Granny is done

Finished up the ?Batik Granny Square quilt top last night. I love it.  Should get it out to Sarah to be quilted tomorrow or Tuesday.  I had to finish up 3 blocks on Friday night and sashed on and off yesterday.  I had picked up fabric for backing on Thursday.  I didn't actually have to purchase backing but I did want a Batik and didn't have any good size chunks so off to Joanns armed with coupons and had some great  success.

I found a great bright green with white turtle images in it.  Fell in love and had to have it. Missed the photo op.  I got home and decided that I needed to use some of it in 2 of the squares on front. Bottom right corner is one of them.

As you can see it is still a tad windy here in NJ.  I'm not complaining because the sun is shining.

When I started to clean up from this project I discovered that I had enough of the Batik squares cut to make 16 additional blocks. 
 

I think I will cut enough additional squares to make it 20 blocks and make another quilt. This time they will be totally unplanned blocks.  I am going to throw the squares in a paper bag and just pull them out willy nilly and use them, no white centers either.

I also found that I had a pile of small triangles after trimming the blocks into squares.

These little guys are looking for a home.  I believe that there are currently over 150 of them. They are various white on white Quilt Store fabric. I will be making the other grannies during the next week or sew so there will be an additional 150 of them.  If you are interested in them I will gladly toss them in the mail to the first person who wants them.  Other wise they are going in the trash.  They are just too small for me to play with or to add to the scrap stash.

Off I go to start the next one.  Have a good week.

Another productive Week

This has been one of my more productive weeks.  It started with the holiday and I found myself on a roll. I am really loving the Granny Square blocks.  I need 20 and so far have these

I know they need to be trimmed into squares but I sew late in the evening after a full work day and thought it would probably be safer trimming them on the weekend.  I need to finish 3 more blocks, hopefully tonight and sashing over the weekend.

Then the topper of the week, my Swoon quilt came back from the quilter.  It's beautiful.  I was surfing the Swoon along flicker spot when I came across a comment by Sarah Russett of Sweet Potatoe quilts,a Long Arm quilter from NY.  She was looking for Swoon quilts to quilt at very reasonable rates.  I thought about it for a little bit and then decided to email her.  She was a pleasure to work with and the turn around was great.

The pictures don't do the quilting justice but it really looks wonderful.  I will post the whole quilt after I get the binding on and we get some sun with no wind.  At least a couple of weeks away.

If you are interested in getting in touch with Sarah her email is srussett514@yahoo.com .  She is working at setting up a blog but I don't have that info yet.

Having a Great Holiday Weekend

Here in the states we are celebrating Presidents Day today.  For me it's a Monday off for a 3 day weekend. So far it has been terrific.  Saturday morning I got my Valentine's present.  I had vetoed flowers and candy and asked for a new chair for the sewing room instead. My OLD chair had a tendency to change heights throughout the day. Sometimes I could actually start at high and end at low or sometimes it refused to go high at all which would limit how long I could sew before the back and knee started to complain.

Isn't it wonderful?

Several weeks ago, Sarah of  http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/2012/01/whats-cookin-at-sweatshop-week-18-lots.html  had a challenge and give away.  I won. My prize came in the mail on Saturday.

I got the name of the sponsor in there well didn't I.  Thank you both.  I enjoyed the challenge tremendously.

Now on to Sunday, I have been sitting on a bin full of Batik scraps I purchased from John Flynn several years ago. I bought them by the pound and it was a great purchase but I just didn't know what I wanted to do with them.  This past week I saw postings throughout the blog world  for Granny Square quilts and thought that it would be a perfect quilt for these pieces.  I found this tutorial http://blueelephantstitches.blogspot.com/2012/01/granny-square-quilt-block-tutorial.html   to use and the blocks worked up beautifully.

Haven't gotten up the nerve yet to trim them square.   Whipping up a few more are on my agenda for this afternnoon.  But before that I am picking up my mom and we are going out to lunch.  We are meeting my sister and her grandson. Should be a great time. Time spent with my mom and sister ususally turns into one huge giggle.  Looking forward to it.
Have a great day.

The Last Christmas Present is now Done

I had one left to finish and it's now done.  This is the last gift for Christmas 2011.  My friend J (NJ) had some surgery in December so I didn't feel any need to rush to get her gift done for the holiday.  Problem with the mental no rush concept it that I then forgot all about it being incomplete while doing things like my Swoon quilt.

On Saturday I was all set to start a new stitchery BOM project by Shell over at  http://theraspberryrabbits.blogspot.com/  please stop over there and see it, it's awesome.Tomorrow is block 2 day.

Anyway, I needed things like my embroidery needles and small scissors and low and behold I remembered that they were in the box holding the rest of the pieces of J's gift.  Now I was so close to the end that I finished everything but the hand sewing of the binding in under 5 hours.  Why do we do these things to ourselves?  So what do you think?

I love it.  This is Shell's BOM   "12 of Hearts" from last year.  I made the blocks a little larger than her pattern because it made it easier to do the stitchery in the man cave with it's limited lighting.

Well I now need to call J and let her know that I am posting this so she can decide if she wants to wait until the weekend to see it live or if a picture will do.

My Swoon Top is Done

I started my Swoon quilt on January 19 and finished it up yesterday, February 9.

I know these aren't the best pictures but we aren't due to have sun here in the next few days and by then I hope to have this off to the quilter.

I am so happy to have finished it in and around the other little things I played with during the past few weeks while working full time.

I had no idea what I was planning to do with this quilt but coincidentally yesterday I received a hold the date notice from a very dear friend for her anniversay party coming up in May.  I'm thinking it is meant to be hers.

My next project is using all of the HST that I have left from this top.  I have started making star blocks.  I hope to have enough to whip up a baby quilt for a gal from work. 

It's supposed to be a snowy, read as quilty, weekend.  Hope to be a very productive girl.

Design a block, not me, so I thought.  I read Sarah’s post about designing a block and made a note to return to see the end results.    http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/2012/01/whats-cookin-at-sweatshop-week-18-lots.html

 I don’t think of myself as being creative. (OK I did actually design my Snowmen quilt but that was a guild challenge years ago).  I can look at a pattern and maybe change up the size of the block or the fabrics but I don’t generally design from scratch.  

Well I finished up reading blogs that evening and took the dog for a walk.  Out in the dark, cold evening with a dog who strolls not walks, with no one to talk to but myself. My brain started playing with the squares and the pre set measurements.  By the time I got back home I had come up with a block. Not an exciting block but a basic useful block.  I think its new, but are any basic blocks really new in quilting. I really hope I didn’t step on anyone’s toes with this block.   I came in from the walk and drew a sample of what was going on in my head. 

Then, heaven forbid I wait, I ran up to my drawer of scraps and started in.  

You know that well worn quilting adage Measure Twice, Cut ONCE,   there is a reason for that.  Remember I told you I designed this in my head walking the dog, well I did all of the math in my head. Turns out it wasn’t exactly accurate.  Thankfully the error was on the segment with the least number of pieces and I had only made 8 of that part.  It was only ½ inch off in both directions.

Oh did I neglect to say that I don’t do 1 of anything, even when I don’t know what it is I’m doing. Once I start cutting, it’s just easier to keep cutting especially when you want a scrappy look.  The block itself is made up of 2 – 5 inch squares, 4 – 3 ½ inch squares and 16 – 2 inch squares with 4 – 2 inch wide filler strips along 2 sides of the  5 inch squares bumping them up to 6 ½ inches.  Each block is made up of 26 pieces, or a whole lot of scraps. 

Well the end result on making multiples from the start is that I ended up with almost enough to make a nice size top. While the bits and pieces were out and about I finished up enough blocks to complete the top.  This is one of those blocks where you could put the blocks together in a number of ways to get many different looks and secondary patterns.  This version was my favorite.  Sorry I didn’t think to take photos as I  tested the various looks. 

I choose this layout because I really impressed myself with the 64 piece square made by the junction of the 2 inch  squares.  Never would I attempt doing that particular block and it tickled me. This was great fun and I hope some of you will try this out and let me know how you did.  Sarah if you let me know where to send this top I will gladly drop it and the many components I have left over in the mail to you.  And thanks for setting this challenge up.