Brenda's Cabin Tracks

Here's one my quilting team (Mom, me, sister, SIL) made for a cousin.  It is called 'Cabin Tracks'.  Oh the strip piecing in this one!  My mom and I pulled and cut fabrics one weekend for the cabin blocks and divied them out to everyone to work on before we got together a couple weeks later.  Then all we had to do was the sashings and borders.  No problem!  

I believe the sashing strips were cut 0.75 inches and the borders maybe 1.5.  Narrow!  We used up a lot of old, ugly fabric bits in this one.  Along with some pretty and new ones of course!  Lots of mindless sewing, which is just the ticket for this preggo-brain infected quilter these days :)  We didn't get it all together in one weekend, but we got all the little strips together and cut to size and were able to start sewing a few of them to the cabin blocks.  

I quilted an all-over feather in the center part, loops in the narrow black border, and a straight meander along the outer border.  

The back.  We gave it to our cousin over the weekend, and she loved it!  But she wasn't able to take it home with her yet- Mom wanted to enter in into a local quilt show coming up in a couple weeks.  Aren't we mean?

Mom says she would like to make another one to keep for herself one day...  uhhh.  Start cutting strips now!

DGS Update & my WIP

Well, I haven't been doing a whole lot of longarming lately.  It's too exhausting for me right now.  (I'm 36+ weeks preggo btw.)  Plus my 2.5 year old little guy has given his 3 hour afternoon naps the veto.  So that has really put a damper on my productivity around here.  So when I get a few moments of me time when he's with daddy in the tractor, I just want to sit down.  So that means I either go on the computer or sew on something. 

So I've been making progress on this quilt--my Do Good Stitches Haven group quilt for March.  I finally have the top all together!  Now I just have to quilt it up, bind, label and send it to Rochester, NY.  Think I can get it done in the next couple weeks??  That would be great, but probably unlikely.  We'll see. 

And, I got my June blocks done in record time!  Joey picked out this block for us- applique!  A little out of the box for our group, and out of my comfort zone, but I love how they turned out.  She was very proactive and sent us the backing fabric, leaf templates, freezer paper, and the 1/4 inch bias green stems.  All we had to do was the leaves and 'sketch-stitch' them down.  She even provided us with plenty of online tutorials and examples.  You can find those on our Flikr page.  Using spray starch was highly recommended when pressing the leaf edges under, which I have never used before.  Oh my goodness, where have I been?!  Spray starch is awesome, and has become my new best friend.  But pressing all those little edges under was still kind of a pain.  My thumb got a little red, but I have no scars to report.  I have a few extra leaves leftover and I'm thinking of making a set of 4 more blocks into a pillow for myself.  One of these days...

But here's what I've really been working on: making pennants!  Amy made a pennant quilt a few months ago, and it really resonated with me.  Mostly because you could use up little bitty scraps and strips, which add up fast in my scrap bins.  I don't have a fancy triangle ruler, so I just made a paper template (that now has little Doritos cheese fingerprints on it!  nice.)  that measures 5.5 inches tall and use that to cut out my muslin foundations and to "triangle up" my pennants once they are pieced.  I try to be extra careful not to shave off any of my paper template while I'm trimming each side.

So I've been slowly making my way through my color-coordinated scrap bins/shoeboxes and making these little pennants.  I've gone through my pinks, purples, blues and greens- making about a dozen or so in each color.  Long skinny strips and long triangular pieces seem to work the best for these.  So far I have about 50 done--they are addicting and quick to make!  

I have also been sewing some of the bigger scraps together into 10 inch blocks as I go too.  

Next up: Reds, yellows and oranges!

ABC Embroidered Baby Quilt

Connie embroidered this adorable ABC baby quilt.

She's an excellent embroiderer!  Word is she learned from the best: her Mom.  

As you can see, I did an all-over feathered swirl on it.  I couldn't remember if this was for a baby boy or girl, or if they even know the gender, so I thought feathered swirls were a safe design. 

Thanks Connie!

Winter Snowstorm

Sharon's mother made this neat quilt top before she passed away 10+ years ago.  It has been in Sharon's closet ever since just needing to be finished.  Now Sharon's mom had a longarm that Sharon inherited, and 5 years ago I bought that machine from her and thus started my longarm quilting journey.  And so this is kind of a special full circle kind of quilt.  

Her only request was to quilt swirls to make it look like a snowstorm, and since her mother always quilted a heart in all of her quilts, I was to sneak a heart in somewhere.  

I quilted each house differently. 

Can you see where I quilted the heart?

The pieced border and flying geese got a little special treatment with c2c and such.  The narrow border got a pine-y looking treatment.

I used a gray thread in the dark areas, and then switched to white for the 'snowstorm' and white triangles in the border.  Although I no longer have her machine, (I upgraded to a Nolting 20" Fun quilter 2.5 years ago) it was her love of quilting that somehow trickled down long after her passing and ignited my love of longarm quilting.  And what would I be doing if I wasn't keeping busy longarm quilting?  Probably living in a much cleaner house, with my kitchen and dining room painted looking like a page out of magazine.  riiight.  Probably more like a LOT of time playing Bejeweled or internet hearts or something.  That's no good.