Changing Sewing Room

The big changes in the sewing room continue!

The new machine/frame has arrived and is all set up.  I haven’t had the instruction on the computer yet, but I wanted to practice FMQ on just the machine anyway.  I loaded a large sandwich of good quality muslin to play on and went to town!  The top is being floated - something new for me to try.  And I took the photo when I was rolling the top up - I hadn't made it more taut yet.

I had to force myself to stop and try to put the sewing room back together a little bit.  It was just too much fun playing with quilting designs.  I will need practice since this machine is heavier than the one I was used to, but "practice" has turned into "play" for me ....

Two of the members of my Sunshine Online Quilt Guild are regional coordinators for Quilts Beyond Borders that will have a table at the big Houston quilt show in October.  We will all pitch in to help make kits for QBB to have available to give out to visitors at the show to take home and make up a quilt to donate to QBB.

Here is the start of my third kit:

I will cut 35 of these novelty squares and add 35 bright solids to make up a kit that will make up a top 42 x 60.  This is a great use of my smaller pieces of fabrics.  I am pleased to have these fabrics moving on and being useful.

And speaking of moving on – on my walk, I took a photo of these lush Coleus plants.  Why don’t mine ever grow that plump?!

Then I ran across this weed – another giant.  Now THAT’s what I can grow well …

Too funny!

Having Trouble Staying on Task

I'm getting a new quilting machine and frame!  I'm so excited ...
I'll have my first lesson on the new setup this Tuesday while it's still in the local quilt shop.  And the thing is huge.  Make that HUGE.  I've been doing this to clean out some things and make room for it:

that dresser in the back will be leaving the premises

The mess is even worse now.  But my tabletop machine is still active and I've been finishing a UFO.  I need more fabric to add borders (can you say "shopping"?!).  And that light purple block in the dark star is making me nuts, so I'll have to rip it out and move it.  It'll take a little finagling since I can't just replace it with that dark blue square above it - that would put 2 dark blues together in the dark star, but I'm making progress at deciding what to do - it might take a Rubic's Cube puzzle person to solve it for me!

this will go to Quilts of Valor

Waterspout and Continuation

Waterspout over Tampa Bay last week:

 Amazing photo by Michael Peddington from:

https://www.facebook.com/AgeOfInformation

I've seen small waterspouts out in the Gulf of Mexico and occasionally over Tampa Bay.  I'm sorry I missed out on this one that was seen by lots of people since it was visible from three main bridges in/out of Tampa/St. Petersburg.  It was spectacular and mainly stayed over the water.  There was some damage when it came ashore (a the term "minimal" is meaningless if it was your damage ...), but it soon broke down.

And the continuation of the previous post about the Indecision Quilt.

It has grown – thanks to all of you for the suggestions – I auditioned several alternatives and this looked the best:

This design wasn’t what I had started to make with the squares a very long time ago, but it had been sitting in a box for so long I decided to just go ahead and make something, really – anything,  with it.  I have a lot more of the square 4-patches made up so I might just get away from the preferred dimensions of a donation quilt and keeping adding rounds.  I’ll keep you posted!

Indecision

Indecision is a terrible thing.  I had to walk away from this top and think about what to do.  Right now it does not appeal to my sense of symmetry.  I need to either add another row of 4-patches to the top or delete the row at the bottom (inside the borders).

Right now it is the right dimensions for the group I donate to and to take either action will change the size.  Have to mull it over tonight and maybe fix it tomorrow … indecision …

Sunday’s Sewing

So, the local quilt shop had a sale – 30% off if you bought the end of the bolt.  And if you were lucky enough to find good stuff, what’s a girl to do?  Well, I found a few bolt-ends and then the book jumped into my bag – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

These are the 4-patches I’ve had around for a long time and this book will help turn them into something:

This was what I had shown previously to be my work in progress:

And, this is what the 9-patches morphed into:

It is very loosely based on this modern quilt design from Elizabeth Hartman:

http://www.ohfransson.com/oh_fransson/2010/02/ninepatch-lattice-quilt.html

I was bored with the first photo and liked the asymmetrical look of the modern quilt.  Someday, I’m going to move into modern …  first I have to use up a lot of stored fabric!

Oh, and this is the bunny I saw on my walk:

We don’t see as many of these as I would expect.  He was in a side yard, just munching away.  Cute little devil … unless it’s your garden, of course!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Birthday to the USA !!

Another Box in the Mail

Well, if you don't keep up the blog postings, you fill another box with quilts apparently!  I have four ready to go to Wrap-a-Smile.  Our group was discussing how easy it is to work up lots of "girly" quilts and how it's harder to find good "boy" fabrics (without skulls - it's just not appropriate for tiny surgical patients).  Often the trendy comics-themed fabrics are licensed and therefore too pricey for donation quilts.  It just turns out that three of my quilts in this box could go either boy or girl since they're jungle animals or nautical.  But I'll be keeping my eye out for those boys!  These are in the box:

baby jungle animals

nautical

more jungle animals

3 Cats on the Brick Path - a bear to quilt!
Don't know why it got so messed up ...

This is the current WIP now on the design floor: