Finish Drought Over!

I have not had a quilt finish in quite a while, but chubby chicks has ended that. This was a fairly fast and a fun quilt to complete. I kept the machine quilting pretty simple, mostly walking foot work.

There is a little meandering with occadional chicken footprints in each of the chicks blocks

and a few hearts in the corners.

Now I am on to my next machine quilting project, the four appliqué Rose Fan blocks. I am using the pattern sheet to pencil in some quilting ideas and drawing a diagram of the finished vases with some room for some feather designs.

Hopefully practicing this echo quilting on the pattern with a pencil will give me some muscle memory when the real quilting starts.

Happy Stitching!

 

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A Couple a Little Ta Das

I have not completely finished a quilt in a long while, but I have a couple little projects completed.

The above wool quilt block is my part of a charity auction quilt my small group is doing this year for our local quilt guild. The quilt is from a 2005 series in Quiltmaker magazine named Home and Harvest by Erica Kaprove. I did the blanket stitch applique on my sewing machine and used DMC wool floss for the embellishing embroidery.

I have also finished another border of Auntie Green's Garden and sewn the first two middle borders to the quilt center. It is getting too big to capture in one picture very well.

Some of my stems are a very light green so the flowers look like they are just floating in mid air from a distance but on close up the soft lighter colors give a nice variety.

I think I am just going to leave it because I don't intend for this quilt to hang on a wall. I have started the bottom border next. There are five sections of flowers along the bottom so that will be my hand project for the next couple weeks.

I have also finished the Chubby Chicks top. I have the back pieced so it is ready to layer and start machine quilting.

My projects are lined up and waiting so to the sewing machine I go. Happy Stitching all.

 

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Needle Felting and Other Fun

We are back home from our winter travels. I spent two days unpacking from the trip and then a day packing some sewing projects for my small quilt group's winter retreat. It was fun to spend three days with my quilting buddies after being gone for 4 1/2 months.

Here we all are at the table learning wool needle felting and making Easter eggs and little chicks.

Betty brought all her wonderful wool rovings and was such a good teacher, she soon had us all designing beautiful eggs.

Our favorite was the top center blue (In the post header picture) who seemed to have uncontrollable orange hair and a face. We ended up naming him Wilson after the volleyball character in the movie Castaway.

One of our members won a Go cutting machine and we put it to good use cutting up our stash and making a quilt for our local Hospice.

I have such talented friends, the projects were hanging everywhere by weekends end.

The super talented Betty also made us this awesome, decadent chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling and raspberry filling. The Singer sewing machine is molded and frosted rice krispe treat. The pin cushion, thread, seam ripper and applique flowers are all fondant. She followed a picture and hand painted all the gold filligree with an edible gold paint. Isn't it just amazing!

My sewing machine did not go along on our camping travels so I enjoyed doing piece work this weekend.

I have started a new toddler's quilt with flying geese, pinwheel, and applique blocks. I love these cute little zigzag chicken legs.

The quilt is a pattern from Black Mountain Quilts called "Chubby Chicks", a very apt name for us quilters after that cake.

Happy Stitching All

 

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