Another "A Lovely Year of Finishes" for June.

It's time again to make ALYOF for June.  I don't really think I should win for May because although I finished a number of BOMs for May, I did not finish (quilt, bind, etc) a full quilt. I only did one top and it wasn't listed.  So this time, I'll put down what quilt I want to finish, and there are five that need to be finished but  I will really try to do two of them and save the others for another time. 

The first one is a quilt BOM that was very fast and the squares were completed with Material Girls Layer Cake Sampler which was completed with two layer cakes or one layer cake and a background piece of fabric.   I've been working with subtle pastels and with a background of black with polka dots. All the pieces are completed, but I need to put the squares together, with the sashes and borders, and then quilt it.  I'm excited about it.  It was suppose to be completed two weeks ago, but with a number of things working against me, I know I can finish it.  Here are some of the blocks.

There are 24 blocks.

The 2nd one I am looking at completing is another BOM that I have been working on from Jennifer at

Border Sample blocks

Gable House and Company.  A friend of mine gave me 50 pieces of fabric for my 50th birthday.  This quilt was difficult in a way because I had to use only the pieces of fabric I was given and some plain green I included.  So there is one more row to complete, and I want to make it slightly bigger, but the top is almost done.  It's bright, cheerful, and I would love to complete the entire things so that I can show it to my friend before I move schools and not see her for a while.  I still have to add another border and another row (saw tooth).  then layer it, quilt it, put on binding, and that's it.  Here's what the quilt looks like so far.  

Center piece

And as usual, in my list of things to do are the different BOMs that I need to complete.  I am behind in all the appliques, and the Star quilt from my Quilting Guild.  But the guild won't meet until the 2nd week in June so I'm safe  ;)

Good luck to me.  Although my list is smaller this time, I still have big jobs to do.

End of May's List of things completed..

Well, it's the end of May and what did I get completed?  Here's the list with  links to blog postings showing each listed item done.  Two of the "Blocks of the Month" are completed, and it will be on the list next month for putting them together and quilting them, so I'm excited about that.  But will I completed them?  Well.....  ;)  Enjoy the read in the links, all pictures are at the bottom in the end of the completed sections.

• Material Girls' Layer Cake 13 and 14
• Material Girl's Layer Cake 15 and 16
• Material Girl's Layer Cake 17 and 18
• Material Girl's Layer Cake 19 & 20
• Material Girl's Layer Cake finishing off the quilt (put the borders on it).
• Down the Rabbit hole Flying Geese
• fix up down the Rabbit  fans.  They were too small.
• Down the Rabbit Hole - Applique pieces
• sycamore-rose-block-2  - Can't seem to get my applique in order...  So much work.
• sycamore-rose-block-3  - I'm getting so behind!!
• Sycamore Rose block 4 (April)
• Sycamore Rose Block 5 - May
• Free Motion Quilt along Block 2 styles 
• Free Motion Quilt along Block 3 - 4 styles
• Free Motion Quilt Along Block 4 - 4 styles
• Crafty 2013 Quilt Along May (2 of them) .
• Crafty 2013 Quilt Along June (2 of them) - did it before.
• Aurifill's quilt for the end of bed (2 rows completed, need one more row, and binding)
• Aurifill's May's quilt.
• Block Lotto March (chain with star) - done
• Block Lotto - May (stripes - 12 of them 
• Made 4 blocks for the Block Lotto - see this link for blog submission.
• Quilt Doodle - May
• Vice Versa - May
• Globe Trotter - May
• Prairie flower #4 (I missed that one) and I'm almost half way through it but it's so complicated!!!
• Prairie flower #9
• Continue on with the quilt I've been dreaming of - its appliqué 
• Galaxy of the Stars - May - This one isn't due until the 2nd week in June, so it was low on my list.
• Finish table runner beads on a string (needs to be quilts)
• Start of a new quilt - disappearing pinwheel
• Do the modern quilt that I have cut out - green and purple.
• Made a table cover with extra material. - added this to list.





Block Lotto entered and quilt half way through.



Down the Rabbit hole almost done.






Table top finished and given away - practice free motion.



BOMs for this month.




All the BOM's that I did this month:




Click to see other bloggers' finished productions  ;)

Creating a Large Applique.

Before

I was dreaming of a quilt which is strange because i've never done that before.  After the 3rd dream I knew that I had to make the quilt.  It's all applique at this point and I just started last month.  So here's my progress.  

AFter

During last week I fixed up the dress because it was at a wrong angle with the wind blowing at it.  So on the right side I added another piece.  The arms were not sewn at this point, I must placed them.

Material is a problem here.  I'm very picky of what it should look like.  I loved the dress material but I can't find skin tone.  I'm looking at painting a light pink tone, but I've never done that before so this will really be a challenge.

This month I found the shawl material and some background material, but I'm not ready to put my piece on the background yet.  I've sewn the shawl and the arms to the girl.  So the piece is solid.

I know it's not a flattering picture, but as I said this is a work in progress and you can see from my "Things To Still Do" list, there was a lot of applique on it that I didn't do as much as I wanted.  I still need to find the skin tone and a couple of other things, so I get to go hunting.  I'll do my rest.

But so far, a good start!!! ;)

Stars of Honor is beginning to grow.

It wasn't on my list of things to do because quite frankly, I had June to do it, but sometimes you feel like working with specific material and this was one of those days.  Debbie Mumm has a block of the month here that looks like the picture below.  She gives all the instructions at the start for the cutting but I've been cutting as I go because I wanted to try to use some of my stash and I have, but to make it for the military I have bought  some more to make it as big as it's getting.  The quilt is approximately 62" by 78" or thereabouts. It'll look great and my husband has already said he wants it. Sooooo  Another quilt to add to my collection.

This was May and June's block.  She does a section every two weeks so it's easy to complete and you make a number of the same blocks to add. The ones below, I had to make four of them.  The colours are different and definitely for a man.  But with the gold in it, it would be a lovely show quilt. Maybe.

Here is a picture with all the blocks so far:

This block of the month will last the entire year.  So I guess this will be one of my husband's Christmas gifts.

Tutorial to help with Down the Rabbit Hole. Look Ma, no curves to sew!

The following is a bit of of tutorial in how to create this block from Jennifer's BOM.  The final piece looks like this:

Final block on the "Down the Rabbit Hole" BOM by Jennifer .

Instead of making the squares and then appliquing the leaves or using a button stitch on rough edges I wanted to finish the edges and then use the button stitch.  So this is what I did...

I used interfacing (normal sewing interfacing), and cut out eight copies of the leaf pattern.  Make your template with a 1/4 inch sewing area.

I pinned each interfacing to the material, and sewed 1/4 inch around the interfacing.  When pinning the interfacing remember that the sticky side faces the right side of your material.  This way when you cut it out and turn it inside out the sticky side will be on the back and the right side of the material will face you.  Continue on to understand more.

This is where I cut out the interfacing now.  And I clipped the top corners.

I then make a small slit in the centre.  This is where you turn your material inside out to look like the next picture.  Right side is on top, and the sticky side of the interfacing is on the back.

Here's a hint to turning it inside out and not ripping the stitches because you are after all, stitching on interfacing which is really light.  Use chop sticks.  I have plastic ones that I got in China Town in Vancouver, BC.  Take a look, small tip works great for turning things inside out, and you get two.

Once I have all the petals done, I place them on my block.  I can pin them and iron them down.  I then used my button hole stitch to sew it down.

      

And done.  Looks great, and was so easy to do.

This block done.  Almost completed the quilt.  Thanks Jennifer for doing this great Block of the month that you can find here!!!!!!!  I highly recommend it!

My List of Things to do still...

Well, I've looked over my list and I still have a bit to do and the end of the month is speeding up. Most of it is applique, but that just takes time.  and the Prairie flower this time has so many pieces, I stitched in the car when we went down to the states for baseball.

Although the list is still large, I don't feel pressure from it because I have completed more then what's uncompleted.  The vice versa is done, and ready to put up on the flickr account.  Take a peek yourself below to see how it turned out. I'm really starting to enjoy the colours together.  In the end it will look fantastic. 

As for the list....  What's left.

• Material Girl's Layer Cake finishing off the quilt (put the borders on it).
• Down the Rabbit Hole - Applique pieces - Orange Peel.
• sycamore-rose-block-2  - applique
• sycamore-rose-block-3 - applique
• Sycamore Rose block 4 (April) - applique
• Sycamore Rose Block 5 - May - applique
• Free Motion Quilt along Block 2 styles
• Free Motion Quilt along Block 3 - 4 styles
• Free Motion Quilt Along Block 4 - 4 styles
• Crafty 2013 Quilt Along June (2 of them)
• Aurifill's quilt for the end of bed (2 rows completed, need one more row, and binding)
• Prairie flower #4 (I missed that one) - applique
  
• Prairie flower #9 - applique
• Continue on with the quilt I've been dreaming of - its appliqué 
• Galaxy of the Stars - May
• Finish table runner beads on a string (needs to be quilts - but I can't seem to find it???!!!)
• Start of a new quilt - disappearing pinwheel 
• Do the modern quilt that I have cut out - green and purple.

Only have a week left, but can still get a few more things done.

Vice Versa - 6th block.  Looking good!

Monday's little adds.....

I wanted to add a few things to my complete list today and although I was going to work on the Layer Cake by Material Girls, I also wanted to do a repair job on my "Down the Rabbit Hole" quilt by Jennifer.  But once I got started I couldn't put it down.  Here's some of the pictures of what I did.

Fixed the fans, put white all around them.

Completed the flying geese around the quilt.

But not completely around...

I ran out of the tan material around the geese, and couldn't find any more so I improvised.  Remember, this is my "50th" quilt, the 50 pieces of material a friend gave me for my 50th birthday, so I promised myself that I would only use that material.  I did cheat with some left over tan that I ran out, but I don't want to add anything more and there was no tan material in the group.  So I decided to put the square there, and the rectangles to sort of mark a spot to embroider the name of the quilt on that square.  In the end it will be perfect.

I couldn't stop there though.  I wanted to see how big it would be and because I added that border of green (it wasn't in the pattern but I needed something to finish one section from the other, I added a 1 1/2 inch border.  The geese were easy to adjust, but will the squares still work?  Curiosity kills the cat, so I continued on....

The quilt center...

One of the borders attached.

I'm thinking of undoing it and putting another border around the geese but I want them to fly free, so I need to think about it.  What do you think?  Advice is needed  ;)

I still need to cut the material for the Orange Peel, and then I'm able to finish the entire quilt and put all the borders on it, as well as the final triangles. See Jennifer's final quilt on this link.

As for the rest of my list, I didn't put the borders on the Layer Cake quilt by Material Girls but I did cut the material for the Vice Versa Quilt.  I'll sew that sometime this week.  You really need to be awake for that quilt.  

As for the rest, my list of completed items is growing which makes me happy.

The Sewing never Ends.... Love it...

I continued on sewing on Monday, but I still didn't brag about everything I did Sunday.  I started to sew and cook at the same time at 1:00 and stopped at 2:30.  No I did not cook a quilt, while waiting for the timer to go off I sewed.  These are my blocks of the month (9 in total with two to be completed by the end of this month) that are on my list of things to do:

Crafty 2012 Block of the month (free online) for May

2nd Crafty 2012 BOM for May. 

Two blocks a month.  Block size is 12 1/2 inches.  I'm loving the colours - blast batique that I got years ago on sale in Belleview Washington.

The International Globetrotting Mystery quilt by Pat Sloan.  Using some very bright material for this and I don't know if it's working or I should get a different flatter colour so it fits in better.  Comment here and tell me what you think.  None of my pictures do justice to the material, which has gold thread in it.  There are beautiful different shades of purple and the green is olive green, darker, but it just doesn't show here.  This is the 5th block of the series.

Globetrotting May

And one of the other things that I needed to do to catch up is with my "Down the Rabbit Hole" quilt by Jennifer Overstreet at Gable House and Co.    I sewed the fans without thinking to add a 1/4 border for sewing, so I made them too small, and instead of redoing (I'm using 50 pieces of material that someone gave me for my 50th birthday and I'm running out of material) the blocks, I fixed up the quilts.  Here are the results  ;)  I love it.

Down the Rabbit Hole - April.

I still need to do May's, but I think I'll do that as applique.  That's it.  Got sewing for today (Monday).

Busy Sunday...

Block Lotto

Been going at it really strong to catch up with the Block Lotto modern quilt and I have to say it was really fun!!!  I had to do 12 blocks of the May block which was stripes.  Many people said it was hard, but I guess my sewing foot is on the mark for a 1/4 inch because once I started I had no problem doing them.  The ones on this bed have been sewn together into units of four.  Now I have to put them on on the Block Lotto site and tell them now many I made.  Not only did I do the 12 for my queen size quilt that I am building (been at it since January - but you can start late because all the patterns are there, you just need to catch up) but I also did 4 more to enter the lottery and 2 others that were the wrong size.  So that's not bad - 2 out of 18 that didn't work.  The secret, I made the side triangles (you make a square and cut it in half to make

two triangles) from a 5" square, much bigger then what they ask for, but really, it's easier to cut down to being short on the size.  The size of each square is 7 1/2" which makes the large square.  They had to be true blue, and that's what they are with cream on the lines.  But as you can see from the above picture, I made a couple with the orange/yellow/wild colour original quilt colour that will be the border as well as more squares.  It's in some of the circle blocks as well.  

So I have to remember (and ladies we know what it's like to remember anything.... with the large list of things-to-do we have  ;)  to enter the block lottery before the end of May.  Check out my post!!!

The other Quilt that I've been working so hard to get done from my list of things-to-do this month is the Layer Cake Quilt from Material Girls' website.  It was an excellent QAL that was fast (truthfully, with working full time and only quilting every second weekend this was quick for me but so much learning) and teaches you so much that each square can before a quilt of it's own.  All you have to do is choose one or two of the blocks you liked and make a complete quilt on it.  Here are quilt blocks 13 - 18 (I did 19 and 20 last month).  All are done now and I need to sandwich the quilt.  I missed the deadline for this one (by one month) but that was because I had to go into the hospital (nothing serious) and the medication before that got me size for 3 days before and a week after.  So darn, no final prize, but the quilt itself is a prize.  Judge for yourself.

They look fantastic all together, with a border of 2 1/2 inches and a large finish border of 3 1/2.  I won't show the final picture until it's all together and then you can be the judge yourself.  If you want to see the blocks along the way, click here.  Everyone says the background is what makes it, the layer cake was a simple, light, pastel layer cake, but it pops with the black and white.  The borders will only be the black and white, so all will really show up in the end.  I'm excited about it and I said I would put the quilt together and have the top layer by the end of the month, then in June, I'll quilt it with tiny circles in black thread only on the black material.  That would be so good looking, it will be approximately a queen size quilt.

I've done more but I'll blog about it in another blog. 

Thanks for listening.

Busy weekend, but always time for sewing.

With my list fresh in my mind and a couple of quilt due dates coming up I spent about 4 hours sewing today.  I did most of the cutting on Friday, so it was nice to just sew and see what appears.  I wanted to keep up with many of my BOMs that I caught up with last month, so here they are, the steady ones.

There's the steady one, the Quilt Doodle which is really turning out so well, I am so happy with it.  I sewed 3 of the large blocks together to make a complete row.  Showed it to my husband and his only comment was "Its a Christmas quilt??"  I explained to him that it won't be finished until Christmas anyways so that's perfect.  Then dutifully he said it was very nice and continued to watch his hockey game  ;)

Doodle Quilt - did the tree on the right.

I completed the Aurifill block.  My entire quilt is all flowers, so it will be very bright when it's done.  It's a chain on point.

I also tried to catch up on the Material Girl quilt - layer cake quilt which will be due on May 16th, but it will take quite a bit of work.  I still need to do quilt blocks 13 - 20, but at least today I finished 13, 19 and 20.  They looked so intriguing I wanted to complete the last two.  And it turned out exactly like it should, so take a look at all three then some close ups.

All three together.

Love the colors.

The pastels look well in the black dotted material.

Looks like the disappearing pinwheel I want to do.

But as I said before I still have so much to do:  blocks 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18, then put the borders on them to put all together.  I'll also need to quilt, and that will take some time.  I want to do a circles on the black all around the pattern.

To continue on, I had some extra material from before and I did a table runner.  I practised my quilting on them.  Did leaf design and flowers in the centre.  Take a look.

Square table cover.

Notice the quiltings?

I was finishing off the edge, and this time I machine sewed it.  It looks perfectly fine.  Will show this and the 3D quilts to my Quilt Guild on Tuesday.

At the same time I tried to catch up with the Block Lotto March block (Irish Chain).  I did two of them

April's Block Lotto Quilt

but I still need two more.  They take quite a bit of time.  One thing that does not take a lot of time is May's lottery block.  It's a simple block with three fines of white and blue.  I love the look.  It's very simple yet beautiful.  I need to do a good amount of them but with creams and simple blues.  the instructions say do not do any in aqua blue and of course that's the one I did  ;)  So I'll have to make more but I'll use these in my quilt.  I love the look of them.  Considering doing an entire quilt of them.  They look so modern, that's what I like about it.  

Notice the block below that is suppose to go all together.  I finally got one whole section completed.  Notice also the Irish block, March's block that I did not complete and one of the things on my list of things to do. It's simple but does take a lot of time, especially the centre star.  I would like to do the block in a different color, I don't like so much green in it then the white.  It would be better to do the opposite.  Maybe for the other two blocks I need to complete I'll do that.

One of the sections all done.

What else?  I still need to do a lot but  when looking at all that I have done today, I still feel that I've done well, and I'm happy with myself.