A Bit of This, A Bit of That

I really need to get my sewing room under control and I think the only way to do that is to finish things. In an effort to finish one project, I have been working with my leftover triangles again. I got them all sewed together into half square triangles units. Got all of those trimmed up and put them together into Broken Dishes blocks and then added them to all the blocks I have made in the past. 

I saw a quilt somewhere online using rows of blocks of various sizes. It had either grey or tan as strips in between those rows. I counted all the blocks and figured out how big a quilt I could make and it was going to be pretty big so I adjusted and decided to make two smaller quilts, thinking they would be easier to sell or give away or something. I sewed the blocks together by size into strips around 45-50" long and took them to work to lay out on the floor. As I laid them out I was talking to my boss about the upcoming Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner and Talent Show at the church and she mentioned having a silent auction also. I offered to add a quilt so I picked up what I started and took it all home to adjust the lengths of the strips to something more like 70-80".

Here is a picture of the rows hanging on the drying rack after pressing.

 Here are the rows laid out at work. As you can see the rows varied a lot in length depending on how many blocks I had of each size.

I took a few of the blocks to the fabric store to see what I could find for the 'in between' and my favorite was an apple green. I added green to each row to make it 85" and then put 1" finished strips between the rows. Here is a picture of it on the floor for basting.

I backed it with a barn red flannel - a king-size duvet cover that my husband got at a garage sale for $5 last summer. Here it is all finished and hanging at the church. 

I did a medium stipple using a variegated green thread. Here is a picture of the two smallest rows. There are 4 little 1/2" Broken Dishes blocks and then a strip of 25 - 1" blocks.

Tuesday was craft night next door and Sally had Linnea's quilt finished for us to see. Isn't that a cool panel?

Linnea also brought her quilt from Mary from one of the previous exchanges. Mary hadn't been able to finish all the blocks and get it put together so we didn't get to see it at the reveal and then Linnea brought it one night to craft night but I wasn't there so I asked her to bring it so I could see it. It is quite beautiful in person!

I finally finished my grandson's baby quilt. He is now 7 months old!

It was made from blocks I cut out of the quilt I made for his mommy almost 30 years ago. While pregnant I had embroidered the 12 old-fashioned babies on a piece of pale green fabric. When I had them done I just quilted around the embroidery and then between the babies. It was a pretty boring quilt though she loved it. When we talked about a quilt for her little one I suggested redoing her quilt and she was open to that. She told me she likes the 30's prints so I got some and cut 2 1/2" squares to frame the blocks. When I cut the blocks I left the original hand quilting around the babies and just cut through all the layers and used them that way. I machine quilted diagonals through the small squares and added another round of hand quilting about 1/4" out from the original. The back I used was fabric I purchased in Sitka when I visited my daughter when she was in college and I thought it was appropriate since little Karl visited Sitka when he was just one month old.

I have had everything done but the label a month ago but just didn't get to the label. Finally this week I wrote out a label and got it stitched to the back.

I have pulled out my denim now and hope to work my way through that next. That would mean at least two large bins will be emptied and I should be able to get rid of some backs and batting that has been given to me too!

I am hoping my next post will be an update on denim quilts.

Relay Raffle

I am well on my way to my second finished quilt of the year! I finished this top this evening.

This will be the raffle quilt for our Relay for Life team this year. I hope to get it basted tomorrow and quilted on Wednesday but there are no guarantees!

Once this one is done I will get borders on Katie's block and then I would like to get some UFOs quilted and finished. I think I have at least 4 tops I could quilt and get finished so that is my next big goal.

Spring is on its way along with lots of outdoor jobs! Over the weekend I got 2 of the five apple trees pruned so if I get some spare time when it isn't raining I need to get out and finish up the other three. Having those done is my next outside goal.

One Block Wonder

Life just doesn't slow down around here. I have been keeping busy with work and getting the business info into the computer. I was focused and finished the computer work by Friday evening! Just in time for my daughter, grand-kids and niece to arrive for the long weekend. Usually when they come I make sure I can spend all my time with the kids but this time I had my quilting class scheduled for Saturday and I wasn't going to miss it!

Here is the quilt top that the person teaching the class made using the pattern. Can you see why I was interested?

Here is the fabric I chose for my quilt. This is the one I liked best but wasn't sure it was as good for this quilt. 

As it turns out, it did work well for the blocks! Here are the blocks I had done by the end of class on Saturday. 

It was so fun to see other quilter's fabric choices and then to see how the blocks turned out. This is the fabric my table mate brought. She wasn't sure if she was going to like it since there was so much of the brown.

But this is how her first blocks turned out! She was still thinking she might add blocks from another fabric to add some green but she was going to wait until she had all the blocks done.

Here is another animal print that someone was using and her first two blocks.

Here is an interesting dragon print

And here is how the first three blocks turned out!

Here are a couple more of the beginning blocks

We had a lot of fun with our company and while the kids were stringing beads on some thread with their uncle I managed to finish up the blocks from the class. This morning before everyone left we went over to the church so we had a place to layout the blocks on a design wall. Here is one of the pictures we took as we were rearranging. 

I am not sure if this is the final picture or not. We pinned all the blocks to the flannel sheet so I can hang it on Sally's design wall tomorrow at craft night and see if I am still happy with it. If I am, I can start putting it all together.

I am definitely excited about trying this technique with some other fabrics!

While I was working on sewing the rest of the blocks, my niece started cutting pieces for my Relay for Life Raffle Quilt. I am making a twin sized Monet's Wedding Ring like this one only I have an off white for the background and miscellaneous scraps for the rings. I got the background fabric today and hope to start cutting tomorrow or the next day.

Meanwhile, I have started cleaning up the sewing room. I got a lot of the mess on the sewing table sorted out so tomorrow I can put some of the piles away where they belong and sort some more! Once it is cleaner it will be much easier to finish up some projects! Wish me luck!

2 Finished Tops

Yes, the two tops are done! Here is one of them hanging up. 

I only bothered to get a picture of one since they are basically the same. It is very rainy out so taking a picture outside is just not an option so it isn't a great picture but it will have to do.

In my last post I said I was working on the last of the 120 blocks for the border but the more I thought about it the more I was thinking I didn't have the right number of blocks. I finished the last 48 and realized I needed 8 more of that type of block - no wonder I had about 8 strips of each size left over!!! I got all the blocks finished by last night and today I was determined to get the borders put together and attached!

I had the blocks made into rows when it was time for lunch. Today I made dinner for lunch so I am done cooking for the day! After lunch I spent a little time on the computer and discovered that Bonnie Hunter, over at Quiltville, had her quilt cam on so I brought the laptop into the sewing room and listened to her as I worked on attaching the border strips. 

So now those two tops can be set aside until I am ready to quilt them. One of them will likely be for the Bluegrass Festival stage next August and the other will be to sell or for a gift. 

Next project is quilting the butterfly quilt and getting that sent off to North Dakota!

Back in the Sewing Room

I finally finished sewing triangles together! I think I ended up with 452 broken dishes blocks in various sizes. I have some other projects that need to get finished so the blocks are going back in the drawer for a while.

One project that is now on the front burner are some graduation quilts. I came up with a plan that would use up some of my precut squares. Basically it is these two blocks alternating. 

My niece, Katie, used up some of her scraps making a quilt like this and I liked how it turned out. I started out counting my 2.5" squares knowing I would need 628 squares to make a nice size quilt. When I was done counting I had just a few over that number! I moved on to the 3" squares and again had just a few over what I needed! I made one of each block from each size squares to make sure I had calculated the strip sizes and then kitted up two quilts. Here are the 2.5" squares and their strips.

Then I started thinking about my 2" squares. I had quite a few but I didn't think I had enough to make the same type of quilt in a similar size but I counted them up and then got to thinking that I could make them into 16-patch blocks and then border the blocks with strips, using 2 contrasting colors on alternating blocks. I need something like 1008 squares for that so I started counting out those squares. I only had around 500 but I had quite a few 4" squares so I cut those into 2" squares and ended up with just a few more than I figured I needed. Here they are in a basket and I have started sewing them up as leaders and enders ala Bonnie Hunter.

This is what is left in the drawer that was almost full of precut squares! Pretty exciting to have so few left!

In other news, I continue to work on Owl Hats I have several that just need their faces sewn on and they will be done. Just need to sit down and do that. Maybe next week at craft night I will get them finished? 


My daughter and her husband (here for his 'home time' this week) now have 6 of the 7 windows installed in their little house and are doing some thinking about lighting since wiring will be one of the next steps. If you are interested in reading more about their little house and seeing more pictures check out her blog.


I managed to get a little mowing done today between rain showers. I had to get the yard inside the fence done so Miss Lucy could find a place to potty without getting her tummy all wet from the tall grass! That went pretty fast so I strapped on Lucy's pouch and we rode the big mower around for an hour or so also. Here is a picture of us taken a couple of weeks ago.

Lucy is so excited when I am putting on the pouch and loves riding around with me, frequently taking naps even!

Less and Less Triangles

I am getting close to the end of the triangles. In the last 4 days I have made close to 120 broken dishes blocks! Those 120 blocks started out as 960 individual triangles! They are now all pressed and sorted into bags according to size - 

it is so much easier if they are sorted as they are made instead of when you want to use them!


I only have really big triangles left and I think I will cut them up into a square and 2 smaller triangles as I am not as excited about the look of bigger broken dishes blocks! That will probably happen today.


On Wednesday when I was done with my batch of triangles the weather wasn't too bad so I went out and started pruning the last two apple trees. I got as much done as I could without hauling the ladder out. Thursday was even nicer out so after some morning sewing I hauled the ladder out to the trees and finished the pruning! Yesterday after triangles I went out and pruned the grapes and after hubby got home and got the lawn tractor started (dead battery) we got all the apple branches and grape vines on the burn pile and disposed of them. So our big purchase on date night last night was a new battery! Such exciting times!


The shower door is now installed and today I will do the touch up painting and then hubby will caulk around the shower stall and we can call that project done! We still have trim in there to do but why should that room be any more complete than all the rest of the house?


I am plugging away on the frog eyes and now have 3 quilts finished. I would love to have the last one done this weekend but not sure that is happening. I want to get the labels on and get the quilts delivered!

More and more triangles!

Work continues on the shower stall. This morning I got the final coat of paint on some of the walls and the whole ceiling. It looks pretty great! Except where the blue painter's tape pulled off the paint! I gave my husband permission to smack me if I ever say I want to use that stuff when I paint again! It never works out for me!

I have decided the touching up will happen after we get the shower door installed so I don't have to do it twice.

Meanwhile, I have been working on turning these (thousands of leftover triangles)...

into these...

or these.

If I got these done I could cross at least half of a project off my list. I would really like to turn them all into a quilt top so it is all the way off the list. I have promised myself I will sew triangles together for at least 15 minutes every day and then press them, trim them and turn them into broken dishes blocks. 

Yesterday I think I made about 50 little broken dishes blocks and today there were 23 little BD blocks and 3 of the 12" BD blocks. At this rate I might be done with them by the end of the year. 

Some Improvement

I have continued with my tidying in the sewing room. On Thursday I finished pressing and sorting scraps other than neutrals and batiks. Then yesterday, I did the drawer of neutrals. It was a larger drawer and was stuffed! When those were all pressed and sorted this is what the cutting table looked like when I was done for the day. Can you see any improvement?

Today I tackled the batiks. I loved pressing the batiks and thinking about projects to do with them. In with the various scraps were some triangles in a couple different sizes that I think might just turn into a quilt top. Here is what things look like in the sewing room this afternoon. Okay, can you see the improvement now? 

As I was sorting through things, I also found some partially made blocks so I took a few small breaks and did a little sewing. Some of these Drunkard's Path blocks were sewn and some weren't. There were 11 full blocks and there were some extra pieces that I was able to turn into two more blocks so I put 4 together like this

 and 9 together like this.

There were 10 of these paper pieced blocks. At first I put 9 of them together like so but I just wasn't pleased with it.

I liked the chevrons on the left side of the blocks so I decided to add the other little block and make a strip of chevrons instead.

In another spot I found 16 HSTs that were all the same size and all had whites for one side. So I turned them into this block.

Then I found this group of pieces and made up 5 4-patch blocks and have one set of two squares left over. This might also end up as a strip.

I sorted out all of my orphan blocks and have some plans for some of them and others will probably end up on the backs of scrap quilts as I finish them.

I am pleased with progress but I am starting to get itchy to start sewing. Hopefully, I can finish the cleaning up in the next day or so and then I will start on some of the projects I need to have finished before the end of summer.