I finished the strippy stars top.
Six years ago at a quilt retreat I made this and had the part on the left of the next photo sewn together. I had the brown floral and two narrow blue strips cut so that I could add another row of stars.
I even had all but three of the star blocks made. But, when I got home from retreat the quilt and parts remained in a pile and I never got back to it. I think I had convinced myself that this would be a twin quilt. In the mean time I used four of the star blocks in a doll quilt.With Project UFO underway I pulled this out again and decided to go back to the queen size quilt plan. I made seven more blocks and had a look at it. There was one block that seemed to stand out as too pale compared to the others and another that was all too dark. I decided to switch the centers on those blocks and sew it together.I think I may try to quilt some feathered vines in the plain strips.
Vintage Yardage
I thought you might want to see some vintage fabric yardage.
I found these long forgotten pieces of fabric yesterday while looking for something else in the sewing room. There is at least three yards of each.
I love that they are all the old narrow width- and just look at that lovely selvedge. Sigh.
Summer has arrived but I still don't spend much time outside because of the mosquitoes. I am eagerly awaiting the day they blow away.In the mean time I am trying to be productive with my time in the house. I have decided that one of my summer projects will be to finish as many unfinished projects in the sewing room as I can. You know, cleaning up the slow way. I am determined to get some of these piles cleared up.I am on my way with these star blocks that I made today. That is all I need to finish a queen size quilt that I started at Beaver Island Quilt Retreat in 2004!!
If I hadn't put four of the blocks in this quilt and mailed it away I would have only needed to make three more blocks. Three. That was all I needed to finish a queen size quilt.That is what I get for not finishing it at the time. I have had theunfinished top and fabrics to finish it in a pile for almost SIX YEARS.Yes, its time has come.Is anyone else up for a summer of Project UFO? Let's get those projects finished!!
Clear Color
I have a few quilt tops featuring solid fabrics that I want to quiltand get finished. My problem is that I can't decide how to quilt them.
What color thread should I use? How do I quilt them without losing the crisp clear colors of the solid fabrics?
Anything I come up with tends to muddy the overall look of the quilt. I could just quilt in the ditch between the fabric colors but I do like a lot of quilting on a quilt. It just makes it feel right. I also want both of these quilts to be USED.I'll be using a thin thread to down play the quilting but I don't have color or a sewing design plan yet.
Garden Window Quilt
I finished quilting this quilt last night. I was so happy with how it turned out that I raced to get the binding sewn down this morning.
I rinsed it and put in in the fluff cycle in the dryer and it came out with the look and feel that I love in a quilt.
It has the soft drape that is perfect for snuggling a little one.
I love the way the hand dyed blue fabric looks like a window to the sky (I wish that showed better in the pictures) and the secondary blue and green star pattern that happens with the alternate hourglass blocks.
It measures 40 inches by 51.5 inches.
Pesto Time
We braved the mosquitoes yesterday long enough to pull the garlic scapes. We added some to our dinner last night but there are still quite a few left.
I'll be making and freezing some pesto today.I quilted some yesterday and finally got in the groove with the new machine but I ran out of the thread I was using in the bobbin. I will have to wait for more thread to get the whole thing finished but I like the way it is turning out. It is a beautiful thing when the tension is right and the stitches look great on BOTH sides of the quilt. Sigh.
Today is a cooler, crispier day so we are heading out for a bike ride around the block. Our block is over four miles round trip; not that far, really, but considering that I haven't ridden my bike for over five and a half years I think it will be far enough for me.
Flowers, Fabric, and Floors
I would love to spend some time outside, maybe sitting by the garden reading a book while sipping something cool.
I would even enjoy getting caught up on weeding in the gardens. But, sadly my time outside the past few weeks is spent in the following way. I look out the window and think, oh, the flowers look so pretty, I'll go take some pictures. I grab my camera and head outside.
I take a few good shots and then the mosquitoes find me. I hurry to make the complete route around the house but I can't hold the camera still to take the pictures.
I end up with some hastily taken out of focus pictures and run screaming into the house while swatting the biting bugs. Next time I'll have to start going around the house the OTHER direction. I didn't get any pictures of the flowers blooming on the south side of the house. I keep encouraging the chickens to eat the mosquitoes but I think they are eating their eggs instead.
My solution to the bug problem today will be to sit at my new sewing machine and do some quilting while watching the wood part of the wall in my sewing room come down. 
The wood will be used for flooring upstairs. Twenty years ago we took up flooring in what will be the new bathroom. We used those floor boards to patch and repair the floor in the rest of the house. We also purchased maple flooring for the bathroom. Since then, we have changed our plan and the bathroom upstairs will not be as big and some of that space will go back to what is now P's room. In working on the new plan we have found that flooring made from yellow pine today is very different from what was made 100 years ago. Today it is all flat sawn. Most of the flooring in our house is quarter sawn. B went to the lumber yard and could not find a single floor boar that was vertical grain.
Here you can see a section of our old flooring. Most of the boards are vertical grain with straight parallel grain lines. There is one board here that is flat sawn and shows the face grain as curvy ribbons of color. This is what ALL of the new floor boards look like. A whole floor like this would look like a zebra! So, we are using the old wall boards for a more uniform look to finish P's room. We can use new flooring on walls in the bathroom that will be painted.
(My sewing room used to be two rooms with the wood area being the back of a build in storage unit. This was changed before we moved in. I do wish the changes had not been made before we bought the house. We have found many interesting things as we have done our own remodeling.)Also, please note that my desk is actually CLEAN.
Easing into Summer
We've been keeping busy this week with some very important activities. We have baked and decorated a birthday cake,
Flown a kite,
Enjoyed the flower gardens (I love these salmony pink poppies),
And even worked in some sewing time. I had this top pieced, pressed, and folded just in time to take to my quilt club last night.
We are all looking forward to the end of school on Friday! I know M will be glad to be out of school like his siblings. I hope it will be warm and sunny for our annual Last Day of School Visit to the Ice Cream Shop.
Sewing Play
I have been working on a variety of projects in the sewing room. This is the quilt I started when the boys decided that they wanted to play with the blocks for this quilt. I have this new baby quilt pinned and ready for quilting.
In my sewing room switch about I found a bin of felted sweaters. I made a few play oven mitts.
I made one of these for miss Petunia a while back and she has really enjoyed using it with her play kitchen stuff. She snitched one of the new ones so that she now has a pair.
The turquoise mitts are made from a cable knit sweater and have a lovely texture.I gave up waiting for a new plan for the Colorful Butterfly quilt and today have been sewing that one together in a randomish scattered layout.
Back to School Skirt
I know, M isn't even on summer break yet and here I am making clothes for P to wear to school next fall. Crazy.
A friend cleaned in her sewing room and gave me this baby wale corduroy. I knew I wanted to make a skirt for P so rather than let the fabric get buried and forgotten under other projects I went ahead and made the skirt. P said she wanted it to be REALLY twirly so we followed the same formula that we used for this skirt but used two widths of fabric instead of one. I turns out that we had JUST the right amount of fabric. I like when there are no leftovers from a project.
I think it passed the twirl test.
The Sampler
My grandmother had quite a collection of fancy hand towels hanging in her bathroom. She taught me how to make these Swedish Weaving towels when I was little - some of my very first needle work projects.
When D was in elementary school I taught him how to make them. He made a few for teachers and other special people. My grandmother was so thrilled that he had learned how to do this that on one visit to her house she gave him this:
I wonder why I had never seen this sampler before.I love how she stitched just enough to show the pattern and that the patterns just run into each other.
Finding treasures like this makes sewing room clean up and rearranging all the more fun.
Out With the Old - In With the New
I bought myself a new sewing machine this week! The sewing room is in disarray as I try to figure out how it will all be arranged. I am thrilled to have a sewing cabinet that the machine will fit down in. I have never had the sewing machine bed to be level with the table. I'll share more about the machine later, after it is set up and presentable. I can tell you that it has lots of space to the right of the needle which is great for machine quilting.
In the mean time we are busy with window repairs, bathroom installation, and issues with our well.Never a dull moment.
More Color Play
I returned from the grocery store today to find this on my living room floor.
B and D have been refining the design since the photo. I am curious to see how it will end up.
Meanwhile, I am working on a new quilt and finishing up a pair of socks.
Color Play
P was thrilled to help me lay out the 361 blocks in the butterfly quilt. We had to move the furniture in the living room to have space to lay it all out.
We were pleased with the layout but others in the family want to try a color or value placement to the blocks.
We picked up all the blocks and have them sorted by light on dark, dark on light, and same value. We all got headaches from squinting our eyes at the blocks to see which way they read.
Does anyone have a ten foot design wall I can borrow?
Back to School!?
P is SO very excited about starting kindergarten in the fall. We went to Kindergarten Round-Up a couple of weeks ago and now the talk is all kindergarten all the time around here. Preschool is over and she is revved up. At Kindergarten Round-Up one of the teachers showed a backpack and demonstrated what would need to go into a student's pack. She pulled out a lunch box, homework folder, a library book, a "book-in-a-bag", a pair of snow pants, and a pair of shoes. P was amazed. She started asking me right away about her backpack. The well trained seamstress that she is came right into the sewing room to choose fabrics to make one!
We used this pattern by Cindy Taylor Oates. P chose the fabrics, trims, and even decided on the quilting patterns.
I reinforced the bottom gusset and the straps with denim cut from an old pair of jeans.We made the small size and had to shorten the straps a bit to fit her.
I like the finished look on the inside. I just hope we can fit all of the required items in there.
P loves her new pack and even wore it when helping with the field fire.
This could be a very long summer.
Spring Butterflies
P has been helping me make these butterfly blocks for my latest quilt. First she helped with stacking the background fabrics for each block. She counted the bundles of four and had fun making the star pattern with the blocks turned on each other.
Her favorite part is matching up the scraps to go with each background. She auditions several colors with each fabric before deciding. I have to say she is really good at that part.It is fun to sit and work at my sewing machine while she is helping on the other side of the table. I also enjoy how much faster the process is with a helper.
I am eager to get all the blocks finished and see what they look like together.
I don't currently have a design wall to put these on (I always just arrange the blocks on the floor) but I think I may have to fashion something to arrange this quilt. I want to have it up and play with it for a while before I sew it.Well, it is a soggy, rainy, thundery sort of day so I expect we will do a bit of sewing today.
Pinned and Packed
I am pinned, packed, and ready to go. This weekend I will be attending a quilt retreat with my local quilt group and I'm really looking forward to it. I have not been on this annual retreat since I was pregnant with little Miss Petunia.P helped me pin baste the basket quilt from my fall quilt retreat. I keep telling myself that I need to finish some older projects before starting something new. I hope to get this quilted.
I have my suitcase of scraps and my collection of solid fabrics packed as well as a couple of knitting projects. You'd think I was planning to be gone for a month.I'll be sure to share the progress next week.Have a great weekend.
In My Hands - Pretty Little Mini Quilts
Yesterday was an exciting mail day. I got a copy of 
It is an honor to have two of my quilts in a book with some of my favorite quilt artists, Progress and Twin Doll Quilts
We have been progressing slowly on our projects around here. The demolition part of the bathroom renovation was without incident. There is still a bit of dust and crumble that is cleaned up each day but I am happy to report that I can still work in the sewing room even without half of the ceiling. I even finished up these two doll quilts yesterday. They were a special order from a grandmother for her lucky granddaughters.
I hope they have fun with them.
The Big Sewing Room Clean Up
Some of you may know that we live in an old farm house. We have s-l-o-w-l-y been renovating it for over twenty years.Shortly after M was born the tiles in the shower of our only bathroom started falling off the wall. We had made plans to put two bathrooms upstairs so we decided not to spend the time to fix the bathroom that was to be torn out and turned into our mudroom.Well, M is now 16. And we still have no bathrooms upstairs. We are still not using the shower in the downstairs bath. Sixteen years of baths. The sink has started leaking into the basement. So it goes.Now is the time. We are putting in the upstairs bathrooms. We have adjusted the plans and are getting ready to make some progress.The flooring in the upstairs bath areas was removed years ago and used to repair the floors in the other rooms of the house. The next step is to remove the temporary plastic ceiling that has been in my sewing room for 18 years so that the plumbing can be installed. There will be lots of dust and debris.SO yesterday was spent cleaning in the sewing room so that everything does not get buried in debris. I am starting at the construction end of the room and going through everything. I found many piles of vintage patterns that I have picked up at sales. In sorting them to file them by size and style I found that I am TOTALLY prepared in the doll clothes department.
Any size doll and any style of dress. I now have half a copy box of doll dress patterns... It's a sickness. 
Have any of you ever seen a looping needle? Well here it is! After looking at the directions it appears that someone has developed a really complicated way to crochet. I could be wrong but really, that is how it looks. If all of my crochet hooks break or get lost I am ready and even have 22 EXCITING patterns to make! This is just one of the many strange and quirky sewing/crafting items I have accumulated.
I found this partially made smocked dress. It is a size four. If I hurry P might be able to wear it. I didn't check to see if all of the pieces are there.
I think it may be too late for this one. It is a much smaller size but I really like the fabric. Someone even started the smocking.
Do you think these hat designs will be coming back? Bow ties might already be back in. Didn't Martha demonstrate how to make them on her show recently? Those rick rack flowers are pretty special -that is an idea I think I can use.
I am telling you. It is a jungle in here. Look what else I found. Yes, I wore that on my head when I got married. It looked a bit fresher then.
I had better get back to work. That ceiling is coming down on Friday!I wonder what treasures I'll find today.
Too Many Irons in the Fire
Maybe it's because I finished up so many projects in a hurry forholiday gift giving. Maybe it's because it is a new year which is fullof new beginnings.
Whatever the reason, I have started a lot of projects the last two weeks. Some are special orders and others are items for myself. I am even trying to write up a few knitting patterns from some of my designs.
Maybe I have too many things going at one time.
Today when I got up to get my coat so that I could pick up M from school, I walked through the kitchen and saw a batch of cookie dough in the mixer bowl from this morning. How did I get out of the kitchen to work on something else before I baked the cookies?!?I am trying not to think of all the OLD projects that I have started...Focus.I need to FOCUS.Oh, yeah, I also ordered some yarn from Knit Picks.
