Quilt Squad Done

Here are the ladies; standing guard in my studio making sure everything is going well. I had a lot of slaplaque to do on them before I was able to load them onto the long arm. I didn't want to do all that background fill with my little sewing machine, so I sewed some extensions onto the top and bottom to be able to load this onto the long arm leaders.

Long Arming the "Ladies"

The Quilt Squad

After long arming the background on the girls, I loaded a small sampler top I was going to use in class. Class? Yeah, if I ever get the chance to teach quilting, this will be a nice little top to show examples of.

On the mower this afternoon, but I'll putter around here this morning doing who knows what.

DW in Action with the Pro Stitcher

A few days ago, while working in the yard, a thorn (pricker week type) found its way into the ball of my foot. Yesterday Hazels deck, which had one (ONE!) rough spot in it with a small piece of wood sticking out, thought it would be nice to slice the other foot open.

Thankfully, Jim forgot his sunglasses this morning and was able to (hopefully) dig out the pricker thorn. I have a bandage on the other foot.

This means no outside work for a few days. Well, shoes could be worn, but seriously, we are finally going to see 80 degrees and I'll just say no thank you.

I quilted these two quilts yesterday.

Debbie's Coin Top

Donna's Coin Top

DW did most of the work. I set the Pro Stitcher up to do an edge-to-edge on both of these and they turned out quite nice. Donnas had a loose meandering feather and Debbies had a daisy/leaf combination. Both quilts are going to be used to snuggle on the couch so leaving the quilting motif loose was the decision.

The Quilt Squad ladies are in the works. I'm doing "slaplaque" on the pieces and will load the quilt on to DW to do the background fills. Mike (my free motion Janome) is behaving well and I don't want to push my luck on having him do all that white background.

More with Quilt Squad today and maybe I'll load the Morning Star piece on afterwards?!?!

Projects

Unfortunately, I was not in the studio AT ALL this weekend. But I did work on quite a few projects around the yard so at least I was productive.

Remember the chairs I started working on a while back? Here's the before pics.

Before

And two of them are now finished. Here's Saturday's project after.

After

Pricilla also got her bi-annual face lift so she seems much happier.

Happy Flamingo

Today is being spent as a transporter for my mom for her colonoscopy and perhaps, after I return home, I'll be able to spend some time working on something in here?

AAANNNNDDDD DONE!

One day. One four hour block actually to quilt the t-shirt quilt. Since I was on such a roll, I went ahead and bound the quilt as well. Only three more steps to go: Remove stray threads in the binding. Tack down the collar of the ref shirt in the middle. Bill it.

Before the binding could be added, the pieces for the Quilt Squad were laying all over the return on the machine used for binding. Knowing the quilt size and how things get thrown around, the Quilt Squad needed to be finished. Or, at least, the pieces needed to be added. Here it is prior to stitching around everything.

The Quilt Squad

Mowing the lawn is in the future for this afternoon. The dew fell pretty heavy last night which gives me the opportunity to do a few things in the studio beforehand.

Yeah Superior!

Superior threads are primarily used in the studio. I piece (currently) with Aurafil, but am going to switch to superior So Fine! for piecing too once the Aurafil is depleted. Why? Cost. Why? Service. Why? Value.

When you have a small business, all factors mentioned above need to be taken into consideration. I've pieced with the So Fine! in the past and quite frankly, it does as well as the Aurafil, and per yard, the cost is ridiculously lower than Aurafil.

As you can tell, my thread arrived yesterday in the mail. Even off the spool (they were currently out of cones) the thread behaved well and I was able to FINALLY get the Tula quilt finished and off the frame.

On to the t-shirt quilt today.

Loaded and ready to go

I loaded it last night and am ready to rock n' roll today.

After loading the top and getting ready to go first thing this morning (changing needles, clean machine, winding bobbins, picking thread colors), I worked on my new little wall hanging project. Here's the first of four ladies.

The Fabric Stasher

Isn't she funny? The other three are just as cute, but this was the hardest of the four, and the directions said to tackle her first, so I did. It needs to be blanket stitched down yet, but despite what the directions say, I'm not going to do that until all four of them are onto the fabric.

And, I'm actually not going to blanket stitch them (I don't think). I'm thinking I'm going to do what I did on my Seasonal Silhouettes quilt and just free motion straight stitch everything down. It's a wall hanging. It's not going get much washing done to it. I can change out the thread colors easier (the pattern said to use just one color of thread when blanket stitching) and it sounds like more fun.

It's a crappy weather day so let's crank up the tunes and put some thread in the cotton.

HQ Inspiration Squad

I've received a few pics from Utah for the surprise we are building for the staff at Handi Quilter. I have to print those off first this morning to let them dry before transferring them to fabric to mail out to Washington for Jan to start getting them into what we are making. Lots of steps, huh?

I've decided to postpone row by row for this week. It would be so much fun to run around with my mom and get all the patterns/kits to build another rxr quilt, but the timing right now just isn't good.

Yesterday, despite being busy outside while waiting for bug man to come, I did manage to work on these sporadically. Before the day ended I was able to get them done. Just a little something to say I actually sewed.

Bowl Cozies

These are great for hot soup and cold ice cream bowls.

After these were finished I dug around in my 'bag of tricks' to find an Amy Bradley pattern in there Jim had purchased for me a few years back. Doing appliqué in the summer is fun since it doesn't require something hot laying on your lap. Not that it's been hot here; anything but actually. But the lighting is great in the summer and small pieces and placement sheets are more easily seen through.

It's called Quilt Squad and has four silly quilting ladies lined up with all the necessary things needed to build a quilt. I started transferring the individual pieces to fusible last night and will continue on with that this morning.

MAYBE my thread will show up today from Superior. Jim tried to track it down at the post office this morning with no luck. Apparently they were not yet done sorting through packages and didn't know if mine was in there. He has an actual run today so he can't go back in the hour they said it would take to go through everything. And my mail person doesn't show up until the middle of the afternoon which leaves me to work on the Amy Bradley piece until then. I really need to get this Tula quilt done!

Another Nice Day in Paradise

Jim and I were sitting out in front of the house (the front of a lake house is the side that faces the lake, not the side which is normally the front where people park and enter into the house) last night. Most everybody had went back to their "normal" lives downstate, or wherever they lived. It was quiet. There was a nice gentle breeze. Temps in the low 70's. Small waves lapping onto our rocks at the waters edge from a passing pontoon.

We said to one another, 'Why do we ever need to go on vacation when we live in this beautiful place?' And we don't go on vacations. First, with only one income, we can't really afford to, but moreover, why would we? The few long weekends we've had for Caleb's military stuff of late only left us wanting to be home again.

And with the beautiful day I had a beautiful amount of work to take care of outside. After finally showering again in the evening, I HAD to do some sewing, so the left over triangles from Morning Star were put into large blocks for pillow shams...or something.

Left Overs

I'll quilt these when I quilt the other top.

New Project

The blocks are into rows, but the rows aren't put together yet. But isn't this cool?

Morning Star

Katie gave me a Dream Big panel for my birthday last year. I've been looking, and looking, and looking some more for something out of the ordinary to do with the panel. I didn't want to just quilt it like everybody else has done.

Then I went to the Pieces of Thyme tent sale on Saturday, at my husbands suggestion (he's the BEST) and (yes, I know, I was there Friday too, but only on a mission trip rather then a fun buying trip) and found this pattern on sale! Two more panels later and this is what you get. I can't wait to dive into the quilting on this!

We were in and out all weekend so this is about all that was accomplished in here. I just got a call for a few quilts for customers to work on, so the project above will have to wait to be done. But it's going to be fun when I finally get into it.

And, I'm starting to research the rows I would like to do for this years Row by Row. I've selected 10 shops, all over the state, and mom has indicated she'd like to ride along Friday when I get six or seven of the ten obtained. I'll need kits for about half of the blocks/rows; maybe more depending on how much I can derive from my stash. I'll have to talk to Jim about the possibility of said adventure because I know we have other priorities around here to work on and spending coin on a fun thing isn't a priority right now.

T-Shirt Top Done!

I know this is a bad pic, but here is the finished top (sorta).

Adriannes Quilt Top

This occupied most of my afternoon. The morning was spent going over to Pieces in Thyme quilt shop for their annual tent sale. I really had to put my blinders on and only head to the section where I knew the fabric was I needed. I didn't want to tempt myself.

But my wonderful, considerate husband is taking me back over there this morning to actually see what she has to offer. Very exciting!!!!!!!

I have a decision to make, and it's a rather quick decision I need to get to in my head. Am I going to do row by row this year? I haven't done it the last two years, and I really miss it. It's fun running around to each of the quilt shops and deciding whether to just get the pattern, or actually get the whole kit for the pattern.

And I like the challenge. No, actually, I love the challenge. And I have all the resources to complete the quilt from start to finish. Here's the catch. This years' theme is: Taste the Experience. What a fun theme to work from and now to decide.

New Music

I was listening to Renaissance music yesterday on YouTube. The inclination probably grew from the episode of Gilmore Girls I watched at lunch. Do not judge me. I have to have something to watch while eating my sandwich. We all have our thing, but Renaissance music is not something I've ever listened to.

Anyway, it was a nice change and I did get a lot accomplished.

The first item was to try to get this 3D Ref shirt into the quilt somehow. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, because, quite frankly, the details are sketchy even to me since I tried so many things to make this work. In the end though, success was met and I continued on with rows 4-6. Row seven is up on the to-do list today since weather is again cooperating, quilt-wise.

The Ref Shirt mounted and ready to incorporate

Mom said something about coming over to get me and heading over to Pinconning to do some errands. I welcome any time with my mom so this will make my sewing day a little shorter than usual. Which is just fine with me since we don't get our moms forever.

A Little Something

Most of yesterday was spent in the yard, but after getting cleaned up and re-showered, I managed to get my new Angela Walters' Build a Quilt block #7 done before settling down for the night.

At least a little something here in the studio was played with.

Today is starting out cloudy and rain is expected later which provides the nearly perfect reason to stay inside and continue on with the t-shirt top.

And as much as I hate to keep mentioning the weather, let me explain before you judge.

In Michigan, we receive about 170 good days a year to go outside; seriously, that's our average up here. It's a little higher downstate, but in the norther portion we have a slightly shorter growing season and much more adverse weather. Let's put it this way, yesterday morning, I had heat on in the house, because the morning temp was 42 degrees.

When a day in the mid 70's with sunshine presents itself you. go. outside.

If you don't go outside and do something, anything, you're either sick, have a  funeral to attend, or are just plain...well...you know.

I don't have a normal "job" to punch a clock for, so I have the freedom to pick the days I want to "work" on customer quilts. And, I have the freedom to take advantage of the [few] nice weather days our state hands us. During the winter months the blog is mostly quilting, because after about mid-October, the thought of going out in wind, rain, snow, and mud isn't very appealing.

So, now you know about my weather discussions of late.

Something Finished

Something was actually finished in the studio yesterday. The Kaleidoscope quilt is done. It was buried under the Long Time Gone and Selvedge tops on the guest bed downstairs.

Kaleidoscope Quilt

Cleaning up the studio was first on the list before tackling anything else. Once completed, work on the t-shirt sashing strips commenced. Here's where yesterday ended.

T-Shirt top in progress

See the black shirt on the right about in the middle of the pic? I have to figure out what to do with it. It needs to be included into the top and unlike all the other shirts, this one is three dimensional. I think if I sash it on three of the sides, and then build a...nope, never mind, that won't work. I'd have to sew a top sashing on and with the collar sticking out it's not possible without losing some of the shirt.

Second idea: Mount it onto a large piece of the sashing fabric and extend the top portion near the collar enough to join the block above. This will let the collar lay onto it to hand tack down after the quilting is done. It's going to add a lot of bulk (six layers to quilt into), but DW is pretty hardy and can probably get through it okay. I may have to change to a ball-point needle once I get to that shirt. I'll have to think more on this while I am on the lawn mower later today.

Yep, a nice day in store meaning more outside time then inside time today. See, this is why I like winter. Quilting in the summer is hard when you have a large yard and a lake. Not to mention a house/property that was neglected for six years to nurse back to health.

It's a Monday

Wedding festivities are complete and here's the happy couple.

Caleb and Lia tie the knot

It's a rainy, dreary day outside which is perfect! Perfect for sewing and not eating into my guilty conscious about not being outdoors doing something in the yard.

Although we had a wedding, and a beautiful weekend with the weather, I was still able to squeeze in some time on the machines and complete the Selvedge Top!

Selvedge Top

And, before leaving for the wedding, we had a few hours left in the morning for me to be able to finish the Long Time Gone top too!

Long Time Gone

And now I wait to order thread so the Tula top can be worked some more.

I have a few more UFO's/WIP's to get to today on the little machines and will be working in that direction. The Kaleidoscope quilt needs to be bound and the t-shirt quilt for my neighbor is in progress. It's my goal to get some more things wrapped up so I can start something new soon.

Getting Ready for the Wedding

Our youngest son is getting married Friday afternoon. Most of yesterday morning was spent pressing out clothes and gathering items for him still here at the house. (He's in the military and is stationed in Washington state). But throughout the day I made this back pack bag.

Something to bum around town with over the summer

And, because it was a nicer-ish day out, some yard work had to happen (of course).

Today is gloomy. A nail appointment is scheduled for this afternoon, so studio time this morning gets to happen. Yeah!

Stupid Nice Weather

It's hard to stay indoors when the weather is sunny, especially when we have such a short "nice" season here in northern Michigan. Temps were very cool but it wasn't raining and yard work is never ending.

And then there were parent visits. Dad was here Saturday. We were at moms yesterday afternoon.

And, we were on the phone with the "little" kids most of Saturday morning and yesterday evening preparing for their exchange of vows this coming Friday.

But a few selvedge blocks were slipped in here and there just so I wouldn't go out of my mind.

Some of the selvedge blocks for the eighth border

Today is much of the same. Sunny skies, and a nice breeze, but again, cooler temps. Yard work this morning and then an electrician coming this afternoon.

DW needs to have his own breaker. The whole studio is on one 15-amp to include the pump down at the lake for our irrigation system. When the pump is fired up, it blows the breaker. And, when the iron is heating, all the lights on the sewing machines dim. Not cool!

So a very stuttered day today in here.