A Prairie Home Quilts

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]

I’ve finished the top finally. It’s all hand pieced. Tonight I hope to make the binding strips and piece the back. . . I’m being frugal and using up some strips that came off the backing of another Christmas quilt hence needing to piece the backing even though this topper is only about 20″ across at its widest point.

Next up will be basting it so that I can hand quilt it.

I am making progress on the quilting of my GFG table topper. I’m just eyeballing it while I quilt — I haven’t marked it or anything. My quilting is not going to win any awards but it’s getting done.

It may be my only finished project of 2008. There just hasn’t been a lot of quilting going on.  That’s sad, very sad. Oh but I did finish up a rag quilt that had been sitting around in a bag getting moved from place to place. It only needed to be trimmed so the edges would fray. I decided it needed to just get done so I finished it up yesterday.

For me, the urge to do some handwork always seems to be there bubbling under the surface. I even enjoy hand quilting but as I explained in a previous post I haven’t had the opportunity to do a lot of it while I was living with my mom.  At one time I thought I’d do some hand piecing to satisfy the urge.  I started basting the hexagons for this topper some time ago.  When I was sitting around while the computerized quilting system was doing its thing, I was usually either reading or basting hexagons–more reading then basting though or I’d have had more of this done. *smile*  When I started packing up my quilting room to get ready for my move to Oklahoma, I left out 4 projects that I could work on by hand in case it was a while before I could get my sewing machine back out. So now, here I am about 3 months later finally doing some more handwork.

I love the portability of my project.  And I’ve become totally obsessed with hexagons. So much so that I’ve totally changed my plan for the GFG quilt top that I am collecting fabrics for.  *smile*  Here’s the little bag that I’m using to hold all my stuff for the table topper.

This holds my needles, scissors, basting thread, hand quilting thread that I’m using to sew the hexagons together, and the sandwich baggies that are holding my basted hexagons (and some extra unbasted ones, too).

I was storing the fabric for my Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt top in a shoe box but then I bought this storage box at Walmart.

It’s actually a tackle box.

I haven’t started basting any of the fabric to hexagon templates for this project yet. Which is probably a good thing because I changed my mind on how I’m going to piece the top. I decided against the look of what we think of as the traditional Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt.

Here’s my progress on the table topper up to the point that I last took a picture–I think it was last weekend. I actually have five complete flowers done and a bit of the last two.

It’s gone faster than I thought it would. Soon I’ll be able to start hand quilting it!

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.