Non-quilt stuff

I've been busy lately, but not with a lot of quilting things. Here are some of the other things I've got going on.
A new (to me) bike! She's a 1984 (I think) Schwinn World Tourist. The fenders are a bit banged up, but it was manufactured by Giant which has a stellar reputation. It rides like a dream and has a nifty gear set that lets you shift while coasting. Love it! It takes a place among all my other vintage things. It's newer than my Viking sewing machine (circa the early 70s) and my Dodge van (1982). Sometimes older is better.
Next up: a new cat condo for the cat. We dumpster dived this from some neighbors who were just tossing it. Nothing wrong with it (no smells and just a bit of dirt), and the cat loves it. We've trained her to stand on top of it when she wants to be brushed or petted. She also sometimes sleeps on the first floor and snores very loudly.

I don't have any pictures of all the apple butter I've put up lately. I've got probably 10+ pints of Apple-Cinnamon, Apple-Peach, Apple-Cranberry and just plain Apple Butter. I think I'm done with apples for this year.

Finally! Another quilt finished!

Finally! For the first time in ages...
This was from a pattern I bought on a trip to NYC in early Oct. It's going to be a gift for our host and hostess who kindly let us stay with them on our trip.
The sunset background, water, and borders are all pieced. Then the buildings, lettering and apple are raw edge, fused applique.
It's not quite finished. I need to stitch the hanging pocket down on the back and add a label. I also need to add some very fine detail to the Chrysler Building (the tall green building) and the Statue of Liberty. Once I get it completed finished, I'll post some better pictures.
In the meantime, you can see a bit of the raw-edge applique in the picture above. I love how the Guggenheim turned out. This was such a fun quilt. The pattern is from Zebra Patterns, and she has some for other cities/states. The cutting and fusing takes a long time, but once that part is done, it goes together very quickly.

Swap blocks

These are some blocks I've been making for a swap I'm in. They're ready to mail off now, so I feel safe posting them.

There are 12 people in the swap, so I should get 12 new tulips in return sometime in Oct. I made 12 red tulips and 1 green on for the hostess of the swap.

It's a fun old-timey block. I can see them set on point with alternating squares of something. Maybe muslin with an intricate quilting pattern in them.

Mini Pantry

This is a small test quilt that I did in preparation for a much larger jar quilt.



I have tons of "food" fabrics and have been wanting to try a jar quilt for a long time. This was a small version of a much bigger project.



In particular, I like the quilts that look like an actual pantry with different sized jar and bottles. So some of mine are jam jars, quart jars, etc.



I made this with scraps I had on hand. That explains the two colors of black. I used some scraps on the jar corners and then accidentally used a different black on the background. Doh! Other people tell me it's not noticeable, but it drives me bonkers.



I ended up giving this one away to some friends. Very appropriate since they had just canned figs the week before.



I also tried outlining a lot of the fruit with my quilting. I discovered I am very bad at following the lines. The quilting on the black background is a very tight stipple, and the brown wood around the outside has simulated wood grain quilting in it. Here's a closeup of the quilting on the purple grapes.

Sneak Peak

A sneak peak of my latest obsession. It's a dark picture, but it will give you the idea.

This is such a fun block to sew. I'm using the great tutorial by Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville. It's a good feeling to clean out the scrap bucket and use up a bunch of office paper that was also destined for the bin.

Sunny Delight

Finally! Something to show off. This is a quilt I call "Sunny Delight."

It's for a co-worker's upcoming baby. It's made from two charm packs of Sandy Gervais's Fresh Squeezed line of fabric. This line of fabric has been out for awhile so I happened upon the charm packs on the clearance rack at a local quilt store. It is very bright, very loud, and very happy. Reminds me of Florida. You can see the great citrus prints in this picture:

It's a simple disappearing 9-patch pattern. I put the charm squares together into a very large 9-patch block and then went at cutting and rearranging. The resulting quilt is about 35"x35".

The quilting is just an allover meander. Nothing fancy, but it helped it wash up into a gorgeous, crinkly quilt. You can see the backing is from the same line of fabric.

Row Robin Swap - Sudi Laura's Row

Next up this weekend was a row for Sudi Laura. She wanted an alphabet quilt. Her first row is still with the previous person in the rotation, but I went ahead and started her row. I was scheduled for the letters F-J. Here it is (pinned badly against the neighbor's fence).

Here's a closeup of some of my favorite fabric. I just love this pink fern fabric. I have a pretty big piece of yardage of it, and this was a perfect opportunity to use some of it up.

This was a fun row to work on because there wasn't a lot of preplanning (other than choosing the fabric out of my stash). I just went at it making wonky letters. It was a bit hard to adjust the size up and make bigger letters (this row is 12" tall, I think) but it came out pretty well, I think.

Row Robin Swap - Darlene's row

This weekend I finished up a row for Darlene in NZ. Her original row was lost in the mail, so these two rows were made me and Sudi-Laura. Darlene's theme was "stash buster" and she wanted it to be classic blocks. I ended up doing 9-patches interspersed with a batik. I love 9-patches, but I think they need something to set them off (sashing, etc) or they just run together.

In the setting sun, it looks a bit Christmas-y, but in natural light, it's a deep red-pink and the green has a lot of blue mixed in with it.

Here it is with Sudi-Laura's row.

More Wonky Words

I really enjoyed making a trial run of wonky letters a few months ago. Sadly, life has intervened and I haven't had a chance to do anything with them.

However, just a few weeks ago, Lazy Gal Tonya put out a call for free pieced words for her "Halloween Noises" quilt. I figured this was a good time to make some words with a purpose. I originally signed up to do a word in a "rounded" font. After a couple of trial runs, I figured out I was trying to fly a bit too high and should stick with what I know. So here's my Halloween noise: "Hoot". (Unfortunately, these are horrible pictures since it's raining outside; they don't do justice to the cool orange animal print.)



I put huge, neutral borders on it because Tonya has plans to hand quilt this and I wanted to leave her lots of room to do whatever she wanted with it. It looks very tiny in the below picture, but the word itself is almost 10" across.

T for Tristan

Last weekend I whipped up a quilt for a friend who just had a new baby.



It's all scraps from my scrap bag. I had been wanting to play around with colors and shading/gradient effects for a while, and this was a small scale project around that.
I outlined the rainbow section and the "T" and then stippled the outer, muslin border. I didn't prewash anything and love how much the muslin shrunk up.



I also did a pieced back using up some of the small scraps that I had leftover after cutting the strips on the front. Then I miscut a piece of muslin and, being unwilling to waste anything, added another colored strip to make it all fit. Not sure all the effort was worth it, but hey, fewer scraps for me!

Felt Food

Due to a swap I'm involved in, I ventured off the beaten path of quilting and tried making some felt food. There are a lot of sites devoted to making felt play-food for little kids and some of it is astoundingly creative. I stuck to making strawberries because they were very easy and (in my opinion) adorable.



I used this wonderful tutorial from mrmonkeysuit/Auburn Studios. It's a great tutorial (although I left off the yellow seed embellishments because I'm lazy. As you can see, it makes a pretty realistically sized berry.



For the swap I'm in, six of us are exchanging different items. Each person will get 4 berries from me. At the end of it all I should also end up with ravioli & tomato sauce, carrots, beans, burger w/ bun, lettuce and tomato, a Popsicle and other assorted goodies. While I don't have kids, I think this might be perfect for my little cousin and his play kitchen. All in all, this is a really neat idea and I'm glad I tried it out.

Aqua Flowers

Finished! I've been trying to post this entry for a week, but we've had nothing but rain for a week.



I really wanted to get pictures of this one outside in natural light. I ended up running outside during the evening, so the pictures and colors are a bit warmer than in reality, but at least they weren't taken inside.



This was made using the templates from Kellie over at Don't Look Now. She has several wonderful tutorials including the one for the pillow that this wall hanging is based on.





I didn't use Kellie's technique of raw-edge fusible applique. Instead I just did some needle turn applique. I had never tried it before, but I figured what the heck. I was watching a ton of basketball (yay for the NCAA tournament!) and needed some handwork.



I loved the splash of red from the little birdie and incorporated a piece of the red into the pieced border as well.



I used 2 layers of batting to try to get the puffy look on the flowers and leaves. I did a random meandering quilting that was much smaller than anything I had tried before. It worked beautifully.

Liberated Pie

This was an experiment in no-pattern, liberated piecing. I just started with some fabric that reminded me of strawberry pie filling and went from there. It turned out remarkably well for just an evening of experimenting.



I'm thinking of pairing it with Tonya's teacup and teapot
tutorials and making a small kitchen wallhanging. What more could you want than tea and pie?

Sneak Peek

This is a sneak peek at a project I've been working on all weekend. I needed some handwork to do while I was watching waaaaay too much basketball. So this is my first attempt at needleturn applique. I'm quilting it now, so hopefully it will be finished this week.

Asian UFO

I finished a top to another UFO. This one had been sitting around with the blocks mostly done for about 4 years (or more). For some reason, I was thinking I had a lot more work to do on it. But when I dragged it out of the closet, I realized that it was a lot closer to completion than I thought. So I finished about 20 blocks and then put the top together.



It's done in an Asian theme, so there are lots of black, red, and gold fabrics. It's a large project at 84" x 84". I'm trying to decide how to finish it. I could put a border on it, but I think it's going to be difficult enough to quilt without adding anything more. It's going to be a real challenge to quilt, so I'm going to set it aside for awhile. (Plus, I'm out of batting and waiting for a good sale to buy more.)

My Town BOM (February)

I'm a bit late posting this, but I swear I did it during February. This is the February block from Forever Green Quilt's free BOM.



This was a series of 4 apartment buildings, but I thought they looked more like row houses. So I made them brightly colored like the row houses I remember from San Fransisco. I reversed some of them to give it a bit more variety. This quilt is going to be another scrappy quilt since the blocks are small and well suited for using up scraps. I've almost got the March block finished, so I'll post that soon.

Row Robin - Row 1

I finished up my row for the Row Robin swap that Tab is hosting over at Enjoying Life's Journey. I've decided on a theme of "Green Christmas" for this one. Hopefully, you can see the green Christmas candies in this block. I did a poor job of choosing the background fabric and the candy wrappers blend in a bit more than I'd like. I think I can correct this with some careful quilting, but I wish I was better at choosing colors and visualizing how all the colors would work together.



It's a 12" finished block with a 6" finished "candy" in the center. I started out with a much larger center, but realized that was a mistake. I was making up the pattern as I went. I had seen the idea somewhere else (done in red and white) but couldn't find it to recreate it. I'm pretty pleased with how it all turned out, but would choose a different background fabric next time.




Now I just have to get it packaged up and sent out. I can't wait to see what comes back. Hopefully, I'll have a gorgeous, green Christmas quilt to display for Christmas next year.

High School T-Shirt Quilt

Finally! One of my UFOs can be marked off my list. I've been working on this one for at least a year or more. This is a collection of t-shirt from high school.



I've been carting them around every time I move and I'm very tired of that. So about a year ago, I dragged out the box under the bed, washed all the shirts, and cut them up. I read a bit about making t-shirt quilts first, but really, I kinda winged it. I wanted an irregular quilt without uniform block, so I just cut up the blocks to match the designs on the shirts.



The borders around the block are all flannel scraps leftover from numerous rag quilts. This quilt was completely stash. Even the binding, border, and backing. I had some sheeting size flannel in cream that is on the back. Between the t-shirts, batting, and flannel borders and backing, this is a very heavy quilt. But the upside is that it is wonderfully soft and cuddly.

I quilted it in a large, 2-inch grid pattern.



If I had my good machine while I was quilting this one, I might have been more ambitious and tried echo quilting or free motion quilting it. But the grid worked pretty well for this quilt. Now I just have that box of college t-shirts under my bed...