Another UFO

While I was on my kick of re-purposing UFOs, I hauled out this little applique picture that I had started a few years ago. 

It was a project inspired by the work of Janet Bolton, 

who you can learn more about on her website, , or you can google her name and look at images of her work, such as this one, 

she is amazing!   

Any how, a few of us had gotten together and started little applique pictures in her style.  

I had gotten quite far with it, and I liked parts of the picture, such as this little corner,

but on the whole I wasn't too excited with it. 

I decided to sew it into a pencil case.  in order to do that, I had to finish a few more petals, and add some lines of quilting to the beige area of background. 

Oddly, after I finished those things, I liked it much better.  So I have decided to leave it as a small picture, rather than make it into a pencil case.

Yoko Saito

Anybody who is ever seen a Yoko Saito quilt or handbag has never forgotten it. This Japanese quilter has produced an extraordinary number of breathtaking projects.  She has also been prolific in writing books and teaching workshops around the world. She is one of the main quilters working in neutral color ways.

I have a few of her books and they are just so relaxing to look through because of the beauty of her work.

One thing about Japanese quilters is that they love to make handbags.

The book on the left has 10p handbag patterns in it as well as the 78 pieced blocks.

These ones are near the top of my wish list to make,

And from the other book, which has patterns for 19 handbags!!  I hope to someday make this one, 

And this one..

But today, I am embarking on this one...

Isn't it a great shape?

However, I have been dying to use this Catnap fabric from Andover,

I've discovered that it goes really well with some of the Mirabelle fabrics from Fig Tree fabrics,

The pattern is pretty straightforward, and so I begin....

Some pretty simple appliqué of the front panel

I like to use the short little pins.

I noticed that the brown fabric shadowed through the lighter cat fabric, so I trimmed it away after I had finished the sewing,

I will continue my big quilt, but it's fun to have a smaller project on the go too.  

Plus, it is really fun to make handbags!

It's a beautiful day

This morning is just so perfect that I have to sit on the deck and stitch. Coffee is also involved.

I decided to do some fun little embroideries that will fit in to hoops later,

Last night I drew up my petals on the TransWeb fusible web,

And cut out the rest of the petals that I need to complete the blocks for the vintage combination quilt that I've been working on.   Still don't know what that block is called.

Do you know the name of this block?

If so, please advise.

Vintage quilt progress

I had a relaxing sewing time when I added all the machine button hole stitch around these blocks.  I had enough supplies on hand to do the blocks below.

I drew a diagram and counted up what I have yet to sew, and I need to do 7 more alternate blocks, and 10 half blocks for the edges, which means I have 136 more petals to cut.  I'm out of Steam a Seam so I am switching to trans-web now.

In the mean time, I sewed up the center three columns so that I could start the machine quilting:

Here it is laid out with the batting and backing ready to baste.

After the pin basting is done, I cut the extra batting away. 

I'm doing this quilt in sections to make it more manageable since it will be pretty big.

This morning I googled FMQ designs to get a few ideas on quilting patterns to fill in the nice white areas.  

This won't be an heirloom quilt, but I do intend to have some fun with the quilting, and try out lots of patterns.  

On another note, I got a gardenia at the grocery store.  It's quite pretty but has quite an overwhelming scent. 

and this little half grown cardinal came to visit yesterday.  It was trying to figure out how to control it's flying.  It would fly into things and then have to rest.  It's mother watched it and occasionally tried to guide it by showing it where to go.  it was interesting to watch from behind my window.  

1930's quilt

I think that I have a condition called ADSD (attention deficit sewing disorder).  I can't seem to settle down to one project to work on.   Flo calls that "butterfly quilting",

I mentioned it to Patti and she said that it made for interesting reading, so try lack of focus was working for me, ha ha

The other day I thought I would forge ahead on the hand pieced hexagon quilt that I've had resting for a while.

 I did do some sewing on it for a day or two, but I was distracted by making some more letter tiles for garland.  

Then, cleaning up my sewing room, I came across another stack of vintage blocks I had gotten on the same day I purchased the hexie ones.... 

They have been hand pieces and then hand appliquéd to a plain background.  They measured about 13-1/2" square, I don't know the name of this design. Anybody out there know? 

It is so nice to look at the pretty vintage prints. Someone had a pretty good color sense  I think, to use the green and bright yellow so effectively.

I it seems that I have 17 of them.  I think that I washed them at some point. 

I decided to make some sort of alternate block to set them.  I really like to have lots of white in this sort of quilt that uses "1930's" fabrics. 

The block I decided on has eight petals arranged in an x across the background.  It was immediately obvious that this was not going to be hand appliquéd, so I got out my last treasured sheets of Steam-a-seam.  ( I will be very happy when they start selling it again)

I was able to cut out enough petals for about 12 blocks, so I fused petals on to 10 backgrounds to get started.  

Now I need to do a machine blanket stitch around all the edges.

I will have to explore other fusible web products to do the other blocks.

I think that right now I just want to make a big bed quilt.  We have a king size bed here, and there is only one quilt that is big enough for it.  I like it a lot, but it would be nice to have an alternate.

I guess that even if I sew all these blocks together I will have to add more borders to make it that big.  As for quilting, I'm not sure, but I'm leaning toward quilting it in sections.  If I knew a really good long arm quilter in Savannah, that would be an option too.  

Anybody else working on a king size quilt?

Thread organization

I made some little dog shapes out of clay to use as thread holders for some of my stitching threads. Yesterday I spent some time organizing my threads and using the little dogs for their purpose.

These are some of my beautiful 50% silk 50% wool threads from Caron. I've been using them to stitch on another picture. This one is done on wool and its about 11 inches square.

iStitching on wool is lovely.  i backed it with a layer of quilt batting so the needle just glides through and I don't need to use a hoop because it's got enough hand that it won't pucker.  I still have some stitching to do on this piece. But I am enjoying it quite a lot

Close ups of the Grove stitchery

I completed the wool and fabric stitchery yesterday and these are a couple of close ups of it. 

To finish it I just stretched it around a piece of foamcore board.  It finishes at about 10" x 30".

I had used linen for the background of that which was okay.  But of course now I have to try another piece using an off white felted wool. 

So I've started a smaller piece that is going to be a vase of flowers.

Now for the stitchery part.