Sewing on the road

Al and I are on our way to my brother's farm in the U.P. of Michigan. They called us to say they needed help with the harvest...which means they've canned all they are able to and would like us to haul tomatoes and other stuff back home. I usually can tomatoes into sauce each year because my husband (being Italian) requests spagetti about once a week. We go through a LOT of sauce!

So yesterday I dug through my 30's for scraps to for the tumbling blocks quilt so that I could work on it as we travel.

I have quite a few 30's reproductions and originals, that I've collected over 20 years or so. I'm trying to use up all the small pieces in this quilt. And if I need some color that isn't a scrap, I'm cutting one. 

Having these papers cut and pinned to fabric makes basting so much quicker. I prepped about 25 of these diamonds then grabbed a stack of scraps so that I'm not bored in the evening up there.

We are on the road, I'm sewing, he's driving...both of us doing what we love best!

 

Current projects

This is my newest quilt start. It's long term ...a hand sewing ( #epp ) project. My last English paper piecing quilt top took 7 years to make and it's taking about 6 months to hand quilt then bind. This one will be faster since it wont be just worked on during car rides and doc appts. I'm doing some blocks each evening. I've hauled out my bin of 30s reproduction prints and vintage fabrics and am sorting in color order. Then I have daughter Jenn finding coordinating light/medium/dark sets for the blocks.

Also, in the evenings or early morning, I'm putting in a bit of time on that first EPP quilt, my 6-point diamond stars. It's getting to the end. This week I flipped the quilt frame around so that I can quilt the last few rows. It should be finished some time in April.

Almost March

It seems like February just started and now it's almost March. Spring is on the way! Of course, here in Michigan we still have a chance of snow until May. Almost every year around Easter, we will get hit with a huge snowstorm. Hopefully not this year. With spring right around the corner I thought I would do some spring cleaning... in my sewing room.

It was a disaster before this. I'm piecing 3 or 4 quilts right now. The main two are on the floor and on the wall. I found old log cabin blocks as I was digging for Civil war fabrics, so I added those to my wall along with a star I had started years ago.

The corners needed to be added to the lone star and then a a border to bring it up to 24-1/2" so that I could insert it in the middle of my log cabin quilt. The two were originally going to be 2 separate quilts but I changed my plan. These old UFOs need to be completed...

This was another UFO that needed some work. Over the last year or so, I've been making hexie flowers...these I applique onto a background square to use as a border on this quilt. I finished up the last hexie flower this past week so I've attached the border and used random leftover blocks as corners. The corner blocks were designed YEARS ago for a quilt that I never made. I loved them and wanted to use them somehow. In the future I may release a pattern using the blocks.

So that's what I'm piecing (along with my monthly rainbow scrap blocks). This is my machine quilting project. I'll be FMQuilting it on my Pfaff....probably starting Monday.

And of course, this gets a litte attention every day. On Instagram, I joined the ladies that are doing #300daysofhandquilting ...This will help keep me working on it a bit all through the spring.

Hand sewing HEXIE flowers

 When I'm on vacation, I love to do a little hand sewing...especially EPP (English paper piecing).
This "stay at home" period isn't exactly vacation but I thought if I looked at it that way, it might improve my spirits.

So I asked daughter Jenn what color hexies she still needed for her quilt. She wanted tans, neutrals, browns and olives.

Well, I can do that. A few of these were already cut out so I stitched those up first.

Then I dug through my "drabs".

I didn't find many...I seem to collect brighter, cleaner colors.

But there were some shirtings...

And homespuns.

I stitched up 10 flowers for her and about 1/2 were darker or drab.

Then I decided to bake. Instead of buying bread, I'm baking loaves once a week. This week I did one sandwich loaf and one cinnamon raisin 😋

I love this recipe that I found online. It needs kneading for 7 minutes so I let my kitchenaid mixer handle that. So easy!

Here's the link:

homemade bread

STAY HOME & STAY SAFE everyone😷

Almost Christmas

I'm still in hexie mode... These pretty Kaffe fabrics are going to become hexagons that I will appliqué to background fabric. Sashing? Maybe. Quilt? Pillow? Who knows. I'll see what it needs to be later...  

My class will be to teach English paper piecing, fussy cutting, and appliqué. I want the project to be fairly easy so I'm going to include a mug rug pattern (Link to my HEXAGON FLOWER MUG RUG PATTERN)  made with just one hexie flower... that way it won't be overwhelming if someone is struggling with the hand work. Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching.. Kathys Quilts

And since it's almost Christmas, it's my annual cookie bake week, I've started getting the 10+ different batches baked. These have to go in the mail by December 15th. My two bachelor brothers that live out in CA and OR, look forward to this treat. 

And to think I was (somewhat) complaining that the temps were too high for December... missing the snow... well, not anymore. We've had snow EVERY DAY since the day after I mentioned the lack of it. We have plenty now and it keeps on coming... Sure is beautiful!

A UFO and some secret sewing

This week I made a Christmas pillow for someone that sent me a HUGE amount of fabric without wanting/needing anything in return as part of #getyourquiltywishesgranted.

She likes Cotton + Steel Xmas fabric, something I don't have and couldn't find at our LQSs. So I used what Cotton + Steel I DID have and made this hexagon tree. There's a text print binding on this pillow because she works at a library.... 📚 Hoping she likes it. 

So the other project this week is getting this 4 year old UFO finished up. Its a row robin that a bunch of ladies from Charlevoix helped create. I did the row of trees and sent that off with some of my favorite Fig Tree fabrics. I had nine beautiful rows at the end but just never got around to stitching them together. The top is finished and basted. With any luck this will be a finished quilt before Thanksgiving. There are loads of leftover scraps so it looks like I'll be doing at least one more Fig Tree quilt. 

Working on RED scrappy blocks

Al and I just got back from a two week vacation in Florida. We had a great time...the weather was perfect. I did miss my sewing machine though. Our new car is a whole lot smaller than the SUV we had last year. It forced me to pack much lighter and that meant nixing the sewing stuff...except for my Englush Paper Piecec Stars. 

Now that we're home I've gotten to work on stitching up March's scraps...reds (soscrappy.blogspot.com). I finished up on Scrap Jar Star block and three of my little log cabin blocks...I should give these a name. 

I didn't quite finish my red spool block...maybe tomorrow. 

The block below is just selvage scraps I had stuffed in a jar. On Pinterest or Instagram, I saw a cute bag with selvage pockets... This might become a bag or if I'm lazy it'll become a mug rug. Just hate to waste them, you know?

So here's my epp stars...working on them as Al drives. I NEED to get this quilt done....not only because it's been 7 or 8 years in the making but because my daughter picked it as her wedding quilt. Their first anniversary is in June. It would be a great time to give it to them. 

I can't tell you how long I've been working on this project....feels like FOREVER! I did a little math on the way home from Florida... It takes me one hour to cut, baste and stitch one star. It takes another hour to cut some white pieces, baste them, attach them to the star then attach the star to the quilt. I have 15 rows of 14 stars...so 210 approximately. Two hours per star is 410 hours and that's not counting the half pieces to finish the edge. Also not counting the hand quilting I'm planning on doing. 

I know my daughter appreciates the work into this one because she's a quilter..and I know it will be in good hands in the future.

Okay, so the only sewing I brought down to Fl with me was the EPP... So when I got a little bored with that what could I do but SHOP! :)

Rainbow's End in Dunedin Fl was having a march sale... 35% off Kaffe, Tula a Pink, Brandon M., cat/dog prints and more. Couldn't resist that!! 

Playing around with some new blocks

The color doesn't show very well but these are 30's repros on an aqua solid. Lisa and I started a couple of blocks after visiting Yoder's. We picked up some paper pieces shaped like these rounded petals. The pack comes with 16 petals and 2 circles for the center. This gave us something to work on in the evenings in Shipshewana. Our fingers were itching to play with our new fabrics :) I think we bought about 25 new pieces of 30's fabrics.

Tomorrow when I get home I plan to post pictures of the quilt festival. We saw some wonderful quilts. The handquilting was AMAZING! While eating our lunch at the festival, we shared the table with some talented ladies. One was experienced in dyeing her own wool so she gave us lots of tips... she teaches a class in wool so I guess you could say we got a free class! We're back in lower Michigan now... Lisa is back home and I head back up north tomorrow... And we're both so tired (but happy!).