Shakespeare Quilt Progress

Today I stayed home from church-something with my lungs, I think it started Thursday when it was windy and I had Button at the park as usual, but there was dust and dead grass and I am sure pollen blowing around. When you have allergies and asthma windy weather can kick up a heap of trouble! Started me wheezing and coughing and it's still a problem, so it seemed wisest to stay home, people get really nervous these days if you cough and the wheezing makes people think I am dying, LOL!

It was a good opportunity to work on SITP quilt and I am pleased to say that it's ready to be pieced into a top, finally.

Here's one possible version, all the big stars are red and white, this appeals to me more I think.

But there is this one where the big red and white stars are alternating with black and white.

The background in the B&W stars is a lighter value and that makes them look even more different. Not sure about this...............

Whichever I choose leaves three big stars, now what to do with those left over-maybe incorporate them into the backing?

Final Vintage Apron draw.

Last week, New Year was the final vintage apron drawing, # 17 came up, Teresa over at Garden Shoes Online.

It took a few days to confirm her addy and that she did indeed wish to receive an apron, and today this one went off in the mail along with one of my "renowned" pot-holders!

Here's a pic. of the apron for Teresa a really good choice don't you think for a gardening lady, the fabric has all sorts of plants on it and the pockets will be handy-I can picture her potting her plants wearing this apron!

Finished For Friday -The "Carolina Christmas" Quilt Top

It's Friday and I have something to blog for FFF, this scrappy mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter. Lit and laundry is hosting FFF and she has a sweet stocking banner to show.

The hard work, the piecing, is done on this rather large [90x90"] top, now just the fun part the actual quilting!

I quite like the design now it is together but I struggled a lot with my attitude getting it there.

This is I think my seventh Bonnie mystery-I made two of one design- and by the time I was half way through the clues for this one I was wishing that I had not begun! It became tedious and repetitive in a way that I didn't experienced with previous mysteries, so I think it must just be me!

My reason for making it in the first place was to use up some Christmas fabrics that have been hanging around too long but I found that I really didn't have what I needed so I ended up buying - fortunately Christmas fabrics were 50% off. Now I still have those old fabrics plus some left from the new ones I bought and I'm wondering if I can piece the backing and use it up that way- I am not a fan of Christmas fabrics or any other holiday theme fabric for that matter.

I took a photograph from the back and it looks like stained glass, doesn't it?

I was in no mood to make the pieced border Bonnie had designed so I simply made a red stop border and used up a yard of green ornament fabric for the outer border. Now I will have to either bind with red or scrap the binding too.

It took me longer than I expected so that may have accounted for some of my frustration, and I confess that I am really pleased to have it done!

I will be quilting it with an all over design probably the freehand Baptist Fan that always looks so nice on these scrappy traditional style quilts.

VTT, Carved Wooden Box

OK it's VTT again and I am for some reason a tad brain dead this week, so I am just showing a small carved wooden box from my childhood -which was a looooong time ago folks!

Then, for some more vintage fun go on over to the lovely Suzanne's blog at Colorado Lady and see all the other fascinating offerings for Vintage Thingies Thursday.

My paternal grandparents traveled to England about every three years to visit family. They had immigrated to Australia when my Dad was a young man and returned to the UK regularly as long as my Grandma's parents were living.

They went by ship, P and O and Orient was the prestige shipping line at the time, and the journey took them through the Suez Canal, I think it took several weeks. We always received special gifts upon their return and this beautiful box was my gift I think around 1950.

It's about twelve inches long and half that tall and has traveled around the world with me and held various treasures. Would you believe that now, among other things, it holds a collection of my four sons' baby teeth! Weird, eh?

This is the top, it looks rather oriental in design..........

and here is the front.

Each of the other sides has a simple carving of a ship, again rather Asian in nature.

I don't know where my grandparents purchased this box, perhaps it was Aden or Bombay, two ports their ship stopped at on the journey. I know that I have a photograph taken with my grandparents before they left on one of these trips but I ran out of steam looking for it tonight!

The box has sentimental value only I think, probably little monetary worth but isn't that the way with most of our vintage collections?

No sewing today-by the time I got my mammogram-ladies please make sure you get yours- and took my car by Atwood European and walked the Button dog, the day was pretty much done. I plan on making it up tomorrow by spending all day at the sewing machine!

Wordless Wednesday/The Business Meeting!

NYE Mystery Quilt Top

These really pretty fabrics taught me a hard lesson-no matter how gorgeous I think it is I will not buy fabric if it is stiff. Maybe it's all the gold metallic on them - one is a batik but it is actually softer! There are still a lot of these African theme fabrics in my stash so I am now wondering how to use them, perhaps as backings, because it really makes my fingers sore from all the pinning.

As you can see I used those indipensible little fork pins again, without them I would have been undoing and re-sewing a lot of the seams that didn't match up well enough to satisfy me.

Incidentally, I found the fork pins at Joann today and on sale 50% off so I picked up an extra package. This made them much less expensive than at Connecting Threads even at CT's sale price, and then you have to add shipping though I only order the pins if I am already placing an order for something else.

Ta-da, here is the finished top ready for the longarm. After hanging it for photographing I noticed a mistake, but it's going to stay there! The elephants at least all go in the same direction, that was in my plan but I wouldn't have fussed if it didn't work out. As time goes on I find myself able to live with some things that are less than perfect, others I can't abide it depends on how much it offends my eyes!

This Just In.......

DH and oldest DGS having a terrible day on the Telluride slopes,LOL!

VTT Wedgwood Lady's Compact

Because I have committed to the NYE Mystery Quilt tomorrow, there has been frantic sewing on Bonnie's Carolina Christmas Mystery quilt in an attempt to get caught up.

Alas, I must now leave it incomplete and do the necessary prepping for the NYE quilt.

Consequently I have just one item to show for VTT, this Wedgwood Lady's compact.

It was given to me by my college friend MA when I was an attendant in her wedding party in 1969 - or was it 1970? I confess I am not certain as my DH would say "I have slept a few nights since then" LOL !

Isn't it beautiful and elegant?

I have pics somewhere of that event and if I were not so far behind I would go find them but I will try to do that for next week, just for fun!

The compact is in fine condition even though the finish is a little worn, because I have always kept it in it's original bag that is a bit more worn!

The original label is till intact..........

and you can tell it is used, has face powder in it.

I love this compact and treasure it so if MA ever reads my blog I would want her to know that after four decades this gift is still in use!

Now if you are blogging this last day of 2009, head on over to visit our VTT hostess , Colorado Lady's blog and see who else has time for blogging on NY Eve!

PS Keetha's and JoJo's aprons are on their way!

Keetha

JoJo

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

New year's Eve Mystery Quilt

QT Mystery Quilts is hosting a NYE project- the past two years I have joined a NYE Mystery and this year will be quilting along with three local quilter friends. We will be working together on the mystery quilt all NYE day and I am using only stash fabrics as in the past two years.
There is quite a collection of African theme fabrics untouched to date in the stash so I pulled them out to try and find a nice arrangement of two mediums, a dark, a light, a focus and a border fabric.

This was the first idea - left to right, far left is the light, the next two are the mediums, the orange is the focus and the last on the right is the dark.

The mediums give me some concern for two reasons.
1-The large gold print will get lost when cut up into small pieces
2-The two golds are fairly close in value and may not have enough contrast

Here is a brown to replace the large-print gold that will then work perfectly for the border.
This looks like the better alternative, the brown print is rather geometric but it will do, it doesn't matter to me if it goes in different directions, makes the design more interesting. Tell me what you think if you have an opinion-most of us quilters do, LOL!

It's good to be able to use some of this ethnic collection and I am determined not to buy for the project, I want to use stash in order to rotate older fabrics out of stash to make room for new ones! Taking into consideration fabric purchases for this year-around 100 yards-the stash so far has decreased by about 50 yards, but my goal is more ambitious for the coming year. The"fabric out" total could conceivably increase by 40 yards or so if the four projects in progress were all done by year's end! Not likely that will happen but I might get one or two done. Stay tuned!


Christmas Day I made cinnamon buns- did the prep. Christmas Eve so they only had to be baked on Christmas Day. Sons #1 and #4 and their families met up with DH and me at the home of son #2 to eat, visit and open gifts. Youngest DGS is missing from the group pic, he was napping, but here is the little cutie with his "Docband "helmet, he has to wear it 23 hours/day for about seven months. You can see his Mum and Dad have decorated it with their favorite team colors, go Cowboys! Baby Matthew is 8 months old.

Below is a pic of his Daddy at about the same age, wearing one of DH's flight helmets, think these two are related?!


Then our "boys" went off to visit the other side of their families and DH and I came home for a quiet evening.
The Shakespeare quilt was calling to me and a spot of mindless sewing, more scrappy pot holders put together from border blocks left over from the strip scrap quilt.

The backs are larger scrap pieces enlivened by the selvedge bindings.

This week these two numbers were drawn from the VTT comments.

JoJo's and Keetha's vintage aprons and scrappy pot holders will be in the mail to them probably Monday.
There will be one more drawing next week after VTT.

Merry Christmas To All........

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill to all men"

Luke 2:14

Come, let us adore Him.

Rwandan Nativity

VTT Christmas Postcard

I can't remember where I found this sweet card, nicely preserved in a vintage looking two- sided glass frame with a loving message for a brother and his family at Christmas, dated December 11th. 1911. I am thinking that my Dad would have been seven months old then and quite unconscious of the fact that he would be alive for Christmas 98 yrs, later! But I digress.........

Notice how the sender of the card has added "Christ" over the word "Xmas". It really doesn't offend me as it seems to have bothered her, though I notice in her handwritten message on the back she uses the exact same abbreviation! X [chi] is the first letter of the Greek for Christ and has been used as an abbreviation since the mid 16th. century.

Completely unrelated, as I was pressing a quilt top this evening I realized that my little travel iron is probably vintage, isn't it adorable,very feminine!

I had another travel iron for about 10 years, but I dropped it one too many times and I missed it. It was perfect for that interim pressing during piecing, but I am too frugal to purchase a new one and even on eBay by the time I paid shipping I decided I could wait.

Then recently I was out "strolling" baby Matthew when I decided to check out a yard sale and there was this dear little iron with all the original papers and the box. I asked the young woman "How much", "Two dollars" she said, done deal I was very happy! Did you notice that it matches the paint color on the walls of my studio, it was obviously meant to be mine!

I really like this older version better than the more modern version iron I had previously. This one is definitely heavier and hotter, in fact very hot, perfect for quilt pressing and the point of the iron is narrower that works well for flattening those pesky seams. I haven't tried the little water bottle, haven't needed it and probably won't but the iron is in great condition so I'm assuming it probably would steam if needed.

I tried to find it's age, I did discover that GE began making the lavender version in 60's so it may be a 70's model. It looks identical to the 60's model except for the cord.

This is the top I was pressing, the strip scrap quilt I have been working on, now ready to go on the longarm.

Most of the other VTT bloggers are showing their Christmas vintage so do check them out beginning with Colorado Lady.

The blogger whose number was drawn last week for the vintage apron gift has not responded to two emails so if I don't hear from her I will draw two numbers this week.

Happy VTT and a Merry Christmas too!

The Annual Cookie Bake-Off

Each year for the past 10 years, during the week before Christmas my two older grandsons come over to bake and decorate cookies. We began this tradition when the oldest was around four years old, and his brother probably joined us a year or two later.

We also make a gingerbread house-this year it is a gingerbread train.

Here's GS#1 working on construction of the train-we use a kit, it's so much sturdier and saves Grandmother heaps of work! GS#2 broke his arm at football so he decided to focus on the decorating.

Similarly with the cookies-I prepped the dough the previous night and chilled it- big brother rolled dough and cut out cookies since it's a little hard for his brother to do that with one arm in a cast. These are their favorites, the "stained glass cookies".

After an hour or more of cookie dough we needed something less sweet, Costco pepperoni pizza for lunch.

As the years pass and the boys are older, the cookies get more and more "decorated" until now they are loaded with decorations!

So here they are on the way home with the cookie lode! See that huge platter stacked with cookies and a few extra special on a separate plate.

One more pic with Grandmother who is all cookie'd out for the moment! In case you are wondering, the boys are 12 and 14 and the oldest is 5 ft. 11".

After I stacked up all that I could onto that platter for the kids this is what was left for us!

Talk about your uber- decorated cookies!

This week DH drew comment number seven for the vintage apron give-away, that's Jane from "Mamie Jane's" blog so I have sent her an email to see if she would like to have an apron.

Finished For Friday And A Tiny Tut!

While I was in the watercolor quilting mode I decided to make one more Christmas gift.

It is even more crucial I think with these quilts to have really accurate seams - I have talked about the "fork pins" before and how they facilitate perfect piecing.

For a little test, this time I sewed an entire row of blocks together using regular pins and found that my fabric shifted just enough to offset the blocks ever so slightly, not good enough in this case. The next row I used the fork pins, the result, total accuracy on every seam! Did I say I love these pins?!

I tried to insert a little video showing just that, sorry but it would not load, not sure why, I have done it before successfully. Maybe the file was too big?

The pins are very fine and are easy to sew over, just slow down as you come to each pin and "walk'' the machine over carefully. If you love accurate piecing or struggle at all with it do try these pins. "Connecting Threads" has them if your local QS does not.

You can see how offset seams would be very obvious and would detract from the watercolor effect here.

It's important too that seams be nested [pressed in alternate directions] in order to have that "seamless" appearance, you just cannot get away with a sloppy pressing job or careless seaming with this sort of design.

I like accuracy but I'm also a bit of a speed freak [one reason I have a LA] I want to be as productive as possible but there are times when a little extra time and care is crucial to the desired result.

Now if it were as easy to find a Christmas gift for my DH, life would be so much more simple!

The quilt from the back.