current project-Bonnie Blue Quilt Kit

This is my current piecing project. My Aunt Mary brought this kit to me when she came to visit for festival earlier this year. I had hoped to start working on it again sooner than today. Life has gotten in the way. There have been a lot of distractions and a few plan changes in the last couple of weeks. I found this very interesting fabric in about the middle of the kit. This fabric is reversible! It feels like a batik. There was no selvage, so I have no idea who made it.

I'm done with the cutting for the blocks. I'll cut the setting triangles, border and binding later. I haven't decided on a backing. I have cut over 121 print fabrics for this quilt. I'm adding 1 row to the pattern. Are there any thoughts on how long it will take me to get all the blocks pieced? I actually only need 100 pieced blocks for this quilt.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! and hybrid 12-06-2009

MERRY CHRISTMAS, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday with family and or friends. This afternoon our grandson will be here. Today starts his Christmas weekend with our family. We have a lot of plans for him while he is with us. There hasn't been much sewing done but, I've had another bloom. The plant is a hybrid and I've grown it from a seed. It's current name is seedling 12-06-2009 for the date of it's first bloom. Below is a picture of the 1st bloom taken indoors. Below is a picture of the 2nd bloom taken yesterday indoors.

Below is a picture of the 2nd bloom taken outdoors today.

day 6 quilt 6 and hybrid hybiscus bloom

This is the 6th day of Christmas decorating and the 6th quilt. The table cloth was given to me by my mom. She used it when I was was a kid at home. Below is the 2nd bloom of the last hybrid hybiscus that bloomed for me. It bloomed today.

2 projects finished -UFO

This project was a UFO. I was thinking about making it into a wall hanging for almost a year. The last day or so, I decided a pillow was a better idea. I added the yellow fabric to the embroidered section and machine quilted it. My quilter went out while I was quilting it. I finished it on my other machine. This is the back of the pillow.

Below is a detail shot of the quilt of our grandsons quilt. I used a bright yellow 100% poly shiny embroidery thread to quilt it. The thread worked out very well, it never broke while I was quilting. It looks great on the quilt. Yellow is our grandsons favorite color.

This is the finished quilt below. It's a fun quilt to make and I'm sure I'll be making this pattern again.

our grandsons quilt-a work in progress

I started this quilt earlier this year. I ended up making the quilt larger than I had planned. I'm trying to get it finished for Christmas. The block pattern is called patience. I revised the block and it's one of my favorite blocks/quilts to make. This is the 4th quilt I've made using this pieced block pattern.

day 5 quilt 5

I've taken a great from decorating and this is the 5th quilt. It's a log cabin tree skirt that I started in the 80's. It's machine pieced and hand quilted. It took me years to get it quilted.

9 to 4 quilt

I think it was back in 2002 that I learned about cutting blocks up and rearranging the pieces. The guild had a speaker come in and talk to us about it. I went home and cut up shoo-fly blocks and 9-patch blocks. My daughter-in-law, Christi and I call this the 9 to 4 block. You make 9-patches, cut them into 4-patches and rearrange the pieces. Below is the 9-patch I started with today. At 3:14 pm today I sat down at my sewing machine and started piecing. This is what I mean by cutting the block into a 4-patch.

This is just one way to rearrange the pieces.

At 5:04pm today the top was finished. This is quilt will be a lap quilt for my mother-in-law for Christmas. I like this pattern with 3 fabrics or more. It makes a great scrappy quilt. I have one in halloween prints and Christi has one in snowman prints.

garden update

Last Friday we had snow in the greater Houston area. The garden was severly damaged. We lost the purple hull peas, the peanuts, the bell pepper plants and a lot of the tomatoes. We're waiting to see what will happen with the rest of the tomatoes.