Sister's Choice Quilts

Well, This Isn't Good

Remember this quilt? It is called Sewcialites, and was a sponsored sew-along hosted by Fat Quarter Shop last year. Each week, we made a new block, either in the 3", 6" or 9" size. I started out making 9" blocks and abandoned both the size and my chosen fabric collection after a couple of weeks. I switched over to making 6" blocks and a different color way. 

I kept up with the sew-along, even though I didn't have much time to sew from March onward since I was traveling to another city to care for my father on the weekends. And the weekend was when I mainly found time to sew. 

So that is my finished quilt top (minus the border) above. You may notice little blobs of blue painter's tape on some of the blocks. Why ever for?, you may ask. Well. Somehow I managed to pick up the wrong cream solid for those large half square triangle alternate blocks and sew them into the quilt. And as you can clearly see, they stand out, and not in a good way.

Of course, this bothers me tremendously. I thought briefly of donating the top to the charity organization I recently discovered, but decided not to. I spent a lot of time making those blocks, some of which were quite challenging. I was happy with my technical achievement with the blocks and was reluctant to throw them away. Also, it was practically the only quilt top I almost finished in 2021.

So, what to do? I got my hands on the proper background cream and have decided to take the quilt apart, remake those large half square triangle alternate blocks and put it all back together again. 

So, I've made a start.

Tell me, what would you have done? Take it apart as I am doing, give it to someone who would never notice or care, donate it, or leave it in permanent UFO status?

Have a great weekend everyone!  Wish I could give you each a seam ripper and a quilt row, but I guess I am in this pickle on my own.

Red Sampler Sew Along Week Nine

I feel as if I've been on vacation for two weeks. Today is the day I get back on a schedule though. I plan to make the most of any free time I have during the week and not lose momentum with my projects.

The red and white blocks above are week nine of Lori Holt's Red Sampler sew-along. Those cheerful red fabrics put a smile on my face. The little framed four patch is so cute.

I wanted to share a tool I have been enjoying a lot. It is called "Cute Cuts" and is a block square up trim tool by Lori Holt. You can buy the tools individually or in sets of various sizes.

If you love crisp, accurate blocks you might like this trim tool too. It is great for squaring up small 3 1/2 inch blocks, but I found it indispensable for trimming 3 1/2 inch block units in the 12-inch blocks I was working on recently. Looking at the photo above, you may think "Wow, Nicole was pretty spot on with her 3 1/2 inch unit".  Ahem, thanks, but check this out:

I was pretty close, and maybe it would have been just fine as is without trimming. However, if you love accuracy, you can see that there was a fair amount trimmed away to achieve the exact 3 1/2 inch measurement. My 2011 Designer Mystery blocks came out great, and I credit this trim tool and a lot of fabric starching for my good results.

Quilting Friends Are the Best

I am actually completely thrilled with this photo. I have finished all 12 blocks for the Fat Quarter Shop 2011 Designer Mystery Quilt! Can you imagine? These blocks were just scraps of fabric that languished in a tub for 11 years. Well, no more languishing. They are going to become a quilt.

But there was just one problem. Back in 2011 when I wasn't working on these blocks, the finishing kit was offered for sale by Fat Quarter Shop. And I did not buy it. The finishing kit had all the fabrics for a fabulous setting, alternate stem blocks, borders, and binding. 9 extra yards of fabric to make a quilt that finishes at
76 x 94.

I reasoned to myself that I didn't have to complete the quilt as intended. I would have 12 great blocks and quite a bit of background fabric, which would be enough for a lattice and inner border. For the outer border, I would need a print that coordinated with the blocks. The fabric is by Fig Tree & Co., and their reds are very consistent. So, no problem. I wouldn't end up with such a large quilt, but it would be pretty and it would be finished.

Then the quilting gods smiled upon me. My quilting friend Lisa D. reads my blog. She emailed me to say she had the kit also and had never made it. Sadly, she had lost the love for this quilt and doubted that she would ever make it and therefore planned to sell or donate it. And she had the finishing kit. I offered to buy it from her and she agreed. Can you hear the sound of angels singing? She has mailed the finishing kit to me and as soon as I receive it, you can bet I'll start work on it.

Oh, and here is something else that makes me happy:

Yesterday I used up a big spool of Aurifil thread! I started using it in April 2020. I was thinking it would last me a year, but I did not sew much in 2021, so it has lasted me 20 months!!! Now, that seems like a good deal for $48. $2.40 per month. I wrote 1/22 on the inside of the cone and will be interested to see how long this new spool lasts.

Hope your weekend was great. If you have today off, make the most of it!

My Garden is in Blossom

Another productive sewing day for me yesterday. This has been quite the week for getting my mojo back. I finished the fourth and fifth blocks in my 2011 Designer Mystery BOM. The setting is going to be so cute. I will be making little stem units so it appears that each block is a flower. Hope I have enough green....

That fifth block (the middle right one) was a bear to sew, I can tell you that. It was a bit fussy. But it used all the colors, woo hoo. Of course, I got one tiny unit switched around (not just once but four times) and had to do some unsewing. Ah, those thread-picking interludes are restful for the mind, right?

I am really enjoying these bright fresh colors.

I also can report that I got my Serendipity quilt top all put together, except for the borders.  Maybe I can wrap that up on Sunday afternoon.

Have a great weekend everyone!

What Next?

I tell you, give me a week to spend sewing, and I can get things done. Lately that hasn't been happening though, but due to a Covid outbreak in the family, I have been able to get up in my sewing room for extended periods this week. And look what I found.

This is an ancient fabric collection by Fig Tree & Co. It was called Strawbery Something. Strawberry Fields, Strawberry Rhubarb, Strawberry Shortcake, I can't recall. It was a Block of the Month Designer Mystery sew along sponsored by Fat Quarter Shop from 2011.  Eleven years ago.  Can you believe I dug up a UFO older than my grandchild?

And I never made a single block. Month after month for a year I paid for my monthly block subscription and never sewed a blessed one. 

I had neatly stored all the fabrics in a plastic tub and still had all the patterns. 

I started assembling the fabrics needed for each block and starching them. Yesterday I made three blocks,
and I don't mind saying, they are adorable!

Block number one.

Block number two. This one took a while. And I got two of the corner blocks turned wrong. Fixed it!

Block number three. I think this one is my favorite.

I am having fun working with these larger blocks (12.5 inches unfinished). I have no idea how I will put them together. Probably a simple setting with the white tone on tone polka dot I am using for my background. I will never find a matching border fabric after all these years, but Fig Tree will have a red print that will still match, so I think I will be good.

Did any of you make this quilt back in the day? 


 

2022 Off to a Great Start

The New Year has gotten off to a great start for me. My goal is to tackle my large number of UFOs and either finish them or let them go. It's probably not surprising that I was drawn right back into the Lori Holt Red Sampler quilt. I had completed only six weeks of the project. The "Sew-Along" ship has sailed, but lucky for me, Lori has kept her sew-along posts on her Bee In My Bonnet blog, so I can refer back to the weekly instructions. Here is a link to all sixteen weeks of this sew-along.

Yesterday I had a lovely day in my sewing room and completed six blocks for Red Sampler Weeks Seven and Eight.

I've also been working on sewing the rows for Serendipity together and trying to catch up with Among the Stars Again block of the month. I'm feeling very good about my organized approach and look forward to showing you some completed tops soon. Or, at least in the next months...

Also, I have gone through my "flimsies" (completed but unquilted tops) and made a pile of some that I want to donate. My charitable organization of choice was Firehouse Quilts in Boulder, CO, which is quilting tops and giving them to victims of the terrible fires that took place in Colorado recently. I have five tops that I plan to mail to them today.

Why do I suddenly have so much time on my hands? Um, well, certain members of my family have come down with a well-publicized contagious virus and are isolating this week.

Hope you are all staying well and getting things done!

 

A Winter's Day

I took this picture of Ozzie, thinking he looked like a sleeping rabbit, with his ears sticking up. Poor fellow, he had been to the dog groomer, and it took all the starch out of him. He has lost his hearing in the past year or so, and it makes me wonder if he perks his ears up in sleep in order to hear things he might otherwise miss.

This week after New Years has been a holiday week for Eva. She has been off school, but has spent some time with us. Today she dove into some of her Christmas craft activities, one of which was a clay activity. She spent quite some time constructing a little figurine of her recently departed dog Remy.

We are letting it dry and set up overnight, and with luck, she will be able to paint on his features today. She wants to give it to her daddy for his birthday later this month.

We made cupcakes and decorated them as our baking activity for the week. We had a few leftover Hershey's peppermint kisses in the pantry and she insisted on plopping them on some of the cupcakes.

We made pizza for dinner, which was delicious. I sauteed some shallots and mushrooms, sprinkled on some ham along with mozzarella and provolone cheese. This recipe calls for the pizza dough to be spread in a cast-iron skillet and baked in the oven. It turned out really good, but a bit too garlicky for my taste.

So, it was a quiet winter's day around here. I am thinking of my quilting goals for 2022, and know that I won't be making many full-sized quilts. I am very tempted by a sew along that Fat Quartershop is doing along with Lori Holt, called The Flea Market Quilt Along. It is scrappy and the colors are bright and cheerful. Here is a link to the announcement of the quilt along. Let me know what you think about it. It could be a fun year-long project. 

I Did It!

I set a goal to finish the last row of the Serendipity Sew Along Quilt this week and I did it! I still have to sew the rows together and attach the borders, but that is a goal for another week. I really love the colors in this quilt and know I will enjoy putting it out next summer and early fall.

Look what Eva made this week. She wanted to make mummy cupcakes and I love what she did. She made seven mummies and decided that was enough. After mixing some yellow and red food coloring into our white frosting, she achieved a nice pale orange, and she frosted the rest of them that way.

I am so enjoying our fall weather right now. The days have been just lovely and in the early evenings, we have been sitting on the front porch and watching the deer wander through. Don't you think fall is way too short? It is still blistering hot here through mid-September, and then by November the leaves have fallen and it is getting into our rainy season. The six weeks between Sept. 15 and Oct. 31 are glorious.

Don't get me started on how the retail stores rush the seasons. I went to the Trader Joe's by my dad's house last weekend because everyone knows Trader Joe's has great food for fall. And they were out of everything fall-related. The employees were putting out the Christmas food already. NOOOOOOOOOOO. Please let me have my butternut squash ravioli for a few more weeks.

Hope you have a terrific weekend!

Last Serendipity Row Coming Along

All my block units are finished and ready to sew into blocks. Row Seven of the Serendipity Sew Along is nearly a done deal. With luck, I will finish the six blocks today.

In other news, this is my tree in the backyard that I share every year. The leaves start to change color and over a two week period it gets progressively more colorful. One day, it is mostly red and the next day all the leaves fall off in one fell swoop.

So here's the interesting thing. This is happening about two weeks early this year. My son-in-law, the winemaker, tells me the grape harvest was accelerated this year also. Started early, lasted fewer weeks,  and is over and done with sooner. I wonder what is up with that?

Could it be we will have a more severe winter? Maybe some rain? Maybe enough to get us out of the drought we are experiencing? Time will tell.  

Anyway, I will monitor the progress of my backyard tree and share it with you.

Guess who Miss Eva is going to be for Halloween? Her dad texted me that it took two hours at the hairdressers to achieve that look.  Hmmm, should I believe him?

Let's Get This Done

You may remember this project from this past summer. The Serendipity Sew Along. Free patterns for this row quilt are from Fatquartershop. You can get the patterns if you go to fatquartershop.com and search for "Serendipity Quilt Along". My fabrics are Apricot and Ash by Cory Yoder of Coriander Quilts. In case you were wondering, that random upside-down acorn on the upper left is not part of the quilt. 

I lost steam for this project when I got so busy with my father's care and when Eva's school started back up in August. I think it is time to get in gear and finish up the seventh (and final) row, get the borders on and call it done.  I've been looking at it on my design wall and thinking how pretty it would be to use it in September and October. It also coordinates beautifully with Cory's new collection "Cozy Up", which I used for my recent acorn block runner.

I dragged out the project box and pulled my fabrics and got started on the square in a square units that form the center of the six blocks in row seven.

For the square in a square units, I like to use Fatquartershop's foundation papers. Things come out so accurate when you foundation piece.

If you do use those papers, an indispensable trim tool is this little Add a Quarter ruler. It has a raised lip that locks onto the seam line for very tidy trimming.

Once you get all the corner triangles attached you are left with this sad wonky unit. No problem. Trim on the outside solid line and you have a perfectly square unit to build your block around.

WIsh me luck. I should be able to get six blocks done this week, right?

Hope you all had a great weekend. I may have to step up my cooking game for my dad. I fed him leftover chicken and rice casserole that I had made for my husband and me last week. When I looked in his fridge for signs of what my sisters had made for Dad during the week I discovered panko breaded fish fillets, steak/mashed potatoes/baby carrots, and grilled sausage and roasted potatoes. Hmmmm. I think I need to do better.