Only a little progress

Last week I was gone on vacation. Our family spent most of the week in Sunriver, Oregon. It was so great to all be there together. One morning I was coloring with my granddaughter and thought of some design ideas. I drew out 3 ideas and my granddaughter choose the one she liked (which was the one I liked best too). It was the ideas for the inside of the tear drop shape. I couldn't wait to get home and try it. I think it turned out better than my drawing, but that's usually the case (I'm not that good at drawing)! This week I have almost no time to work on it and it's driving me nuts. I now have the whole rest of the quilt designed in my head. I'm a working out at the local county fair this week in 4-H with the sewing projects that the kids do. It takes a lot of time and energy but it's something I've done for almost 15 years and I love it. I want to encourage young people to sew. Hopefully next week I will have plenty of time to get most of this quilt done. There's a few customer quilts waiting to be done before the end of August. Too many quilts -- not enough time!

Whole Cloth Quilt Progress

Here's a photo of the progress on the wholecloth quilt. This was not my earlier thought to put in the 12 inch wide space created by the double lines and circles but after trying a few things out, it seemed like an interesting shape. I have no idea yet what will fill in these tear drop shapes. I probably will draw some ideas on paper before I decide. So far it's been fun though at times a little tense trying to find that perfect idea for a new design. I really like this kind of challenge. My daughter who is getting married saw it and said she might like something like this for her wedding quilt -- hmm -- we'll see :)

Spontaneity

I like to quilt outside the box. What I mean is, I don't like patterns, especially those that are just repetitious and you see them on so many quilts. Now that doesn't mean I don't do that kind of quilting. It's really the bread and butter of my quilting. But being creative, just going with the flow, not really sure what I'm going to do until it's actually done -- that's me. So as I have mentioned in this blog before, I want to do a whole cloth quilt. The books and other instructions I have read all say to draw out the designs on your fabric before beginning. For me, that's a mind block. It's tedious, and requires too much thinking and planning. So yesterday I ironed a solid piece of fabric that was purchased to someday make a whole cloth quilt. I drew a big X in the center and then another so that basically there are 8 lines coming out from the center of the quilt. Then I loaded the piece on the longarm. I have decided that other than these 8 lines, everything else just comes as I think of it. Not much planning and not a lot of thought. This quilt will probably be on my machine for several weeks (it's my break from customer work -- remember) and I'll just do a little whenever time permits and I have a new idea. I have no idea what the end result will be. I'll try to post pictures throughout the process. I may hate this quilt and say, "that didn't work" or it may end up in a quilt show! I've called this quilt 'Spontaneity'. Stay tuned!

Brown Quilt is Done

I feel like I have worked on this quilt forever. This fall it will be two years since I started piecing the quilt. The applique work took such a long time to complete. Appliquing leaf after leaf got tedious and I found myself constantly putting the quilt away only to take it out a month or so later and challenge myself -- do two leaves a day and in a month it will be done! What finally motivated me was the desire to start a Dresden Plate quilt in miniature (mostly applique work) and my son-in-law saying, "you can't start something new until you finish that other quilt"! He was right of course, so now it's done. There still is the machine quilting to do on it. I want to have a good chunk of time to do that so I may not get to it for a few weeks. Ideas are brewing in my head as to how it should be quilted. I'll post when it's being worked on. Sorry for the poor photos. My husband has the camera and is in Peru, so I had to take pics with my cell phone.

Latest Customer Quilt

This was a lovely quilt to do. To keep the cost down, I focused my work in the white border and did an all-over feather design in the center. I love the way it turned out. The quilt has prairie point edges -- a really nice touch. The photos aren't the best because they are taken with my cell phone. That's all I have right now since my husband is out of the country and has the digital camera with him.

Tired Sewing Machine

My main sewing machine seems to be giving up the ghost. I'm not sure how long I've had it, but probably close to 15 years. And it has a lot of miles on it. I can't begin to count the number of quilts that have been sewn on it. There's also been many home decorating projects, a couple wedding dresses and many bridesmaid dresses. My daughters have all sewn on the machine. Over the last few months the machine has become very noisy, the tension not good and regular thread breakage. Yesterday it became so frustrating that I put the machine away and got out an old machine. I have 5 sewing machines but they are old and I'm spoiled by the computerized machine. I imagine it will be expensive to fix. I'm debating whether I get it fixed or purchase another computerized machine. I know I won't put the money into a machine like I did this last one. It had a lot of stitches, several alphabets and many options I just never used. There are some things I wouldn't do without, like a needle up down, the buttonhole stitch, a machine that makes good buttonholes and a few decorative stitches. But I don't need an alphabet. So now I have to contemplate my options and decide a course of action.

Summer

It's getting to that time of summer when my garden is really starting to produce. So that means it's also canning time. I love to can. I started canning the first summer after I was married, over 30 years ago. Since then, I try more and more new things so that now canning requires a huge chunk of my time. I don't regret it or even feel like it's too much work. I love gardening and 'putting by' what comes out of the garden. The last two days I've canned raspberry jam and blueberries. Today I will finish the blueberries and then maybe get marionberries. After that it's pickles, beets, and then into tomato season. I can literally a ton of tomatoes. It's my favorite because there is so much you can do with tomatoes. I'll do plain sauce, pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, salsa, tomato soup, chili sauce, diced tomatoes, italian tomatoes and anything else that suits my fancy and have the tomatoes for. This year I also am growing tomatillos. I've found several recipes that look wonderful.
I love canning so much that last night I taught a home canning class in our community. 15 people came. Of those 15 only 3 had ever canned before. Most were young women who have a desire to be more in charge of what comes to their tables. It was exciting to see their enthusiasm. Hopefully most went home saying, "I can can"!

A Daughter Engaged!

My oldest daughter got engaged over the weekend. I'm so happy and excited for her. She is 26 and waited a long time to meet the man of her dreams! They just started dating 5 months ago but I guess when you're older and sure of your relationship there's no need to wait years. They are thinking of a December wedding. I've always hoped one of my daughters would get married in December. We have a lot of birthdays in December but a wedding would still be wonderful. I love everything about Christmas so it would be so fun to throw in a wedding. My daughter loves vintage. I'm wondering what she will choose as a wedding dress. Or will she want to sew her dress (which means a big commitment from me). My younger daughter who got married almost two years ago made her own wedding dress and it was absolutely beautiful. We actually had a great time sewing it. I learned a lot having it only my second wedding dress that I sewed. I would do it again (am I crazy)! Stay tuned as more will be posted soon. This is not the dress but a picture I found of a vintage wedding dress.

Booking Fall Quilts

I have room on my schedule for a couple more quilts this summer and then I'm into fall quilting. September, October and November are my busiest months for quilting and they usually fill very quickly. So this is just a reminder to those of you who I regularly quilt for -- if you want something quilted this fall get your name on my schedule before fall is here. I won't be doing a lot of quilting in August and I usually take most of December off too. August this year will be busy with vacation, working at the Clackamas County Fair (with sewing and quilts), canning and teaching canning classes, and hopefully working on some of my own quilts. Sounds like a plan!

Basket Quilt is Quilted

I finished the quilting on the basket quilt. I'm pleased with how it turned out. The quilting doesn't show up like it would on plainer fabric but I still put some time and effort into quilting it artisitcally and with designs that I thought would add to the beauty of the quilt. I'm not sure if this will hang in the front entry hallway or our bedroom. The quilt was so long in the process of getting to this point that it deserves some place of prominence! Now just to get the binding done.