What's on my design wall

Well, this is on my design wall this week.

I took a class at Ginger's Quilt Shoppe on Saturday from Mary Ellen Sakai. It was supposed to be a string piecing class, but I asked her if I could improvise. She kindly accommodated me, and allowed me to play around with free piecing. This is the result of my playing around. I was thinking of expanding the burbs it a bit, adding borders and calling it a mini quilt.

I've finally gotten the borders on Bali Sea Star and Starstruck tops. I pieced a top for the Longarm University's Mystery Quilt, but I have to finish a few customer quilts before I can load the mystery quilt.

Quilt Entry

I entered a quilt into Quilting Bloggers' Nature's Best Quilt Contest. It's all Sue's fault. She started me on this. You should go check out her Leaves Around the Cabin. It is beautiful, and her photography is much better than mine too.

Not much chance of winning, but that's OK. I'm branching out. I've never been much for entering quilts. I display my quilts when the Valley of the Mist Quilters' has their outdoor quilt show.












I just don't enter much. My friends are encouraging me to enter a couple of quilts in the Valley Quilters show in February. I'll try to get at least one of the flimsies quilted up. (flimsy-an unquilted pieced top)







I'm thinking of this one. What do you think?

A future project

I think I've found a project for the little half-square triangle units I've been saving. This is a project in the October/November issue of Quilt magazine. It's called Sawtooth Log Cabin and was designed by Jodi Barrows. Mine will be a bit scrappier, because my little units do not all have a red half.

Because I love Bonnie Hunter's quilts, I have been cutting strips as I work on other projects. It is her scrap user's system. So, I have a bag of 2" strips ready to go. I just have to trim up all of those little HST units.

I don't usually buy Quilt magazine, but I'm glad I did this time. There are several pages of inspiration.

Little Buckaroo

Here is Bubba the Buckaroo. When we went to my daughter's house for the birthday lunch, Bubba headed to his rocking horse and struck this pose. The boy loves his horse!

Birthday Weekend

My daughter and daughter-in-law celebrate their birthdays this weekend. They were born one day apart thirty-one years ago. The cakes aren't fancy. I don't often do fancy, but they are made with love.

Unfortunately, the house was so hot that the frosting started slumping off the lemon cake. I quickly put it in the fridge, but some damage was already done.


On the puppy front, my husband and I had forgotten what it is like to housebreak and train a puppy. We are both exhausted from keeping a vigilant eye on Ginger. I have to be careful with my sewing machine cords. She really, really likes cords, shoe laces and yarn. In the picture what she is really chewing on are the leather laces on top of the slipper.

What's on my design wall

I finished making all of the components for the Starstruck top. I still have to sew the rows together though, and I'm not sure what borders I want on it.
I pinned these fabrics up on the design wall to give me a chance to think about it. I usually have a hard time deciding about borders. These will have to sit with me for a day or two before I decide.

If you want to see other design walls, visit Judy Laquidara's blog.









I finished quilting this today. It was the New Year's Eve Mystery Quilt designed by Ann M. Smith. She presented the clues on the Pickle Road Studio Yahoo Group. I admit that I didn't get it done on New Year's Eve. I wanted to, but I was also working on the piecing for Longarm University's New Year's Day mystery quilt. The two mysteries were quite different. With Ann's the mystery was how the quilt would look when it was done. She posted cutting and pre-sewing clues before the big day. (She just had a summer mystery also)

With Longarm U's the mystery was how would it be quilted. Cindy Roth, of Longarm U., designed a simply pieced top that would highlight quilting. The piecing was done on New Year's Eve, and on New Year's Day she posted videos of the quilting lessons. A couple of weeks later I received a DVD of all the lessons. It was a great bargain.










By-the-way, if you like the idea of machine quilting lessons, she has another mystery scheduled for August 29. The one on the 29th focuses on feathers.

Now, cute kids and puppy pictures. Twinkle Toes and her brother came over to meet our new puppy. Ginger was thrilled to have new playmates, and chew toys.

Our New Addition

We have a new addition to our family. Since Wednesday died poor Red has been lonesome and depressed, so today we adopted Ginger. Red and Ginger haven't warmed up to each other yet, but haven't


shown signs of enmity either. We have high hopes for a good doggy friendship blossoming.


-- Post From My iPhone

Triangles and Squares

I have been reaping a great deal of these half-square triangles from recent projects. Add to those all the squares that I've cut from ends of strips and I have the makings of ... of ... well, something. I just don't know what. I'm going to need to use some of what I learned in Roberta Horton's class about value. The colors sure don't go together. I don't think the sizes mesh either. Hmmm...this is going to take brain power to figure out, and right now I have none.

What's on my design wall?

I've not done much sewing lately. Which is why I haven't participated in Design Wall Mondays. School starting has put a damper on my personal work. Most of my machine time has been at the longarm, quilting for customers, but I have been plugging away at units for Starstruck.

My friend requested a quilt in neutrals with red accents. I'm not sure if she was thinking about neutrals getting as dark as the deep coffee browns, but I think it's turning out nicely.

I haven't made as much progress on Pick and Choose. I'm working on the four patch units that go in the corners.



I did finally get my table runner top assembled. Not quilted, but assembled. I didn't make my goal for the Charming Girls July contest though.

Do you think I put in enough flying geese units? Since I'm demonstrating how to make the geese units for the October quilt show, I wanted lots of the units in this project. Now, I'll start collecting pictures of blocks that use the units to have as part of a display.

Off to school for me.

Sunday

I'm spending the day trying to get organized for the coming week. You know, meals planned and shopped for, laundry done, sewing room organized. I am back to school now, so it is a good idea to strive for organization.

Well, the sewing room really being organized is a bit of a stretch. I would like to be able to walk in and not step on the stash though. I volunteered to learn how to make free-pieced houses, and give my friendship group a mini-lesson on how to make them. I needed to find some scraps to do the prototypes. That led to my attempts to organize the sewing room. I'm too embarrassed to post a before picture.

And So it Begins

This is how my classroom looked last Thursday when I opened the door.







After much sweat, effort, and Tylenol, this is how my classroom looks. Students return tomorrow, and I pretty much feel ready.

I never would have gotten this far without the help of my hubby. He helped me with moving all the big heavy stuff. I just didn't have the ummph to move the big roll around cupboards.






In quilting things, I've been cutting fabric for a Starstruck quilt and fabric for a Pick and Choose quilt. Starstruck is from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site.

Pick and Choose is from the June issue of American Patchwork and Quilting.

I've sewn the dark strips to the light strips for Starstruck, and I've sewn some of the darks to lights for Pick and Choose. Unfortunately, neither is far enough along to say that they qualify for Design Wall Monday. Hopefully by next week.


Also, I did get my Arkansas Crossroads top quilted. There are times I need this journal/blog to remind myself that I do get things done.




Well, off I go to finish the quilt on the frame.