This month has flown by, or dragged by, I haven’t made up my mind yet.

On the quilting front, I quilted 4 quilts for a customer.  I’m doing edge-to-edge computer driven quilting for hire.  My customer was thrilled with all of the quilts I’ve done for her.  The top 2 are the Minky backs.  Depending on who you ask Minky is a bear to work with, or it’s not.  I suspect it has to do with the quality of the Minky.  This is from Shannon. It is WONDERFUL. It’s also hot, so I was asked to not use batting. The 2 tops came out just fine.

I’ve also been playing with pouring acrylics.  The vase and painting above it were done at the same time.  Then I did the painting on the right.  Finally I attempted to do some Christmas ornaments, but the paint didn’t stick to the inside of the ornaments.  I’ve since painted them on the outside with mixed results, but I haven’t taken a picture yet.

There’s a new quilt shop in town — Stashworthy Fabric.  It’s on the north side of town — about 35 minutes from me.  They had been open for about a week when I stopped in.

As for my quilting projects, I’ve been working on a “gazillion” red/neutral and blue/neutral HSTs.  I finally finished them, and have started assembling my broken dishes units. If I’ve counted right, the red ones are made, and the blue ones are partially assembled.  I am concerned though as I came up with an extra blue/neutral HST.  Does that mean I need 3 more or have 1 extra?  Of course since I’ve already thought I had all I needed who knows for certain.  I hope to finish this quilt top tonight or tomorrow so I can start working on the “real” quilt — which needed even more HST as it is large.

The United States celebrated 100 years of Women’s Suffrage back on August 18, 2020.  Starlight Quilters Guild was asked to make 36  12″ quilts in celebration. We used the purple and yellow stars from a replica of Alice Paul’s banner with one star for each of the 36 states which ratified the 19th Amendment.

This is my quilt.

I based it on the story of Harry T. Burn’s vote in the Tennessee General Assembly.  As the story goes, the assembly was evenly split with suffrage supporters wearing yellow roses and those against wearing red roses.  His mother, an educated woman, wrote him a letter which he had in his pocket urging him to vote for suffrage, which was not the view of the men in is district.  At the last moment, wearing a red rose, he voted to ratify the amendment making Tennessee the 36th and final state needed to amend the constitution.

The blocks I picked are Rosebuds,  Mother’s Choice and Tennessee.  The purple star is from the banner and was a required to be included in the quilt.  Here’s what I wrote on each block:

Rosebud:

He wore a red rose
His constituents said no
Women should not vote

Mothers’ Choice:

Mother’s Choice was vote
So a letter to Harry
Give women the vote

Tennessee:

Harry changed his mind
So Tennessee ratified
Now women can vote

Star:

One hundred years past
The ballot box was accessed
Regardless of sex

The quilts can be seen at Johnson County Arts & Heritage Center in Overland Park, Kansas through January 23rd. They are currently hanging in the lobby.  The plan is to show them at the 2021 Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival in June and the 2021 Starlight Quilters Guild Quilt Show in the Fall of 2021.

As our grandmother’s and great-grandmothers fought so hard for our right to vote, please make your voice heard and vote on November 3rd if you have not voted early. (I voted last week.)

Not too long ago, I was brought 4 quilts tops to quilt. It was the first time I had a customer in my sewing room. I discovered that thread selection was an issue.  She picked colors off my colors card, but of course, we had to try it on the quilt tops. She was standing on the back side of the quilt frame, I was on the front side, and the thread was in the 2nd drawer of the chest. There were so many spools of thread in the drawer to find anything you had to pull a bunch out.

It started me thinking about a better storage solution for my thread and where it should be in the space.

Monday, I found this cabinet on Facebook Marketplace.

My original plan was to fix glass panes so they didn’t need the backing, but after I broke the glass, I decided I didn’t need to see my thread.

My main thread drawer is empty.  Now I just need to figure out where exactly I’m going to put the cabinet.  For now it’s in the middle of my living room.

It’s been a long 2 weeks.  I’m not sure what I was doing the first week of my absence – I can’t think that washing my quilts took up all that time, but I guess that is what I was doing the first week. I need to refold them to get them back into the cabinet, but for now, they are sitting on my bed protected from cat hair by a towel. I’m not sure what Sherbet is protecting them from.

The 2nd week, I know what I was doing.  Working long hours – and that was before anyone got wind of me being out of the office on vacation this week. Needless to say there was no quilting happening last week.

I finally was able to begin quilting this past Saturday – after I swapped out the ruler foot for the cup foot on my Innova.  Of course I first had to make a trip to the hardware store because  I couldn’t find my 6mm allen wrench. It has been in the top drawer for nearly a year. Who knows what happened. I’m sure it will turn up now that I’ve replaced it.

Once the foot was replaced I loaded the first of 4 customer quilts on the frame.   I’ve decided I will do a bit of computerized edge-to-edge quilting to help pay for my quilting hobby.

This is the back of the 4th quilt.

Actually it is two new quilts.  My last post had me picking fabrics for a sampler quilt (Quilt #1). This is my final decision — but I haven’t started it since it was a crazy week at work and I never made it into my sewing room.  I was able to play a bit in EQ. I’ve designed a quilt for a wedding gift for my nephew and his wife.  They requested whites and creams with a hint of sea foam and lavender as shown in this color palette:

So Saturday I headed to Quilters Haven in Olathe,  Kansas to look for batiks.

I seldom buy fabric in one go for a quilt – especially if it is going to be scrappy, but that’s what I did.   So this is Quilt #2. But before I start cutting into the fabric I want to make certain I have the pattern correct – not to mention have a quilt I can practice my quilting on when I get that far.  So I pulled red, blue and neutral FQs from my stash to make some practice blocks. Thus Quilt #3 – although it’s the one that is currently being worked on.

If you’ve read my blog or followed me on Facebook, you know that I’m a scrappy quilter, so only using 3 fabrics — the same 3 fabrics throughout a quilt is a challenge. Especially since until recently I didn’t have much yardage.  Now I have yardage, but very little in the way of prints that could be used for borders.

I think I found 4 maybe 5 prints with enough yardage, but then finding 3 fabrics to go with it was a challenge.  I came up with these 2 options.

Background –  Soft yellow, “Dark” – Fuchia, “Medium” – Turquoise

or

Background – Gray/White dots, “Dark” – Fuchia, “Medium” – gold/yellow

The plan is to use the black with gold sparkles as the accent border and sashing.

Now I’m wondering if the second set of fabrics works with either the butterflies or abstract print.  I guess I’ll be sleeping on this for a bit until I get the pattern worked out.

Since I was up early this morning for a work thing, I worked on updating the collage pictures. I found pictures of all of the tops waiting to be quilted.

I found pictures for all but 5 of the quilts. I wasn’t able to locate 2 of the projects. I suspect they are in a bin under my longarm.  I’ll dig them out before the first of the year.

This blog has been neglected for the past few years, so tonight I updated my “Finishes”. Not all the pictures are great, there aren’t blog posts for every quilt and there are no dates listed.  But the “Finishes” are up to date.  “Tops to Be Quilted” has a current list, but picture is out of date. The “Quilts in Progress” has been updated in the same way.

A few more things have been crossed off the list — including the pillowcase for Narragansett Blues which I decided not to make. I planned to use the backing fabric, but since it bleed so bad….

As for the quilt, I mentioned I fixed the spot on the binding.   Here’s the quilt hanging in my living room on a temporary sleeve. There’s just barely enough space on that wall.

I finished the two Flying Dutchmen quilts from the February 2009 Lotto blocks.  Both of these quilts were give to Hope House.

Then I temporarily misplaced this piece of banner fabric.  This is what I am to use in my Suffrage Quilt.  Needless to say, I was in a panic trying to find it.

I suspected it got grabbed up and stuffed in one of my fabric boxes by accident, so pulled all of the “FQs” out of their boxes looking for it. I didn’t find it.

So I asked if any of my quilting buddies wanted to come help me look.  Karen said she’d come over.  That morning I found the fabric in the bag of stuff I needed to cut into strips. Karen came over anyway and helped me put all of this back together.  She boxed while I finished folding the cat FQs.

Then I got to work on the Suffrage Quilt.  I’m happy to report that it is quilted and just needs to be bound. I’ll show  picture of it as soon as I’m able.

Instead of throwing away the fabric and batting scraps that are too small for me to use, I’ve started collecting them to give to a woman in my small guild who uses them to stuff dog beds for the shelter. After cleaning my space this week, I had 2 bags full. Since the guild is not meeting, I drop them off at Show-Me-Quilting, in Raytown. A smidge more fabric came home with me.

The red  on the top and the black on the bottom will be used with the crazy blocks I bought at auction a few years back. The dinosaurs and hexagons will go into kids quilts, and the dotted fabric goes into my stash.  Now to figure out where to store the fabric from the past two days.  At the moment it’s neatly folded and stacked on a chair. I’ve got to sew to use it up.

Speaking of using it up, I pulled down my Flying Dutchmen Swap blocks and have started the quilts. The blocks will be framed in gray. The sashing will be be pink with gray cornerstones. I’ll finish it with a grey border. That will be 8 yards plus backing out of the stash, and another thing crossed off The List.

I crossed off Fix Narragansett Blues. I didn’t catch the bottom right 3 pieces under the binding very well and it pulled out after washing.  This is the result of my fix. While crossing things off,  I crossed off the pillowcase I planned to make.

Easy Breezy = 68