More Banner Work

I spent quite a bit of time working on church banners in the last week or so.  We changed over to fall decor at church last Wednesday night.  That gave me a week to get busy and get the banners completed.  One of our ladies made the banners last year.  They have a fall leaf design on one side..

and solid fabric on the reverse. 

  

She asked me to do something to the plain side.  So I made ginormous leaves - one for each banner.I started by printing off simple leaf shapes from the Internet.  I like using coloring book designs for easy applique and they are free.  Then I copied the shapes onto transparencies, enlarged them with an overhead projector at church and traced them onto large pieces of paper.  These were my patterns. 

I decided to make the leaves as stiff as I could so they would hang well.  So I traced the patterns onto Tear Away stabilizer which was the stiffest interfacing I could find.  From there I stitched veins onto the fabric

 and glued the edges of the fabric over the stabilizer so I could applique them to the banners.  The process was pretty simple, but I did all the applique by hand, so that I could sew only onto one side of the banner and not have the stitches show on the backside.  That was the time consuming part.  I managed to come up with 5 different designs and fabrics and got them done in the week's time.

They are now hanging in the church and look pretty good.

I made one sunflower to have something a little different.  

I crosshatched a portion of the center and then dabbed on gold paint so it didn't look like a giant brown spot staring at you.

I also finished my mystery quilt from Kathleen Tracy's blog.  It finished at 30 x 30, so I am thinking I will hang it on the guest room wall.

Designing Monday

I have not posted in over a month.  No posting means no work done by me.  I wish I had a good excuse, but I keep telling myself I need to get back to sewing.  I finished this little piece yesterday.  I took a class from Linda Poole to learn how to use Inktense pencils and we made this bird picture.  Sort of like coloring in a coloring book.  The class was in Feb of 2016.  That was a long time ago.  I finished the coloring after the class in March of 2016.  I got it layered and quilted in April or May of 2016 and then it sat while I looked for a binding material.  I finally found this batik last week and now it is done.  Yea!

I completed piecing and assembling the mystery quilt from Kathleen Tracy's Small Quilts group.  It was fun, but ended up being 30+" square.  That's bigger than most of my small quilts and I will have to find a place to display it.  I marked it to quilt with a Frixion pen and hope it will come out when I am done.

Hope you are more motivated than I am.  I want to finish more projects and move on.

A friend brought me a bag of beets.  Four beets to be exact.

 Each was bigger than a softball.  I had to parboil them for an hour in two batches as my biggest pot would only hold two at a time.  Then into the freezer they went.  It took me about 3 hours to accomplish all this.  Good thing I love beets.

I am linking to Small Quilts and Doll Quilts today.

Patterns Galore

Our quilt guild met this week and had a nice speaker named Mickey Mowery from southern Wisconsin.  Her pattern line and quilt shop are called Sew Many Pieces.  What a perfect name!  She brought lots of quilts to share from her earliest work to her most current.  Each quilt was constructed with smaller and smaller pieces.  She went from quilts with 2000 pieces to quilts with 8000 pieces.  She is currently working on a pineapple quilt that she hopes to land in the Guiness World Record Book for most pieces.

I bought two of her patterns.  The first is called X's and O's.  The pieces are cut 1" and sewn into  blocks of 81 pieces.  It does kind of look like a checkerboard.

The other pattern is the pineapple block she is using for her world record quilt.  The blocks finish at 2 inches and have 45 pieces per block.  I don't plan to challenge her record breaking quilt, but thought I would see if I could actually piece a block that small.  Mickey's plan is to make a king size quilt of these little 2" blocks!  Yikes!

My favorite quilt shop here in town closed recently and the owner sent a basket of patterns to our meeting that she is closing out at $1.00 each.  I really didn't need any more patterns, but these were so cute I could not pass them up.  One is needle punch.

One is two cute table runners from Buttermilk Basin.

The other two are Lori Smith patterns.  I just love her work.

I also finished the next step in the Sentimental Quilter Mystery Quilt.  Shoo Fly blocks.

Have a fun Mother's Day.  I will be enjoying my traveling daughter for a few more days.

Spring is Coming!

It's almost the end of April and I am catching up on my blog.  I spent the winter in Florida again enjoying the wonderful weather and did not sew a stitch.  Our daughter travelled with us to see where we are staying and do a little sight seeing and then she flew off to Turkey once again.

We returned home 2 weeks ago and so far have been cleaning inside and out, vacuuming up lady bugs in the house and raking up leaves and debris from the yard.  I committed myself to sewing 5 hours last week and managed to get all the steps done for Kathleen Tracy's mystery quilt.  It's always fun to find a new project!

I also started quilting this piece I made sometime in the last two years.  

This weekend our son is getting married and so this week we are getting organized for the big event.  We are fortunate that he found someone so special and they are starting off their life together in a beautiful setting with family and friends to share in the day.  Can't wait!

I made it to the Daytona Quilt Show which was a treat.  I ran into two people from my local quilt guild here in Wisconsin.  How does that happen?  I even managed to take a few photos to share.

Love the applique and the quilting!

Hope you can see the detailed quilting.

Neat edge treatment.  No clue how it is done.

Fun name.

By The Chimney With Care by Karen Turnbull

Love this fabulous detail on the edge.

Bonnie and I at the show.

Our trip home included a stop at Kitty Hawk and then Washington, D.C.  I had not seen the WWII memorial and somehow in many trips there had never visited the Jefferson Memorial, so those were our first two stops and then we spent the afternoon at the American History Museum.  I was hoping to see some quilts, but there were only one or two on display as part of other exhibits.  We also spent a half day at the new Air and Space exhibit at Dulles Airport.  It is huge.  

Hope you are all enjoying the beginnings of spring.  We have a few daffodils and hyacinths popping open here.  It feels so good to see everything turning green!!

Blue & White Day

Today is Blue & White Day at the Sentimental Quilter Yahoo Group.  Each month or sometimes every other month the group is challenged to make a small quilt following some theme.  This time it is blue & white.  Here is my entry.

I posted the beginnings of this awhile back and got it finished pretty quickly, but couldn't reveal it until today.  When the them of b&w was announced, I did a google search or on pinterest to find something.  There was an antique quilt just like this one that was a doll quilt that had seen lots of lovin'.  I loved it too.

If you are not a member of the group, you just need to ask to join and then you can see all the great little quilts that are posted for all the challenges and join in the fun.  To find the group, go to the Sentimental Quilter blog and find the yahoo group on the right sidebar.