My SEWJO is back

I finished a top! This is super thrilling for me since lately I just haven't felt like sewing.  I lost my SEWJO in January and just couldn't get it back.

Well, this past weekend we met up with family.  I met a niece for the first time and her two adorable little girls. I have tops made for the little ones but just haven't had the ambition to quilt them. But now I do! 

First I figured I'd get this top off the floor and onto the "to be quilted" pile.

I woke up early, started doing laundry and then decided to go down to the sewing room and, at least, finish the friendship stars...maybe add them to the header and footer.

I did that and forced myself to finish...put it all together. There really wasnt that much to do!

So it's done! It's a top. And I think I have my sewjo back because, as I was having a cup of coffee, staring at my new ottoman, I decided I need a new quilt for this room.

I have mostly blue, gray and white in the upstairs. I needed some warmth so last fall I ordered a new "coffee table". Actually, I found this cute leather ottoman and a tray to serve as a coffee table we can put our feet on. The leather picks up the warm tones in the rug and in my fish picture. 

Now I need a quilt that matches better. I pulled out my Autumn/Halloween quilt for now. But I'm thinking gray beige, blue, and a bit of orange/rust might be nice.

So I guess I back😁 Time to get working on more quilts!

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.

Started a new star quilt

So I started another quilt. It was an accident... really...not planned at all.

Remember those vintage scraps and old blocks that I was organizing? I remade the friendship star blocks and put the 16 of them together as a future quilt center. Well, I was thinking about it at night and thought, "what if I cut up all the scraps that matched the stars and surrounded my center with a huge star.
This was about midnight...couldn't sleep. I pulled out my laptop with my EQuilter program and started playing with ideas.
Long story short... About 3am I finished my design and in the morning I wanted to test out one block. Just to see if I liked it. And I haven't stopped. May as well finish it at this point.
So the plan is to make one more border of star points. The quilt will be 72" sq, a good size I think.

These are some of the vintage fabrics I tucked into the star points. This stripe above and the brown print below, are early 1900's fabrics!

This stripe with the flowers is 50's I think (36" wide). It's a really nice, crisp cotton.

I'm still organizing the vintage scraps too. The ones that don't make it into this star quilt will go into my next one. THAT quilt needs to wait! No more starts allowed!

Blue and White Quilt Top

Check off another quilt top! 

Im finally done with this blue and white quilt top after...oh...maybe 10 years? It's going onto a hanger with the rest of my unquilted tops, mainly because I haven't decided how to quilt it (hand, domestic or longarmer) and I haven't found the batting or backing. It's not a rush...I have PLENTY more UFOs to work on. 

This one started YEARS ago as a class sample. I was teaching from a book with lots of jelly roll quilts. I had a finished sampler quilt to show the class but I started this solid one to explain cutting and piecing. The center star and some of the surrounding stars were taught in the class along with the 12" corner blocks in the next round. They were never put together...just stuffed in a box for 10 years. I'm just thrilled to have finally finished this much of it. It's 80"square. 

I love two color quilts and am so happy to have one. They feel vintage to me. I suppose that means I should hand quilt it. Yup...maybe.

Blue and white star quilt

I had a little sewing time this afternoon and was able to add 3 blocks to my #blueandwhitequilt

I changed the design just a bit. The outermost border was plain. I decided to add a bunch half square trianges (hst) and a few more of the stars going around the center. I really HOPE I have enough fabric to do all of this. It's going to be close.

 So besides sewing this weekend, we met a new family member. It's amazing what can be discovered through #Ancestry.

And now I'm relaxing a little before the big game comes on....I'm also admiring Al's handiwork 😉 He's such a talented carpenter.