Well, I'm a little late posting the February report, because the internet service was being switched! Sorry bout that!! But we're back up & running with a much faster speed than before & can now upload/download a whole lot quicker than ever.
February list:
1. QOV - finished & hanging in dining room.
2. Customer's baby quilt - done & delivered
3. 2 Scrappies - one done & delivered, other on design wall
4. New Year's QOV - all pieced, awaiting quilting, bought backing for it.
5. Delectable Mountains - loaded on Queenie now
6. Santa - finished piecing, awaiting quilting
7. Wholecloth - still designing, threw out origional design & started over.
8. Coloring baby wholecloth - gave up & put it aside
9. Grandmother's Flower Garden - I'm getting there!

I also did a few not on the list!
Red Bird - finally got the binding on it!
Baby quilt - bound
Forever in our hearts - quilted & finished
Placemats & table runner for dining room table - complete!
Here's the table placemats & runner

And here is Forever in our Hearts:

Now on to March's list!
1. Finish & deliver scrappy
2. Deb's curtains ( been putting this off awhile!)
3. Day & Night - get it quilted & sent off
4. Delectable Mountains - is loaded on Queenie right now, get 'er done!
5. New Year's QOV - get it quilted & finished, sent off
6. Doug's T-shirt quilts - this turned into 2 quilts, get them done & delivered
7. Do the new mystery on Quiltingboard - it's a table runner & I'm making 2 of them.
8. Two small quilts for the Guild
If time allows, knock out at least 1 UFO.

The UFO pile is slowly but surely dwindling. I think I'm down to 3 of them. That's for piecing, then we have the quilting & binding to do on them to finish them up. I'm getting there! But it looks like I'm going to be spending more time on Queenie this month than anything else.
I'm also helping my neighbor make a Storm at Sea king size quilt. This will be his 1st quilt! Right now I've given him the homework of cutting all the pieces out. Then the sewing begins! This is not an easy pattern for a first time quilt, but he insisted, so here we go! Will keep everyone posted as to progress.
Til next time.............Happy Quilting!!

Yesterday was a fun day in the studio. On my "to do" list was placemats for the dining room table & kitchen island. Since it's nautical themed, I chose a simple anchor for the center & rope around the perimeter. Dug out some light blue batik & started drawing out the area & stenciling all the placemats (all 10 of them!) Then got to thinking I needed a table runner for the center of the table. What to do? Think, think, think......I thought I'd use the anchors & rope like on the placemats, but the runner is going to be 60" long. Hmmmm....... Well, lets go explore my library for ideas. Oh! Mariner's Compass! I'll put that in the center & anchors on either end with the rope surround! Cool! Then I remembered an interesting tutorial I had seen on Quiltingboard.com just last week about a dresden plate with spikes! Off to the computer to find it. In the tutorial, all the spikes are the same length. I wanted more of the Mariner's compass look, so I varied them to two sizes, tall & short & alternated them. Here's the result!

Well, I see it's been 3 weeks since I posted anything! Didn't realize I'd been without the main computer that long! I could have posted with the ipad or laptop, but it's a real pain!

I correspond regularly with some other longarm quilters. Some have blogs, some don't. Anyway, a couple of us have been taking classes on Craftsy to better design & quilt. One thing about quilting, it's never a destination, it's always a journey! And we so enjoy the ride!  What a couple of us are doing is designing wholecloth quilts. Not huge ones, but nice wallhanging size. Or at least  mine is! The one element we have in common is roses being used as medallions. We all admire Irena Bluhm's techniques, but want to take it further. So, instead of piecing quilts, we're painting them!

Here's a sample of the painted center. Not perfect, but it's a work in progress. I did several samples & did each one with a different technique. The one I like the best is the Derwent Inktense pencils. But instead of using water to turn them into ink, I used a fabric medium. The water made the colors bleed too much, but the medium kept the ink right where I wanted it.

I'm already on the 2nd draft of the quilt. Too many aspects of the 1st draft I wanted to throw out, so I started over. Here's a corner from the first draft that has the possiblity of staying in the quilt. With some modifications, of course.
Stay tuned! There's more to come!!

Well, color me happy! I just took the QOV from the Craftsy class by Kimmer Brunner off Queenie! Now to trim & bind it! That'll cross one off my February list!!
All kidding aside, this pattern may have been easy peasy for Kimmy, but it was sure a big learning curve for me! I learned a lot on this one. First of all, have your drawing, design, whatever you want to all it, always handy for reference.  On that, make sure you identify what rulers or templates your using for each area to quilt! If you use the wrong one, you wind up frogging!  (ask me how I know!)  This one had a whole lot of starts & stops, so you get real good at them after awhile. I also learned a whole bunch about Queenie too. She's a pretty basic machine. Only "bell" she's got is stitch regulator & needle up/down. I discovered that I can play with her on/off switch to get my bobbin thread up top so now I don't have to go to the back of her & turn the fly wheel!! Hooray!! Getting really good at turning her on/off without looking, either. Well, enough. Suffice it to say, I learned a WHOLE lot on this quilt. So now, here it is!!

February goals

I forgot to include the goals for February in the post yesterday!

1. Finish the QOV on Queenie right now, get it bound.

2. Quilt customer baby quilt

3. Get the other 2 scrappies finished pieced, quilted & binding on.

4. Finish New Years QOV. Have blocks done, need to get it put together, quilted, binding on.

5. Quilt the Queen size Delectable Mountains & binding.

6. Get Santa finished put together!

7. Continue design work on new wholecloth wallhanging.

8. Work on coloring the baby quilt sized wholecloth.

9. Find time to work on Grandma's Flower Garden!!


Is that enough to keep me busy this month??

January's progress

Well, here it is the end of January. What's been accomplished this month? Not as much as I'd like, that's for sure!
First thing off the bat while Floyd was remodeling the guest bathroom in preparation of our niece & her other 2 girls arrival on Feb 6th, I hid in the studio & designed & quilted a little wholecloth quilt. Came out pretty good too!

 

Then I finished cleaning out the fabric bins & scrapping out anything under a 1/4 yard to strips or usable size squares or rectangles. I now have a huge collection of charms, enough 2" X 3 1/2" rectangles to make several scrappy quilts, enough strips to make lots of scrappy things & I can see what I have cloth wise for bigger projects! This project has been on the "to do" board since I put the studio together last March! Glad it's finally done & better organized too as I also did some re-arranging of the studio at the same time.

The New year found a new mystery quilt on the quilting board. This time, Paintmejudy did a quick scrappy. Just 3 weeks worth of clues rather than her usual 6 weeks. Since Dusti now knows how to sew, she wanted to do this one with me. Also my Grandson. So we decided to make 3 of the mystery quilts that were crib sized to be given to charity when finished. Grandson bowed out early on, so Dusti & I decided to turn two into one & make a lap sized. Now she's spending time next door with our neighbor, so will turn it back to 2 crib sized ones. Mine is done & already given to the guild for the local fire or police depts.

I had finished the top for a QOV for a Craftsy class given by Kimmy Brunner on templates. After finishing the scrappy one, I got it loaded up & now is about 2/3 done. A lot of learning curves on this piece, as I've ripped out probably as much as I've quilted! It's not going to be show quality, by any means, but my hubby will love it! Here's a picture of one of the designs.

I hope to have this finished by this weekend, as I have several waiting to be quilted, including a customers quilt! WOOHOO!

So, what did you do this month??

 

 

T

Well folks, looks like a good day to get some quilting done...it's SNOWING! Yep, that white stuff that's a dirty word falling right here in Texas. Sure glad I don't have anything super important to do today!