More Peas in a Pod....

Last night was an exciting night for the beginners making More Peas in a Pod. They worked on getting the borders sewn on to their quilts. They are beautiful! Donna chose a green, small print fabric for her backing fabric and binding.

It was fun to see their color choices come to life. We all loved how Ruth's border makes the other fabrics in the quilt sparkle.

 George's black print was a great contrast to his bold center! It really seemed to add that finished touch. I think it's always hard to know if you made the right fabric choices until the end....maybe that's what keeps us sewing! We have to see!

Joan made hers a little bigger than the pattern. She had to miss last week, so came Monday night to work on it with me before my sampler class so she could get caught up.

Lisa finished putting her borders on, but after we admired it, we went out to look at batting and I forgot to take a picture of her finished top....sorry Lisa! Her border of dog bones is so adorable, too! I will take pix next week when we gather to start putting it together.

Vicki couldn't make it last night, so I will get a picture of hers next week as well.

I'm teaching the Circle and Spin class tomorrow at Cut Up and Quilt. There are still a couple of openings.  That's always a fun one to teach because people find out that curves are not impossible and so much fun to cut and sew.  Happy Friday!

A sampler finish and new Country Farm blocks

I love it when people bring their finished quilts from classes to show me. Barb put a lot of work into making the woven border as well as all of the blocks on this quilt and we all agreed that it is stunning! Next stop...the quilter!

Dianne has been working on her Miss Tess quilt and it is looking good too! They are both part of the Starluna Sampler club meeting on the 4th Tuesday every month. Another fun part of sampler clubs is show and tell! Everyone gets a chance to show off what they have been working on during the past month. I think it also gives them incentive to get their quilts finished, knowing that they can come and show them off!

They worked on making the Country Farm block Tuesday night. Many of them got the blocks finished or very close! Here they are with last month's block. 

 One quilter was gone and one picked up her pieces before we could get a picture! 

Tonight the beginning piecing class meets to work on attaching their borders. It's always fun to get them finished!

Busy bees...

I have a busy week of classes this week, beginning last night with a group that is making the Sunbonnet Sue Sampler quilt. They took a beginning piecing class last fall and wanted to continue learning more techniques.  

 They made the Churn Dash and Grecian Square last night. It was interesting to see whether their pieced sections fit the half square triangles and to figure out what to do if they didn't. Unfortunately, that is part of quilting...figuring out what went wrong.

Thread art or just a mess?

I have been thinking about how I wanted to quilt the colorwheel sunset quilt. I wanted to try some free motion quilting on it, rather than a panto. My machine isn't really set up for free motion quilting. I don't have front controls or a stitch regulator, so I don't attempt much free motion. Plus I have a range of about 7", so that limits the area being worked on.  I have done organic wavy lines across a top a few times. And have done a little echo quilting.

I wanted to show rays coming from the yellows, so I started sewing some jagged lines in and back out from the top edge. I knew if I wanted lines to come from the center I would have to overlap them somewhat.

I used tape to mark the edge of where I could go in one pass, since I didn't want any weird jags when I hit my "edge" or the end of my range for that row.

I continued the rays, but tried to put more of a curve on them to soften the look. I used a variegated gold thread. I had plans to switch to a rosey variegated when I got closer to the darker fabric on the bottom, but I forgot.

I just wanted an organic wavy line across the bottom portion, but I wanted some overlap between the rays and the organic ground part. Not sure if you can really see it  in the above picture.

Originally I wanted to blend this yellow/orange corner better with the reds  by using a darker thread, but I forgot to switch and after I had used the gold over parts of it, I decided I liked how it looked on the darker fabrics.

I will take a better picture after I have it trimmed, but overall I am happy with it. I'm not sure it's what I had envisioned, but it is pretty in it's own way.

I used a solid gold on the back. I had some other class related things to do yesterday, so didn't work on it anymore. I laid it out on my table so it could lay flat and rest from all that quilting.

 Both cats thought it looked comfy....

I have a busy week of classes this week. I am starting the Against the Tide Mystery class on Wed. at CUAQ. I'm doing this one at two locations since a mystery isn't very mysterious after it's been shown! Plus it's nice to have a choice for people to come during the evening or a Sat. morning. The times and dates for both locations are on the upcoming classes page if you are interested in doing this mystery!

Little bit of sewing...

 I didn't get much sewing done this week, but I did get these colorwheel 6 x 6 blocks partially sewn together...they won't take long to finish now.

 I have an idea of what I want to do with these, so I hope to find some time to work on them soon.

I want to load the smallish colorwheel quilt on the frame today...that won't take long but figuring out how I want to quilt it will take some thinking. I don't do much free motion quilting because my machine doesn't have front controls or speed control. I can slow it down, but I'm not used to going that slow so it's harder for me to keep an even flow of stitches. It's a learning experience at this point so if it doesn't turn out perfectly, it will still be fine.

 I'm going to head out to do a little shopping with a friend this morning....looking for the Mo Willems Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus fabric. I definitely need some for a school project of some kind...the kids love his books.

Beginners dig in....

I met with the beginning piecing class last night....they are getting close to a finished quilt top. It was fun to see their quilt centers take shape.

They had time to cut their first border before class ended and we talked about measuring to make sure both of the side borders were the same length.

You can see my version hanging on the wall behind the door!

Our crazy snowstorm yesterday didn't end up sticking to the streets for long, but it was wet and wild while it lasted. It's supposed to warm up a bit today and then we are back to more normal highs for this time of year....20s and 30s. I'm off tomorrow, so I hope to get caught up at home a little and maybe do some quilting.

Love finishes....

I met with the Sampler Pick class last night. These quilters picked which of my 18 sampler designs they wanted to make so there has been a lot of variety in this class! Last night was the last of 6 sessions. Dorothy had made her last block last month, so had put her blocks together. She worked on cutting and attaching the first border last night.

Lora had one block left to make, but had all of her setting blocks made, so she will be putting it together soon! It was so much fun to get it up on the wall! We've been admiring those red and black blocks every month. 

Kelli had one block left to make also, and worked on it last night. She has the pieced frames on 4 of the 6 blocks and the other frames ready to put on, as well as sashings cut. That's the beauty of making these samplers over the 6 month time frame...you have a chance to have it all ready to put together by the last class except for the last block or two. Some of the designs have more blocks than others.

Her last block was paper pieced, so it took a little longer than usual to complete, but she is ready to finish sewing the sections together.

They decided last night which design they want to start working on next month when we start a new Sampler Pick class. They each chose a different design again, so it will be interesting and keep me on my toes! I will be sending out an email soon, but if you are interested in joining this group and making the sampler of your choice, let me know.

We are in for some snow today, they are saying 3 - 5",  but the temps aren't supposed to  be too low, so we'll see how much we end up with. 

Lots of scrappy Miss Tess....

We spent more time cutting and arranging on Saturday during the Miss Tess class than actual sewing.

Anytime you are making a scrappy quilt, the arranging on the design wall is a big part of it, especially with a tessellation quilt. Once you start putting those interconnecting pieces together, they have to be in the correct spots.

Diana is making a baby quilt....Dianne is making the queen size. Karen concentrated on getting everything cut out for her twin size quilt as she had to leave early.

I spent Sunday working on updating some patterns and doing other class-related things. My daughter came over for dinner as we were celebrating my husband's birthday, so that was fun.

My other daughter that lives locally is in Malaysia right now doing some training for her job. She will be gone until mid-March. She got to spend some time doing some touristy things over the weekend...one of those things was visiting a batik factory and store. This factory makes most of their batiks by machine, but she did watch one craftsman at work.