Final Finish for 2015

     Today I finished sewing a scrappy binding on the Scrappy Duo lap quilt which makes it the final finished quilt for the year.  If you want to make one, you can find out more about the pattern here. 

      Saturday I spent most of the day playing with scraps and “made-fabric”. 

I already had a piece of made-fabric about 15 by 15” that I wanted to use for a 4” finished border but I needed more that was similar.  Here is the pile of scraps I pulled to use and there is a piece of made-fabric in the middle.  After free piecing a section, I trimmed it to 4 1/2" for the border.  The larger trimmed pieces became part of another section.

Today the top is finished.  A niece is expecting in May and she wants a garden theme for the nursery.  I hope she will like this. 

 If you are in the Columbia area and want to try playing with crumbs and made-fabric, Saturday morning, March 19^th I will be teaching a workshop at Midlands Technical College, Harbison branch. You can find out more on their website.

Enjoy a few minutes of sewing or quilting!

Time for Some Quilting

    Today we had multiple periods of strong downpours so it was a good day to stay in and quilt.  I am very glad I did not need to go out shopping.  All my holiday shopping is done so I pulled out an already sandwiched project and started quilting.  The top was made by Fons and Porter's design called Scrappy Duo because you end up with 2 quilt tops.  Quilting is over half done.

Here is a close up of the quilting.  I used light gray thread and meandered on the colored fabrics and did a FM motif in each white area.

Wishing everyone a joyous, safe holiday and

Holiday Season Happenings

    I hope you all are enjoying this holiday season as I am.  I had family visiting last weekend. As we and our children age, it is more difficult for my sisters and brother to all get together so last weekend was special.

   I am now the owner of a small condo near granddaughters and this week I have been painting and planning for some other work to make it my own. The new paint color (on the left) is just a little lighter but fresh. 

   I have enjoyed spending some time with granddaughters also.  One afternoon I did find the time to pull out my black, white and red scraps for some improvisational sewing.  These blocks are in the log cabin format. 

     If I don't post again before Christmas,  I .....Wish All a Blessed Merry Christmas!

Made-Fabric Pieces

     I know it has been awhile since I posted.  I have mostly been working on more Christmas gifts.  a My youngest granddaughter enjoys dress-up play so I decided to make a princess dress for her for Christmas.  The past year she has been wild about purple so I spent at least 3 days making a dress.  I used an elegant dress pattern ( Simplicity 1508) and changed a couple of things  to simplify.  That is a lot of time to spend making a dress-up play dress, but I can do it so I did.

    I have also been playing with my green and blue crumbs to create made-fabric.  I free-pieced some more made-fabric to add a row to a top and then found I had too much green in them and decided to piece more with more blue.  This top is now 52.5” by 76.75”.  I may use the print fabric at the bottom left as a wide border to make it larger. 

Since I already had several mostly green made-fabric squares pieced together, I made a few more and put together a small top (40.5 by 52.5”).  This may also get a border to make it larger, although I like the modern feel of it without a border. 

My stash of green crumbs is now very low and I am ready for a break from free-piecing.  This coming week will have my guild holiday gathering and my church quilt group.  I better get busy thinking of some treats to fix.

Enjoy this special time of year and maybe a few minutes of sewing as a break from the hustle and bustle.