Starting a new quilt

Hello, everyone. It's a chilly, wet day in South Texas. Fairly typical for this time of year.

As the title says, a new quilt is in process. The design is sketched out on graph paper requires 14 star blocks. Here are the first few.

Thanks to the advice on the internet from Mr. Appel! These sawtooth stars are 4.5 inch unfinished. 

As y'all can see, the theme will be Western. I was able to make the centers of the whole set of stars from one print, a few strips of 2.5 inch fabric that was in the stash. 

Cold weather has arrived

Hello, everyone. It's really chilly out today, it was yesterday,  and it's supposed to be tomorrow, too. We call it "winter", no fancy names needed. It's warmer than a lot of places farther north, but it is in the 40'sF. 

I had some tallow in the house, left over from making chili, and I melted it and poured it over some birdseed. 

When it firms up it can be broken into chunks for the poor little birds outside. 

Final finish of 2024!

Hello, everyone. Happy New Year to all of my readers!

The final finished project, just under the wire yesterday! is the panel quilt.

The reverse is in a cream colored Australian aboriginal style print, no fancy piecing or creatively used orphan blocks, just getting the job done.

Update on the quilt-in-progress

Hello,  everyone.  I hope all y'all had a merry Christmas. We've been busy, of course, but some progress has been happening on the quilt.

This is the present limit of the stitching; it's a machine sewn binding with mitered corners. (Autocorrect tried to confuse that sentence. I really have to look sharp all the time.) There actually is a fair amount of these greens in the quilt panel, on the various water-oriented parts, even though none is showing at this corner. Other than the twigs in the border that is.

I found these fabrics, except the binding, at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Denver last summer. They also had a really cool exhibit of a couple of kinds of quilt making. In depth coverage of the potential of the two way to work. We really enjoyed it, and also the quilt fabric shop attached. 😉

Just in time for Christmas,  I  completed a yarn bag gift. 

This was made from a Sew Can She pattern, except for quilting on the sides and some piecing. I got to use some of the cool hardware I got at the Houston Quilt Festival a couple of years ago, too. All fabrics and the foam stabilizer were from stash, because at the last minute who has time to shop?

Merry Christmas!

Hello, everyone. I just realized that the Christmas season has been so busy that I hadn't posted in a while. Sorry about that!

This is our Flight Into Egypt ornament. That actually took place a good some months after the birth of Jesus, but the photo came out better than the glass Holy Family ornament.

We're expecting a traditional South Texas Christmas, enjoying the official food of the season: tamales! We shouldn't even need jackets for going to Christmas Mass as the cool air of these few days is supposed to slide on out.

I wish for all y'all a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year.🎄🪅

Since the embroidery machine goes to class sometimes

Hello, everyone. The embroidery machine goes to Sewing Club sometimes and carrying it is rather awkward. Toting a four-year-old child in arms awkward--both arms needed and while it doesn't weigh as much as the four-year-old, it's an inanimate object and can't help at all. So I decided to look into a way to carry it. Thought about a webbing harness but couldn't figure out how to design one that would support the machine without major wobbles. Then I was looking at Sailrite.com and found a video about a tote. Theirs is a little smaller than this but it looks sturdy.

The footprint of the machine is 22"x18". 

I have now learned a lot about Dacron sail cloth (the interfacing) and Cordura. And that this project is at the very edge of the ability of my Janome HD3000 sewing machine. 

There is a little bit of extra fabric,  maybe I can make some little things out of that. 😀

Spray basting a new quilt

Hello, everyone. The weather in south Texas has finally cooled off. We walk in long sleeves in the morning now.

This is the newly spray basted quilt. It's mostly based on a panel print with a national parks theme. The happy Alaskan bear in the middle was added; there was a block of ugly text there that I didn't like.

This is the happy bear. He is an applique done with the embroidery machine, a design from John Deer. The Dipper and Pole Star above his head are embroidery. He has been echo quilted with navy blue thread, because there has to be enough quilting to hold the whole thing together when it is washed. 

As it's early days yet on the quilting,  there may be more added later on. We'll see how it looks.