Midnight Posies Block 7 now available

Wow, it is nearly August and I can hardly believe how quickly each month slips away. But its time to release Block #7 for my free BOM Midnight Posies. This block starts the 3rd row of the quilt and steps up the difficulty of the blocks just a little by adding some additional techniques.

The Carnation Block adds some bold red and gold to the quilt and introduces “Quick Corners” and “Flying Geese”. Both techniques are super easy and accurate. If you want to keep the carnation all red, choose a 3rd shade of dark red for center instead of the gold. It will really look like a carnation then. Or you might want a pink carnation and choose more pink or magenta colors for your carnation. Whatever you choose it will be gorgeous.

This simple block is essentially a nine-patch, and goes together very fast. Watch your color placement! As in all my blocks, it is the color placement and contrast which makes these blocks look more complicated than they actually are.

You can download the PDF pattern for this block here . I hope you enjoy this next block in the series. And as always, I would love to see your pictures!!!!

Back From Texas Retreat

I spent a wonderful weekend at the Cabin Quilter’s Retreat in Houston last weekend. What a wonderful place! Great new friends, great old friends (well, not THAT old) and wonderful eats, conversation and quilting. If you can still get a date, the retreats at the Cabin Quilter’s Retreat are first class. I worked on a set of swap blocks while I was there and put them up on the design wall behind me. It was fun the see the pattern emerge as I added more and more blocks to the wall.

One Afternoon the neighborhood Peacocks stopped by for a minute to munch on Four O’Clock seeds by the front door. This lovely lady posed for me as she was cooling off in the shade. I kept hoping I would see a flamingo but this is as close as it got to a tropical bird!

Now I am off to Ohio to visit with my dad for 2 weeks and get some serious work done on my next pattern. Thanks for coming along for a visit.

Beach Birdies Quilt

UPDATE: Kits are available for this quilt at Quilting Bits & Pieces in Eudora, KS. There are only a few left, so you probably better call them if you want one!

I finished the quilt top for the Beach Birdies panels and fabric (by Moda) and delivered it to the quilt shop yesterday. After a few glitches with the borders I finally got it all together. I used a narrow inner border with green and black to echo the dropped shadows and then added a Finney Flap and a 6” large border with Kaffe fabric.

I took this pic with my phone since I didn’t have my camera with me at the shop last night. I’ll post a better picture next week when I can get back to the shop with my camera.

What is a Finney Flap you ask? It is a little 1/4” flange, like piping only without the cording inside, between the inner and outer borders. You can see it better in this close-up.

It will be a while before I quilt it since it will hang in the shop for a while. I just love the Christmas Flamingos. I only had a few of the fabrics from this line to work with so I added a few of my own fabrics from my stash. I love using black pimatex. It is thin but has a high thread count. Much nicer than Kona black in my opinion. Here are the 4 fabrics I had from the Fabric line in addition to the panel.

I am patterning the design now and will have it available for sale next week. If you would like the pattern It will be available for download (email) for $5.00 or a print version (snail mail) for $8.00. I will only offer the pattern as long as the fabric is available. Let me know if you are interested.

I am working on a tote bag next and will post a pic as soon as I get that done. This has been so fun! Have a great Holiday Weekend.

Midnight Posies Block 6

I love the beginning of each new month – it means I get to post another new block for the Midnight Posies BOM! This month’s block is called the Star Flower Block. It is based on a simple friendship star with an extra blue violet triangle in each corner. It reminds me of a larkspur, the July flower of the month!

You can download the PDF instructions here.

You now have the patterns for the first two complete rows of the quilt. If you want to start assembling the blocks. . . . I know, I get excited and can’t wait to see how they look together . . . here are the directions for the sashing! You will want to save these instructions for later if you wish to continue assembling the quilt as you go. I will post complete sashing and border instructions along with the last block so you won’t miss out once all the blocks are made. Hope you enjoy this next installment of our BOM.

Cutting List for Sashing
Cut (5) 2” strips of black (WOF) for sashing
Cut (5) 5 ½” strips of black (WOF) for borders
• From the sashing strips, cut eight (8) pieces that are 9 ½” long. You will use these to join
the blocks together into rows.
• Make four rows of blocks with three blocks
in each row. Arrange the blocks as shown in
the illustration or create your own arrangement.
• From the remaining sashing strips cut three
(3) strips that are 30 ½” long. You will use
these to join the rows together.
• Press all sashing away from the blocks.

Farwell to Wilma

This was a sad day.  My beloved gray cat  -- Wilma -- who has been my companion and pet for 14 years died today from lung cancer.

   Wilma and Betty are sisters and have been close since I got them as kittens.  It was hard to watch my big lovable kitty drop from 13 lbs to 8 lbs over the past month, and see your lustrous gray coat look shabby.  When she quit eating a few days ago and noticed her breathing was becoming more labored I knew something was very wrong.

I took her to the vet today, and after seeing her x-ray showing massive lung cancer I made the decision to have her put to sleep.  I held her and petted her till the end and kissed her good-bye.  Betty is still around and in good health, but is sitting on my feet while I write this.  I think she knows her sister is gone, and misses her already.

Thanks for sharing this sad moment with me as I mourn the passing of my little furry friend.

Purple Flutterbye Auction Mini

After making the first butterfly quilt I had blocks left over so I made this little cutie for the guild mini auction.  For some reason I had a lot of purple butterflies left so I framed them in various shades of purple but used a blue binding to bring out the blue a bit.  I added tiny black piping around the border just to accent the black in the blocks and the sashing.  It was auctioned off today. . . will have to find out who bought it and what it sold for.  I still have 8 more butterflies left. . . yes most of them are purple!!  hehehe. . . so I will make one more mini, only this one I will keep.  You can’t see it well in this picture, but I did tiny little McTavishing inside each block, and quilted tiny little feather antennae for each butterfly.  You can see details if you click on some of the photos below.

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UFO Sewing day

What a fun day! Three of my quilt friends came over today to sew. We try to meet every month to work on UFO's, but we also love to visit and catch up, do some show and tell, and of course, EAT! I made a big chicken salad and the other girls brought melons and peach crisp. YUM

This is the project I worked on today. These fun panels are Christmas Flamingo’s. I am putting together a top as a show sample and today I was working on figuring out connectors between all the blocks. I framed them all with black and prints, then a second white frame. They are still on my quilt wall so I will try and finish this tomorrow. It is sort of a challenge since I am making it up as I go along! I’ll post a “finished” picture when I am done.

The other fun thing we did today was go to the Ottawa Piece Maker’s Quilt Show! (Ottawa, KS not Canada). I had 8 quilts in the show, but there were lots of gorgeous quilts there. Here are pictures of the quilts I had in the show.

“Monet Monet” A Bargello Quilt I made in a class with Tony Munoz	“Cats in Candy Land” The blocks are from Claire’s Cats
Color Wheel Quilt – I designed and made this quilt as a teaching tool for my color class	Flamingo Calendar Quilt from a wonderful fun swap
Halloween Bag O Blocks Quilt	In Da Go Sampler Swap Quilt
Vintage Moments Quilt done in 1930’s reproduction fabrics	Winding Ways Quilt made from a John Flynn precut kit.

What a great day. . .Good friends, good food, good fun, and a great quilt show. Ahhhhh, what more could a girl want?

Ok. . . .Tomorrow I will post the next block in the Midnight Posies BOM. There’s something to look forward to!

Flutterby Mini Quilt

I have had these little 4 " blocks in my UFO drawer for about 3 years and finally got them out and made a little quilt. I loved the blocks but never had an incentive to get them put together. I am in a Mini Spring Blooms Quilt Swap sponsored by Quilting Bloggers and thought of these sweeties and pulled them out. I quilted it on my regular machine, not confident enough yet to do that tiny McTavishing on my long arm.

Now that is is done. . . .I want to keep it instead of sending it off to an unknown person in Michigan!!! Of course I will be getting one in the mail in return, but it just isn't the same as making it myself and loving it! LOL When I get my mini from my mystery partner, I will post a picture. Off in the mail this one goes today!

Life's a Beach

I am having great fun making beach blocks for a swap I am in. These pictorial blocks are so fun and since I do fusible machine applique, they are also pretty fast. The first set of blocks is a light house. I found this pattern online as an embroidery (noun not a verb) pattern and fell in love with it. I adapted it a bit for applique and here is the resulting block.

The second set of blocks are jelly fish. This was from a coloring page I found on the web. It was just so cute. I often find coloring pages great sources for applique or embroidery. I love to do the machine button hole stitch on the edges and use different color threads to realy enhance the pictures and add details.

I found this background fabric in several colors on my recent camping vacation and thought the jellyfish would love swimming around in this swirly water. You can't really see in the picture, but I stitched the pieces down with variagated gold metalic thread! I wasn not sure if it would work but I increased the tension on the bottom thread and decreased the tension on the top (metalic) thread. Then I used a Metalic needle (it has a bigger hole so the thread doesn't shred) and so far, not a single broken thread. It works great!

The last block is one of my favorites. I call it Flamingo in a hurricane. Now I really didn't intend it to be a hurricane, but when I positioned the palm tree and leaves on the block, it looked like it was in a big wind.

Then i realized that the flamingo was too big to stand in the water -- I didn't want him standing on the beach sand -- so I added a puddle for him to stand in and added some ripples around his legs with blue thread. I think I will add some more so it looks more realistic. I pieced and appliqued the background (sky, water, sand) then machine appliqued all the elements on top. The flamingo legs are satin stitch in orange thread with a little extra wide thread play at the knobby knees.

My big tip for machine applique. . . increase bobbin tension and use a stabilizer. My stabilizer of choice. . . . wax paper! Its cheap, easy to get just the right size, and it slides around easily on the machine bed or table making it easy to get around corners or curves. Also, a knee lifter on my machine is the key to success, as i can keep my hands on the work and my knee lifts the presser foot when I need to pivot. If you need a thicker stabilizer. . . use 2 sheets of wax paper. It pulls off when you are done really easily! What fun this was to do!!

Now that my blocks are nearly done I am going to load a charity quilt top on my new long arm, it will be the first REAL quilt I will do on my new machine. I have been practicing on scrap fabric and muslin, now its time for the real deal. I think I will do loopy stars or swirls. I have been practicing both of those. Wish me luck!! I'll post pics of the finished quilt when I get it done.

My New Toy!

I finally realized one more of my professional quilting goals this week. I purchased a long arm quilting machine. Technically it would be called a mid-arm, HQ16 with the new professional studio frame. I bought the 12' table but only set up 8' so it would fit in my studio. Since I mostly do smaller quilts this is a great size for me and will work just fine as I am learning. Of course it meant I had to clean up my studio and get rid of all the junk! That alone made it worth it. I finally parted with stuff I have been hauling around for decades which I really do not need or want. I bet you have a pile or two of that stuff in your house too! :-)
I had to move my book shelves and get rid of my rocking chair and book nook corner in my studio to fit in the frame, but the rug works great to cushion my feet when I am standing at the frame. My studio is long and narrow 24' x 9' so there wasn't room to put it on one of the end walls. This way I can get behind it to use the laser and pantos with the rear handles. I really wish I could get wheels for it so I can move it around as I need to, but my floor is cement (under the vinyl) and not particularly flat!

I am still adjusting the height, and may have to lower it a bit once I get more used to what works for me. Luckily the frame is easy to adjust. I have signed up for some classes and am watching some DVD's a friend lent me. I am also filling up sketch pad pages of squiggles and leaves and feathers while I train my eye and my hand. This really is fun. I find I am really jerky in my movements and have to really practice being smoother. I sure would love to hear your suggestions and advice as I fly along the learning curve! Don't you just love new toys?!?!