Category: Christmas Lights

Some Finishes

Posted in Christmas Lights, Completed Quilts, Mystery Quilts, Quiltville Quilts, UFO Challenge2 Comments

Since I’m spending the weekend on my bed with my leg elevated and iced, I sewed down the binding on a few quilts that I can now call FINISHED.

Bonnie Hunter’s Mystery that was in Quiltmaker a couple of years ago, Christmas Lights.

And, here’s a Laurel Burch kit that I got a couple years ago at my LQS parking lot sale.

And, finally a small table topper from a mystery kit that’s been around for at least four years.

I’m really pleased to get these out of my pile of UFOs.

Linking up to Amanda’s Finish it Up Friday.

Three More Ready to Quilt

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Today I took advantage of the folding table being out for Thanksgiving and sandwiched three quilts.

I pieced backings for and sandwiched

  • Christmas Lights – Green tone on tone
  • Big Star – four different blues
  • 16 Patch and Pinwheels – solid piece of white on cream extra wide muslin.

I used Sharon Schamber’s method of sandwiching with the 6 foot boards. The jury is still out on this one. The fabric didn’t seem to wrap smoothly on the boards so I ended up with puckers on the back that I had to repin.

Finally a Stash Report

Posted in Christmas Lights, Stash1 Comment

Can’t believe it’s the middle of June already. Where has this year gone. My last post was two months ago!!!

I’ve got so much to share. I’ll try to do it in the next few posts. I’ve been quilting up a storm and working way too hard. No time to add any posts to my blog.

So let’s start with this weekend. I finished my Christmas Lights top, finally. Sewed together the last of the rows Friday night and added the three borders yesterday. Whew. It’s probably one of the largest quilts I’ve made yet at 79″ x 67″. I tend to work on smaller quilts because the quilting is so much easier and I like to get things finsihed. Ha Ha.

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Also, I received my box of strings and blocks that I won a couple weeks ago on Amy’s blog. Thank you Amy. Can’t wait to start making more blocks to go with the ones you sent.

As for Stash, well here are my stats. The good news is I haven’t purchased one scrap of fabric since March 20th. I’m on a roll here.

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Given all the quilting I’ve been doing I haven’t used that much yardage. That’s because I’m trying to get my scraps used up. I’ve made three tops all from scraps so no yardage used there. I count the scraps as used when I cut up the yardage for whatever quilt they come from.

Progress…

Posted in Carolina Christmas, Christmas Lights, Quiltville QuiltsLeave a comment

img_3936I’ve actually gotten a lot more done today than I thought I would. My left wrist has been giving me a lot of grief today. But in spite of that, I’ve finished the two patch units for Carolina Christmas and I’m 1/4 finished with the HSTs. I actually have more of the twosies than I need but that will allow me to pick and choose the scrappy combinations when it comes time to use them.

img_3935I’ve been adding the setting triangles to my Christmas Lights top as leaders and enders for the sewing on this first part of the CC. That’s one way to make some progress and get this one off my design wall.

I’m heading out to an after Thanksgiving Dinner at my good friends home this evening so I’m pretty much finished sewing for the day. I’ll pick this up again tomorrow morning. I’d like to be ready for Part 2 when Bonnie posts it on Sunday.

Couple of Finishes Added

Posted in Baby Quilts, Christmas Lights, Completed Quilts, Quilts for Kids, Quiltville QuiltsLeave a comment

img_3905I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. But it’s not because I haven’t been busy. I have a three finishes to add to the list.

All in all it’s been a pretty productive Fall. And, I’ve got a couple more quilts that just need some final quilting and binding. I hope to get those done in the next couple of weeks.

I’ve also got my Christmas Lights quilt on my design wall ready to have the corner triangles added to the rows so I can sew the rows together. I’d like to get the rows together before I start Bonnie’s new challenge, which will begin the day after Thanksgiving.

It’s Saturday Again…

Posted in Christmas Lights, Jared Takes a Wife, Old Tobacco Road, SquishiesLeave a comment

I’m way behind on my posting. Here’s what’s on my design wall and has been for the past week. I just didn’t to post until now. Hopefully, it will be gone by Monday.

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I had this pastel fabric and didn’t know what to do with it, but I do have three baby quilts to make so I was playing with nine-patches. I think this will work with white 3″ squares and a pink border for one of the girl quilts. I’m finding pastels are not my thing.

I read on Kathy’s blog (which she read about on Sue’s blog) about the “Power of 10”. I think I need to follow this to finish some of these UFO’s that are piling up. I will put together my list of top 10 projects and post it here to stay on top of it.

I need to find a way not to get bored with one project, so here’s the to-do list I made for myself last night to accomplish this weekend:

1. Finish binding my OTR. It’s 3/4 of the way done. DONE!

2. Cut one set of place mats for my bf Kathleen. She chose several fabrics that she would like place mats from out of my stash of florals.

3. Cut white 3 1/2″ squares for the baby quilt above. Decide if I want them to be on a white background or a colored background. I’ll try them out on some yardage before I start cutting 3 1/2″ squares. The answer is I don’t like it any way I try it. I’m going to put these nine-patches away for awhile and see if something else comes to me. Instead, I pulled some other fabrics for perhaps making a very bright baby quilt using the Crazy Eights pattern I have. More tomorrow when I put some pieces on my wall.

4. Finish making the nine-patches for the baby quilt above. DONE!

5. Pull out the fabric for the 2009 Squishie Swap at Quilts Your Way and start pulling fabrics from my stash.

6. Sew units 4 and 5 for the Christmas Lights mystery. And, then I’ll have all of the first part done. DONE!

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So now all of Part 1 is finished and I’m just waiting for the next issue of Quiltmaker with Part 2!!! I got the last issue right around the 1st of June so maybe I’ll get the next one around the 1st of August.

7. Add the first border to Jared Takes a Wife. This will be the purple fabric.

Notice, most of these are small tasks that will take about an hour or so. This way I will feel that I’ve accomplished a lot! I’ll try to post pictures as I finish each one of these.

What are you working on this weekend?

Stash Report

Posted in Christmas Lights, Stash1 Comment

Christmas Lights MysteryI’m happy to say that I used 7 yards from Stash this week cutting most of the fabric for Bonnie’s Christmas Lights Mystery. I didn’t cut the Black Print and Red and Green Print for the borders yet. So with all the fabric I added in May, I’m finally making a dent.

So far for the year:

87.5 Yards In
32.25 Yards Out
55.25 Net Increase in Stash

All I can say is that I really, really needed to increase my tone-on-tone choices so I’m not complaining about the increase.

No fabric busting today. I’m going to sew the border on my OTR and start piecing the HSTs for Christmas Lights.

What’s on my wall?

Posted in Christmas Lights, Viking Sapphire1 Comment

I threw up these twelve blocks a week ago just to have something different to look at. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them yet. Maybe incorporate them into a quilt with some Halloween blocks from swap we did a few years ago. See what having them on the wall resulted in? I wouldn’t have thought of that if I hadn’t been staring at them mindlessly this past weekend.

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So this past weekend I got to pay with my new Viking Sapphire 850. I absolutely love this machine and I got a fantastic deal on it. Saturday I quilted borders on both my Old Tobacco Road and my Orange Crush, finally! Not finished yet, but they are well on their way. What a difference a good machine with a 10″ throat makes.

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And, that pile of four patches in the picture is growing like crazy. I’m making those for Part 1 of Bonnie’s Christmas Lights mystery just published in Quiltmaker magazine, July/August issue. I subscribed to Quiltmaker earlier this year because Bonnie told us this mystery was coming. I had a bin full of 2″ strips of all different lengths so I just started sewing lights to darks until I got tired, then cut them into two inches pieces until I got tired of that, and then sewed them together randomly to make 4 patches. I have way more 4 patches than I will need for this quilt (52), but Bonnie’s quilts always seem to use scrappy 4 patches so they won’t go to waste.

I was experimenting with the 1/4″ quilting foot that I got for the Sapphire versus the 1/4″ stitch setting on the machine using the regular A foot. The 1/4″ foot makes a really generous quarter inch seam so that’s no good and you can’t move the needle over because the hole is very small. I’m just wondering if I can make that hole bigger because I love the edge on the foot for butting the fabric against. Since the foot is plastic, I’m thinking there’s got to be a way to enlarge the hole so I can move the needle over to the right a bit to get a scant 1/4″ seam. Otherwise, I’m totally happy with the 1/4″ stitch built into the machine. What is does is move the needle over to the right just enough so that if you line up the edge of the fabric with the right edge of the foot, you get a perfect scant 1/4″ seam. So that’s what I used to make all these 4 patches.

This machine is just amazing with it’s 10″ bed, needle down and foot up to pivot position. I did a cable border on the outside border of OTR without having to constantly lift the foot to pivot on the curve. And, it sews beautifully. I can’t say enough about it so far.