Down to the Wire

There's nothing like a challenge and a deadline looming to get my rear in gear. Tomorrow is the last day for Peg's challenge, and I needed two more quilts to meet the challenge.

These two railfence quilt tops are from my early quilting days... so they are about 6 years old. I've been wanting to quilt these up since the beginning of the year for Project Linus but never got around to it. Well, this is the perfect push that I needed. I pulled them out yesterday and got the red/white/blue quilted; the binding went on last night. Then, I quilted the pastel colors one this morning. These worked up rather quickly because they are small baby quilts. The red/white/blue is about 46", and the pastels one is 40".

I still need to prep and attach the binding on the pastel quilt. Then, the bindings need to be sew down on both of them. Will I be able to finish with them by tomorrow night? I won't be able to work on them until after dinner tomorrow.... oh, pressure! 8-)

Did you see the sleeping beauties under the quilting frame? ;o)






Here's a close up.

Awww... they look so sweet ... when they're asleep, that is! LOL

A Finish

Yeah!! My first finish for Peg's Challenge and another baby quilt for Project Linus. All I had left to do was to sew the binding down yesterday which took about 15 minutes because I machine-stitched it. I usually like to do it by machine on donation and utilitarian quilts.

I used a fabric with butterflies on it for the backing and quilted loopy butterflies in the center in yellow thread. It was scarry at first to use a color thread on white background, but I like how it looks and was able to see where I was quilting.

I love the look of feathers in quilts so for the border, I quilted "whimsical feathers". The inspirations came from here; she has free patterns and her quiltings are amazing.

Now, don't look too close to my feathers; it is something not to be look at too closely except for when you're on a galloping horse going by it at a high speed... LOL... but I'm happy with my second attempt of feathers. I think my brain is starting to get it because it was much easier to form the feathers, made them smaller, and going around corners were not as difficult.

Back to Quilting

It's true! My Dolly has been neglected and collected dust for this past few weeks.



Then came along Peg's challenge of finishing five quilts by the end of July. So I got up earlier this morning and loaded this baby quilt onto Dolly. If this quilt looks familiar, then you are right. It has the same fabrics as my Summer Breeze quilt. I had cut too much for Summer Breeze that I made Summer Breeze 2 and still had enough leftover fabrics that I made Dancing Butterflies.

This quilt will be for Project Linus. My goal this year is to complete a quilt for each month for the total of 12 to donate. However, I'm falling behind with only two quilts so far. Therefore, I'm happy to almost have this one done; I only need to sew the binding down.

Crumbs, Crumbs, Crumbs Madness

This is what my sewing desk looked like lately.... filled with little bits and scraps of fabrics from other projects that I could not bare to throw away. I have a huge laundry bag of scraps, and this is just a micro bit of what I pulled out!

There were times when I thought of throwing out the bag of little scraps but just couldn't. Then when Bonnie posted her Crumbs tutorial last month, I knew that THERE IS a reason to my madness in keeping all of those crumbs. LOL

This is the result of all those crumbs. I called this one, I Heart Crumbs! It's a baby quilt and for a little girl... can't you tell? lol Perfect for donating to Project Linus for this month... don't you think so?

Yeah! My machine quilting is improving! :-)) With this quilt, I focused on even stitches and am quite happy with how it turned out. I quilted loops in the borders and around the hearts, echoed hearts in the heart-shaped blocks and cornerstones. The quilted hearts came out a bit wonky in a few places, but that's OK.... I'm happy with the even stitches. I found a piece of pink and white checkered flannel and used that for the backing.

This is the center of another crumbs top that I'm currently working on. I'm planning to add borders and applique vines and leaves... will post my progress when I have it done.

It's Done!

Here it is! The SuperBowl Baby Bargellow quilted and bound! I'm on a roll... second quilt for 2008! That's a big accomplishment for me! Normally, my quilt tops get to sit and aged before becoming a quilt! *U*

My journey to better machine quilting has improved with this one also. I did an overall meandering for the first time and it looked decent! lol

This quilt will be donated to my local chapter of Project Linus and will go to the same hospital where Hannah was borned.

Thanks, Bonnie, for a fun project! I think I will make another one since I still have a bunch of strips leftover.

Baby Bargello

I finished with the last of the borders on this quilt top as the family were heading up to bed tonight! I really like how this turned out... this pattern was quick, easy and so much fun to do! Thanks Bonnie!

Oh, I did said that I wasn't going to do the SuperBowl Bargello because of my hand, but I couldn't resisted. I could still sew but just have to take it easy and not using the rotary cutter that much. Besides, I had wanted to try this pattern for a long time. *U*

It was a perfect night to sew last night. John was at the Anaheim Stadium to watch the Supercross, the girls were at their friends' houses, and Simon was playing games online with his friends.... So that meant, it was just me and the animals left. The cats at their usual spots on the sofa, and the little doxies followed me around in my little sewing corner and got underfoot as usual. Finally, after an hour of roughhousing, they settled down for the night and went to sleep.

BTW, I had Amanda (DD1) cut all the strips at 2 inches for this project before she left for the night. She did a great job at cutting. HMMM.... maybe she can cut more strips next weekend for the larger Bargello that I wanted to make for my bed. I might have to sweeten her up with some kind of briberies though. LOL

Anyway, I sewn half of the quilt last night then sewn the rest of it during the Super Bowl Sunday. The border was added after dinner. I'm planning to sandwich it tomorrow and start on the quilting. I will practice my meandering on this quilt and bind it with a dark blue. This quilt will be for Project Linus.