Monday, Monday

I love a busy week and this is one of those.  Most of my weeks are pretty tame, so when it rains it always pours around here.  Lots of activities and never enough time.  Then the rush is over in a few days and it's back to the normal humdrum.  I love a busy week once in awhile.  It makes life more interesting and helps keep me organized and on my toes.  

I decided last week to take on some of my projects that have been hanging on forever.  My sofa in my sewing area has looked like this for many  months.  Projects that just need to be bound or just need to be quilted or a top waiting to be sandwiched or lots of pieces waiting to be assembled. 

 I started with this patriotic one.  It needed to be quilted and bound.  I did the straight line quilting weeks ago and then stalled.  I decided to put some wavy lines on the bars, but couldn't figure out how to make a template and I couldn't find one in my collection of templates.  I tried folding paper and drawing a wavy line, but that didn't work.  Did I mention I can't draw?  I finally asked my husband who said, "It sounds like you need a sine wave."  Is that the wiggly line they show on those machines that check your heart beat?  Close enough.

 If you are in need of a wavy line,  he showed me how to make one using the program Grapher which is on Apple computers.  When you get the program up on your computer screen, it prompts you with an equation.  It starts with "y=".  He added .2 sin 5x.  So the equation looks like this

y= .2 sin 5x

Once you enter this equation, the program graphs a nice wavy line.  You can change the wave by changing the two numbers.  That will make the waves taller or shorter and make more or less of them.  Once I found a pattern I liked, I printed out the graph with the wavy line.  I traced it onto freezer paper and used that for my quilting template.  It was so easy.  I know I will use Grapher again.

 This is the back.  Just using up some scraps.

Next up was this little Spool or Hourglass quilt.  It is pretty small, but cute.  I had it quilted in less than 30 minutes and bound in about an hour.

My friend, Barb gave me this beautiful needlepunch piece for Christmas.  It was also on the sofa pile.    I finished off the back of it and then went frame hunting.

I found a framed piece in the clearance area at Hobby Lobby that was perfect.  I found a gold mat in the framing department and had it cut to size.  Using double sided tape, I put the mat in the opening of the frame and stuck the finished piece on the mat with the same tape.

Here it is hanging on my kitchen wall!  

Three projects down and many more to go!!

Linking to Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

It's a Wild and Wooly Monday

I have made one of the patterns that I wrote about in my last blog post.  That was a month ago.  Where has time gone?  Anyway, it is a pattern from Buttermilk Basin.  The design is very cute, but the pattern was a little sketchy.  Glad to be done with it and have it sitting on display in my family room.  Using it as a table mat.

I used cotton batting for the sheep's body.  Nice and fuzzy.  

 I used fleece for the head and feet.

 I traced a shape of a star onto freezer paper to make a template for quilting.

 Then I sewed around it versus tracing.  I peeled it off and then used it again under the tree.

 I think I forgot to give my sheep an eye.  Oh, well.  She looks pretty good to me.

I am linking up to Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.