Category Archives: Quilting

AT LAST: Pineapple Crazy

Yahoo…It happened. I did it! I am THRILLED. Pineapple Crazy is a done quilt!!

In all of my life I never dreamed I’d be able to do a quilt like this. NEVER.

When I first started this quilt I was all excited. Then I finished one block and it took 50 minutes per block if I was hustling along….I lost my momentum. Then I decided that I actually liked paper piecing after I learned a few things along the way. I made a list of some of the “how to” blog posts I wrote while making the quilt. I had lots of questions asked about organization, printing paper and the like. Here they are for anyone who would like to go back and read them.

How to print papers
How I Organized
Ask Jo Questions
More on Organizing

Wow. I have blogged about this quilt SO MANY TIMES. I had to dig to find those posts.

I remember WAY back when I was making Bonnie Hunter’s Crab Apple quilt I was complaining about paper piecing. Just for reference sake: That was in 2010 and this was the piece I was paper piecing. Read about that here.

Crabapple

That tree trunk. Bahahahaha!! As the old Virigina Slim Cigerette ad said, “I’ve come a LONG way baby”. I’m so glad I went on, challenged myself with harder paper piecing and moved past that stage in my life. Now I actually like to be challenged in my quilting.

The bulk of my blocks were done here on this machine. It was 2015. We had just moved to this house. The sewing room wasn’t finished. I had this small spot to sew. I didn’t have my stash easily available. It was sew on these or nothing. For two months I worked super hard to try to do 12 blocks a week. Sometimes I made it plus some….other weeks I didn’t.

sewing-1

I worked hard to finish the machine quilting on the quilt on Sunday night and finished it up over the course of Monday morning, Monday night and then Tuesday morning again.

Then Tuesday night…BINDING! Yes, I machine bind.

There she is…Oh my!

Hubby came home late from farming Tuesday night. He knows I’ve been working on this quilt for forever (really only since the book came out in 2012). I showed him the quilt and he said his usual, “cool”. Then as I was folding it up he said, “Where are you sending that one off to?” (meaning I was giving it away). I snapped my head around so fast I almost gave myself whip lash. Then he busted out laughing and laughing. He was only teasing me!! That guy!!

I did all of the block myself except for a six or so that Kayla made. We were hosting the retreat when Bonnie Hunter came in 2015. She wanted to try her hand at paper piecing. She made some from the scrap that were there. Those scraps were darker. I debated for a long time…use them, don’t use them? Most of my other blocks are all brights.

Then I decided to add a little black here and there.

Then it blends in and looks okay.

I did change up the pattern a bit.

The quilt is made up of inner blocks and then has different block at the border. The pattern suggested this…. Continue reading →

Stash Report and My Mail

11 Replies

There’s an auction happening here on the blog. You can see what is available and bid here.

So I didn’t know if I should call today’s post an “In my Mail” post or a “Stash Report”…I guess it works either way.

At nap time this day I saw the UPS truck stop. He was delivering a HUGE Amazon box. I was sitting on the couch between Ruby and Carver trying to get Carver to go to sleep and keep Ruby from barking at the UPS man and waking everyone. It was a task. The box was set outside the door and I left it there hoping Carver would go to sleep. While I sat rubbing his back I keep questioning myself….”what did I order from Amazon?”. My goodness, certainly I would remember if I order something in that big of a box, wouldn’t I?

For the life of me I couldn’t figure it out. About 20 minutes later I gave up on Carver sleeping and sent him to the kitchen while I grabbed the box off the porch. He was excited for me to open it….

The outside of the box made it seem like maybe it wasn’t from Amazon and inside made me sure it wasn’t Amazon. Good. I wasn’t losing my mind.

Inside was a STUFFED kitchen sized garbage bag!! I was a good girl and read the note first. The note was from Kim. It said, “….I noticed that you had lamented that while your found other goodies at auction, you didn’t find scraps. Guess what? I have scraps!”

WOW…Not only did she have scraps but she shared!!!

She said they were 10 years old…I think that means aged to perfection! It’s time to pull these out and put them into a quilt. Don’t you think??? Kim also mentioned that if I thought I wouldn’t use them I could pass them along. NOPE. I’ll pass on fabric MUCH sooner than I would ever-ever pass on scraps. Honestly…this is Christmas to me!!

I didn’t dare dig through the bag and pull some out. I’m afraid it’s so stuffed I’ll never get the scraps back in the bag and I’m not quite ready to use them yet. WOW. This is going to be fun.

My next package came from Karen. There were cross stitch goodies and crochet goodies for Kayla…and goodies for the kiddos. See? Continue reading →

NE Iowa Quilt Guild Quilt Show

11 Replies

Earlier this week I told you about my fun packed Saturday…I ended my time with Kelli with a visit to the NE Iowa Guild Quilt Show. Warning this post is VERY photo heavy. If you don’t have speedy internet, please be patient.

We were welcomed by this wonderful quilt…it’s the guild raffle quilt. WOW. Impressive for sure!

We were also met by lots of welcoming ladies. Kelli and I have often discussed joining the guild but to date have not. They meet about away from my house. I don’t want to drive back late in the evening. They have day meetings too but for now, I’m working so, no guild for us.

They had a fun raffle bucket. If you bought raffle tickets you put the tickets in the bucket for the item you most want to win.

There was a wonderful Quilt of Valor display. Check out this ….

The quilting is AMAZING. In the white of the flag is the Pledge of Alligance. COOL right?? Check it out…. Continue reading →

String Challenge

8 Replies

My weekend was filled with and auction, quilt show, and then processing the things we got at the auction. I didn’t have sewing time. OH NO!! Aw…it’s okay. There will be time for that.

I did finish Daylilies and showed it off on Friday. That’s one more string quilt DONE!! I am incredibly happy to have it done!! If you missed that post, catch it here. Thanks to all of you who commented with such kind words about the quilt.

So now I more on to another quilt from the book. I have two left.

Pineapple Crazy, which is a top….I found a backing for it! I had picked something before but hated it. Yahoo. This is MUCH better. Now to piece it together and get it quilted.

The other quilt left is Tulip Fields. I got that out and have it set up on my 15-91. I don’t have the string piecing done on it, or even started, so it will be a mess. It always is with string quilts. I did make a change in plans. Originally I thought I was going to do the quilt all batiks…but I’m kind of ready to do something different. The last several quilts I did were batiks so time to change it up. I am doing fall colors. My point of the tulips are a batik (red toned) and my sashing is a yellow/orange batik (more golden)…I thought fall colors with that might be fun.

I’ve been working on trying to make a bit more of a “focused” scrap quilt. To often I throw every single color in and aren’t as selective as I sometimes want to be…so very few blues on this one. This is a shocker. I always try to squeeze in blue…AND RED!! I haven’t pulled scraps yet so I started working on step “C”…(who says the first step should be first??)

In other sewing news…I looked at the calendar. We have a wedding in November. Well two actually. One is family but I hardly know them so, I broke with tradition and decided that I’m done making quilts for everyone in the family. If I don’t really know the couple and the invitation only came from obligation, then I’m not making a quilt. I did send a gift as we won’t make the wedding. With the rain we’ve had Hubby still has only barely started harvest. It’s troublesome.

The other wedding is a neighbor wedding. We know the bride and groom and the parents and like them all LOTS. The bride is a sister to one of my childcare families…the groom is on the fire department with Hubby. This one, I am making a quilt for. I did a long debate on what quilt to make…I tried to think of something they might like. Then I remembered that I have Bricks in the Barnyard as a finished top.

I finished it at retreat in August. The bride is a dairy farmer…I think it would make a great wedding quilt so, (sigh of relief), all I have to do is quilt it. That’s do-able for a Thanksgiving weekend wedding. Easily do-able.

So this week another quilt was checked off the list…and a backing found for the other and the other was pulled out. That’s good I think!! I’m counting it as a WIN week of work.

I’m hoping to have some progress next week. Life has been pretty busy so we’ll see.

PDF Print