A quilt should be basted before quilting if it is quilted by hand or by machine.  In the summer,  I baste using safety pins and clamps on a 4 X 8 basting table.  It is quick and easy to baste a large quilt.  The quilt is very heavy with the added weight of the pins.  The table is in a shed and I don’t slog through the snow in the winter to bring it into the house.

In the winter I  thread baste on a PVC pipe frame. I could pin baste, but I enjoy thread basting while watching TV.

 

 

The pipe frame goes together easily.

 

 

 

The backing is centered with the right side down and clamped on the rails.  The under side is checked several times during the clamping to make sure the backing is taut.

 

The batting is and top are centered and the pipes are re-clamped.  Again, the underside is checked.  This is the time to make sure that there is enough backing and batting to cover the top.  If the backing and batting are cut several inches bigger than the top, there should be no problem.

 

I use my “bad” thread for the basting.  There are some threads that shouldn’t be used in the sewing machine.  I have a lot of thread that I inherited from my Grandmother and Mother.  It is old polyester and old clunky threads that say they are hand quilting threads. These threads have a wax coating and would damage your machine.  I like to use thread with a contrasting color to the top as it is easier to see when removing it after quilting.

I baste, with a big needle, in a grid of three inches horizontally and vertically,

 

 

After the center if completely basted, the package is moved to baste the edges.  Again, checking the bottom to see if the backing is taut and smooth.

 

After the quilt is completely basted, I fold the outer edges over to the top and baste around the completed quilt.  This prevents the batting from fraying while you are quilting the quilt.

 

 

Now that this quilt is basted, I’ll get busy and quilt it.  It will return to the blog when it is finished.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

A few years ago the Guild gave us a paint chip challenge.  I received brown, gold and green.  The colors looked like sunflowers.  I had to make a sunflower wall hanging.

 

 

I had several sunflower embroideries in my file so I used them.

 

 

My signature butterflies were recolored with the correct colors.  I use these three butterflies often, usually on my quilt labels.  They can be colored to go with the quilt.

 

After all the pieces were embroidered, I sewed them together where they fit.

 

 

 

Making a piece out of colors that you don’t usually use is sometimes difficult, but it helps you explore different options.  It’s good to get out of your comfortable box.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

Several years ago, when taking classes at the Vermont Quilt Festival, I noticed a lot of laughter coming from one class.  I signed up for that very popular teacher and finally after four years of trying, I was accepted to her class.  It was wonderful.

The class was held on a very HOT  day in July.  There was no air conditioning.  The teacher, Doreen Speckman arrived, wearing a bathing suit and her signature cow earrings.  We had a wonderful time , laughing and learning. The class was worth the wait. 

Our project was a Carolina Lily made using Doreen’s Peaky and Spike templates.  I immediately changed the name of the wall hanging to “Poinsettia”.  It is one of my favorite Christmas wall hangings.  It is 34 x 34″ and is machine pieced and hand quilted.

Our Guild was having a challenge that year that used different shades of black and one other color.  I couldn’t figure out what to do.  The design presented itself to me as I left Doreen’s class.  I went to the dorm and cut out the squares and started sewing.  This quilt was pieced before I went home.  I was on a roll.  It was hand quilted after I got home.  It took a little longer to finish the class project. The name of the 30″ x 30″ wall hanging is “Peaky and Spike Meet the New Fish on the Block”.  I wonder – Is the little red fish brave and bold enough to visit with the big gray fish?  Do they accept him even though he is   different?  Did he go back where he came from, never brave enough to venture in the big world again? I’m glad that I saw him out and about at least one time.

 

MARCH

 

 

 

The Mile a Minute quilt is made of strips and pieces left over from other projects.  Pieces are added to the strips, then cut apart and the two joined pieces are added to another strip.  Continue in this manner until the made fabric is large enough to cut with a 6″ or 6 1/2″ square.  These mile a minute blocks can be placed in any quilt that has a 6′ or 6 1/2″ part to the block.

The fabrics can be themed, such as 30s fabric, pastels, or just a jumble of what is leftover.  All fabrics can be used next to one another without concern of color.  When set with sashing, the quilt will take on the color of the sashing.  I saw a mile a minute block that had random pieces of black poker dot scraps.  It was striking.

Blocks can be set straight

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Blocks can be set on a diagonal.

This is such a versatile block and can use up all of your scraps.  I small wall hanging made from the leftovers from a single quilt would make a matching piece.

Have a great day and happy quilting

Gaa-Barge #4

This wall hanging is 19″ x 19″  Several fabrics from different colors, red, yellow, tan and green were sewn together to make new fabrics.  Then, the made fabric was cut up and pieced in a tulip pattern

 

 

 

 

The piece was then machine quilted with polyester thread.

 

 

 

 

 

The small gaa-barge quilts are fun to make with the tiniest of scraps.  I have several bins of small scraps to make more gaa=barge or maybe a mile a minute quilt.  Mile a minute quilts are also fun to make.  They use  scraps that are larger than the gaa-barge scraps.  Nothing is thrown away.

Have a great day and happy quilting

Seed catalogues are still coming.  They will have to be enough until the real flowers come up in the spring,  I’ve ordered New England wild flower seeds, cosmos, zinnias, and sunflowers.  That should be a pretty mix.

The first two pictures are repeats.  I did pull fabric from my stash to represent colors in the pictures and made a block.

Poppy bud

 

 

 

Poppy

 

 

 

 

  Purple lupine and daffodils

Pink lupine

 

 

 

I don’t know yet what I will do with the blocks, but an idea is forming.

Lupines are bi-annuals and only blossom every other year.  A few years ago, I saved lupine seed and planted it the next year.  The purple lupines have blossoms every year now.  The pink lupine still only blossoms every other year.

Gave a great day and happy quilting.

 

 

 

In family folklore, Nanna could go to a refrigerator and make a five course meal with what was inside. She was a marvelous cook.  I thought that it would be fun to try this.  My refrigerator needed cleaning anyway.  It would be two birds with one stone,

The five courses would be appetizer, soup, entre, vegetable, and dessert.

Appetizer – I keep Town House crackers and Cheeze it Crackers in my pantry.  I use Cheeze It crackers with a sandwich in place of potato chips.  The Town House crackers are used for a snack, sometimes with jelly and sometimes with cheese.  In the refrigerator is sour cream, mayonnaise, and onion.  I would make Linda’s Dip to go with the crackers.  It is my most favorite dip.  I received the recipe after an office pot luck party.  Linda brought the dip, thus the name.  This is the original recipe.  Even single cooks entertain at times.

Linda’s Dip  –  one 15 oz. container of sour cream, 1/2 c mayonnaise, 1 medium onion, chopped fine, 2 Tbsp. parsley, 1 Tbsp. Beaumont seasoning.  Mix all together.  It can be served with raw vegetables, chips or crackers.  Beaumont seasoning can be found in the grocery store.

Soup – I found a container in the freezer that had parts of a chicken in broth,  At some time, I was going to make a soup and put the simmered chicken into the freezer.  I stir fried 1/4 c each of celery, onion, and baby carrots.  This mixture was added to the broth.  Then the meat was taken from the bones and added to the pot.  Then I added about 1/4 cup of brown rice,  a small handful of spiralized zucchini,(more on that later.) salt, pepper and Mrs. Dash seasoning.  I made a little soup, not a large on like I usually make.

Entre – I found two small pieces of chicken breast in the freezer.  Tucked into the refrigerator drawers was some dried tomatoes, basil pesto, and pine nuts.  I pan fried the chicken.  The pine nuts were toasted in the oven.  The dessert was cooking in there and  the oven was on.  Then I deglazed the  pan and added the above to make a sauce.  All went into a casserole dish and baked for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.  This might be good with some pasta.

Vegetable –  I bought a spiralizer on a whim and had never used it.  My daughter had brought me a delicious dish that she made using her spiralizer, so I thought I needed one.  I had zucchini and sweet potato in the refrigerator and used half of each.  It made a very large pile  of vegetables.  They are stir fried in olive oil with sesame seeds.  A very delicious and low calorie  addition to the meal.

Dessert – Raspberry , white chocolate cheese cake.  I have a raspberry bed Two years ago, it outdid itself and I froze a lot of berries.  Last year there were no berries, so it is good that I have some in the freezer.  I thawed and strained a package of berries, added some sugar and cornstarch.  It cooked in a pot until it thickened just a bit. Melt about 1/2 c white chocolate chips in the microwave a few seconds at a time.  For the crust, I used one whole wheat pita bread, It was made into crumbs in the food processor.  I added 2 Tbsp. sugar, about 1 Tbsp.  melted white chocolate, and one Tbsp. melted butter .  It was pressed into a 7″ pie plate.  Mix one square cream cheese, 1 egg, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/4″ milk, and melted white chocolate.  Pour half into pie plate, drizzle 3 Tbsp. raspberry over and repeat. Swirl with knife to create marble top.  Bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes.  This is not only very pretty, but very yummy.

This is far more food than I could possible eat in a day.  I did get the refrigerator cleaned out, but I also did spend a lot of time doing dished and cleaning up.  Will I try making a five course meal  again?  Probably not.  I just have to pay more attention to what I put into the refrigerator and freezer.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

This has been a good week.  I finished two UFO projects.  Does that make me one week ahead of my weekly challenge to finish one UFO a week?  Probably not.

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The first UFO project was a stack of squares.  They were cut from fabric that I received when another quilter cleaned out her sewing room.  There were enough squares to make two charity quilts and four placemats.

 

 

 

 

I backed the placemats with some Asian fabric,  I seem to have a lot of that type of fabric in my stash and hate to cut it up.  It usually has  a big repeat.  I do have a pattern that uses Asian fabric.  I bought it years ago at Keepsake Quilting.  It was a  “I just have to have that pattern” moment.  I seem to have a lot of those patterns in my pattern drawer.  I should think about making that quilt and use up the fabric.  It will be in the line of my “to do someday” quilts.

 

 

 

The second UFO project is the prototype of the Circle of Friends quilts.  I made it in pastel colors which is not at all like the colors in the other two quilts that I made.  I did learn a lot by making a prototype.  It helped me figure out how big to cut the strips and how to sew it together.  It also helped me design the quilting.  The other two quilts will be quilted differently.   It makes a very nice table topper or wall hanging.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

Last January, I went to the Dear Jane Club at the Quilt Shop.  A quilter in another group was making a Temperature Quilt and it was fascinating.  Each block was a flying geese. The goose was the warmest temperature of the day and the sky was the coldest. How hard could that be, making one flying geese a day.

Temperatures were charted in 5 degree increments and a fabric assigned to each 5 degrees. The temperatures were written on baggies and a fabric inserted in each baggie.  I had a lot of batique scraps  and put a different color in each baggie.

 

The baggies are kept in order in a bin.

Each morning, I check the temperatures on my I phone and pull the correct baggies from the bin.  It takes one minute to cut the three pieces with Kimberly Einmo’s Flying geese ruler.  Her method uses 2 1/2″ strips, so if I had used that temperature before, there is usually a 2 1/2″ strip already cut  in the bag.  Sometime during the day , when I am sewing, I sew the one flying geese.  It is a beginner and ender block.  There are just three seams,  Two to add the sky and one to place it on the strip.  I press the seams when I’m pressing something else.  It’s like making a quilt and not knowing it.  The joining seams are pressed open.

This is a year long project. If I’m not near my sewing room,  I can keep the temperatures in the message app in my phone and make the geese later.  If I forget to do this, there is a temperature app online that tells me the information that I need.

I have the temperatures of five different states in my phone.  Utah, California, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Maine. If a Temperature Quilt was made for each city, they would all be different, even if the fabric was the same.

The quilt is very busy,  Some of the fabrics don’t play well with the adjoining fabric, so I’m thinking of making a 1″ black Kona sashing between the months just to rest the eyes.  If I add the sashing each month, it will keep the months in order.   On the months that do not have 31 days, I can add rectangles of black at the end of the month.  The center of the quilt would be 62 1/2″ L x 59″ wide.   The geese are 2″ x 4″ finished.    (12 x 4″ = 48″  & 11 1″ sashing  11″  = 59″)

It will be interesting to see the colors change to summer colors and then  back to winter colors.  The sides of the quilt should be about the same colors.

Have a great day and happy quilting

Several of my wall hangings are on my walls.  The are rotated from time to time so that I can have a new look in the house.  Some are there forever because I enjoy them or they bring memories .

My welcome wall hanging is by my front door.  It is the only pattern that I repeated as it make a great gift.  I appliqued the pineapple and ribbons before I had an applique class with Nancy Pearson.  The later welcome wall hangings were much better, but we do get better with practice and knowing the right techniques.

 

My granddaughter gave me the lovely depression ware wind chime.  My kitchen walls are green and it didn’t show it’s beauty.  I made a wall hanging to go behind it.  Silver Angelina fibers are stipple quilted on the border to bring out the silver in the glass piece.

 

 

I found the pattern for the wire fox terrier at a quilt show.  The body of the dog was fussy cut from fabric that had several different dogs.  I still have that fabric but it has holes.  Maybe I will need more fur for another piece sometime.  The hair is placed going the right way so the dog looks real.  I machine quilted around the dog and then quilted the background from the back.  The backing fabric had a wavy pattern and I machine quilted the waves up to the stitching around the dog. When shopping for new fabric, I often look for fabric that can be quilted upside down.

Have a great and happy quilting.