I don’t remember how old I was when I got my Betsy doll for Christmas. I have her original pink dress, plus a couple of dresses that I wore when I was her size. A red cotton dress my maternal grandmother made me and a light blue dress that my mother made me. I felt she needed something more festive for Christmas, so I went shopping and found this velvet and taffeta dress. She wears a size 2T.
I have a few more pieces of sashing and corner stones to make then I can start assembling the quilt.
Over the weekend I finished both Clue #3 and Clue #4 of the Quiltville Mystery Quilt Chilhowie. I saw some grumbling about folks running out of orange fabrics and I think I know why. Although 2 yards is mathematically 1/2 yard more than is needed, when working from FQs and needing matching sets, if the orange squares from Clue #2 were not evenly distributed from each FQ and not cut along the width of the FQ I can see where you would run out if you only purchased 8 FQs. I had 13.
My current Leader & Ender project is Rivanna. I think I have 30 different fabrics, so I’m about 1/4 of the way through the HST. This is a quilt for my guest bed, so there’s no rush.
After finishing Clue # 4, I worked on the sashings for my Pizza Box quilt. The units for the inner portion of the border sashing is done and now I’m working on the outer portion. I hope to have everything pieced before the next clue comes out.
But I’m already planning my next quilt – or rather how to finish a quilt on my UFO list. I pulled the fabrics on the left from my stash, but naturally I don’t have enough fabric, so a trip the LQS was in order to see what I could find. The fabric on the right came home with me. I love the that diagonal stripe as a binding. We’ll see if I use it or not. My plan is to have my decorating Christmas Quilting done by July this year as the guild program that month is Christmas Quilts by our members. I have 2 Christmas quilts on next years UFO Challenge list. The list was complied and turned in prior to knowing what the program was going to be. I might have added a 3rd quilt had I known.
Yes, I seem to have duplicates. I found all of these because I was looking to see if I had something to help me trim the hourglass units from Part 3 of the Quiltville Mystery – Chilhowie. I can attest to having recently purchased an Easy Angle Ruler. I couldn’t find mine — or my Essential Triangle Ruler. Then I found the small one which worked for whatever it was I was doing. I just opened the new ruler last weekend….
As I was putting the box up, I looked up through the wires shelf and yes, I found my Essential Triangle tool. I’ve put all the rest of the tools back in the box.
As for those hourglass units, I found a Quilt In A Day Fussy Cut ruler the exact size of these hourglass units. It has made trimming these units so much easier and makes me wonder why I put off working on them. I think I have 1/3 of the sets left to do before I start Clue 4 which was released this morning.
It wasn’t just the dread of making the hourglass blocks which caused me to put them off. I’ve been working on the sashing for my pizza box quilt. I think I have all the sashing cut and just need to sew. I hope to get both Clue 4 and this top finished this weekend as I have decided how I’m going to finish another set of swap blocks and just bought the necessary fabric…..
First up is Part 2 of the Quiltville Mystery Quilt – Chilhowie. I’m running about a week behind. When clue #2 came out I was in the home stretch of finishing the UFOs on my challenge list so I barely looked at clue # 2. As when I have a big push to finish something I’m exhausted both mentally and physically. But I rallied this weekend for a road trip.
Last December Ruby and I traveled to Dekalb, Mississippi to visit Village Cloth Shoppe and I purchased fabric for my Pizza Box quilt – 1 yard each of the pink, green, yellow and blue and 4 yards of the black and multi-colored fabric. I’ve finally decided on a layout and I didn’t have enough of the blue or black fabric. Although I could attempt a search of the black fabric as the name is in the selvage, there was no identifying information on the blue. So, this past weekend we headed back to Dakalb. My intention was to simply ask the owner if she had any of the fabric. But as she was with a customer, I walked down the aisle of black fabrics. Lo and behold, there was the bolt. Since I got lucky with the black fabric I circled to around to the blue, and found it! I also picked up the card pattern.
On our way home we took a side trip to Sciple’s Water Mill.
We picked up some stone ground corn meal, fish fry, grits, and wheat.
We stopped for lunch in Philadelphia, MS, which is the home town of Marty Stuart – which reminded us we wanted to go see The World of Marty Stuart at Two Mississippi Museums, which we did Sunday afternoon.
I said I was done when I finished the SQG 2021 BOM. I was wrong.
This is the Green & Cream or was it Cream and Green Swap Block? Either way, the blocks were swapped in 2006. I don’t have notes to know what group I swapped these in. Since it is that old, I started of doing quilt-as- you-go — not my favorite method as evidenced by it still not being finished 7 years after I planned to give it as a Christmas gift! Normally, I don’t TELL the person I’m giving them a quilt so I can just kick the quilt down the line, but this time, I gave them a piece of paper that looked like this:
In the past 7 years I managed to get the top two rows sewn together and to each other and had part of the 3rd row done. Saturday morning I decided the only way this quilt was going to be finished was if I ripped out all of the quilting and assembled it so it could be quilted on the long arm. And that’s what I did. Before I went to bed, I had the quilt loaded on the machine ready to start quilting it. I stayed up Sunday night after binding it to wash and dry the quilt.
I quilted it with 40wt Glide in Thyme. The E2E design is Fresco Feathers.
Now to decide if I’m going to try and lift the green from the batik block or leave well enough alone.
This is my version of the 2021 Starlight Quilters Guild Block of the Month. I started it, then halfway through I started moving so it was put up in a box to be completed later.
With the possible exception of the background fabric, everything came from my stash. The sashing fabric was purchased years ago when I was looking for a light blue to repair a vintage quilt. The backing fabric was left over from Shimmer.
I used Glide 40 wt in Magic Mint. I only had to wind one bobbin. The E2E design is Espalier. The quilt finishes at 40″ x 46″.
This is the last quilt on my 2022Brandon Quilters UFO Challenge that I expect to finish. I’ll do a recap after the meeting on Monday.
First up is Bauble ‘n Beads, a Cat Nix design. I saw this on a Facebook live the summer of 2019. Then I saw this collection of Dan Morris fabrics called Radiance. So, I made the decision to make this quilt and Atomic Starbust from the collection. I subsequently made Shimmer with a white background using the same FQ Bundle. Will there be another quilt (wall hanging) from this bundle, stay tuned.
I have also finished the top to the 2021 Starlight Quilters Guild BOM. I need to make a backing then I’ll get this on the frame.
Both of these quilts are on my 2022 Brandon Quilters UFO list. Once I finish the BOM I’ll have completed 11 of the 12 quilts. The 12th one will roll over onto the 2023 list and my plan is to finish it first.
Since we are talking Thanksgiving weekend, naturally we have to start with the Quiltville Mystery Quilt by Bonnie Hunter. This year’s quilt is Chilhowie. Information on the quilt can be found HERE. All though the clue was not difficult, it took me all weekend to get it done. Once the clue came out, I decided I wanted another piece of white batik. My SIL and I went to Stitch-in-Frame in Bovina, Mississippi. It’s about a 45 minute drive. Afterwards we went on to Vicksburg for lunch at Rusty’s – awesome catfish and we split a Mississippi Mud Brownie.
We’ve been hearing about how low the Mississippi River is low. It’s about 10 feet where historically it is closer to 13 or 14. This picture was taken at 2:47.
Just a few minutes later – 3:01 the fog started rolling in. I finally started working on the quilt Friday evening.
Saturday morning, after receiving notice that my nephew’s quilt top is on the way to me, I pulled out Baubles-n-Beads to get it quilted. I started by pulling out all my gold thread. I apparently have quite a variety. LtoR: Mocha, Khaki, Biscotti, Sand, Dijon, Military Gold, Buttercup and Vegas Gold. That’s Bombay on the far right which I used in the background. I ended up using Sand since it matched the topstitching on the quilt.
It was after I finished the quilting on Baubles-n-Beads that I worked on Chilhowie. I ended up with 18 HST, which still need trimming for Rivanna, my Leader/Ender project.\
On my design wall proper I have blocks for 2 quilts. The black and bright blocks are from the Pizza Block challenge I participated in with Quilters By Hearts Desire. I have one more block to make. The blocks on the right are from the 2021 Starlight Quilters BOM. I still have a few more blocks to make. My goal is to get this quilt finished by December 6th.
In my quest to knock out the last few UFOs on my Brandon Quilter’s UFO List, not only have I finished a Christmas Project before Christmas, I finished it before Thanksgiving! My SIL and I both bought this fabric when she was visiting us in July 2018. I drove down after Thanksgiving to show her how to make flying geese, as it simply wasn’t working over the phone. I think she had her top done by the time I left to go home. Due to my husbands death the week after I got back, my top languished.
This past April I finally made a decision on how I was going to make my wall hanging (it’s different from my SILs) and I finally figured out how to quilt it. I found a Christmas Tree decorated in holly on my machine. I morphed it to fit the space. For the border, I pulled out a June Tailor wavy ruler and marked the wave on the top and used one of my curved rulers to guide the machine for a straight line. At the top/bottom of each wave I put in a circle using the smallest hole on the largest swiss cheese ruler by Handi-Quilter. The pieced blocks was done in continuous curves with a “curly-q” in the corner squares and flying geese. Suzi’s Magic binding finished the wall hanging.
To hang it, I cut square and folded them in half. I have a piece of lattice which I picked up at the hardware store to hold it up. It measures approximately 16″ x 52″. I used Glide 40wt in Basil.
I have another finish this morning. I started this sampler December 31, 2020, drafting the block patterns and giving them to my SIL. Then I decided to move. Last week I delivered the last of the block instructions, so it was time to assemble this quilt. The only issue, is I didn’t like the fabric I picked for the sashing – it was too stark against the blocks. I really thought it was going to be yet another quilt where the inspiration fabric wasn’t going to be used as the border. I posted on Facebook my dilemma, and orange and black were was suggested. My original choice was black, so that wasn’t going to work. So I took my blocks & the border fabric with me when I drove down to Gardensong.
I found an orange Grunge with pink and yellow highlights. I think it works.
The backing is a floral with all of the colors. I bound it with the Grunge.
Started: 12/31/2020
Finished (top, quilted, bound and washed): 11/14/2022
Measures 51 1/4″ x 62 1/2″
Legacy 80/20 Batting
40wt Glide in Strawberry Blonde
Quilting design: Airborne
This is one of my UFOs with the Guild.
