Danny's Quilt

My friend and neighbor, Sharon's son Danny passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. It was so very tragic and it affected us all deeply. We both built our houses at the same time over 30 years ago so our children grew up together over the many years. It was like a part of our own family had died. 

I was given Danny's t-shirts to make a quilt. When I finally got some quality time to make the quilt I started by laying out all the blocks. 

Once I figured out how to lay them out in a nice order, it didn't take long to sew them all together. I used some dark Moda Grunge as the sashing between the blocks then quilted the finished top with a modern quilt pattern. 

I like the finished quilt. I used the same Moda Grunge for both the backing and the binding giving the quilt a consistent look and feel. 

The hardest part of making this quilt was delivering it to Sharon. I knew it would be emotional and we would both cry. 

It was a little bit of comfort that I could provide and I hope Sharon gets some comfort from wrapping herself in it.

July Client Quilts

All things considered, I quilts quite a few client quilts this month. With a summer filled with fun, vacations, a holiday, and gardening. I am very surprised that I had the time - ha!

For the quilt shop, I quilted a Lori Holt Vintage Holiday Christmas truck quilt and a Glow-in-the-Dark Halloween quilt. It was so funny to see the halloween quilt on the machine - I went to close the door of the sewing room before going to bed and all I could see was the glow from black and white checks on the fabric. It was so cute to see. 

I also quilted a charity quilt for my Sweet Sundays church quilt group. The ladies in the group like to make strip-pieced (string) blocks to sew together. It allows them to use up lots of scraps. 

One of my co-workers at the quilt shop asked me to quilt her Christmas quilt. I used a pantograph that had partridges and pears on it - a perfect match!

Summer feels like it's slipping away from me way too quickly. I wish I could slow things down.

Quilts on Etsy - Finally!

I finally posted some of my quilts on Etsy. I've avoided the whole thing for a very long time because it's so time-consuming to do. On Sunday I took photos of 5 quilts. I hung the quilts outside, I laid them on a bed with the overhead lights on, then with the curtains pulled wide open to be photographed indoors in natural light. What a production. 

I also had to iron out the fold marks before I took the photos. I did set up the ironing board and iron on the back patio since it was such a beautiful day. 

Once I reviewed and cropped the photos to my liking it was time to write up detailed descriptions. The size, colors, patterns all needed to be written down. After I finished uploading 5 quilts, 5 hours had gone by. I was done for the day. It's too nice outside and my garden needed tending. 

I proceeded to pick some pickles to crock.

Monday I got up with the intention to make the pickles and finish uploading quilts onto my Etsy account. I am happy to report that I got 9 more completed and I spent another 5 hours getting it done. At least I am getting faster. Ha!

 The pickles are in the crock fermenting nicely. And I still have more to do but I am taking a break. 

Here's what my Etsy site looks like today:

I am hoping to finish all the entries on Etsy by next weekend. The moral of the story is don't let them pile up. As soon as I know I want to sell it, list it! 

Summer Days

I love summer. It's my favorite season. I will spend afternoons napping on my hammock in the hot sun. It's one of my favorite places to be. I find it hard to stay in the house and do anything in the sewing room. And I struggle with deciding whether to attend sew days. Summers are short so I don't want to be indoors however, I love chatting with the ladies in my sewing groups. It's definitely a conundrum. Since it was supposed to rain, I did go to the Saturday Basement Quilters group sew day. I decided that that's where I will work on items for upcoming arts & crafts fairs. So I completed a bunch of flannel baby blankets and burp cloths while I was there. 

It felt good to get all of these done but it never rained. I would have rather been outside all day. 

Speaking of outside...

I was weeding my vegetable garden when I came across this:

Yes! That is a baby bunny. I am certain there are two babies nestled together, possibly three. I didn't want to disturb them too much so I spent very little time checking them out. They are hard to see as they are deep down under my lettuce patch but isn't that the point? 

My neighbors do this thing they call "Wine Down Wednesdays" where they invite all the neighbors to come and sit in their yard. All you have to do is bring a lawn chair and your own cocktail and you're welcome to hang out. It is great fun to sit and chat and it's a little something to look forward to each week. We have decided to make it an opportunity to try new cocktail recipes. This week we made Moscow Mules and wow, were they good.

The recipe is so simple, just 2 ounces vodka, 1/2 ounce lime juice, and 4 ounces of Ginger beer. Just put the ingredients in a mug full of crushed ice with a slice of lime and a spring of mint. I didn't have any mint but I knew our hosts from WDW had some growing so they kindly gave me some mint. The drink was perfect and I will be making them more than this one time. Yum!

My roses are looking so lovely these days. I paid $3 for each rose plant at Wal-Mart and they are hardy and growing without much care.

A T-Shirt Quilt

My friend Audrey asked me to make a quilt for her grandson. He is a high school baseball player and she attends all his games. She gave me his jerseys and a few t-shirts to make a quilt for his birthday in August.

I am happy to report that I finished the quilt way before the August 16 deadline. Phew! I love when that happens. 

I cut all the blocks the same size and laid them out on the floor. It was hard to get all the number nines down in a way that scattered them around. There were an odd number of blocks that made it a challenge so I just took the ones with lots of blank space and cut them in half to make two blocks into one. It worked out nicely, I think.

Sewing the blocks together took no time at all and I got it on the longarmer the same day. I did take two days to quilt it since I used a pretty tight quilt pattern.

I machine bound the quilt once it was done. I like the sturdiness of machine binding as well as how quick it is to do. And here it is all done:

I hope they like it.

A Summer Bazaar and Some Projects in the Works

I rented a space at a Summer Bazaar this past weekend. This is the only photo I took of my space. I was lucky enough to be so extremely busy that there was no time to sit back and take a photo while I was 'open for business'. What a great day it was!

The weather was perfect, the bazaar was very busy. I met many wonderful people and some friends stopped by to visit. Thankfully, I have a very supportive husband who helped me set everything up. It sure helps that he has a big truck to haul all my stuff. I don't know what I would do without him.

So that explains why I haven't had much to blog about - I've been spending lots of time making baby blankets, burp cloths, and rice/boo-boo bags to sell. They are my most popular items. 

I've had these blocks on my design wall for over a month. I took them down temporarily while I made the wedding quilt, but they're back up now to remind me to finish the project. Ha!

I'm also working on a quilt called Flea Market Flowers by Lori Holt. 

I've learned a lot about applique from making these blocks. The first block I made I ended up ripping the whole thing apart to re-do it because I just didn't like how it puckered when I sewed the flower onto the block. That's where I learned about Terial Magic. It is a fantastic product that when you spray it on your fabric and press it, the fabric feels like a piece of thick paper. 

I pressed all the pieces with Terial Magic on them and re-stitched everything to the background and it lays perfectly flat. It is amazing.

I have 4 blocks done so far. They are fun to make however, I must admit that after a while I get tired of sewing dresdens. There are so many pieces. I think this one will take me quite a while to do. 

I have two t-shirt quilts to make and I took an order for a lap quilt while I was at the bazaar. It's going to be a busy sewing summer. 

Silver Linings Quilt

I spent the last month making a quilt for my niece. She got married on May 8th and planned a wedding reception for June 5th. The invitation came in April and we were quite surprised. She had talked about how she would get married "someday" but it didn't seem like she was in a rush. They were both married before and have 6 kid between them. Quite a blended family they will be! 

I got working on making a wedding quilt as soon as I got the invitation. I found a pattern by Basic Grey called Silver Lining that I loved and I purchased a beautiful Moda fabric collection called Sanctuary. It came it teals and grays that I thought were perfect for a couple. Not too feminine but not really manly either. 

The blocks were easy to make however each one had to match up with the block next to it. It required a lot of planning on a design board in order to make it work. It was fun planning each block.

When it came time to make a quilt label, I worried I wasn't going to know how. My embroidery machine is pretty new so I wasn't sure I was going to have any success. I downloaded a font I purchased online and this label was my first attempt.  I think it worked out pretty well.

I hope the new family enjoys the quilt.

May Client Quilts

My co-worker made a baby quilt for herself using fabrics from the shop. Since she used a brand new fabric collection, the quilt will hang as a sample until most of the fabrics are sold. She asked me to quilt it for her so I wanted to so something fun. The fabrics have animals wearing glasses so I found a quilt design with eyeglasses on it. It worked out perfectly.

I had a friend ask me if I would quilt something for her neighbor. She was using Minky on the back so she was worried that no one would want to quilt it. I have no problem with Minky, you just have to know how to load it on a longarmer. I think the important thing is not to use a quilt pattern that is dense since there's so much going on with the Minky. 

I grabbed an unquilted quilt from work and decided to longarm it. It's been sitting at the shop because by the time the sample quilt top was made, the fabric was sold out. It was a pretty busy print so I just did a large swirl pattern over it. Now it can go directly to the sample sale after the binding gets sewed on.