Happy Holiday

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving holiday. I was content to stay home and make dinner for my two guys. In between I gathered all the batting scraps I could find upstairs, downstairs and in the closet. There were too many cluttering up my space. I was able to put together 9 small batts with a bag left for 6 1/2" strips for our quilt-as-you-go comfort quilts. We have batting scraps of all kinds. cottons, polyester and blends. Different lofts too. I knew the others at church were going to be asking me to order some more batting soon, but I won't till we use up some of this.We also have packages of batting to use that someone donated last year. We would rather work with a roll of batting, but we will use this cause it was free. We all like that.

A couple of days ago I was rummaging around in  a pile in the corner and came across a bunch of old Thimbleberries that had been cut into 2 1/2" strips. So I very quickly decided on a project and began cutting and sewing the squares and rectangles for some Crazy 8's blocks. I made lots of progress. Again I really liked that they were already cut into 2 1/2" strips even though I cut them who knows how long ago.  Now I kinda see the appeal of the jelly rolls.  I still really prefer to make my own.

More work with Lucrecia today on comfort quilt kits. Tonight I will put another one on the frame downstairs. Quilt quilt, eat, sleep quilt and repeat. Is there anything else?

Studio 3 Sampler 1

As you can imagine, I divide my time between my sewing room, the quilting studio and studio 3. Sometimes I feel like all I do is sort and organize quilting stuff but especially this week because I have been planning a few projects to piece this winter. That always means pulling fabric from the drawers and drawings and photos from my files. I have settled on several so far but have yet to tweak my plans for most of them. I've decided to straighten up most of the mess now and dig in again later.

This morning I was working on backs for these three comfort quilts I'd like to get quilted soon. I brought these from church last Tuesday and when I opened up the fabric I'd selected for the back for one of the tops another top fell out. I do have some fabric here for backs I will choose from for the 3rd top. I will do a panto on one of them. I will do a freehand all-over on the other 2.

I put together my sampler blocks from the sampler class at Studio 3. More blocks were made, just not in the same group of fabrics. Mark thinks I need to add the light green as an inner border. I will have to dig around for something. If I can't find any here, I might skip it. I am pretty happy with how this thing turned out. It's a little bright for my taste, but I liked working with the colors. Better yet, I finished it without having to buy any more fabric. If I had made any more blocks, I wouldn't have had enough fabric to finish it like I did. I considered framing each block in a different print but thought this was better.
The snow is piling up fast here. Up to  4" expected. Wet and heavy. Did errands in town at noon. I am going to check the blogs linked up to Judy's and then quilt downstairs the rest of the day. Thanks for visiting.

More Stars

Like most of the country, we got hit with an early blast of cold and a little snow. As an experienced quilter I knew to prepare for some long sessions in the sewing room. I guess I prepared a little too well in the past cause when the Thursday class went shopping for sashing and... All I needed was thread. Of course, that is not saying that is all I bought. One shop we visited is closing so I had to fill my bag with lots of the Civil War prints I love. That's my idea of having fun!

With the time in the sewing room I finally finished my latest star quilt top. I considered adding a border of triangles and then another plain border, but really didn't like it when I arranged a few triangles on the wall.  So this is it. Since I bought enough red to add a border and decided not to, I could actually make more stars and make this to fit the bed, but that would probably get boring. I could just use that extra for the back of the quilt. I think I want to quilt this simply with straight diagonal lines much like so many antique quilts were quilted. I think that would really add to it looking old. I am surprised how much I love it. Thinking of getting it quilted now to use as a couch quilt through the holidays.

Saturday I taught my Infinite Stars class for the guild that meets in Antioch.  That is always a fun class to watch the ladies discover just a few of the possibilities to create a star starting with a traditional patchwork block. This is one of the class samples I bring.

Tomorrow I meet with the ladies at church to work on comfort quilts. Then I quilt again on Thursday and . . . Mark can't get over how much time I spend sewing. Of course, he is not here to see me check out the other blogs linked up to Judy's.

Random nine-patches

Before I forget again I am showing the first antique quilt our neighbor gave me. Musta been busy when I got it, that I didn't share earlier. We'd done a few favors for him and then he asked what he owed us.  I told him that the quilt keeping the dust off the car in the garage would be enough. Too easy. I am looking forward to helping him out some more. I know he has more antique quilts, but I don't know how many or that I even want them. We did see one keeping dust off some boxes in storage, but it looked like an old cheater that was very faded and thread bare.

I find the arrangement of the patches very interesting. Is it rare that you see the fabric arranged randomly like this? I wonder why she didn't fuss with consistent placement of lights and darks. It would be very difficult for me to do this deliberately. Was she working in the evenings by lamp-oil light? Did two people make the blocks and they weren't in agreement that value placement mattered? Was she in a hurry?  Or was it intentional? Is that why I find it so attractive? I tried to count the number of fabrics. I quit at 52. It's not easy. First I counted all the plaids and strips then each color separately and add 'em up.1 pink, 1 green, 2 reds, 4 blues. Lots of plaids and stripes and blacks and browns.

This was entirely hand-pieced and hand quilted. There is some fading, of course. I wonder if  I would have liked it more then or as it is now.  Some of the blacks and browns are starting to rot and split. The back appears to be a hand-dyed homespun. The back was brought to the front to bind. In one corner on the back is written in marking pen "your grandmother made this". and in blue thread below that is stitched "for dads 9". We can't be sure what that means as there are no names or dates. He has poor family records besides. Glad it is mine now.

 I made 8 more uneven 9patch stars and I am ready to sew them together. Hopefully this week. This is more interesting to look at so I am not showing my stars.

I joined Judy's Linky Pary at PatchworkTimes and Leanne's new Linky Party at SheCanQuilt. Thanks ladies.

No Intentions

I'm still catching up from being gone to Quilt Market so haven't had much chance to sew. But Sue came over and saw my new antique quilt (last post) she thought we should make it as on of our sampler blocks in class. So I made a sample block and have to say that I don't think it is a good choice for beginners. Sue won't have any problem with it though and already bought fabric to make a quilt with the pattern. So this is the only thing on my flannel wall.

There is nothing on the wall either at Studio 3. Hope to rectify that situation on Thursday. First I must prepare for a program I am presenting on Wed evening  in Antioch to the Northern Lake County Quilters.
Now to visit a few blogs linked to Judy's.