Mugs Rugs Made Into Pot Holders

    I found a cute mug rug pattern at Quilt Addicts Anonymous, link here.  The pattern is free, but you do have to put it in a cart to get the download.  

    I enjoyed making these tree blocks.  I used Christmas fabric I already had and muslin for the background, but I did buy two yards of the green fabric I used for the borders, backing and binding.  They finish at 8" before binding, so I added 1.5" borders to them to make them a little bigger for potholders.  I put two layers of cotton batting in my potholders with a layer of insul-brite in the between the cotton batting.  I like the scrappy trees, but I really like the tree where I used the Christmas light fabric on the entire tree.  That is my favorite.  I made seven of these potholders.  Three for me, three for dear daughter, and I sent one up to my sweet big brother who is always looking out for me.

I have more fabric cut to make more of these blocks for a wallhanging.  So that's what I'm doing in January, making home decor items for Christmas 2021.

Fun Quick Sewing

 Made a zipper pouch from a candy bag using Missouri Star's Tutorial here.  This is a nice quick project and they are really fun to give.  I made one a couple of years ago for dear daughter and she thought that I was giving her a bag of candy.  It was so funny.  Here is the one I made tonight.  It took me about an hour to sew up after I gathered all my supplies and cut up the candy bag.  The one I made tonight is kind of on the small side.  I might frankenstein two bags together next time to get a bigger pouch.  I hope it works.

I've been saving candy bags for a while and I have a whole bunch.  I also have a load of zippers to use up so I think I'll be making some more of these.  

Halloween Cat Potholders

    I was going through my stash of fabric and I decided to make some Halloween potholders for me, daughter and a friend so I could get rid of some of this pretty fabric.  I put solid black on the back and bound them with black and cream homespun fabric.  These potholders have two layers of cotton batting with a piece of Insul-Brite in the middle. 

Flower Garland and Wedding Gift

     I'm going to use up all the spool pin doilies I haven't given away and make a garland to hang in my living room for spring.  I ordered a dark green cotton thread and I'm going to crochet a chain adding flowers as I go.  I have approximately 129 spool pin doilies made and I'm going to keep crocheting a chain until I run out of green thread.

   While I'm doing this, I'm knitting yellow dishcloths and making some pretty potholders for a special niece who is getting married in the summer.  I ordered two yards of this lovely fabric to make the potholders.  My DD and I had already purchased gifts from her registry, but I decided that she needed some homemade things in her kitchen.  She is not expecting this so this will be a nice surprise for her.

    Here's the fabric for the special potholders.

    I'm still working on my hexagon quilt top, or should I say, not working on it.  It seems I'm finding all manner of different projects to do that take me away from that monster.  I'll get back to it as soon as I finish my potholder dishcloth projects.

My 2019 Quilted Calendar

   I found this at Spoonflower after hearing about it on a knitting podcast.  It was a reasonable price.  I bought backing/binding fabric, added some scrap batting, did some simple cross hatch quilting and it's on my kitchen wall.

Halloween Table Runners

Yes, Halloween was yesterday.  I now have two Halloween table runners.  The pumpkin table runner has been done for weeks but I forgot to put a picture here.  I finished the black cat table runner tonight and it will be ready to use next year.

More Pumpkins, This Time It's Fabric

    I need a fall table runner, nothing fancy, just a little something on the table that says fall.  I was hoping I could find fabric for the entire thing in my stash and I did.  I have at least a couple of yards of the orange fabric, perfect for the pumpkins, backing and binding.  The purple and green are the canvas I have leftover from making bags with my souvenir fabric from Hawaii.

    There are loads of free pumpkin block patterns out there.  Here's how I made the pumpkin.  The orange fabric is cut 10" square, the snowball corners are 3" squares, the stem is a 1.5" wide by 3" piece and the purple sashing is 3" wide by however long each side needs to be.  The bottom sashing was trimmed down to a narrower width to accommodate the length of a side piece.  Easy.

   Here's a picture of my first pumpkin block.  I know my piecing could be neater and more uniform, but I don't care.  I will make two more of these to finish this table runner.  I love this project.

More Pretty Bags

   I made a couple of different quilted bags with more of the fabric from Hawaii.

Quilt Assembly

   I spent some of the day making the backing for the scrappy 16-patch quilt top and I now have it sandwiched and ready to quilt.  A twin size Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting was the perfect size for this quilt top.  I thought I would run short because of the length of my top, but I had just enough.

    Here's a picture of part of the backing with the row of blocks sewn in the middle.  I lined this row up with the center row of the quilt top.  The blue is quite washed out in this photo, it's a much brighter blue in real life.

   I will be straight line quilting this one using my walking foot.  I'll be using cream colored thread to quilt this one because I want to use up all that cream colored thread that I bought in June for my hexagon quilt.

Sewing Blocks For Quilt Backs

   I'm in the process of sewing blocks to put in the backs of quilts.  I have made 5 - 16 patch blocks to place in the center of the back for that quilt.  And I'm working on 7 scrappy string blocks to place in the center of the back for the string block quilt.

   I decided to go ahead and get these quilts finished.  I ordered batting and backing/binding fabric for each.

   I ordered two twin size Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 battings from Connecting Threads.

 

   I had my usual problem making a decision on backing/binding fabric.  I finally narrowed down the color to a light blue and found this at Connecting Threads in their solid collection called Sky.  I ordered 11 yards of this for backing and binding on both quilts.

   I'll be piecing the backs and sandwiching these as soon as I can get my fabric, and get it washed and ironed. 

Time To Make A Backing Fabric Decision

    I've finished the fourth row of my Grandmother's Flower Garden English paper pieced hexagon quilt top.  I have to add three more rows and I will be done with the top.  Now that the top is over half way done, it was time to look for backing fabric and order my batting.

     

        The batting is an easy choice, I bought a twin size Heirloom 80/20 batting.  I love that batting and it's easy to get online from Connecting Threads (none of my local stores carry it, darn it).

        The backing fabric wasn't such an easy choice.  I had to decide on color, print or solid, and wide or regular width fabric.  I looked at lots of options and nearly drove myself crazy in the search.

         I picked a wide backing fabric with a floral design since it is a garden quilt top.  I like how the green and yellow match the path and center of my flowers in my top.  I  found this 104" wide print at Connecting Threads and ordered 3 yards, which will be more than enough for the back and binding.  I usually piece my quilt backs with blocks from the front of the quilt, but I won't be doing that with this quilt.  This quilt will have a plain back.

         I'm working on the fifth row now. I'll update this blog when I have that done.  See you soon.

She Who Sews Quilt - Finished

   

    It's done.  I loved working with the yellow polka dot fabric.  I love the look of it with these panel squares and I even used it for the backing and binding.

Sandwiched Quilt Ready To Be Quilted And Re-Making A Quilt

   I have my She Who Sews quilt sandwiched and ready to straight line quilt.  The machine is set up and I meant to start on it today but I got sidetracked with my next project.

   Yesterday I had lunch with Dear Daughter and we did some shopping.  She gave me a string quilt made from polyester fabrics that her grandmother made for her half brother when he was born.  I was supposed to mend the tears in it.  Dear Daughter's half brother was born in 2000 and her almost 90 year old grandmother finished this in 2003.  Dear Daughter remembers that her grandmother was having a hard time making herself finish this quilt.

   Dear Daughter and I assessed her half brother's quilt yesterday and realized that it did not have any batting in it, the binding was made by folding the backing to the front and sewing it on with the machine, it was kind of messy, and it was not very well quilted.  So we decided that I would take the quilt apart, mend the tears, add a batting, a new backing, do some straight line quilting on it and do a proper binding job on it.  The quilt measures about 56" x 56".  So my mending job has turned into re-making a quilt.  Dear Daughter and I went to Joann Fabrics to get backing/binding fabric and a nice new batting.  I spent the day today taking the binding/backing off the quilt and pinning up all the blocks that need mending.  I wanted to get a sense of how much needed to be mended.  Now that I have it ready to be mended I can get back to my She Who Sews quilt project.

    Here's a picture of the polyester quilt that I took yesterday before I dismantled it.

Round Hotpads

    My dear daughter needs new potholders, so I started out by making a couple of round hotpads for her kitchen.   These hot pads were super easy to make, I cut a 9 inch circle out using my Easy
Circle ruler.  I used a layer of Insul-Brite and a layer of cotton batting between my fabric pieces, I did a simple straight line quilting and I bound them with bias binding.  I love the scrappy puppy fabric and she will too.

   When I get some more Insul-Brite I'll be making some square potholders for her.

Progress on the Black and White Disappearing Hourglass

      I managed to get some quilting done this past weekend while I had company staying with me.  They are late sleepers, so I had plenty of time in the morning to play with my fabric.  I now have all my half square triangles sewn and I'm in the process of ironing them and trimming dog ears for the next step, making the hourglass blocks.    I have six completed blocks and another 35 to finish.  I haven't decided how I am going to set these blocks or what fabric I'm using for the back.  I'm thinking about placing some sashing in between the blocks.  I do have the batting for this quilt, at least that is something I don't have to think about.

     My company leaves today and I have a few things to do to get settled back into my bedroom, and after that I'm planning on getting Magnolia fired up (my new Janome 7700) to see how she does piecing hourglass blocks.  I want to test it with the cotton quilting thread I bought at JoAnn's that I'm using on this project.  I hope she is not going to be fussy about what thread I use on her.  I'll let you know how that experiment goes.

The Back Of The Christmas Quilt Is Done

   I finished the back of the quilt tonight.  I managed to have just enough of the light grey fabric to make this.  I don't know how I did it because when I bought the grey fabric I had no idea what size the top was going to be.  I probably couldn't get this lucky again.  I say lucky, because the grey fabric that I bought to make this side is not available now.  I was told this fabric would not be back in stock until mid-March.

Here is the back of the Christmas quilt.

   I ordered the batting for this quilt today.  I should have that in about 10 days.  So this quilt will not be finished until March.    While I'm waiting for the batting I can work on a few other projects.  I want to do some machine embroidery (I have a couple of St. Paddy's Day designs for dish towels), some vinyl pouches, and a tote for a birthday present.  Maybe I'll get my buttons to finish my pink flower wall hanging.  I also have an idea for a pink granny square pillow cover.

Waiting for Batting

   The Pretty In Pink quilt is patiently waiting for my batting and thread order, placed on Christmas Eve.  I hope to receive it next week.  In the meantime I made my binding and pieced the back together with some blocks to match the top of the quilt.  That's one of my favorite things to do, is to make the back interesting with pieces and colors used on the top.  So much fun.  I'm officially ready to get my batting and sandwich this baby for quilting.  I can't wait.

      I've been knitting on my hat and I'm about 5 rows away from the last 10 decrease rows.  I'll share a picture tomorrow of the hat with my two circular needles in it.  I split the stitches evenly on each circular needle, so each one gets 50 stitches.  It's an easy way to keep tract of your stitches that way.  The 10 decrease rows decrease by 10 stitches a row until you get to the last 20 stitches, then you just knit two stitches together for the last two rows.  At the end you have 5 stitches remaining then you weave the end of your yarn in those last 5 stitches to close up the top of your hat.    

Update On Pretty In Pink Quilt.

   I finished trimming and ironing the rows on Tuesday night and I just finished sewing the rows together.   Here it is.

       Next week I will iron and piece my already washed solid light pink backing/binding fabric.  I'm going to piece in some blocks from the tops across the back to give it some interest.

       I still have to buy a batt for this quilt project.  I'm going to do some on line shopping for that after the first of January.  My local stores do not carry Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting (my favorite) so I always have to buy them on-line.  I usually order from the Connecting Threads website.  They seem to have the best prices even with shipping charges.

Not So Pretty Potholders and Pretty Ironing Board Cover

     I made some not so pretty potholders to match my blue and yellow kitchen curtains this weekend.  I used scraps of different fabrics for the first set because I thought it would be pretty, but they didn't turn out as cute as I wanted them to.  I made the round set after the square set because I thought they would turn out better.  Not.  All of these potholders are, however, very functional, since I used a layer of 100% cotton batting and a layer of Insulbrite in each one.  The binding is a tad messy on the scrappy potholders and the round ones just curled up after I applied the bias binding.  Crazy potholders.  I also had a chance to crochet a new dishcloth, using up some of the tons of white cotton yarn I accumulated for some project or another that I now be using for new dishcloths for my kitchen.

 

    I made a new cover for my new small ironing board this weekend.  This ironing board came with a very thin muslin cover and a super thin layer of batting under the cover.  The muslin started to stain after two uses.  I sometimes spray my fabric with water to get out the tough wrinkles and the water stained the light beige muslin and that's when I knew I had to re-cover it.  I made a quick cover for the ironing board and I beefed up the inside with one layer of cotton batting and one layer of Insulbrite.  I left the old cover on it and used the ironing board as my pattern (I love this trick, learned on the Internets).  I put my fabric on the floor and turned the ironing board upside down on it and cut around the board giving myself about 4 inches for side coverage and  my elastic casing.  I cut the batting and Insulbrite the exact size of the top of the ironing board with no overhang for a neater look.  I made a casing for my 1/2 inch elastic and threaded the elastic in it.  I put the new cover on the board over the old cover along with the new insulating layers and tightened the elastic, knotting it really well.  That cover is on there to stay, I can't get it off without cutting the elastic.  I love the blue and I love the thickness of it.  It's perfect.

  I  washed some of fabric for my new quilt project.  I'm ironing today.  These are the pinks and greens, the patterns are for the top and the solid pink is the backing fabric.  The white fabric that also goes on the top will be washed today.  I'll start cutting soon.