Plugging away!

So Grandma's Quilt is progressing!  I finally finished ALL the quilting. 

There is a mixture of hand  and free motion quilting but remember this hand quilting all took place back in 2000 when I was certainly more ambitious!  

  I will be honest....it's not my best work doing the free motion quilting.  Just way to heavy to work with and my heart wasn't it in.  I hate having projects hanging around so I just wanted to finish the quilting!    And I did! 

So, now it's a matter of squaring up this monster so I can add the binding...which I will do by machine.  I'm not putting the effort to hand sew the binding on.  Let's be honest...this quilt is going to be 'finished' and put away somewhere!  I don't see the kids wanting it, other than when I'm gone they may just want it but certainly not now.  Or they can put it in my coffin with me!  Not a bad idea!  

Not sure when I'll get to the binding...yikes...now I have to find enough fabric for that too!  Forgot about that!

My week!

 This past Tuesday I had a tooth extraction! UGH This one hit me hard for some reason...ok, maybe I'm wimping out...as of today, (1/26/2023), it's only been 48 hours!  I'm missing eating real food!  The one plus is the swelling on my left side is taking away the wrinkles in my face!  Honest, it's kinda funny but as I say there's always a plus side to everything!  HA

I honestly haven't done much the afternoon after the removal, nor did I do anything yesterday except lay on the couch in the family room, drinking tea, napping and watching Netflix!  Today, I'm feeling much better (still enjoying the look of no wrinkles on one side of my face!  HA).  I felt like I had wasted two days so kicked myself in the butt and started to work on designing my Dye Dog 2!

I picked out some JoAnn fabric that had some shibori type pattern to it and picked out a pink fabric.  I wanted to have some type of angle blocks using small strips (pink), which I could then embroider somehow.  Really, I thought about cutting this up some more and sewing back together...but I didn't....my mind went another direction.

These are the 'dye dog' fabrics Kay sent me (you can read the post on how this project started here).

Pretty cool  fabrics and the patterns sure can get the old mind working!  Just hope I get my mind working correctly!

So now I'm playing with other colors or fabrics that may work with Kay's 'dye dog'.  

I pulled out some old ultra suede fabric I had.  These are pieces that I painted with black paint.

I have a design in mind but I need to go into my dye work area, which means asking Bob to move his plane from my work table!

I won't have time to do anything until Sunday.  Today I'm going to try and knit before dinner or after.  Tomorrow, I need to go to the grocery store and possibly laundry.  Saturday I'll be headed to the library to put away donation books.  I'm sure there's a playoff football game on Sunday but I might be able to do something or at least get my table set up with my 'idea'!  Fingers crossed!

Grandma's Quilt Progress

 

Yes, I am quilting my little heart out!  I actually keep the quilt under the needle and just shut off the sewing machine and my lights!  This bugger is way to heavy to keep lifting and moving back and forth..plus, if I have 10 min to sew, everything is right there ready to go!  I'm about 75% finished with the free motion quilting...sure seems like I keep finding empty areas!  I accomplished quite a lot of hand quilting back when I first started this bugger.  Can't believe I was hand quilting!  What was I thinking!  HA 

I was trying to look through old photo's to find the picture of my daughter's graduation dress I made her. this is the fabric, I had a small piece in my stash and used it in 'grandma's quilt.....Along with so many old fabrics, which I can remember using the fabrics in other quilts....I was big on applique way back when!  Remember 'Thimbleberries' patterns!  

And this is a pattern I drew up in 1987 to make a quilt for my daughter!  Yes, I still have this paper!  HA

And if you look closely, you'll see some of this floral fabric in grandma's quilt!  Actually, there are enough wide panels of that floral fabric in this quilt!  This was way before batik's!  HA

This is large quilt, 72"x76" and Dawn still has it!  In fact, I did a repair job on this quilt back in spring of 2019! "Waste not, want not"...guess I didn't want for any fabric since I used so many of my fabric pieces in 'grandma's quilt'.  I don't believe I purchased any fabric with the exception of the beige background.  HA  Now to finish 'grandma's quilt' so I can start on my Dye Dog 2!

Dye Dog 2 Project

Back in 2018 while in Florida, my quilting bud, Kay, who most of you know as Kay Sorensen from Quilts+Color, gifted another artist and I with pieces of her 'dye dog' fabrics.  Kay considers some of her shibori/over dyed fabrics as 'dye dogs'...pieces she just isn't that happy with!  Heck, anyone would be happy to have her dye dogs!  So, Beth Sherman and I were given the task of making a small quilt with some of Kay's 'dye dog' fabric.  

Also, I was fortunate to receive a piece of Kay's art work.  It's the positive and negative Kay quilted and put into a dual frame!  This sits in my sewing room so I see it often!  One of my prized possestions!

Here is the process for the completion on my dye dog!

And both of our 'dye dog' quilts!

Beth did a beautiful job utilizing Kay's dye dog as well as the addition of the flowers! 

Here is the reveal of Beth's and my 'dye dog' pieces.  I love what Beth did with her 'dye dog'!!!!  For her flowers, Beth used fabric that was dyed with bleeding tissue paper!   So delicate but so effective along with the other shibori fabrics from Kay.

So, Kay is back in Wisconsin (yes, a true Packer Fan!) and thought it would be fun to gift Beth and I another 'dye dog' fabric challenge!!  We are both up to the task!!!!  And, yes, my head is spinning with ideas!!!  Here are the 3 pieces of fabric I'm starting with!

The don't look like a 'dye dog' do they!!!

How pretty...and my camera doesn't do the color any justice!

I love Kay's shibori!  You have to check out her blog or better yet, just click on this link!  You'll see tons of Kay's shibori/overdyed fabrics.  They are beautiful and how she incorporates her fabric into beautiful quilts is just as amazing!

I love the colors in the fabric!  I know I'll have SO much fun!!!  Or a real challenge...probably challenge but it does get the old brain starting to get back into designing and quilting.  I'm afraid I've been lax with my quilting and allowing knitting to take over!  Now, back to the drawing board!

Happy Birthday Time!

 I've had a great BD celebration this year...started out with meeting my kids at The White Horse Inn for lunch!  The restaurant is so cool...it was originally used for travelers to stop in the mid 1800's!  Long history so go to the web site to read more.  I love the interior and the food is really good too.  Anyway, we had a great lunch, laughs and even got a picture of the six of us.  Both grands were at college so they missed out!  

My daughter got me this beautiful bouquet of flowers...they are lovely!

And of course, the girls have to feed us old folks!  Dawn knows we love the triple berry pie from the Achatz Handmade shop in Oxford.  The filling is delicious and the crust is better than homemade!!

My son and Kris know how much Bob and I love our bread and we especially love to make this bread from Kruse & Muer...so they got us another loaf to put in the freezer...it makes four small loves that are so good!  Kris also gave us containers of her wonderful split pea soup and cinnamon scones...OMG..they are so good!

Dawn recently had a photo shoot done for her business so she gave me a picture, which I love!

I also received this bouquet of flowers from my special friend in Florida, Jan Miller!  I love having them in the porcelain cup!!!

All of the above happened on Sunday, the day before my BD!  

On Monday, my actual BD, Bob took us to my favorite Mexican restaurant!  And we invited my BFF, Donna, to join us.  

Donna seemed to like the Margarita's!

We had such a fun night!  lots of laughs and great food!  Donna had a new Mexican dish for her, Chicken Flautas!  This is a dish either Bob or I will get but lately I've been hooked on their chicken Fajitas!  They have so many different peppers grilled along with the onion and chicken...just delicious! 

Bob did really well not eating more than a basket of chips!  We usually eat two baskets and it makes a huge difference if you don't pig out on that chips!  We were both glad we didn't indulge in more chips!

And check out the present Donna gave me!!!  Donna is into Astrology and has prepared Birth Horoscopes for her family and friends.  This is such a time consuming effort for her to make!  I was in tears knowing how much work she has to put into this booklet.  We are going to go over parts of the horoscope.  She has prepared a Solar Return for me before but this is so detailed!!!  I can't thank you enough, my friend!  You are one special lady!

And yes, Bob and I have had a small piece of berry pie my daughter gave me on Sunday....two nights in a row actually!  But it's only best with Cook's Vanilla ice cream!

And to show two of the same card I received!  How cute!  One was from my BFF, Carol and the other was from Bob's son's wife, MaryJo!  

Yorkies were my first love before Bichon's but I don't think either one knew that!  HA  I did receive so many cards and can't thank everyone enough.  It does mean so much to receive a card!!!!  Thank you one and all!!!

I'm making a grandma quilt???

 

Back in year 2000, I pieced this quilt using only scrap fabric I had on hand.  Some of the fabric was from a quilting class I took in Holly when you could only find beige or blue fabric(s)!  HA  That was in the 80's!

This bugger is huge!  We have a California King and the bottom panel is the same on all four edges, so it hangs over quite a bit on each side!  What was I thinking!  

 Hard to see my hand quilting...tiny stitches but I'm sure they were not consistent!

And, this backing, which was an old sheet!, was tea dyed!  This was before I started to get into dying my own fabrics.  The color is pink in some areas and tea color in others!

Here are some of the blocks....I don't remember the names of each block...and I'm not sure if the pattern was a class or ????  I'm thinking that it was taught by Beth Ferrier who has written several books and was teaching at Davison Fabrics at that time.  I did send a FB message to see if she remembers the pattern.

I'm sure you recognize quite a few of these fabrics from the 80's!

We didn't have a lot of choices back then (80's) but we made up for it by shopping at all the quilt shops that were available in the late 90's and in year 2000!

I made my daughter a dress ?? for her graduation in '84 and I remember using small pieces leftover from that dress in this quilt.  I'll have to search for a picture of her graduation and where the fabric is in this quilt.

The applique was machine sewn using the invisible stitch and invisible thread.

This was the center, obviously...lots of mistakes in the piecing I'm sure!  

So this is when I decided to start to machine quilt!  OMG....talk about a heavy quilt!  Baby quilts are easy for me and most of the time, I'll quilt panels using the 'quilt-as-you-go' method.  UGH...my hands and arms were killing me!

I got smart and rolled the quilt as it was laying on top of our bed.  I did a good job of folding it really nice and wow!  So much easier to free motion...yes, I am free motion quilting and, trust me, the quilting is not up to par!  I'm not a beginner FMQ'er but some of my stitches sure look like it on this quilt.  But I don't know what the heck I'm going to do with it....maybe one of the kids will want it so they can say...look at a quilt my grandma made...looks just like her!

Waste not..want not!

 Several years ago, I don't even remember where!, I purchased a stool with a Bichon dog as it's cover.  Quite well made tapestry...well, I tried to stand on the stool one day and oops...crunched the middle of it.  Bob tried to repair and was going to add lumber/etc. to stabilize it.  I told him to just let it go and I removed the tapestry.  It's only 19" x 13".  But cute, isn't it!

So on New Year's Eve day (before all the college bowl games started!) I saw the tapestry sitting in my sewing room (out of sight...out of mind..hence, I keep my projects in the open!  HA).  I have thought about making a pillow with the fabric and I kept this old pillow from one of our previous bed spreads.  Perfect, right!

Of course, I had the perfect fabric that matched some of the blues in the fabric and used it for the backing!

And here's the new pillow!  I think it turned out cute!  Not sure where we'll put it but my first project finished for 2023 or is it my last project finished for 2022!!

She's sitting a little crooked but for now, she is sitting on top of my quilt case!  Which is decorated for Christmas!  HA