Happy New Year

Wishing joy and happiness in this new year bloom in your life like flowers in a garden.

Cheri

 

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Quilt Gift

I just received this adorable sewing box from one of my quilt friends.

She made it with a teapot from her own collection.

So sweet, love it Pat!

 

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And They Sinned Sampler

We are currently traveling through Texas with our RV spending time in some warmer weather. I turn to hand work when we are living out of our camper and this past month I have spent a lot of time working on this sampler I actually started last year. It has been very nice sitting in lawn chairs outside each morning on bright sunny days and stitching. I often wondered how young girls stitched their samplers in the 17th and 18th centuries without the use of our modern day magnifiers and Ott lights but I am convinced they stitched during the day in the sunlight.

Speaking of Ott lights my Black Friday shopping excursion this year was just a quick trip to the local fabric store where the Ott lights were a great bargain and I got a smaller one that attaches right on my sampler frame and will be kept in the camper for those night time stitching opportunities.

This thistle was a fun section to stitch and then the peacock sitting on top.

Joshua and Caleb ( the spies of Canaan) are just coming into view. With the completion of this section I will be about 2/3s finished with this sampler.

While it is nice to spend some winter months in warmer areas our biggest reason for being in Texas is to spend the holidays with our son and his family. We had family pictures taken and the photographer took a bucket of leaves for our 2 and 7 year old grandsons to play with hoping for some candid shots.

 

It is always those non posed shots that end up being my favorites.

Merry Christmas

Cheri

 

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This and That

I have been working on the corner applique blocks of my Mariner's Compass quilt.

Each basket is a little different and I tried to fussy cut a flower motif in the center of each one.

I still need to cut down the triangles and add a small inner border around the compass but then the applique corners will be added.

Earlier this year I posted these two wool blocks that I had done for a donation quilt my small quilt group was working doing.

The quilt is finished! It is 64 x64 inches and all wool. It will be auctioned off at the Omaha Quilter's Guild Christmas party to benefit local children's services.

I hope it makes lots of money!

I also have the top finished from my Stonefields quilt.

I sized it down a little from an 11x11 grid of center blocks to a 10 X 10 and 2 rows of hexagon flowers in the border instead of 3.

This past week I was making some Christmas sugar cookies to put in the freezer. I included a couple Dinosaur cookies for the grandkids and snapped a picture to text one of my girlfriends what I was up to on this particular day. Now when I look at that picture I have to smile as it looks like T Rex is going after the doves.

I hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving,

Cheri

 

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Foxes and Dinosaurs

October has flown by but I managed to complete two quilts for my grandsons this month. The month started out with a trip to the American Quilt Society show in Des Moines Iowa. While there I took a class on machine quilting with Sharon Shambler where we focused on background filling, especially circles. Little did I know this new machine quilting skill would come in very handy later in the month.

A couple weeks later I went to my local guild's annual fall quilt retreat, Camp Wannamakeablankie. Our first order of business was to make the schlep bags hanging on the wall for a charity project.

These bags are made for foster kids who suddenly get moved and their possessions are just thrown in plastic garbage bags. One of our group members is a school nurse in the local public schools who knew a young girl about to age out of foster care. This young girl was collecting used backpacks and small suitcases for these foster children sometimes known as garbage bag kids. It is always nice to be able to put our fabric stashes to a good project.

After the schlep bags were done I started working on a quilt for my two year old grandson for Christmas. This pattern is called Fancy Foxes by Elizabeth Hartmen.

The glasses on the fox were what caught my attention, I frequently (always) wear reading glasses while I stitch and park them on top of my head like a headband when I don't need them. My grandson loves to reach those glasses out of my hair and have me put them on. He conversely likes to take his Grandpa's glasses who wears his all the time and move them to the top of his head. So this quilt has a grandpa and grandma fox complete with glasses.

 

I found this cute fox fabric for the back of the quilt and had enough left over to make a pillowcase.

My seven year old grandson has always loved dinosaurs and this past summer his parents decided he was old enough to see the Jurassic Park movie. A couple weeks ago he told me he wanted a dinosaur quilt for Christmas, a Jurassic Park dinosaur quilt, which meant scary dinosaurs. What is a Grandma to do? There are no patterns for this. I ended up buying a Jurrassic park comforter at Walmart. I completely took it apart (which not surprisingly took less than an hour) and layered the top with a good cotton batting and cotton backing fabric and requilted the whole thing. Now those circles from the Sharon Shambler class come into play, they make great dinosaur skin.

The rest of the quilt was just outlining the pictures on the top

then I filled everything else with clouds or long blades of grass to give it a jungle feel.

Whew! October done and two Christmas presents done :)

Happy Stitching,

Cheri

 

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Projects with EPP

I have three projects that are either complete English Paper Piecing quilts or have appliquéd hexagon flowers appliquéd in the design. The four hexie Flowers added to the center of Mariner's Compass quilt seem a little busy when added to the background but this quilt is designed by Kim MCLean.

She works a lot of her patterns with Kaffe Fassett fabrics but this one was done in reproduction fabrics and I love the way it comes together.

So I am going to have faith and kind of pick colors like the pattern cover quilt. When I finished the compass I thought it was a little Christmasy with the red and green compass points but that is going away with the background fabric and now these hexie so I will carry on.

My evenings are spent making hexie flowers for the borders of Stonefields. I am making my quilt a little smaller than the pattern making my center with only 100 blocks and my borders with two rows of hexagon flowers instead of three.

I have little piles of prepped hexagon flower pieces in my sewing room and have to be so careful not to drop fabric or books on the table-the pieces blow around easily and then I can't remember which centers go with which piles.

The third quilt with EPP is Patchwork of the Crosses. I have finished a couple more connecting blocks this summer at EPP club at a local quilt shop.

Last meeting I just worked on fussy cut centers.

I have liked this Jo Morton Toile fabric for a long time.

I have been pulling out fabrics to see if I have enough reds and creams for a quilt pattern she designed using this fabric.

I rarely buy a fabric without a specific project in mind and I have thought of using this Toile in several projects but I hate to cut it. What to do? Make a quilt staring this fabric (I do have enough fabric to enlarge the center blocks and make this quilt 54 X62) or save it for appliqué and broderie perse?? I am so undecided, I should have bought more.

Happy Stitching Everyone,

Cheri

 

 

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Wicked

I just returned from the Des Moines Iowa AQS annual quilt show. What a breathtakingly beautiful (and fun) display were the 110 quilts from the Cherrywoods fabrics Wicked challenge.

 

 

 

Happy Stitching :)

 

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