12 Quilts

It's been so great having this goal of 12 quilts this year. Even if I don't make that number, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting back to doing something I love. It gives me a little oasis of calm in my otherwise chaotic life. I have some pictures to add of some recent work I've done but won't get to it today. I got a Kings Cross quilt quilted at the beginning of this month but my phone died so I didn't get a picture of it on the machine. Earlier in August, I also quilted up the brown and blue nine-patch pictured in the previous post. Both of those quilts, along with the Pioneer Braid, now reside on my stair railing awaiting binding and labels. But I will share a couple of (dark) pictures of what I'm working up currently. Sorry about the lighting, I sew at night and take pictures at night, and my room is sort of cave-like which is terrible for doing things like deciding on colors, taking pictures, reading. You know. I'll be taking one of these two in to quil

...but I've lost a bunch of pictures. I'm sorry for the missing pics and I'll get it fixed as soon as I can.

Back again with a progress report and more pictures. While summertime isn't the ideal time for me to get quilting done, I was proud that I made time to finish up this top and get it quilted. It's hanging from the railing at the top of my stairs waiting for binding...queued up right behind Star Mountain and Pioneer Braid. Someone is getting this for Christmas and it looks a whole lot better than this now! First a little backstory.

Seems like forever since I posted any progress. I've got the binding completely handstiched down on Swapping Stars. This weekend: the LABEL and then the pictures to show it's actually, truly, start-to-finish done! Hurrah! That said, it's June already. Where in the world does the time go? I've been looking at my list and I noted one quilt missing from the list - Star Mountain. Star Mountain is a king size quilt made of swap blocks from three different swaps I was in with the same group of gals through our online group. It has two blocks - Sawtooth Stars and Delectable Mountains - so now you see why it's called Star Mountain. I never said I was creative in naming my quilts. Anyway, I quilted Star Mountain in Dec 2011, so I was thinking it technically would not count for my challenge. Except for one thing - I didn't get the binding stitched down or a label put on. Oh, the binding is ON the quilt. One side of the quilt. I handstitch my bindings and so since De

So we've made it through Spring Break around here - took the whole week off to play with my kiddos and get Pioneer Braid quilted. Happy to say, it went great! My folks came for a few days so I could toddle off to the quilt shop guilt-free! First to decide on setting... Finally decided that the up and down pattern didn't make me too seasick after all. Left the 3 inch strip border on the center row and went with 2 inch strips between the remaining rows. I like how that turned out. Now my original plan was a solid navy border and going to bed before midnight. Around 5 PM I got this wild hair of an idea...piano keys. Now mind you, I still had the backing to prep and I didn't have ANY pre-cut bricks left. I'd literally used every single one I had won in the auction, plus many of my own scraps. You can see my "audition border" for the piano keys at the top - I only made it 10 bricks long, telling myself that if I didn't like it, I'd go back to the s

I've decided to finally finish up this navy Pioneer Braid that's been hanging around for-EVER as a set of five panels. I found these fabric "bricks" at a quilt guild auction and could not pass them up. I think I paid maybe $1.25 for a huge bag of them. I was immediately excited to start a Pioneer Braid...so excited that I didn't even consult a pattern, I just decided I wanted a navy background. I cut up navy squares and started building up the braids. Unfortunately, as a newer quilter, I didn't quite get the dimensions correct, so what's going to happen when I put the panels together is that the points on one side are going to be obliterated, for the most part, since very few have a quarter-inch seam available. You know what? That's ok. I will still love it. As for settings, let's take a look at some options. Option 1 are the alternating rows. Every other panel goes up, down. I'm finding this setting makes me slightly seasick. Opt

I'm glad to say that I've got the miles and miles of binding made and attached to the quilt. Now comes the longest part for me: hand-stitching it down. I know, it would be so fast to machine stitch it but I'll be honest here, I really suck at am not good at that. I've practiced on potholders. It's not pretty. Ever. When I have to make a mile of binding, I wind it on a little plastic lid for a needle case. It really helps keep the binding from getting tangled up and I just set it on my lap and flip it over a couple of times every time I stop to adjust the binding I'm feeding. Works like a charm! My dear Juki goes a mile a minute on the straightaway but for the binding I slowed down. Notice I haven't trimmed the quilt all the way to the edge. I do that on purpose. When I'm ready to hand-stitch a section of binding, I trim once I'm ready to fold it over. It has saved me on a couple of occasions when I didn't get the binding attached

After taking a long arm class last Fall, I quilted 2 quilts in order to get a little practice in. I also gave a top to a friend from the class so she could practice - what a treat to have her hand it back to me so all I had to do was put on the binding! Swapping Stars was a top that was ready for borders. I had a few extra blocks and decided I'd make a pillow tuck as well - they weren't my best blocks but they are made from some of my favorite fabrics and I decided they weren't THAT bad, particularly since I'm keeping this quilt.  It's a very bright quilt, made by me and my quilting friends on a Yahoo group as a row robin. I went for a pretty simple block called Swapper's Star from Quilters Cache  but I redrafted the instructions since my friends would be making 7 individual blocks instead of strip-piecing several of the same fabrics. I also asked the ladies to do something unusual - set it on point. I drafted instructions for this and they did a te