Quilt Gift

A sweet little quilt from a special friend.

My quilting time has greatly reduced over the past few years with living on a farmette and making a new life in a small town. But things slow down in the winter so now I'm spending more time in the sewing room. Current effort is basting this ocean waves quilt.

A New Quilt - Ocean Waves - and Levi's Quilt

The Ocean Waves pattern has been on my bucket list for a long time. This is the beginning of a quilt I'm making for my guest room. I'm using fabrics from my stash. It's also a test for a quilt I'm making for my sister. She requested greens and purples and let me choose the pattern. I'm using directions from  Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!! by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes. It's a good thing I'm testing the pattern first because I found an error in the directions. I'm kind of surprised since I have the second edition of the book. On page 35 under Construction direction 1. It says to cut the squares into quarters diagonally. It should say to cut them in half diagonally. Both quilts will be full size - 84" square.

I see my last post was in February. That doesn't surprise my since I spent much of March through June in the garden - mostly weeding! However, I did find time to finish this quilt for my nieces baby and was able to give it to her at the family reunion in June.

Of note on the farm - Three of our hens hatched eggs for a total of 18 chicks. Above Bonnie is with the biggest hatch of 8 chicks.

Piper's Quilt

This was sent off to my great niece, Piper, in Minnesota soon after her first birthday.

This is my head start on a quilt for a great nephew due to be born in March. The hourglass blocks are 5".

Last week I visited the Virginia Quilt Museum with some friends. I especially enjoyed seeing Dawn's quilt in the American Quilt Study Group's quilt study of civil war era quilts. Her quilt is gorgeous! I'm going to try to get back to Harrisonburg for another look before the exhibit is gone.

Stars In A Time Warp

This top has been done for over a week. I just wasn't feeling up to posting. Trying to stay away from the computer as I was finding I was spending way too much time in front of it. This top is about 94" long (about 1/3 of it is on the other side of the stair rail) and 83" wide. I wish I had made the side borders about 3" wider to allow for shrinkage. I may add a strip of the dark fabric I was auditioning for the setting triangles (see previous post) to each side border. 

A friend invited me over to hand quilt in front of the fire this past Wednesday so I pulled out my hand quilting project. I've been doing a little each day. So glad she got me going on this again. I'm not sure I can finish it up this winter but I hope to make some real progress.

It snowed hard the last two days. I shoveled a path to the barn so we can check in on the chickens and then another path down to the creek so the ducks had an easy way of it. This is a shot of our little potting shed under the cottage stairs. I've ordered my seeds and will soon be in the shed planting those that need an early start.

Happy New Year!

Spent a little time in the sewing room yesterday and today. I love the new year. It always gives me the feeling of a new beginning and I love the quieter time after the hustle and bustle of the holidays. 

I first auditioned the light setting triangles for my Stars in a Time Warp project. I loved it and was sure I wouldn't like the darker fabric.  However, once I got this green up on the design wall I loved it too. I decided I better take photos so I could compare side by side. Though I still love the dark setting triangles I love the light better because I think it shows off the variety of star colors and placement of dark, medium and light within the stars. What do you think?

I had made 41 stars. Given the length of the border print I figured I could make each star strip with 11 star blocks. I wanted 4 star strips so I made 3 more blocks. To make this wide enough for my bed I'm going to add two borders from a large floral print on the sides. The floral print, border print and much of the light setting triangles will use fabrics from the Matter of the Heart line from Kaye England. The green that I auditioned for the setting triangles is also from that line and I'll probably use it for the binding. I have a couple cuts of yardage from that line that I'll use for the backing. I must have really loved that line. I didn't buy it all at once and it took me a while to realize it was one line of fabric. Thanks, Kaye England! This quilt will go on our queen size bed. Well, I'm off to sew together another strip of stars. Hope the new year brings you lots of happy stitching!