Passion for By Annie Bags

Almost no quilting has happened this summer.

It’s been a, “By Annie,” production room in my studio.

These are challenging projects...my seam ripper got way too much action!

Most of the time it was the wrong thread in the bobbin that was the problem. I had trouble thinking about the two sides of the fabric being viewed.

I am so thrilled to have these done. The Running with Scissors has a little mat that helps protect all the tools when you close the case.

The Running with Scissors bag opens up to drape on the Take a Stand bag...this will be perfect for retreat sewing.

I had enough fabric to make a 24-inch sewing machine mat. I looked at a free pattern, "Lillyella Maker Mat," to get an idea of sizing for the front pocket.

My main fabric is a multi-color batik I bought on our Kauai vacation in February.

I also had enough of the quilted fabrics to make two more little bags.

Here's the tiny bit of quilting I did...

These two lap-sized tops are scraps from a sampler quilt I finished last fall. They will look great in my living room...when I get around to quilting them.

I am giving myself a double pat on the back for tackling another project that I've been wanting to make for soooo many years.

One of my favorite bloggers is Vicki from Colorways by Vicki Welsh. She saves her batting scraps and makes dog beds for shelters. Having critters that regularly need new beds...this inspired me to save my batting scraps. I had two garbage sacks full of scraps and my cat needed a bed. I used one and a half bags of scraps.

I bought a two-yard piece of precut decor fabric at Walmart. It was perfect for this project. Eli was in the studio when I was sewing...taking up space on one of the dog beds from Costco.

It took him a day to warm up to the new bed...which I put outside in the covered dog run. I have an old kitchen table outside that gives him a little space away from the dogs. The table backs up to a studio window in front of my desk.

I finished two more of the ornaments from the Bucilla ornament kit, "A Partridge in a Pear Tree."

This kit has recently been re-released. It's so nice that Plaid, the company that owns Bucilla, has re-released some of the older kits that were very popular.

We've had a steady stream of critters visit us...though I haven't had a camera on hand most of the time.

A  lovely moose cow...no calves with her.

And the butt of a big black bear leaving our parking pad. 

June Update

eek!!!

That saying about as you get older…time passes more quickly…

I think that is true. No other explanation for June passing at high speed. 

I failed to blog about handwork finishes for a few months. Here’s what I have accomplished.

I started the year tackling two Bucilla kits.

Nordic Christmas Ornaments. Such a fun kit! This kit was given to me by the Plaid Bucilla company. I am an ambassador for their Bucilla felt kits. 

I finished this 3-D Bucilla kit, Christmas Tree Centerpiece. This was a 2008 kit from my stash, 

This kit was a nice little challenge. I spent years looking a the instructions and thinking about making it. As usual…once I started making it…everything came together pretty easily.

I have started a couple of more Bucilla kits from my stash.

I making a set of ornaments, “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.” 

Three ornaments finished.

Love the little French flag on the last ornament.

Cross stitch projects are getting stitched too.

The 12 Days of Christmas is a theme running through my projects this year. 

I’m working on a set of patterns from 2000 , by Heart Strings, that where patiently waiting in my stash.

Partridge in a Pear Tree

Two Turtle Doves

Three French Hens

Four Colly Birds

Five Gold Rings

I have also finished two more Mill Hill Jim Shore Santa ornaments.

Santa with Lights and Santa in Chimney.

Just a quick post to share my handwork finishes. 

April and May Quilty Doings

 Wow! 

Time just zips by once we gain our daylight hours.

I ended April with a quilt retreat with my wonderful group, "Material Girls."

The big event at our April retreat was a mystery.

Here we all our with our finished blocks.

 Yes!!! We look at this gorgeous background while sewing at the B and B we rent for a long weekend. 

 

The main goal was for everyone to finish one block. Below is one block from everyone. 

It was a resounding sucess. We all love our blocks. This is a Debbie Caffrey mystery, "Lasagna."

Our homework is to finish setting the blocks by our next retreat in October. 

Now onto the projects I took to work on at retreat. 

First, I had these scrappy triangle sets left from a completed top...

I had a lot of them! They were made into strip sets.

The colors are so hard to get accurate in photos. 

Below are q    the setting fabrics I think I will use.

This French Braid freebie pattern is my inspiration. Notice how many more rows I have made than required. My big decision is whether to make two lap quilts or one biggie quilt. 

If you've been reading my blog for a while...you are betting on the biggie.

Our group is always trying to come up with challenges. Sandy proposed pineapple block quilts earlier in the year. There were only three of us really interested in doing it .

Below is Sandy's scrappy pineapple. She used a Creative Grids Pineapple Block ruler and liked it very much.

She did a second version...she has a lot of scraps!!!

Joyce used foundation papers from the Fat Quarter Shop. She also like this method.

I immediately thought of a pattern from a magazine I had saved for several years.

I love the border as much as the center pineapple blocks.

Of course....it is a big quilt...finishing at 94-inches square.

The designer, Cathy Wierzbicki, has a really neat method. These triangle blocks will get cut into four, 1 1/2 -strips, mixed up and pieced backwards to make a mock pineapple block.

It took me weeks to pick colors and it was a chore to cut everything. I made a dent in piecing the triangle blocks at the retreat. I probably won't work on this during the summer months but I am excited about this quilt.

My biggest accomplishment at retreat was finishing all the blocks for the, "Sew by Row," quilt designed by Lori Holt. It took me a little searching on Pinterest to come up with a different border idea than Lori's version.  

After retreat, finishing the, "Sew by Row," quilt was my main project. 

Then I turned to finishing up a freebie quilt from my scraps on a previous project.

It seemed like I had thousands of little HSTs. These are the clipped corners that finish at 1 3/4-inch.

Pinterest inspired me to make this block.

It is from this Missouri Star Quilt Company design.

There were no shortcuts in this pattern for putting together all these HSTs.

I got to a point where I just needed to finish it! I came up with a border finish I love. It is a 42-inch square. I still have many HSTs left and I do have another little quilt idea in my head.

My husband gets me to join him on a little outing in one of his planes every now and then. My favorite quick trip is lunch in Talkeetna. There is an adorable quilt shop there, the Patchwork Moose, and a great restaurant, Mountain High Pizza Pie, that I love to visit. Here's our parking spot for our Cessna 185 at the Talkeetna airport. This photo is from April 3rd so I'm sure all that snow is gone now.

I do have more non-quilting projects to share…maybe another post later in the week…but it is gardening season…hopefully it won’t be September before I post another blog.

March Recap

I had a nice walk today with the dogs and then grabbed my finished quilt for a little photo session with natural lighting. I love how the light blue in the quilt matches the blue sky. 

This is the pattern, "Eldorado Canyon," by Whirligig Designs. This was a kit I bought in 2015 at Hancock's of Paducah, the one and only time, I made it to the spring AQS quilt show in Paducah, Kentucky.

I am giving this quilt to one of my sons who just had a birthday. I tried so hard to have it done on time (March 25th) but I quilt at the pace of running turtle so it just didn't happen. 

The quilt went straight from the photo shoot to the laundry room sink for a nice hot soaking to deal with any possible bleeding dyes. The blocks were made with precut strips so I wasn't able to prewash all the fabrics. I expect all non-art quilts to get lots of use and be thrown in a washing machine. 

Despite really focusing on machine quilting, "Eldorado Canyon," I was also on task to complete the borders for three quilts I had pieced at Sew-Ins and retreats. 

 Last summer on a rainy day I went through my notebooks of saved internet and magazine patterns and pulled three to prep for retreats. 

The quilt below is a pattern from the December 1997, American Patchwork and Quilting Magazine.

I only used three fabrics for this quilt....just as it was designed. It is "Snow Stars," designed by Joy Hoffman. Tri-Recs templates were suggested for the design but I had a bloc-loc ruler for the triangle shapes in my stash of rulers...and it finally got used in making this design! My triangle units were perfect and this quilt top came together so sweetly

My second border finish was, "Autumn Elegance."  Hmmm....this quilt also has a connection to my trip to Paducah. I bought the border fabric from a vendor at the show. 

This pattern is a freebie on the internet, "Winter Elegance," by Jason Yenter of In The Beginning Fabrics. All the fabrics came from my stash. This photo is so washed out compared to the actual colors. When it is quilted it will get an outdoor photo shoot. 

I really like fancy or interesting borders...in case you didn't notice that after looking a the first three quilts. 

My third border finish, "Ice Castles," is also from a magazine, the February 2009 McCall's Quilting. I had many of the actual fabrics used in the magazine's version of the quilt in my stash. My first visit to a quilt shop after all the initial Covid shutdowns was to look for the white background fabric. Found the perfect piece of fabric...very surprising as batik backgrounds are so difficult to source sometimes. It has little gold to brownish colored irregular dots. There are some gold to brown tones in the blue batik fabrics, too.

Again...the colors in the photo look so washed out. This border required a template that came with the magazine...which of course I did not have...so I bought the issue on eBay just to avoid using my high school sophomore year of geometry. I still had to do a little extra math as I added a row...it needed a star in all four corners. After I made it bigger...I realized I could have made if one row smaller. Ha! Of course I didn't make it smaller but it is encouraging that I thought about it.

I have also been on task to work on cross stitching patterns I've collected over the years. The patten below came with the linen fabric, beads and some cute tiny buttons.  I found a piece of Nancy Halvorsen Christmas fabric in my stash that looks really nice with the floss colors. 

The pattern is, "Christmas Means More," from Heart in Hand Needleart, published in 2014. The stitching covers roughly a 4 x 6-inch area. Not sure how I will finish it...but I want it to stand next to a Jim Shore statue of the Grinch with Cindy Lou Who.

I really got hooked on cross stitch patterns by Pat Thode of Heartstings in the early 2000s. I made a darling series, "The 12 Days of Santa." That led me to buy several of her series and many of them came with fabric, cute embellishments, buttons and sometimes floss. 

Haven't touched them in at least 10 years.

So...I started the 12 Days of Christmas, released in 2000.

I finished Day 1 on my Kauai vacation.

I have this little nagging thought that I should try and finish one "Day," every month. So I became obsessed last week to finish Day 2.

My Bucilla felt kit stitching time in the evenings is getting squeezed by all these cross stitch projects so no finishes in that area but...

I could not resist purchasing a few felt kits from Merry Stockings with my birthday discount in the month of March.

The Easter kits really got me and I had to add a few Christmas ones. 

It is rare to get any photos of myself. There must have been a break in the college basketball game my husband was watching because he saw me on the back deck trying to get a good photo of my quilt and actually came outside to get one of me! 

When I showed my husband the finished quilt last night (binding was finally done) he said it was the best quilt I have ever made. He loved the colors! I was so surprised.

I'm still giving it to our son.