Swoon 4, 5 and 6

Three more Swoon blocks down and three more to go!

Block #4...
Block #5 is the rebel block. Got a little shot of aqua!
Block #6 is a little subdued...
And this was a little practice block for another project. Yes, I have something up my sleeve!

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I can Paper Piece!

I can Paper Piece! With no crying or swearing! On Wednesday I took a paper Piecing class from Marsha Bray. I've tried Paper Piecing in the past and was frustrated with the process. Marsha's method (that she learned from Judy Mathieson) requires no tearing out of paper and perfect coverage of your pieces every time.

We made 2 of these flower blocks in class and were instructed to make 2 more for homework to reinforce the technique. My 4 blocks completed...

Then I decided to try this block that I've had bookmarked for a while. You can find the free pattern here.
If you're in the St. Louis area and want to Paper Piece - take this class. Marsha teaches it at the Quilted Fox. I promise no crying or swearing! You'll thank me!

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The joy of hand quilting...

It's been a really long time since I hand quilted and I'm enjoying the peaceful, relaxing process of hand stitching.Old fashioned simple tools...
New fashioned thread and colors. Beautiful Finca Perle Cotton from Joggles.com.

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Joseph's Coat ~ the final chapter...

This is it! If you've been hanging around here for a while you've seen the progress on this quilt many times.

My plan was to do a big quilt even if it took me forever. In the end I decided that big would never get done; not even in forever. It's small, but I love it.
The quilt is from a tutorial by Don't Look Now. The whole method of putting this together as blocks and ending up without seam lines between the blocks is brilliant. How she came up with that I'll never know! It is tricky and unwieldy, but goes together perfectly. In the end, because of the size of mine, I could have done it on one piece of background fabric. My quilt is only 36" wide.

The directions called for a Floriani product called "Stitch and Wash Fusible". I'm not sure I had the correct product. I thought it was supposed to wash out, but mine did not. I washed the top and it softened, but did not dissolve.

Of course, then it needed a curved binding. I went to my old faithful book Happy Endings for directions on how to bind the curves. Worked perfectly!
For more Joseph's Coat inspiration and to see lots of quilters that have more stamina than me visit the Joseph's Coat flickr group!

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Everyday Sacred...

I thought about writing a blog post this morning. Although it seemed like a busy week, I couldn't think of any thing to blog about. As I went about my busy day, I thought about something I had learned from one of my favorite books, Everyday Sacred by Sue Bender. She said that in our busyness of getting things done, we often miss our accomplishments. Instead of finishing one project and moving on to the next, we need to stop and appreciate the completed project. Really take in what we've done.

It probably resonated with me because I am a project person. I'm like my Dad who we laughed about because he would get up from Thanksgiving dinner and go build something in the basement. I'm not quite that busy, but I don't sit still for too long (unless I have some sewing in my hands) and my family does tease me that I always have a project in the works.

So tonight I'm sharing and appreciating what I did do this week.

On Monday, I cut up a bunch of scraps of black and white fabrics and some colored scraps and made a pile of half-square triangles. There are lots of cool designs you can make with them - so I'll get more done and play.
Tuesday I pin basted and quilted my Joseph's Coat quilt. Simple quilting around each petal. It's trimmed and ready to be bound. I'm going to use Kona Snow for the binding which is the background fabric and hope to pick some up tomorrow.
On Thursday some fabric came in the mail as the result of some holiday online shopping. I love this "Long Live Vintage" from Fabric Worm.
In addition to some "Just Dandy" and "Alphabet Soup".
The fabric wasn't in the house more than 30 minutes and I was cutting it up. I played with the cover pattern from Living Large 2.
Today I made some wonky cross blocks to go in our charity quilts for STLMQG.

On to non-sewing activities - in addition to the normal cooking, laundry and cleaning, I painted our guest room, did a talk on quilt photography for my guild, got an eye exam and new glasses, cleaned out 4 kitchen cabinets (I'm getting rid of stuff and organizing what's left), and trimmed 2 big trees in the front yard (at the request of our mail lady).

I'm going to try to live up to the proverbial line "Stop and smell the roses". At least I hope to stop and appreciate the projects!

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A Neutral Quilt

It's rare (like never) for me to make a neutral colored quilt. But I did want to try one and made this the end of last Summer. I just got it back from the quilter, got the binding on and done!The fabrics are mostly neutrals from several Anna Griffin lines with a taupey gray Moda Bella solid for the star points.
Now back to some color! I finished the machine quilting on my Dresden Plate quilt. Next I'm going to try some hand quilting with Perle Cotton in the center circles. I'm hoping that's the perfect final touch!

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Winner!

Random Number generator chose #3 and so the magazine goes to Megan! Thanks for all your great comments. A few commented on how difficult the pattern looked. While it's certainly not a candidate for a first quilt - it's really quite simple. The diamonds are cut from strip sets that are sewn back together to create the large star. I do recommend doing some pinning at each of the intersections when sewing the diamond rows together. They are bias edges and this keeps them in line. I go an email from ibemomof2 because she was having trouble with just that. When I suggested she pin each intersection just as you would in making a Lone Star quilt, she wrote back saying that helped tremendously. So give it a try!

And because a blog post from me wouldn't be complete without pictures, I thought I'd share a couple of red, white and blue quilts. I don't have many - need to remedy that.



To all of you in the US - enjoy your 4th of July holiday and your freedom!!

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