Big Finish

 After Mary Huey came to speak to the guild she brought up some amazing points.  Use the fabric you have bought.  She recently helped a man whose wife passed away sell all her quilting/sewing supplies.  She mentioned how hard it was to see all this amazing stuff sell for much less than it was worth.  She also in the same manner mentioned to finish the UFO by finishing them or realizing you won't finish it and change those to something you will finish.  The last point she mentioned that really stuck with me is sew a little everyday.  Your sewing skills will improve and you will be amazing with even a few minutes everyday how much you will get done.  Now I would completely be lying if I said I have been sewing everyday but I have been sewing much more often.  With this happening I thought I might be able to work on some big finishes this year. 

This quilt is a gift for a co worker.  He spent 20 years, before working at IU, with the Army.  Then it was over 20 years at IU.  I have worked with him for about 7 years.  I picked out the fabrics first.  Red, white and blue seems like the obvious choice.  I looked at probably 10 different patterns before I found what seems like the perfect one.  Finding this pattern was just one of the very lucky things that sometimes happen.  I was getting together to sew with a few of my favorite quilting friends and one of them a just bought the pattern.  I really thought this one had a great look right away.  The very next day I was at Quilts Plus buying this pattern and wonderful ruler.  You can make templates for the pattern but the ruler certainly made this quite a bit easier.  This quilt goes together very quickly and I certainly think I will be using this pattern again. 


After working with red, white and blue for a bit I got bored with the colors.  While I'm sure the quilt would have been nice with just those colors something was missing for me.  As I thought about it this quilt needed more color.  Orange was an easy choice.  It is one of my favorite colors to put in a quilt and it is easy to have red smoothly move towards orange.  Green and purple did the same with blue and the addition of these colors really help this quilt pop.  Not being one who follows directions well, I did end up changing the way I made this quilt.  The pattern calls for a jelly roll and I already had fat quarters.  Instead of cutting those fat quarters into 2 1/2 inch strips I just cut them into strips 1 inch to 2 1/2 inches wide. 

Once I had the top completed I called (maybe texted)  my friend Steph.  I asked if she would teach me to use her long arm machine.  She agreed and I am so excited I had the chance to use it.  One night I came over and practiced and the next time it was onto the quilt.  I had tons of fun and really can see why using a long arm machine for quilting is so nice.  While that kind of machine is way outside my budget, I really do appreciate Steph letting me try it out and I may even be back quilting some charity quilts soon.

Oh you should also take a look at this very fun back.  He likes Superman, news and crosswords.  That white spot will soon get a label.

 

I do love the way this quilt turned out and soon enough I will be handing it off.  Here's to hoping he will like it.

Happy Quilting

Cathy

Push It

My head is silly and I understand that.  Salt 'N' Pepa popped back into my brain again.  Babies are coming faster than I can make quilts.  Okay clearly people did give me plenty of notice but I seem to like last minute deadlines.  For all the new moms giving birth push it seems like a good song.

This has given me a chance to look at all the cute fabrics for little boys and girls recently and the designers are doing a great job.  With great fabrics to show off a simple design seemed like the way to go.  I googled simple baby quilts and this was the first image to pop up. It  is a quick and easy baby quilt  and super cute.

  I really did get this cut out, sewed together and quilted in one evening.  Getting the binding on took a little while.  Once I found this cute little stripe I got quite excited and the binding went on quite smoothly. 

You will see this pattern pop up a few more time.  This one is going to a sweet little boy that one of my friends gave birth to a couple of months ago.  Mom and baby are doing quite well.  

Happy Quilting

Cathy

Happy New Year

Okay I'm late as always.  This year is going really well so far.  My New Years resolution included getting more sleep and I have been doing that.  I have been busy recently.  I am helping out as co program chair for the Indianapolis Quilt Guild.  I was a bit out of sorts for the first meeting but feel I will be much more prepared for the next ones.  Not that I will know all of the answers but I have been putting in lots of time learning about the coming speakers and their workshops.  There are some very exciting people joining us this year and I am really excited about all of them.
Mary Huey joined us for the first meeting and she really did inspire me.   I have been using fabric that has been sitting on my shelves for awhile and thinking of ways to rework some UFOs I may never finish.
As for sewing I did lots today.  The weather cooled down quite a bit and I thought I need a scarf.   I'm not sure how I ran across this blog the other day but I'm certainly glad I did.  Sew homegrown from Japan has this great pattern for an infinity scarf made with just 2 fat quarters.  I had fun putting this together and it went quite quickly.

That isn't a great photo but it really is a great scarf.  I still need to do the hand quilting and remove the gray basting stitches.  I can see making many of these as gifts.  

Here's some photos I took during the first lecture for the guild.  I was sitting in the very back of room at the workshop table.  So these photos don't show lots of detail.  I hope for the February meeting to move much closer to the stage during the lecture but we'll see how that works.  

Happy Quilting

CDC

Glad to be back

I've not been blogging since my birthday and I think a great little gift has been part of the problem.  Back on July 25, my birthday, I had some friend's over for quilting and dinner.  While I'm pretty sure very little quilting was done, catching up was fun and one even brought over some quite yummy and colorful cupcakes.  This night certainly didn't make me stop posting.  But just days prior I received this wonderful gift

This little tablet is so much fun and so easy to take to the quilting room, play pandora and look at quilt patterns.  I have been sewing some fun stuff and can't wait to start showing that off.  One thing that is hard to do on this little thing is blog.  I can't type as quickly on it as the laptop so today I dusted off the laptop and stopped by to say hi. 

Back in August the Indy Modern Quilt Guild and Crimson Tate quilt shop did a great First Friday night and hung quilts along the cultural trail on Mass Ave.  Here's a great little look at all the wonderful quilts. 

Happy Quilting 

Cathy

 

Modern Quilting

Maybe I'm not completely a modern quilter but certainly a large part of me is in love with modern quilting.  I like simple designs is my home life;  furniture, art work, etc.  Seeing quilting move in that direction over the past few years has been fun.  I'm not sure if most of my quilts fit that category.  My newest quilt certainly does, at least in my mind.

The design started while watching the Quilt Show.  Ricky Tims showed how to make this split rail fence block.  It's a simple block with a fun little twist.  My head started designing this quilt as he is teaching this block.

I thought about the rail name in the block more than the fence.  I was raised in coal country in Eastern Kentucky.  One thing you notice, I didn't until I moved away, is coal dust is on everything.  I had a white car and it was amazing the amount of coal dust that you could wash off the car.  So dark gray seemed like the perfect background color.  I had a set of Kona modern quilt guild fat quarters and thought those bright colors would be perfect with the gray background.  Here is the completed top and I really do love this one!!

Now I just need to decide how to quilt it, seems a little more challenging with all the negative space. 

Happy Quilting

CDC

MIA

Wow, time does fly past quite quickly.  Quilting took a break for a good bit of the summer but I'm catching the quilting bug again.  It started with a table runner for Mother's day.  I worked really hard and was loving the way the table runner turned out.

Other than messing up my first partial seam this went together quite quickly and I thought looked great.  I even loved my quilting, which is a first for me.  It's a simple pattern but still adds to the beauty of the piece.

 

Then it was time for the binding and it was Saturday night.  I have never struggled some much.  I took the binding off 4 times and redid it and it was still a mess.  I was ready to cut this table runner into little pieces and never think about it again.  At that moment I decided to just step away.  Here you can see some of the left over mistakes (really it's not nearly as bad as it felt that night)

Now that a few months have passed I think I could take this binding off, one more time and really take my time and finish what I still think is a great table runner. 

Happy Quilting

CDC

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

I knew April would bring some changes for all the lives in the house.  My nieces and nephew headed home to Arizona.  After a little over 2 years of having them around things had certainly changed. 

Here's a look at those cuties in Feb 2010.

This is how much they had changed by Christmas 2011.  Those cute baby faces have been replaced by amazing kid faces.  

I knew the kids leaving would be hard but really it was much harder than I thought it would be.  I couldn't be happier for them to be back at home and with their mom and dad but it certainly took me a little while to settle into my normal life. 

Life has returned to normal and I am having a blast.  Bike riding at whatever speed I want, craft time with no interruptions and getting ready to leave the house happens quite quickly.  Quilting has been happening as well even though right now I haven't taken a single photo of anything.  Tonight I should finish a really nice table runner with my most detailed bit of machine quilting to date.  I think I might become a machine quilting addict.  I do need to find a way to improve my posture while quilting.  Between all the quilting this week and driving a bit longer to work a couple days a week my back is not happy with me.  Oh yeah about that driving a bit longer to work.  In April I also agreed to be the tech to go to the new office we opened May 1, 2012.  So now 2 days a week normally quite easy 15 to if traffic is just awful 25 minute commute jumps to 40-50 minutes one way. 

I did make it to the Indy modern quilt guild meeting in April and had a blast and I will be trying really hard to join in of the fun in June.   I also made it to the regular Indianapolis quilt guild meeting in April and May.  I do love the speakers.  April was Cathy Miller , it was a fun evening and see did show some amazing quilts.  May was very special to me since I am taking her machine quilting class on craftsy, Wendy Butler Berns.  It was another great show and if just a few months or even weeks ago my head would have been clear I could have taken a workshop today.  

I hope everyone else has been enjoying spring!  

Happy Quilting 

CDC