Baby Quilts and Christmas Projects

I just checked and I have not posted since April.  Oh boy, there’s been a lot going on.  My daughter just started her Junior year at JMU and I’ve become an ambassador with Plexus Worldwide.  We specialize in health supplements.  Hardly leaves time for quilting, or so you’d think.  My guild chapter started a UFO challenge back in January.  We each put a fat quarter in the pool and we get to put our name in the hat for a drawing at the end of the year for each UFO we finish and bring in for show and tell.  We meet twice a month, so my goal is 24 finished UFOs by December.  I just finished #20.  OK, that is for another post.  I still haven’t shared some of my quilts from 2014.  I need to get busy!

Here are the three baby quilts I completed as gifts.

And now for some Christmas Embroidery projects.  I just love the OESD Christmas Village designs.  I’m really behind on them, but the ones I do have finished take up an entire kitchen table.  Here’s the Town Hall and the Gingerbread House.

I made some Christmas wristlet bags on my embroidery machine (in-the-hoop designs) for Christmas presents and finished a Christmas Music Quilt.

The biggest news of 2014 was I got a new Bernina machine to add to my sewing studio.  It is a Bernina 750 and I absolutely love it.  Amazing for embroidery, free-motion quilting and so much more.

Last but not least, here’s the bunch of Embroidery Christmas ornaments I made for various “exchanges” and parties over the Christmas season.

I’m done.  Until next time, happy sewing & quilting!!!

Melinda

Let’s Play Catch Up – It Has Been Way Too Long

This post is going to have a lot of different types of projects.  It has been so long since I’ve posted and many projects have come and gone.  Let’s rewind the clock back to August 2014.  I’m getting ready to send my one and only sweet daughter off to college and emotions are running high.  One of our co-workers was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months earlier.  We wanted to make her a comforting quilt to get her through the hard days ahead with surgery and treatments.  We made simple blocks with a place in the center for everyone in our company to sign well-wishes and prayers to her.  Here’s the quilt and a few close ups.

 

Second project, before my daughter went off to college, she wanted to make a rug for her new dorm room to match her comforter set.  We went to our local Goodwill store and bought up a bunch of t-shirts.  She cut them into strips and rolled them up in balls.  Then she took three colors at a time and braided the rug.  My job was to sew together the braided rows into a circular rug.  It turned out really cute and she used it her first year of college in her dorm room.  Here’s the photo!

 

Fast forward to the fall season.  My daughter and I had started a Halloween quilt together many years and due to crazy schedules, it got put on the shelf.  After she went to college, I wanted to finish it for her dorm bed for Halloween.  It was emotional dragging it back out, but I’m glad I did.  She enjoyed it during the Halloween season.  I also made a Halloween pillowcase/sham to go with it.

Another fun Halloween project was this machine embroidery free-standing lace coffin.  Lots of pieces, but way fun to put together and even more fun to decorate with!  This design was from OESD!

For our annual Fall Fest meeting, I finished a quilt top of the raffle blocks I’d won at a previous full chapter meeting (I think it was the previous Spring Fest).  I may have already posted some of those blocks, but here’s the finished top.  It is on my “UFO to do List” that I plan on finishing this year.  I just need to decide if it needs a border to pull it all together and we’re off.

Prior to our Fall Fest our chapter got together to make pillowcases for charity (the chapter hosting the above Fall Fest event asked for these).  Our chapter made all these great pillowcases.  They took little time to make and were so much fun.  Plus it is always fun to have an excuse to get with your quilting friends and sew, sew, sew!

OK, enough for this time.  I’ll start up next time with the Christmas projects of that year.  Until next time, Happy Sewing & Quilting…

Melinda

 

Virginia Row by Row 2015

Have you heard about the Row by Row Experience?  I hadn’t until last year.  It is a major, country-wide (and Canada) shop hop.  You visit participating quilt shops and collect their rows and license plates.  You purchase the license plates and most shops have fabric kits available for their rows.  The bonus is the prizes offered.  If you visit 8 shops and make a finished quilt (which means, pieced, quilted and labelled), and turn in into one of the shops, you get a prize of 25 fat quarters.  You can imagine my excitement on learning of this contest.  Last year a small group of my quilting friends went to a lot of the shops in the Virginia row by row.  I even picked up a couple out of state plates after the event at quilt shows.  I have a nice collection of plates and patterns from last year.  This year the event started June 21st and I made it my mission to win the prize at my local quilt shop, Cottonwood in Charlottesville, VA.  This year’s row by row theme is Water.  Here’s the website if you’d like more information or a list of shops in your area.  The event goes through September 8th, so there is still plenty of time to get our there and shop hop.

www.rowbyrowexperience.com

I visited my hope shop, Cottonwood first and bought their kit.  I had so much fun making this one.  “Hooked on Fabric”

 

The 2nd row I completed was from my hometown, Wytheville, VA – Batiks Etc.  Love this shop when I’m visiting my parents.  “Waterwheel”  I ended up making this block one of the outside borders, so I had to turn it sideways, but it worked.

My daughter, who attends James Madison University was feeling like a trip to Harrisonburg, so she went with me to the three shops on the Row by Row there.  We also hit Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint for lunch which was amazing, and I made my first visit to the Virginia Quilt Museum.  Definitely a great trip.  Our first stop was at Ragtime Fabrics, and I completed their row next called “A Day in the Valley”.

Then we went to a shop in Harrisonburg that I’d never been to called Sew Classic Fabrics.  It was inside a farmer’s market off Rt. 11 in Harrisonburg, so there was an additional perk to visiting it.  This one is called “Seven Bends of the Shenandoah River”.

Last, but definitely not the least in this area was Patchwork Plus in Dayton, VA which has always been one of my favorite shops.  Their take on water was quite unique.  Here’s “Southern Water”.  To top it off they had samples of their southern water, some really wonderful sweet tea.  I had to break out my hand sewing/embroidery techniques to hand stitch the lettering on the jars.

Next came the beautiful row by Quilter’s Corner in Midlothian, VA.  I absolutely fell in love with these beautiful batik turtles and had to purchase the kit.  If I hadn’t, I would still be cutting out the little turtle pieces and fusing them to the row.  The colors in this row are awesome.  Photo doesn’t do it justice.

Last stop on the trip before visiting 8 shops was a trip to Culpeper and Fredericksburg VA.  First stop was 145 Design Studio – That Little Quilt Shop in Culpeper.  Downtown Culpeper is so charming and it is always a pleasure to visit this shop.  They have cute little beach umbrellas for this row called “Summer Fun”.  I also found some cute little buttons to embellish it with.

Last row came from The Crazy Cousin in Fredericksburg, plus a trip to Texas Roadhouse for steak made the day just perfect.  Their row is absolutely adorable with these cute little duckies in their row-boat.  This row is called “Ducks in a Row”.

After all 8 rows were done, it was back to Cottonwood to pick out the fabric to finish this big quilt.  When I picked out my fabric, I heard the ladies in the shop discussing that several people had called the shop to see if they had a winner yet.  Yikes, I was going to lose out if I didn’t kick my sewing into high gear.  I knew my group was going on a Row by Row trip to Northern Virginia on Thursday and this was Tuesday.  I didn’t have much time.  I went home and had two days of marathon sewing.  I took my finished quilt to Cottonwood on Wednesday afternoon about an hour before closing.  I’m so happy to report I won the prize for that shop.  I got to pick out 25 fat quarters of my choosing.  That was so fun.  I was so exhausted and tired of looking at fabric, I decided to go back on Friday and pick out my prize.  I don’t think I’d ever do this again.  I kept seeing on Facebook each of the quilt shops that I had sewn rows for get winners. I saw my chances dwindling.  It was very stressful.

Without further delay, here’s the finished quilt top and label.  I used the license plates for corner block fillers and designed a label that listed all the shops and locations of each row.

 

 

I’ve asked my quilting friends to stop me if I try to do this again next year.  It was fun, but very stressful.  There are some very fast quilters out there and they all want to win a prize.  It has been fun seeing all the finished quilts and rows from around the state.  I’m hoping to get some from out of the area this time, we’ll see.  We’re planning another Row by Row trip to the Richmond area in a couple of weeks.  There are 4 new shops I’ve never been to.  Can’t wait for that trip.

Until next time, Happy Sewing & Quilting,

Melinda

 

 

 

Bible Verse Quilts

I made each of these Bible Verse quilts as gifts, so I had to wait until all three were delivered before I could share them with you.  The first one was made for our pastor and his family who left our area.  I love pairing fun colors with these Bible verse panels.  Here’s quilt #1.  It is the Prayer of St. Francis paired with colorful batik fabrics.

 

Quilt #2 was made for one of our current pastor and his wife.  Our church had a “pounding” for them as they moved into their new home.  For those of you not familiar with a pounding, it is an old tradition where a couple was showered with a pound of things they might need for their pantry.  I decided instead of a pound of something a Bible verse quilt would fit the bill nicely.  This quilt is the “Love” chapter from 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13.  Here’s quilt #2.  Yes, the border fabric is the same.  I believe in maximizing my fabric usage!

Quilt #3 was made for our missionary family serving in Madagascar.  I had the info that their living room colors were orange and yellow and she picked the verse – Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord”.  I really love the colors.  I tried every combination of batiks I could find in my local quilt shop until I found “The One”.

I love making these small panel quilts.  They make great gifts and help me hone my free motion skills and bonding with my Bernina 750.

Until next time, Happy Sewing & Quilting!

Melinda

 

Graduation – A Year Later

Wow, the time has flown since my daughter graduated from high school.  I still have projects from that time that I haven’t posted yet, so shame on me.  Life has been a little crazy recently.  We just returned from a 8 day vacation to sunny (and yes very hot) Florida.  For our 25th wedding anniversary (June 16th), we decided to take a family trip to Disney World and Universal Studios.  We are big Harry Potter fans so we had to see the Harry Potter World at Universal Studios.  I had two misconceptions – #1 it will be nice weather in Florida in May.  Yikes, it was mid 90’s most of the trip.  #2 – It won’t be as crowded since school-aged children should still be in school.  Wrong again, Disney had tons of little kids too young for school and Universal Studios had tons of school groups.  Lots of crowds and very hot temperatures, but it was still a fun trip.  We walked our feet off.  We did 3 days at Disney and 3 days at Universal Studios without a break in between.  Yes, that was my ambitious scheduling.  Here’s a fun photo of me and the hubby having fun at Disney.

 

At Disney we stayed in a Royal room at the Port Orleans Riverside resort.  That was a great place to stay and we had so much fun.  Here’s a photo of my daughter and her best friend in the princess-themed room.

We moved my daughter home from James Madison University where she completed her freshman year as a music education major just three days before leaving for our vacation.  The boxes are still all over the house.  Not sure where they will go until she moves back in August.  I’m so proud of her…she made the Dean’s List both semesters.  She’s going to be working at a local grocery store as a bakery-deli clerk and taking 7 credit hours at the local community college.

OK, now back to the business of sewing and quilting.  I have a lot of projects to catch you up on.  I had been having trouble with my Bernina 830 and broke down and took it in for an overhaul.  I’m happy to report after replacing a few small parts and a thorough take apart/cleaning my baby is doing very well.  I haven’t put her back on the quilt frame yet, but plan on doing that once the excitement of moving my daughter home from college and vacation wear off.  Can’t remember if I shared this or not, but in November 2014, I became the proud owner of a Bernina 750.  I absolutely love it!  I haven’t found anything it can’t do yet (except the dishes…darn!).  I traded in my work horse Bernina 440 which made me sad, but it was time to move on.

These projects are from last May, so here goes.  I did a Bernina retreat at my local quilt shop, Cottonwood called Sew-A-Palooza.  It was so much fun and we got an embroidery design to make these little in the hoop wristlet bags.  I have made close to if not more than 30 of them.  I used them as gifts for my guests at my daughter’s graduation party last May.  Here are some of the bags.  I finally start making some for myself and have made a bag for every month October through May (yes I really need to get started on my June one since it is coming very fast).  It is fun finding cool fabrics, ribbons, etc. to make these.  I also made two JMU ones for my daughter and her first year college roommate.

Last project for this post was a gift for my daughter’s best friend.  She loves to bake and always wears my Girl Scout Cookie apron I made a few years back when she bakes at my house.  I made her a similar one and embroidered her name on it for her graduation gift.  It was such a fun project and she really liked it.  Love that Girl Scout cookie fabric!

Until next time (and hope it isn’t so long from now), happy sewing & quilting!

Melinda

 

Bags, Bags and More Bags

I keep meaning to share another project with you, but life gets in the way.  There has been so much going on during the holidays and having my daughter home from college.  Her college marching band took a New Year’s trip to Rome, Italy so there was a lot of preparation for that in the days leading up to Christmas.  What an experience of a lifetime though.  My only regret is not getting to go with her.  Since I seem to be so slow in sharing, I’m going to combine a few items in this post.  Buckle your seat belts!

First was a purse that I had bought a kit for a few years back.  I kept getting the instructions out and then putting them back.  This year my goal was to sew up a lot of the purse/bag kits that I’ve bought at quilt shows over the years.  The first bag is the Manhattan bag made out of fun watermelon and strawberry fabrics.  This was a great purse to carry in those warm summer months we only dream about now in cold January.

Here are some photos.  Between the panels I did some decorative stitching with variegated thread which was a lot of fun.

 

Next on the list was the “Mondo Bag” which was a fusible square kit.  This bag was really huge and I used half of a jelly roll to make all the squares for the bag.  This bag would make a good weekend or overnight bag.

Next bag kit to finish was this quilter’s tote.  The kit included pre-printed quilt related sayings.  I love this bag and use it to tote my projects and show n’tell to my quilt guild meetings.  Love the sewing theme fabric in this one.

Last, but not least is another purse kit I bought on a quilt tour.  Love the purple colors of this bag and am using it now for fall and winter.

I’ll try not to go so long between posts next time, until then…

Happy sewing & quilting!

Melinda

Let the Good Times Roll Quilt Challenge

My chapter of our local quilt guild issued a challenge for our Springfest meeting back in May of this year.  I wasn’t going to participate because nothing came to me, but at the last minute (yes a week before the meeting) I got a good idea.  The theme was “Let the Good Times Roll”.  I wanted to incorporate Mardi Gras and something personal.  I came up with “My Favorite Things” and decided that is how I best could “let the good times roll”.  I took photos of many of my favorite things…my husband, my daughter, foods I like, sewing, knitting, quilting, horses and my two kitties plus a few more things and printed them out on fabric paper.  Then I made a collage of them on my background fabric.  It was a lot of fun and I love the purple, gold and green fabrics I found to coordinate.  I just did free motion quilting around the quilt and used ribbon embellishment to accent the embroidery design of the quilt name.  Now I just need to find a good place in my office/studio to hang up this quilt to keep me focused on the good things in life when the irritating and bad things come along.  Here are the photos.

 

Until next time, Happy Sewing & Quilting,

Melinda

Even More Bright Stars Quilts 2014

Wow, I just realize it has been a long time since I’ve shared with you all.  May in fact.  I guess having a daughter about to graduate from high school takes priority.  We made it through graduation, summer and moving her to college.  That was the absolute hardest thing I have ever done.  Although we miss her terribly, she is flourishing and doing great on her own.  We are so very proud of her.  She is a member of the marching band at James Madison University–the Marching Royal Dukes.  We were able to see her perform for the first time last weekend at Family Weekend.  So proud.

That really isn’t my purpose for posting tonight, but I had to be a proud mom for a few minutes.  I have a huge list of projects to share with you, and hope I can get them posted in the near future.  Our quilt guild participates in Bright Star Quilt projects for a local preschool program.   It is so much fun making these quilts for the little ones who appreciate them so much.  Here are this year’s donations that I made.

Here are some close ups of the quilting.

Sorry this is short.  Just trying to get back into things.  I did free motion quilting on both of these, and played with some new designs I’ve learned in various forums and Craftsy.com classes.  Lots of things to come including a hallenge quilt from my guild, “Let the Good Times Roll”,  several more installments on my “bag of the month” project and some gifts I’ve made.  I have two friends having babies in the Winter, so will have those two quilts to share.  Also, I won some raffle blocks at our guild’s Springfest meeting and finally put them together last week.  Lots of fun projects.

Until next time, Happy Sewing & Quilting,

Melinda

High School Graduation – How the Time Flies

It seems like moments ago we watched our little girl get on the school bus for the first time to go to Kindergarten.  Today she had her last official school day of high school with only an exam left and a couple band rehearsals.  I’m happy for her so she can spread her wings and become her own person, but I still will miss that little girl.  Since graduation is less than two weeks away, I wanted to share with you my daughter’s graduation quilt.  I was looking around the house just yesterday at all the “graduation” quilts I’ve made for her.  Her first was preschool graduation and one of the first quilts I ever made.  Then the elementary school graduation quilt which were “art squares” of her artwork from each year.  For her middle school graduation, there is a beautiful Asian quilt that still hangs on her bedroom wall.

I wanted her to pick what she wanted for her high school graduation quilt with the hopes that she’d take it to college to feel a part of me with her.  I made this kit I bought at my local quilt shop from Timeless Treasures fabric.  I love the colors.  My daughter’s only request was that I put a soft backing on it so she could get good use out of it at college.  I found a navy Minkee fabric for the backing.

I did not put this quilt on the quilt frame for several reasons.  Reason #1, I didn’t want to chance the thickness of the Minkee.  Reason, #2 I only wanted to outline quilt each block so that the quilt wasn’t too heavy and kept the softness.   I used my Bernina 830 with a dual feed foot and this quilted like a dream with the thick layers.  I didn’t add a batting and just used the two layers of fabric.

Here’s the finished quilt.

And here’s a close up of the blocks so you can see the wonderful detail of the butterflies.

I made a couple in-the-hoop wristlet bags today, but can’t post them yet since they are graduation gifts for my daughter’s friends.

Until next time, happy sewing & quilting,

Melinda

New Baby Quilt on the Frame

I’ve had this quilt finished for a while now, but couldn’t post about it until I delivered it to the new baby and her family.  Didn’t want to spoil the surprise.  This was the first time I’ve used a purchased design with Quiltmotion and the Bernina Quilt Frame.  It was successful.  I was a bit nervous, but I purchased three designs that weren’t too expensive if it didn’t work out.  Now I have the confidence they do work and can increase my library of designs.  There were a few snags along the way, but all in all it was a pretty good experience (or that’s what I remember from almost a month ago).  It might be like childbirth…you’d never quilt another quilt if you remembered all the pain!  I really have to be careful when setting my safe area.  I got the machine foot caught yet again and ripped a seam.  This time, I used steam a seam to try and fix the tear.  Then when I took the quilt off the frame, I did some tack down quilting.  I could tell where it was, but I’m not pointing it out.

Here’s the finished quilt.

The design was a continuous line design with a large and a small flower.  I quilted with Superior King Tut on the top and Superior Masterpiece in the bobbin. This seems to be a good thread combination.  I bought some new variegated thread at a recent quilt demonstration and am anxious to try it out on the frame.  Here are a couple close ups of the quilting design.  I did free motion for the borders.  I’ve found that to be easier, then trying to quilt on the frame right out to the edges of the quilt.  I’ve been experimenting with new free-motion designs.

I want to get my chocolate quilt on the frame next and get that one finished.  I found a continuous line design of candies that I think will make a great design for this quilt.

Only two weeks until my daughter graduates from high school, so I’ll probably be silent for a bit.  I’ve been working on a lot of new projects though, some cute in the hoop wristlet cell phone bags, a new handbag, an apron for a graduation gift,  more knitted ruffle scarves and a challenge quilt for my guild plus two more Bright Stars quilts.  I need to plan my next new project.  I’m on a quest to sew up the many, many handbag and tote bag kits I’ve bought at various quilt shows.  I’ll call it my “bag of the month” project.

Until next time, happy sewing & quilting,

Melinda