Ferris Wheel for DWM

Isn't this a cute block? It's called Ferris Wheel and I fell in love with it several years ago. I made 24 blocks then, probably, some other project beckoned and I put them and all their parts and pieces in a box on a shelf. You've done that before, right? Well, I found it the other say and decided to work on it again--I'm obviously in a 30s frame of mind lately.

Decided I needed to make 15 more blocks for a 7 x 9 layout. It's a tricky little block to put together and since I made the 6" version rather than the 12" version, it was pretty tedious but worth it!

I plan to put white sashing with 30s cornerstones in all different colors then do some applique treatment on the borders and probably have a wavy or scalloped border. It would make a darling baby quilt that way, wouldn't it? Perhaps for a future grandchild? (I understand from my 25 y/o daughter that I won't have to wait more than a couple of years. . !)

Don't forget to check out all the other beautiful projects on Judy's blog!

DW Monday--Baskets

Last week it looked like this--





Now it looks like THIS!!
These blocks will be going into a scrappy, 30s wallhanging-sized version of Tennessee Waltz, a class I'm taking with my quilting buddies later in the year.





Happy Quilting everyone!

UFO for April--complete!!

     Four for four!! I feel as good about finishing this quilt as I have for any I've made. This is the first quilt I've marked and quilted with contrasting machine quilting and been completely happy with--like happy enough to put it up for judging in my next quilt show! Formerly called "Michigan Highway", I renamed it "Starry Night".
     With the 18 different colors of stars, I also used 18 different colors of thread to quilt it with. A good friend of mine suggested that and I'm glad I took her advice.
     This was a quilt I made in a mystery class about 3 years ago. I was apprehensive about quilting it because I knew I wanted to use all these colors on the black and I've never found a way to mark on black (and have it wash out) that I was happy with. My friend suggested the Clover white marking pen. She also lent me 5 of her 300+ stencils (!) and that was the ticket! Worked great and the marks washed out beautifully.
  

Here's my #9 UFO for May. It consists of a pile of luxurious fabrics I bought at Britex in San Francisco a few months ago. Britex is a 5-story building just off Union Square in the heart of the city, has been there for decades and is one of the only true fabric stores for a hundred miles around. (No, Joann's doesn't count!) This is where the serious clothing-makers shop, ladies!

I found a fabulous jacket pattern at the road to California Quilt Show in January. Lorraine Torrence is a talented pattern designer who creates fashionable yet wearable garments. So I made a 'muslin' of her

"City Wraps" jacket using my neglected dress form and LOVED how it fit! Hopefully I can translate that into the brocade and silk for which I paid $85!

 Thank you, Judy, for encouraging me to finish 4 of my UFOs so far this year. I finally feel that my UFO pile has been depleted enough to start on some new projects! Check out Judy's website to see everyone else's accomplishments.

DWM: My "A-word" Love Affair

People talk about "the A-word" like its a scary ogre or a disease. I shared that opinion through 3 applique classes over the years where the method and outcome produced a less than desirable outcome. Then I found the freezer paper and starch method and an obsession was born! I'm currently working on 4 applique projects including a Bunny Hill Design BOM pictured here. This is the 4th block of a 10-month series and I'm going to love this fall-themed quilt.

At my quilt guild meeting last week, I signed up for a class in August. The quilt we'll be making is a wall-sized Tennessee Waltz which has 4 large blank areas for fancy quilting or a fussy-cut fabric. I've decided to use 30s fabrics and prepare 4, 'basket-of-fruit' applique blocks to put in the spaces instead. Besides the baskets that will measure 6" across, I need 8 leaves, and 8 each of a penny-sized circle, a quarter-sized circle and one in-between those sizes. By the time you read this, they will be cut out and ready to sew.

I'm also appliqueing 150 leaves on borders of the "Civil War Anniversary" quilt I'm making for my Civil War-buff DH commemorating the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War and making the "Flight of Fancy" pattern below.

If you think of applique as "the A-word", don't give up! There are a lot of different methods you can learn!
Don't miss at all the other fabulous projects by checking out Judy's blog!

Do I HAVE to tell you. . .?

Boy was I a bad girl this week. Fabric.com had a one-day sale earlier this week where some mighty lovely fabric was $3.95 and $4.95 a yard. With the price of fabric so high--and going higher--I thought I'd better embellish my stash a little and also buy some 3-yard pieces for backs. I added . . .  gulp . . . 29.5 yards. . . to my stash. Top this off with the fact that I only did applique this week (tiny, tiny pieces), and a binding, I can only add 1 yard to my 'used' column.

Fabric bought this week: 29.5
Fabric used this week: 1
Fabric bought this year: 109.5
Fabric used this year: 68
Total: -41.5

Finished 2 quilts this week!

I'm on a ROLL! Don't think I've ever finished 2 quilts in one week before--what a great feeling.

This will be my donation to the Sutter Breast Cancer Auction along with 8 other quilts, one each made by my Spring Chicks group. (They're not supposed to see this one until August when it's due but I can't help myself).

Below is the detail of the quilting that a longarm quilter from my quilt guild, Cathy Evans, added. I hope someone finds this quilt worthy of donating some serious money for this great cause.

The other quilt I finished is the April UFO that Judy challenged us to finish so I'm going to wait to post a photo of that until the 30th. I think you'll like it! If you want to see a 'before' photo of it (as a top) look at #4 in this post here.

Check out all the other accomplishments from Design Wall Monday on Judy's website.

And if you want to see a hilarious U-Tube video to prepare you for the Royal Nuptuals later this week, check this out!

"A day patched with quilting seldom unravels"

Don't you just love that quote? It's so true. I get in my sewing room and it's like going on vacation. Color! Patterns! Soft, cuddly stuff all around! Once I get my quilting 'fix' I can face the day, or, more often, once I'm done with things I HAVE to do, a respite in my sewing room is my reward.

I'm working on my April UFO here. The pins are still in it and you can see the markings I made with white pen. It's a top I finished a couple of years ago with 20 blocks in different rainbow colors of batiks on black. I envisioned quilting it with bright colors of thread to match the blocks but even though I've had quite a number of years of machine quilting practice, really wasn't sure I could pull it off.

With some encouragement from my "best machine-quilter" friend plus the fact that I bought a Janome bobbin case made especially for machine quilting that another friend told me was great, (and that totally fixed my tension problems!!) I have success! I'm very happy with the way it's turning out!

This UFO WILL be done by the end of the month and I'm going to try to take a photo of it that does it justice rather than the rather washed-out version you see here. You'll notice I used a black batting to keep any "bearding" that might occur from a white batting at bay.

Thanks to Judy for the encouragement to finish my big stack of UFOs! See what other quilters are working on at Judy's blog!