March 14, 2014

Still have snow on the ground in big piles from where the plowed snow was dumped. I am tired snow and ready for spring, but I have to admit the last snow we had was the most beautiful and made everything look clean again. That is easy for me to say, because I did not have to drive in or shovel snow. This is one of the advantages of being retired and living in an apartment.

Here are some things I have stitched since my last post:
The tree from Quilt Doodle Doodles the BOM.

All of Cindy's blocks are made of 2.5" squares. I redrafted the pattern to a 1" finished grid and used strips rather than squares for piecing. The green was left from another project that had 1.5" strips. It is connected to last months cabin block.

I have been trying to remember to use leader/ender piecing ala Bonnie Hunter. I finished 3 nine patches along with the tree. That makes 20 with the ones I pieced in February. Not sure how I will finish this.

I had a Bento Box in the UFO state for years. I liked the fabrics and colors but not the quilt. I unstitched the entire quilt and started over. A few new fabrics were added including sashing and boarders. The end product will be two quilts and a pillow.

The quilt on the left is for Jackie, a friend who is in a nursing home. It is backed with dark blue fleece and has a thin layer of polyester batting to make the stitch in the quilting slightly puffy. I have two more blocks to quilt and then bind.

I plan to use QAYG for the blocks on the right. They will also have dark blue sashing and a border. I am much more pleased with these two quilts in progress than I was with the original UFO. Just sorry that I did not take a comparison photo.

February (3)4, 2014

View from my patio door
A fitting picture to go with my BOM blocks
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Found the draft! Three cheers for dumb luck!


Quilt Doodle Doodles BOM
I am doing the BOM quilt from the Quilt Doodle Doodles blog. I competed the sewing on the snowman block for Jan. They still need their eyes and noses. The pattern called for 2.5" squares to finish at 2". However, I want it to be a wall-hanging.  Since the design is based on squares, it was easy to size it down from 2" to 1". I drew the pattern on graph paper in order to eliminate as many seams as possible added 1/2" for seam allowances on each piece. It worked! The idea of eliminating seams, came from my friend Linda at Linda Quilts. She posted the blocks on her blog. 

Sew here are my snowmen, actually snowballs.

It took a deep search through my stash to find the fabric for the Cozy Cabin block. Also, it took two tries to do the roof, but I like the result.

Cozy Cabin

Back again next month if not before.
Happy stitching,
Liz