August 30, 2012

The end of August!  Already?  Seriously?

With Labor Day weekend right around the corner, I feel the need to celebrate and Labor at the sewing machine or in my chair appliqueing.  :)

What will you be doing?

My list of "quilting to do's" is (and not in any particular order):

New wall quilt for office - That would be the Kumbayah Walll Quilt from Quilter's World Magazine, August 2009, Vol. 31, No. 4

Sketch out some of the details on the mock up of the medieval quilt - including the quote from Lord Liam Devlin "We are your Bards, your storytellers, list'ning what all the folk say, we bring you news, in war & peace, with only shelter for pay." -- chorus of song, "We are your bards", Lord Liam Devlin"

put together a large quilt sandwich to try and figure out my flynn quilting frame.

make a potholder

Well if that's not a varied list, I don't know what is.  Wish me luck in getting ANY of it done.  LOL.

 

Sunday, August 26th - Herding Turtles

Didn't do much this weekend but after having breakfast with mother this Sunday, it started to rain.  I figured it was a good time to work on the Herd of Turtles again.  I managed to finish up one turtle and now have a system.  Between gluing the pieces on and then stitching them, I am finally making progress.  I am using Elmer's clear school glue (washable) and Roxanne's baste it glue.  Whichever I find first when I get the urge to work on it.  :)

It's starting to take shape.  I love the material but from a distance it definitely looks like a ghost turtle.  I started to experiment with some tea to stain it with and see if I'll like that as an alternative.  It will be too much to cover to just "paint" plus I want it to be flexible yet.  I'll keep you all informed on how it turns out.

Flowers

I had a nice day yesterday.  A friend of mine sent me flowers and had them delivered to the office.

I also finished the test project so the critique will be going back today or tomorrow.

When I can, I"ll post a picture of how it turned out.  I think it will be one that mom with like.

Wish me luck.  Today I am going to try to test some tea's and coffee for the turtle project.

What to do with a lost t-shirt block

Cleaning up this weekend, after being in bed most of the time with allergy head, I found one lone t-shirt that had already been cut and had the interfacing ironed on.  What to do with just one block?

I made a mini wall hanging of it and put it on the side of my book shelf that is over part of my desk at work.

This is the original 9 block wall hanging....

Here is the one lone block...

I was able to find flannel that had small paw prints on it which I thought worked pretty good.

Over all it doesn't look too bad on the side of the book case or whatever that thing is called.  LOL.

In order to get the right size, I appliqued the red t-shirt block onto black t-shirt material  and then put it all together.

That's about it this time.  On to the turtles, the castle and the test pattern.  I have a long story to tell about the test pattern but it can't be told until the pattern appears in the magazine.  LOL.  You'll just have to stop back then and read all about it....unless I forget by then.

Done...almost

Ahhh.  the weekend is almost done and so is my time for quilting projects.  It has been a satisfying weekend though because I feel that I got a lot finished...almost finished...ummm.  made progress at the very least.  :)

Remember the t-shirt wall hanging I was talking about?  Here is the finished product.  I just need to put the hanging sleeve on it but I have other things to do today so that might have to wait until tomorrow.  I am counting it as finished since it is for the office and I have a couple of quilt hangers so if it fits in that space I won't need the hanging sleeve.

 

Here is a close up of the binding.   The material was a gift from my boss when he came back from Ghana.  I wasn't sure at first if it would work but I think it looks pretty good on it.

 

I also used the same fabric on the back (same as binding). 

Now on a semi different topic, or at least different project, here is my August block for Wenche's Christmas Baltimore BOM that is being offered via The Quilt Pattern Magazine.

Another woman who is doing this project also happened to use the same red fabric that I used in the flowers.  It's a small world.  Obviously we both have good taste in fabric.  LOL.

Everybody have a great day.

Progress...at last

This weekend is UFO weekend in my yahoo quilting group.  While I only have a couple of UFOs (yes, I'm in denial) I did make a list in my last post on what I wanted to work on.  I am happy to announcement that I actually accomplished part of that list.

I managed to get the t-shirt blocks for Connie done and will take them to work with me on Monday as well as getting some t-shirt blocks cut out for me.  I've never made a t-shirt quilt before and while I didn't want to make a full quilt, I did decide to make a wall hanging out of NIU related t-shirts that I no longer wear for whatever reason.  I managed to get the top done and I have to say, I don't think it looks too bad.

Connie usually just puts fleece on the back but this will hang in my office on the wall for a little while and I didn't want to use fleece.  I was looking through my fabric and found a black and white fabric that my boss, Lyndon, brought back for me from Africa.  What do you think?  Think it would work?  It would be nice to use that since it too ties into NIU.  I hand washed it and now it is drying so I have the rest of tonight to decide if I will use it or not. 

Care to give your opinions on it?

Oh yes, before I forget.  I have also worked on the test pattern.  Had to go out and buy more embroidery floss...really...I just "had" to.  (grins)

Trial and Error But.....

Welcome to Friday everybody!  It's my last Friday off for summer now that we've hit August.  School will start again in a couple of weeks so that means back to five day work weeks.  That also means less hours to work each day which will be a joy.  To celebrate I plan on doing a lot of crafty stuff this weekend.

My list of things to work on so far is (not in any particular order):

1.  Herd of Turtles
2.  T-shirts cut and interfacing put on for Connie
3.  T-shirts cut and possibly interfaced for Bonni
4.  Test pattern for Quilt Pattern Magazine
5.  Asian Teapot BOM
6.  Baltimore Album BOM

Whew!  That's a lot to work on.  I might get the T-shirts done and ready to go back to work for Connie and maybe the Asian Teapot BOM for August done.  The rest are on going and will take longer than one weekend but I will be working on them.

Herd of Turtles.  That is the pattern that I am working on for my friend Dan's fiance'.  Dawn loves turtles and I saw this pattern and thought I'd do the wall hanging. You saw the picture of Herd of Turtles in my last post.  There I had the blue/teal background with a dark brown for the turtles.  It looked good in the picture but when I took it to work and hung it up on the wall and looked at it all morning from my desk?  Nope.  It wouldn't work.  It was too dark.  You couldn't see the pattern at all.  It blended too much.  Round three has me working on it again but with a beige fabric.  The fabric is cute and has light brown circles on it which I think will look good for the turtle shells.  NOW my problem is that I'm thinking it is too light but I'm not going to restart it again.  If I had thought about it before (before I started to sew on it), I should have tea dyed it a little bit to make it just a "tad" darker.  Here is what I'm talking about.

I'm thinking now that the fabric will be too light but, like I said, I'm not going to restart again otherwise it will never get done.  Afterwards I'll see if there is something that I can do.

T-shirt quilts....I am helping my friend Connie work on some and thought I might go and do a wall hanging on some of that I am not wearing.  I have a couple of ideas that I'm working on since I want to do one for military themed but I only have two t-shirts for that.  I can take another couple of them and take the US Flag off of them to off set it.  I'd cut out the flag and applique it to the back of the other one or something.  That is still be brainstormed in my mind.  I also thought I'd do one from the NIU t-shirt that I'm not wearing.  I can do a wall hanging for work with those.  I saw a picture of somebody who did a t shirt quilt but they did it more free form and just appliqued on what they wanted instead of the more structured method of squares etc.  That might have to be done for the NIU one.  It is hard to say at this point.

One thing is certain.  I will not get anything done if I don't get off the computer.  Everybody have a great day.  I'm out of here to get crafting.