February

I feel like I have mostly been doing prepping for different projects this month. There are several papercut (cut as you go) blocks in Celebrating Mary Brown. It is a fun method of needleturn applique that I enjoy. I have one finished and two more ready to stitch.

Generally you trace 1/4 of the applique pattern on freezer paper, fold it and cut it out carefully (like cutting out snow flakes). Then I iron the cut out freezer paper pattern on my applique fabric and trace around it for my needleturn lines. Remove the freezer paper and center the applique fabric on my background. I like to baste the two layers inside the applique design and it is ready to begin stitching. It works best to just cut an inch or so of the applique fabric at a time.

I also finished this pretty ruffle leaf red and green block in the Mary Brown quilt. I think I stitched the center section three times and was about to just applique a circle in the center of the block. I gave it one more try and this time the fourth time was the charm, glad there are no more of those blocks in the quilt.

After I finished that block I laid out all of the blocks I have finished this winter while living in our RV. Lots of nice weather and new campground friends to stitch with outside.

My friend Julie also came to Texas to spend a week camping with us.

Celebrating Mary Brown is actually Julie's quilt. She got the pattern and sent me her fabric background and some starter applique fabrics (we live in different states), I love to applique and am doing the applique. She is the hand quilter and the top will go to her when I am finished. She has been posting the pictures of the finished blocks I send her on the Celebrating Mary Brown Facebook group so it was fun for her to see the finished blocks in person this week.

I also have three of the four borders of the a Rowdy Flat Library quilt finished. Forgive the wrinkles, I did not iron them for this picture.

I have all of the prep work finished for the final applique border of Mariner's Compass. I have hundreds of leaves and piles of flowers all cut out with steam a seam 2 ironed on the back, all ready for raw edge blanket stitch applique. I just have not laid them out because this final border will be 94 inches long and I am just not sure I want to crawl around the RV floor to do that, if there is even room in the camper to try it. I may just have to wait until we are home and I am back to the nice long tables in my sewing room.

A friend from the campground and I traveled about an hour north to the fabulous Painted Pony quilt shop in Houston Texas last week. I just love a quilt shop that requires shopping carts.

That back room Sally is coming out of was all reproduction fabrics! Heavenly!!! I bought a variety of black with tan print reproduction fabrics.

I will be cutting out the background triangles for Panama Pyramids from these fabrics. The completed pyramid count is somewhere in the 50s with another 50 cut out and ready to sew.

So that was my final prepping project this month,

Happy Stitching All,

Cheri

 

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Quilting on the Road

My husband and I are in the beginning of our cold weather escape to Texas. We have been on the road for a couple weeks and have reached our winter destination in the Houston area. This is our third year of being Winter Texans and besides missing snowy weather our biggest draw is the opportunity to live near our son's family and getting to be a part of their family and getting lots of Grandparent time over the holidays. Because we have enjoyed this RV experience we have moved up to a larger 5th wheel camper.

This move up to more space has allowed me to take more than just hand quilting projects along. I found a small used Bernina 220 on eBay and promptly named her "Sally" after a girl I met camping last year who brings her embroidery sewing machine, serger, and Singer featherweight in her RV. Sewing Machine Sally, as I affectionately think of her, and her husband are full time RVers. They sold their home and live in their RV, they are work campers for KOA and spend their summers working in campgrounds and winters escaping the cold much like us. Sally's RV is called a toy hauler and the back is a small garage that carries motorcycles or golf carts, when they get to a destination the vehicle is moved out and the toy hauler garage becomes Sally's sewing room. My set up is not nearly so grand but my little "Sally" and I are getting accustomed to the space and getting some projects worked on.

I sew at the dinette table and brought a small trunk that holds my projects and doubles as my ironing area and a coffee table/ foot stool.

Quilting in an RV is a bit like going on retreat, you hopefully pack more than you can possibly have time to work on and hope you organized your projects and remembered to take everything.

So, what have I been working on since we have been on the road? Well the Mariner's Compass quilt has a new border.

The scrappy octagon border is machine appliquéd and next will be a final applique border.

I have decided to tackle the large postage stamp blocks again on the Rowdy Flat Library quilt. I tried one earlier this summer and all my carefull peicing and measuring resulted in a block that measured an inch and a half two large. Ever since I have put off these blocks (there are 4 in the quilt) and seriously thought about appliqueing the squares onto a background block or hand piecing it, but I am going to give it another try by machine.

All of the pieces are laid out on a scrap of batting to stay somewhat organized in my smaller quilt space and I am just going to go for it, no adjusting my needle position like I did on the first try in an attempt to get a perfect 1/4 inch seam.

And of coarse there is still time for hand applique. Here are the latest Celebrating Mary Brown blocks.

In our travels we camped at an alpaca ranch and had perfect timing to see two new baby alpacas. Brown boy was 24 hours old and already running through his little pasture.

And Kismet's new baby was born a few minutes before our arrival, we witnessed the baby's first steps out of the birthing barn.

The herd of about 15 alpacas were so gentle and unafraid of strangers even with new young ones nearby. They were eager to greet campers and be petted, the camp hosts were so proud to show off their little herd.

We celebrated our stay with 4 skeins of Kismet's latest trimming spun into the softest yarn.

We have also noticed tiny houses popping up among the campers at some of the places we have stayed.

There have been many new quilt shop visits along our way but mostly we are settled in one place now for a couple weeks . After Thanksgiving we will be making a move to the beach on Galveston island.

Happy Thanksgiving and happy stitching from the road,

Cheri

 

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Mariner's Compass

I just finished sewing the next border on the Mariner's Compass quilt. This border was made with hexagon flowers appliquéd in scrappy square in a square blocks. The quilt is a BOM from homesteadhearth.com. I do not have the fabric stash for a scrappy quilt like this and Homestead Hearth is sending the prettiest fabrics.

For this border they sent a huge variety of 6 inch squares and fat 16ths and it was up to me to fussy cut the hexagon flowers, and choose the centers and corners on the square in the square blocks and use them where I want in the border.

I like this type of BOM that leaves fabric placement up to me.

I also did a little fun sewing on a group quilt that will go in a charity auction later this year.

We started with gold kite shapes and then there is basically no wrong fabric you can add to these foundation strip pieced blocks.

When the triangles are put together you get four pointed stars surrounded by spiderwebs.

Roseville Album is getting closer and closer.

I have finished the last of the corner blocks

and now I am about to start the last long border.

The shapes on this border seem large so hopefully they will not take long to applique. That polka dot squirrel just makes me smile.

We have had a lot of rainy weather lately which has kept me indoors sewing and getting lots done on my different projects.

Happy Stitching,

Cheri

 

 

 

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Caswell Quilt

The Caswell quilt by Corliss Searcy is a new beginning for me. I have not had a hand applique project since I finished Auntie Green's Garden last summer and I missed doing a hand applique project. I just finished the first block and decided to tackle one of the many blocks with fern type leaves next. I usually like to use a back basting technique with needle turn applique but these fern type leaves had me a little intimidated. Luckily I remembered all of Kerry's (simplebirdestudio.com) wonderful applique videos on YouTube. She has one dealing with just this kind of leaf. You can find it at YouTube.com and search for Simple Bird Studio, she has several videos, the one dealing with this type of fern leaf is named "how to do deep inside curves with hand applique and the starch method".

After I had decided on fabrics for this next block

I set my iPad nearby and started preparing my block while watching this video. I worked my way through the leaves

and just kept watching all of Kerry's videos on YouTube.

I did some fussy cutting on the buds and itty bitty berries

and used the starch method for all of the applique pieces of this block. Now it is all glue basted on the background and ready to stitch. I like needleturn but this prepared edge is a nice change up and certainly is good for fussy shapes.

I also finished the next border on Mariner's Compas, a small 2 inch wide border with scrappy appliquéd semi circles.

Happy Stitching, Happy Spring, and a blessed Easter to all,

Cheri

 

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