Blessing of the Quilts

Tonight at church we had a quilt blessing at the beginning of the service. It was wonderful to hear our pastor speak about the work we do and the effect it has on those in need. We placed the quilts on the chairs in the church so people could sit and lean back on them. There were many comments about them and it felt really heart warming to get all at positive feedback. I would have loved to take photos during the service but that would be rude so I took these shots half an hour before church began.

Now that the service is over we will sort them and my husband's Legion group will take some over to the VA Hospital as part of their Christmas visit and the rest will go to a local homeless shelter. I am already looking forward to next year and making more.

Plus Sign Low Volume Quilt - Completed

I made this plus sign quilt using low volume fabrics for the background. I like the way the background has movement due to the various shades of the soft grays and beige.

I used charm squares as well as some yardage to make the 5-inch blocks found in the background of the quilt. The plus signs are made from fabric scraps.

Quilts for Kids - Superman Tipsy Tumbler Quilt

I made this quilt using a piece of Superman fabric I got from the Quilts for Kids stash. I really wanted to keep the scenery in tact so it tells a story. So I chose to make it look like something like a film reel. However, the pieces of fabric weren't all that wide but they were long so I had to improvise to get to a nice lap size.

I chose to take some of the Superman fabric and make tipsy tumbler blocks by fussy cutting the Superman figures from the fabric. I found the instructions for the block on the Missouri Star Quilt Company website. They are a great source of inspiration for quilting. The tumbler blocks went together very quickly and easily. In fact, they were fun to make.

I backed the quilt in a light blue fabric I found in my personal stash and free-motion quilted it for a quick finish.

Scrap Quilt Challenge Winner!

I entered a scrap quilt challenge a few months ago and I won a prize. I entered my wonky stars quilt since it was a perfect fit for the requirements to enter. So today I got this package in the mail.

I know I should be grateful for the prize but I have to admit, I do not like batiks. I tried to like them. I've made project with them but I just can't seem to get to a place where I want to work with them.

Actually I am grateful that I got such a generous gift however, I will have to find a way to pay it forward to someone who will love it and enjoy using it. I thank the person who donated this to the scrap quilt challenge. I do appreciate the acknowledgement.

Selvage Quilt

My first free-motion quilting project on my new machine is my selvage quilt. I made the top a few months ago and I wasn't sure what I was going to use for the back. I recently went to the fabric store and picked out some fabric that I was sure would be perfect (without taking the quilt top with me) and of course when I got home, it was a terrible match.

Just as I folded up the fabric and placed it on my shelf, I noticed a stack of new fabric I forgot about. I went to a clearance sale last week and bought some fabrics for my stash. Some were so deeply discounted that I bought enough to make quilt backs. Lo and behold. the piece on the bottom of that stack looked like a perfect match!

I pulled out the fabric and laid it on the quilt top and I was right this time. It was just what I was looking for. So after pinning the layers together, I quickly got started on my first FMQ project on my new machine. I did have to read the instructions on how to wind a bobbin first. I discovered a really cool feature; since I was using a different color thread on the bobbin, I could leave the thread loaded on the machine and wind the bobbins without changing the thread out. What a wonderful feature!

Once I got started, it only took me just a little over an hour to finish quilting the piece. Then I chose some leftover Sweetwater fabric from my stash for the binding and completed the project.


I tried to photograph the quilt outdoors but it was too sunny to get a nice shot. However, I did get a great shot of the fall colors on the tree in front of our house.

The Elna 680

I have had my Husqvarna Rose sewing and embroidery machine since 1997. That is a long time. As my machine started to age which I only noticed each time I had to bring it in for repair, I started to look at other machines. That is an overwhelming thing. There are so many machines that offer so many different features that I realized I needed to pay attention to the things I like about my machines as well as the things I didn't like. It's been two years since I started that process. I also started a wish list of the things I would like my next machine to have. The funny thing is my wish list wasn't all that long. I wanted a bigger throat space and the knee lifter. That's it.

My Rose is an embroidery machine. It has the hoops and the software for making various embroidery designs. I used it twice. Yes, twice in 18 years. That is not a good return on the investment. I hope my husband doesn't read this; he bought me the machine and it was not cheap. I did use the many embroidery stitches on the machine when the kids were growing up and I made their clothes and the girl's dolls' clothes. But after I quit garment sewing there was no need for all that.

Lately my Rose requires more intervention. In order to make it work smoothly, I have to let the machine warm up. If I don't, the thread sensor beeps constantly driving me crazy. I could take it in for repair again but it's starting to get costly. It is time to get a new machine.

Introducing the Elna 680. It is a machine designed for quilting. It has a larger throat space and the knee lifter for the presser foot. If you ask me it still has too many stitches but that's not the end of the world. The machine was reasonably priced, unlike my Rose so it won't take me long to get the return on my investment.

I can't wait to get started on my next free motion quilting project to try it out.

Quilts for Kids - Comic Book Quilt

I had a piece of comic book fabric from the Quilts for Kids donated fabric stash. It wasn't big enough to make a large quilt out of so I had to do some creative sewing to use it in a quilt. I decided to try a shadow box quilt and just make bigger sashing around the blocks in order to make the quilt a decent size.

There are plenty of free shadow box tutorials online so I just plucked one from the internet and made as many blocks as I could. I could only get 12 ten-inch pieces from the fabric. There were two smaller strips left over so I cut as many squares out of it as I could until there was nothing left.

Because this fabric was not directional, I lost track of which end was up. So I made a really huge mistake. Half the blocks are right-side up and the other half are up-side down. The 'shadows' should all be on the same sides! Unfortunately, I never noticed...not even when I was free-motion quilting it. It came to my attention when I took the photos. So it was way too late to make any correction. Oh well.

What's on the design board?

The other day I was perusing the Missouri Star Quilt Company's website. The ladies at my QfK meetings rave about their site and have used many of their free quilt tutorials to make donated quilts. I instantly wanted to make at least 5 quilts from the free patterns I saw.

The thing about my donated quilts is that sometimes I have a piece of fabric without a pattern. The size of the piece will dictate the quilt pattern. That was the case with the Superman fabric piece. I really wanted to showcase the scenery in the fabric and still do something creative.  Enter the Tipsy Tumbler free tutorial!

I cut the larger piece into sections that I will border with some narrow sashing in gray. Then I fussy cut the tumbler blocks out of the narrow fabric piece I had left. I sewed them into a red block that goes well with the large piece of focus fabric. I want to use the tipsy tumbler blocks as a border around the larger pieces. I have to make a few more tumbler blocks before I can lay it out but the process is going rather quickly so it won't take me long to get this quilt top done.