Finally - a Finish!

I hope all of my US friends had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We were blessed to once again travel to North Carolina to spend a few days with our loved ones.  It was a lovely visit, even though both of us brought home a nasty sore throat and head cold!

I took my latest finish with us ....

I finally finished our youngest granddaughter's baby quilt.  Jacqueline is now 1-1/2 years old and I had not even started it, so needless to say I had been feeling a lot of pressure to spend any spare time I had on making that darling quilt happen so I could give it to her on our trip to see them at Thanksgiving!

I did the shopping last spring.  Pattern:  Cellophane Flowers by Abbey Lane Quilts.  The quilt I made for Jacqueline's big sister, Genevieve, has her name on it, and I thought J's name would be cute in the center of this design.

Fabrics:  Focus fabric is Canyon by Kate Spain - I just love those adorable birds in the selvedge!!!!

I chose this fabric because my daughter-in-law had shown me some of the items she planned to use to decorate the nursery, and they had these colors in them.  Now I'm just hoping she hasn't already changed the nursery already several times LOL!!!

For the background, I decided to simplify by using only one fabric instead of the scrappy style used in the pattern.  I went with one of my current favorite fabric lines - Grunge!  Can you see below how the fabric carries some of that turquoise?  It really couldn't be a more perfect match!

And I knew I needed to use Lara Buccella's method of Crafted Applique for the flowers and her name in the center.

I wanted nice crisp raw edges, no fraying for this special little girl's quilt!

And just in case you were wondering - Yes, I was under strict Snoopervision during the making of this quilt!

Rocky believes in being a "paws-on" kind of Snoopervisor!!!

By using the Crafted Applique technique, I didn't have to use a blanket stitch to attach the applique shapes.  Simple straight-line stitching was all that was needed - saving tons of time and work!

To give you an idea of how hard I worked to get this done for Thanksgiving, I finished up tying off all the loose ends in the car while on the way to Carolina!  You can see here that I used the same flower shapes for the quilting designs - it worked perfectly, but there were a lot of stops and starts :*)

Unfortunately, events conspired against us and we were not able to see Jacqueline and her family, so I wasn't able to give her the quilt personally.  Yes, we were terribly disappointed!  But we've made plans to make a special trip to visit them in early spring when the girls have their birthdays.  For now, we'll just have to box up the quilt and ship it to her this week.  I've never shipped a quilt, and I have to say I'm a real Nervous Nelly about it, but it just doesn't make sense for me to keep it here when it is so long overdue!

This little guy was pretty unhappy about the 8 hours of traveling (could he look any more pitiful???)  We have to give him meds to keep him from crying all the way down the road.

.... but he didn't waste any time at all convincing his Grandma that he was an abused kitty and in desperate need of love and attention!

Ahhhhh - Nirvana!!!!!

My mom was his first love, and he is always happy when he can see her and hop in her lap for some loving!

He also thoroughly enjoyed taking his Snoopervisor duties to a new level when it came time for the all-important Thanksgiving dinner preparations.

While at Grandma's he found a little vanity chair that sat in our bedroom window where he could look out and watch the squirrels play, and he quickly made that his happy place during our visit.  So mom gifted him with the little chair, and he is now happily napping quite a lot in it here.  He has to sit up to see out our window, but he doesn't seem to mind =^..^=

Later today, I'll join my Slow Sunday Stitching friends over at Kathy's Quilts and finish up the handwork on this Folk Art Album block while watching the Panthers pretend they are playing professional football.

And then I will be busy cutting up strips so I can start on Bonnie Hunter's newest Mystery Quilt, En Provence!  I only have 221 four-patches to make before tomorrow morning - no pressure right?!?  Haha - that won't happen, but I do want to make a few and get started before the next clue comes out tomorrow morning.

Are any of you playing along?  I've decided to use celery greens instead of the yellow, and only two neutrals, but otherwise I'm pretty much keeping to BH's color scheme.

♥♥♥♥♥

Thanks again for your patience with me in not blogging for so long!  I had no idea when I popped up that quick post back on September 6 that it would be my last for a couple of months!  To be perfectly honest, I simply lost my blogging mojo for a while.  [Insert whining music here]  It was as though I suddenly hit a brick wall and knocked myself out!  Without warning, I found myself overwhelmed with deadlines, commitments, and a few nagging health issues, a combination which left me feeling exhausted and drained of all mental and creative energy.

Fast forward to today, and I am happy to say that I am finally feeling myself relax and unfurl a bit - getting Jacqueline's quilt finished was a major monkey off my back!  I have to admit that it has been a rather refreshing break, but I'm looking forward to sharing some new things with you soon.  I just want to send my sincerest thanks to all of you who sent messages saying you missed me - I feel very blessed to have so many wonderful friends!!!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=

Stitching and Praying

Sundays are always a time for contemplation for me, as I am sure it is for many of you, too.  It is hard to ignore the insanity of our world right now, and this morning I found it very comforting to be able to pray my heart out until I felt His peace fill me up to the brim, and then spend the rest of the day with My Guy, peacefully stitching and watching the final round of the British Open.

And although he doesn't care at all for golf, my little furry sweetheart cannot resist a quilt, and it wasn't long before I saw this little face pop up .....  Whatcha doin' Mom?

Can I help?

I think you might have a problem .... right .... here .....

At this rate, you'll never get done Mom!!!  

C'mon!  Let me show you how it's done!

Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl has challenged her readers to take a Mid-Year Review of their goals for 2016 and see how they are doing now that the year is half over.

I didn't have time to do a formal review, but I do know that my main goal for this year is to finish my Blue Collection quilt.  To that end, I have been diligently working the hand applique on this project at every opportunity since the first of the year.

I'm happy to say that the 3D braided tree is now completely appliqued down!  There are still a few small branches at the top that will need to be stitched down after the top row is attached, and of course, hundreds of leaves, but I am so pleased with my progress on this project!

I also have several quilts that are on my list for family members.  Our smallest granddaughter still does not have her baby quilt!  She's 1-1/2 now, so it's definitely time :*)  Other than choosing the pattern and purchasing the fabrics, this project is not yet started.  And I have a brother who hopefully will receive a quilt from me this year as well, but choosing the pattern is as far as I've gotten.  Another goal has been to complete each month's UFO on my Guild Challenge list - except for last month, I've been faithful to get those done - Yay!!!  I am determined to finish last month's Blooming Nine Patch before the year is out.

One special goal for this year is to make a special quilt for a special someone that I can't share for a while.....

As you can see from my design wall here, I've got a great start on it, and if all goes well, I should have it done by the end of this week.  I had a ball digging through my white, gray and black scraps to make this background.

I cut the pieces I could get from them, then of course I saved the little left-over crumbs for a later project.  By the end of the day, I had quite a nice little pile of adorable crumbs :*)

And yes, I had lots of help with this project too!

I'll show and tell on this project as soon as I possibly can, 

but I don't want this someone to see it before it is gifted!

I'm looking forward to a fairly quiet week, which is nice because the past month has been pretty hectic.  I have a sit-n-sew with friends tomorrow - one of my favorite highlights of every week!  I'm teaching a class one day and still have some prep work to do to get that ready.  The rest of the week I will be immersing myself in those things that make myself and my loved ones happy.  And I hope you will be doing the same!  What will you be doing this week that makes you or someone you love happy?

Isn't it wonderful to have a passion in life that allows us to put the chaos of our world on a back burner somewhere, while we enter our peaceful zone with needle and thread?  While the world is seemingly going to hell in a handbasket all around us (one of my grandmother's favorite expressions), I am thankful to be able to take up my needle and choose to create something beautiful and lasting and filled with LOVE to counterbalance the hate spilling out on our streets.  And while I stitch, I pray.  For our country, for all countries, for all people, for our world.  When fear for the future, for the world our children and grandchildren are inheriting tries to overtake my mind, I turn to Psalm 23 - The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.... and before long my broken heart finds rest in His peace.

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=

Linking up with the following:
Slow Sunday Stitching
Design Wall Monday
Tuesday Linky Party
Oh Scrap!
Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?

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

=^..^=

Slow Sunday Stitching - Playoffs Style!

I'm so looking forward to watching the NFL Playoff games today!  I'm all set with my hand sewing project and joining my friends at Kathy's Quilts for some Slow Sunday Stitching ....

This is the top right section of the border for my Blue Collection quilt.  Both of these top sections are complete, and I am working on the first of two side border sections now.  The sides are long vines like this that will come out of vases in the bottom of the quilt.  (I'll show you what I mean in a later post!)

All of this quilt is hand appliqued, with the exception of these side border leaves and a few very intricate motifs in the vase blocks, which I've chosen to do as raw-edge fusible applique.  They have so many curves and valleys, it would take FOREVER to hand stitch all these leaves, and I decided I'd rather finish this quilt in my lifetime than worry about whether it is ALL hand stitched LOL!!!  I've indicated one of them by the arrow on the right.....

I'll finish them with a straight-stitch along the edges.  The flower buds indicated by the arrow on the left are little monsters to hand stitch all by themselves!  The fabric I chose for the medium blue in the center is too flimsy and it's almost impossible to make neat V's.  And the points on the stems are very narrow and steep, so it's hard to stuff the seam fabric underneath such a small space.  On some of the last pieces I prepped, I drew the points in a little bit wider V to make them slightly easier to stitch.

It's a great day to be inside stitching here in Nashville!  I'm under the weather a little, battling a sinus infection with the usual accompanying aches, sore throat and cough, so the order for the day is to take it easy.  We're having one of our coldest days so far - currently 32 degrees and woke to a light snow on the ground.  Here's the view from my front window ....   Brrrrrrrrr!

The only bright spot is my little Christmas cactus....

Love that beautiful fuchsia color!!!  I bought it a few weeks before Christmas this year because I loved all my friends cacti which were blooming.  For some reason, it finally decided to wait to bloom this week - I'll take all the bloom and color I can find at this time of year, right?

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

=^..^=