Cookies Ahoy!

Thus starteth the cookie season. Tonight Rachel, Isaac, and I are baking Snickerdoodles and Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin cookies. Trying to start some good memory-making times.

~Joan

Finished Steps and Stars with Dwirling

Ready to go into the dryer...

Dried and on top of my queen-sized bed below. I estimate this finished at about 68" x 86". You can really see the machine quilting in this one. It is the dwirling pattern from the Pajama Quilter DVD. It was very difficult on a DSM, but I think it would be easy on a long-arm. Too many starts and stops on a DSM for me.

Here it is in its entirety. I had thought about giving this away, but I want to enjoy just looking at it around the house for a while.

Test driving a new Parker house Roll recipe (for Thanksgiving) this AM. Not that all our rolls aren't Parker house rolls, but these are the genuine article.

~Joan

Feeling Fuzzy

The last week or so, I've been piecing these flannel blocks...I'd make a set of 3 fabrics each night. The pattern is called Fat Quarter Squares. There were 21 fat quarters in the kit, each one making 3 blocks that finish 9-1/2" square. I have not sewn with flannel for some time, and it was...was...different. The flannel swallows up any stitches. I'm thankful I didn't have to rip any out. Don't think that would have gone very well. The finished quilt is 63" x 81"

I am bartering yardage of fabric in exchange for machine quilting service by a friend. I don't think I could wrestle this in all it's fuzzy puffiness under my domestic machine. Notice how if you twist each block the opposite way, the only seams that need to meet are the corners of the blocks?

Here is a look a little farther out. Pretty colors. Most are Thimbleberries. I bought this as a kit so long ago that I don't even remember if I lived in this house at the time.

And even farther back. My camera was left in GA two weekends ago. I just found out that it was mailed yesterday. So I snagged my son's to take the pictures.

I will sew the blocks to each other soon. Stay tuned...

~Joan

Steps and Stars Just Needs Hand Sewing

I know--the above picture isn't a quilt. But it is one of my lovely offspring! Wearing my cow apron! And my chef's hat. What is going on there? Cookie baking, of course. Just a pic for my post. I left my camera in GA last weekend so I borrowed this from my daughter's blog.

I did a lot of sewing this past few days. I machine quilted a quilt for a customer (Ruby Slippers) and made then sewed the binding onto the front by machine. Then I also finished the quilting on my Steps and Stars quilt. I have about 1-1/2 sides hand-sewn to the back, so that is coming right along.

I tried to get my ancient Singer free motion quilting machine up and running, but the thread broke after just a few inches of stitching over. and. over. and. over...very exasperating. I am debating about whether to try to get it repaired (again!) or just pitch it.

Anywho...pics to come when my camera arrives home. I wish I had taken a pic of the Ruby Slippers. I just did loop-de-loops on it, but it did look lovely.

~Joan

Joan's Windows with Two Sides Bordered

Here is the intersection of four of the blocks. You can see the 1/2" finished frame around each block. Varying these colors would make for a very dramatic quilt. I was trying to play it down some with the gold.

Here is the pieced border. I cut up the extra strips I had already cut for the center and used them so it would sort of match, but it would be hard to tell if a stray got in there!

What appears to be spots are drops of water from the iron. Didn't wait for them to dry.

Lastly, a picture of my progress tonight. I did not have anything else to do. My oldest four were at college or work and my youngest four were watching a movie. I'm so lonesome I could cry.

~Joan

Joan's Windows

I worked on a cool quilt tonight. I was rewarding myself for cleaning off my cutting table. I feel like a new woman!!

I am not into randomness when it comes to quilts. I typically select the blocks with carefully measured and very precise units. But not for this one. It's in a magazine. The name of the pattern is Sonja's Windows. But my name is not Sonja.

You piece two blocks that are later trimmed to 14" square, so I cut a bunch of scraps from my cutting table top into 15" lengths. All I did for the set of two blocks was make sure I didn't use the same fabric in each. I didn't try to match the colors in each block or anything. I also used a variety of widths of strips. From one-inch to three-inches wide.



Then you lay the blocks so that the seams of one go horizontally and the other is vertical.

Trim and pin. I pin very sparsely. The fewer pins the better.

My camera is acting up. It skipped the picture of sewing a 1/4" seam around all the edges and then cutting diagonally through the sewn blocks. The next pic shows me peeling back the left triangle to reveal that block.

Here are all twenty of the blocks laid out with sashing. There will be sashing all around the edge as well. My camera also pretended to take pics of sewing a one-inch cut piece of gold around each block. That will be a half-inch finished frame. It really sets the blocks off.

I haven't picked a border fabric yet. If I remember correctly (and I rarely do), there is a border of another color, then a pieced border with the half-inch finished gold on both sides, then another outer border of the same color. Green? Blue? Cream?? Black??

This makes a very large throw. So fun to piece. You just piece five sets of two blocks and you end up with 20 blocks.

My camera has been giving me fits. The pictures are slightly blurry and it doesn't save each picture I take. Hmmm...old age? I mean of the camera, not me.

Naturally I used every color imaginable in this quilt...blues, blacks, pinks, purples, oranges, greens, golds, creams, browns...it's all good.

~Joan

Child, Where Have You Been?

The above is a picture of scenery in Canada. I don't think THAT is where she's been. My sweet, sweet Susanna saw my Steps and Stars quilt from the back (neatly folded in my sewing room). She said, "What's that?" I pointed out the nifty quilting from the back. She opened it up and commented, "I've never seen this before!" She spends far more time in my sewing room than all of my other 7 children combined. Proof that I could sew a queen-sized quilt right under someone's nose and they would not notice.

~Joan