What I Did on Vacation - 2023

Last fall I spent 2 weeks in Albuquerque with my friends Wanda & Roger. Some crafting happened while I was there, but no pictures were taken. A third friend, Phyllis, didn't get to see the quilt tops and requested pictures after I got home and took photographs. So this post is for Phyllis.

First, I finished stitching together the quilt top from the September kit from our 3rd Sunday Project Linus Group. (Yes, we're still meeting on the third Sunday of the month and sewing quilt tops for Project Linus.) The official name for the design is Boomerang, but it was soon known as the dinosaur quilt.

Here is a closer view so you can better see the dinosaurs.

Then there were quilts from a Spongebob Squarepants pillow panel. I cut up the pillow panel in 2022. Found coordinating fabric in my stash. Took photos and scanned fabric to import into Electric Quilt. All in the middle of 2022. Then I set it aside to work on something else and there it languished.

The Spongebob pillow panel was polyester. See-through thin polyester. Luckily, I had some solid white polyester fabric in my stash (inherited from the stash of Wanda's mom). I layered the pieces from the pillow panel with the solid white polyester cut to the same size and stitched them together about ⅛" from the edge. This was also done in the middle of 2022 before I set the project aside.

I occasionally stumbled across the Spongebob panel parts; moving them when working on something else. When it came time to choose projects to take on vacation, Spongebob Squarepants quickly went on the list. After getting to Albuquerque, I dusted off my Electric Quilt design skills and created designs to use the pieces from the pillow panel.

I made 2 Spongebob Squarepants quilt tops from the pillow panel. I used a blue background and orange border on the first one.

And two closer shots to better show the details.

For the second Spongebob Squarepants quilt top I switched the blue and orange, so the second one has an orange background and a blue border.

The smaller panel pieces are different on the second top. Here are two closer shots to better show the details.

Now I'll confess that I started this blog post 3 months ago. Didn't quite finish it on the first writing session and kept procrasting or getting sidetracked by other things.

I currently have 6 Project Linus quilt tops waiting to become quilts. The two Spongebob tops are on the top of the stack and will hopefully get finished in the next week and half to turn in at our 3rd Sunday group meeting this month. The dinosaur quilt got finished and turned in last month.

Design Wall Monday - Strips

This week I'm quilting a couple of tops so they'll be finished and ready to turn in at our next Project Linus group meeting. But I couldn't resist arranging some strips I'd cut for another bargello quilt. So on my design wall are the strips for Life's Ups and Downs #2.

Look what's hiding over on the right edge of my design wall: Cobblestone blocks. There's 11 blocks now; still a long way from being enough for a quilt top, but it's a leader / ender project. I. e., something to stitch when I have to pull my current project from the machine to press, cut, arrange blocks, etc.

Head on over to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times to see what JudyL and many others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Design Wall Monday - Making Friends

That lonely little Cobblestone block from last Monday is still on my design wall, but it's not so lonely now. It has 4 friends.

Our Project Linus meeting yesterday was my only piecing time last week, since I spent the week finishing quilts to turn in. I remembered to take my leader / ender project to the meeting and finished 4 more Cobblestone blocks.

Head on over to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times to see what JudyL and many others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Project Linus - Third Sunday Group - February

Our Fast & Fun quilt top for February 2013 was Up & Down. Our Third Sunday group met today at JoAnns Fabrics in Independence, MO to work on Project Linus blankets.

Up & Down is a 40" by 48" quilt featuring 2 coordinating fabrics plus an accent fabric. Jodie had plenty of kits ready complete with instructions for us.

We had a small but dedicated group today. Jodie was the first to finish her quilt top featuring a Disney print. She used a striped fabric for the accent.

Look below for a close up picture of the fabrics in this quilt top.

I've noticed that Marie frequently picks kits with blue fabric. Her quilt top features another Disney print with a (different) striped accent fabric. The third fabric is the same blue/aqua tone-on-tone print that was in the Diagonal Puzzle quilt I made.

I'm sorry the picture is blurry. I don't know if it was my camera or the quilt top that was moving. Maybe both.

I've been picking kits based on my supply of potential backing fabrics I have in my stash. Today I picked one that I think I can pair with a baseball print on the back for something that will appeal to the boys. The baseball print has a light blue background, but I think it will work.

Want to know what is on the red and blue prints in my quilt top? Look at the picture below.

Can you see them? Sharks! Some boy (or girl) is going to love those sharks!

I had an uneventful drive home until I was about ¼ mile from my neighborhood entrance and came upon 3 deer crossing to the right side of the road. No problem, it was a 35 mph zone. What worried me was the 4th deer that was still on the left side of the road. Fortunately, it stayed there while I and the car behind me drove by.

I see deer around my neighborhood occasionally, but it's always a surprise. I enjoy seeing them, but I have neighbors that wish they weren't around. Seems the deer are rather fond of their garden.

Quilting Update

I finished quilting both Diagonal Puzzle and Life's Ups and Downs, so they are ready to turn in at our Project Linus meeting tomorrow.

Diagonal Puzzle Quilt

On Diagonal Puzzle, I ditch quilted the edge to edge seams between the horizontal rows of blocks. Then I quilted zig-zag lines from top to bottom, first going through the center of the black squares on one row, then zagging at a right angle across the solid block on the next row arriving at a black square corner and turning again.

Once all the zig-zags were quilted through the black squares, I used a chalk pencil to mark half way between the points of the zig-zags and quilted a set of zig-zags through those points so the stitching was close enough to hold the batting securely. You can see that better in the close up picture below.

Life's Ups and Downs Quilt

On Life's Ups and Downs, I first ditch quilted some of the vertical seams to stabilize the quilt. My goal was to have the vertical stitching about 5" to 6" apart, but I had to work with the width of the pieced strips.

With the quilt stabilized by the vertical stitching, I quilted horizontal waves across the quilt. First I stitched waves through the yellow lizard print and the 2 waves of continuous green (the only 3 fabrics forming an unbroken wave). With those lines as a rough guide, I quilted more waves to divide the area and leave no spot more than 4" from a line of quilting. A closer view is below.

I used Pellon Quilter's Touch polyester batting in these quilts. I bought a 60" wide by 20 yard long roll at JoAnns when it was a door buster special on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It is a nice batting to work with. Definitely better than the 10 yard rolls of polyester batting that JoAnns sells.

Design Wall Monday - Lonely Block

One lonely Cobblestone block has been on my design wall for nearly 2 weeks. This is from a leader / ender project I started after finishing the Diagonal Puzzle top. I have several more blocks in progress. And yes, my design wall really is that dirty. That flannel sheet used to be white.

After stitching together the Life's Ups and Downs top, I moved into finish-em-up mode. First up, a Scooby Doo quilt top I brought home from our 3rd Sunday Project Linus group.

I don't know who stitched the top, but I'm sure it started as one of Jodie's kits. The design is a slight variation of our September 2012 pattern, In the Stream. Jodie paired it with Warm & Natural batting and a yellow flannel back. Here's a close up of a few of the Scooby Doo squares.

I'm quilting the Diagonal Puzzle top now. I plan to finish that and quilt Life's Ups and Downs so I'll have 3 quilts and probably 3 fleece blankets to turn in at our Project Linus meeting on Sunday. Yes, the 3rd Sunday of February is 6 days away. Time flies when you don't pay attention. And the 3rd Sunday comes early when the 1st is on a Friday.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times to see what JudyL and many others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Life's Ups and Downs Stitched

I stitched my bargello strips into a quilt top.

You may recall that I used the Life's Ups and Downs pattern in Quilt It with Love: The Project Linus Story as my guide for this quilt. I made one major detour from the instructions.

The Life's Ups and Downs instructions say to sew a strip of border fabric to both the top and bottom of your strip set. You crosscut the strip set, arrange the pieced strips to create a curve you like and stitch the strips together. Then you trim the top and bottom to make them straight, creating a large amount of scraps.

I hate waste. My scrap drawer is overflowing. I knew there had to be a way to do this without deliberately creating all those scraps.

Some bargello patterns have you sew the strip set into a tube, crosscut into narrow tubes and either cut fabric or unstitch seams at predetermined intervals. Life's Ups and Downs doesn't shift the strips by predetermined intervals. You arrange them to create a design you like. So the tube doesn't work.

SusanB's Bargello Magic Trick

You may remember from my Design Wall Monday post that I had a wide strip of a pale yellow fabric on the bottom of my pieced strips. That pale yellow was for my top and bottom borders.

When I sewed my strips together, I left a couple of inches of the seams unstitched on both the top and the bottom. The picture below shows the top of some of the seams.

I did some measuring and cut that curvy section of pale yellow into 2 pieces. One piece was attached to the bottom of the quilt top. The loose piece got moved to the top of the quilt top.

I stitched the ends of all the strips together, stitched the gaps in all the vertical seams, added the side borders and it's all done. No wasted border fabric. No scraps!

Click on any of the photos to see a bigger version.

Design Wall Monday - Ups and Downs

I'm working on a bargello quilt. Arranging the strips so no seams lined up was a challenge.

The focus fabric is a really cute lizard print.

My sister got me Quilt It with Love: The Project Linus Story for Christmas. The book has a bargello quilt pattern called Life's Ups and Downs that caught my eye.

Some time back, I was given a fabric packet of coordinating 8" to 10" wide strips for a Project Linus quilt and never quite figured out what to do with them. When I saw Life's Ups and Downs, I knew it was a match for that fabric. I added the border fabric and one other fabric from my stash.

I have leftovers from all the solid strips and a whole other strip of the lizards, so I foresee another bargello quilt featuring the lizards.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times to see what JudyL and many others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Diagonal Puzzle Quilt Top

I'm a bit late (what's new?) reporting that the Diagonal Puzzle blocks I showed on Monday are stitched together into a quilt top. Here's a closer look at the wonderful fabrics Jodie put in this kit.

Although, it wasn't a lot of stitching, I didn't stitch the last seam until Wednesday. Why? One clue is in these strips for a bargello quilt hanging to the right of the Diagonal Puzzle top.

I cut the bargello strips and used them as a leader/ender project for stitching the Diagonal Puzzle together.

With the Diagonal Puzzle finished, I was ready to focus on the bargello quilt, but decided to pull my scrap drawers and cut fabric for a new leader/ender project first.

I recently borrowed Easy Quilts for Beginners and Beyond from my local library. The Cobblestones pattern inspired me to tackle turning some scraps into quilts, so I cut a bunch of 2½" squares and 2" strips.

Playing with fabric is so much fun!

Design Wall Monday - Diagonal Puzzle

On my design wall today are my quilt blocks from yesterday's meeting of our 3rd Sunday Project Linus blanket group.

Our Fast & Fun quilt top for January 2013 was Diagonal Puzzle and it proved to be a bit of a challenge. One group member misunderstood the instructions and is creating a totally different design. My seam ripper was my best friend as I kept stitching squares onto the wrong strips and then onto the wrong end of the right strip!

I managed to get all the pieced blocks stitched together and the large solid pieces cut at our meeting yesterday. This morning, I pressed the pieced blocks and arranged it my design wall. If I can keep the pieces turned the right way for the trip from the design wall to the sewing machine, it won't take long to finish stitching it together.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times to see what JudyL and many others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Libby's Patriotic Four Patch - Free Quilt Pattern

Just added to the Handcrafting with Love website, Libby's Patriotic Four Patch is an easy quilt design made with 4 coordinating fabrics. Instructions are given for traditional piecing from cut squares and for strip piecing, so choose whichever method you prefer.

Libby's Patriotic Four Patch was written as a Christmas gift for my BFF's mom. I designed this as something she can make for charities such as Project Linus or for the patients at her local Veterans Administration hospital. The quilt top finishes at 40" by 60" and uses 3/4 yard each of 4 different fabrics.

Design Wall Monday - Almost Finished

There hasn't been a lot of sewing going on here in the last week. It took me until Saturday to figure out just how I wanted to do the 1st and 3rd borders on the wolves. Then I realized that the scraps of purple and the 2 blue prints were too small. At that point, I quickly invented Plan B and cut some fabric.

It won't take long to stitch on the 3rd and final border. Conveniently, there are strips less than 3" wide left of the 2 fat quarters I used for geese and borders, so it's off to the scrap bin for those. No worrying about what I can do with half a fat quarter.

I've already sliced strips of 2 fabrics ready to start stitching the next quilt top as soon as I get the last border on these howling wolves.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times to see what JudyL and others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Design Wall Monday - Geese & Stars

I finished the strips of flying geese and stitched some 5" friendship stars for the corners. The squares in the stars finish at 1 2/3" which caused some interesting measuring and cutting.

Now the challenge is to decide how to turn some of this fabric into

1. a border between the center panel and the geese,

   and

2. a border around the outside of the geese and stars to finish the quilt top.

There will definitely be some piecing in these borders, but I want to keep them pretty simple.

Click either picture to see a bigger version.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork times to see what JudyL and others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Project Linus - Third Sunday Group - May

Our Fast & Fun quilt top for May 2012 was Modern Chain. Our Third Sunday group met at JoAnns Fabrics in Independence, MO last Sunday, May 20, to work on Project Linus blankets.

Modern Chain is a 36" by 50" quilt featuring 2 solid or near solid fabrics and a fun variety of 6½" squares. As always, Jodie had fabric kits and instructions for us.

Louise is back from spending the winter in Texas and picked the kit with green and orange strips. There are some fun prints in the squares and the green and orange is bold.

Marie stitched a kit with red and blue strips. Marie had the same print squares as Louise, but arranged the squares differently. The red and blue strips make a bright, cheery quilt top.

Jodie stitched a kit with pink and purple strips and some cool print squares. A pretty nifty quilt top.

I picked a kit with purple and pink strips and some of the same print squares as Jodie's kit. This kit got the squares left after Jodie made the kit she stitched, plus a couple of other prints. The purple strips are a different purple than Jodie's.

The pink strips are almost red and were the only strips in any kit that were not a solid color. I really like the tone on tone strips, but Jodie thought they were less "Modern" than the solid fabrics.

As we were wrapping up to go home, Sandy joined us after attending a graduation party for her grandson. She turned blankets in and picked a Modern Chain kit to take home and stitch.

Design Wall Monday - Geese Attack!

The howling wolves have been joined by some flying geese. This UFO is back on the active project list.

Saturday morning, I spread the wolves on my cutting table to measure the length and width. I grabbed a pencil and some paper, did a few calculations and decided to make flying geese that finish at 2½" by 5".

Most of my geese are laying on the cutting table waiting for the corners to be trimmed.

Some are at the sewing machine patiently waiting for the second sky triangle to be stitched on.

The geese will be the middle of 3 borders around the center wolf section. My original thought was to use strips of dark blue for the other 2 borders, but I don't have enough dark blue and I'd like to make this from stash. I used fabric from a couple of fat quarters for some of the geese. I may use some of the FQ leftovers to piece border strips, maybe using some of the dark blue, maybe not. As usual, I'm designing as I go.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork times to see what JudyL and others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Project Linus - Third Sunday Group - April

Our Third Sunday group met today, but let me play catch up and tell you about our Sunday, April 15, 2012 meeting. Our small group of Project Linus blanketeers meets at JoAnns Fabrics in Independence, MO on the 3rd Sunday of every month to make blankets.

Jodie is our dedicated leader and she creates quilt kits for us. There are also quilts ready to tie and quilt tops with backing fabric and batting to create the quilt sandwich.

Our April quilt top project was Fat Quarter Big Blocks, a 38" by 54" quilt top made from 6 fat quarters and 1/3 yard of accent/border fabric. This was a really Fast & Fun quilt top and 5 quilt tops were finished instead of our more typical 2 or 3, or occasionally 4.

I lost track of who stitched most of the tops, so I'll just dive in and show the tops.

This first one is bright and reminds me of summer. I think it's the combination of the tone on tone green print (grass) and the flowers and butterflies on the navy background that give me that summer feeling.

Can you say "ORANGE?" Put your sunglasses on before looking at this second quilt top! It screams "orange" and the red prints and green flower print just add to the brightness.

Stand up and salute the 3rd Fat Quarter Big Block quilt top. Red, white and blue with U. S. flags and a sky blue print. Just picture those flags flying in the breeze. You can't get more patriotic than this.

With pastel prints and Easter eggs (or are they jelly beans), this quilt top says "Spring." Jodie stitched this top, proving that even the person who writes the pattern doesn't always read and follow directions. She stitched the blocks with all of them oriented the same way instead of rotating every other one 90°.

Child's Play: with Mickey Mouse, colorful toy trains, and a yellow print with the alphabet, this quilt is for the child in everyone. I stitched the top at our April meeting and took this picture after layering it with a back and batting and quilting. I deliberately strayed from Jodie's written instructions and did the corners differently.

I had a fun Cars™ print on flannel that my sister found at a thrift shop that fit the "Child's Play" theme. It wasn't long enough, so I used some red flannel to lengthen it and used it for my quilt back. I quilted in most of the ditches and stitched an 'X' through the large patches. That is enough quilting for the Warm & Natural batting that I used.

Sandy turned in this Beary Fun double four-patch quilt last month. Isn't it cute? She used the serpentine stitch on her machine to quilt a grid based on the four-patches.

As always, click on any picture for a bigger view.