Slow Down Stitching

I find myself with several hand-stitching projects to play with and wonderful fall weather to enjoy some outdoor stitching.  It's a perfect combo for slowing down and relaxing now that the heat of summer has passed - not to mention the worst of hurricane season!

This is a completely hand-stitched project - a doll quilt featuring Lemoyne Stars and some well-aged Robyn Pandolph fabric.  All the stars are pieced, now I just have to join the blocks and strips, then add the borders.  I'm excited to see this one coming together!

This baby is in the process of having the binding hand-stitched.  My niece asked if I would donate a quilt for a fund-raiser she is holding, so I need to finish this one soon and mail it off to her.  I really love this quilt, but I'm happy it will be used to raise money for a worthy cause. 

I'm going to link up with some more hand-stitchers over at Kathy's Quilts and then head outdoors to enjoy some gorgeous weather and relaxing stitching!

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Gosh, I've been waiting all month to use that song title for a blog post.  I hope Bob Dylan doesn't mind!

It has been a week of wrapping things up.  I finished another quilt from last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I made the binding for the Orange Confection quilt and got it machine-stitched and ready for hand sewing.  I played with and then put away all the baby blue scraps, clearing the table for next month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge color.

A few baby blue scraps were sliced into wonky log cabin blocks.  I need to pull out all the previous month's log cabins and put them on the design wall.  My vision for this quilt is to only use rainbow colors, so it's time to plan the layout and see how many more blocks are needed.

I have wanted to start working on an all blue and white quilt for some time.  This month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge color inspired me to think about and play with several designs.  I first noticed this block combination on Barbara Brackman's Material Culture blog.  I thought it would make a great combo for a blue and white quilt.  My first effort was to create 8" blocks, but I thought they were a little too big for a scrappy quilt.

Next, I tried the block combo as a 6" finished size.  Much mo bettah!  (that's a New Orleans phrase, btw)  Now that I have the blocks sorted, I'll try to make a few of these every month.  This will be a long-term, ongoing project.  If I can figure out a way to make it a leader-ender project, so much the better!

That's my baby blue report for the week.  I'm going to join up with the other Rainbow Scrappers at Angela's soscrappy blog, so do take a peek to see what other baby blue inspiration happened this week!

Rainbow Scrap Quilt 2.0

Another 2012 Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt has reached completion!  

I was inspired by Cathy Tomm's Greek Square blocks and dug through my scraps each month to add more blocks to my challenge pile.

I planned from the beginning to give this quilt to one of my nieces.  I found out her favorite color was red, so it was a no-brainer choosing a red batik for the border.  I'm so accustomed to not pre-washing fabrics, it didn't even occur to me the red batik might not be colorfast.  I didn't think about it until it was too late to pre-wash, so I did a test on some scraps.  They didn't bleed, so I think it will be OK.  I do plan to do a quick washing with LOTS of Color Catchers!

My local long-arm quilter, Cindy Braiwick, did the quilting.  She used a wonderful fleur de lis based design that really looks great with the Greek Square blocks.

Here's another look at the quilting from the back.  She used gold thread to help pull all the crazy colors together.

I'm still experimenting with what type of label I like best.  For this quilt I did a simple, triangular label.

As always, many thanks to Angela of soscrappy for the inspiration and to all the other Rainbow Scrap quilters for their weekly words of encouragement!

Stitching Up Blue Napkins

Very little sewing has occurred this week as I've been getting ready for and entertaining guests. I've missed my usual quota of sewing therapy, but having friends come for a visit is good therapy, too!



I did need to make some more napkins for the camp, so I dug into the blue fabric bin and made these. I don't need to have matchy-matchy napkins, and this way everyone can keep track of their own. If you'd like to make your own napkins, a good tutorial is here.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! I'll catch up with everyone next week!

Lemoyne Stars Revisited

I'm still playing with the iPad Blogger app.  It doesn't have many bells and whistles, but it gets the job done.  It does have a camera option built into the program, so I thought I'd give that a try.  The camera option allows you to snap an iPad picture while in the process of typing a blog entry.  You also have the option of using a photo already stored on your iPad.

So, I snapped a quick picture of the progress I've made on the Lemoyne Star doll quilt.  I've been hand-piecing the stars during quiet moments, and only have one more to complete.  The plain blocks are ready to go once the stars are finished.  The large scale pink flowered print will be the outer border.  I'm looking forward to hand quilting this!

Grrrr!  One major drawback to this app is there is no way to put links in your blog post.  That's a big negative for me, so I guess I'll have to keep looking for the perfect iPad blogging app!

Addendum:  link to original Lemoyne star quilt added & picture re-sized via regular Blogger interface on my laptop.

New: Project & App

I don't blog from my iPad with great frequency, but it's a nice option to have.  I recently updated my iPad blogging app and had an epic fail when I tried to blog while traveling.  Today's post is an effort to overcome iPad blogging obstacles.

Here is my latest sewing project at the camp.  It's a Mary Engelbreit kit from Moda that I bought several years ago to make for a friend.  I didn't think it had been in the queue THAT long, but when I started working on the project I noticed the date 2007 on the selvedge!  The good news is this will be a quick project, although I am contemplating hand quilting.

Scrappy Saturday: Make It Blue

Most of this week's sewing was focused on hand-stitching quilt bindings.  I'll eventually post pictures of the finished quilts, but for now they're just in that not-photogenic binding stage.

I did find the time to make some leader-ender spool blocks in this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge color:  light blue.

These will round out a nice batch of blue spools for this on-going project.

Some more light blue scraps were turned into a happy, scrappy house block.  I especially like the blue toile-like fabric that makes up the main body of the house!

This week's blue house is brought to you by Brad Pitt.  His Make It Right Foundation has been building green homes in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.  The homes are quite a departure from traditional New Orleans architecture!  More Make It Right homes can be seen here.

I'm linking up with the other Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilters over at Angela's blog.  I know there will be lots of scrappy blue inspiration over there!

Scrappy Saturday: Back to Blue

The September color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is light blue.  I have no shortage of blue scraps in all shades, but I haven't decided how I want to tackle using just light blues.  I've been wanting to make a blue & white 9-patch quilt, so maybe I'll start out with some light blue & white 9-patches.

I did start out with a light blue happy, scrappy house.  I love the main house fabric - it reminds me of blue and white china.

This New Orleans house is so whimsical - it looks like something from a fairy tale!

I'm going to be working on some binding stitching while I watch college football this afternoon, but I'll be taking breaks to check in at Angela's soscrappy blog to check on other light blue scrappy inspiration.

A Cure for Hexie Fever?

I have been sorely tempted by all the hexie stitching to be found throughout Blogland.  So many stitchers have been sharing their hexie projects, it's been hard to resist beginning a project of my own.  But why would I want to resist, you ask?

Because I have an inherited hexie Project That Must Be Finished before I start another!

I was gifted with a bag of partially completed hexagon flowers begun by my maternal grandmother.  She made a number of Grandmother's Flower Garden quilts - I happen to have a completed one - but this one was never finished.  For some reason, she free-pieced the seams on these; no marked seam lines, no English Paper Piecing.  That made the blocks a little wonky to start, so I did some judicious ripping and re-sewing to get the flowers to lay flat.  This was a take-along project that went with me to many of my boys' sporting events, and having something to do with my hands was always a blessing!

Eventually the flower sections were done and I had to start connecting all the flowers together.  That makes the project much less portable, so it became my football (NFL/American football) watching project.  Somewhere along the line it got tidied up and put away and ignored for newer, sassier projects.  Until a recent Hexie Queen blog post inspired me to get going on this project again!

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about finishing this quilt!  I love the idea of finishing something my grandmother started AND I love the prints she was using.  It's just not at the easiest stage for stitching now.  However, football season starts tonight and runs through February, so if I persevere, maybe I'll have a finished top in time to celebrate the Superbowl!

Better Late Than Never: Wrapping Up Red

Well!!  That will teach me to try to blog while traveling - using a new iPad blogging program!

I wrote TWO versions of the same blog entry on Saturday and both were lost to the ether when I attempted to publish them with my new-to-me iPad blogging program.  Talk about frustrating!  I'll skip all the boring details and just say I'll be sure to test out any future iPad blogging programs before I attempt to use them from the road.

This past Saturday was the last day of August and the last day of scrappy red stitching for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  

I wrapped up my use of red scraps by making a few more red leader-ender spools.  I dug deep in the red scraps, including scraps from my Grandmother's Choice blocks, for these spools.

I was also inspired to make one more happy, scrappy house block, although it's really a red, white and blue house!  These scraps are well-aged:  they're from a fat quarter "souvenir" bundle I picked up in an Atlanta-area quilt shop one summer after dropping my boys at summer camp in north Georgia.

The last red New Orleans house for August is actually a hotel - the Le Richelieu Hotel in the French Quarter.  The hotel is actually two different buildings stitched together (how quilt-like!) to make a new whole.  The building on the right is an example of a double gallery house and was built in 1845.  The building on the left was once used as a macaroni factory!