Monthly Archives: January 2017

Quilt finish #4 for this year is the shop hop blocks from 2004.   I’m so happy they are in a completed project.   This quilt is 41″ square – just perfect for a baby.  I put a polka dot backing on it (but forgot to take a photo).

Every quilter needs a disaster to keep her/him humble.   After finishing the quilt above, I thought I’d get another done in a quick minute.   Not so, the thread jumped out of from between the disks which I didn’t notice and left me this mess.   I just took it off the machine, will take all this mess out and start over another day.   I’m so glad it happened right at the beginning of the quilt as it is back breaking to take many stitches out when it is still on the machine.

And just for fun, we went to Costco to get our passport photos taken.   DH will mail them off tomorrow.   Who knows if we’ll need these, but if so, we will have them.

Sunny coins is quilt finish #3 for this year.   And this one was not a ufo!   It is 50 x 68 and I really like the way it turned out.   I probably will do this again.  It went together rapidly and quilted up nicely.  This size would be good for charity quilts.

 I did edge to edge bubbles and am happy with the results.

These are the stars who starred at the birthday party last night.   And two more photos to show we know how to celebrate as a family.

with games, food and plenty of liquid.

I went to the closet to pull out quilts for a family whose house recently burned and to my surprise, the binding on this quilt was not finished, so that was my big accomplishment for today.   The name of this quilt is “Globe Trotting” and was a block of the month quilt by Pat Sloan.   It is finish #2 for January and #3 is coming up soon.

Storm at sea was started about 5 or 6 years ago.  I forced myself to work on it on my spare moments this week as today is our 54th anniversary and isn’t that what marriage is all about – weathering the storms of life together.   The is totally finished – the marriage continues.

with a hanging sleeve and very difficult to see but I used permanent marker in the lower right corner to put my name and date.    I love this quilt so am so happy to see it finished.   Now I need to find the perfect place to hang it.

I’m linking up to Elm Street Quilts One monthly goal with this finish.

I quilted bubbles over this Sunny Coins flimsy today.   So now another quilt is in the “needing binding” pile.  Interestingly, when you have a flimsy ready to go, often times, you really aren’t even half way there.   You need batting and some of these battings definitely need to be pre-shrunk.   Then there is choosing and sewing together the backing and the binding.   Now you get to choose the design and get everything on the machine so you can quilt.  It all takes time, so this entire day (after gym) has been spent getting this flimsy quilted.  And currently I don’t’ even have a place to put it up where you can see the entire quilt.

Storm at Sea is quilted, but when I cut the binding, I find that I am about 10-12″ short, so I will need to take the time to look in various places where it may have been placed.   This quilt was put together a few years ago.   I have always liked this pattern, so soon will have it hanging on the wall.   I was so pleased with myself that I was up and working on this in the morning.

I had hoped that I might be able to get another flimsy quilted today.   No such luck.   Since my phone was not working again, I made an appointment with Apple to have it worked on.  I was sent to Best Buy about 45 minutes away.   But they couldn’t fix it, so sent me another 5 minutes away to the Apple store in the mall.  It was 5 hours from the time I left home, until I returned with a new IPhone.  I’m hoping this time, since they gave me a new phone, my problems will be solved.  It is difficult not being able to send or receive calls.

On the way to the appointment, I stopped at JoAnn’s and picked up 2 yards of Seahawk fabric for a project.   Then there was 7/8 of a yard remnant and I can’t just walk away when offered a good price on a piece that I  know will eventually be needed for a project.   So now I have an increase 2 7/8 yards of fabric – at least until I get a quilt fully finished and can add it to fabric used.  The only fabric I purchased in the last 2 years was Seahawk fabric.  Maybe tomorrow I can either quilt another quilt or find the rest of the fabric and finish the Storm at Sea.

Chinese Coins is one of the fastest, easiest and brightest quilts that I remember making.  It was fun watching the bright colors come together in this “rain forest”  labeled as Seattle.   Not complaining – just sometimes a bright spot is fun.   The rust color panels are a solid panel so that went rapidly.   This quilt measures 51 x 70 because I wanted to add a bit of rust color to the coin stacks.    I used Babylock’s love of Sewing with Pat Sloan’s lap quilt pattern.  Her jelly roll had much more variety than the one I had on hand which is why I add the rust.

And these are the better storage units – already full as I just transferred the contents from the units falling apart.