January is red month...red blocks

Yesterday, I worked on red blocks. I pulled out my red scraps and and made some little 9 patches and one string block. 

Today, I  made 4 flower blocks.  I'm making this flower quilt out of the Easy Quilt magazine.  I'll be working on this quilt this year and I'll be using scraps to make it.  I did buy the yellow fabric for the center of the flower but I plan to use scraps for all the other flowers.

I was thinking about making some scrap blocks too.  What are they called?  Oh, yeah, crumbs...Do you use a foundation to make these or just start sewing crumbs together?  Can you use paper or should it be fabric?   I haven't done any of the crumb blocks yet but I have some crumbs that I want to try.  With the cost of fabric now, I think it would be good to use up all the fabric I have. 

Here's my pile of red fabrics, it didn't go down at all, so I'll be making a few more blocks out of my reds.

My Present Quilt

I came in Friday night and worked on my present quilt...here's a picture of it. The last border in the pattern shows just a small 1 1/2" white border.  I had several 2" blocks left over and I started putting them together two at a time.  My first thought was I would make a little quilt out of the leftovers but then I thought, well, what about a border on the quilt?  Look at the top of the quilt and you will see what I'm talking about. 

Should I use this as the border or do you think it takes away from the presents in the middle?  Let me know what you think, please.

I was hacked and I'm hacked off!

Ok, I can't send each one of you an email as my contact list and email have been compromised.  If you have received email from me in the past, you were probably in my contact list. I hope you didn't get a crazy email from me saying I was in Madrid and got mugged.  I have had so many calls and texts letting me know about this.  I apologize if you got this, it wasn't me.  I hope it's all cleared up now. All my accounts have been changed but like I said, if you continue to get crazy email, please don't hold it against me.  Thanks for your understanding.

Row By Row quilt and a little Christmas wallhanging

I finished my Row by Row quilt this weekend.  I think it turned out really cute.  We were given  a row instruction each month last year and the final instructions were given to us in November.  We are to take it back to our January meeting and show how we finished it.  For all the ones that finished, there will be a surprise drawing.  I think there was only 8 or 10 of us doing this but this was a fun project and I know everyone will be sorry they didn't do it when they see the cute quilt it made.  Here's my Row by Row quilt flimsy ready for quilting.

Here's a little wallhanging I finished too. 

Free Motion Quilting challenge

I worked on a few things Saturday.  My Free Motion quilting was one of the things I started....

I am participating in SewCalGal's Free Motion Quilting challenge this year. I put a sandwich of fabric together and started working on my homework for this month's challenge. I started out using Robison-Anton thread on top and the bobbin. I then changed to a bobbin thread in the bobbin case. That worked a little better. I slowed my machine down too and that helped also. I went to the quilt shop and purchased some King Tut thread and some top stitching needles. I changed those out and started playing again. I could tell a difference right off. The stitches looked alot better on the front and back. I have bobbin thread in the bobbin case but it's old thread. It kept breaking so I changed back to regular thread in my bobbin. I found some Coat's and Clark bobbin thread Sunday afternoon at Joann's and I'll be trying that out next. I've heard about some bobbin thread called Bottom Line that they say is good but I can't find that locally. I'm going to order some of that and play with it too. Here's my sample of the leaves we are supposed to do this month.   It was hard for me to change directions with this but I finally got that down.  I'm pleased with the way the different threads made my stitches look and I  feel like I have more control now since I slowed my machine speed down a little.  I know it's going to just take practice and more practice to get it right.  But, here's my start:

Christmas Package Quilt

I came in Friday afternoon and was going to go sew with my friends.  I got off a little early Friday and came home and instead of going up to my sewing room and getting ready. I laid down on the bed and decided to finish a book I had been reading. Well, needless to say, I fell asleep, didn't get to the sewing night with my friends and didn't finish the book either!   I woke up and decided it was too late to go sew with my friends but I did go on up to my sewing room.  I sat there for awhile trying to decide what I would work on.  I have so many projects to finish and was feeling overwhelmed.  I decided to just pull out one of my projects and work on it and see how far along I could get. If you don't get started, you can't finish, right?  Anyway, I pulled out the Christmas package blocks that I won at my quilt group from our Christmas party.  I put them on the design wall and played with the layout and decided I needed to make more blocks.  I won 16 blocks but wanted this quilt to be a bit bigger so I made 9 more blocks.  Here is the middle part of the quilt put together.  I finished sewing it together tonight.  Now, I'll be putting a white 2 1/2" strip around the outside, some 2 1/2" blocks sewn into strips for the next round, another white 2 1/2" strip, then a final outer border of a Christmas print.  I'm not sure what that will be yet.  I think this has turned out pretty cute so far.  Here's the middle part to this quilt...

I'll be working on this later in the week to see if I can get it to the flimsy stage.  I'll show you my progress later.

soscrappy: Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2012 and SewCalGal Free Motion Challenge

Happy New Year!   I hope your Christmas or holiday was wonderful and you got to spend time with the ones you love. 

I don't know about you but I'm ready to get busy again.  I decided I didn't want to overwhelm myself right off but I do want to challenge myself to get things done. I know I always do better with deadlines so I decided to take stock and see what I wanted to accomplish this year. One thing I want to do is to use up some of my scrap stash, so I turned my attention to Angela.  She had a rainbow scrap challenge last year and is at it again this year.   I've been organizing today and I didn't do too much with my colored scraps last year but I'm willing to try again.  I love seeing what everyone does with their scraps and I want to use up alot of mine too.  Angela is way more organized with her colors than I am but I can always pull mine out as I go.  She's already started the month off and decided on reds.  I'm going to incorporate this challenge this month with another.  My group is doing a Mug Rug a month.  This month is a house mug rug.  I'm going to use my red scraps to make some house mug rugs.  So, to that end, I'll go pull out my reds and get busy.  Here's a link to Angela's Scrap Challenge, go check her out.soscrappy: Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2012

 But before I go, I want to tell you about the other challenge I decided to do this year.  I'm always trying to finish my own projects.  I like to be able to work on my quilts from start to finish.  I love to hand quilt and do still hand quilt occasionally but I'm not a fast quilter and I want to see my quilts finished in my life time.  I used to work in quilt shops (I worked in three different shops over a ten year period) and I did alot of samples.  These samples did not have to be quilted at the time.  So, I have several of those hanging around and I have several other tops finished waiting to be quilted.  I like to machine quilt but I don't like to quilt big quilts on my sewing machine.  I have quilted a king size quilt in the past and did not enjoy it at all.  I will quilt up to a full size but I don't like it to be bigger than that.  I am an ok machine quilter but want to improve my skills,  so to that end, I have decided to participate in the Free Motion Quilting challenge  over on SewCalGal's site. She's having 12 different teachers, one each month and she's giving away prizes too.  So, I think that's a win-win combination. 

  There is a link on the sidebar of my blog for more info. Or, you can click here: http://sewcalgal.blogspot.com/p/free-motion-quilt-challenge.html

Ok, I'm getting off now so I can get busy.   Until next time, happy sewing!