Sister's Choice Quilts

Joy Luck

I got so much done this weekend, which is surprising, since the weather was so lovely, it was a shame not to be outside.  I got the Joy Luck Schnibbles pieced together, and think it turned out very pretty.  I used an older line of Kate Spain's called Paradiso.  Those pink, coral, navy and aqua tones are so nice together.

I altered a few things in the pattern.  I made it smaller--the pattern calls for five rows of twelve blocks and I made five rows of ten.  The border on the pattern is also different.  It is a series of rail fence blocks turned this way then that, and I just sewed strips together.

The result is springy and I am hopeful Sara will enjoy using it on her table.

This is the view from my back porch.  Can you see why I kept wanting to sit outside in the sunshine?

Joy Luck

Spring was in the air over the weekend, and I was in the mood to work with some Springy fabrics.  I chose Paradiso by Kate Spain, for its lovely aqua, blue, pink and coral tones.  I had a couple of charm packs, which is just what you need to make a Schnibbles (Miss Rosie patterns) table topper.  I love the Chinese Coins block that is featured in the Joy Luck pattern.  It looks a bit like Chinese lanterns in the garden.  I think I need to replace a couple of the pink blocks with aqua ones, but we shall see.  I just threw the blocks up on the design wall, stepped back and snapped the picture.

I am making the top a skosh smaller than the pattern calls for, and will be adding a fun pieced border.  I used the Clearly Perfect Angle  tool to make the blocks and was generally very pleased with the results.  I had to remake a few blocks, where I hadn't sewn the corner squares on just right, but all in all, it was a painless process.  I am listening to a book by Belinda Alexandra called Southern Ruby, which is entertaining.  Set in Sydney, Australia and New Orleans.

Can you guess what I get to do this week?  Every ten years....The prep is worse than the procedure, I tell you.   My sister Andrea says the mixture you have to drink tastes like Lemon Pledge.  The pharmacist just looked at me sympathetically and said, "I hear it goes down better if it is super cold".  Yay.

Two Green Table Toppers for March

I made another little green table topper with my leftover green scraps.  I just couldn't let them go to waste.  The one pictured above is called "Mite", a Miss Rosie "Little Bites" pattern.  It measures just around 24 inches, a good size for the center of my dining table.  The one I made for Sara is called Roundabout, and is a Schnibbles pattern by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co.

I must have really liked this Roundabout pattern.  In greens.  It was the second time I had made it!  lol  Oh well, Sara wanted to be in my Table Topper of the Month Club, so she gets the 2017 version of Roundabout.

Hope you are all having a good week.  I am simply amazed at how much rain keeps coming down.  Lots of creeks overflowing and roads flooded, but no mudslides or trees down in my neighborhood.

St. Patrick's Day is Coming...

Well, this week sure did get away from me!  I did have most of the day on Thursday to sew, and decided to make a March table topper for Sara.  I have made this Roundabout Schnibble by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co. previously and have enjoyed it in my home.  I thought Sara would like one as well.  My gosh, my machine quilting sure has improved since I bought the Craftsy video by Jacquie Gehring.  I got this little topper done in just a few hours and once I bind it, it will go to a new home at my daughter's house.

The sewing on this topper went so darn fast, mostly due to a little tool I tried out with it.  

The Folded Corner Clipper.  It is great when you have to sew squares onto rectangles.

Position it on your rectangle and clip away.  Stack the fabric and trim six at a time.

Trim your squares the same way.

The trimmed units fit together like they were meant to.

Chain piece together and before you know it, your units are all pieced and ready to make into blocks.

This block does have "partial seams", but the explanation as to how to construct them is so simple, you will wonder why you were afraid to make this type of block.  It was a fun and easy project and the world has been enriched with one more table topper.  lol

Have a great weekend everyone!

Two Blue and White January Table Toppers---Done!

I am ridiculously excited that I finished these two blue and white table toppers while it is still January.   The part I am excited about is that I did the quilting myself on the machine and it turned out decent!  Can't wait to tell you about the process.

I got so many really useful tips from you wonderful readers.  One of them that I jumped on right away was to look into the machine quilting classes that are offered on Craftsy. Craftsy.com   What a great resource!  I have used Craftsy in the past, but had kind of forgotten about it.  I purchased Jacqui Gehring's class called "Creative Quilting with your Walking Foot".  I loved the sound of that.  Free Motion quilting and I have not exactly hit it off as of yet.

Jacqui is a terrific instructor, and I felt as if I was sitting right across from her in a proper class.  Her main message is:  use your walking foot, go slowly and sew straight.  She likes to sew half inch grids or half inch straight lines.  I had never sewn lines so close together before, usually choosing to sew about an inch apart.  She said if you sew wide lines the attention will go to the lines.  If you sew lines close together, the focus isn't so much on the lines as it is on the texture the quilting gives to the quilt top.

She was dead on right.  The close quilting is a wonderful look and I don't think I have ever been this satisfied with anything I have machine quilted.  I finished the first topper and was well pleased, then tackled the second one and had the same great results.

Using her method, I did not have to mark my quilt top at all.  I used a piece of painter's tape laid diagonally on my quilt top and stitched my first line on the edge of the tape.  After that, you discard the tape and use the guide bar on the walking foot to follow along the first stitch line, making parallel rows across the surface of your top.

I am so glad I purchased this class.  I have used my walking foot and guide bar in the past with decent results, but you won't believe this:  I had the guide bar positioned completely on the wrong side of the walking foot.  Duh.  Nothing like a visual to set a person straight. 

Any way, if you don't "get" free motion quilting, but have a walking foot and think you can sew in a straight line with guidance, try this Craftsy class.  I found it worth the $24.99 and learned so much.  Plus, now that I own it, I can refer to it any time I like.  Jacqui offers additional more advanced tips as well, and I am looking forward to playing around with my machine. 

Have a great weekend everyone.  And thanks again for all the encouragement and tips regarding machine quilting.  I don't get to sew with friends anymore, so I love the feeling I get when reading all your comments.  It is like being on a retreat with you all!

Reveille Table Toppers

What is better than one little blue and white Schnibbles table topper?  Why two of them of course.

My border fabric arrived in no time flat, and I was able to get the tops finished this past weekend.  Now I have to machine quilt them myself, which I am dreading.  I got out a couple of machine quilting books and practiced free hand quilting--loops and stippling and so on.  It all just looked so uneven and amateurish.  I suppose I will go back to my trusty stitch in the ditch or cross hatch straight line quilting and just get it done.  Believe me, I have half a mind to do hand quilting!  These little quilts measure about 25" square, so it would not take me too long.

I would give anything to be able to machine quilt these little projects myself and do a really good job.  Do any of you have any advice or book recommendations to help a novice machine quilter get up to speed so they can quilt their own small projects and be proud of the results?  

I have a feeling the answer is hours and hours of practice!

Tidbit

This is Tidbit, a Little Bites pattern by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company.  I just had to make it.  Had to.

The pattern has three versions, all very cute.  I made the smallest one, which measures 16.5" by 19.5".  I seem to really be into these small projects lately.  I love to use them with seasonal fabric offerings.  I can just get a couple of charm packs and get my fabric fix taken care of, and have a cute little topper to use.  The fabric collection I used was a charm pack of Sweetwater's Boo Crew.  

The reason I "had" to make it was to get the bad taste out of my mouth from a complete and utter failure of a project.  I needed to succeed at something in the worst way.  Here's what happened.

I had gotten this Kim Diehl Simple Whatnots club offering recently.  I have been feeling guilty that I haven't kept up with this club, so I figured I could make up a small project and kill a couple of birds with one stone.  I'd get my small project to use in the Fall and at the same time keep up with the Club.  This is how the project ended up:

And I will tell you why.  I usually make my block units a bit larger than called for and them trim them down to the proper size.  I get much more accurate piecing results when I follow that rule.  Kim's patterns do not call for doing that.  This pattern called for 1 1/2 inch half square triangles made from 1 7/8" squares.  I should have cut 2 inch squares and trimmed them down, but no, I blindly followed the pattern instructions and ended up with wonky, inaccurate results.  I was so frustrated I tossed the whole mess into the trash.  It totally serves me right for being too much in a hurry.  I thought I could be super careful and save myself the extra step of trimming.  Mistake.

So, I needed to make something right away and have it turn out perfect.  Carrie Nelson's patterns (Miss Rosie) always give glorious results because she has you make your block units a tiny bit oversized and them trim them down.  "Tidbit" was a breeze to make, and went together like a dream.  Every seam lined up, every point was sharp, and every half square triangle was a perfect 2 inches.  

You can see that I have stalled out a bit with Viola, but hope to get back to it this week.  Eva is helping me by pinning leftover scraps of Halloween fabric to the Viola squares.

In this photo you can see my little Tidbit has a cream colored outer border.

Oh Good Grief

My memory is just kaput, I tell you.  My friends have all been setting me straight as to 1) the name of this pattern, 2) exactly where I was when I started it, and 3) what fabric line I used.

Darcy is the name of the pattern, a Schnibbles, designed by Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie's Quilt Company.  I started the pattern in a class I took, which was taught by Carrie Nelson, not at Buggy Barn, but in Illinois, and 3) the fabric is Halloween Night by Minick and Simpson of all people.  I never in a million years would have recalled that, as the style is so unlike what they typically do.

And ta da, I got it quilted yesterday!  I used my Stitch in the General Vicinity of the Ditch Stitch, and the Wiggle Stitch.  I was literally chuckling when I was doing the Wiggle Stitch on those little blocks.  They are so darn cute.  Now for some binding and I have a cute little Schnibbles to use this Halloween.

Speaking of Halloween, look what I found when I was rummaging around for something to use for the binding on Darcy.  One good thing about losing your memory, is that you discover cool things you forgot you had stashed away.  Eva would love it if I made this little quilt for her to use as a Halloween table mat.

What?  What did you say?  Nonsense.  It is NOT too early to be thinking of Halloween.

Paganini

It feels so good to have finished something.  This little table topper is from the pattern "Paganini", a Schnibbles pattern designed by Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie's Quilt Company.  The pattern has three or four variations, including a beautiful one with a scalloped border.  I made a variation of my own with this project, making my version rectangular, to better fit my oval dining table and outside table.

 

Once it is quilted and bound, it will be the perfect centerpiece for a spring or summer brunch.  Those faded vintagey colors are so pretty.

This is what the rest of the house looks like with my Easter decorations.  I kept it pretty simple this year.

Some Happy Sewing

Time for some happy sewing!  I decided due to some recent comments by a certain guest blogger/family member that it might be time to set aside the dark Civil War Reproduction fabrics for some cheerier stuff.  It's ok.  I get it.

Yesterday morning I pulled out a couple of Schnibbles and Cotton Way patterns with the idea of whipping up a quick table topper in spring colors.  Paganini by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company won out.  For fabric, I had a harder time deciding.  I fondled a fat eighth bundle of Ruby by Bonnie and Camille, and played around with a couple of other older collections that have been sitting around for way too long.  In the end, I chose a layer cake of Breakfast at Tiffany's by Fig Tree.

While Eva watched Dora the Explorer, I got all my fabric cut out, and while she napped, the blocks practically made themselves.  By the time she woke up, this is how far I had progressed.  Today I hope to get the lattices and borders on and maybe even do some quilting.

This happy project was a mood changer!

And so is this.