A Is for Anne

Anne turned 8 in December. Amongst the holiday craziness, we hosted a sleepover for two of her bestest friends. Instead of bags filled with crap, I asked the girls to color pictures using two colors that I would then transfer to t-shirts. We didn't get these done before the girls left and the project got set aside until today. Surprise, surprise, I cannot find their pictures. I do remember they had lots of hearts, so here is my interpertation:

I used two tones of the same color Circut iron-on vinyl. Each shirt has a heart with the girl's first initial. This was my first attempt at iron-on vinyl. It was easy-peasy. My 4-H club co-leader was sitting across from at the craft day, and we are already planning a club project with pre-cut vinyl shapes for this summer.

Now, maybe it's time to mail my Christmas cards ....

Friday Finish: Auction Quilt

In a recent post, I showed a work in-progress for a benefit auction. I was able to finish it over the weekend and photograph it while we were having spring-like weather. The weather in Nebraska is a frequent conversation topic because it changes so often and can be very unpredicatble. Until yesterday, we had been experiencing highs in the sixties and seventies. As I am writing this, it is 30 and snowing.

OK, so back to the quilt. This was a fairly quick finish. The pattern, though not really more than a sketch, is simple, and I was able to find fabrics fairly quickly. The prints were in my stash and I found the solid at one of my favorite local quilt shops.

The auction is Saturday. I sincerely hope the weather cooperates!

This post is linked up to Confessions of a Fabric Addict's Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?.

MQG Mini Swap

As a recovering swap addict, I was eager to sign up for the Modern Quilt Guild's inaugural mini quilt swap. I was paired with a quilter in British Columbia, Canada. She is a prolific quilter with broad quilting interests and styles. She is not on Instagram and did not post a mosaic on her blog so I felt like I could go pretty much anywhere with my mini. (I'll add a link to her blog as soon as she receives her quilt.)

I've been in love with Allison Glass' work for quite some time and have made a couple of small pieces using her Feathers pattern. I'm testing the waters to see if I think making a whole quilt is really something I can stick with or not. In general, making a hundred of the same blocks holds zero interest to me, compounded, in this case, by the fact that this is a foundation paper-pieced pattern. So, I chose to make another excerpt from her pattern. The last one that I did, grew quite a bit bigger than I'd planned so this time, I scaled the blocks to 80%.

Selected Feathers is about 14" square and features batiks and a dark Kona cotton gray. I opted to play with the text function on my new sewing machine instead of a traditional label. The strips of text fit well with my attempt to use the remainder pieces of the layer cake used in the top.

This week I received my package from my partner in Oklahoma. SQUEAL! I LOVE this quilt and am so excited it gets to live with me! Thank you, Becky Gore of Birch Lake Designs, for a beautiful quilt and the unexpected extra stitched coaster, Swedish star and pillow case.

WIP Wednesday: A Heavy Heart and a New Experience

While I was sitting at one of my family Christmas celebrations, scrolling through Instagram, I saw a post that made me cry in the middle of joyous children, a competitive card game and all of the other activities of a large boisterous family enjoying time together. One of my sorority girls from back when I was an advisor to the sorority to which I had belonged as an undergraduate student who is now a grown-up with a husband and a grown-up job had posted about the unexpected loss of their five-month-old son to an undetected birth defect. Ever since, my heart has been heavy and I've felt powerless not knowing what to say or how to reach out. A couple of weeks ago, another Sigma invited me to a benefit dinner and silent auction. I'm not able to attend the benefit, but contributing to the auction gave me something to do. I sent a note to the organizer that I would try to get a quilt to her in time for the event.

In a previous post, I outlined some of the UFO's floating around my space, but none of these seemed like the best option for this particular need. I opted to dig through my stash for one of those sets of fabric I bought but didn't have plan for and test a pattern I've been playing with for a few months. As of yet, it is unnamed, but I like the bold pattern, asymmetric layout and negative space.

I was able to finish piecing the top in a later than I should have work session after the kids' bedtime and the back in an early morning burst. Both unusual sleep-depriving bursts of productivity were not only to keep me on track to get a quilt to the auction, but also to keep my appointment with the APQS Millennium Long Arm at Innovation Studio today. I'll write a full post (or series) about Innovation Studio at some point, but in short, it is a community center with oodles of fun tools available to members. The textile lab includes regular sewing machines, industrial straight stitch and serger machines, looms and the Millennium. I completed my orientation course to the long arm a couple of weeks ago. Today was my first solo run on a quilt I had made.

My time was limited, and I was starting to get nervous when it took me a chunk of time to get everything loaded, threaded, and otherwise set-up. Once it was on, I continued to have problems with breaking threads so I opted for simple straight-line, channel-lock strip-quilting. I was able to get it done and my mess cleaned up in time to make daycare pick-up, though, so all worked out.

I can hardly wait to finish some more tops and schedule another block of time to practice my long arm quilting skills.

Now I'm down to trimming, binding and getting the quilt to the auction. I know money won't help this family replace their lost son, but I do hope it will relieve some of the financial pressure of intensive care and a funeral.