Quilting Almost Done...and Design Wall

I feel good! I bought a book a while back from Suzanne Earley. It's called Meandering Magic. I read her blog regularly, and she had a sale on her book, so I bought it. I'm so glad I did. I got this quilt done in one day...almost. I still have the borders to do, but the main part of the quilt is done. I really like the way it turned out. It's not great, but for a first time trying the technique I'm pretty happy. The first photo shows you the back. Yes, I used yellow thread, but that's so the front would look better.

The second picture  of the back shows the texture a bit better. The purple is fleece, and it wasn't too bad to quilt on. The tension was off a bit, but it works. I think once I wash it many defects will be less visible. I tried to get a picture of the top outside, but it was a bit too breezy to get a good one. This is the best one I could get. The color in the first pictures is much closer to the color of the fleece than the second one. You can see how the fleece looks against the quilt below. The colors aren't right, but I've found it very difficult to get blues and especially purples to look right.

If you want to see what's on other design walls, check out Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

On the wall is this quilt top. I've decided to quilt some tops before I start on another one. I finished one top that has been pinned and partially quilted for a couple of months at least. It's the log cabin hanging in the woods (my backyard).

Then pulled out another top and pinned it. You can see a picture of the top here without the borders. I guess I never took a picture of the completed top.

I'm going to get some of these done so I don't feel like I'm avoiding quilting (even though that's exactly what I'm doing) and so I can make some more tops.

If you want to see what other folks are doing, check out Judy's blog.

Hunting Quilt of Valor

It's taken me a while to finish quilting this one. Didn't take me much time at all to piece the top. I want to be more constant when I am quilting so I can get them done. It's not my favorite part of making a quilt, but necessary.

It's backed with a blue/black/white camo fleece. I ended up doing an outline around each of the motifs in the center, then quilting in concentric squares (I just looked it up, because that's the way I am, concentric actually should only refer to circular things but I'm using it anyway) around the panel.

I hope to give it to my friend early next week so she can present to the soldier it was made for...finally.

I'm going to design a label for it and use some iron-on printable paper I found a while ago. I'll post a picture of that when I get it done. I have an idea of what I want it to look like. Let's see if I can do it.

Another Fair and Square

Here is another Fair and Square. This is a deep chocolate brown background. The squares that are pieced are from a half-yard of fabric I dyed earlier this year. I dyed it deep orange and bright red if I remember correctly. I like the way it looks much better than the first one I made.

I put the colored squares up sort of randomly. Not my usual color scheme, but the high contrast is. If you're interested in making one, the pattern is free and I've linked to it on the previous post.

This is not quilting (or rocket science)

I have made an amazing discovery. Do you see the cookies above? Do you see they are not flat as pancakes? do you see they are fluffy?

I live at 8,600 feet and have had some small success baking. I've been working on a chocolate chip cookie recipe since I moved here in 1993. Sometimes they have been OK, sometimes they have spread and been awful. I've tweaked the recipe above until they were acceptable, but not like this.

About a week ago my husband was listening to Science Friday on NPR, and a man was being interviewed about cooking science. He said something that is probably obvious to everyone else out there, but just in case I needed to share. If  you are using a leavening in your baking, and there is no acid in the recipe, you should be using baking POWDER. Every cookie recipe I look at calls for baking SODA, as did the one above. As soon as I looked at the recipe and realized there was no acid, and that baking powder supplies its own acid, I decided to give it a try, et voila! No more flat cookies. I am amazed!

Thank you for listening :^)

Design Wall

I took a class from Karen Pharr on Saturday. Here's what I have so far. It is supposed to be a scene through a window. I decided on a night scene, we'll see what it looks like when/if I finish it. At the moment I'm thinking thread to sketch out the details, but I really don't know what I'm doing.

To see what others are doing, check out Judy's blog.

Free Fans

Last night at quilt guild someone brought in these fans to give away. They're all hand pieced and I had to trim them to size. I like this setting...against white I think.

Fun!

A Quick Top...and a Request...and Design Wall Monday

This is a quick top I made today. I'm not loving the fabric I chose (I used some background that I bought quite a while ago that isn't very exciting) and bits of yellow and green I had. The pattern is easy and available for free from Crazy Mom Quilts. She has made a number of them, and I like her color choices much better than this, but it will do. I'm going to use this for a charity quilt donation and plan to make a few more at least. I may piece some of the squares instead of having them all solid colors.

The other quilt is one I'm trying to make a decision about. If you check out this post you'll see that I'm thinking of adding a simple border. Either just the blue I used for the background or one with a narrow strip of peach. Looking at the picture of the quilt here I'm thinking I may just add a 2 inch border (as I did on the top and bottom) to finish it off.

What do you think?

One More Thing

I went to a guild board meeting on Thursday. We happen to meet in a room at the back of one of a quilt store, and there was an Anniversary Sale going on. I bought just a few pieces. One was 50% off (because I bought the rest of the bolt) the blue one with the stars. I think it will be good for backing. The light blue I just liked...have no idea what I'll do with it. The striped is going to become a quilt top that takes advantage of the stripes somehow.

Which Border?

I don't know if I like the orangey bit on the left. Is it a distraction or does it add something. I was going to finish this top today, but looks like I won't get it done now. I need to wait for opinions!

Here is the other top I finished. I now have to figure out how to quilt it.

Design Wall Monday

The top two rows are sewn together now. I had to trim many of the blocks because this was sort of a made up quilt so everything didn't fit just right. I like the results though.

I also finished the stack n whack top from last week. I forgot to take a picture while it was on the wall so I'll try to get one after this one is all together.

If you want to see what more folks are doing, check Judy's blog.