Lucky Quilt Finished

Two years ago I designed a word phrase quilt using the Simple Shapes Alphabet by Laura Hartrich. I cut and sewed all of the letters while at my first Sewtopia in New Orleans, using Drunkard's Path templates by Jen Carlton Baily.  The top was finished soon after returning home, but remained only a top until last month, despite being on two UFO lists!  Finally I got a backing and binding picked out and my sister quilted it on her longarm machine.  It has sat a month waiting for me to sew up some missed spots when attaching the binding, which I accomplished today.  Finished at last!  My husband held it up for pics today in the backyard. 

So happy with the quilting design and texture it gives the quilt. At Superbuzzy, I chose a solid Kona Berry for the binding, and found a great print for the backing--on sale!

All the colors of the quilt top seemed to be here...

..with my favorite--tea--as the theme.   I love this Cream and Sugar, Tea for Two Windham fabric and have lots of cutoffs from the quilt to play with later. I'm thinking a hot pad or mitt would be really fun and I have plenty of InsulBrite. 

I got a  photo of my Camellia bloom this year.  Our avocado tree is loaded with fruit as well--I counted 19 avocados just on one half of our dwarf tree.  It is not likely we will get freezing weather in our area, but we watch for it just the same--lows are predicted in the 40s this week.  Many many acres nearby are planted in strawberries, citrus, and nursery stock and frost and rain are dreaded around here!  There is still snow in the nearby mountains and our grandsons got to play in it today when their parents took them to Rose Valley in the Los Padres National Forest, about an hour's drive. 

 

 Their first snowman!  They had a great time playing. 

 I did a lot more sewing today and will show that tomorrow for Design Wall Monday. 

Holiday Times Keeping Me Busy!

Well, gosh, didn't mean to disappear for so long.  It's been sweatshop sewing, decorating, and plenty of work and family of late.  I did get the binding on my Lucky quilt in time to share at the guild meeting, but haven't gotten any better photos.  You can see the random box quilting my sister Kathy did pretty well here.  I think it looks great and hope to get some outdoor photos sometime this week.

 Kathy also quilted this lap size Sliced Cake (a la Canoe Ridge Quilting).

I finished this top during my Three for March self-challenge.  Kathy hooked up the longarm's computer to quilt this design she named "Annie's BS Swirl", lol.  I haven't had a chance to make binding for it yet.  This is a fun method for using lots of prints.

There was also a lot of work on the star blocks for Barb's Oh My Stars swap.  

I saw a hint on Instagram about cutting apart flying geese a fast way.  It worked really well.  There are now 17 completed blocks and the remaining ones in various stages of completion.  I want to get these in the mail right after Christmas.  

Speaking of Christmas, decorating was finally accomplished Saturday, only a week after we got our tree, sheesh. 

Very happy to have the tree skirt I finished for the Fair now under the tree.   

A few vignettes on the kitchen cupboard end shelf.  

 

And my latest cross-stitch staged on my Grandma's recipe box.  This was a free Lizzie Kate design I jazzed up with a border, extra cookies, and my own color scheme for the cup.  

I posted this guy on IG, noting his pensive look while resting up for the big night with Santa :).

There will be lots more sewing this week, I have a Secret Santa gift to finish up, plan to sew some fabric wrapping bags, and a couple of scarves.  Oh, and do some Christmas shopping....

Hope everyone is taking time to enjoy the season and plans with family and friends.  

Design Wall Monday--Thanksgiving and Quilting

It's Design Wall Monday again, see more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog.  I have several things to show for the long holiday weekend's work.

First, Thanksgiving prep meant moving a lot of my sewing room stuff into the garage so we could make room for moving furniture to extend the dining tables.  My husband took the opportunity--and unusually cold and rainy weather in SoCalif--to use our fireplace.  

Usually my cutting table is directly in front of the hearth and hides the pretty ginkgo leaf firescreen I got as a gift one Christmas.  We have had piles of logs from an ornamental pear tree that the drought killed years ago--Grant fed the fire all day with them and it made him very happy :)  We were only 11 for dinner and there was plenty of everything, with lots of leftovers!  It was a lovely time together and we got a visit from the grands and their folks later. 

Friday morning I partially reassembled my sewing room to work on two projects, the Oh My Stars swap blocks from the fabrics I showed last post, and the ongoing background fabrics for Jen Kingwell's Dreamweaver quilt for our son and new daughter-in-law.  I got seven more rows sewn together.

 That's another 140 squares completed....and another 140 to go.  I pulled out the project bin and applique template instructions and will need to confer further with the 6-month-weds about fabric choices in the near future.  Then I got to work on the swap blocks.

I used my GO cutter for the 2.5" red print squares and cut the remaining pieces.  The flying geese were made the four-at-a-time way and then trimmed to final dimension.  In this photo the muslin background looks pink, for some reason...

...this photo has truer colors.  I'll need to keep being careful with the seam allowances to keep the 1/4" from the points, but I am really pleased with the fabric choices.

I'll have another quilt to share next time--my sister quilted my Lucky word quilt top for me today!  We got it on the frame together and she finished it tonight.  Here's a sneak peak...

So excited--here's how it last looked...two years ago after Sewtopia New Orleans in November 2017.

More Sewtopia NOLA

My sister joked that we flew 2000 miles to keep sweatshop hours, sewing all day and night at Sewtopia, but we enjoyed every minute of it.  Kathy, the speed sewist, made four quilt tops and completely finished two quilts!  I think she was the only one with that number, but there were many finished bags, blocks, quilt tops, and new projects going on all around us.  Our tablemates were our Guild president Tisha and her mom.  It was nice to have familiar faces but of course we met lots of other quilters.  Me, I cut and sewed, cut and sewed, and used two design walls to help me with my word quilt.  

Lots of color choices were made, plenty of switching around as well, as the quilt grew.  The letters were made from Laura Hartrich's Simple Shapes Alphabet, although I changed the dot of the "i" to a curved block instead of plain square. I used a 4" finished Drunkard's path template set from Jen Carlton Baily for my design.  The curves required a few pins but were not too difficult to sew at that size.  Many attendees were interested in my project and stopped by to ask questions and take photos.  Jen herself said she wanted to make a word quilt, and in her free moments as part of the staff, she sat down to design.  I fed her squirrel project by giving her some cat fabric:)

Lots of people signed up for a secret swap project.  The staff swapped them overnight and there were lots of squeals of delight the next morning as we found them by our sewing machines.  Too funny, my sister found her own swap item on her machine, which was quickly switched by staff.  Here's the beautiful item I received, full of goodies, made by Nela.

Gorgeous zip bag with the pineapples and polka dot lining.  The gnome fabric was made into a bag the items were in.

Tisha's mom's item came in this sewn paper wrap.  Very clever.  The girl who got my item seemed to like it; the house blocks runner I showed in progress a couple of posts ago.

 

Simple straight line quilting to keep it modern. 

I had fun with the back with this fabric from stash.  The runner looks crooked in this late-night-thrown-on-the-floor shot, but wasn't!  My word quilt grew slowly, letter by letter. I enjoyed choosing all the different colors. Many of the fabrics were from a Dimples charm stack of every color that I won at Superbuzzy a few years ago. 

In progress shot...with Tisha's intricate block project sharing the design wall.  Having the design wall was so great.  Wish I had room for one at home.  One gal the next table over couldn't wait to see what came next and helped me make decisions about the clover I designed to add. I begged additional greens from other attendees.

 It came out looking great, with her help.

By the noon witching hour on the final day, I had managed to sew all the pieces for the letters, clover and stars, and sewed over half the individual rows together.  I stacked and rolled them up for transport, pinning the loose rows and the clover pieces together in order.  They made it just fine in the luggage.  Last Sunday I sewed the rows together, then made the final decisions for the missing section.  Sew, press, sew press...

Hooray, a finished top!  The top is 60x76".  I am pleased with how it turned out and would make another word quilt with this simple alphabet.   What phrase would you make?