Finish and Work in Progress

      The past few weeks I have not spent a lot of time quilting.  Since the weather is cooler and we have had a couple of nice days of rain, I took the opportunity to work in my flower beds hoping they will be lovely next spring. 

       I have worked on quilting for my church group.  This one is quilted and just needs binding. 

I am counting it as finished even though I don’t have enough of the brown fabric for binding. I will find something.  

Here is a close-up of the quilting of each block.

I used a pastel variegated thread. I stitched in the ditch to move from one area to the next without breaking thread. It took planning to move to the next area with the shortest distance stitching in the ditch again. After I trimmed the quilt and took a photo, I saw one block that I had skipped the half feather above the fan so had to go back and quilt that.

       

      I quilted the diamonds of this giant rainbow star top and the faint blue marker is my plan for quilting free-form feathers around it. 

You can see the free-form feathers on a similar quilt in this post.

I enjoy quilting them but would like to find a new special quilting motif for large plain areas. Especially since I have 2 more of these giant star quilts to quilt. 

    I spent one day sewing a baby bunting for an expected great nephew.  The fleece is especially soft.   

   

I linked up with Alycia for Finished or Not Friday.  

Have a great day and enjoy some time sewing and quilting.

Family Doll Artist

    I have been doing some quilting but today I want to share about my sister, Irene, the doll artist.  She is the one who started me quilting but now days she spends more time making dolls.   

    My very talented sister Irene is a member of the High Country Doll Artists.  For the past few years she has taken a week long workshop with art doll teacher Ankie Daanen. You can find more about her here.

  

The end of September the doll group had a booth at West Jefferson’s “Art on the Mountain” day.  Here are the dolls she had for sale there. 

   

 

     I love her dolls!  They range from magnificent art dolls with parts sculpted from air dry clay which is hand painted  to more simple fabric dolls.  Something that makes all of her dolls special is the time she spends to embellish each and create their unique personality. You can see more of her dolls and those of other members on their Facebook page. 

    In the past I have shared some of her dolls from the group’s exhibit at the Arts Council.  You can find those posts here and here.  

Enjoy some time sewing and quilting.

A Pile of Finishes

    A couple of months ago I decided to work on improving my curve piecing and started a couple of projects. I have finished my Strips and Curves quilt that was inspired by quilts of Louisa L. Smith. I used strings from my stash.

Here is a close up of the free-motion quilting.  I used the same motif in each unit. 

 

    I quilted this for my church group.

This was the first time I have used a loopy meander overall.

 It was pieced by another member.  The pattern is Fair and Square from CrazyMomQuilts blog.  You can get the free pattern here. 

    After making fabric postcards, I was inspired to make some fall mug rugs.  Here are some finishes. 

    Carole at FromMyCarolinaHome blog is hosting Autumn Jubilee again and sharing a variety of projects. Check out the new projects or ones from past years like this mini quilt that I just made. 

Directions can be found here and here.

I guess I need to post more often so I don't have so many different things at one time; but then I would have to take time from sewing. 

Hope you enjoy some time sewing or quilting.