Half-pieced

Wow! I really haven't been doing much quilting this year. Yes I have been out in the woods and marsh alot. It was so pretty I would have had a hard time staying away. Since I am not writing anymore books and I really don't need anymore quilts and I feel no need to use all my fabric before I die I am content to sew when I have the chance. Yes I am still quilting with the ladies at church and Studio 3 but mostly helping or teaching and not doin my own stuff.
Actually I cancelled Thursdays for a while with several gals out on medical leave and all the work I was doing cause Mark was injured and had surgery. He's fine now though will never be 100 % but now it is my turn. I have a painful shoulder. Whether it is a torn rotator cuff and/or  bursitis/tendonitis irritating a 50 year old broken bone is unknown at this point. An MRI scheduled in 2 weeks will tell me if I am a candidate for surgery. Meanwhile I can do little and hope even this doesn't irritate it.
Earlier this summer I told myself to put together more kits for just such an occasion but didn't so am forced to play with my collection of 2" squares and triangles or walk in the woods. But it has been so pretty out there I am not complaining. Not. O Well, it could be worse.
Sew, this is all I have accomplished in the studio this summer:

 This lap sized blue and orange and pink thing. Status of border is unknown; not quilted yet.

and these are the sampler blocks begun w Thursday group. Will add a few now with the Friday group working on sampler blocks again. Most of the blocks are from Barbara Brackman's book Civil War Sampler. I wonder if she would recognize them. I love the Civil War fabrics but had grown tired of them earlier this year. Of course, I got over that and now with my shoulder I started to assemble my 1800's charm quilt, 1000 Pyramids, since it was partially cut out. I still need a few hundred more prints. I have the 5" charm squares collected but not cut into triangles yet. With any luck I should be able to cut more of those and sew. Otherwise I will just keep collecting till I can cut again.

I did a little work on comfort quilts. And I had some prep work for a few classes and lectures I gave but nothun worth showing here.

But this is what is drawing me outside now:
This is the woods from across the creek at edge of the road in front of my house.  The trees blooming are mostly hickory and some ash which we are loosing to green ash borer.

 that was last week. And now the oaks have turned colors. This is a young red oak.We have a bunch of old red and white oak trees. The red are now dying due to old age and oak wilt disease. That makes me very sad. Not sure what we will do about it. But we do have a big bunch of young red oak to replace those we loose. It would be better to get a white oak variety to replace the dying red cause they aren't as affected by the disease. I'm making it my mission to get some white oaks started in the woods. For that to happen we need to get more sunlight into the forest floor. But since we are loosing red oaks and ash trees and some elm to dutch elm disease and removing the invasive buckthorn,  I dont see a problem.  The bigger problem I see is getting Mark to recognize we should get some help cleaning up the mess. He's always been a do-it-yourselfer.

 So you know where you can find me, and its not the kitchen.

My Quilting Marathon

This has been the best quilting marathon I've ever participated in. I should do this more often. The pile is 7 quilts deep. I thought I only had 2 or 3 more comfort quilts here but I forgot about the half dozen of my own tops I decided to contribute. I am sincerely hoping  this trend will continue for the next few months. Perhaps as long as I have everything I need then it will. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.  I'm glad the church basement ladies will do the bindings even though I don't mind that step.

I musta made this blue one over 20 years ago. It is next in line to get quilted, then I will donate it too. I will do a casual custom quilting job it. That means it will be simply and lightly custom/freehand quilted as opposed to the overall meander I might for some of the other comfort quilts.

And this one I just finished. All of the blocks except two I made to go together. Want to guess which two?  I framed them each with a different fabric cause we don't have the yardage to make sashing  all the same. And really I don't like sashing anyway. I made them all so they all came in the same size. But if you are working with blocks from different sources like a block lottery or exchange through a guild it would work to add wider sashing to the smaller blocks then trim them all down to the same size. It would also be an opportunity to repeat or introduce some new colors to make the colors  work together better.  I've had just about enough of the sampler quilts for a while After demonstrating twice a week for over a year I still have a mountain of blocks left. In fact, the blocks I arranged on the wall a few weeks ago are still there though I did make a few additions.

I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with the donation of fabric left for us at church last week. I haven't gone through it all but feel better about it now. Especially since I found backs for several of my tops. Perhaps when the roads clear after this storm I will go back and go through the remaining 6 boxes. It was fun even though it feels a bit overwhelming. Sure hope there are no orphan blocks in the mix.

Linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday. 

Prepping Binding

My Thirtysomething sampler is quilted and waiting to be bound. It is supposed to be nice out all week so I may put it off till next week.

When I make my binding I usually cut each end at an angle for my mitered seams before I sew them. When I cut 2 1/2" binding strips I use the Easy Angle triangle or similar tool so I get useable, measured triangles that I can use in the future. Better that corner triangle goes in the scrap basket than the trash.
 
 I cancelled classes last week at Studio 3 cause it's getting a new roof. But before that some of the ladies helped me sort through the orphan blocks. Now I have to find  coordinating fabric for sashing, borders or whatever they need to make the kits complete. Not in a hurry to do that cause there are still plenty of kits waiting to be completed.

The only thing on my flannel wall is these 3 blocks that I found stuffed in a basket in the living room. And to think they have been in that basket nearly 20 years! I will hang on to one for my orphan block pile the other two  joined the others for comfort quilts at church.

Tell Me Why

     This is what kept me awake last night after my show for the Patched Lives Guild:
Why is the space on a longarm sewing machine between the needle and the motor called the throat and not the armpit? 

     Since the Machine Quilting Show I quilted this orphan sampler for church. They are fun to quilt, but without any practice to memorize the quilting design for each block it was easy to get confused. So I ripped a little more than I would normally. I try to keep the quilting on the light side for these quilts, but sometimes it isn't easy. Maybe it is time I quilt one of mine again.  I see I will have to play with this new camera a little more. The color isn't the best. Here are a few closeups.

      It was great to see so many familiar faces in the crowd last night. More than one gal was surprised to see that it was me doing the program.  We both attend the BenFranklin club way over in Oconomowoc, and I never let on there who I was.  Sometimes I try to be just one of the gals and it is easy at a shop club as opposed to a guild meeting. Things aren't as "social" there.

     And here's a few things I learned at the meeting last night:
Grandkids can cramp your style, but in a good way.
I have lots more local mystery readers of my blog than I thought.
I have more than one "biggest fan" in Wisconsin.
Sometimes Walmart clears fabric at 75 cents a yard.

Happy quilting.

Year end finishes

 Happy New Year everyone. I hope you had as good a weekend as I have. Mine was real quilty. It is not uncommon for me to finish a quilt on New Year's weekend. And this weekend I have several finishes to report.

This first one has been waiting the longest. The blocks were just orphans I made in my stash.  A few of them date back over 25 years. Then about 5 years ago, I put them together.  I liked how it turned out so much that I decided to hand quilt it using a wool batting. I quilted about half the blocks and removed it from the frame and put it away for a while.  Then I brought it out about 1 1/2 yrs ago and finished the blocks.  Then it sat for almost another year untouched because I couldn't decide how to quilt the border.  Then I decided I'd rather use it this winter than let it haunt me another year so I let Lenni finish it. The quilting was all simple straight lines so I didn't want anything elaborate for the border quilting. This is how I finally quilted the border. See? That was early yesterday.

In the afternoon I loaded this quilt top for my daughter. She had recently complained that the quilt she is using is to small for 2 people. So I chose this quilt from my stash of tops and she chose simple meandering loops. What a great kid. Fast and easy.  I didn't want to invest much time in custom quilting this top.

Thank goodness I took the picture. Otherwise, I don't know when I would have noticed that I sewed the star together wrong.  And I remembered to fix it before quilting it. Yeah.

There was another top I finished I will show next time. Otherwise, there weren't many  finishes for the year. Usually there are more, but it was a tough year again. And now my time is divided between the quilting  with Lenni and piecing with Bernie (my Bernina) and...
Well, once again, Happy New Year and thanks for visiting.

I decided to put an end to this PHD. There wasn't a pattern for this sampler, and I was tired of it sitting on the shelf so after these 12 blocks I decided it was time to finish it.  And as has been happening lately, I am almost sorry already that I didn't make it bigger. But I didn't want to add an elaborate pieced border and I am out of the print I used in the sashing, so that's as good a reason as any to finish it.

Now with so many tops finished, I feel like I can get on to starting something new. I just put 6 kits together in the last month. Yesterday I  pulled one off the shelf and saw that I  already forgot that I started a kit for it. I don't know what  anybody does with dozens of UFO's. With Christmas on the way, I think it will be a while before I can really put some time into piecing again.  I want to focus next on some quilting and before you know it I will be working on comfort quilt kits again.
I am convinced- Whoever figures out how to bottle time will become very rich. Sew long.

Current Favorite

Remember when you were a kid and you thought that favorite meant that there could be only "one best, most liked". I remember how glad I was when I discovered you could have more than one favorite in any category. This sampler is my current favorite quilt. And believe it or not after 27 years of quilting it is the only sampler I set out to make. All the other samplers I have made were from orphan blocks I eventually joined together.

The blocks in this sampler all use my Thirtysomething technique. There are a few designers around the country that have discovered my Thirtysomething Square Up tool and have designed quilts for classes using it. That led me to play with the concept more and since then I have come up with another 100 blocks. So I plan to do another Thirtysomething book eventually. Life has a way of throwing you a curve ball sometimes and I have had to postpone those plans. You can try the basic technique and free pattern at my website.

I posted this picture for the Online Quilt Festival. I don't know if I will be able to figure out how to set my options to link correctly. Thank goodness for all the friendly quilters out there that can point me in the right direction.
Excuse the interruption. Sew long.