really would like to join another circle or form a new one.  Anyone interested in starting a new circle or taking me in as a member?  Really, I am very reliable!

I also was involved in a swap that celebrated marriage equality.  It was a rainbow swap and here is the mini that I made for my partner.  I paper pieced the Xs and am really loving using a low volume background.

Next up will be posts about the DCMQG bee and holiday sewing…at least I hope that is what happens next!

 

WIP Wednesday

I have not done one of these WIP posts in a while…probably since I have not sewn much, even though it is summer, normally my most productive time.  However, I am getting my sewing mojo back.  By the machine I had this little stack of Riley Blake fabrics.  I was one of the lucky ones that was able to sign up for the MQG Riley Blake Challenge this spring.  I checked my email at an opportune time and actually responded and signed up immediately.  The deadline is coming up soon and so I had to develop a plan and get to work.  When at QuiltCon I had purchased a yard each of two of the coordinating fabrics, but that was it.  I discovered that my LQS did not carry this line or any Riley Blake solids, so I needed to make best use of what I had.  For the challenge they said to make something new for you…I have played with hexagons with English Paper Piecing, but not by machine.  I also had Jaybird’s Hex n More ruler that I had never used, so I thought that a hexagon project would be a good way to go.  I started sketching – the pencil is my original doodle – and the purple pen was me thinking about how to quilt it.

The large flowers dictated the size of the hexagons and since I was fussy cutting, the leftovers of the fabric that I was sent were only small bits.  So here is what I came up with…a table runner.I then needed to decide how to quilt it, and what color thread, so decided to make a sample of different threads.  However, I had an extra hexagon, and added to it to make it a square, figuring that I might as well make something useful.  I also found that I had a brand new spool of a nice aqua that went well and tried that out.  Here is the front of my sample…

And here is the back…please ignore the stray threads…

I an rather liking the aqua and will keep with it.  Next up – to quilt this baby!

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced…

Feathers Quilt – ALYOF June Finish!

This finish is perhaps a year and a half in the making.  January 2014 I joined the Feathers QAL for the quilt designed by Alison Glass.  The sewing commenced on January 3rd and I pretty much kept on target, having the top- minus the top and bottom borders – constructed by mid-March.  I had a wee bit of trouble with the background chambray as there were many, many defects in the middle of the fabric.  Fortunately I always purchase a bit more than they say that you need, so I was able to work around the problem areas.  The feathers are Kaffe Fassett prints, as I am rather fond of them.  Last fall I finally got around to getting it to Sue Bentley, longarmer in our guild, and got it back in January.  S0oooo, you wouldn’t think that it would take me that long to bind it, but there you go….I finished the binding and minutes later went to the park behind my house for a mini-photo shoot.  The dad and son fishing there were sort of wondering what I was doing, but …oh well!  Here are my attempts at artsy shots….

A close up or two…yes, it is quilted with purple thread!

 

And finally…the back…another Kaffe Fassett print.  I even did a good job seaming it!

There you go, June’s goal done!  Linking up with ALYOF – I was #82 of the goal setting party 🙂