Today's progress

So this is how the Celtic applique looks finished. The third and last lesson was loaded today about how to finish the table runner. Instead on working on finishing this I spent this morning with redrafting my doodle from the other day into a workable pattern.


The final size of this comes out to be about 18 1/2" for the design itself. At first I thought I could work it to be a 40" wall hanging, but the proportions of the bias would be off. One option I'd have to bring it up to 40" is to use double lines and fill the areas between them with different colored fabric from the main background to give it a stained glass effect. Definitely something worth looking into. ;o)

Sometimes you just don't know ...

how things will turn out. lol Take the picture above for example. This is how I start my Celtic doodles - set up a frame and then add "stop" lines. At this point I have no idea where the design is going.

Here I fill in my turn points, but it still doesn't give me too many clues.

And I keep going till the design is filled. Sometimes (with this many lines) I can't tell if a design consists of one uninterrupted line of if there is the possibility of a multi color application.

Once I follow the line with a highlighter I can tell at once - one color application. To see how the design would look like without the background grid and stop lines I trace it on an overhead projector sheet. The design has symmetry on the diagonal and as I said above, you don't know what you get till it's done - this design isn't my favorite, but it was good practice.

Here is another example of an unexpected outcome, but I like this one. :o)

And below is a design, I am planing on turning into a wall hanging in the near future.

Then I was also playing around with some practice pieces with rectangular grids. Can you envision the top one as a table runner?

OK, now back to some applique!

I got to work a little more on the table runner last night and the picture shows how much I've gotten done so far. Plan is to have all of the applique finished this weekend, because I have quite a few other projects waiting for me to work on.

Celtic knotwork class project

This picture was taken at an earlier stage of the knotwork. I'm almost done with all of the applique and I really like how it's coming along. I made one change to the instructions - I'll be using two different fabrics, instead of a one color application, but other than that the design will be the same.
I've met Nancy Chong (who is teaching this class) in person, while we were still living in Washington state, but living in AZ now, it's nice to take classes from her long distance at Quilt University. Her classes there are great, because her material is very detailed and you work at your own pace, while still having the benefit of classroom discussion/input.

I don't know if I'll finish the applique over the weekend (DD is having little guest over), but if I do, I'll take a picture of the finished top to post here.

Sewing machine caddy-mat

This is a sewing machine mat I made as a gift, using 3 Fat Quarters. The nice thing about these mats is that you can put some supplies you need, while using your sewing machine, right in front of you in the pockets and it seems to muffle the sound of your machine a bit.
I wrote up instructions, as I went through the steps of making this mat, and I'm thinking of possibly teaching this as a class. What do you think?

Celtic Knotwork doodles

After having signed up with Nancy Chong's Celtic knotwork class at Quilt University, I've ordered a few books, how to "draw your own Celtic designs". Last evening I started experimenting with some practice designs of my own and I wanted to share the process with you.

Here I'm working with a 7x7 block grid. The red marks tell me where the grid will be interrupted and the light pencil markings are the beginning of the knotwork. (You'll see an oops in the picture here, where I didn't highlight one of my "stop marks")In the next pictures you see how I'm working my way out of the center.With some lines I stop to take a moment to see where the lines will lead me.And then I can continue to close the lines. By now this looks pretty confusing, don't you think? To make the visualization easier on me I decided to use different color highlighters. Later on, if I decide to turn this into an actual project I can use different colors of fabric in place of the different colors of highlighter that I used, or make the design all in one color, but I think different colors make the projects more interesting.Here you see more clearly that some parts of the design are continuous and others (although continuous in themselves) are not continuous throughout the entire design.

Now it's time to fill some of the empty spaces, shown with the orange highlighter - and you probably can see that something's still missing.So to balance the design out, I mirror image the orange line and fill the rest of the design in with the yellow highlighter.

Voila! This is the finished design doodle. I think this design, once worked out in a larger scale would make a nice table topper or wallhanging. Maybe you'll see this as a finished project in the future on my blog. ;o)

American Hero top

Browsing through some old posts of mine I realized I never shared a picture of the finished top I made with blocks that I received from Robin M. (+ two of my blocks) to use for this American Hero top. I have some more blocks left for another quilt top, but I need to bring most of the blocks up to size first, before I can piece the top together, but that will have to wait for another post.

Selecting fabrics for the Northern Lights quilt

Boy, it is work to find a decent focus fabric from which you can pull the rest of the colors that need to go in the quilt. Just about all focus fabrics with a dark background that I've found were either way to pink or had too few colors to pick the other required fabrics from. So the above is what I'm working with now. I'll need to make a quick trip to the quilt shop later to find some more of the light fusions fabric, to have enough to use throughout the entire top. The blocks above are just laid out, so if I can't find enough of the fabric I'm looking for it'll be easy to switch a few pieces out, before sewing the blocks together.
I was hoping to find a focus fabric with a dark blue background to build my quilt around that color scheme, but didn't have any luck with that, so this fabric has a black background.

More cloud pictures

Impressive clouds

These two pictures were taken right outside our front door. Aren't those clouds impressive? I'm glad things are cooling down a little bit with the clouds moving in, but we could use a little more rain here for sure.

Aaron received his blue belt

This morning we went to the Kung Fu graduation ceremony for Aaron to receive his blue belt.

In the picture he is receiving his new belt and the certificate from one of the head instructors.

Aaron's instructor is Master Dining, who is an 8th degree black belt (wearing the black with yellow uniform), so he is in good hands.

Tumbling Blocks wallhanging & Shaded 4-patch top

I finished this wall hanging July 3rd.
The top was pieced using Marti Michelle templates quite some time ago and I was debating if I wanted to incorporate it into another larger quilt or finish it as a wall hanging. Well, as you can see the wall hanging won. lol I'm just at a point that I want to cross things off of my UFO list and finish things.

BTW, yesterday I finished piecing the top with blocks from the Shaded 4-patch block swap and here it is. Michelle's claiming it already, although it's not quilted yet, but I should be able to finish it for her birthday. ;o)

Two wall hangings finished

Back in April I shared pictures of these two projects in progress and can say they are both finally finished. :o)

With the amount of UFO's I have (I stopped listing them after 45 projects) I'll try to get at least one of my tops (regardless of size) finished per month. Some of my UFO's will take me a year or longer to be finished, like the Moonglow and Robert Callahan quilt (haven't started on this one yet other than letting the fabric age for several years already hehe), but I know they'll get finished eventually and I'll keep you all updated here on my progress.
First I want to finish two more American Hero tops to send out to Sue to be finished. One is just about done, but the second one still needs a lot more planing with all of the block sized being different, but I should be able to finish both tops by the end of this month and then I'll have a total of 6 tops to send out.

Trip to Disney Land

Since I bet all of you have been to Disney Land at one time or another, I'm not going to bore you with details, but I wanted to share a few pictures we took. ;o)
After a 450 mile drive and a stay at a Hotel we were ready the next day for a full day of adventure at Disney Land.





























Day two was started out at California Adventure park. First ride we went on, Michelle and I got soaked, but with the weather having been great, it wasn't all that bad and we both dried fairly quickly.


Of course you can't go through the parks without taking a picture of Minnie and Mickey, so when Minnie came our way at CA she posed with the kids.

And at the end of the day we were able to see Mickey at his "film barn".

We all had fun, but by day two we were worn out and ready to make our way back home the next day.

Four American Hero tops

Michelle had helped me sewing up enough rail fence strips that we were able to make one Rail Fence top and one Heart top using what was left over from the strips. The hearts were fused and then button hole stitched.












Then from the pre-cut fabric for shaded 4-patch blocks that Robin sent I was able to create two tops as well, adding my fabric for the alternating squares, setting triangles, and borders.



So these four tops are ready to be mailed to Sue for American Hero quilts and I have some more blocks in preparation for two more tops. Those will take me a while longer though, with the blocks all being of a different size and my kids going on summer break soon.


This is the beginning of one top I'm working on with blocks of varying sizes. Once the center is pieced, I'll add a narrow red border followed by a 6" wider border.

As always, to get a larger view of a picture, just click on it. :o)

Table topper for Mr. Garrett

Michelle wanted me to make a wall hanging for her favorite teacher (Mr. Garrett), but with the time I had on hand this little table topper had to do. lol
I was able to piece and quilt it while the kids were at school.
You can enlarge the picture by clicking on it.




This is the label I put on the back.
I had ordered a Bubble Jet kit from softexpressions. com, because I could not find the Bubble Jet set or the rinse here locally and I like their service.
The reason I like the Bubble Jet set over the prepared fabrics is the price for one, but also that I can choose any cotton fabric to print on. When I prepared enough fabric for 4 sheets the other day I hung the wet fabric over a clothes hanger outside to dry and it just took minutes before I was able to iron it on to freezer paper and cut my 8 1/2"x11" sheets to print on.

Two American hero tops in the making etc.

Robin had sent me a nice stack of partially prepared shaded 4-patch blocks (among an assortment of other finished blocks that I'll show below) to use for American Hero tops. I went right ahead and finished the blocks and squared them up to 7" and put 4 of these units together in one larger block.




Here I was playing around with a layout option of the blocks.








With the amount of blocks that I have I'll be making this center for a top. In this picture I simply laid out the pieces to take a picture last evening, I'll try to get everything sewn together over the weekend. Today I will have to purchase some more fabric for the setting triangles for two quilts and the border.







This is the second version I'll sew up.
Michelle likes the first center better, I like this one. :o)










The border fabric I intend to use on these is the same I used for several other quilts. It seems to really pull out the colors of all blocks.
The rail fence top is another American Hero top. It's ready to be mailed, but I'll mail it together with the other two tops as soon as they are finished.
In this picture are some more of the blocks that Robin had sent and I was playing around with them to see how I could incorporate all of the different sizes into one top. I don't know yet if I want to float the blocks on a white or blue background, but might have a clearer thought about that once the other two tops are completed.



Here is my completed "1st quilt", well complete, other than the label. I couldn't find Bubble jet set anywhere around here, so I ordered some yesterday online. Once I have that, I'll print a label out for this and quite a few other quilts, like the deployment quilt, on which the quilting is also finished. The binding is attached by machine on it, so now I just need to sew the binding to the back by hand. Another quilt I'm sewing the binding on by hand right now is the Lone Star wall hanging, so things are moving along nicely and I should be able to finish quite a few more UFO's by the end of the year. :o)