Determination is a Flimsey

It's a Flimsey!  Nothing left to do but the quilting.  I had thought about sending it to a longarm quilter, but I really want to quilt it myself.  I get all this hardware off my wrist and hand on Tuesday, so hopefully it wont take me too long to get the strength back in my wrist/hand to do the quilt basting and machine quilting.


I also have the binding made and wound on my binding bobbin.  My husband made these for me  after I saw them in Nancy's Notions Magazine.  He had the wooden people looking pieces in his woodcraft supplies, and had to drill the hole in the bottom and cut the slit.  My daughter, Ellen, painted them.  A ponytail holder keep the roll tight until I am ready to sew it on.

You put the bobbin on the extra thread spindle and sew away, no tangled, twisted binding to fool with :)

I usually wind it a little more evenly, but this was the best I could do one handed.

Making Progress

The first strip is done and I am excited about how this is turning out.  This quilt
just shouts Spring to me.  It also has special meaning in that Fred, my husband, has helped so much in its construction.
Its actually longer than this picture shows - there are 19 4-patches in each row and this will be a vertical row.

I finished the March block called Shamrock.  This took me all month to do, and would normally only take a few hours.

Its definitely not my best stitching, but I will always remember doing this one with a broken wrist and the greater appreciation and empathy it gave me for people with handicaps they overcome to achieve their arts. 

This past weekend we made a quick trip to West Virginia to attend services for Fred's Uncle Glenn, who passed Wednesday last week. It snowed while we were there, and our ride home was so beautiful.  Living in South Carolina we don't get to see snow very often and even then, seldom in this quantity.  I must admit to being scared as we don't have the equipment to clean off the roads when we do get the freak snow storm.  But when we left on Sunday to come home it was a winter wonderland and the roads were clear of snow and ice.  I took lots of pictures from the moving truck so they aren't the best
but I wanted to share some of them anyway. 

Determination Quilt

DETERMINATION is the name I am giving this quilt.  I am used to getting up each morning and enjoying some coffee and doing some quilting.  This broken wrist has put a kink in my morning fun time.  After doing a lot of reading, studying up on EQ8, being on the computer with facebook, blogs and games, I was determined to come up with ways I could make a quilt.

I have this tub of 2 1/2" squares I use when teaching Cathedral Window quilts or Hexagon EPP quilting, so I decided to just start making 4 patches I could use when I make this quilt I designed in EQ8.  This takes 152 4-patches.  That should keep me busy for awhile.

A couple days later, they were done, and needed to be squared up......but try as hard as I could, I could not use a rotary cutter with one hand :( 

So my wonderful, thoughtful, smart and PRECISE husband to the rescue.  Using a 3 1/2" square ruler, he squared up all the 4-Patches,  He also cut 310 3 1/2" squares and then cut them diagonally to make the corner squares,  and once I get the corners sewn on, he is squaring those up to a 4 3/4" unfinished size block, using the Creative Grids Square in a Square ruler.  That is what he is doing in this picture.  He has already cut the 3 1/2" x 86" strips I needed to go between the vertical rows of 4-Patches.

I think he got tired of all my muttering and "southern sighs" because I could not master one handed rotary cutting.  Or maybe he just did not want to see me cut off a finger.  Either way, I think he is enjoying helping :)

I am a blest lady!






4 Patches

Corner Squares

Before and After Square in a Square

Alternate Strips

Adeline and Lorelai Coming for a visit....Woohoooooooooo!

February Hearts Block

February has been a long month with breaking my wrist limiting so much of what I am accustomed to doing. 

I have tried EPP and that did not work out too well, although I did get a little done on my Jacks Chain.

So then I tried embroidering on a BOM of the month I started in January.  This is the February block, appropriately named Hearts.  I had it a little less that half done before my fall.  I found that by balancing the hoop on a table I could stitch one handed,  but after just a bit of trying to undo knotted thread, rethreading needle and not so good stitches, I gave up on this too.  The heavier stitching is twilling, and the other is backstitch. I did finish the block!

So now I am trying to do a little machine piecing 4 patches. 
I have a tub full of 2 1/2 inch squares and have recruited a friend and my husband to cut scrappy off white and white tone on tone squares for me.  This is fun, and I can even press the seams open.  I have just been sewing twosies so far, but that is a start! 

I learned how to layout a custom quilt in EQ8, so I spent this morning designing my 4 patch quilt.  Going to have to teach hubby how to square the 4 patches for me, but he seems to be enjoying working with me on the quilt. Here are my designs.  The 4 patches will be scrappy, but I just used the same block in the design.

This one is my favorite so far, but that could change.

Least favorite, maybe too messy looking?

I like this, but it seems off balance to me - think it needs one more column of 4 patches to match the first vertical row.

Had to laugh, hubby asked me at supper how long it would take us to finish "our" quilt.

Teresa