Designing Woman

The 16 quilters in my Calendar Girls group decided to donate a quilt to the Sutter Hospital Breast Cancer Auction coming up this September. They do this every 3 years and receive over 300 quilts each time to raise funds for their cancer center. We call this quilt "Hearts For Hope".  It's only a top at the moment but with the quilting we plan to add, we hope it raises a good bit for their cause.

Judy's UFO Challenge has actually gotten me to finish 3 quilts this year and I intend to keep it up. She picked #4 for April and this is the top that awaits me. . . . . I love this quilt which was a mystery class I took three years ago. I want to quilt it with multi-colored, variegated thread, maybe feathers or some other wonderful pattern but I'm just not sure I'm good enough to do it justice. Think I should pay a long-armer to do it for me?

Check out what everyone else has on their design walls  HERE, on Judy's wonderful blog!

Stash Report April 3

I bought fabric this week. Plain white to do some redwork embroidery. Yes, I have a ton of white fabric but I don't have very big cuts of it and I want all the redwork on the exact same background--you understand. . . Here's one block I made so far.

So, a yard of that and a yard and a half of the background for the Civil War fabric I'm using for the mystery retreat in June--decided to make it larger than planned. I cut leaves for my appliqued borders and cut the other 2 sides of the CW quilt so I used about 1 3/4 yards for that. Not bad for me!

Bought this week: 2 1/2
Used this week: 1 3/4
Bought this year: 66.25
Used this year: 55
Total busted: -11.25

Finished!!

Three for three! I've finished my 3rd UFO Challenge project in as many months! If you know me, this is totally unexpected! I'm the one with 2 stacks

of finished tops never to be heard from again! Yet,

Judy's encouragement has some sort of magic effect on me and I'm actually finishing projects!

I loved this quilt top, begun in 2008 at a "Strip Club" (tee-hee) in Sacramento. Why didn't I finish it? Same reason as always: I hate to pin! Love to piece, love to quilt, love to hand stitch binding, hate to pin! And another thing I did that is astonishing: I marked this quilt before I quilted it! I don't like to mark (takes too much time for a peddle-to-the-metal quilter like me--that, and the fact that I've always had trouble "coloring inside the lines") so I'd rather just wing it with free-motion quilting. Here's a little detail of my "fancy" quilting for this quilt though:

Once again, thanks to Judy for the support! (Peer pressure from the other fabulous quilters on Judy's blog doesn't hurt either!)

Designs Galore!

I've had quite a bit of time to quilt this week! With all the rain we've had (over double normal for the month of March and there's lots of flooding) I'd rather be in than out so it's been perfect.

I did some hand-applique on my DH's Civil War quilt borders. . .

I also started another hand-applique project:

They're not sewn down yet but the freezer paper/starch method I love has them all ready to be.

And this beautiful stack of Civil War fabric (took me a while but I'm hooked on the colors and 'flavor' of it) are for a June Mystery Retreat my quilting buddies and I will be going to.

Check out what everyone else has on THEIR design walls over at Judy's Blog.

Stash Report March 27

As I mentioned last week, my quilt guild's quilt show was last weekend and like a good little quilter, I supported our vendors. I'm signed up for our annual mystery retreat in northern California and found some lovely Civil War prints just right for it. Aren't they pretty?!

But I did work on 3 projects that used a total of 1 1/2 yards so I wasn't all bad. Two were applique projects which used tiny pieces but I did have fun with my new ruler gadget and used up a Charm Pack plus borders.

Fabric added this week: 8.25

Fabric used this week: 1.5

Fabric added YTD: 63.75

Fabric used YTD: 53.25

Total: -10.50

Go on over to Judy's Blog and see how everyone else's done this week?

New gadget!

I bought a new ruler-gadget at our quilt show yesterday and tried it out today. It's the Lil' Twister ruler and here's my progression through the process:

You take 5" squares (perfect for charm packs of which I have many!) and make 9-patches out of them.

Add a 3" frame around them making a 14" block.

You take this little 3 1/2' Lil' Twister ruler and lining up the lines on the ruler with the seams you've just sewn, slice up the nice little blocks leaving this behind:

But what you get are these cute 12 1/2" pinwheel blocks that would make a lovely baby quilt, which is what I'm making this for--

You might think there's a lot of waste but you can cut the remaining scraps into 2 1/2" squares. I used 36, 5" squares for this quilt center so have 36, 2 1/2" squares to use for the border or whatever. They also make a larger one of these rulers to use with "layer cake" charms. I think I might buy one!

Oh, and I spent 2 1/2 hours on this project. I plan to add sashing and borders and am thinking about making it Minkee!

Stash Report March 20

We had a terrific storm last night and our electricity has been out until now so I couldn't post!

As I reported last week, my quilt guild's quilt show was this weekend. Since I won't be shopping until later today, I have ZERO additional fabric for this week! However, we are encouraged to "make our vendors happy" so we do like to buy from them and I intend to comply.

I quilted my UFO, completed by BOM and prepared applique leaves for my Civil War quilt so didn't use much fabric--only 1/4 yard for the binding for my UFO and 1/4 for the leaves. I don't use a double binding, only single, cutting 1 1/4" strips. I learned that in a Darlene Zimmerman finishing class. Most of my quilts are for show and won't get a lot of use so why struggle with double binding? Of course, if it's for a college kid or a baby or a quilt that will get a LOT of use and washing, double it up. Otherwise, save your fabric and make it easy on yourself, especially if you're doing a curvy or wavy edge you'll be cutting on the bias!

Stats:

Fabric added this week: 0

Fabric used this week: .5

Fabric added year to date: 55.25

Fabric used year to date: 51.75

Totals: -3.75