UFO updates.....

The UFO project at the Quilter's Nest has been a big help to me!  I have finished a UFO for each month so far, although I was slow on the November one and just got it done in December.  But I have also completed two others that they haven't called the number for yet!  

 September was my Batik Fan runner.  It is a bit odd, but it is finished.  Now what to do with it???  It measures 53 1/2 " x 25".....pretty long and wide.  Too big for my buffet.  It was a tough project to finish.  I liked making the fans using coffee filters....I show how somewhere else in this blog....but then I didn't know what to do with it since I didn't want to make a whole quilt.  I decided on a runner but had to add some applique to make it come out more evenly shaped.  Oh, well.....it's done!

 This was my November UFO.  I started this circle project with my sister, Margaret in Seattle in 2007(?)  or there about.   About 29 x 31 finiahed.  Based on the book Circle Play, by Raynola Pakusich.  It is an interesting idea that I need to spend a lot more time on.  Working with the backgrounds and the circles takes some thinking.  I made it harder by deciding to make my circles 3 different sizes.  That made it impossible to make it come together right.  I was going to make 3 separate hangings, but changed my mind.  I want to try another one and think it will be better.  At least I did find a way to finish this one, and I'm not unhappy with it.  I was limited on fabric when I began this, since I wasn't at home with my stash!  The thing that saves it is the white stitching that I did....I think.  Turned out OK. Again....what to do with it now?

 My December UFO.....a cat quilt....literally!  I made this little quilt for my cats to lie on when they are in my lap.  I was also using up the strips from my other "strip" quilts I did....still not all gone!  I call it "Cats in the Cabin".  I messed up and got two identical greens too close together and it bugs me.  I may sew another strip on top of one of them to change the color.  A lot of trouble for a cat quilt....so maybe not!

 Cat tested and approved!  Mouse taking up more than her share.

Ozma.

Hopey haven't tested it yet and she is the one who will spend a lot of time sleeping on it probably!

Binding the edges.....

.......Love it? hate it? tolerate it as a necessary evil of quilting?  Sooner or later every quilt project comes down to that boring task of binding the edges.  Some people find it relaxing and like to watch TV while they finish their projects.  Others like me, can't do that ( I need glasses to see the TV but don't wear them for close-up work), so I usually listen to music while I sit and bind quilts.  

Most of my current projects are at the edge binding stage.  This "Three Chickens and a Dozen Eggs" runner needs the edges bound and I'm also still hand quilting the eggs and have a few little buttons to sew on.  This was my UFO for the month of October, so I have one week to finish this before show-and-tell time on the last Saturday of the month!  Should be able to do that without much problem.  The harder parts are done.  This will be a gift for a friend who raises chickens when it is done.

 Another UFO that is almost finished now....except for binding the edges!  First you have to make the binding. Sewing the binding to the front of the quilt with the machine is the easy part, but the back side has to be hand sewn with a blind hem stitch.  Not hard....just tedious and boring (for me)

 Three little hex table toppers for Christmas gifts.  These I haven't even made the binding and sewn it on by machine yet! I hate doing corners that are not 90 degrees.  Hope to add the binding soon and then add them to my pile of projects that need the hand sewing done.  At least they will be done by Christmas!

And finally, my little log cabin lap quilt.  

All done except.....you guessed it....binding the edges!

Whether you love doing it or hate doing it....the finished project is always worth the effort when you see it done!  The perfect finishing touch to every quilt.

Catching up and the UFO Challenge.....

  I don't think I ever posted a photo of the strip quilt when I finished it, so here is a photo of it draped on the end of my couch.  I'm looking forward to putting this on our bed when the weather turns cooler.  Too hot right now!  I made 2 pair of pillow cases to go with it.  I call it my "M&M quilt" because it reminds me of a bowl of M&M candies with all those bright colors in it!  (or maybe jelly beans?) And also because it will go on our bed ........we are Mike and Mary...2 M's!

M&M Quilt done

I decided to make a little log cabin quilt....lap size.....out of the left over strips from my M&M quilt.  

I just finished the top except to add a small border.  I think I can put this one together myself and do some stitching in the ditch to quilt it...I hope!  I sure wish I was better at the quilting part of quilting.

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The UFO Challenge

Every quilter has lots of UFO's....admit it!  All those UnFinished Objects sit around in a drawer or bag and never got finished because we got excited about some new project or we got bored with the old one or couldn't figure out what to do next!  Well a local quilt store....The Quilter's Nest....decided to help us take care of this problem by issuing a challenge to register 12 UFO's at their store.  Each month they will draw a number between 1-12 and that is the UFO you are to try to finish in that month.  If you finish it you can bring it for Show-and-Tell on the last Saturday of the month and also be registered for some prizes!  I had no problem finding 12 UFO's to register and so I signed up.

 The number drawn for August was #4 and that was my "butterfly project".  

I think I started these in 2008. 

 I had made these two small butterfly pieces with the idea of doing more and them making them all into a big wall hanging or "something". No real plan in mind.....just wanted to applique butterflies!  Well, after two butterflies and flowers, I put them in the drawer and they had been sitting there ever since.  So what to do with them??????   I decided to make each one into a small wall hanging and will give them to my sisters for Christmas.  I had to add the borders, hand quilt around the butterflies and flowers, and then I machine quilted around the borders and a bit of rambling quilting on the background.  Added the bindings and my first UFO is FINISHED!  Yeah!  

September's UFO.....#11 was drawn.

This was a workshop I took in January 2011 to learn to make the little coffee-filter batik fans that are on this runner.  It was a lot of fun, but I didn't want to make a whole quilt of them!  So I arranged mine into a rather large runner.  Because of the nature of the block, putting them in rows like this makes it asymmetrical in appearance.  To combat that I have decided to add an extra strip of fabric on the two odd ends which makes it symmetrical again, but now it seems "unfinished".  

My plan is to add applique of some sort on the fat parts of the two border ends.  Then I will have to layer, quilt, and bind the whole thing.  OK.....I have a month to do this!  I can do this!

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(Not off to a good start.  I spend all morning looking for the fabrics I used to make the fans and found all but the reddish one....which is rather important for what I wanted to do with the applique.  Darn!  I have no batik that matches in color.  Hmmmmmm.....thinking.)

Update next month when the next UFO number is announced and hopefully this is finished.

Links for Grand Rapids, Michigan Quilt Show photos....

We went to the Grand Rapids Quilt Show earlier this month and the quilts were fantastic!  So were the extra exhibits.  Here are links to web albums of the photos that I took at the show.  The first link is for the main quilt show:  Grand Rapids Quilt Show

and the second link is for the extra exhibits that I have some photos of: Grand Rapids other exhibits

And here is a link for my post on the Quilt Barn Trail in Vicksburg, Michigan.

I hope to get something new posted in here, soon.  Have been working on some UFO projects mostly and a log cabin from the scraps left over from my strip quilt.  Just need to take some photos!

Posey County Quilt show....

Saturday we went to the Keck Gonnerman Antique Machinery Association's 22nd Annual Show in Posey County, Indiana.  It also included a quilt show.  Here are some of the quilts.  I will not say anything about them....they speak for themselves.  Most are hand quilted and some are antiques.  A lot of nice embroidered tops and old fashioned patterns.

Nature Crazy Quilt finished at last!.....

I finished it!  This is both the hardest and the most exciting thing I've ever done.  I have wanted to do birds or other nature stuff on a quilt almost since I started quilting.  I never had the nerve, or the patterns, or the know-how.  I finally decided to give it a try and worked out the patterns based on some paper-pieced patterns in books by Margaret Rolfe, that I altered to make them more real looking and usable as needle turned applique.  Some of the patterns I made by looking at drawings on the internet and adapting them.  

 The crazy quilt background is from the Kwik Krazy Also pattern where you stack 12 pieces of fabric and whack them according to the pattern and then restack them and sew them back together.

 When I started doing the crazy quilt stitching, I was just "making it up" as I went.  My favorite method of sewing :-)  Then I began trying to add realistic looking wildflowers to all the bird blocks.  That was fun and I used my Wildflower Field Guide for guidance as well as the internet.  I still have some just made up stuff, too.

On the three flower blocks, I also added butterflies, caterpillars, grasshopper, tree frog, bees, ants, snail, etc.  And there are three spider webs (for luck!).  The biggest one on the lily block has a garden spider in it with his signature zigzag (which I didn't do very well).  The raccoon block has dragonflies (the blue one is a Blue Dasher male :-)

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I almost feel bereft now that it is done.  I have worked on this for many months and many hours and it seems weird to be finished!  The quilting is so-so....I just machine stitched it in the ditch.  Looks OK on the front, but the back is sort of puckery in places.  I'm not good at the quilting part, but wanted to do the whole thing myself.  I will make a fancy label for the back eventually and will post it when it is done

Raccoon, Iris, and Wren in progress....

I'm still working on these nature blocks....still having fun with them!

Almost done with this Raccoon block.  I was going to do a little thread work on the raccoon body, but not much else to add.  Making dragonflies and Cattails was fun :-)  Not totally happy with the yellow water lily.

 The Iris  has a lot to be done on the block yet.  I decided I would embroider bugs and butterflies and such around the flower blocks, but I did put a vine with a couple of types of flowers here....Morning Glories and Scarlet Creeper.

I just started the Carolina Wren tonight.  I still have to add the beak and legs and maybe work on eye and wing and tail feathers.  He may be my only bird with legs.  Somehow he just seems to need them.  I just noticed that I have a photo of a real wren on my sidebar almost opposite this photo....how appropriate!

That leaves me just one more to do the applique....a Day Lily.  Then the rest is all embroidering until I decide they are finished.

Blue Jay....another block started!

The only thing I seem to be working on is my nature quilt.  I did a recent update in my other blog...click here

The most recent block I am working on.....Blue Jay.  Needs a bit more work on the feathers and all the other fancy stitching.  I may actually finish this someday!  LOL.  Four blocks to go needing applique!

See my other blocks and recent stitching work.....here.

Nature Blocks update.....

I was stalled on this project for awhile, but have picked them up and been working on them the last few days. (Click photos to see larger slide show).

 I just put this Cardinal on a block last night.  I'm mostly happy with it.  He will be sitting on a large branch, I think.....so I can avoid doing anything about feet or legs.  None of my birds so far have legs :-)

 I have been adding to the Goldfinch block.  I felt it needed more white on the wings and tail, but think I over-did it.  I like the wings, but may take a black marker and do away with most of the white on the tail.  I just added the thistles in the lower left....one of the Goldfinches favorite flowers :-)  I gave him a sunflower, too above him and wheat to sit on (without any legs :-)

 This has been my "stumbling block"....best name I can give it!  I made the pansy and didn't like it.  Stared at it for days trying to figure out what to do to like it better.  Then I added a hummingbird....didn't like it either! This block has been a cursed one....and cursed often.  I've been adding thread to the hummingbird to give him texture and shiny highlights, and like it better, but this photo doesn't show it very well.  Maybe if you click to make it bigger.  Did more work on the pansy, too and begin stitching the seams to draw the eye away from both of them!!  Sigh...this will be the block I never like, I am sure.

The woodpecker block....I began embellishing it.  I found the neatest book about embroidery and tried an idea from it...the circle thing.  The book is by Brian Haggard and he has a blog.  I also tried to make it look like the woodpecker was pecking a hole...so-so, but acceptable.  Stitched a few seams.  I now have seven blocks out of the twelve started!  I think a raccoon block will be next to give me another mammal to go with my squirrel block.  Since I just photographed a raccoon family, it seems fitting to make one on a block.

I do enjoy working on this and am glad I got (sort of ) past my "stumbling block"...a.k.a. the "pansy and the hummingbird".  I'm looking forward to seeing what I decide to do with these block eventually.  I'm thinking a black fabric to sash them and borders.  Will have to start looking for pretty floral black fabrics or what ever I think might look good with these......oh, boy.....a shopping trip!