ITS DONE, its really done and looks ...

sooooo purdy all set up. Wally redid the cabinet that the Wilson Rotary came in.

Before it was cleaned n refinished

Here is a before picture of it.

Refinished and cleaned up.

Here is the same cabinet after it was refinished and cleaned up.
I love it..








Thanks sooooo much Wally for taking the time to not only refinishing the cabinet but for also taking the time to get our Wilson Rotary up n running so smoooothly...

Free Motion Quilting or FMQ.

So, I have been thinking, and yea this can get scary and can get me into trouble every now n then.
But I need to learn some new skills and one of those is free motion quilting, I can do some simple patterns, like stitch in the ditch and meandering, but to really bring out some blocks you need to highlight them with stitching.

Your quilting skills depending upon your skill level can really enhance a quilt pattern or basically take away from the blocks you just spent hours on putting together.

Now to begin this journey, I will attempt to learn from Leigh Day over at The Free Motion Quilting Project. Using some of her techniques I am going to try and enhance and practice my free motion quilting.

 First project that will be my first attempt at something other than meandering or sitd (stitch in the ditch) is my sister's table runner, it has these wide open triangles that are just screaming at me to do something with.

See what I mean, I have quilted the other parts of it using sitd method and it has the binding on it. But I don't feel like it is finished.





So this is to chronicle the steps I am taking to learn something new. You can do it how ever you feel comfortable, its not a race, I am hoping I can help someone else in taking those furtive first steps that are usually scary to do on your own. Lets try this together.

5 in charms

I have these charm packs I bought with no thought as to what I was going to do with them. Since I have scrap batting from previous projects, these charms will be sandwiched together and practiced on.

ruler, fabric, frixion pen

First thing I did was grab my 6.5 in square ruler, you can use what ever you have on hand to do this. Put it at 4.5 in from one edge of the fabric as shown in the picture. I grabbed my frixion pen and began marking.

Now I do have the 4.5 in square ruler, but its in the dining room and I didn't want to go grab it. lol
I will grab it and show it to you the next posting.

a marked charm square

Here is the marked charm square. I think I will start with Leigh Day's 1st tut, in her 365 days of fmq, which is located here .
I really like the frixion pen, should I mess up on marking a piece of fabric I can iron it off, it just disappears.



Like all things you must test it on a piece of scrap fabric.




Lets see how well I do on my practicing this morning. Check back later today to see how it goes.
What are you doing today?
Happy crafting.
Tammy

On today's Agenda

Lets see if I can stay motivated long enough to get these done.

Going from this stack>>>>

I put together kits to be sewn together yesterday in between sewing up the 6 setting triangles. Ok so yesterday it was like 3 or 4 of them but adding them up to the ones I got done the day before.. It was 6 ;-)

I got one done last night of the remaining 6 left to do and layed out the next set.

To laying them out correctly>>>>

Lay each stack out one at a time so I can begin sewing.

TADA a setting triangle

To having them all sewn together to form the setting triangles

The one I got done late last night, needs to be pressed.

Leaders/enders project

Since I have a small pile of bonus triangles I may as well put them together, after sewing a row together for the setting triangles. Press, trim dog ears, and throw into a box..

On todays agenda

I was going through my photos and wrote a post up about Wally learning how to sew on my Wilson Rotary. Here is the outcome of it.

A perfect 4 patch out of jean material. I made up some more of those 4 patches, I think they will all go into a lap quilt.






As for me I worked on "Easy Street" a mystery Quilt put on by Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville.
you can still see how everyone did by heading on over there. The final Link up for Easy Street.

What I got done yesterday and today.

 Setting Triangles I got 6 of them done, 6 more to do.

Now what do you do with these? Bonus triangles from doing the snowball house type block.. Most folks would probably just throw them away or put them into a crumbs bin.







Well I put them together since they they are already actually matched up.

They came out to just about 1.5 inches.. they are cute.. Will sew those together and put them in another quilt. If I put 2 of these together right, I get a flying geese..






What did you'all get done today?
Happy sewing and quilting.

I'm sooo proud of him!!

My b/f Wally not only got my Wilson Rotary sewing machine he learned how to sew on it. :D
Yep I'm sooooo very proud of him... You can teach an old dog new tricks.. lol

 I cut some jean material into 6.5 squares and some rectangles, basically just getting as much out of them without to much waste. And left them sitting there next to the machine till he got home from work. You can see the post here and can understand a bit more as to why I did it this way.

WIP and UFO or PIGS

Lets see if I can get things done this year, especially in the piecing department. I have about 25 bedroom sets to make for close family and very close friends. I have one completed for my sister Verna .
My work in progress this week is Bonnie Hunter's "Easy Street" quilt top.
Its suppose to be a bit scrappy, ok a lot scrappy. But I'm wanting to do some controlled piecing with it. I only have so much of the dark grey fabric, so decided to make all the setting triangles with it.

Setting Triangles.

I do have enough to finish these out. And will have a few extra.
hmmmm Maybe I have some that dark grey hiding in one of my buckets.. gonna have to look and see, if I do than I will hopefully have enough to do either the 9 ( block B) inside 15" blocks or if I get really lucky since I made one already with drk grey, I can get the other 15 block A's done.




I don't have any of Block B done, so I'm hoping to get all the setting triangles and 15 Block A's done with the drk Grey, if that is accomplished I can go ahead and do all the Block B's with a lighter grey.

Block A

One of 16, so need to do 15 more.











WIP = Works in Progress
UFO = Unfinished projects
PIGS = Projects in Grocery sacks, these are usually hiding in our closets or bins. ;-)

So lets get some sewing done.. :D

A cold windy day

It was fairly decent here all weekend long, although we did have rain and wind.

Yesterday Wally got my Wilson Rotary to working. And I worked on the tension to get it going really good. Tension is now all set on it, new needle in it, new thread in it along with getting the one bobbin I have for it filled. I set it up last night to do some sewing on it today and wouldn't you know it, Wally walked by it and just had to play with it, one more time before he headed off to bed, stepped on the foot peddle and made it go.. lol
Came in here to let me know he may have messed up the bobbin thread.. :P
So I go out there and sure enough the bobbin thread was a bit messed up,all tangled up and had a couple of knots in it. Oh well, got it untangled and snipped off the thread that was knotted up. Looked up at him, he said he was headed to bed before he got into trouble again.. smart man. ;-) although I did get a good laugh about it.

You see he has been working on it for a couple of weeks. When he hasn't been working 10-12 hrs a day.. So every time he would be anywhere close to it, he would roll the wheel around. Just to keep all the inner workings loosened up.. so he said lol
To be honest it really didn't surprise me any when he walked by it and just had to play one more time on it.. What he doesn't realize is that now, I'm going to cut some blue jeans into squares and rectangles and let him sew them together. ;-)

As for me I worked on the Easy Street mystery quilt over the weekend, and managed to put together a few of the big blocks after remaking some of the 4 patches, which have now turned into a leader/ender project.

 One of 16 - 15.5" blocks put together.

 One of 4 corner pieces put together, actually got all 4 of them put together.

One of the large triangle sections put together. Need 12








I still need to put together the other 15" block ( there will be 9 of these) that will be used to create this quilt, along with the other large triangles and the other 11 big blocks.

First post of the New Year

Happy new Year everyone.

Well last night and today I have been working on the "Easy Street" mystery quilt that was put on by Bonnie Hunter. This quilt will be put into a bedroom set for my b/f's brother and sister n law.
My bedroom sets include a quilt, a set of pillow cases and a dresser/table topper.

Here is an update of what has been done:
Week 1: 192 - 4 patches made out of grey and blck on white squares - DONE

Week 2: 64 rectangles and 128 flying geese - DONE

Week 3: 2 - 3" squares cut on diagonal creating 4 triangles and 64 shaded 4 patches - DONE

Week 4: 64 flying geese with blue wings.. Attach them to 64 triangles from week 2.  4 are done.. 60 geese are cut now need to cut the wings out and attach. Cut 145 - 3.5" green squares

Week 5: 64 house fronts- well that is what they look like to me, I will show a picture of them when they are done.. :D

Week 6: 128 dble bricks.. Cut 16- 5.5" squares Cut them into quarter square triangles

Week 7: take 64 flying geese from week 2 and pair them up with the 64 rectangles.. DONE
Start building triangles out of assorted pieces ..

Week 8: Start building blocks, set them on point and finish the quilt top into a flimsy..

Flimsy in the quilting world is a quilt top that is not quilted.. Now for some eye candy some of the blocks and pieces that were done yesterday and today..

 Week 7

 Red Geese a waiting on their blue wings.

Week 3 shaded 4 patches.









Told my b/f Wally that I need to do some more cutting and if he wanted to help out, I would let him cut out the 145 green squares.. He laughed as he walked out of the room... Guess I can take that as a no ... lol..