2018 Finishes - Zeke Scrappy - #57

I have more Thimbleberries scrap fabric than I know what to do with, especially pieces measuring 2.5 inches.  I was playing around with using up these pieces, and put together this pattern.  This is one of my first designs using no pattern other than what was in my head.  I am calling it Zeke Scrappy.  I will get to why I am calling it later in the post.  

I thought I would be able to put a dent in my scraps, but no avail.  This is one of my favorite quilts I have ever made.  One because I designed it, and two, it's scrappy with my favorite line of fabrics.  There is not much if any duplication in the pieces.  It borderlines on being a postage stamp quilt. 

The size is 65" X 88".  I made it specifically to be a throw for a tall big man.

I chose a scrappy reds for the binding, to bring all the colors of the quilt to a focal point.  

Of course, I chose my favorite 108" backing for this quilt, as it fits the colors and background of all my Thimbleberries fabrics.

Now, the idea behind this quilt comes from a person that came into our lives when my children were in high school.  His parents had just gotten divorced and he was not in a good place, so he spent a lot of time with my children and at our home.  He began to call me mom, and loved being a part of our family.  He went on to do a tour in the military, landed back in the Eastern part of the US, got married to a wonderful woman, and now has a daughter.  One of Facebook's redeeming qualities is that I can keep in contact with these individuals and their growing lives.  This individual, Zeke, commented on one of my FB quilt posts that he buy one of my quilts, as he wanted one.  I replied that I don't sell them, but that I would make him one.

When I sent it to him, I wrote him a note explaining that life gives us lots of scraps that we piece together that makes us whole and what we are today.  Much like a quilt, the fabric can stay in a box all jumbled up and messy, not really being anything useful, but put together it turns into a beautiful thing that is useful, comforting, and warm.  It brings happiness to individuals lives, much like he did in his life.

Therefore, I give you the Zeke Scrappy...

Warmest...

Renee.

Size: 65" x 88"

Fabric Lines Used:  Thimbleberries 

Colors:  Black Gold, red, Green, blue

Pattern:  Zeke Scrappy  

Designer: Renee Steele

Long Arm Quilter:  Carol Nelson

Year Began:2018

Year Completed: 2018

2018 Finishes - Springs First Breath #56

A quilt that looks like its name, "Springs First Breath".  When you look at it, it looks like spring.  Light and airy, very pretty. It comes from a Block of the Month club through a local quilt shop.  The kind where you spend $5 a month, attend the club meeting, do some show and tell, and meet with like minded other quilters.  It was a lot of fun back in 2009.

It is a nice sized quilt, measuring 70" X 88".  The pictures below do not do it justice.  The light was not in my favor the day I took pictures of several of my quilts.

I tried to get up close to show the block patterns throughout the quilt.  It is a sampler, where each block is a different pattern using the same colors for each block.

The backing is just gorgeous with the blue floral.  It was used also as to outside border on front of the quilt.  The fabric line is from Tanya Whelan called Grand Revival.  I like her lines of fabric.  I have some more of her lines, and will be making more from them.  

Warmest...

Size: 70" x 88"

Fabric Lines Used:  Tanya Weylan Grand Revival

Colors: Pale blue, pink, green

Pattern:  Springs First Breath

Designer: Diane Bowden

Long Arm Quilter:  Carol Nelson

Year Began: 2009

Year Completed: 2018

2018 Finishes - Garden Party #55

This is a table runner from the Thimbleberries program "You're Invited" for the month of March 2007.  When I am typing these dates, I think wow, that was a long time ago, many years ago.  There is no feeling like getting all of these projects finished.  The baggage of unfinished projects can be heavy and discouraging in our quilting world.

Take this table runner for example,  I put it aside this top as the pattern called for quite a bit of appliqué in and around the center blocks.  I don't really like doing appliqué, so I put it away.  When I set out to finish my UFO's, I told myself that I didn't need to do my projects like the pattern, and could do without the appliqué!  What a feeling of control and freedom.  This project turned out simple and something I really like without the appliqué.  We need to learn to do what we like and what it takes to complete projects.

It is a fairly large table runner, measuring 27" X 52".  I have a table it will fit, but I haven't used it yet.  I'm thinking of using it a gift for a distant friend who really appreciates the work that goes into these projects.  

Also, I had to get creative for the backing.  This is a different color value that Thimbleberries tried (and failed in my humble opinion), but it then cause difficulty in getting a matching or a close to matching fabric to use on the back.  Then, I remembered that during the participation in this program, they sent me two of these kits by a mail mix up, when I called about it they told me I could just keep the second kit for free.  I dug through my bins of kits and found the duplicate, and I had enough to create a backing using two of the fabrics from the front.  Win! Win!  The rest of the kit went into the scrap bin for future scrap quilts.

Warmest...

Size: 27" x 52"

Fabric Lines Used:  Thimbleberries 

Colors:  Red, Yellow, Blue, Green

Pattern:  Garden Party (Thimbleberries "You're Invited" 03/07)

Designer:  Lynette Jensen

Long Arm Quilter:  Carol Nelson

Year Began: 2007

Year Completed: 2018

2018 Finishes - Starry Path - #54

This quilt is a Block of the month from 2009 at one of the local quilt shops.  Once again I did all the blocks during the year, but put it aside and it became an UFO.  I pulled it out this year, as one of the BOM's I was committed to get done.  The sashing are patterned pieces, so I had to spend time getting them made up and then I was able to proceed in putting the top together.  There are big background blocks, every other block with the printed fabric blocks.  There was an option to do an appliqué ring of flowers using the same colors as the blocks, but I opted not to do that for this quilt.  It came out better than I thought it would with all that background white space.

The borders use the same fabrics as found in the blocks.  It measures 65" X 65".  It doesn't look square in the picture, but it is, believe me.  I am not a fan of square quilts, but this is quite pretty.

Again, the sunlight doesn't due the close up pictures any justice, but I like the sherbet colors used in the quilt.

I had enough of the border fabric as a backing, and the fabric from the inner border for the binding.  

Size: 65" x 65"

Fabric Lines Used:  Unknown

Colors:  Sherbert yellows, pinks, blues

Pattern:  Frizzle Frazzle (Lynette"s "You're Invited" 05/06)

Designer:  Diane Bowden

Long Arm Quilter:  Carol Nelson

Year Began: 2006

Year Completed: 2018

2018 Finishes - Hourglass & Rails - #53

Everybody who reads about my projects and quilts, know that I'm  a follower of Bonnie Hunter at her blog Quiltville.  Every year around June/July, she puts out a new Leader Ender project.  I combined two of her years blocks to make this quilt.

Year 2016 was the pinwheel block and year 2017 was the rails block.  I chose to alternate the two blocks and came up with this quilt.

This quilt is made with 30's reproductions prints, and there is not duplicate within each block.  So, in essence, there in one block in a pinwheel and one block in a rail using the same print.  But, it is really very scrappy.  It measures 84" X 102".

The sun did not do justice of this quilt.  This is a close up of a corner of the different blocks.  I get all my quilts done in a stipple pattern by my long armer quilter.  It is very reasonable, and looks great on most of my common quilts.  

I chose a very pretty pink tone on tone to match the period pink colors.  I used it also for the binding.

Size: 84" x 102"

Fabric Lines Used:  30's Reproduction Prints

Colors:  Red, Green Yellow, blue, pink

Pattern: 2016 Pinwheels and 2017 Rails Leaders Enders 

Designer:  Bonnie Hunter

Long Arm Quilter:  Carol Nelson

Year Began: 2016

Year Completed: 2018

Child's Play Quilt #58

Still working on finishing up kits in the several programs I joined back in the 2000's.  This one comes from a program called "Anniversary Club" Thimbleberries by Lynette Jensen. The kit came in June 2006.   It is in her book, that I have done other kits from this club.  More about past posts can be found here.  

This kit is called Child's Play Quilt.  It will measure 74" X 86".  

This shows all the different pieces that I put together by chain piecing.

This is the lay out of the other different pieces of the quilt.  I cut them all out, and then sew them block by block.

Here is a sample of the layout I use to get the pieces done in chain piecing.  I pair up the half square triangle with the one color and one background.

I have the top finished, ready to go the long arm quilter.  I will get final pictures when it is done.

BDU Memory Dog and Bear

We have a dear friend that served in the military and did a tour over in the Middle East.  I am taking a pile of his uniforms (BDU's) and making a memory dog and bear for his daughter.  I also will be making a quilt with the leftover pieces for our friend.

This is the dog sewn up before stuffing.

This is where he is stuffed, still unfinished.  I have to tweak the stuffing, add the eyes and sew up the back.  

Here is the finished stuffed dog.  The eyes and nose make the dog look so cute!!

This time of year is tough to find red, white and blue striped ribbon, which is what I want to use.  The recipient is a young girl, so I went with a pink bow.  

I am honored to do this for our friend.

Warmest...

Wren

2018 Finishes - Farmer's Wife #52

Going back to July 2011, another blogger started a quilt along doing the Farmer's Wife sampler quilt.  This was really popular around that time,  and several bloggers and local quilt shops were doing it either as a quilt along or a BOM.  I had already purchased the book several months earlier (you can purchase one here on Amazon, or anywhere else you want to get a copy.  The local library might have one too.  This sampler is by Laurie Aaron Hird, and has a total of 111 sampler blocks.  The book comes with an accompanying CD rom with all of the templates.  Marti Michell also has most of the templates in acrylic to use with this sampler.

In the book, the first half of the book shows a completed block along with a letter from 1920's wives that inspired each block.  The second half of the book has a page for each block, showing cutting instructions and construction diagrams.  

I jumped all in, really excited.  I printed all the templated out on card stock, cut them out, and started cutting out each block. I blogged about each block I made.  I was so into this sampler, that I opted to do it in two separate color ways.  One in civil war reproductions and the other with a fabric line called Breath of Avignon by American Jane from Moda fabrics.

I used both the acrylic templates and the card stock templates to get each block, then placing the cut pieces in an individual zip lot sandwich baggie for construction at a later date.   Little did I know, until I was in too deep of construction, that the card stock templates were copied at normal printing (which is at about 98%) instead of setting my printer to print them at 100%.   So, many of my blocks were off up to a quarter of an inch.

Some of my blocks came out 6.5 inches and some came out at 6.0 inches.  Panic time!!!  I gave it some serious thought.  One, do I trash the whole project and move on, wasting all that fabric, or two figure out how to make it all work together. 

I took option 2.  I took the framing fabric and added an additional 1/2" to the blocks that were too small, and then framed all the blocks according to the directions.  Anyone looking at it would not see the correction.  It takes only me to know what happened and the fix.  Especially after it was quilted, there is no glaring or even an easily noticeable fix to the error.

I am still working on how to fix the other color way to get that quilt done.  I am guessing this one will fall under my 2019 Finishes.  

To read about my finished quilt on the blogger who started the quilt along, please go here.

Here are some up close pictures of the different blocks and the finished framing and cornerstones, and you can't tell.  

I opted not to add any borders other than the offsetting triangles and bound it with the same fabric I used in framing the blocks.

I tried to get a picture of all the blocks used in the sampler.  Just a note about the blocks done in this sampler.  Remember they are only 6.5" square, and some of them had up to 65 pieces per block.  Sometimes it would take about 2 to 3 hours per block to make.  

This quilt requires lots of time and planning.  

Warmest...

Size: 72" x 84"

Fabric Lines Used:  Civil War Reproductions

Colors:  Black Gold, Orange, Green, red, blue, purple, yellow

Pattern:  The Farmer's Wife

Designer:  Laurie Arron Hird

Long Arm Quilter:  Carol Nelson

Year Began: 2011

Year Completed: 2018

2018 Quiltville Mystery Quilt - Good Fortune

It's that time of the year again.  I am doing the Quiltville Mystery Quilt again.  This will be my fifth year of participating.  This year Bonnie Hunter is calling it Good Fortune.  You can read about the mystery quilt and all it's instructions as they come out here.  

The mystery quilt has the premise of using fabric from your stash based on the colors she has chosen to use as a suggestion.  She always refers to her color choices using paint chips.  Using the paint chips gives you help in values.  I am choosing to use up some more of my Thimbleberries scraps and picked these to match the values on the paint chips.

The colors are published on Halloween, and the first clue comes out on Black Friday, and the final revel will be on New Year's Day.   I written before in past Mystery quilt posts about her thinking of doing this during the biggest holiday seasons.  

Many of us quilters no longer have families around to gather and celebrate, and by doing this Mystery quilt, they can get involved with a group of quilters around the world to keep their minds on something fun during what could be a hard time for them.  It gives them a place to connect and share with others.

Stay tuned for progress as I do this Mystery.

Warmest...

Renee

Rug Hooking

I have another hobby that I don't get to very often. I even blogged about these two projects back in 2012.  You can read more about it here.  

I am on a mission to get UFO's done this year, even those that are not quilt related.  I pulled these out, and I am ready to get them bound, so they can be put in the finished column and possibly put them to use.  

This hobby is called Rug Hooking.  You can google it or look it up on Pinterest, but it is a fascinating hobby.  Basically, you cut up wool in even small 1/4" strips and hook them into a base.  The result is just beautiful.  The finished products can be from primitive to very intricate perfection.  

The top two pictures are the first one I did in a class where I was taught how to do the craft.

I folded the backing to get it ready for the binding it needs to finish it for use.

And this is the next one I did and it is ready for binding.

I choose to use rug binding (can be bought by the yard, I purchased a whole spool) to finish my quilts.  I have this one started, and I am about half way done.  

An up close look at the binding after it is sewn on around the edges.  It gives the hooked rug a nice finished look.  Then you just slip stitch the binding down around the inside of the rug.  

I usually only do my hand work while traveling to and from our trade shows.  We don't have one until the first weekend of December.  I will be able to finish this one and then work on the other one. 

I can then add all my Rug Hooking UFO's to the finished column, and then start on a new hooking project.  

Warmest...

Wren