Coiled Fabric Bowls

      On a rainy Saturday morning there is not much better to do than sew.  This morning I taught 4 ladies to sew coiled fabric bowls.  First we all wrapped our precut strips around 3/16” cotton clothesline ( It is getting harder to find.) then zigzag stitched rounds to form bowls.  Following are photos of them working and their finished small bowls.

Mary

 

Tina

 

Lynn

 

Kathy

I hope they enjoyed the process enough to continue and make more.  

Week of Sewing

    Wednesday at SQG sew day I started sewing Scrappy Duo blocks.  It is a quilt pattern from Fons & Porter’s Quilting Quickly Summer ’14. 

You can also watch video lesson on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMl157vw5IM.  

Instead of purchasing a Layer Cake of fabric, I used the stash of scraps and fat quarters to cut the 10” squares.  One thing I especially like about the pattern is when you sew the blocks, you create 2 blocks alike; plus at the same time you make 2 HST blocks from each square of fabric which will make another small quilt. 

     In my pile of UFOs and orphan blocks, I pulled 9 bug jar blocks that were left over from a quilt I made in 2003. I made 2 more jars and paper-pieced the frog, dragonfly and snail.  I did not have enough of the dark brown background to make any more blocks.  After adding shelf sashing and a frame, this is how it looks. The pattern is named "Escaping Bugs" by Bottle Quilt Co..

 It is small so I am thinking of adding a made-fabric wide inner border and then a regular outer border. 

made-fabric

Have fun sewing and quilting!

Halloween Costume Sewing

     Since my first granddaughter’s birth, about this time of year it has been requested that I make a Halloween costume.  This year the younger one is into super heroes so I have been spending time sewing on Super Girl’s dress.   I still need to make a cape and the pattern also offers fabric boot covers.

This past week I also spent a day cutting up scraps for pet beds (another finished); however, in the process a finger got in the way of my rotary cutter blade (not bad enough to need stitches) so I did only a little cutting or sewing for a couple of days while it started to heal. 

Sunday afternoon I finished quilting the Dora comfort quilt.  I plan to take it Tuesday to Comfort Quilt Sew Day in hopes that someone will volunteer to sew on the binding. 

This week I have sew days Tuesday and Wednesday.  

Hope you find a few minutes to sew or quilt. 

Another Afternoon Quilting & Another Finish

     After doing some Saturday morning chores, I went back to quilting on another child’s comfort quilt pieced from a fabric book and it is finished.

     

I decided it would be a good project to practice my FM echo quilting and slower speed control and stitch consistency. 

 I still have 2 more fabric book panels like the one this was made from.  It was easy but I don't enjoy doing the same thing repeatedly. 

While I practiced, I was planning the quilting on my next big UFO.   

Hope you can make some time to sew or quilt.

Three Finishes

      It feels SO good to get big UFO projects finished.  Today I finished hand sewing the binding on the large GA ZigZag quilt which was a UFO for several years.  It is so large this is the best photo I could get with it laid out in the house. 

       I also finished a child’s comfort quilt made from a fabric book. 

Since the border fabric has stars, I used the quilt to try out continuous no-mark free-motion wonky stars.  I saw the idea in Kathy Sandbach’s book Show Me How to Machine Quilt.  The photo is of the back since you can see them better.  The border is red and the stars are quilted in gold which did not show very well in the photo of the front.

     Two pumpkin placemats are also finished.

      I have finished 3 large UFOs in the past 3 months, but I still have a few on my list.  I am trying very hard not to start a new big project until I get more finished. I see so many patterns I want to try.  I comfort myself by only starting small ones that I can finish quickly.

Pumpkin Placemats In Progress

     In October my quilt guild will hold an auction of handmade, baked or grown items.  I started a couple of pumpkin placemats that can be used for a lot of the fall season.  The leaves and pumpkin parts are fused.  The vine is couched yarn.  I searched my stash and first used a green.   

It was really the wrong color so I ripped it off and found a great brown hairy yarn.

I used a zigzag stitch to secure the appliques and add veins on the leaves. I had trouble deciding on what to use for the border until I decided on going scrappy.  Quilting will wait a few days. 

Hope you have had some fun on this Labor Day Holiday.  I did.

Happy Sewing and 

Days Spent Quilting

       I finally finished the quilting on the large zigzag UFO.  I don’t like the fabrics in this quilt and was not eager to work on it; but instead of doing a simple overall free-motion quilting design, I decided to use it for practice so I planned a few special motifs.  Before the free-motion I stitched in the ditch beside each zigzag. 

That took more time than I expected because they change direction many times; however, it did the job to stabilize the quilt for more quilting.  I stitched a familiar continuous design in the squares in the center of the triangles.

I used a soap sliver to mark sections of the border and planned a leaf and loop motif to go with the border fabric.  I like how it looks and enjoyed quilting it.

When I needed a break, I sandwiched children’s comfort quilts so I have 3 made from fabric book panels ready for quilting. 

Hope you can enjoy some sewing or quilting!