Background work

Often, when I have a few minutes to sew, I can either stitch, or cut out fabric, but not both.

Thursday, I stitched ... Lots of "crumbs" foundation-pieced onto skinny paper tape (like these ones I made).

I also stitched some pink and white T-Shirt squares ... Made most of the "twosies" into four-patches.

Friday I cut backgrounds ... for the pumpkin quilt and for the crumb quilts.

Weather Quilt: Week 51 of 52

This quilt top is almost done!

More pictures later ... when the weather is more suited to an outdoor picture!

This has been a fun project this year. I'm hoping to work on backing and quilting early in the new year.

Pink T-Shirt Squares

Started stitching these last week: a couple hundred pink and white T-shirt squares.

Planning for this to be a fun, customized cozy quilt!

More details later!

Little Quilts on the Clothesline

I put binding on these little quilts last week.

One's my latest Crumb Quilt (See this post also.)

One's a simple two-fabric quilt that was perfect for practicing a new quilting design. Here are the first few rows of quilting. (It got better as I went along!)

As often happens, I accidentally picked a really windy day for taking pictures!

These quilts are both baby-sized quilts, and ready to be given away!

Kitchen linens again!

It's not very glamorous, but so practical: kitchen washcloths made from a tablecloth!

Because making 38 kitchen washcloths is one of my favorite ways to use a thrifted $2 cotton tablecloth!

The pumpkins ...

So, I've got about 50 of these pumpkins started ... All the orange is done.

I'm working on background now. 

I've got backgrounds on a dozen or twenty pumpkins so far.

So far, so good!

It's beginning to look a lot like ...

Christmas Trees!

Here are some little Christmas Trees in progress. 

I've got a hundred fifty-something of the trees made, and a layout that requires 149, so that's good. 

Now, they're put together in a quilt top!

This quilt-top-center is about 50" x 65"; I'll be putting 3 simple borders on to make it bigger.

Yesterday, I cut borders out, and I cut the fabric for the pieces quilt back.

Progress! More to come soon!

Quilting on Little Quilts

During some recent sewing time, I quilted a couple of little quilts.

This was fun. I haven't perfected my technique on this floral/spiral design, but I had fun trying it on this small lap-size quilt!

I quilted this baby quilt with a simple meandering pattern with little hearts in it.

Both of these need binding, and then they'll be done.

Pumpkins!

Because I really have a lot of fabric, I started another project! (Shocking, I know!)

I loved the pumpkins quilt that Jo's Country Junction recently posted about, based on a Bonnie Hunter pattern. I don't have the pattern, but I love the idea, and it seems simple enough. The quilt quickly went on my mental list to make someday. (It also went on my {huge} Pinterest list of Quilt & Sewing ideas -- see this Pin!)

Without pressure to worry about whether I finish this this fall or next fall, I got started on some string pieces. I'm foundation-piecing big strings onto paper that's cut at 8.5" x 7". My blocks will be bigger than the pattern, but that's a good thing. 

I cut my scraps into usable strings that are a variety of widths. So far, I'm liking the variety, and it's fun to see, with scrap projects, how different each piece turns out.

 

I've got quite a few orange scraps to use; we'll see how long the variety holds out. The first day I worked on them, I got 9 pumpkin sections done; the next time, I added 18 more. 

I'm not sure how many blocks I'll make; the pattern had 49 small blocks (+ borders) for a lap-size quilt. If I do 49 big blocks, I may have nearly a twin-size, which is nice. But I'll probably just see how long my orange scraps hold out, and let that guide my number-of-blocks.

I have no definite plans for a background fabric. So. We shall see. It's a fun start!

O Christmas Tree ... Again!

A few months ago, I started working on these little Christmas Tree quilt blocks.

Something about the combination of lots of Christmas scraps (cheap at the thrift store), and a new Tri-Recs ruler made me want to start these in summer.

I'm thinking I should just finish them up into a quilt by Christmas. That would be nice. We'll see if it happens!

I already have 50 tiny blocks made, and 100 more are mostly-done: they just need the tree trunks put on.

Watch for more updates on this one soon!

Knitting finish and start!

About a week ago, I finished these socks ...

AND I started these socks!

It's always fun to knit with self-striping yarn! This is a new-to-me pattern called Geek Socks from Knitty. 

In other crumb quilt news ...

I've recently made some progress on the next crumb quilt: the pink one!

Not long ago, when I was prepping the green crumb quilt, I also mentioned wanting to make a pink one.

I love that baby quilts are smallish, do-able projects. Usually what I have is little bits of time here and there. The other day, I was pleased to be able to completely quilt the green crumb quilt in less than an hour!

One day a couple of weeks ago, I cut some pale pink fabric for this little quilt top. I don't usually have time to cut things out AND sew on the same day ... so I try to do the rotary cutting for a couple projects while I've got the cutting stuff out. And on another day, I'll do some of the sewing for a couple projects, while I've got the sewing stuff out.

With some weekend sewing time, I stitched the pieces together, and now I have a little quilt top.

I still need to press, and trim, and remove the papers from the back of the crumb quilt strips. Then I'll decide if I need a border, and what kind of backing & binding I'll use.

Finished Baby Crumb Quilt

This was a fun little quilt to work on. I mentioned it recently (see this post), and finished it up last week.

I like the color variety, and the cheery green in between the crumb rows.

The backing is made from a cute print that was once a twin-sized sheet (Pottery Barn, maybe?). I love the little cars and trucks, and the perfect assortment of colors to go with the quilt top.

I quilted it with green thread.

Briefly, I considered binding it in bright orange, because that would have been cute. But ultimately, I chose my recent favorite binding: stripes!

This little quilt is a gift for a sweet friend who has a new baby boy.

I'm looking forward to mailing it off this week.

Knitting a little ...

Every now and then, my hands are free, so I knit!

I've recently had the time to knit the heel flaps and finish the heel shaping on this fun pair of socks:

Next up: heel gussets and then the foot. Moving right along. Football season should help. Maybe. :-)

Crumb Quilt Top

So,  I recently posted a picture of this work in progress. (See Weekend Stitching here.)

Here are a few more pics. 

I had lots of these ... "crumbs" stitched onto adding-machine paper rolls ... So, now, those crumb quilt rolls (see previous posts here and here) are becoming something!

 

I was trying to figure out what to make with them. 

Baby quilts are fun to make, and baby quilts happen to be my favorite baby shower gift to give, so, baby quilts it is!

Here I'm auditioning these stripes on green and on pale pink, trying to pick a background color.

Turns out, I like both, so I'm making one of each! 

I've got the pieces cut for the pale pink variation, so, that'll be happening soon!

This green one's a quilt top, anxiously awaiting being quilted! (I've got the perfect backing. Time to buy some batting!)

By the way, the stitching-onto-adding-machine-paper is a new idea for me, but good for using up random scraps. Jo's Country Junction mentioned the idea at the end of her blog post here, referencing a blog post from QuiltedTwins -- see their posts about the idea here and here.

After stitching these stripes into this quilt top, I removed the paper from the back of the crumb strips. This was a sort of tedious process, not surprisingly. But it's easy to do while watching a movie, so that's what I did.