Its a Wednesday and Jacobs Ladder block.

Dang where is the week going? Bonnie is giving away 2 issues of the Quiltmaker magazine, both have her absolutely wonderful pattens, some tips and techniques.

In order to enter the giveaway, you HAVE to go to her page and leave a comment HERE!! so what are you waiting for head on over and enter the giveaway. Have a safe, fun and wonderful trip Bonnie.


Now what else can I share with you.. ohhhhh lets see how about a Jacobs Ladder . :D
Its for my Mom's quilt top. Its a 2 yr old WIP ( work in Progress).. Many mistakes have been made. Lots of learning and relearning of how to do things.

Draw line from corner to corner

 Lets start with the basics. 5" charm packs can be used, with this one though I have cut my own 5" squares. Draw a line from corner to corner.

Sew 1/4" on either side of line.

Line up the foot so you will be sewing 1/4" on one side of the line that you have drawn. Once you get the other corner, you can flip it around and go back down the other side of the line.

Line up your ruler on the line.

 Line up your ruler on the line and cut these apart.




But don't do like I did and let the ruler slip, otherwise you run the risk of splitting your seam.

Don't let the ruler slip.

Love it when you take pictures during the process and don't find out about the mistakes until after you are done and you are processing the pictures.. lol

It is cut a bit close, but I can still use it. If you get to close, you might be able to run a scant 1/4" or just to the outside of the line, going up til you meet the old seam line.

2 Half square triangles ready to be used.

And this is what you wind up having, 2- 1/2 square triangles ready to be used.







The Jacob Ladders pattern also uses 4 patches.

4 patches and 1/2 square triangles.

Here are a bunch of 4 patches and a few 1/2 square triangles.. Once you have enough to put together..
You will need to lay them out and then sew them together, I will see about getting some pictures of doing that. I started using the webbing technique that I learned over at Quiltville on Bonnie's blog, in the techniques and tips tab.. Found HERE!!!!

Jacob's Ladder block.

Once you have it all together, it should look similar to this block.

I learned how to cut and make this block through Youtube, Jenny Doan over at the Missouri Start Company put together a really neat video showing how to do it. The video is located HERE!!!!!

This is a sample block had to test out the pattern. :D




Enjoy and happy quilting.

Tammy Jean

Its a Saterday, time to start a new week

Well nothing much has happened over the past week. Been thinking a lot and sometimes it comes down to, what I need to do, what I have to do and what I have done.

Not much done, Have a lot I need to do and have a lot I have to get done.

I did get 2 blocks done for my Mom's quilt, however, I put the blocks together all wrong. :P lol
It is what happens when you do not have the original block set up by the machine so you have a reference.

Dang it, I need to find my camera again.

Discouragement this week has been profound for me. Making stupid mistakes, not sorting fabric correctly and putting into the correct bins, attempting to cut some fabric and find out 1) its not the correct one, and 2) cut it out all wrong. Bad Tammy, lol.

Oh well time to slow down, take it easy and put everything back into perspective. Hopefully within the next few days I will have improvements to post about. :D

Like getting fabric sorted and put into the correct bins, like cutting out and putting blocks together CORRECTLY..

What have you all been doing this past week? Sewing, crocheting, knitting, hiking, biking, staying warm for my northern friends, walking, jogging, etc??


Until next time
Tammy

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.

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..

1 down and a few dozen to go.

Instead of working on Bonnie's mystery quilt this week, of which I now have 3 weeks of clues to work on. I worked on my sisters bedroom set, which includes 2 pillow cases, a quilt and a dresser topper. It has all been washed and I see that I need to redo the binding on the dresser topper, missed 3 spots in folding it  over.. Other than that it turned out pretty good.

I still have problems with pin tucks underneath. But I'm going to leave them. Its still a learning process for me and I know that she will love it any ways. It was quilted on my domestic machine, Janome Harmony 4052, in the ditch or as close as I could get to it.


As I was stitching all the bindings on I came to the conclusion that it is going to have the Tammy Element added to it and probably every piece I do from here on out. Its not perfect by no means but its good enough for me, for this set. Next set will hopefully be better..

I need to slow down a bit when doing the straight lines of stitching, but this will come with practice. And I plan on have a lot more practice as I will be producing lap quilts, kids quilts, and more bedroom sets for my family and a few close friends that I know will appreciate all the work that goes into producing them.

Now you can head on over to Quiltville and take a look at how everyone else is doing with the mystery.

sooooo many things to do, so little time..

So I told my b/f that I needed to get week 3 and week 4 done for the mystery quilt. He said " Don't you think you need to finish up some of these other projects?"

lol uhhh yea but I'm working on a mystery quilt also.. Needs to get done..

sooooo many things to do, so little time..

Sister's Quilt

Is finally done with the quilting, hoping she doesn't look to closely at the stitching.. lol
All n all not to bad, it could have been worse. I still have some areas that can be fixed relatively easily. As in I started stitching, didn't like and started over, need to rip out those first stitches.

I should have seen if I could have found another neutral color to border it with as it barely fits the top of my bed with absolutely no drappege off the sides or the foot of the bed.

So onto figuring out the binding, and get that on.. Sew I can sit and have something else for my hands to do 3 nights a week.





Next up to be quilted is the matching table/dresser topper

I started to hand quilt it, but may put in on my Janome Harmony and finish it out.

Easy Street Wk 3 Linky up

Holy Cow, the week has flown past, but then again this whole year has.
I didn't get much done on Easy Street last week, until about Friday or Sat., then I got another 50 Flying Geese done, so now I have 88 of them flying around, and have another 40 to make.

Here they are in the bin with the 4 patches.








On one of the quilt cams last week I decided to make some string pieces, another thing I have never done before. May as well learn.. lol Using phone book pages as a foundation. I got 3 done.

Not to bad for my first times.






Last night I went ahead and did up about 5 of the new units and the 4 green triangles.

I'm getting better with the angle ruler.. Practicing is the key in my book.






I did get all the inside squares of my sister's quilt done now to finish quilting up the borders. Then to bind it up, I hope to get it done this week.


Head on over to Quiltville to see what everyone else is doing, we have some new bloggers check them out. Along with the other 249 bloggers that posted in last weeks Linky up.

Easy Street link up #2

Its going on now at Quiltville. If you have not been there you need to go and check out how the other wonderful quilters are doing and to see what color choices they have made.

This week for our week 2 challenge was to do Flying Geese, now I have never done them and have never used the companion ruler nor the angle ruler, I have had them for months, saw them and thought of triangles.. lol
So this is going to be a slow process for me to get through all, 128 flying geese. :P

I have 30 of them done and have close to 10 that I have to rip apart and see if I can put them together right.

My color choice for this step is red, I have some reds in my stash. Enough to do this part of the mystery. But.... then again who doesn't like going to the local quilt shop. :D

 We took my Wilson Rotary machine to be fixed up. Hopefully it will be done within 2 weeks. While at the local quilt shop E-Jays, I found these 3 reds to add to my pile to use for Easy Street.

And I found this Black on White print that I just had to have to use also in Easy Street. Its cute, it will interesting to see where the owls pop up at.


So go on over to Quiltville and see what everyone is up to.

And have a wonderful sewing week.

Easy Street Part 2 is up

 Easy Street Part 2 is up. Its 5:30am and Bonnie preset the instructions to go live while most in the US were sleeping.

Looks like my SInger 99k is going to get a good workout this weekend. Even more so than last weekend. lol
We have 128 flying geese units to make, she is using purple, and my b/f picked reds, so that is one color I will be using. Now to see how much of the red I can pull out of my bins, I have a mess load of reds in my 2.5" bins mostly Christmas prints but you wouldn't really be able to tell by the time we got them cut.

 My Janome Harmony is busy quilting this beauty. I have planned to finish up 2 lap quilt's and at least 2-3 quilt tops while working on "Easy Street"

I have plenty of the strips already cut but some are already sewn to the grey strips, guess I pull those apart if I need to to make the 64 2” X 3-1/2” rectangles for one of the next steps.






Happy sewing everyone have a great day.

Today's Agenda

It is now pin basted and started to stitch in the ditch.
It may take me a couple of days to do this one.


And to pick colors for the "Easy Street" mystery quilt, since clue #2 comes out in the morning.

On looking at my list of recipients, alot of them like the blues and greens, now for a 3rd color.. hmm reds, purples or oranges..

What color do you think I should do?

Remember Bonnie is doing Limey greens, blues, and purples. My greens will be different shades of color as will the blues. 
My reds and purples will also be different shades of color. Time to get sewing and pulling colors.

All Roads Lead to Home

This lap quilt will be going to my Cousin Charley. He is a truck driver, and he was diagnose with cancer this year. He has completed all his chemo and radiation treatments and we shall find out next month if he is in remission or not.


I had to revamp how I wanted to do this but I think he will love it anyways. I will be putting on the house block "Home Sweet Home".
This is being made out of Batiks in the D9P or disappearing 9 patch blocks. With roadways going all around it.

Thanks for looking and happy sewing.. Anticipation for Friday's clues is mounting.. :D

"Easy Street" part 1

In the introduction of "Easy Street" mystery quilt, Bonnie is going to be using Limey apple green, blues and purples. I have not decided yet on which colors I'm going to use yet, that part will be decided the closer we get to Friday, so stay tune.

Our first cutting and sewing instructions we received this past Friday so I spent Friday and Saturday cutting and sewing together 192 4 patches. 

Here are the strip sets, these are out of yardage that I got a few weeks ago.
Out of these strip sets I cut them down into 4 patches that look like this.

We are having a linked up party over at Quiltville so head on over there and see what everyone else is doing. This going to fun. Its like a Blog hop.

The main part of this mystery quilt is to have fun..
What will you be doing this week?
Me I'm going to be working on my " All roads lead to home " lap quilt for one cousin, and some other blocks as leaders and enders for another cousin, and possibly a twin quilt or a full size quilt for my grandson.

Happy Sewing


The highlighted links will take you directly to each part of the mystery quilt.