Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Barbie World

This summer is all about Barbie. Kendra got her first Barbie doll for Christmas, and just recently became enamored with it.
I wanted an easy project for my summer travels, so I asked Kendra if she'd like some knit dresses for her dolls. Of course the answer was yes! Luckily, I am used to working with small needles for socks, and these dresses were knit flat with a seam up the back. Easy peasy!

AND, Grandpa searched the garage and found my old dollhouse!
It is a wooden house whose walls are hinged so it folds flat to store. The furniture is wicker. The whole set was purchased in the Philipines while my dad was stationed overseas in the late 1970s. I think it held up rather well!

Friday Fill-Ins

Hey Pickle...here's another theme day!! If you want to fill in your own blanks, visit Friday Fill-Ins.

1. I feel ___hopeful for rain__.

2. ___Run __ to catch up.

3. Do _you have a plan?____.

4. Snowflakes are ___ completely unique.

5. It's hard to know how much __spaghetti to cook___.

6. Card players_____ follow suit.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to ___finishing a quilt____, tomorrow my plans include ___movies_____ and Sunday, I want to _get back to church after a few weeks off____!

Thursday 13

In an effort to blog on a regular basis, I will resort to "theme days." This week's list:

Thirteen places I've been this summer (in roughly chronological order)

1. Quality Inns in various cities.
2. US Airways Center for a Phoenix Mercury WNBA game.
3. Rose Chapel in Fort Worth for a lovely wedding.
4. Perini Ranch near Abilene for a dear friend's birthday.
5. Carlsbad Caverns
6. White Sands National Monument
7. A minor league baseball game: Brainerd Lunkers vs St Cloud Bats
8. Park Point beach on Lake Superior
9. Nickelodeon Universe at Mall of America
10. The dentist
11. The movies
12. Gettin' my kicks on Route 66
13. Swimming

Wordless Wednesday - Dance Party

Other Projects

I needed an easy sock pattern for a recent road trip, so I cast on "Primavera" with some Lorna's Laces in the Franklin Habit Panopticon colorway. Fun pooling and the pattern had just enough difficulty to keep it interesting across Texas.
Our house is slowly being overrun with Barbie dolls, and most of the time they are nekkid. A quick search on Ravelry brought me to this...which will probably end up under the bed like the clothes the dolls came with!
And, my Arizona Centennial Postage Stamp quilt. 196 pieces done, only 1804 to go!! Hopefully you can see the gold star which is the center of the state flag. If you have any red, navy blue or butter yellow scraps, I can definitely put them to use!

Quilting Designs

All I have left is the background meandering! Oh, and then binding, ugh. Well, I needed a project for the dog days of summer...
Front view:
I couldn't get the hopping foot over some of the points, so I just avoided them!
I used a circle design in the blue diamonds, so I brought that into the border with a "Bubble Curtain" (courtesy of Leah Day's 365 freemotion designs).My staple "Flame Flower" in the green diamonds and green border:I've used matching thread throughout the project, so the back will be as interesting as the front. The backing fabric is a navy blue tone-on-tone print and the first picture is truer to the actual color.

Mysteries

I am working on two mystery quilts, destined to be Quilts of Valor.
Mystery #12 from Persimmon Quilts...traditional red, blue, cream and gold. I'm working on Clue 3.
JudyL is designing this one. Bright colors with cream background and green accents. Working on clue 3 on this one as well!On the longarm is the wedding quilt, which was paper pieced. The wedding is this Friday. I totally blew the deadline, as explained in the last post :-) So, now I can relax and enjoy the process of stitching. The jewel blocks are in purple, blue and green, and these stars appear in the corner. I am quilting a feathery pinwheel in the purple area, and I will use some concentric teardrops in the turquoise triangles.The view from the back - I am using a different design in each jewel block. I love this purple thread, it's King Tut and it is working like a dream in my machine! At the top of the photo is the over/under feather I used in the inner border.

ter

Time flies

My mind is filled with quotes like "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and something about best-laid plans.
There's no way around the fact that June kicked my butt.
Over the past few years, I have dedicated my summer vacation to quilting. This year, I got a wild hair and volunteered to teach summer school. We are running a three-week math class, from 7:30 am til 12:30 pm. A little extra money, and afternoons free for quilting.
HA - another quote: Man plans, God laughs.
Mondays filled up with swim lessons. There were a few year-end parties, and a weekend church retreat. Then I got sick, and laid on the couch for a few days.
So, I have accepted the fact that the quilt I have been working on, which was planned as a gift for a wedding on June 25th, will not get done since I only have about 8 free hours between now and the time we leave. (heavy sigh) I was so optimistic when I started this project back in January! I still had hope when I was taking the paper foundations off in April! But darn this June - the fates conspired against me. Emily Post says we have four months to deliver gifts, right? (Or is that the rule for writing thank yous...I can never keep them straight.)

Quilting Time!

I've started the quilting phase of my paper-pieced gift. Nothing too complicated, although I am in the process of ripping out a row since the backing puckered...what a bummer!
To reward myself after an hour with the seam ripper, I have started a mystery quilt-along with the Quilts of Valor group. This one is designed by LeAnn at Persimmon Quilts. She uses a great method for the flying geese! (Look for clue #2 on quilt 12)

I thought I'd share a tip I learned from the Yarn Harlot - a counting thread.
That is the sleeve for a raglan sweater, and I need to decrease every 4th row. So, I grabbed some contrasting yarn, and laid it between stitches in the middle of the first decrease row. It's very easy to count those four rows, then bring the red yarn forward. You can use this method to keep track of how many times you've decreased along with counting the individual stitches.

And a tip for the quilters...I was getting stuck with the corners of some blocks on the mystery quilt. My machine was eating the tips and creating a tangled mess of thread.
So, I flipped the fabric so I could start sewing on a wider edge rather than the tip.
Happy Stitching!

New Projects

Thursday afternoon I had some time to kill, so I decided to go to the quilt store. I planned to get fabric for a mystery quilt that Judy is hosting. Of course, I browsed the sale rack while waiting for inspiration to strike. Great sales technique - 20% off when you take the rest of the bolt! That explains about half of those fabrics. Hey, I don't shop very often, so when I do, it's definitely a SPREE.
Then I picked out some fat quarters and fat eighths, whatever struck my fancy.

The greens here are my accent fabrics with the marbled tan/cream background for the mystery quilt. I am hoping it has somewhat of a manly look so I can put it in the QOV pile.
Then, I joined the Block Lotto group. You can find a link in my sidebar --->
Each month there is a different pattern, and when the winners are announced, you send your blocks to that person. It's a fun way to try some new patterns, and maybe I'll get lucky sometimes and win enough blocks to make a quilt.

Have you figured out that I am *not* a monogamous quilter? LOL. Time to go cut more squares for my centennial project!

No patience

This is the cutting table in my sewing room. I had some very nice internet buddies who sent fabric for the Centennial Project, and I have been cutting my little pieces out. I wanted to see how the scrappy fabrics would look in the stark solid design of the Arizona flag, so I concentrated on the center star - re-drafted, counted each color...
and just couldn't wait to start sewing! Even with the darker pieces thrown in, I think I have a decent golden star for the center. My red and yellow rays start as nine-patches.At this point I am about 5% done with the cutting! I worried a bit that I should finish collecting the fabric first - if you remember from the first post, I wanted to use each fabric only twice, but in my rush to start the golden star, I included some fabric about 10 times. Of course this project should wait - I have a quilt that needs to be loaded on the longarm, but I was too excited about my postage stamps!

Centennial Project

Arizona's 100th birthday will arrive in 2012. That's a nice round number, so I set myself a challenge - quilt the state flag (pictured on the left) as a postage stamp quilt. "Postage Stamp" refers to the individual pieces...I'm aiming for 1" finished. For the centennial part of the project, I decided to use 2000 pieces. I'll make up the other 12 in the border!

Kendra wanted to make a similar design, so I sketched the starburst, and she filled in the details:I've started to collect fabric, since I want a very scrappy quilt. By scrappy, I mean 1,000 different fabrics! I'd like to have pieces duplicate only once :-) If you have blue, red or yellow/gold scraps, please email me for a mailing address. It will take a major effort to collect the fabric and get this pieced and quilted in about two years!
I'll close with a random shot of fabric, ready for the washing machine and destined for quilt backs.

4 years and counting

Tomorrow is my blog-iversary! WOW. Can't believe it's been that long, time flies, my baby is growing up, you know all the cliches.My other works-in-progress...

The test swatch for a lace shawl. In my dreams, I hope to have it finished to wear at a wedding in June. LOL - don't hold your breath! Counting yarn overs, k2tog and ssk takes concentration which is difficult to find when a pre-schooler is in the room.
Most of my time has been spent on this paper pieced quilt. 42 blocks, 40 pieces per block. Yeah, it took a while! Now I can have fun quilting it. And you'll have to wait for the final reveal since it's a gift and I don't want to ruin the surprise :-)
Finally, what every girl needs in Phoenix, a wool sweater. At least it's short sleeved! The pattern, Bob, comes from Knitty.com. This is much easier to work on while Kendra plays, so there is hope of seeing a finished product in a few weeks. Of course, then it will sit in the closet until the temperature drops back down to 60 degrees...perhaps this will debut for Thanksgiving dinner!

National Quilting Day

I am going to miss my guild meeting because Kendra has strep throat. That kind of put a damper on my Spring Break plans to quilt while she was at daycare...and I am officially sick of all the cartoons on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. Thank goodness there is basketball this time of year!

I am working on the last six blocks of my paper pieced quilt, so that huge project is on track for its June deadline. I had most of the thread I need for the quilting stage, and managed to pick up the last two colors at the annual show last weekend.

Kendra is a budding artist herself - she is in a rainbow phase, and must cover every square inch of paper in her drawings. I've learned not to pick her up during art time at daycare, because I have to wait for her to finish. This week she colored what looked like a log cabin quilt block, so I had her dig through my scraps to find fabric pieces - TA DA!

Sunday Sewing

I am working on the last dozen blocks for the secret project. What should I do with these oddball scraps that are left over? I'm thinking about a log cabin...Although this picture was taken in January, we have had a repeat of torrential rain this morning.
Perfect day to curl up on the couch!
It's not all doom and gloom, we have some lovely rose blossoms!

Knitting Update

I do have to mention my blog-iversary during this Winter Olympic season. I joined the first Knitting Olympics, the brain-child of Stephanie McPhee Pearl, the Yarn Harlot. She will be knitting a gorgeous Dale of Norway fair isle sweater. Yes, from cast on to finished sweater in 17 days. She is a knitting legend. I will be plodding along on my socks:I finished the front of a sweater vest. The yellow marks show where I have to cut the steeks to make the V-neck. I'm a little nervous at the prospect of attacking my knitting with scissors, but my mom says it helps to think of it as fabric :-)
Here is a tempting little quilt project that I may use as a reward for passing the halfway mark on my paper-piecing stars. A Valentine Sudoku!

Quilt Designs

I had planned a beautiful, photo-heavy post of the quilts I am working on. Tragically, I cannot find the usb cord that goes with the digital camera, so that will have to wait. Luckily, I took a picture months ago of the quilt that is currently on the longarm:It is the Boxy Stars pattern from Bonnie's Quiltville. Here is a rough idea of the quilting:
meandering around the stars, sun rays in the stars, and a wavy filler in the border.

Sunday Sewing

Well, I had hoped to be a better blogger in 2010. It was a busy week back at school, and all my projects are at that middle plateau which isn't very interesting to photograph.

During vacation, I got the first phase of seaming done on my mitered square blanket:All the colors are sewn together in groups of three. Now, I need a lesson on mattress stitch along a cast-on edge, then I can get the blocks together and start the border. I wanted ALL the squares to intersect, but my layout didn't work with the number of blocks I made...you can see the pairs on the left are different than the design on the right.
I only had time to get one top quilted on the longarm during the holidays:
I used Judy's Freeze Frame pattern for the center, and added my own piano-key borders to make this Quilt of Valor. It just needs a label and then it's ready to go in the mail.
I am steadily knitting my Noro Striped Vest during TV time. Kendra is fanatical about Disney princesses, so we have the videos of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella on constant rotation. She's napping right now and I'm enjoying the AZ Cardinals domination of Green Bay this afternoon! I'm trying to get a couple blocks done each week on my paper piecing quilt but it's a gift, so no pictures to spoil the surprise.