So Many Projects!!!

I thought I'd share a few of the projects that are getting the lion's share of my attention lately.  I've got so many quilting irons in the fire right now!  But I think I really work best when I have a lot going on.  It keeps me energized and inspired to have lots of different projects to choose from on any given day.  There's always something in the works that trips my trigger and makes me want to play in the studio!!!

Blue Collection is one of my Dinosaur UFO's - it's been in process since 2008!!!  It's my focus project for this year, and I've been steadily plugging along on it.  I'm happy to say that I've finally added the 3D tree in the center!  This tree has been a stumbling block for me from the beginning.  I've been dreading it!  But it got to the point that I couldn't add other elements until the tree was stitched down, so I finally bit the bullet and went for it!

The tree is made from three tapered bias strips of brown fabrics that are braided together and then loosely arranged on the quilt center, with lots of little branches and leaves sprouting out from it.  (Rocky felt that this particular strip should be his - we had a little bit of a disagreement about it, but happily I finally won ☺)

I had to piece together the blocks in the center section of the quilt with their blue-and-white checkerboard sashing before I could begin to make the tree.

When I appliqued that bottom pot, I left a section open so that I could slip the tree limbs down inside ....

I'm doing hand-stitched applique on this quilt, and it's pretty difficult work handling this large center section to stitch down the tree and all those little remaining leaves, but there was just no way around it.  Of course, this little guy with his curious little nose in everything I'm doing doesn't help LOL!!!  This picture was taken just seconds before he snatched the whole piece off my lap and tried to run for it!

There are quite a few wonderful little details stitched into this quilt ....

And lots of stitching remaining to be done!  But I can't tell you how excited I am to have gotten this far on my Blue Collection project!  I will try my best to post about my progress more often :*)

I usually try to have at least one project all set up and ready to stitch at the machine, so that when I have a spare few minutes I can use it stitching.  This is a paper-pieced project in progress called Diamonds Are Forever from a class I took at guild several years ago.

Lots and lots of scrap strips are going into this fun quilt, and it is amazing how quickly these blocks add up!

Happily, I also have an almost finish to show you!!!  Notice Rocky photo-bombing in the top right?  Believe me, he's not going to miss a quilt-on-the-floor opportunity!!!

Calypso is a kit My Guy bought for me quite a few years ago at a local quilt shop that is no longer in business.  I made the quilt top and then put it on my flimsy shelf to be quilted - and it has remained there for way too long.  I decided to put it on my Guild UFO Challenge list, and it's number came up for this month.  My friend Joanne let me use her long-arm machine so I could git 'er done ...

This will be a feel-good finish for me - I love whittling down that flimsy shelf!

Tomorrow my plan is to quilt and bind my little 14" Fractured Seahorse.  The fabric on the bottom is my backing fabric, and I'm thinking to use a scrappy hot pink binding.  This one is going to go in my stand-up frame in the living room for the summer!

After all the sewing I've been doing on my Janome 6600P, it was finally time to send it off to the spa for a good cleaning and to check the timing, etc.  While it was gone, Rocky found a new favorite place to sit and watch me as I putter around the studio ....

He's such a fun little guy, and I love how he keeps us smiling and laughing!

I'll be linking up with lots of fun parties this week:

Slow Sunday Stitching

Design Wall Monday
Main Crush Monday 

Oh Scrap!

I May Have a Scrap Problem

Linky Tuesday Party
WIPs Be Gone 

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=

Design Wall Monday - 4/8/14

Yes, I'm a day late, but I have several exciting-to-me projects currently in the works....

These Diamonds are Forever blocks are just too much fun to let them sit idle for too long!  They're like potato chips - I can't resist dipping my hand into those luscious strips and starting just one more block.... and then just one more.... well, maybe just one more LOL!!!

I love all these wonderful colors and playing in the scrappy strips - and don't these lime pieces look like a row of ties?  LOL!!!  Yes, late last night I was getting a little loopy and in need of sleep :*)  You can see by the number of "ties" that I still have quite a few blocks to go on this project, so you'll be seeing it again - just thought I'd warn you!

I also spent a very relaxing and enjoyable couple of hours this weekend preparing the applique pieces for my last vase in The Blue Collection.

My tools of the trade for Starch Applique preparation

Edit - One friend just pointed out that she found it amazing that diced pimentos would be part of my applique tools LOL!!!!!  Of course, that's just the jar that I keep the liquid starch in for traveling :*)

This is the vase that holds the center tree, and I totally love this piece of Jenny Beyer border fabric I found for it!  There is only a fat quarter of it, so I have had to be very careful about cutting it.  There are a lot of pieces to this block, and of course those angles are already threatening to give me headaches.  Looks like I'm going to have to re-cut the bottom right piece because it is not lining up :( 

The Blue Collection is one of those dreaded Dinosaur UFO's that I really, really, really want to get done this year!!!  Once this block is done, I will have the outer border applique remaining, with about a million leaves (see below picture of the original by Maggie Walker), but most of those are going to be done with raw edge fusible.  I'm sorry but I'm just not crazy enough to sew all of those leaves down by hand!!!  And there is still the motif block at the center top that needs to be completed as well.  But I'm beginning to smell a finish here and it feels GREAT!!!!

This is the Designer, Maggie Walker's quilt.....

Courtesy of Maggie Walker

The number pulled for my Guild UFO this month is #7 - which is to assemble my Fantasia blocks from the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last year into a top for the contest at our next meeting.  Ugh!  I have no idea how I want to set those blocks!  At least I DO have all of them done, which gives me a great shot at maybe meeting that goal.  Here's the RED block for reference :)




The May Bertie's Year BOM block should arrive this week and I'm looking forward to playing with her - we're quickly becoming very good friends.

And that's about it for me.  What is on your Design Wall?  Some see all the pretties at Judy's Patchwork Times today!  Also linking up with Connie's Linky Tuesday party!  Hey, wait a minute.... that MY Cottontail bunny she's featuring today!!!!  Yippee :*)

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=

It's a PURPLE-y Kind of Month!

PURPLE is our color for April's Rainbow Scrap Challenge ... and of course I'm delighted!   It's one of those really delicious jewel colors that just trips my trigger! =^..^=

And I think it makes a really delicious Soul Searching block too, don't you????

From the deep dark PURPLES.....

To the more red VIOLETS......

They are all yummy to me!  

And I especially like them all mixed up scrappy-style to add sparkle!

Auditioning for the Soul Searching block :)

My task of washing up my stash for the RSC color was made much easier this month because I had already washed many of my PURPLE fabrics for the recent Diamonds are Forever workshop at Guild -

I sewed up a few of these fun blocks last night just because I love seeing these colors play together so much!!!

What a lovely potpourri of strips!!!!

And while I had all the PURPLES out, I chose my fabrics for this month's Hootie block....

I'll let him shine in next week's RSC report :*)

And can it be a coincidence that my current socks project is PURPLE?

I think Angela is reading my mind! *grin*

Are you playing in PURPLES too?  

Please share at SoScrappy's RSC linky party HERE!

Or are you just enjoying some of the lovely PURPLE blooms that are bursting forth this spring?

Courtesy of Found and Sewn

Wishing you all a perfectly PURPLE kind of Sunday!!!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=

A New Week.....

Life is beginning to get back to what passes for "normal" around here, 

and I want to say a heartfelt THANKS to all of YOU!!! 

Your outpouring of love and comfort and prayers  

has meant the world to me, and I love you all!!! 

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Sorry - it's a little blurry :(
But it makes up for it with COLOR, right????

This is my NewFO Challenge project for February ......

Diamonds are Forever

I had the pleasure of taking part in a class given at our Music City Guild this past week and completed one large block, which looks like this.....



It is actually 4 small 6-inch string blocks put together into a larger 12-inch block.  The string blocks started out like this....

These were so much fun, and I loved the play of these colors together so much, that I came home and put together a few more of these little string blocks so I could get that lovely diamond effect to begin shining through as each block was added to the sides of the first large block - YUM!!!

I can see that I seem to have some of my colors running together, but I don't think that will matter once the entire quilt is assembled.  This quilt is from the below book by Virginia (Ginger) Baker & Barbara (Bobbie) Sanders - and these lovely ladies also taught the class :)

Amazon Link HERE

I'll also link up with Sharon at Vrooman Quilts for her Let's Book It party with this project :*)

I love actually using my quilt books for a change LOL!!!

As you can see from the cover photo, the authors made their quilt with black as the neutral star points in the background, and civil war prints for the colorful strings.  I've seen this quilt made with black and jewel colored fabrics - and let me tell you.... it was just simply FABULOUS!!!!  However, I've done quite a lot of quilt projects lately using that color palette, so I really wanted to do something different.

My first decision had to be what I wanted to use for the background - the star points - and black was not allowed as an option.  And then, what colors would be brought out to play with it?  These are the fabrics I ended up with......

My first thought was to use the same fabric for the background star points throughout for continuity.  But I am really short of large chunks of fabrics that would work as a neutral.  See that lime solid in the upper left background?  I had about 5 yards of that, which would have been plenty for the star points as well as a nice outer border.  But lime?  Wow!!!  You all know I love color, but I had to be sure it was "beautiful" colorful, not "circus clowns" colorful LOL!!!  I gave quite a lot of thought to whether I really wanted to use lime, but then I got the bright idea to use the print you see at the very top as a tool for pulling other colors to play with the lime.  Of course, this was easy to do because they turned out to be some of my favorites!  Fuscia! Violet! Blue! Aqua! Purple!

After I had it all together, I was disappointed to realize that the solid lime looked too tame with all that sparkle, kind of flat - which of course led to the choice of using lots of different limes to get variety and sparkle!  Why should the strips be the only ones to shine, right?

Even after I had it all laid out though, I was still not quite sure it was going to work together okay.  How could I be sure before I cut all that fabric and invested so much time and effort?  I decided to tackle my EQ7 to see if I had progressed enough in my lessons to be able to draft this quilt and then try out some color plans before I did any cutting .....

       ..........  I think I did okay - what do you think?????

This is my favorite colorway!

I have to tell you - I am HOOKED!!!  

EQ7 is serious FUN!!!

And all that power can go to a girl's head, you know what I mean?

Here are a few more colorways I played with  ....

Of course, I loved the next few, but the black background was not allowed ...... maybe someday?

So that is what is on my Design Wall today - in addition to my February Dinosaur UFO which is getting some serious work done to it in the next few days!

Amish Beauties - center done and awaiting border treatments

I'll share more about this one when it is finished.  I'm hoping to get it to the flimsy stage by Tuesday :*)  I'm also slowly stitching on the March Bertie's Year BOM, which will probably not get done by March 1....

Most of the pieces are now appliqued down and I'm ready to make the half-square triangles for the border.  Next will be the embroidery embellishments - my favorite part of these little quilts!!!  Well, except for enjoying them once they are finished, of course :*)  

I'm a little late, but linking up with Kathy's Quilts for her Slow Sunday Stitching party anyway.

Also linking up with Connie's Tuesday Linky Party and What a Hoot's BOM's Away!

Come join in on the fun - link up your projects too!!!

Hope everyone has a lovely week!  We are expecting gorgeous weather until the weekend, when it is supposed to turn cold again.  But I'm not going to complain about that .... no indeed!  I'm just thrilled that we've been given this current reprieve, and that SPRING is finally on it's way - woohoo!!!!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=