Dog Chasing Its Tail

I have to say that lately I feel like a dog chasing its tail.  And like a dog chasing its tail I'm either having too much fun or slightly confused.  Usually, other than family or work, I only concentrate on one thing at a time.  However, over the past few weeks I have had several different projects pulling me in different directions.

Last week, I started participating in the 2015 New Bloggers Blog Hop.  The hop has not officially started quite yet, but I am slowly getting to know my fellow quilting enthusiasts and learning so much.  I think most of us have been broken down into groups so that we could critique each other's blogs and provide advice on what we can do to improve our posts and pages.  With the help of my fellow friends, I have successfully added labels for better searching to my posts and finally figured out how to widen my layout so that things flow better.  Sometimes, it's the simple things that makes us happy.

I have also been desperately trying to quilt the Mystery Quilt I finished piecing back in April.  I solemnly swear (to whom I'm not sure) that I will not let this poor lap quilt become a UFO.  I'm not sure my back room shelves could stand it.  But I'm showing progress.  I just need to start quilting the pink blocks.

So with this quilt practically wrapping up this meant that I had a great excuse to break my "Thou shall not purchase any new fabric this year" declaration and splurge on new fabric for Meadow Mist Designs upcoming mystery quilt.  I'm ready, how about you?

In my attempt to try to bring a love for quilting to the next generation, I have persuaded my daughter to give it a try.  In her down time this summer she is going to follow Diane at Quilt Shop Gal's Kids Camp.  The fabric for the first project came yesterday and hopefully by the end of the week she will have her first completed cuddle quilt.

The last project I'm working on requires me to call on my limited paper piecing abilities.  I'm pretty sure piecing these blocks shouldn't take as long as I am making it take, but as I get the rhythm down I think I'm starting to shave my over all time down.  One of my biggest questions with paper piecing is how do you know what sizes to cut the fabric to make sure you are covering the area you are working with.  I can't tell you how many times I have abandoned a project because I got to the end and found that after all the hard work, I didn't have enough fabric to cover the seam allowance when I folded it over.  I hate wasting fabric.  In the next few days, I hope to share the process I have come up with to help me avoid this tragic mistake.

Thread that plays hard to get

The quilting of my finished Mystery Quilt is well under way.  I think I might be able to get it finished up by next week, which will give me time to start a second mystery quilt being hosted by Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs.  She is suppose to post the material list sometime tomorrow.  I think I'm actually going to allow myself to purchase new fabric for this quilt.  Gasp!  I swore at the beginning
of the year I was going to try to only work from my stash but momma needs some retail therapy in a textile kinda way.



Another small project I'm going to follow (well the teenagers in my life) is a kid's camp being hosted by Darlene at QuiltShopGal. Every Tuesday and Thursday from June to September she is going to post some sort of kid friendly activity.  She is kicking off the camp with a Cuddle Quilt  and a tutorial from Jenny Doan at Missouri Star Quilt Company.  After showing my daughter the video she was more than willing to try making her first quilt.  Depending on what the activity is for Thrusday, I may recruit my teenage niece (she's the same age as my daughter) to participate as well.  I thought having them write down their thoughts about the activity would be a great way to introduce them to blogging and keep them thinking over the summer.

Yesterday I posted this picture of one of my pretty little Aurifil spools to Instagram and to a FaceBook Quilting group in need of advice.  This particularly bad boy was playing hard to get at a time that I just wanted to get to business and I was getting pretty frustrated.  Later a non quilting friend messaged me to see if I was able to find my thread start.  My response back to her went something like this:

"After walking away from it for a bit to cool down and reading advice from other quilters, I started gently rubbing/massaging the top threads to loosen them a bit.  Then I carefully lifted a thread with my seam ripper and lightly ran it along under the thread until, finally that little sucker popped out."

After reading my response to her question, I thought "rubbed/messaged" the thread?  Is there not a better way to word that?  But no there really wasn't.  She just kind of laughed at me.  But thankfully I was able to find the start to my thread and make a little more progress on my quilting.

The Quilter and The Cat

I do all of my quilting on a domestic machine. I long for the day when I can scream from the roof tops, "I finally bought a long arm!"  I've been on a miniature quilt kick for several months now, as some of you know, and I think I have become spoiled.  I forgot about some of the challenges that come with handling large amounts of fabric in a tiny opening.  But it definitely can be done.

After finishing the last Aurifil Designer Mystery BOM 2015 I thought I would finish this Mystery Quilt I found at the Gold Coast Quilter's Guild  website.  I wanted to be able to call it finished before it ended up in the dreaded UFO pile.

The quilt is so colorful I wanted to do something fun with the quilting.  So I thought I might go with some dot-to-dot quilting and ribbon candy.

So after getting everything ironed and pinned together I was finally ready to get to the quilting.  Oh, how I waited for this moment.  And that's when I remembered what it was like to start manhandling all the fabric around.  I hadn't had to do that in a while.  In the past few months, I think the largest thing I've touched was 30 inches square or possibly smaller.

So after a few deep breaths, I jumped in.  I decided to start with the ribbon candy.  Something easy that I could work on without any marking.  I was buzzing right along, lost in my groove when the fabric stopped moving.  What the...

Meet Oliver, I'm pretty sure he was a quilter in a past life.  Anytime the fabric seizes up nine times out of ten he's decided to lay down on it.  My miniature quilts are too small to lay on while they are on the machine.  All he can do is set beside of me and glare or knock my scissors in the floor.

At least he let me get most of the white ribbon candy finished this evening.

He drives me crazy but I'd miss him if he wasn't here.  But please, no one tell him.

Spring Tiles

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend!  Other than some much needed time with my family I used the extra time to finish my May Aurifil Designer Mini Spring Tiles by Lynn Harris.  If you are looking for a fast easy (possibly beginner) project this little mini definitely delivers.

Lynn's version of Spring Tiles is very scrappy, very happy and very fun!  Pat Sloan also gave us a sneak peek of her version; still the same pattern just a switch up on layout of colors.  After downloading the pattern I headed straight to my stash to search for the right fabrics to make my version.  I wanted to go with a color layout similar to Pat's tonal blues that created three distinct squares.  I chose these poor little fat quarters.  They actually started out as another project but got abandoned some months ago. It was now their turn to shine.

After around 2 hrs (tops) of cutting and piecing this mini was ready to be quilted.  It was time to figure out a quilting plan.  I knew I wanted to highlight the three squares created by the blue/brown and cream fabrics.

This definitely highlighted my three squares but I didn't quite love the dot to dot quilting in the cream.  So I erased and tried again.  Maybe highlighting the three squares shouldn't be the plan.

This was a completely different approach. I thought about using squares to create nine four patch blocks.  No, I wanted my three squares.  So I decided to put away my markers and Plexiglas and start on my stitching in the ditch.  My hope was that something better would come to me.  

The more I stitched the more I thought about the nine four patch quilting version from above.  Then I remembered a pile of charm pack squares left over from the Chubby Churn Dash mini from February.  So I did the only rational thing...I stopped quilting and started piecing a second quilt.

This was probably the best idea I've ever had, because in the middle of piecing the second Spring Tiles this idea came from out of nowhere.

  Now I had what felt like the perfect answer to my original quilting problem.  All of the lines on the darker fabric had given this one a very masculine feel.  The addition of the curved quilting in the center square seemed to soften it a bit.  Problem solved and second mini pieced.

Now 100% of the focus was on the quilting and the Aurifil thread.  I few hours later I had my finished projects.  

One of my favorite parts of quilting is picking out the thread to use. The thread used on the quilt is just as important as the fabrics; they can really make or break a piece.  One of my favorite things about Aurifil thread is that it comes in so many different colors and shades.

I used #2309 silver white in the cream areas, #1285 Medium Bark in the blue/brown quilting areas, #2460 Dark Carmine Red in the red triangles and #2780 Dark Delft Blue for the binding.

For this one I used only two threads.  Aurifil #2405 Light Oyster for the quilting on all of the charm pack blocks and #1158 Medium Grey for the gray squares and binding.

This little project definitely proves that if one is fun, two is better!  And my darling Chubby Churn Dash now has a matching partner.  

My Crazy Week--A Wrap Up and Wind Down

The past week and a half has just been crazy and has not left much room for quilting.  Work craziness started off with our server crashing and trying to rebuild it.  It has made for some long nights, but at least I had some company. (My co-worker and best big brother Doug)

               

This time every year our small town hosts the Strawberry Festival.  Over the years it has turned into a week long celebration of strawberries.  Lots of strawberry shortcake!  The carnival creeps into town.  Stuffed animals are won and some slip through the cracks.

Four parades are held and even a 5k run.  For our small piece of the world it is a big deal.  Oh, and most importantly the local quilt guild hosts a quilt show.  

This year I decided to open myself up for judgement and enter some of my work.  We are allowed to enter one item in up to five categories.  I decided to bite the bullet and enter five things.  I choose four items I had quilted and one that had been long arm quilted by the local quilt shop.  And to my surprise I did much better than I expected.  I took second place in four of the categories and got honorable mention in the other.  I had just hoped to place in one category so this was an awesome surprise!

Falling Leaves--Second Place Large Wall Hangings

O' Christmas Tree--Second Place in Machine Quilted

Sunny Lanes--Second Place Miniature Quilts and Star Pot Holder--Second Place in Misc Division

Carpenter Star--Honorable Mention in Medium Size Quilt Long Arm Quilted

       I couldn't be happier with the results and feel like all the time I have spent at the machine this past year has truly paid off.  However, I feel like I owe Debby Brown a huge thank you for inspiring me to set down at my machine and give it a try!  I definitely owe Kathleen at Kathleen Quilts a huge thank you for helping me when I was stuck quilting O' Christmas Tree and Falling Leaves!  And lastly, Pat Sloan and Aurifil thread.  By finding Pat's awesome blog I finally found a thread that has stole my heart!

Now that the week has finally wound down it's time to get some rest and get back behind my machine again.  It's been too long.  

Falling Leaves--A Small Quilt

Early last fall while surfing on Pinterest (I'm a little ashamed how many of these start this way) I stumbled onto a blog of a quilting genius.  Her name is Kathleen and her blog is Kathleen Quilts.  At her blog every friday is Free Motion Friday and it is simply my favorite day of the week.  If you have a quilt and you find yourself stumped on how to quilt it; she encourages you to email her a picture (taken straight on) and she will do a mark up of how she would quilt it (drawn in steps).  I couldn't believe what I was reading, it seemed almost too good to be true.  The best part is it wasn't too good to be true!

After I finished going back to the beginning of the Free Motion Friday blogs, soaking up all the inspiration, I rushed to my pile of UFO's to find the perfect one to send to her.  I came up with a wall hanging called Falling Leaves from 101 Fabulous Small Quilts.

For months the back ground and leaves had me stumped.  I made several attempts at coming up with something but absolutely nothing suited me.  (I wish now I had kept some of them)  I decided this would be the perfect quilt to send her because I was at a complete loss.

A few weeks later when I logged on the check out the Free Motion Friday post I squealed with delight because she had chose my quilt to talk about!  Check out Kathleen's post and what she had to say about it.  Thanks to her big juicy quilting brain, I now had at least some sort of plan for quilting; I just had to figure out what fillers to use.

Even though she had already drawn out a plan for me, I decided to draw it out myself with the fillers.  Drawing can help you figure out what you need to do first and how to move around the quilt.  Since I do my quilting on a sit down machine, I'm not locked into quilting a row of quilt at a time.  I can move the quilt around however I need to.

I made a few changes to her original design.  Instead of doing continuous curves in the small colored blocks I did a little loop and changed the design in the leaves just slightly.  I really had not given pebbling a try so I wanted to stick them in the area around the center.  I went with back and forth curvy lines in the area outside of the center square and inside the center leaves.  Now came the bigger question...could I pull this amazing design off?  Could I do it justice?  Could I bring it to life?  Well, you'll never know till you try.

I started off by stitching in the ditch and working on the center leaves.  

I try to use matching thread colors in my top and bottom threads and almost always match it to the front of the quilt.   Not everyone likes the way it looks on the back, but I do.  It can make for a very colorful back.  Until this point, I used what ever embroidery thread the local quilt shop sold to quilt with.  I suffered through lots of thread breaks and frustration.  I had heard of Aurifil thread from Pat Sloan's blog and decided to give it a try on this project.  I had colors in my thread stash to match everything but the background fabric so I figured I would order an Aurifil to match it.  I have never turned back.  I can't stop saying how much I love their thread and so many colors to choose from.  I started out with the pebbling of the background.  If I had used the cheaper thread I probably would have thrown this project out due to the thread breaking, but this thread held on like a champ and laid nicely.  

This is an up close picture of my pebbles.  They are far from perfect.  You can see all kinds of little eye lashes, which resulted from foot/hand coordinating speed issues.  (After I washed the quilt most shrunk some)  Never let small imperfections slow you down, it's how you learn.  This is a picture of the pebbling form a distance.  To an untrained eye all they see is the fun texture not my tension issues.

Here is the finished project.

I entered this wall hanging and few other projects in our local quilt show today.  I have to admit I'm a little nervous because I have never entered anything I have quilted into a show for judging.  Keeping my figures crossed that the judge will have some good things to say and good advice on how to improve.  

Remembering My Dad

I'm not sure which date is harder for me to swallow,  May 8th or Mother's Day.  Four years ago I lost my dad on Mother's Day, May 8th to a massive heart attack.  It doesn't seem possible that it has been that long.  Things have changed so much that when I think about it everything seems jumbled.  For the longest time I had this weird way of thinking about events (ok, I still do it but not as bad) as being either BDD or ADD (Before Dad Died, After Dad Died).

I could not have asked for a better father, period.  He was always very loving and very supportive no matter what my hair brain idea was.  I simply had him wrapped around my finger so much, that I'm not sure if my mom found it endearing or annoying.  I remember one time when I was probably four my grandparents came in from out of town and we took a trip to the local game farm.  It was July or August and super hot and humid outside and you had to walk a really long way to see the bison display.  I begged my dad to carry me to the exhibit saying that I didn't feel well.  The back story is I was always begging to be carried, I was L-A-Z-Y.

Proof I was always on his shoulders.

For once he stood his ground and made me walk and then there was the really long photo shoot of family pictures.  When we got home that evening my mom took my temperature and it was very high.  I really was sick.  My poor daddy felt awful.  I think he carried me for the next five years no questions asked.

I remained the center of his world until 2000 when I gave him the best gift ever (and lost my top dog status just slightly) my daughter was born.  

She absolutely adored him and he her.  Her favorite thing to do on the weekends from the time she could talk was to spend time at grandma and pap-paw's house.  She was with my mom they day she found my dad and my brave little 10 year old held herself together to call me to get to there.  For such a young age I think she handled herself in a horrific situation better than the rest of us.  

It breaks my heart that he is gone and the things he has missed.  Energy can neither be destroyed or created.  I believe that he still lets us know he is around.  

One of the last conversations we had was about getting a pool and after he passed we did purchase one.  We were in the process of setting it up and I was feeling sorry for myself.  I looked up at the open door of my dad's outbuilding and noticed for the first time something I had not seen before.

In the center of the door he had spray painted a smiley face.  

While going through pictures to have at his viewing I ran across a picture from a Christmas when I was smaller.  I never quite understood the picture.  No one was looking at the camera, the grown ups where talking and dad was doing something but I had never paid attention to what.  In that moment I finally saw it.

Flying through the air straight for my mother's head was a wrapping paper ball.  I miss his since of humor and joking.  Always remember to laugh.  

I just wanted to take a few minuets to recognize him on a day that hurts.  Those that knew him would tell you what a great person he was.  He was not showy and did not need recognition for the things he did.  He was one of the few people that just didn't complain.  He was simply put, love.  

One last thing, after everything had happen, I got a chance to go through his camera and look at pictures he had taken.  I realized he was giving me some very important advice through the things he had seen.  It's the simplest moments we should notice, in its own way, everything is beautiful.

I love you and miss you very much, Dad!