Snug as a bug

 Thank you Jackie, for sending me yardage of 

Robert Kaufman chartreuse green for Christmas.... 

How did you know I'd need that for the binding?  Your fabulous!

The Jennifer Paganelli on the back makes the whole quilt...

About 100 more threads to bury, but I will snuggle under it anyway....

Darkness came to quickly to snap a decent picture of the granddaughter's quilt... 

But you get the idea...  

Purple and green per her request, using the 5 shirts 

she selected from goodwill

I forgot to bring a backing fabric along... 

and no fabric stores near by... so basting may have to wait 

unless I can scrap something

together... hmmm... more to play with!

And a little more scrap play....

Are stuck at home hiding from the snow?

Quilting done!

 I just finished the quilting and trimmed the red cross quilt.

Right when I thought I was done, I had to go back in and do a little more...  

I figured it was worth it at this point not to rush it, and do it all just right...

I'm not sure Why I quilted a quilt like this.. It just sort of happened...

And let me tell you, I learned a lot by doing this quilt...

 Go slow.  Free motion does not mean got 100 mph...

As you gain confidence you find you can speed up a bit, but over all, taking your time is key.

 I learned, I HATE stippling, aka, Random meandering... 

Why?  Although it looks good to quilt down areas,

it take north east, south, and west direction when your quilting... 

So your pushing, pulling and moving the quilt in every direction and is the hardest on your shoulders.... 

Feathers, are often a forward backward movement, which is much easier.. 

and also the three half shell stitch, which looks even better than a meander, 

is also easier, forward and backward....

 Feathers are intimidating? Very much so. So, wanna know what I did?

I took a sketchbook, and I filled ever page with feathers.... every kind of feathers... straight line feathers, curved feathers, feathers around a shape... and filled every inch of the sketch book...

Once you have the motion and the direction that you are sure of when attempting your feathers, they become very easy...  You can cover a lot of ground doing feathers very quickly.

On this quilt, I basically used 4 different stitches... feathers first... 

then meander, then the half shell thingy, and the curves inside the boxes of the crosses...

(these stitches are in the first top left photograph.)

For the scallop swags around the border, I traced the curve for the swags, then just went for it ...

I added things as I went along like plumes at the swag points. Extra lines if the swags were to puffy... etc...

Now I am going to prepare my bias binding... Haven't ever done that before either!  But I have been told that it will stay laying much flatter after it's laundered, if I use bias binding... 

Hey, it's a learning curve,

and it's time to learn something else new!

It's by far, not a perfect quilt... Patience, was key...  

And think how fab it will look after it's laundered!  

You wont' see all the little oopsie stitches!

I'm so OK with that!  There are always more quilt to do something a little better on next time!

I'm not into perfect quilts anyway...  

I accidentally stitched out a sway scallop... I think I may leave it.

;-)

My Christmas gift to myself! (nearly complete!)

ooh!  extra!
SEE PAGE 7 at
http://www.thepiedaterre.com/

saturday delight

 Auntie's Star:

basted

 Stitched in the ditch and now feathering...   While holding a tissue under my nose...

It seems our party guests brought me a hostess gift of a drippy runny nose... LOL!

All those Holiday smooches... Lots of luck!

I tried really hard to get the quilting done on Friday... But it wasn't mean to be...

Perhaps Monday I can finish... Just needs the last three sides of filler around the swags...

Oh! so close...

My hubby was reading over the book list you all suggested

and he asked that I post his favorites!

(In case you need a good read good for your hubby! )

The Quilter's Book list is in my sidebar, all suggestions by you readers...

The QUILTER'S HUBBY BOOK LIST

Top ten fiction books read in 2010

(In no particular order):

The Storyteller

The Siege of Krishnapur (these three are a trilogy)

Troubles
The Singapore Grip

Turbulence: A novel

Wolf Among Wolves

Ordinary Thunderstorms: A Novel

A Free Life

Italian Shoes

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

Solar

I have a feeling after Boo see's this, She will want to post her list too...

Happy Weekend!

Homemade Christmas show

My New favorite homemade Christmas ornaments... 

Last night at the party, I rcvd a few lovely ornaments from my quilty friends!

Janet made this little house block from a bunch of my scraps....

Pop over the AMY's today, 

I'm honored to share info with her, from the Bloggers Quilt Festival...

 

 Ellen gave me the Fabulous sewing machine ornament, along with homemade spiced nuts...

 Terri gave me this bird and house ornaments when she came to visit...

My tree is filled with  crafty love...

thank you!!

 

 Since my studio is clean(and I can find things)

I thought I'd show 

you the Christmas quilts that I have made or collected...

 This scrappy star that I made summer 2008, lives in Canada... 

It was a gift for my hubby's brother& Family last year...

 The Bear paw(far right) was a quilt I made when I was 20... I couldnt' figure out 

how to do binding, so I made it like a giant pillow case and turned it inside out.. 

And hand quilted it the ditch... surprisingly, it lays flat!

The Santa Quilt, I made  about 3 years ago, and still could not do a proper binding...

I had to piece fabric over the corners, how funny is that?

You can learn a lot in three years...

The middle quilt, Christmas log cabin was from a Christmas block swap...

I love that quilt... It is the most snuggly happy quilt I think i have... it may be the RED... ;-)

 This is a vintage Seersucker snowball quilt that I have had for ages... 

 I finished it off last year, the texture on it is so lovely.

This star quilt  was a recent ebay find... Isn't it grand?  

I keep it out to look at it all the time... 

Hand pieced, hand quilted... big and very heavy.... Love it.

Stripey Christmas quilt made this year, ready to be quilted...

(for next year!)

And lastly,  I am marking out my SWAGS to finish quilting my (last year's) Christmas quilt...

the red cross quilt

I will finish quilting it today, 

bind it over the weekend, and get it on my bed ASAP.

 I will be singing when it's done.

Fa la la la la la la la la la!

Do you have homemade ornaments 

and quilts that you make each year?

****

Also see all the fun over at my 

15minutesplay.com site... 

we've been having fun with orange light bulb Christmas fabric!

PARTY!

 It took me a week to clean my studio...

Don't ask me where anything is...  (!!)

But alas, I think I am ready for our Christmas Party tonight....

(it may never look like this again!)

 My Cross quilt is not done, but it will still be visible tonight...  

I have one outer row left to quilt.

I had to take a few days to think about what I want to put there...  

more criss crossing feathers? swags? 

Big random feathers...  I think I've made my decision, 

and  hope to finish it tomorrow, and bind it over the weekend...  

I just couldn't rush it... It's pretty special...

 Besides that, I had to get my auntie's quilt top done... 

More on that later... 

Many of you asked how I did that... stay tuned...

And just to get myself into the Christmas Spirit, Here is a silly link to 

an event that happened in Union Square... most likely before Thanksgiving...

How I wish I would have seen this at Union Square.... 

Click the image to take you to the youtube video...

We get these elf yourself cards every year, and giggle... so this was pretty fun to watch.

Today Charlotte sent me this link to0, which is pretty cool for a flash mob.

Definitely worth taking a peak...

goose bump kind of thing.. ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

Alright,I Have got more cleaning to do... 

No more sewing today! 

have fun!

one more xmas gift

I realized I have one more special Christmas gift that needs to be made... 

Nothing like last minute...right?  eek!

This is about 67" square... I think it will live as a lap quilt... 

But BOY, it would look fun in a KING size right?  LOL... no way.  time's a tick'n!

This was made from the beautiful Jennifer Paganelli Fat quarters I won... 

with an older piece of hers That I had on hand for the back ground...  

Better pics to come... hard to take decent night photos...

gettin' there...

This book was very helpful to my quilting...

Shelly was even more helpful.

She puts up with am my email quilting questions...Thanks!

inspiration

 Why does inspiration hit when I absolutley have no time to focus on it...

well, if I take just a minute to make a few blocks...

 I finished my applique parts tot he above quilt,
and planned on diving into my red cross quilt to get that thing quilted asap...  
But, I made this mess instead... I couldn't resist...

 I need to be cleaning my very messy studio for Thursday eve... 

I did get everything off the floor to clean that, but no wit's all piled up on my sewing table...  

But maybe I should just sew one more set of blocks for the Star Bird quilt first...

 But wouldn't it be fun to play with the Sunset blocks?? 

Just a few strips....

 ACK!  ADD alert... get back to the crosses....

Jenny Egg, what have you been into?

Now where was I?

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +