Two new small quilts

Over a year ago, my friend Kathy and I joined an Art Quilt Guild in Lubbock.  The first meeting we attended we made a wonderful black/white top. I don't have mine finished to show you because I am not sure what exactly or how exactly I want it to be.  It was a lot of fun to make and just to be sitting in that room with about 14 other art quilters was inspiring.  Then, with the scraps and other things we made a couple of other projects.  This is one of the projects.  I used the leftover cutout pieces from my black fabric and made some more of that pattern in other colors.  I put it on a lime green background and there it was for almost a year.  A couple of weeks ago I decided to make it into a quilt.  I had fun quilting around the edges and off the edges.  It is bound in dark purple and is about the size of a sheet of paper.  (I don't have exact measurments.)

One of the assignments from that day was for strips and one shape.  I made this next quilt top and invisioned fish swimming among the reeds and seaweeds in a lake.  Everyone else that saw it just went, "yeah, that's good."  They couldn't see my vision.  After I quilted it, my friends thought it was wonderful.  Of course, now you can clearly tell that those black blobs are actually fish.  It all makes sense now. 

Okay, I can't make this picture turn the way I want so just turn your head to the left to see it the way it is supposed to be seen.  It is also about the size of a piece of paper. 

McDuffy Quilt

this isn't a very good picture and I apologize for that.  I am still a little bit in limbo computer-wise, but I am trying to make a go of it between several electronical devices.  I e-mailed this picture to my school computer three days ago and it finally showed up today.  It's a little bit slow, but that is probably due to needing to be re-charged.  Who knows.  I will try and do better in the future.  (If I can figure out the new high tech devices) 

this quilt is my version of the schnibble McDuffy.  I have loved that pattern since I first saw it and now I have finally gotten around to making one.  A couple of weeks ago, Midland Quilter's Guild, held their bi-annually quilt show.  that is where I picked up the charm packs, Etchings.  I loved the front of that pack and flipping through the stack, I thought it would make a great quilt.  After opening up the packet, I realized that there were a lot - - I mean a lot - - of light colored fabrics.  I don't usually work with light colored fabrics so putting this together was a bit of a challenge for me - not piecing it - that was simple - just dividing the lights from the darks.  there were more lights than darks so some of the fabrics are both a light and a dark depending on which other fabric it is paired with.  I like the look of this quilt (sorry again about the poor quality) it might be turned into a baby quilt for someone since I have about 6 friends and family that are pregnant and due sometime in the early new year!!  It's baby crazy here now adays.  Be looking for more from me in the near future since this isn't the only picture I e-mailed to my school address.  I am back to blogging!  It feels soooo good.  Now it's back into the kitchen for me and my students. 

a quick check in

I know it has been forever since I have posted, but I just wanted to touch base here and let you know that I am still alive and quilting. School has become busy, busy, busy.  We are in labs 2 or 3 times a week and that means trips to the grocery store.  The good thing is, last week we made focaccia bread for the first time and it turned out pretty good.  They had never made a yeast bread before.   I had never made that recipe and it was good, but needs some tweeking before we make it again. 

The good news is volleyball is over for me for the year, unless there are playoff games they call and ask me to work.  One of the basketball coaches wants me to keep his books, but I haven't told him yes yet.  I keep putting it off and thank goodness he didn't ask on Friday. 

This week we were in the lab today - didn't go great, burned cookies, yucky brownies - just not a good day to bake I guess.  Tomorrow we are serving lunch for 24.  Then on Wednesday we are serving finger food for a series of meetings held here at our school.  We made some mini muffins for that today.  Tomorrow will be extremely busy!! 

I have been working on quilts.  I even have the pictures to post, but I killed my computer.  Thank goodness our tech person here was able to save everything to one of her computers and I am hoping our computer class can find the problem and fix my machine.  I am going to have to make the trip to Best Buy in Midland to look at getting a laptop.  Too bad our Best Buy here isn't open yet.  Well, gotta go put the cooled muffins and cookies that made it up for the night.  I may work some more on my hexagon quilt top this evening since I can't play games on my computer!  (by the way, I am writing this at school which is why I don't have any pictures)

Whisper and Retreat

Last posting I talked about my whisper quilt.  Even though I have to top completed, I still haven't had the time to quilt it.  I really need to get on that since I have to have it finished in 13 days.  I will share with you a little bit of the quilt I got from Kathy. 

Then I will share part of my quilt. 

Sorry, that is all you get to see at this time.  I shouldn't even be showing that much, but I couldn't keep it all a secret, now could I?  Last weekend was the Ogallala Ceta Canyon Retreat and my friends Kathy and Gerri and I headed out on Friday making the long trek to our getaway.  Of course I planned on getting away much, much earlier than we did, but I really overslept and then I wasn't completely packed and the car wasn't clean and well, let's just say about 2 hours later than planned, Kathy and I were on our way.  Which, it turned out was not a bad thing since Gerri was leaving about the same time we were and we got to meet up in Lamesa.  However, the quilt store there was closed.  Neither one of them have ever been to that store since she has been closed every single time they are with me and we stop there.  I, on the other hand, have stopped there quite a bit.  She has great prices on her fabric and some wonderful  new and clearance items.  I seem to always find a few things to purchase.  Next time we will have to call ahead of our trip and make sure she will be open when we get there.  Too bad we didn't do it this time. 

Since that quit store was closed, we headed on up to Lubbock to the Bernina store - yes, we purchased a few things - and then Sugarbaker's for an early lunch - okay, since I was running late, yada yada yada, it was about lunchtime.  Gerri went to Sugarbaker's and ate first.  When we called to find out where she was, she had already ordered and we were already purchasing so we both stayed where we were.  Then we swapped.  Lunch was good as always, but the Italian Cream Cake was exceptional!!  Since we were already in Lubbock and not going to make it to Ceta by 10 - hah - we decided to schlep on over to Rachel's.  yes, we all found goodies and whatnots there, too.  We enjoyed sitting at the counter getting our fabric cut and chatting with the employees. Then off to Plainview for a Sonic drink and a stop at the Wal-mart.  I know, we have a Wal-mart here, but you know how you have those last minute items you forgot and this is the last stop along the way to pick up any of those items.  We shopped and found some wonderful things that we just had to have - S'MORE GOLDFISH!!!  Have you tried them.  YUM!! 

Now a few more hours and we are at Ceta Canyon.  It looks like we are some of the last to arrive.  There is a table for two and Kathy and I grab that one.  Gerrie had already put her stuff down on a table with another friend, Pam.  It wasn't right next to us, but we don't usually sit really close together anyway.  We need an excuse every once in a while to get up and move and not sitting close is our excuse.  Here is a picture of Kathy with her winning challenge quilt.  The Challenge was to make a small quilt with a "Calendar Holiday".  She chose Johnny Appleseed's birthday.  Yes, it's on her calendar.  Maxine doesn't celebrate it on my calendar, though.  I loved her use of a pair of jeans with a hole it that she used to make Johnny's jeans with a knee hole.  It was very clever and I was so proud of her when her quilt won. 

This is one of the quilts I worked on while there.  Like I have said before, I have been wanting to make one of these interlocking crosses quilts for quite some time.  I have read about them on the blogs for over a year now and I finally decided to just draw one up and make it.  This is some of the fabric that I was cutting and cutting the last couple of weeks.  This quilt is made up of 4 1/2 inch squares.  196 squares to be exact!!  I can't believe there are that many squares, but there are.  It went together really fast.  Much faster than I thought it would.  It would have been faster if toward the end I hadn't sewn some of the rows together wrong and then had to take then out and  sew them back together correctly.  I really like this quilt and plan on making one or two more.  I thought I was giving it for a baby gift, but I think I might just keep this one all to myself.  At least for now.  Anyway, it's not quited and may not be for a few years the way things go around here. 



Quilt top Done!

I am still cutting fabric.  However, I took some time out to work on my Whisper Quilt this weekend.  I can't show any pictures - one, because I am at school and don't have my camera with me and two, because it is a secret!  That's why it is called a whisper quilt.  This is how it all started.  In April at the Ogallala Quilt Festival, I saw a display from a quilt group out of New Mexico called "Whisper Quilts".  (Or it could have been Gossip Quilts or something else entirely, but for this purpose I am calling it Whisper Quilts)  The premise is you have a group (4 - 8 people) (we had two groups of four) and person number one gets a picture from a magazine (we had my sister in Arkansas pick the pictures, seal them in an envelope and mail them to me and I handed them to the first person in each group)  The first person makes a quilt based on their interpretation of the picture. (they only have one month)  They then send their quilt on to the second person who makes a quilt based on their interpretation of person # 1's quilt. They give # 1 their quilt back and they pass their quilt on to # 3 and so on and so on.  You only get to see the quilt from the person in front of you.  Only the first person gets to see the original picture.  When everyone has had a chance to make their quilt (must be finished - quilted and bound), everyone brings their quilt to display.  There are only 3 people in our group this time and 4 people in our second group because we wanted to get this done before the holidays.  We will display our quilts in October. 

I am so excited!  I have my Whisper quilt top finished!!  I only need to quilt and bind it before the 15th of October.  I can't believe how fast it all came together for me.  I would love to do another one - and may - someday.

Scrap Organization and Blocks

This past week I have been reading blogs whenever I have gotten the chance.  Which hasn't been very often.  I have a few blogs that I read first and then if I have more time I go a little deeper on my list.  This weekend, I had a bit of that free time and was going through my list and one block really, really caught my eye.  I got to this blog in a round about way.  So, let me give credit to the blogs - I was reading up on what Quilt Dad is doing when I noticed that during October there is going to be a Quilt-Uberfest.  I picked a random name off that list, Amy Logsiger - October 5th and went to her blog, Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts. Wow, I have been to this blog before.  I have always liked what she has done and I don't know why I didn't have it bookmarked.  Reading through, I came upon her posting about the Japanese + and X blocks.  I was transfixed.  I love this block.  I need to make this block.   I clicked on a link that led me to another link and now, I can't tell you where I found the tutorial on this block.  I have tried to backtrack - I had to backtrack to even write this posting, saved it, looked, write, saved it, looked, etc.  Just so I could bring you all the information I could, but alas, this is it.  I made four blocks yesterday and put them up on my design wall.  I sewed them together already and think I will make it into a pillow. 

Even though I really like this and it uses up my scraps, I think I need to have a lighter "background" like in the ones on the flicker group. I think it is from here that I followed links to the tutorial, but I can't figure out which magic website got me there. 

Last week, or the week before, I made a 15 minute play block for the basics quilt.  I just hope it's not too late to get it to Victoria for her quilt.  It has been hanging out on my wall ever since it was finished.  I need to go over to 15 minutes and see the rules/guidelines for this one and send it off. 

This is what I have been up to the last week in that extra free time.  Cutting fabric. I am getting ready to go to the Ogallala Ceta Canyon retreat.  I plan on working on my quilt for the retreat my friend Kathy and I put on each year. 

This is my year to teach and I designed the block below.  You can read more about this block here.  Since it is made up of lots of scraps, I have been cutting my fabric into squares.  You can see my boxes for a few of the sizes on the cutting station.  I have squares from 5 inches to 1 inch.  I don't know what I am going to do with the one inch blocks, but I will do something.  They have been talking to me all day and I am thinking 9 patch or something like that.  A 9 patch block made with 1 inch squares would only measure 1 1/2 inches!!  That is crazy.  I may just have to make it and play with my other size squares.  However, that is in the future.  For now, I need to get this quilt made. 

 



Just Organizational Stuff

I have added another shelving unit to my quilt studio.  I had to move the ironing board out to put the shelf in and now I don't know where to put the ironing board!  This shelving unit isn't as large as the other three or as tall.  I am not sure it will hold everything I need it to, but I will keep it until it crashes down.  In the clearing out process, I have started going through a box of quilting stuff that has been sitting by the ironing board for several years now.  I have discovered some round robin quilt tops from over 10 years ago when I was part of an online quilt chat group.  I have also come across several orphan blocks, more quilt tops, some batik blocks that I really, really like and can kind of remember making.  There are 8 of those blocks.  Five of the blocks are put together from 4 separate paper piece blocks and the other 3 are the log cabin style.  I just need to make one block in a log cabin style to have a nice wall hanging or center section of a larger quilt.  I will try to get a picture of them this week so you can see. 

I have spent the evening and parts of this long weekend cutting fabric (okay, and being really, really, lazy and playing games on the computer, too).   I need to clear out some boxes and put all my squares in them to get more organized.  I already have boxes that have strips - 2 1/2", 1 3/4" and 1 1/2" - all in separate boxes.  I also have a tub (larger than a box) of multi-size strips.  Right now I use my tub to make spiderweb blocks.  Now that I type this, I need to get back to this sometime in the near future.  I also have separate boxes of 2 1/2" squares and 5" squares that also includes some charm packs.  I have a little, bitty, box (it's actually a recipe box) for my 2 inch squares.  I have squares cut from 1 1/2" to 5".  I went on a retreat a few years back where the teacher told how she cuts her fat quarters into squares and strips getting them ready for later use.  Since then, I have been trying to get some of my larger fabric scraps and random fabric in fat quarters and 1/2 yards cut up ready for scrap quilt use.  I am trying to clear out some of my older and  ugly fabrics.  Well, I just wanted to put something down here since it's been over a week since I posted.  I will try to get a few pictures up here on Wednesday.  I need to get back on a system both here and in real life.