Sister's Choice Quilts

Thrifty Me

I had a lot of leftovers from my recent Red Pineapple finish. Normally, I am not one to fret about using up leftover fabric, but I had an idea for what to do with them.

I have had foundation paper piecing on my mind lately and purchased a couple of the 6" Log Cabin paper pads from Fatquartershop.com. I LOVE these papers. Years ago, you could not have persuaded me to do paper piecing for love or money, and now I am obsessed with it. The accuracy is amazing and each block turns out just like its sisters. I sure wish they came in a 4" size.  I am also working on some 4" log cabin blocks and using a Creative Grids ruler.  It's going ok, but I sure do prefer the papers.

So I used my leftover French General strips and made a super cute Log Cabin table runner.  I am sending it off to be quilted this week. I doubt I'll get it back in time for Valentine's Day, but I may put it out anyway! It will look so good on my dining room table.

The colossal mess pictured above is my sewing table. I was using my little Fiskars cutting mat to trim the seams after each addition. I realized while I was using it that it is really beat up. I have never had to replace a cutting mat in my entire life of sewing, but I did order myself a new one. I have probably had this one for twelve years or so and have used it constantly for trimming small block units. Replacing it is sure cheaper than replacing the bigger mats on my cutting table, so I don't mind. The small size is so handy, so keep it in mind as a way to save your larger mats.

I had a very productive weekend, but we are commencing back to homeschooling today. My plan is to try to carve out a couple of hours of stitching each afternoon when school's out. Fingers crossed!

Apricot and Ash, Corey Yoder

Isn't this stack of fabrics luscious? It is Apricot and Ash by Corey Yoder, a Moda designer. There is a sew-along coming up called Serendipity that I want to do.  Click here for fabric requirements. It is a row quilt, you know, the kind where you make multiples of some blocks and arrange them in rows.  

Here is a better picture of the range of fabrics.  Aren't they lovely? My bedroom has green walls, and I was thinking a quilt with these colors would be so pretty in spring and summer.

This is the quilt I plan to make.  I love Corey Yoder's website Coriander Quilts.  Her fabrics are scrumptious and her patterns are pretty good too. She lives in Amish county somewhere in Ohio and often posts Instagram photos of neighbors driving their horse-drawn buggies down the roads in her area. Her photography is excellent. She is very faithful about telling you which Moda Solids match her colorways. When you are looking for a perfect background match that is so helpful. She seems like a lovely young woman.

So, that's all I have for today. I hope to sew this weekend and be a good companion to my husband. Happy January everyone.

My New Neck Light

My new neck light kind of blends in with my dark sweater, but you can see it I think. I turned it off so you wouldn't be blinded by the brightness. Let me just say I love it. It works so great for reading, particularly when I walk into our library room to read in my favorite chair by the window and am greeted by this sight:

It is somebody else's favorite chair too and he is often in it when I want it. That little red light is from Ikea and was given to me years and years ago by a friend.  At first, I used it by my sewing machine, but now I use it all the time by my reading chair. Except when Ozzie has it monopolized.  But it no longer matters if my chair is full of dog!  I have my neck light. I can go into the living room and sit on the couch, where the light is not great for reading. With this neck lamp, low lighting in a room no longer is an issue.

This photo is with the light on.  I can see the printing on the page of my book brilliantly!  I am very excited about this purchase.  Less than $20 on Amazon and it is going to make such a difference in me being able to get all those bindings stitched down. I highly recommend this for reading and hand sewing.

Small Blue and White Project for 2021

I enjoy starting out the new year with a blue and white project. Typically they are small table toppers. For some reason, I always associate blue and white with the month of January. This year Moda Fabrics is kicking off the first weekend in the new year with a Log Cabin sew-along. There is a post about it on the Fatquartershop's blog Jolly Jabber. 

I had some lovely leftover strips from a quilt I made in the summer of 2019 and thought they would be perfect for a small navy and white table topper composed of four or six log cabin blocks.

This was probably my favorite quilt made in 2019. It is a pattern by Thimbleblossoms called Sweet Escape. I used a collection of prints from Sweetwater called Sweet Tea. I am really pleased with how it turned out. Anyway, I have loads of navy strips leftover and it feels good to use them.

Making a small blue and white quilt in January has become a tradition without me even really being aware of it. Here are some of the little January table toppers I have made over the past three or four years.

This is a fun way to use those little house blocks everyone has been making. I used leftover blue and white Snowman Gatherings prints from a Primitive Gathering project. I even quilted this one myself.

And I still had fabric leftover, so I made another topper with square in a square blocks. See that beautiful little cardinal card? That was my daughter Sara's Christmas card this year. She actually painted a watercolor of the cardinal and had it made into her Christmas card. She is so talented with her watercolor painting.

This was last year's blue and white table topper. At least I was able to move away from my leftover Primitive Gatherings fabric! And it still needs to have the binding sewn down. I told you I procrastinate. I will finish it this week and put it under my January tiered tray arrangement.

What kind of projects do you like to do at the beginning of the year? Do you start something new?

 

Miles of Binding to Sew

These are five of eight quilts that are patiently waiting for me to sew down their bindings. I am one of those people who hates sewing bindings, so I put it off as long as I can. One of my problems is that I don't want to sit around and waste time during the day doing it. I would much rather do this type of hand sewing in the evening in front of the TV. Except I can't see to do it. 

Over the past few years, as my cataracts have developed, I have found that I need more and more light to see things properly. My table lamps just don't put out enough light for me. When I do any sort of hand sewing, I like to go outside if possible and sew in bright daylight. This works fine for me for nine months out of the year, but right now it isn't very nice for sitting outside.

So, look at this cool neck light I purchased from Amazon. I heard it recommended for reading on a book podcast I was listening to. The wheels started turning and I thought "Ah-ha. I could use this for hand sewing". I think it will also be great for reading a physical book in my bed, as well as for knitting. It is supposed to be delivered this week, and I will be sure to let you know how it works.

I guess I can put off doing those bindings for a few more days?

Last Finish of 2020

Happy New Year friends! I hope you all started the year off healthy and full of hope for a great 2021. My husband and I managed to stay up, or should I say wake up at midnight to give each other a smooch and a Happy New Year wish. There was lots of banging and fireworks sounds going on in my neighborhood, so evidently, others nearby were giving 2020 a big send-off.

The photo above is of my Red Pineapple quilt. What a project that quilt has been. I can't tell you how happy I am to have this quilt finally finished. I started this quilt back in 2013 and used up most of my stash of French General fabrics on hand at the time. Which was a lot. I used a special trimming ruler called The Pineapple Rule, made by Possibilities, which you cannot buy anymore. Trimming the blocks was a horrendous chore, I don't mind telling you. In retrospect, I should have paper pieced these blocks. 

I would work on the blocks for a week or so, get totally sick of the process and put the project away. When I was reminded of how spectacular a Pineapple quilt can be, I was prompted to take it out again and work on it for a bit until I couldn't stand it anymore. I would always find myself thinking, I should have paper pieced these blocks.

Despite the supposed precision of the trimming ruler, the white strips along the edges were not all exactly the same length, even though the blocks all came out at 12 1/2" unfinished. Sewing the blocks and rows together was made much more complicated and unpleasant by that issue. I should have paper pieced those blocks.

I made 42 blocks and sewed them into seven rows of six blocks each. 45 pieces in each block for a total of 1890 pieces. It will fit nicely on my queen-sized bed. The best part of the quilt is that I didn't give up and waste all that beautiful French General fabric. However, it will be some time before I ever tackle a large Pineapple block project such as this.  Probably never.  But if I do, I can tell you I will paper piece those blocks.

Sweets for the Sweet?

It is the final countdown of days before Christmas.  This month has just flown by. It feels like we only just got the place decorated. I may have to leave things up longer this year. I never do though. It gets to be New Year's Day and I want to clear away all the clutter. We shall have to see if this year is different. I sure have enjoyed my lights and candles and other decorations this year.

Yesterday I made two kinds of cookies. The ones above are called Monster Cookies and are from Sally's Baking Addiction. The recipes I try from her site always seem to turn out so well.  I think she tests everything a gazillion times before she decides the recipe is perfect. The secret to these is not to overbake them. You take them out of the oven when they have just a touch of color and are still really soft. After ten minutes or so they set up and are perfect.

Check out this gift from my nephew. Killer Brownies. Oh my. I am going to need to find more people to share these with.

And here is the last batch of cookies. These are Chocolate Crinkle Kiss Cookies with peppermint Hershey's Kisses on top. They melt in your mouth. This is another cookie you don't want to overbake.  They don't really look done when you take them out of the oven, but once they set up they are wonderful. There are a thousand recipes for these on the internet, but I use the one by Betty Crocker.

I sure do hope you all have a wonderful holiday. I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for your support and friendship. You have definitely added a big plus to a difficult year! I have so enjoyed all of your comments. And even if you read this blog, but don't comment, I thank you for checking in with me. Best wishes for a healthy and prosperous new year, filled with lots of love.  I'll be taking a brief break, but will be back on January 4.  Happy New Year!

 

 

 

This and That

I know I've shown this a million times, but the latest update is that I have completed all 42 blocks and have begun to sew them together! The intersections where the cream sections have to fit together isn't absolutely consistent, which is driving me a bit bonkers. If it is really off, I have had to re-do the places where the seams need to meet, so it is slow going. I sure would love to finish this dinosaur up before New Year's.

What I've been spending my time on is wrapping Christmas presents. I worked on that for most of yesterday and finished, except for a few gifts that have not yet been delivered. And oh my gosh, is USPS ever overwhelmed. I'll be surprised if everything I am waiting for even gets here by Christmas Eve. I have one package that has been sitting on the bottom of a pile at the post office of a town only an hour away from me since Dec. 11.

Oh and here is a funny story. One of my neighbors sent out an email to everyone on the street saying he had gotten a notice saying that a package had been delivered to his front door that day.  No package. He asked us all if it could have been delivered to one of our front doors by mistake.  Nope. A week went by and we all got another email from him. It was trash day, so he went to the area under his house where he keeps his garbage cans, and there was the package. USPS had delivered it to the door to the crawl space under his house.  I am not kidding.

Here is a little fabric bundle I treated myself to recently. It is Bess' Flower Garden by Pam Buda. I thought it would be fun to sew something up for the summer/4th of July. I am toying with the idea of decorating my front porch in all red, white, and blue quilts for summer.

Well, that's all I've got for today. I am going to go reward myself with a cup of hot cocoa. With marshmallows. Hope you are all having a great week!

Sewcialites Re-Set

I had a talk with myself over the weekend and had to admit that I was not loving my Sewcialites Sew-Along quilt blocks.  I was using fabric that just wasn't floating my boat. I think I'd like the Betsy Chutchian fabrics I had chosen in smaller bits, but not in the big 9" blocks I was making. I had made around a dozen blocks and decided not to invest any more of that fabric or my time making a queen-sized quilt top.

So I pushed my fabric re-set button, had a rummage through my stash, and came up with a new game plan. I pulled red, black, and gold/tan fabric from several designers (Jo Morton, Renee Nannemann, and Pam Buda) and remade 13 blocks in the 6" block size. It will be a smaller quilt, but I think the fabric colors are more cohesive and will make a nice statement together.

For reference, these are some of the blocks I had made with the other fabrics:

Pink, purple, black, green, and (inexplicably) blue. Hmm.  I am usually pretty good at this, but what the heck was I thinking? Just because a designer puts numerous colors in a fabric collection does not mean you have to use them all together. 

On another note, I have come to think that when making a sampler quilt comprised of 36 or more different block patterns, it might pull things together more to use just one background fabric instead of a dozen varied ones. That cohesive thing again.

I had an absolutely delightful Saturday and Sunday starching, cutting, and re-doing my 13 Sewcialites blocks and am much happier.

I was in my happy zone, binge-listening to a new reading podcast discovery.  A Strong Sense of Place is the name of it.  It is a blog and a podcast done by an absolutely charming husband and wife duo. They put out two extremely well-researched podcasts per month where they discuss and recommend books that have a strong sense of place.  For each episode, they pick a country or a city or a place, such as Paris, Germany, the Circus, etc. They also discuss books that are specific to a holiday or a setting.  They have a show on Halloween books, and my favorite so far: books that are set on Trains.  Their recommendations are not all new books by any means.  They often recommend older books that are dirt cheap on Kindle or readily available through your library. I highly recommend both their blog and podcast. Besides, they seem like super nice people you would like to know better. 

Hope you all had a great weekend.  Ready for Christmas this week? It will be different from the norm, I am sure, but I plan to try to find the wonder in it regardless.

My intention is to post Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, then I will be taking a break between Christmas and New Year's. I'll be back to my usual posting schedule on Monday, Jan. 4. 

Christmas Candles and Sew Along Blocks Catch Up

I am really enjoying my house and my holiday decorations this year. Next week there won't be any homeschooling and I plan to spend every day just soaking it up and loving every minute of the lights, music, and holiday cheer.

The lack of time spent in the sewing room is catching up with me.  It's time to make up for lost time and get some of my various sew along blocks done.  The two blocks above are from the Moda Blockheads 3 sew along.  47 and 49 I believe. I wasn't sure I really liked either one of them, but went ahead and made them anyway. It turns out I do like them. 

I wanted to share three different holiday candles that I am especially loving. This one is Tree Farm by Bath and Body Works. It really smells like fresh-cut trees and other Christmassy smells. I love Bath and Body Works candles, but get impatient with their gimmicky sales.  You would never want to pay full price ($25) for their candles because they reliably go on sale for half price every few weeks. There is so much hype around their various releases, which is annoying too.  They play on the "buy it NOW or you will lose out" mentality. Obviously, I fell for it, but am enjoying this one anyway. I did get it for half off!

This one is by HomeWorx, and I got it on QVC last summer and have been saving it for Christmas.  It has all the good smells of holiday baking and is very warm and cozy. I have enjoyed many HomeWorx candles from QVC, but do find they burn fast.  Maybe those four wicks have something to do with that.

Talk about candles that last forever, I have such good luck with Yankee Candles.  They honestly burn for hours and hours and hours. I can use them for a couple of years if I just take them out around Christmas time. This one is Snow Dusted Bayberry Leaf. When I was younger, bayberry candles were about the only scented candle you could find during the holiday season.  That is what my mother used to buy anyway. Smelling bayberry really takes me back to my childhood.

Hope you are enjoying the sights and smells of the holidays wherever you are!  Have a great weekend.