A Prairie Home Quilts

Last night I was cutting up scraps for one of the Happy Scrappy Houses wallhangings that I was thinking of doing and was inspired by an idea to make a statement with the houses. Of course, it’s not what I had *planned* to work on. LOL This project is on my WIP List but not on my weekly (or even monthly) goal list. Naturally, today I couldn’t wait to get started on sewing the houses for the wallhanging. I don’t like the fabrics I used in three of them (house #2, 3 & 4) so I’m going to redo them. I’ll try to post a new picture later tonight.

I also threw my pink & burgundy quilt top on my bed last night to see what I thought. I decided it looks quite nice on the bed actually. Now I have to find some sort of machine quilting pattern to use on it and I still need to figure out how I’m going to quilt my Mom’s Ohio Star wallhanging. I agonize over what to machine quilt unless something hits me right away…

And I’ve decided, after putting the borders on my quilt last night, the one thing that I like the least about quilting is putting on the borders! They’re tedious–measuring, cutting, measuring, cutting, ironing, centering, pinning, blah, blah, blah. I even like hand sewing the binding to the back of the quilt more than borders. (I actually find hand sewing relaxing.) I think that’s why I put off the borders on the 5 remaining quilted signs I have to finish up and started a NEW project today. LOL

Updated photo: I’m not sure if I’ll keep this arrangement, but I like all the houses now.

I needed a new quilt for my bed and I saw one that looked simple, quick and romantic in a quilt book. It was done in light shades of pinks with a few deep, darks thrown in. It looked sort of French Country. I decided to make it bigger so I needed to add some more fabric and I wanted to use as many different fabrics as possible. When I was throwing bolts of fabric and FQs on the counter, I guess I wasn’t paying any attention to the fact that I was going for more deep, darks than lights. Why? Because I *prefer* deep, darks and brights. [sigh] I should have had dd Rachelle help me out… she prefers light, pastel colors. This isn’t exactly what I envisioned when I started this quilt and I’m not sure I like it yet. I think because I managed to get a mix of half deep, darks and half lights. I’ve added a smaller inner border in pink–a bright pink. Today I’m going to add the outer border–a deep, dark–and call it good. Maybe I’ll like it once it’s quilted and on the bed. :) Anyway, one more project off my WIP list.

My goal today is to finish up the borders and bindings on the 5 remaining quilted signs I have and add the borders to my quilt. Then I’m done with machine piecing for a while. I’ll be doing some hand work and machine quilting for the next couple of weeks. (I hope.)

Tonight I completely finished up the background piece for the Psalm 8 quilt. The top half & bottom half aren’t sewn to each other yet. I decided to leave them apart until after I’m done with the appliqué. I thought it might be easier to have them in 2 separate pieces. I’m going to appliqué cutouts of my hands first, I think. The “S” curves between the night sky and day sky were troublesome to say the least. I bought Katie’s Scallop Radial Rule because I wanted to try some scalloped borders and I thought it would look cool to have a wavy effect between the 2 different skies so I experimented with the ruler. It was easy to use and I think it will be a nice tool for making scalloped borders.

I updated my WIP list to add a few things from my ~Some Day~ Quilts list and to add a few new ideas. I started a list of goals for March, but I’m going to have to pare it down to something more reasonable! LOL Stay tuned…

The really fun thing about working on 5 to 6 WIPs at a time is that when you start finishing them up, there’s a lot of finishes all at once. It makes me feel sooo productive! LOL I’ve finished up 6 WIPs in the last 4 days…

1. Mom’s wallhanging
2. A duplicate one for resale
3. Scrappy Irish Chain lap quilt
4. Scrappy Irish Chain table topper
5. Second Scrappy Irish Chain table toppper
6. Please Pass the Ranch (pictured below)

I used Lettuce Leaves from Kyle’s Marketplace in the top and I have Tomatoes from the same fabric line for the backing. I’m going to quilt this one all over with a tomato pattern.

By tomorrow, I hope to have my pink & burgandy quilt top and the sky portion of my Psalm 8 quilt top finished up. It’s going to take a while now to get these UFTs quilted. :) I’m going to do some hand work (appliqué, redwork, etc.), I think, while I’m sitting with the quilting machine. I need to add some more projects to my WIP List, too. It’s looking sparse with only 13 projects listed. LOL Not to worry, I found some ideas at Bonnie’s site… I love the Happy Scrappy Houses.

I have lots of pictures to share today. :) First, though, I heard from Mark early this morning while he was looking at my sick sewing machine. He said he’d call back to let me know what he found, but I never heard from him… not a good sign, I think.

Here’s a picture of the rest of Rachelle’s repro doll quilts and a small table runner that I machine quilted. The small table runner matches the one I made for my aunt. These are all for resale @ Treasures, a local antique and craft mall where my Mom and I have a booth.

I found these buttons to use for the yoyo hearts I’m making for Jessica’s pillows. The buttons belonged to a dear friend, Barb, who passed away more than 15 years ago. When her husband passed away late last year, my ex-hubby brought me a few things from their home–one was a jar of buttons. I had asked for Barb’s fabric if there was any left laying around but none was found. She had quite a collection. She was planning on spending her retirement sewing. Sadly, she passed away before she retired, and she never got to enjoy using all that fabric she had plans for. I think she’d be happy to see her buttons being used.

Here is one of my yoyo hearts. (Here’s a link to the free tutorial.)

This is a closeup of Jessica’s quilt. I hope you can see the detail of the quilting… It’s hearts on vines. The pillows will match the quilting with the heart yoyos and appliquéd stems and leaves.

I spent the day piecing today. I’m excited that my current WIP list is down to 14… the bad news is that my UFT list is climbing. I decided that I was tired of my Scrappy Irish Chain Leader/Ender projects so I concentrated on getting them done today. I originally started out to make a large quilt but used some of the squares in an antique window frame for resale. I finished up enough scrappy and alternate blocks last night to make a lap quilt and 2 table toppers.

Ludo was there to help me out today.

This is the lap quilt. I really like it and think I’m going to have a hard time parting with it–not that I don’t have enough 2″ squares cut to make another 1 or 2 lap quilts exactly the same. LOL I’m quilting this with shamrocks.

These are some of the signs I’m working on for resale @ Treasures. I have at least 10 started. LOL They were fun and I got carried away. :) I need to put borders on most, machine quilt and bind them.

Yesterday my trusty sewing machine quit on me. [sob, sob] I was working on finishing up the top for Mom’s wallhanging. It sews in place and in reverse. [sigh] I dragged the Brother 1500 off the machine quilting frame to finish up. I’ve never pieced with the Brother. I was surprised that it sews nicely and it’s quiet. (It makes a lot of noise when it’s on the PC Quilter.) I finished up Mom’s wallhanging complete with flange and mitered borders. :) I’ve never mitered the corners before–they look okay and seem to lay flat. Just don’t look too closely at my mismatched seams on the stars! LOL (Picture is clickable)

I *really* like the border fabric and may have to go back and get some more for one of my Women of the Bible quilts. It’s a grape viney pattern with grape leaves and grapes that I think would like nice on the borders of my “scrappy” WOBQ.

I dropped off the Bernina at the local vacuum & sewing machine repair shop. Hopefully it won’t break the bank to have it fixed. Mom told me I was having a good month of sales in our booth at the antique & craft mall so I’m sure that that money will be going to pay for the sewing machine. God usually knows when I’ll need a little extra for such things and He always provides. (Thanks and praise to Him!) I’m going to keep working steady on piecing some other projects before I move the Brother back to the machine quilting frame to finish up some projects there… Let’s see how many other things from my WIP list I can finish up.

I managed to snap a few pictures from the local quilt show we attended yesterday. There were two appliquéd quilts that were beautiful–one captured Best of Show. (Pictures are clickable to see an enlarged view)

On the left: Dian Lamb’s “Guardian Angel” First Place – Machine pieced & Machine quilted On the right: Lynda Caffey’s “Crazy Quilt” Third Place – Any piecing method & Hand quilted [Lynda's quilt has black & white photos of family members, her grandmother's lace and wonderful embroidery work]

On the left: Sonia Wittenberg’s “Black & Brights” – Machine pieced & Machine quilted On the right: Wanda Smith’s “Block of the Month” Third place – Comination piecing & Machine quilted [This one is done in batiks]

On the left: Wanda Smith “Bear Mountain Cabin” First Place – Machine pieced & Machine quilted On the right: Diane Johnston “Dad’s Tulips” Second place – Combination of quilting [This one is done is plaids]

Shirley Pierce “Baskets & Hearts” Best of Show & First Place – Any piecing method & Hand quilted