challenge top complete

I finished putting the last border on my charity challenge top tonight. Blogger is not allowing any photo uploading-though, I wasn't going to show it just yet- after next Sunday when we all reveal our tops, it will then be ok to put it up here. I am in charge of keeping Zoe on a short leash tonight so she doesn't slurp the children coming to the door for treats. I hope we are almost done-she is sure we are torturing her doing this! I will be sandwiching this top and then switching machines-oh joy, playing with my new machine...I am quite looking forward to it. I guess I will visit some blogs and catch up with my reading.

completed 49er wall hanging

The usual disclaimer...it is straighter than I could hang it...and the printer pushed the bottom left corner out...however I think you can appreciate the fact that it is done. The top lost a few inches in the squaring process...but all in all I am pleased with it. I can not believe how heavy it is! My brother is ten years younger than I am-so by the time he became a real fan, Joe Montana was no longer on the team-accounting for the lack of his name or number in this wall hanging. After all, this is a memento of HIS shirts and those times of wearing them. It certainly will take care of one blank wall in his office nicely. By the way, his 49er decorated office is his home office. He works from home at least two days a week. Needless to say, I am happy to have this done in a pretty timely fashion. On a related note, thanks to my final frustration with quilting this, I bought a larger throat area machine Saturday, a MemoryCraft 6600. It's made by Janome and I quilted a baby quilt on it as my test drive of how it handled. I chose the machine because I liked how it quilted, it's sold by my favorite lqs/dealer, and it will do the things I bought it for well. There are many great machines out there-I think besides liking how it handled (and that is such a personal preference, isn't it?) I know the folks servicing it very well-and to me, a good mechanic saying a machine is well built and a good value carries a lot of weight. Still, no matter what, if it had not stitched so smoothly and nicely...I would have kept on searching.

Friday morning

Well, I finally had time last night to start hand stitching on the wall hanging. The label is neatly stitched and I am around the first corner. Tonight we have a movie to watch and lots more will get done. I have the weekend ahead to work on it as well, so my goal is a photo of this totally done by Sunday evening. I have been reading blogs and for whatever reason, blogger has not allowed me to leave any comments- so believe me, I am visiting..even if I don't leave a comment right now.
Plus, when there are huge amounts of comments already posted-well, I usually skip leaving one of my own-I mean, do I really have something more to say that has not already been said? I am going to start cutting fabric tomorrow for the next deadline quilt. No progress photos as I know at least one person reads this blog who is also playing in this challenge..it's due a week from this Sunday, so you won't be waiting all that long!

a few more nights

I managed to finish quilting and trim the 49er wall hanging today. I checked two quilt shops for a better binding fabric than the one I pulled from my stash. Neither had anything even close that would work-so stash binding it is. I have the sleeve cut and all the binding put together, pressed, & waiting. I am off to relax the rest of the evening and look forward to doing the machine stitching binding on Monday night. I will include stitching the top side of the sleeve along with the binding-so that will move it along. I still need to come up with a label. Once it's completely done, I will post a photo of it. Thanks for all the encouraging comments. This has not been my favorite project and I truly do not want to do another tee shirt quilt-ever. My free motion quilting had to be ripped out and I had to use my walking foot instead...that really was frustrating to waste so much time ripping out all that quilting. It's ok looking now-I know my quilting is not the focus - the shirts are...so I am settling for how it turned out. My brother will be thrilled with it and that is the important thing.

wall hanging progress

Gasp! I am actually writing and it's not the weekend. About the only time I am getting on my home computer is in the mornings-before work. Yesterday morning, I stitched the last row down.
Last night I laid out and crawled around on the floor pinning the wall hanging. It's a small house-limited options for pinning a larger size quilt-the living room area is the only place possible.
ugh. ok, double ugh. However, it's all pinned and waiting to be quilted. I was going to do a large meander all over it. Naturally I am now wondering if that is really what I want to do. Tonight I will sit down and figure it out. I am wishing I had more time...a big stitch by hand might look really good on it. Of course, hand quilting tee shirts would probably not be a fun thing to do, so nix that idea. I will post a photo once I get it quilted and trimmed...blogger would not allow me to leave any comments this morning- so don't think I am not reading your blogs...I am.

49er wall hanging progress #1

as promised: I have a third done-here is the start of the middle vertical row...I put in a sleeve piece to fill a gap between row 1 and row 2 start...I sprayed sizing on the shirts to help "stiffen" them up..which has worked-ok-ish...this is a method that would not work well if you want real precise stitching...but, I am doing my own thing..and it's working great for what I am doing.
I can't tell you how much fun I am having - in my jammies, stitching, cutting, pressing, fitting, etc on this project. Now I am considering adding stablisher around the edges of the tee shirt wall hanging, so I could add black regular fabric on for a border...it's only an idea right now..first I want the body of this done and then I can see where I want to go next. It's only 2:15 pm my time, so plenty of day still left.

at last a quilty day

It's a rainy day-yesterday I declared today would be my guilt free quilty day. I planted 50 daffodil bulbs yesterday-came home from buying them and got them right in. Went by to spend some time with Alice and were invited back for dinner-Oxtail stew. My son makes his own beef stock-it was delicious! I love how we always talk cooking when we eat together. Alice was her usual adorable self..we left her having her after bath bottle-getting ready for her long evening sleep.
This morning I slept in late-and have spent time clearing the sewing table, putting stuff away, helping locate a missing item out in the garage (honey, what is in this tub? honey, help me put this back up on top, honey?) thankfully it was finally located not in a box, but in a bag LOL! I am going to fix the hem on one more tee shirt , then start in on the tee shirt wall hanging. It's laid out on the bed so I can keep track of which piece goes where. Once I have a few stitched together I will take a photo and post. I also need to take a photo of the start of another Cher scrappy style charity quilt-taught my small quilt group Thursday night my approach to grab and stitch-it was a wonderfully fun time stitching with these gals. I am starting to see the end of the overflowing bin of scraps I have been working on all this year to empty. I may accomplish that goal this year after all. So, it's a lovely day ahead for me...what are you up to today??

Saturday again

thought I would put up a photo of my next project- a tee shirt wall hanging for my brother. I just went over to the lqs that has stored my bolt of 49er fabric for several years now. You can see it in the bottom of the rough cut shirts hanging...it will be the backing fabric. I have 3 more maroon colored shirts to cut apart and then start stitching together. My friend who owns the lqs, teaches a class on her way of making these quilts/wall hangings. I am going to try what she suggested-which is no fusible interfacing, zig zag the shirts on top of each other...sandwich, and use a large meander stitch to quilt it together. This means not having to pay a longarm quilter and puts it all on me.
This won't be any larger than 72 by 96 as that is the largest his wall can hold. I am excited to tackle something new-and do something for him. He is my baby brother ...ten years younger-and such a wonderful sweet man. We fly out early November to visit with my sister and her family and will also be seeing my brother and his. I am so looking forward to spending time with all of them.

October....

Well, like so many others...I could use a few more days of September to help reach my goals set.
But, I haven't mastered that time/space change thing-so October it is. I set what seemed pretty reasonable goals in September-however when I threw in an unexpected comfort quilt, naturally that meant one less charity quilt got done. Which is perfectly ok with me. I always make special quilts done when needed a priority to any goals set. September:
1) 2 of 3 charity quilts finished.
2) African scrappy top completed
3) family projects..started cutting last night

Not so bad. October I will finish one more charity quilt-it's pinned and waiting to be quilted. I am working on a tee shirt quilt-which is a new format for me-it's a family gift and I think it won't take too much time to put the top together. The pieces I am using however are huge..so I am worried about this ending up being NOT a "wall" sized hanging..but, they are what they are-and if it turns out huge..well he has a whole wall bare after all !

And, to round out my goal list - I have a few Christmas gift projects for my granddaughter, Alice Wonderful. Easy to do I hope. Plus I am going to take my left over sweater yarn and knit up an easy and favorite scarf pattern. And now with the cooler weather, the mending pile will need to be tackled. Those polar fleece pants are going to be needed!

charity quilting day

This may look familiar, it is the other half of a donated top I split and now this one too is quilted- the same way-but with a scrappy binding.










This was a shop sample given to our group-I quilted it and bound it last night/today. I am washing it as there were a few spots on the backing I used that should wash out. It's flannel top and back...with batting-cotton binding.
it's about 44 1/2 inches by 62. Thimbleberries...it will certainly keep some child very warm!

We had a very small turn out and I broke 3 or 4 needles trying to stitch binding onto the flannel quilt before giving up and taking the machine over to another shop for repair. The many layers of fabric when I was doing the corners was just impossible for my little Gem..poor thing. I finished it up at home on my faithful Bernina. I also stitched two more labels on other donated quilts and took photos of all 23 finished quilts-except for the flannel one. I will take a regular photo of it for our album. That will bring the total up to 24 finished quilts since spring for our group. We have had so many members be busy with other life events this year-it's been our lowest number of quilts since we started 5 years ago. I know I will be taking a break except for our challenge quilt to work on personal projects needing to be completed before the year ends.