April Recap

Last Thursday was Breakfast Club. We worked with the ruler, "Hex and More," to make jewel shapes and little triangles. The class sample is on the left in purples. My version on the right. The block finishes at 20" x 23." The pattern is Sweetheart Table Topper, free and available at this link from Jaybird Quilts.

I had time in class to make two blocks since I had everything cut out the night before.

So nice when that happens. 

I was pretty remiss at getting photos of show and tell. There were only a few items but I did get the a photo of one called, "Sea Glass," designed by Talk of the Town.

It only took me one day to quilt my little 32" quilt made from the scraps of a larger quilt.

 Nothing fancy but it is done! I had so much fun playing with my scraps and piecing this. 

I plan to hang it in my sewing room

I have been getting back to my Bucilla kit projects. I finished a little airplane ornament.

It came with the Airplane Santa kit.

I waited for many years for a pilot Santa theme stocking from Bucilla. 

It was a quick and easy kit except for working around the cardboard that is placed in the plane body, wing and propeller.

We had a big windstorm last week. Lots of power surges and now the garbage disposal and cooktop downdraft are cranky and don't want to work.  Hoping hubby can fix them when he gets home. In the meantime...the wind uncovered some new trash for McKinley to play with on our walk.

She was kind enough to carry the rigid piece of black plastic all the way home. 

Logan wasn't too interested in it but he did take time to strike a pose for a photo. 

I have a quilt retreat coming up this weekend. I am going to work on kits from my Row by Row collection. A new summer of Row by Row designs is approaching. I need to ease my conscience so I feel good about buying more kits. 

Good Thing I Don't Have to Make A Living Quilting

I have been working for several weeks on my latest quilting design. 

I keep thinking of the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he races the turtle and the turtle says,

"Slow and steady wins the race." 

That appears to be my quilting motto.

I outlined the faux Hawaiian applique blocks with off-center circles.

Then I got stuck for a few days figuring out what to do next!

A little ruler work around the triangles is a good time to clear the mind.

Straight lines help curves pop...I think.

Then I was just down to figuring our how to fill in the background. 

I didn't want a really dense filler...

It seems a little counter intuitive to do a doodle meander with some flower-like

pops on a fabric with a busy look but that's what I did! 

I  like it. 

I like it a lot.

Meanwhile back at the ranch...

Below is what my garden beds looked like halfway through the summer.

 I am trying out the German method of Hugelkulter. 

Layers of organic matter...

starting with large pieces like logs and layering with smaller pieces like twigs and leaves.

Then garden soil. 

A quilting friend did her garden beds like this several years ago and it is a great success. 

By the end of the fall I was ready to add soil. 

Major dilemma about how to get it around the side of the house that is on a little hill. 

No way was I trying to fill these raised boxes with a wheel barrow and a million trips. 

So we bought a pallet of bagged garden soil from Lowe's and filled them in that way.

 One bag at a time...

but we were able to put four bags on our four wheeler 

and drive it from our driveway to the garden boxes. 

Once filled, I covered them with black plastic sheeting to kill any weed seed in my organic matter. 

That worked so well...I convinced my husband to get two more pallets of garden soil for the perennial bed I outlined with rock last fall.

Here's what the back yard looked like for our two weeks of fall weather...

Below is delivery day for the bags the first week of April. 

We found having some snow covering our rocked driveway edge

 gave us an ice slide to drop the bags from the bed of the pickup.

As I recall, there were 48 bags on each pallet.

A few days later with sunny skies and temps above freezing every night

 and we are almost done with our snow. 

It is all rather mushy and muddy right now. 

That part is really not fun with dogs!

I am so excited to have the major obstacle of soil positioned in my beds already. 

There was still a foot of snow in the perennial bed when we threw the bags in 

so I didn't open them up yet. 

That can wait. 

I need to figure out a way to keep the dogs out of the perennial bed before I open up all that dirt!

Back to needlework...

I finished a set of felt Christmas ornaments.

Ugly Christmas Sweaters.

Some are so ugly...they are cute. Like the Meowy Christmas sweater.

Oops...back to gardening!

Those bare root perennials I bought from Costco are growing.

The two freezers we have in our garage appear to be a great area to start plants. 

Three bleeding heart plants are looking fabulous. This plant loves Alaska!

I have several Astilbe sharing some of these yogurt containers. 

Going to need to transplant them to their own containers very soon.

Seeing new green life is always very exciting to me.

I almost shared a photo of every container.

Very anxious for the growing season.

Getting Back to Quilting

I am getting anxious for winter to end!

I had great success with these bare root plants from Costco when I put in my landscaping at our previous house. I should be able to manage getting a few perennials started for my huge landscaping plans for this summer.

Since I did some traveling earlier this month, I started a set of Americana Santa ornaments from my favorite cross stitch designer, Sandra Cozzolino. Patriotic Santa, Pioneer Santa, and Prairie Santa.

And my Hawaiian Applique quilt is finally loaded on the frame and getting stitched. I am using mono-filament thread. I think it is a Superior Threads product known as Monopoly. It is stitching perfectly so far. I am sew happy! 

I am working with two layers of Hobbs wool and it is working great too. I want a lot of puff in this design without a lot of weight as I expect to only use this quilt as a wall hanging. Previously I have used a layer of 80/20 cotton/poly with a layer of wool and it makes for a heavy quilt.

I'm so anxious to get off the computer and get back on my quilting machine.

March Happenings

We made a quick trip to Montgomery, Alabama, to see our son, Zack, get commissioned in the Air Force. He got to come back to Alaska for about 10 days before making his way to Texas where he will be at Sheppard Air Force Base for Undergraduate Pilot Training. He has a pilot slot with a California Air National Guard unit in Fresno where they fly F-15s. It will be some time before he gets through all training  programs.

I did look on the internet to see if there were any quilt shops in the Montgomery area but nothing looked like a place I would be interested in since I am strictly a batik quilter.

Breakfast Club is on Thursday so I have been a busy little sewer trying to use up the 480 HSTs I got from the Christmas themed quilt I made from the mystery quilt the group did in December.

I ordered more of the background fabric in December, anticipating some kind of design with these mini HSTs. I looked for months on Pinterest for an idea. I finally saw a star design that I enhanced by adding an outer ring of blocks to echo the star. I love it! It is 39-inches square so a nice little size for a wall hanging. 

I haven't gotten very far on my "Wring" cleaning. 

Hoping I get re-energized to finish it by the end of March.

"Wring" Cleaning

I've decided to create a new season for my part of the world, "Wring." 

A cross between Winter and Spring. Winter takes forever to leave and Spring is very brief. 

We awoke to a few inches of fresh snow this morning but it was nice and sunny today so it had a "Spring" feel in the air. I am tackling cleaning my studio which I expect to take all of March to finish with the rest of my activities.

I spent three days going through quilt magazines, store bought patterns and internet downloaded patterns and getting them organized into notebooks...which I will probably ignore just a much as my previous "basket" system. 

One can try!

And I went through all my finished tops that need quilting and paired them with backing fabrics. I to tend to stock up on wide backings when I catch a good sale. 

I have 27 quilt tops that need to be quilted! EEK!

The good news is only 8 tops are not officially paired with a backing but I do have some options if I don't find any on sale that I think would be a better match. Below is my stash of wide backing batiks. 

I spent all of yesterday organizing two baskets of 2 1/2 strips into these lovely boxes. Many were "sets" that I broke apart. It was very freeing for my artistic mind. I figured if I hadn't been compelled to create with them in the sets I bought them in...it was time to let go and make new sets for the future. All these strips are intact, width of the fabric. Haven't gone through my scraps of 2 1/2-inch strips. I need another big storage bin!

This is the 27th quilt top I finished last weekend. It was a kit but I did add some of my own strips for the braided sections. The kit was extremely heavy on black strips for the last third of each braid. They are supposed to mimic Fireweed which is a very pretty wild plant that is prevalent in Alaska. I took this photo at night...a bit on the bleak side. So much prettier in person.

As luck would have it...I just finished a new rayon batik top that is also the color of Fireweed! I love it when those little serendipitous events occur.

I went with my favorite quickie top pattern that I can make in two hours. No buttons or zippers. Very nice with jeans!

I had lots of bare walls in the house after all the Christmas decorations finally got taken down. Put my latest quilt to be finished in my entryway. Nice and bright!

Off to do more Wring cleaning...

Immersed in Quilt Projects

Several positive factors have come together in February to put me in a quilting state of mind. 

I am taking B-12 injections three times a week. 

The number of minutes of sunlight is increasing at least five minutes a day. 

Several snow days have kept me playing inside.

But mostly I have been working on quilting in the evenings instead of handwork in front of the television. I rarely spend time in  my studio in the evenings during the dark winter months. But I still have energy after dinner to head to my sewing studio and work on my projects. And I've been really enthused with my recent projects.

I finished piecing my challenge quilt for my Material Girls quilting group.

I am so thrilled with this top. This "inside" photo just doesn't show all the wonderful color in the background fabric but it really was my inspiration for this quilt. The fabric had been aging in my studio for at least 15 years. Hard to believe.

I used all my scraps to make this adorable little quit that is 31-inches square. 

I want to share our leap into new technology. 

We have officially cut our telephone land-line and cable television. We are now completely dependent on the internet. Scary but so easy and we are saving money.

We are using Roku stream sticks to live stream on Hulu and Amazon Prime. This little box replaced three different cables that went between our television set and the cable box. And the biggest item in the Roku box is the little remote control.

One cord to the power outlet and the rest is all generated through our home wireless network. It is magic. I am the technical goddess in our house and now that we don't have teenage boys living at home I was a bit worried about what snags I might run into but was able to install and get it all working in less than 15 minutes.

My husband is a constant channel surfer and he won't be able to do that with this set up as far as I can tell. I'm happy about that! I hardly ever watch TV with him because he is always changing the channel in the middle of what we're watching. He's either avoiding commercials or trying to actively watch two or three shows at once. We still probably won't agree on what to watch so we'll retreat to separate TVs most of the time.  

Quilt Retreat Sewing

My quilt retreat last weekend was SEW MUCH FUN!

Three nights and four days of nonstop sewing.

Typical me...I went with the king-sized version of this pattern so it was tough to find a space at the retreat large enough to layout all the blocks. I got the blocks sewn into rows but still have to add sashing between the rows and a piano key border. Not hard but time consuming at this size. 

I absolutely love how the Bali tiles look with a little triangular border around each. I ordered a fat quarter of Hoffman 1895s that matched the center applique designs. 

The quilt pattern is a freebie from the Hoffman website called, "Twinkle" 

I actually downsized the pattern...that rarely happens! But I plan to do some intensive quilting to enhance the Hawaiian applique look even though it is actually a print and not an actual applique. I'm hoping it makes a great wall hanging to compliment my tropical king-sized quilt!

The construction method led to a collection of mini-half square triangles.

I do love to play with those little triangles.

One idea for blocks.

Another block idea...I liked the spikes...reminded me of flower petals.

Then I tried setting them up as a border...nope...didn't thrill me. But I did think some kind of border that repeated the colors of the blocks would be a good thing.

A row of triangles works! Simple but a bit of a challenge to piece all those triangles. I am using Bonnie Hunter's ruler that allows me to cut the triangles from 2-inch strips with the long edge on the horizontal grain of the fabric and not the bias. 

All those little leftover HSTs are getting made into star blocks. I have a general idea for a layout but waiting until I get the main quilt done to see how much fabric I have left. I bought the background fabric over 10 years ago at a Kauai quilt shop. I have never seen it anywhere else so I know I can't get anymore. Another reason I decided to downsize the quilt design. I would have been cutting it close to make the quilt as originally designed.

I took this quilt to retreat hoping I would hand stitch the binding in the evenings but I just kept machine sewing until I couldn't keep my eyes open. It was definitely a weekend of working with bright colors. I find in the winter months I crave color.

The next quilt retreat is in early May and I need to have my Hawaiian applique quilt done. 

It is good to have a deadline. I have a quilt kit cut and ready to go for that retreat. It was a kit I didn't get to this time. So I am technically ahead in my preparation for the next retreat. Nice!