Well into the new year

Hello All,

It's well into the New Year, and I've yet to make a post. My poor little blog... I hope there is some readers still out there :)

Medical issues are not getting any better, and my sewing time seems to be dwindling :( so I don't have a lot to show, but a bit.

I'm making a new purse for my DD. She likes to use ones the straps go across the chest, and she doesn't need a large one.  I'm enjoying working with these faux leathers. The off white with flowers is a linen, that will be a pocket. She has a pair of black moccasins with fringe down the sides and wanted some on her purse as well.

I've been slowly quilting my Irish stars quilt that I made a few years ago. Pattern my Wedding Dress Blues. I love this pattern! This is the second one I've made and I am thinking of doing another. This one has some of my beloved Sunkissed line, from Sweetwater, in it.

I decided to put that quilt on hold while I whip up a small wall hanging for my chiropractor. I've been seeing her for quite a few years now, and she helps me immensely. She is moving into a new building soon, so this will be a 'welcome to a new place' type of gift. 

It's another of my favorite patterns, any and all who have been to my site often will have seen many of these Lone stars over the years :) I made this one with a few pieces from a jelly roll.

So I have a few things to peck on now and then in the sewing room, and that always makes me happy.

Thanks for stopping by, have a lovely day,

(Sorry for the small pictures, I don't know how to work with blogger pictures anymore, another reason I don't blog as much. SIGH~)

Dorian

A scrappy New Year

 Good morning Everyone,

I can't believe it's already into Feb. The days are just flying by, although they are not busy days. How does that work? lol So a Happy belated New Year to you all, I hope it's a good one for you.

I've been working with my scraps a lot lately. It started at the end of last year with these little 9-patches.

These are made with my 1.5" square scraps. I had made a little lap quilt with some black scraps earlier last year, and wanted to work with them some more.

With this pattern, I wanted to see if I could use up some of my triangle scraps. I have a lot of these, and tend to just leave them in a baggie and not use them. But most of my triangle scraps were the wrong size for this design. So I used some larger squares and cut them on the diagonal, matching the colors in the 9-patch.

This is also a small lap size. With a border it would make a nice wheel chair sized quilt. I was happy to use the last of this beautiful black with flowers fabric scrap on the outside.

Then I took out these tiny triangle scraps.

These are from a quilt a few years ago that used a square put on the corner of a larger square, and made a triangle in the corner. Like when doing a snowball block. The white with swirls is from my favorite Sweetwater line, so I couldn't throw them away :) Once trimmed, they are 1.5" HST's.

I was going to make them into a mug rug. I was going to keep it for myself, something sweet to look at. But then, as I was sewing, the little pieces said they wanted to be part of something else....

I then had to add a pretty little flower and butterfly... I love adding bits of embroidery/applique to things.

then I turned it into this sweet little bag. Side 1

Side 2

And now it has some yummy sweet treats in it, and is going to be flying off to live with a dear friend instead  of staying home with me :)

I love making little gifts like this.

I also decided to make the scrappy mystery quilt from Charlotte Hawks. She is using lots of triangles. I was, again, hoping to use some of my scrappy triangles, but mostly the triangles the pattern uses are much larger then what I have saved. 

But that's ok, as I have lots of under 1/4 yard scraps that are easily cut into these triangles.

This is the first blocks. Very scrappy. The red and the dark gray are the constants, something to mellow out all the scrappiness a bit.

This is a once a month clue pattern... sigh~ I hate waiting for the next clue, but I am enjoying playing with these scraps.

Have a lovely day, thank you for dropping by,

Dorian

It's snowy outside....

But sunny inside... at least in my sewing room...

 Hello All,

Our February and into March was very snowy. We haven't seen this much snow in quite a few years. But now the rain has come and the snow is starting to melt. We had close to 2 ft at one time. Now we have a bunch of mud.

These fabrics are some of my very favorite, Sunkissed and Spring Chicken, both by Sweetwater. I just love the cheerfulness of the lines, the sherberty goodness :)

Those swirls are my favorite.

I'm also working on some sweet hearts.

The fabrics for the hearts comes from a jelly roll. The fabrics are vibrant in real life, more of a jeweled tone. The quilt is going to be a chain quilt.

And I'm working on this scrappy table runner.

Using a few of those jelly roll strips as sashing and border.

So while the rains come and go and the ground gets muddy and wet, I'll be in my sewing room, enjoying the Spring colors and flowers :)

Thank you for stopping by,

Dorian 

Things I'm working on

Hello Everyone,

I hope your January has gone well. Can you believe it's over already? The days are flying by. Our January was very wet, and we have lots of lovely snow on the mountain tops. So that is good news! Hopefully it will help keep things a little less dry this summer.

I have 3 different projects I'm working on right now. The first is this cute little mystery quilt we did on the QATW forum. It called for 3 fabrics, light, medium and dark. I chose these 3.

I've finished the top. It's only around 40 inches square. A fun little mystery. I do like chain quilts :)

As I did on the previous mystery from Cheryl at Meadow Mist designs, this next mystery I also saved the clues and then took them out a few weeks ago and started putting it together (Cheryl starts the mystery in the summer and it goes till the following Spring). This is the Melodic mystery. The layout clue comes out on Thursday, can't wait to see how this goes together :)

I've been wanting to use this beautiful rose fabric for awhile now. I know the pink is a little light, but I really wanted to use it and the blue. Its' a little subtle, but nice I think. I hope that Red isn't going to be overpowering.

And lastly, I pulled out a charm pack of my favorite line ever, Sunkissed by Sweetwater. My best quilty buddy, Pat at the Scrapatch, sent me a charm pack. She and I both love this line. 

I was very happy when Sweetwater came out with their line Spring chicken. As it uses the same beautiful sherbert colors as Sunkissed, along with the lovely gray. So I took out an almost full fat eighth
bundle of it. Along with some yardage and bits and pieces of Sunkissed.

I cut up everything I could into 5" squares, and then had to cut up some into 2.5" squares. So that I can make another Pat's Gems quilt. It's a pattern I designed to use up charm packs. This version I am making I am changing up just slightly, like I did for the one I made last year. You can see that version HERE.

I can't wait to see this one pieced. Those  cheery colors just make my day :)

So I am keeping myself busy, what with snow outside and cold wind blowing, it's best to stay indoors ;) 

Thanks for stopping by!

Dorian

What I'm working on

 Hello Everyone,

We had been having some lovely Feb weather, and now things are starting to get a bit cloudy and rainy, which is good. We reallllly need the moisture. So I am hoping this is the starting of a wet Spring (which often mean snow and freezing weather, as well as rain).

Not long ago, I was talking about pulling this old UFO out, and getting it quilted up.

It's now sandwhiched and pinned, ready to quilt. 

I started to hand quilt this, because I have some issues that I'm afraid I'm going to have a hard time 'quilting' out ( and because I haven't hand quilted in a long time and thought it would be nice), like the bumps below (where the arrows are). I know, it's wrinkly as well and I should of ironed it before pinning it...

But, there is lots of lovely spaces here to quilt...

And after quilting for just 10 or 15 mins, making barely any headway, I started rethinking my hand quilting. For one, it's not very good. Something like 5 stitches per inch, instead of 8 or 10. And then the next day, my forearm was hurting a lot from doing the little bit of stitching I had the day before. I don't think I can handle doing this whole quilt by hand :(

So, I had my oldest son get my machine oiled (I had cleaned it a few days ago) and am going to get going on quilting this one... as soon as I buy some thread. The thread I started using started falling apart when I was frogging it. It's polyester and I am not a 'poly' girl, much prefer cotton. But I don't have any matching colors, so I'll have to buy something. 

Now I hope that I can quilt this up decently and don't have many issues with it.

I also have a few more tops to add to the 'need to quilt' pile. This is the macaroon mystery top. So pretty and colorful! I really like the green sashing, which was supposed to be the background color but I had too much swirls and needed something to rest the eyes.

This is a Jacob's ladder quilt top that I got out of the Fall 2018 Quilts and More magazine. This is the quilt I did for a swap on our forum. We aren't supposed to quilt it, so that we can swap it with someone else, if we want.

I really wish this one was bigger, as I love it. But I don't have any wall spaces for it and I have no Grand babies to give it to. So, I might keep it and add some more patch work around it, making it bigger.. I might not, we'll see.

I have plenty of things to quilt up while I wait for thread for the Lonestar, I'm starting on a few table runners.

Take care, and thanks for stopping by.

Dorian

Scrappy Irish stars top

Hello All,

The summer here has just been so lovely, I can't get over it. We've had very few days over 90 degrees, and none over 95, and that is almost unheard of! I feel very blessed to have such great weather this year. I pray that it keeps the fire danger down. August/Sept are the two worst months for fire in California.

I've finished piecing my scrappy Irish stars! The pattern is at Wedding Dress Blues. I debated about putting a border on it, but I don't think I will. It is at 70x80 right now. I think a border might detract from it's scrappy goodness.

This quilt has some of my very favorite fabrics in it. The background for the stars is from Sweet waters Sunkissed collection, which is my all time favorite :)

There's some V& Co fabrics (that bright orange loveliness). And some Maywood (the roses). 

That cute kitty is Here Kitty Kitty fabrics I got with the kit for this quilt.

Love those gray butterflies too... so many great collections here :)

This quilt to will go put away for now. I have a few other quilts I want to get quilted up before I tackle this one.

Have a great day all!

Cornerstones is finished!!

Hello Everyone,

Hope all is well with you and yours.

My Cornerstones quilt is complete! The blocks have my favorite fabric line in them, Sunkissed by Sweetwater. Also some Kona Bay fabrics. I can't remember the name of the colorful fabrics, I think it is Boundless by Crafty, but I could be wrong.

 I started this in the last half of 2015, so it's about time it was quilted and bound. LOL

You can see the quilting a bit in the picture below. Elongated orange peel in the borders and big flowers in the blocks, with swirly centers.

Here is the back, just a plain black flannel. I have never used black like this in a quilt before. But those jewel like colors needed something to set them off, and black was it.

Sorry for the poor coloring in these photo's, they don't really show off the beautiful colors very well. But it's very, very smoky right now, due mostly to the awful Redding fire. And  a few other fires contributing to the smoky air is well.

Have a great day!



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WIP Wednesday, on Thursday..

Hello Everyone,

I've made a bit of progress on my disappearing 9patch project this week.

Here's most of my 9 patches, all trimmed and cut in half both horizontal and vertical (as that's what makes them 'disappear' if you didn't know). I love the swirly yellow (Sunkissed by Sweetwater) paired with the almost-solids.

And here are half of my flying geese... sigh~ only half, as I calculated wrong when first cutting them out. I love the gray check (Sunkissed by Sweetwater) mixed with the almost-solids, too.

When I was first cutting this project out, I calculated 4 geese per block. But I am supposed to use 8 geese per block!! And then, I decided I needed this quilt a bit bigger, so have to make 5 more blocks, which means another 20 geese on top of the 80 more I have to do. BLAH!

Buuuuttt, as much as I hate the trimming, don't these blocks all look fantastic! Trimmed and squared up just right :) and that makes the piecing together go much easier too, of course. So it's well worth it.... maybe by next week I can actually start putting the blocks together ;)

Have a great weekend!

Linking up with Lorna, thanks Lorna!

A new project

Hello All,

I hope my American friends had a great Fourth of July weekend. The heat wave we've been having has finally cooled some, we might even see a shower or two in the next few days. That would be good.

So, I started a new quilt top. I know, I need another quilt top like I need a hole in my head. But, well... you know ;) My son is making me a nice sewing table, and I am hoping to be able to use it to help me baste my quilt tops, so that I can really and truly start quilting them easier.

I designed this quilt quite a few months ago. My dh helped me pick out colors :) Then I bought this fat quarter bundle from Riley Blake, it's called Cotton Shades. And the colors are close enough to what my dh and I came up with, that I decided to use them for this project.

I didn't use the whole bundle, there are 4 pieces left over. These are all the ones, plus the backgrounds pieces, I am using.

The darker gray is Quilters Rose by STOF. Oh, thats the wrong yellow. I switched it out for some Sweetwater swirly yellow fabric from the Sunkissed line. The gray check is from the same line. You can see the swirly yellow I am using in the next picture.

Here's the disappearing nine patch block I'll be using.

And some flying geese.

I'll be doing a lot of trimming... sigh~ but, trimming makes the blocks go together better, right?! So trimming I'll be doing... after the blocks are sewn.

Have a great day!

Linking up with Lee and Lorna today. Thanks Ladies!

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