Look at this grumpy face. Sami is NOT a morning person and apparently she isn’t a cool weather dog either. This morning we had our first frost since last January but warmed up to a beautiful day. Sami decided to wait on the warmer weather snuggled under her quilt.
While lazy bones snuggled I have been able to quilt two UFOs. I will be putting the binding on tomorrow and I will post pictures then.
Stay warm everyone.
My New Year’s resolution is to complete my UFOs (unfinished objects) around my house. I love to pick out fabrics, piece quilts, and even put on the binding but for some reason when it comes time to do the actual quilting I put it off. It is not as though I do hand quilting, I invested in a long arm machine a couple of years ago, but for some reason I let quilt tops pile up until I get embarrassed and then do them. Unless they are quilts for someone else, then I get them done as quickly as possible.
This is my Basket of Flowers quilt that I pieced months ago. Finally finished! It will be used for a table topper for a large square table.
This baby quilt is a simple rail fence with sashings. It will be donated to our local women and children’s center. I am pleased with the bright colors and I hope it makes a little one happy.
I have another quilt on my long arm now and I will post it later….just trying to keep those resolutions.
I think I will just stay out here and enjoy the sun for a while until my mom calms down a little. First I want to take a nap on her new quilt that she has been working on FOREVER. Well, you know I can’t nap with making a pacifier out of the quilt. Who knew that my little teeth would make holes in the fabric. I think she just had defective fabric. She was disappointed but that’s OK. Then I decided I would bring in some nice pine cones and you know I have to chew them up AND my favorite place to chew is on the carpet. She raised her voice to me then but I figure she is just crabby today. Since she took my pine cone away I found some nice fuzzy purple and black socks that she wears all the time to chew. Oh, these are much better than pine cones. Oops! It is probably a good thing I don’t understand some of the words she is yelling. Yep, I think I will just stay outside in the sun for a few hours. From your friend, Sami.
I do a LOT of sewing. I am usually in my sewing room from 5-12 hours each and every day. It is very hard for me to give up my daily quilting ‘fix’. The good thing about my ‘sweat shop’ is that I have lots of natural light coming in about 10 hours a day. The bad thing is all this natural lightĀ makes my room very hot, especially since it is on the 2nd floor. Since I live in Florida it is hot in this room 50 weeks out of the year. After living here 13 years I finally installedĀ window tinting and I am hoping this will cut down on the western sun exposure. Even though it is January the temps are still in the 80s and the tinting seems to help. I’ll let you know if it was worth the money in July.
I do my cutting, sewing, ironing, etc. here. If you are a quilter you will understand that my hobby has slowly taken over most of my house. What used to be my dining room now is home to my long arm quilting machine. The guest bedroom now is my fabric and quilts storeroom. I have my ‘monster sewing machine’ in the master bedroom. I use this machine forĀ heavy dutyĀ sewing, such as boat canvas and leather work.
My sewing helper, Sami-The Wonder Dog, keeps me company all day long. We listen to audio books while I am working. Each CD usually plays for an hour then I change to the next one. I take Sami downstairs to pee at every tape change and it gives me time to stretch my legs and refill my water cup. During a recent road trip to Georgia Sami and I were listening to our book and every time I changed CDs Sami had to go pee. š
I have finished the basic layout and joining the blocks on my Baskets A-Plenty quilt. The pattern called for 72 baskets but I needed a bigger quilt so I ended up with 111Ā 7 1/2″ basket blocks. This is whereĀ I leave the pattern behind and strikeĀ out on my own. I will be adding a small white border all around and I think I will add some flying geese blocks on each side. Not sure about the geese but I need something to make it a little wider to fit a queen size bed so if not geese then….who knows what.
This pile of fabric strips is going to beĀ a new quilt that I am calling Baskets A-Plenty. It is based on a designĀ by Lynette JensenĀ downloaded from the FonsĀ & Porter’s Love of Quilting website.Ā Sometimes I am not nearly as organized but since I wanted lots of different colored baskets I knew I would have a terrible time trying to keep all the little pieces straight if I did not get a system going. I usually like to ‘wing it’ and start off with either a picture or a rough drawing for a layout and the quilt grows from there,Ā especiallyĀ when sewing memory quilts because I am working with so many different sizes of shirts.
I have to admit that sometimes my quilts start out as lap quilts in my mind and grow to queen size before I know it.
My son’s friend gave me a bag of t-shirts to make a memory quilt. This is one of many quilts I have completed for his family. He usually tells me to do whatever I want as long as I keep the colors in the black/gray family as they are usually biker shirts. This time his only request was to make it big. The problem is he only gave me five shirts. After much thought and many trips to browse Pinterest I decided I would make a very large border and then fill in around the shirts. Here is the end result. I hope he likes it.
Quilt number two is for the same family. They areĀ a very active family that runs marathons, enjoy sports, and overall live a healthy lifestyle. Again, the request was to make it large. I took a little creative license with this one by adding the family name at the bottom to make it a queen size. I quilted it on my long arm with small meandering around the shirts, a leaf pattern on the inside sashings, and feathers around the outside borders.
Peggy and Sami Quilts 