A Snowman UFO

I, like most of you, have so many things I have started only to have life get in the way. My last two years were consumed with health issues and some personal stuff. I never did seem to get out of my own way!! BUT in the last few months I have been busy.

My quilt for today's show and tell is a panel I picked up a few years ago to make a quick Christmas quilt for a dear friend. It was started and then put aside like many of the other UFOs for another day. I am usually careful when I do this -  stacking all the fabric and either the actual pattern or the EQ layout sheet (including the name so I can re-find the file) together and placing them is a clear tub for later completion. However that did not happen this time, the panel and partially completed pinwheels (about 75% of the pinwheels were complete and trimmed to size) were left in a large 2 gallon ziplock,  haphazardly stacked with the loose fabric. Well ... 18 months later I could only find the blue fabric, the pinwheels and the panel. The white on white was missing. Sadly I could not remember where I got the white on white or who the manufacturer was. If any of you have ever searched the internet for white on white, you know the daunting task it is to find the exact fabric that you are looking for. I took me several weeks but I was successful and ordered 3 yards more ... and yes a week after I received the new yardage I did find the other piece - lol!!

I did finally finish it and I was very pleased with the outcome. It is for my dear friend whose two grandchildren stay with her several nights a week. They are two of the most beautiful little girls who love to cuddle. So what better Christmas gift for my friend than a fun winter quilt with a soft cuddly flannel back for the girls. I chose a Anne Bright design of snowflakes and swirls. I am new at this computerized quilting and while the design was perfect, I wish i had chosen to make the design just a bit smaller than I did, but it is done and ready to go.

I struggled with the label this time. In most of my other quilts I used either stark white or cream for the label background which for this quilt seemed out of place on the dark navy flannel. Again my scrap pile spoke to me. There on top of the cutting table were the navy flannel trimmings from squaring up the quilt after I removed it from the Avante. I threw a large piece into an embroidery hoop, pulled up my 4D Embroidery software and chose a simple script. I embroidered it with White Rayon and was extremely pleased with the results

Two more UFOs are in the works - a cute 18" table topper with snowman buttons from the Red Button Quilt Company and a gorgeous paper pieced Christmas Tree skirt. Those will be my next post. 

Till next time .... Happy Quilting.

Something Fun for Fall

I have had a pattern for  Log Cabin Pumpkins from Suzanne's Art House for quite a while - maybe three or four years. After I bought it, I began picking up 1/4 yard and 1/2 yard pieces of orange and yellow/orange fabric. I kept adding to the stash until I finally decided to make this.

 my stash

I decided to paper piecing these leaves and pumpkins as I tend to like the preciseness of paper piecing. So, I drew the pumpkins and leaves out in EQ7 and printed out the paper foundations.

printed foundations for paper piecing

What is really nice about using EQ7 is that once you have designed the block you can drop that block into any size block and it will recalculate the rotary cutting directions or print the foundation for paper piecing any size!! Here is the original size and layout - the blocks finished at 9".

as designed - 27" x 36"

However I am contemplating making another using 6" finished blocks either smaller or longer. The options are endless!

6" Blocks - 18" x 18"

6" Blocks - 18" x 30"

The directions were straight forward and the runner was done quickly. I chose a simple edge to edge pumpkin design and quilted this design with orange thread.

off the longarm

I could not decide which fabric to bind this runner with. Meanwhile sitting on my cutting table was a stack of leftover 1 1/2 inch stripes of all the various oranges, so I sewed them all together and made a scrappy binding!

Done!!

Happy Fall !