{Blogger's Quilt Festival} Sadie

Whenever I see that another Blogger's Quilt Festival is coming up, I start to rack my brain, trying to think of what I've done since the last festival that I really want to show off. This time, it was easy.

I'm sharing Sadie with you because I am absolutely head over heels in love with this little quilt!

My original plan was to make a scrappy pink version of  this baby quilt, but then I decided that I wanted a pieced border. To keep it a good size for a baby quilt, I made smaller churn dash blocks. You can find all of the details in the tutorial.

I've started giving my baby quilts people names. It makes them so much easier to keep track of than "Blue Sheet Quilt #1" and "the one with the pink hearts." And it makes me stop and think about them and take pictures and write a blog post. There are baby quilts from past years that I can't find any record of except for the pictures in my album.

Usually, I don't decide on a name until the quilt is nearly done.

 

Sadie started with her name. It was on the list when I was brainstorming names for Sara, but sometimes I save names I really like for special quilts. Sadie is a cowgirl -- a girly cowgirl who needed a pink and brown churn dash quilt. And I'm sure that my imaginary little cowgirl has a well-worn stuffed horsey that accompanies her everywhere.

 

By  the time I had the top assembled, I was pretty sure that this quilt was going to live in my sewing room. So I decided to try some custom quilting. I outlined around all of the squares in the churn dashes and then stippled around them -almost- as tightly as I could. Not quite as tightly as I quilted Lobster Sue, but it's close.

I'll hang onto her until I either find the right baby to send her off to, or make a bigger version for myself and don't need this one anymore. That's how it tends to work around here.

{yarn along} Dark Places

I'm still working on my 3rd pair of socks for the pooling sock yarn challenge and the yarn's still not pooling... I've given up on that part, but I do still like colors. And I love the book I just finished, Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

 

Twenty-five years after Libby Day fled into the snow as her mother and two sisters were brutally murdered,  the trust fund that she's been living off of is almost completely drained and Libby is facing the unpleasant truth that the people who were so anxious to help the only survivor of The Satan Sacrifices of Kinnakee, Kansas have lost all interest in her. When a representative of  the Kill Club, a group obsessed with famous murders, offers her cash to speak at their next meeting, Libby reluctantly agrees.  Her need for money is enough to force her to finally dig through the sealed boxes of her family's possessions looking for things she can sell to the members of the club. For more money, she agrees to visit her brother in prison, then to look up her estranged father. The more people from her past she makes contact with, the more Libby begins to question what actually happened in the farmhouse that night.

Dark Places absolutely blew me away. The chapters alternate between Libby in the present day and her brother and mother in 1985, on the day of the murders. The way that the events and evidence all tie together is so intricate -- what makes perfect sense one way when a character sees it is obviously something else entirely when you're reading from another character's point of view.  

Silly disclosure -- the books came from the library.  For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.

A Quilt for Mrs. Bates's Parlor

It's my turn to show of my It's for the birds! project, and the waiting has been driving me just a little bit crazy...

 

 

 

As soon as I saw that we were making quilts with birds on them, I knew I wanted to use a black silhouette of a raven. Or a crow. Who can tell the species when it's an outline on a quilt? I've got a whole bunch of irons in the fire right now, so when I was up in the sewing room and came across a bunch of scrappy black and neutral hourglass units from an abandoned project I decided they'd make the perfect jump start for this project.

They were going to be sashing, at least until I started playing with them and decided that they reminded me of an ornate frame. If I was making this quilt again (and I think I do want another one with bats to hang in October) I'd add prairie points or a scalloped black outer border.

Why the name?

Madame Samm started my mind in that direction when she showed off her Tippy Hedrin Barbie. Then I was watching Hitchcock, a movie about the making of Psycho, while I pieced the quilt -- and wouldn't Mrs. Bates have totally had this quilt in her parlor, if she'd had quilts? I think she'd have had this little settee, too. It was passed down from my Great Aunt Molly to my Grandma Marr, and then to me. How I manage to get away with this piece of furniture in a tiny house full of kids, I don't know.

If  this is your first visit to my blog, welcome!  I'm Michelle and I'm trying to make fifty scrappy baby quilts this year, but sometimes I get in the mood to make a quilt for me. And this one is definitely MINE.

Be sure to visit today's other bloggers -- it's amazing the variety of projects everyone is coming up with! You can find the full schedule here.

 

http://www.intheboondocks.blogspot.com

www.thimblemouseandspouse.blogspot.com

www.quiltingandsewingarts.com

http://Sewgratefulquilts.wordpress.com

www.aquiltingsheep.com

http://tricia-ramblingsofaquilter.blogspot.com

http://sewmanyyarns.blogspot.com

www.moosestashquilting.blogspot.com

http://bethstrand.wordpress.com

http://quiltoo.blogspot.com

http://teatimecreations.blogspot.ca/

http://secretlystitching.blogspot.gr/

This post is linked to to Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, and Freedom Fridays,

Spring House by Stephanie Ryan

 

 

Today I'm playing with Spring House, Stephanie Ryan's new line for Moda. These prints are giving me such an incredible sense of dejavu.  I think it's the shape of the flowers that reminds me of things from my childhood -- I've got an image of insulated plastic mugs flitting at the edges of my memory.

 

To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

It's going to be a busy few weeks!

I have got so much going on right now my head is spinning. Tuesday is my day in the It's for the Birds! blog hop over at Sew We Quilt!  Next week, I'm participating in a virtual book tour for Sinister Entity, a new horror novel by Hunter Shea. I've got two new baby quilt tutorials in the works, more socks on the needles... and a couple of other things I'm not ready to share yet.

Life is good!

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 1 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 39 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 87 1/4 yards
Net Added for 2013: 48 1/4 yards


Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 1150 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 7100 yards
Net Added for 2013: 5950 yards

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

Quilter's Favorites - Share and Learn

Geta at Geta's Quilting Studio has invited bloggers to share what makes their quilting more enjoyable.



I love my AccuQuilt Go! and Sizzix Big Shot. I do a lot of scrap quilting using fabrics from thrift stores and estate sales. And I make a lot of baby quilts to donate, so it seemed like a die cutter would help me finish more quilts than I could if I was cutting them all with a rotary cutter and ruler.

I can't tell you how much fun I've had with these machines over the past couple of years.

I've used my Go! to quickly cut enough units to piece a two-color Drunkard's Path quilt while I was recovering from knee surgery, to trim someone else's unevenly cut squares so that they were all the same size. It's great for cutting things that would be time consuming or impossible with a rotary cutter and ruler.

When I've just been in the mood to play, I've experimented to see if I could use the Apple Core die to make Halloween bats, or the Dresden Plate and Drunkard's Path dies to reproduce a traditional pieced turtle block. The more ways I can find to use a die I've purchased, the happier I am.



I've used my Big Shot to cut intricate shapes that I just don't have the talent (or time or desire)  to cut by hand with an Exacto knife. There is no way I  would have cut all of those typewriter keys by hand -- not when I could buy a die for ten bucks that would do it for me over and over!

Depending on what shapes I'm cutting and what fabric I'm starting with, I also love the Easy Angle Ruler and Companion Angle.


I also use template plastic, or even cereal boxes, if I want to make something that I don't have a die for, but I sure do appreciate what I've been able to do when I've got the right size die or ruler!

It's swarming season!

I've seen two stories on the nightly news lately about bees swarming neighborhoods and how terrifying it was for local residents. One woman had a mass of bees on her decorative flag.

 

Something like this...

 

 

The only terrifying thing about the mass in this picture was that they're our bees and had decided, for whatever reason bees decide to do what they do, to leave their hive.  If hubby hadn't been out tinkering with one of the cars and heard the louder than usual buzzing, we would have lost them for good.

 

Instead, we suited up, cut down the branch they were hanging from, and shook their annoying little bee butts back into an empty hive box. They're at the far end of the yard now, and hopefully they're happy with their new residence.

 

See where Hubby is standing? The swarm is that darkish shape directly to the right of his arm... and I was standing in that same spot a few seconds later, sawing through the last of the branch so that he could lower it into the box. Did I mention that I don't have gloves for my suit?  (Teenage Son has been boasting that he's taller than me now, but he stopped that as soon as I told him that being taller meant that he got to help cut the next swarm out of the trees.)

 

I wish I'd taken time to learn how to shoot video with my new camera, because this was definitely an experience worth filming. All went well and neither of us got stung. Swarming bees don't have a hive to defend and have gorged themselves with honey before leaving their old hive, so they're at their gentlest. If you have allergies or if you live in an area with Africanized bees, I'm not going to argue with you.  But for the rest of us, swarms aren't anything to be afraid of.

 

When a hive swarms, the queen leaves the hive along with half of the bees, leaving behind the rest of the bees and a new queen.  Bee populations are dropping dramatically due to pesticides and Colony Collapse.  There are beekeepers out there who would be thrilled to come capture a swarm and set them up in a new home. Google "swarm list" along with your city and state and you should be able to find a whole list of them.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 19}

I often get asked what the name of whatever baby quilt I'm working on at the time is going to be, and I usually don't have an answer. Most of the names come later. Sometimes I think of the perfect name while I'm still in the middle of making the quilt.  Steve got a last minute name change when I decided to use Blue's Clues fabric for the backing. Emily was going to be Amelia until I decided to save that name in case I ever make a girly airplane quilt.

And sometimes I start with the name. This quilt was always going to be Sadie and it was always going to have pink churn dash blocks on a brown background.

Coming up with names for these quilts is so much fun!  No one but me and my blog readers will ever know these names, but they make the quilts feel more distinct.

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules:

Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, you're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

this week's finishes

This week, I finished a quilt that I can't show you...

It's driving me absolutely nuts that I have to wait until Monday night to show you this one. It looks so much prettier in reality than it did in my imagination.

I also finished these, which I don't have to keep secret...

Toe up, plain stockinette feet, short row heels, k2 p2 ribbing for the legs... 60 stitches on size 2 (maybe) Harmony dpns. The yarn is Knitpicks Sock Garden, in the Zinnia colorway.

They were originally going to be an entry in the pooling sock yarn challenge, but the yarn didn't pool. That doesn't matter, though -- I've got a new pair of hand knit socks and just a tiny bit less yarn in my stash.

 

This post is linked to to Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, and Freedom Fridays,

What are we scared of?

What Was I Scared Of? from The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss is my absolute favorite picture book. It's got a pair of empty green pants that ride a bike and row a boat...and prickly black Brickel bushes and the most amazing color combination. I think I might need an applique quilt based on this book...

 

Lots of quilters seem to be scared of half square triangles and willing to make all sorts of contortions to avoid those scary bias edges.

I'm working on a tutorial with about a hundred half-square triangles and I just know that someone is going to scold me for the way I do them -- the same way I've been scolded in the past for cutting individual squares instead of using quick strip piecing methods.

I cut the squares because I don't want the prints falling in the same combination every time.  And I do my triangles the way I do them because I think it's easier to make the half square triangle units that way.

I cut squares in half to make two triangles and sew the triangles together. For me, that's a lot faster  than drawing a line from corner to corner of each square, then sewing a quarter inch on each side of the line, then cutting. (I've done it that way, too.)

Back in high school Home Ec, I made a matching blouse and skirt out of red and black plaid cotton. The teacher suggested that the square patch pockets would look nicer if I cut them on the bias. So I did. She did warn me to watch out for the stretchy edges, but they were no big deal.

After a gathered skirt with a button and zipper, and the yoke and collar and more buttons on the blouse -- not to mention matching plaids! -- those bias edges weren't that scary. Maybe that's because I'd never a bunch of warnings about bias edges.

How do you make your half square triangles?  Have you tried just cutting them and sewing them together?

{yarn along} I killed my sock!

Remember that sock I showed you last week -- the one that was done up to the heel?

I made a mistake. The stitches got redistributed a bit, so my heel stitches were off. And I was starting to get a bad feeling that the sock was way too big.  I tried it on and that bad feeling got worse. After I'd pulled the needles free, I tried it on again to see how badly I'd miscalculated.

And the darn thing fit!  But getting those live stitches back onto the dpns sounded like more of a hassle than reknitting the foot of the sock, so I gave up.  I love these colors, so I'll cast on again later with an actual stitch pattern. That heel would've bugged me.

And next time, I'll try to remember to count my stitches before starting the heel!

In a Yarn Along post a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Liver Let Die, the first book in the Clueless Cook mystery series. I wasn't very far into the book and hadn't decided if I liked it or not.  Now that I've finished Beef Stolen-Off, the second book in the series, I can definitely say that I'm hooked and will be watching for the next one. 

Jordan McAllister aspires to be a sports reporter, but she's been making her living writing personal ads. When the newspaper's culinary reporter is injured in a jet ski accident, Jordan is thrust into the job. There's just one problem -- she doesn't know much about food beyond take out pizza and Hostess Ho Hos.  But with the help of her neighbors, she's come up with recipes and slapped fancy sounding names onto them, making the Kitchen Kupboard column more popular than ever.

In Beef Stolen-Off, Jordan is sent to the Cattleman's Ball. The plan is that she'll write about it in her column and get her readers to eat more beef. But  her blind date for the evening winds up dead.  There's cattle rustling, and a haunted house (have I mention that I love haunted houses?), and a fake seance...  It's a fun read!

Silly disclosure -- the books came from the library.  For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.

When did this one become a UFO?

Teenage Daughter wants a big-girl version of this quilt --

That just means making it bigger and leaving out the fabric with baby bottles and diaper pins. Easy, right? I pulled out the fabric leftover from the little quilt and cut some more squares, pulled more  fabric from my stash, got it all ironed....

And then I got sidetracked. That freshly ironed fabric got moved... and that's how UFOs tend to happen around here.

 

I'm linking up to Judy at Patchwork Times and her Wednesday UFO Report.

not what I thought I was making...

I'd planned to use these little hourglass units as sashing for something else entirely...but then I couldn't find enough 1 1/2" strips to make the background blocks and I didn't want to go dig around in the dark sewing room....

And I'm pretty sure I like this better anyway.

Would you believe this started out as Orca Bay? To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

{Whatcha Reading?} my growing book collection

Every day or two, I scan through Amazon's list of  free Kindle titles to see if there's anything interesting. That's one of the things I love about my Kindle -- it's let me amass a huge collection of books that I think I'm going to read someday.  It's the same thing  I used to accomplish by shopping used book sales, except it's far cheaper and takes a lot less space...and the books are all right there in my hand, whenever I do decide to read them.

This week, I downloaded 3500: An Autistic Boy's Ten-Year Romance with Snow White. I always enjoy the chance to glimpse parenting through someone else's eyes, and I've got an ongoing fascination with Disneyland, so I thought it might be interesting...


 

I carried my Kindle around with me for the next day and a half, hoping to find spare moments of time to read just a little bit more.  It's the story of Ben, an autistic boy who had such an amazing reaction to the Snow White ride at Disneyworld that his parents moved from Seattle to Orlando to give him continued access to it. Over the next ten years, Ben and his parents went on the ride 3500 times, stopping only when the ride was permanently closed.

 

The book is being offered as a free download through May 6.  

 

By the way, I checked -- Snow White's Scary Adventure is still part of Disneyland in California.  So there's hope that I'll get my own kiddos there one of these days. And in the meantime, I think I'm going to watch a few ride through videos on You Tube when I'm done posting this. :-)

When's the last time you cleaned your machine?

When I'm doing a lot of sewing, I clean my machine several times a week, sometimes more than once a day if she's being persnickety. It's when I'm not doing a lot of sewing that the lint creeps up on me. I'll tell myself that I haven't done much sewing at all...and I'll keep telling myself that until the machine is absolutely full of lint.


Some of the quilters I know claim to clean their machines rarely, if ever. I want to know how they get away with that. There's a point, not far from the point my machine was at when I took this picture, where she just throws a fit and won't sew properly until I fix the situation.

That explains the twice a day cleanings -- and that brand of thread I won't use again.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 2 3/4 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 38 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 87 1/4 yards
Net Added for 2012: 49 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 750 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 7100 yards
Net Added for 2013: 6350 yards

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

another reason to love old books

I've told you before about how the smell of old books makes me giddy.  My oldest son and I had a long discussion last week about what old books are supposed to smell like, as opposed to what mildewy books smell like. Sadly, the mildewed example was an original text Nancy Drew that I would have really wanted if it was in halfway decent condition.

Except for my growing stash of vintage children's mysteries, I'm not buying a lot of books for myself lately. My Kindle has won, assuming that the price of the Kindle edition is actually less than the price of the paperback. It's a happy combination of having the book I want right now and not having to keep track of it once I do have it.

I still have real ink and paper books, and I adore the special ones. Even though I've found a much nicer copy of the same edition, I'm still keeping that Bobbsey Twins book that came from the small girls room.

And I'll be keeping this Nancy Drew that  I picked up at the thrift store on the same day as I had to pass up the mildewed one. I've got a nicer copy with a dust jacket, but look at what's written inside the front cover --

Beverly Jean Iverson
Devils Lake, North Dakota U. S. A.

Christmas "1945"   a  Christmas "no one" will ever forget, for it is the year of "Victory and Peace" of the second world war Thank You

I assume that it was Beverly's book, but I wonder who wrote the inscription.  Was it Beverly, or one of the adults in her life?   (And yes, I did Google her name -- I found one woman who would have been about the right age, but Iverson was her married name and she lived at the wrong end of the country, and one who was born a few years too late.)

There's something about this book that just makes me want to hug it tight and protect it.  Do you save books with strangers' inscriptions in them?

This post is linked to Time Travel Thursday, Ivy & Elephants & Vintage Thingie Thursday.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 18}

This week, I've been playing with block sizes. I wanted to make a pink version of this baby quilt, which I made a couple of years ago.


This time around, I wanted to add a pieced border. The scrappy churn dash blocks in the blue quilt measure twelve inches. Adding the borders bring my new quilt up to 48", bigger than I want my baby quilts to be.

The answer? Make my churn dash blocks with 2" cut squares instead of the 2 1/2" squares I use in most of my baby quilts.  With the blocks reduced to 9" square, I could add my border and still have the final quilt measure just under 40" square.

Here's Sadie. Even with that pieced border, she went together quickly. (I made up for that by spending three hours on the free motion quilting. That may be the longest I've ever spent quilting a baby quilt. But I love the results!)

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules:

Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, you're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

Sadie {a baby quilt tutorial}

Meet Sadie! I've been planning this baby quilt in my head for months, watching my scraps for just the right pinks.  Now that she's together, I'm seriously in love with this little quilt. I think she just might live here with me.

 

I've used the scrappy half square triangles before, first in Extra Scrappy Pinwheels, then in  blue sheet quilt #1 (see why I started giving the baby quilts people names?), and later in Dashes in the Woods. 

Want to make your own? You'll need about a yard of pink scraps and about two yards of background fabric.

 

Cutting --

Cut pink scraps into 2" strips. From those, use your Easy Angle ruler to cut 72 triangles. Cut 200  2" squares (108 for blocks, 92 for pieced border)   (Not using the Easy Angle for your triangles? Cut 2 3/8" squares and cut those in half diagonally.)

From background fabric, cut nine 3 1/2" squares for block centers.  Cut thirty-six 2 x 3 1/2" rectangles.  Cut  background fabric into 3 1/2" strips and use the Easy Angle ruler to cut 36 triangles. (Not using the Easy Angle?  Cut 3 7/8" squares and cut those in half diagonally.) You will also need 2" strips for the sashing and borders. I used eleven WOF strips.

Piecing --

To make the scrappy half square triangle units, sew two print triangles to one print square as shown and press. Sew to a large background triangle and press. 

To make the bars of the churn dash block, sew two print squares together and press. Sew to a 2" x 3 1/2" rectangle to form a square and press.

Lay out four half square triangle units, four bar units, and a 3 1/2" center square and assemble the churn dash block as shown. Make nine blocks.

 

To make pieced border, sew 2" squares into two strips of 22 blocks each and two strips of 24 blocks each.

 Using 2" cut strips as sashing, assemble the nine blocks into three rows or three. Add a border of 2" cut background strips, then sew the shorter pieced border strips to opposite edges of the quilt and the longer pieced border strips to the remaining opposite edges. Add another border of 2" cut background strips.

Quilt and bind. As always, if you make this quilt I'd love for you to send me a picture or link up to my weekly Let's Make Baby Quilts! linky party. There's a list of my free baby quilt tutorials over in the sidebar and you  can find out when new ones are added by either following my blog or liking the Let's Make Baby Quilts Facebook page.

Is it just me?

Does anyone else love that stained glass look that quilt tops get when you hang them in front of a window?

I'd be tempted to keep her hanging like this for a while if I didn't know first hand what sunlight does to quits hanging in windows. In my defense, it wasn't my quilt and I'm not the one who hung it there.

 

This one, though, is my quilt, and I'm going to take care of it!

 

{yarn along} Picture Perfect Corpse

I'm still knitting socks, so many of them that the backs of my hands are starting to ache when I'm not knitting. I should probably take a litle break, but I don't wanna...

At least I've got good books to read!

I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for Picture Perfect Corpse to come out. And, because I've been reading all of the new short stories that came out while I was waiting, I'd managed to forget exactly why I was so anxious to get my hands on the next book in the series (aside from the fact that I'm always anxious to get my hands on the next book in this series) ....

Luckily, author Joanna Campbell Slan did a great job of  quickly reminding me where she left off in the last book. To save herself, her mother in law, and her friend Johnny, Kiki has just shot the man behind her first husband's murder, in the head. Brenda, the estranged wife of Kiki's boyfriend, tried to shoot Kiki, but the bullet only grazed her temple.  I've spent almost a year waiting to find out what happened to everyone.

This book picks up right where the last one left off.  Just as things start to settle down a bit, Brenda's body is found in an abandoned farmhouse. Casings from Detweiler's gun are found next to her body and he's immediately arrested. Kiki is absolutely sure that the father of her unborn child and love of her life is innocent, but she's forbidden to meddle in the  case for fear that she might uncover something that could be somehow used to damage his defense.

Kiki is also trying to track down the young woman who appeared at Time in a Bottle, the scrapbooking store where she works, and announced that she was responsible for the death of Kiki's employer's son. There's also another puzzle involving Kiki's daughter Anya's best friend.

I highly recommend the Kiki Lowenstein books, but I wouldn't start with this one. There's a whole lot going on and I think it will make more sense if you already know the characters and their backstory.  Once again the book ends with a cliff-hanger and once again, I'm going to be very impatient to find out what happens next.

Edited to add a giveaway -- shortly after I posted this, Joanna emailed and offered to give away a  copy of Picture Perfect Corpse to one of my readers. To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post before 11:59 pm May 6. I'll use the random number generator to pick a winner and announce it here next week.

Silly disclosure -- I pre-ordered my copy from Amazon with my very own money.  For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.