A Prairie Home Quilts

Most spam comments I get are deleted by the two programs I have installed to protect against such things. Every once in a while a spam comment sneaks through and ends up in the spam folder. Usually they are from a non-quilter trying to promote their website by commenting on one of my posts. This morning I found these two gems in the spam folder.

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Hmmm. These are from the supposed “distinguished essay writing/good custom writing service.”  I do hope that “honest students” all over America aren’t paying for essays with similar English grammar.

Okay, on to the finishes! The first three are just to the finished top stage.  I don’t have a picture of the Orange Peel topper [Improved 9 Patch] and I’m house sitting so I’ll try to get a shot of that some time next week.

This little LeMoyne Star wall hanging, Polka Dot & Paisley, I made with the scraps from the table topper.  I watched the free Jinny Beyer episode on The Quilt Show and she demonstrated a better way [than what I was doing] to put together 8 pointed stars.  So, you know, I had to try it out.  I think I’m going to hang this on the wall near the sewing machine when I get it quilted.   This next one is a class sample.  I’m going to teach a Winding Ways class at the LQS at the end of February/first part of March.

I also finished putting the binding on three scrappy quilts.  I made a Scrappy Irish Chain quilt and two matching table toppers as leader/ender projects.  My friend, Stacy at Mimi’s Quilting Cottage, quilted them for me.  I’ve already sold one of the table toppers. Here is the quilt in all it’s scrappy, crinkled goodness…

Now I’m hoping for a repeat performance of finishes for February!

I was inspired by Lucy of Quilting with the Past to make some HST from the scraps in my basket of 2″ squares.  It was mindless sewing and before you know it, I had enough HST to make three mini quilts.  [I hadn't planned to do that many.] I made my youngest DS put them together into sets for me so I wouldn’t make myself crazy over-thinking the layouts.  [I know I'm not the only one who does that.]  I finished two of them up while I was house sitting.

The third needs binding.  I’d originally cut one that matches the border but found I liked the red binding better so I need to cut & sew a new binding for it.  Mom has taken these two to put in her booth at the antique/craft shop to sell.  I’m going to put the third one with one of her bears.  The bear sits on the bench in the dining room.  Let’s see how long it takes for her to notice it.  [Tee hee]

Star Log Cabin Wall hanging

This is a wall hanging from Eleanor Burns’ Star Log Cabin in a Day book. It’s machine pieced and hand quilted (mostly SID and some in the middle of the stars). I completed it on 31 December 2003, I think. It depends on when we actually celebrated Mom’s and oldest DS Nathan’s birthdays that year. (Yes, they share a birthday!) It may have been New Year’s Day 2004. Anyway, this hangs in our dining room in between 6 racks of my Mom’s cup and saucer collection–a place of honor.

This was basically my second quilting project and actually my first one completed. I decided on the spur of the moment to do something quilty for my Mom for Christmas even though I’d just learned to quilt a few months earlier. My goal was to get it done before Christmas. The problem is that I am well known in my family for either being up all night Christmas Eve completing gifts for Christmas Day, or for wrapping up a half completed gift and giving it and then *never* finishing the project! I tried, I *really* tried to get this all done for my Mom before Christmas. . . I managed to get the top done. [sigh] Fortunately, because Mom’s birthday is a week later, I told her I’d have it all quilted for her by her birthday. True to form, I think I was still hand sewing the binding to the back *on* her birthday, but I did get it done!

Oh, and I almost forgot. . . I won a second place ribbon on my wall hanging at the Pahrump Arts Council Fiber Arts Show in 2006.

Just how mischievous can one cat be? Well… Mom had seeds for some Bird of Paradise and Red-tipped Yuccas that she was planting in rows along the fences. Ludo was apparently digging them up as fast as she could plant them which then encouraged the birds to try and make off with the seeds. (Maybe it was his plan all along to entice the birds… LOL) After all that mischief, he decided to nap in the pot of freshly planted day lilies.

After Rachelle snapped the third picture of him, he’d had enough of his sleep being disturbed…

He doesn’t look very happy with Rachelle, does he? LOL

After several attempts, I managed to get a picture of Josh’s quilt. I was having a difficult time getting a picture where the quilt looked straight. I had Tyler and Rachelle hold the corners and Tyler’s about a foot taller than Rachelle so the quilt kept looking a little lopsided. I should have checked this picture closer before I packed up the quilt and mailed it. For some reason the top right corner is fuzzy. Maybe the lens needs to be cleaned…

and the detail shot…

I like the method Evelyn Sloppy gives for making flying geese for this quilt, but I’m not happy with the way too many of the flying geese points got clipped. I’m assuming it has to do with the ruler I used to square up the flying geese. Here’s a tutorial showing how the flying geese were made and I used the ruler like the one pictured in the tutorial. I have Eleanor Burns small flying geese ruler and have used it successfully to make flying geese without the corners getting clipped but it was too small for these units. I think if I’d had her bigger ruler and used it to square up these units, they would have come out okay. That’s my plan for next time. Live and learn everyday, right?

In a week oldest DS, Nathan, and his girlfriend, Koren, will be here for a visit and in ten days oldest DD, Jessica,will be home from Montana. This happy momma hen will have all her little chicks at home for a short time.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted because I’ve been having trouble with our ISP. So instead of wrestling with “server timed-out” messages and having to hit the “refresh” button multiple times, I’ve just been quilting. Yesterday, mom finished sewing the binding down on her quilt for me… I’m not sure if she volunteered because I’ve got a stack of them to do or she just wanted to be sure to get her (overdue) birthday present some time this year. :) I need to sew down the binding on the one just like it for resale.

I ended up doing an E2E allover loose feather design. The flange was not a good mix with an edge-to-edge design as it kept getting caught up in the presser foot and folded over the wrong way in spots. I ended up having to fix nine such spots. [sigh]

I finished up a baby quilt that the director of our local crisis pregnancy center asked me to quilt for a woman who decided to keep her baby after coming into the center. (Both my daughters volunteer there.) It’s nothing special, just two pieces of fabric sandwiched together–otherwise I’d post a picture. :) I quilted it allover with little hearts and hands. I’m still working on Josh’s quilt. I have all the log cabin squares finished and am working on the flying geese units. I bought the border material and backing today. Tomorrow I’m going to concentrate on getting Josh’s quilt done so I can get that sent to him.

Don’t we all have at least one of those? It starts out fun or interesting or whatever and ends up being s-u-c-h -a- c-h-o-r-e that we’d like to hide it in the deepest, darkest closet we can find until 10 years after our death! LOL Okay, so this wasn’t that bad. Let’s just say it was a quilt with issues and I was trying to machine quilt it.

My youngest daughter, Rachelle, made it for her friend. It’s large–110″ x 110″. On my frame, which is set up at 10 feet, I only have 104″ of sewing space. It was really too big for me to machine quilt. But Rachelle couldn’t really afford to pay someone else to machine quilt it, and it *has* been sitting around as a finished top for a long, long time–over a year. Sooo, even though I shouldn’t have, I told Rachelle that I’d finagle the thing and get it machine quilted on my frame one way or another. Afterall, she is my dear daughter–a person whom I love…

Okay, so I find myself basting with water soluble thread, sewing 18 partial rows, reattaching the top, sewing the rest of the partial rows, turning the top, sewing 9 more partial rows, reattaching the top, sewing the last of the 9 rows. Ugh! It was a bear. I think it’s been on the frame for over two weeks… I can’t remember any more. It’s all a haze. LOL I don’t think I’d worked on it in almost a week and I only had the last half of the last nine partial rows left to do. Finally, yesterday I decided I was going to persevere until it was done. Done! I finished it up last night.

Today when Rachelle called from Oregon (she’s visiting friends) and she asked about the quilt, I could say it was done. She’s happy; I’m happy. And I am definitely ready to move on to the next project!

Piecing: 7 days of 8 (No pieceing was accomplished yesterday, but I’m okay with that.)