Design Wall Monday

I did not get the borders on the Star Flower wall hanging so it is still up on the wall.

I do feel real good about the quilts that got quilted this weekend.  I also made the baby bib last night for my co-workers first grandchild.  I am giving her the bib made from recycled blue jeans and a sock frog doll.  Her daughter is doing the nursery in lime green and black and I thought this frog was too cute!

I have them setting on my longarm table and the pattern is Velvet Queen if you are wondering.  I really like how it quilts up.  I will figure out how to do a tutorial and get a pattern upload this week so that you can make a baby bib if you wish.  Until then, have a Sew Wonderful Monday!

Restful Sunday

There has been so much going on for the last three weeks, it is nice to be able to relax today.  I'm trying to catch my breath so I can come home after church tonight and maybe get some sewing done.  I finished a king size 9-patch quilt Saturday and just need to stitch the binding down on this Scrap Tease.  The pattern is by Bettie Hammock.  She is a local lady and it is a published pattern.  The quilter made a king size and had some blocks left over, so she made a few more block to make this lap size.  She will probably give the quilt away (she does that sometimes).  Beautiful pattern:

Results from the county fair:  The dresdan plate wall hanging received a 1st place and the Double Delight received a 2nd place. I also have several ribbons from some jewelry pieces I entered.  I need to work on a gift for a co-workers first grandchild.  I am planning on making a bib from recycled jeans.  I'll get a pic when it is made, hopefully later tonight after church.  Have a Sew Sew Day!

County Fair Time

It is county fair season.  I have been helping to take in entries for our SMALL county fair this week.  Today, the judges come and I will work with them and begin setting up the quilts for display.  I am sad that there was not many entries this year in the fair.  Seems like it just keeps going down in number of entries.  I have been working the fair for almost 10 years and last year it looked like it was going up, but this is the least amount I have ever seen here.  I usually get around 50-60 quilted items, this year maybe 25.

I took the day off as vacation so I could work with the judges and start getting set up.  I have a friends quilt to quilt and I need to measure it to see if I need to run out of town to get a king size bat.  Annie will go in to get her stitches out later.  She has been so energetic with the cooler weather we are now having.  It is in the 80's this week.  So nice!!, especially after all those 100+ days.  Still need rain.  As they said at church, "If your not praying for rain, what is wrong with you?"  Even the next system coming up the Gulf they are predicting will stay away from North Texas.  Last night (dog had to go out at midnight) I could see smoke in the sky and smell wood burning.  What worried me was that toward the West (Greenville) I could see an orange glow in the sky.  It was only in that area.  I can't think of any lights or anything that it could be, so I am hoping it wasn't a fire.  Need to get moving for the day.  Have a wonderful SEW day!

Design Wall Monday

This is the last day of Staycation.  I don't want to go back to work tommorrow.  I am going to focus on today!  Last week I posted my goals for the week.  Seeing that we did whatever caught our fancy, I did not complete everything on my list, but I made a good dent and I am pleased with it.  Here is what is on the wall today:

That is Star Flowers by Kim Schaefer in her book Flowering Quilts.  When I put it on my list for this week, I forgot it had stars on top of the circles.  I had the stems stitched down, had to make four more blocks (because I made a table runner for my sister-in-law for her birthday) and thought all I had left to do was place and stitch the circles.  After I got everything back out, I realized that I had to do the stars (or why would it be called Star Flowers??).  That is today's project.  I think I can get it done.

Here are the finishes for Staycation:

Binding is all finished on the quilt.  This is the Double Delight mystery quilt that Bonnie Hunter did a couple of years ago.  I love how it turned out. 
I finished the placemats:

I quilted and bound the dresdan plate flowers:

It is ready so that I can enter it in the county fair this week.  When I get it back, I will add beads to it.  I want beads in the flower centers and in the border.  This is heavily quilted.  It does not show up in the  photo.  When I add the beads, I will get close up pics.  Off to sew.  Later today, we are smoking beer can chicken.  YUM!  I hope that there will be left overs.  It makes the best chicken salad.  Have a Happy Labor Day and don't labor too hard...have FUN!

Reading Judy's post about setting goals has me re-thinking my UFO challenge list.  I have not kept up with it.  I went back to find the list and I have hardly done anything on it.  I did not keep up with Judy's group (no where near).  I did not totally understand how the challenge would work, so my list had projects that would take more than one month to do. When I set it up, I thought that the first month we would work on the first project and go on down the list.  I planned out projects that I would be able to get it done due to schedules.  I fell off when the first split project came up and I was to work on the 2nd half and still didn't have the blocks finished. I worked on finishing the blocks instead of finishing the quilt.  Then I was to doing embroidery on a few blocks and now I am still working on that 6 months later.  I went back to look at the list.  Here it is:

1. Quilt Mystery Quilt

2. Plan and prepare applique for Log Cabin Baskets
3. Attach all applique's for Log Cabin Baskets
4. Quilt Log Cabin Baskets
5. Finish applique for Christmas Block of the Month
6. Finish putting Christmas Block of the Month together
7. Sew civil war table runner
8. Put my sister's antique quilt together
9. Put Amy's antique quilt together
10. Quilt the two class sampler quilts.
11. Finish the two machine quilting class samples
12. Finish the reindeer games pillows.

I finished number 1 this week (almost, working on the last side of the binding). 
I think I have it figured out on  what I want to do for the applique on the log cabin baskets.  So you know that 3 and 4 are out. 
I have finished #5.  All  the applique is done, just need to finish the embroidery.  When that is done, then the blocks can go together and it goes to the quilting list.
I don't know where I put the civil war table runner at.  I can do that on a weekend this month.
Working on someone else's quilt for #8 and #9 doesn't necessarily grab my fancy, but I know it will be well worth it.
That leaves me with the last two on the list.  Totally doable this month.  I will make it my goal to get both or at least one done this month.  The embroidery will go with me when I have to travel to go to a class for work later this month.  That way I have something to do while in the hotel at night.  Should get it done.

But this week I am working on the short list I made for this week.  I am not going anywhere that I know of today, so I should make better progress than yesterday.  I need/want to get the dredan plate quilted.  I am about 1/4 done.  Not exactly what I normally do for quilting, but I am trying some new things. A new foot for the machine is one. It is the new covertible foot by Janome.  I have not fallen in love with it yet, but I am still plugging on.  I am also doing my version of McTavishing. It is my version because it doesn't look anything like hers, but it gets the area covered somewhat.  I decided to quilt some flowers in the background and am changing up what I was doing after getting it started.  Pic to come later today.  So off to quilting.  I will tell you about yesterday's trip later when I post some pics.

Thursday (aka Staycation Day 6)

Let's see what gets done today.  Jim has college tonight, and dove season starts today.  I want to get some quilting done, at sewing machine as well as longarm.  I haven't decided how I am going to quilt the last two flimsies.  The smaller one will be done at the sewing machine.  I got a new quilting foot for Christmas and haven't tried it out yet.  Now is the time.  The Magic Star Flowers I will do at the longarm.  I want to do extra special something or other.  I am leaning to trapunto and some small, dense quilting...like what Char Anderson has in her book One Line at a Time .  But the one thing I wanted to do was to go to Dallas area and go to a gourmet food market and check out the cheeses and meats and spices and anything else they have.  Maybe tommorrow.  I'll report back later today to let you know how it's going.