Pemberley Quilt Progress



I started this post on Sunday afternoon and intended to finish it Sunday night when I got home from church.  Unfortunately at church, I fell down a flight of stairs, with a concussion and taken by ambulance to a trauma center in Charlotte.  I was released yesterday, and am wearing a heart monitor as the doctors think my heart has been beating at a fast rate and may be what caused me to black out on the steps and fall down the stairs.  Crystals in my ears were also dilodged and I am going through therapy to get them back in place.  I begin out out patient therapy on Tuesday.

 

This is my Pemberley and what I intended to post Sunday night.  I have completed the center and am starting to work on the corner flower pots.

 



Each corner on the center will have a flower pot and I have one completed.  I think they are so cute. The drawn lines are the cutting lines, and there will be a sashing border that will cover these edges.

I like to draw lines to show the placement of the applique.  I drawn the line inside the applique lines so that the lines will not show up when I place the applique in place.

My applique patters are cut from freezer paper, then traced on the from of the fabric.  I then trim the fabric to within 1/8" - 1/4" of the drawn line, and do needle turn applique.



Trick or Treat

Eight of my Grandchildren came Trick or Treating tonight. Hollis was here too, but she slept through it.  We don't get trick or treaters in our neighborhood unless its the grandkids.  Love seeing them!

Adeline

Lorelai

Tess - orange fox, Timothy - Waldo, Taralyn - black dog, Toby - magician, Tori - princess, Titus - brown dog

Hollis Joy

 My #12 grandchild was born October 18 and named Hollis Joy and she is beautiful, sweet bundle of Joy. I now have 6 grandsons and 6 granddaughters and am so blessed.  

 

This is the quilt I made for sweet Hollis. I  hope she enjoys it for many years to come.  (I probably should have ironed it or at least put it in the dryer to fluff out the fold before I took the picture.)

Making progress

 

I have been quilting on this top for a few months now and recently completed all the center Star blocks.  There are 12 Star of Bethlehem blocks and an hour glass blocks between each star block. Everything is set on point.

  The way I have quilted it, the hour glass block disappears and makes the Star block look bigger.

Although my hand quilting is rather dense, and taking a good bit of time to complete, I am enjoying the process.

This is a a close up of one of the 12 border blocks and how I am repeating the pattern in the border block.

I plan to use a Feathered Wreath in the outside border and duplicate the horizontal and vertical lines used in the center top. It actually takes me longer to quilt those lines than it does the feathered corners. 

People always ask me how long it takes to hand quilt.  Well I timed a Star block and it took me approx. 15 hours to do one star block.  The small border block takes approx. 4 hours.  Not sure what the outer border will take just yet...but just to complete the quilt center I am looking at approx. 228 hours.

Still working on my Happy Quilt.  I have all the rows completed except for the last one which is a row of house blocks.  I like the bright primary colors in this quilt.  Since I am quilting it as I go, once I complete this last block, it will be finished except for the binding.


Continued progress on my Guild's BOM:







September Leaves



October Pumpkins

Jack's Chain



I finished my Jack's Chain quilt in time  for my Guild's quilt show - it took a third place ribbon.  My brother, Jack, came to the show and I "presented" it to him as a birthday gift for his 70th birthday. It was a surprise, and he was really surprised.  Several of my fellow quilters and my family that were there, gathered around and sang Happy Birthday. 

Momma's Quilt

My blog is a type of quilt journal for me where I can look back and see quilts that I have made over the years.  I was never very good at documenting this before I started blogging and oh how I wish I had.  A lesson for those just getting started in quilting.  I print my blog every year and have gone back many times to check when I completed a quilt, or how long it took me to make a certain quilt.

  Momma was an excellent quilter and hand pieced many of her quilts and hand quilted nearly all of her quilts.  She kept very few of them, giving most to her children and grandchildren.  When she passed we shared among the family the quilts that she still had left at home.  They all held many special memories to me.

This is a quilt I made for my Momma in 2001.  I had not done much hand quilting, but knew if I was going to give Momma a quilt, it had better be hand quilted.    She was so surprised and touched when I gave it to her - said no one had ever made a quilt for her before.  I still get tears when I think of that time and how much that comment meant to me. 

When Momma passed years later, I reclaimed the quilt.
Now it resides on the back of "my chair" in the living room. I cuddle under it when I feel chilled or just need a little comfort.  The quilt reminds me so much of my Momma as most of her quilts were scrappy and she loved the traditional patterns.  Besides, I know it was something I made for my Momma that she truly cherished, and that makes me cherish it all the more.

Miss you Momma, every day.

Rainy day sewing

Today has been a day of watching the tv for news of  Hurricane Florence .  It keeps changing course and intensity.  We are going to get hit the worse tonight around 1 - 2am and then all day tomorrow.  They keep saying that there will be power outages and trees down.  We live in the country with lots of large old Oak trees, so this all makes for a tense night.

 



  I did spend some time last night and today doing some applique on my Pemberley Quilt.  Those scallops are actually appliqued to a large background. The next step will be to applique the vines, flowers and leaves that go around the center.

 

My guilds quilt show is Friday and Saturday, Sept 21 and 22.  I am doing a demo on how to board baste a quilt sandwich, and needed a small quilt top for the demo.  I had some cute duck fabric and decided to do a baby quilt.  I thought it just right to use on such a rainy windy day.  

 

If you are in the path of the storm, I hope you will stay safe and dry,

 



Ahoy!!! Whales!!



 This afternoon I attended a baby shower for a sweet young woman at our church named Heather.  This is Heather and her husband , Robert's,  first baby and I was excited about making a quilt for her.

I saw this pattern in a book called Fat Quarter Baby and had been wanting to make it. When my daughter told me Heather was having a boy, and was using Red,White, Light Blue and Navy for the nursery with a maritime theme, I thought this would be perfect.

Front view of the quilt

Back view of the quilt. The sailboat label has his name and October 2018 date - hope he does not come early!

And here is the sweet expectant Mom

Stitch 'N Sew Quilts Magazine

I have been subscribing to quilt magazines for years now, but am to the point where I am letting my subscriptions expire.  All the magazines are so full of ads and I think they try to out do each other to see who can print the most quilt patterns in a magazine. The main problem being they try to compress all the instructions into 2 or 3 pages, and I have found mistakes many times when I tried to follow these sparse instructions. The only current magazine I will continue is AQ Magazine and recently I have subscribed to Quiltfolk, which I thoroughly enjoy reading.

While in an antique shop recently I came across the April 1987 issue of Stitch 'N Sew Quilts.  I am fascinated with this magazine which is full of stories about quilters, original block designs and very few ads. 

 

Being an avid English Paper Piecer, I am always on the lookout for new blocks that I can EPP.     

 

  This block was titled Windblown Star.   The description given in the magazine: "This wonderful design came to us from Jan Halgrimson and her book Great Scrap-Bag Quilts,"  the second in her series of 3 "Scrap Quilt" books."  they go on to give the Publisher information of the books.    

They have the pattern pieces for making the block, and I can hardly wait to try making it.

 



 

 

Other articles in the magazine included:

• Pieces and Patches - a poem written by a quilter
• Reverend Foster's Quilt - a quilter's story about a special quilt made for a pastor
• Unfinished Quilt
• Why Quilting? - I found this article so current to quilters in 2018 as in 1987
• Getting the Most Out of a Quilt Show - Should be a must read before going to a show - hey, its not all about the vendors!
• Immigrant Influences - this is an amazing Baltimore Album style quilt that has a different block depicting the impact on the various nationalities of immigrants.  It described in detail the meaning behind the block - I found it fascinating.
• Sixty Per Cent Syndrome -  this article gives a whole new meaning to the purposes for our UFO's
• Finished in Love - a very touching story of a quilter who purchased unfinished quilt objects at auctions and other places and finished them - turning them into beautiful gifts as an act of love the quilter that started the project
• Numerous block designs and quilt patterns - readers submitted their original design blocks as well as a couple "professional" designers

 

I haven't read all the articles yet, but I will.  I enjoyed it so much, I got on line at ebay and found 10 more issues.  This is what is missing in today's magazines -  QUILTERS and their stories. 

 

 

 

Happy Quilt Progress

 This is my progress as of this morning when I took these pictures.  Still have one more applique row with butterflies, and checker board separator row and a row of houses to go. 

Having a lot of fun with this one and loving working with these bright happy colors.

Since  am doing this Quilt-As-You-Go, I can use a different bright color fabric for the backing on each row.  How fun is that!!!!  I am using an orange sashing to connect these rows on the back ad just a white on the front.

Pemberley

I spent this afternoon working on my Pemberley quilt.  This is just the center oval, and today I completed the brown edge around this center oval.  I am trying to work at least once a week on this project, which is rather overwhelming if you look at the entire quilt. 

This is a picture I pulled off the internet of the entire quilt, so you can see I just have completed that tiny little oval in the center, but progress is always good.










I have also started hand quilting my Star of Bethlehem quilt.  This one is going to take awhile as I am doing it in a regular stitch with #40 YLI hand quilting thread.  But then I am not in any hurry.  I ordered some corner stencils that I am going to use to set off the blocks - working on one of those now.  Will have a picture soon.

Jack's Chain - QUILTED!

Just finished hand quilting my Jack's Chain Quilt.  I am so excited to have this done.  The binding is made and ready to sew on as soon as I get the quilt trimmed and squared.  I took the first stitch in the quilting on June 20, and now, just one month later, it is quilted.  I think that must be a new record for me.  Doing big stitch with #8 perle cotton sure sped up the process and I am pleased with the look.

Progress on the Turevon BOM

May - Celebration

So far I have been able to keep up with the Block of the Month my guild is sponsoring - blocks designed by one of our guild members.  I am twilling the blocks along with a little back stitching to just add a little dimension to the blocks.  Its also easier to backstitch the smaller design areas.

Seven blocks done, five to go!

June - Peacocks

July - Beach Party

January through July Blocks

Little English Paper Piecing Tote bag

Yesterday was such a beautiful day.  My husband and I decided to take a ride in the mountains and visit one of our favorite antique stores in Hudson, NC.

 I found this sweet little tapestry bag, measures around 5" x 6".  I think it is just perfect for toting an English Paper Project or embroidery project  to work on at a friends house or anywhere else that I just need to take a small project.  It is lined in satin, and just too irresistible to. 

I have been spending most of my available time quilting on the Jack's Chain quilt.  Doing big stitch with #8 perle cotton means quilting is going a little quicker than my usual hand quilting, but still taking awhile.  I am trying to get the quilt completed in time to enter in my guild's quilt show in September, which means having it ready to submit Mid-August for judging.

This morning I sat on the porch for about 5 hours, enjoying another beautiful day watching the birds at the feeders, listening to an audible book (The Great Alone) and quilting. Such a peaceful start to a day.

I have also started piecing a baby quilt for someone at my church.  Unfortunately  I have had to set it aside until I can get the Jack's Chain finished.  All I have to do is add the borders, and then machine quilt it.

Also managed to fit in a little work on my Pemberley quilt - making these sweet hexagon flowers with 1/2"hexagons. I have a couple more to make and I can start appliquéing them to quilt center. 

So many fun things to work on - and so little time to do it.

Quilting Jack's Chain Quilt

 

 
Hooray, the Jack's Chain is in the hoop!   I debated between machine and hand quilting, and hand quilting won out.  Primarily because my left wrist and hand are still pretty weak from the break, and I don't think I could tolerate the twisting and turning and pulling this pattern would require on my machine. Besides, since the quilt is entirely pieced by hand, it seems fitting to hand quilt it as well.  I am doing big stitch quilting with #8 Perle cotton and thoroughly enjoying the process.

Going to the West Virginia State Quilt Festival tomorrow in Summersville, WV.  Excited about taking a landscape quilt class from Judy Lily and also seeing all the beautiful West Virginia quilts.

Crossed over the New River Gorge Bridge this afternoon - what a beautiful site.  This is a picture of the gorge I took from the visitor's center.