I love to share my Quilting projects with other Quilters. My goal is to share my progress on projects that I am working on. I would love for you to follow along with me during my endeavors. I hope you enjoy watching me tackle new techniques and projects. Hopefully you can learn from my "hiccups" and mistakes and make your journey easier.
I do believe that summer is quickly approaching here in South Texas. A little rain out of all the storms yesterday and into the 90’s today.
Today we are heading to the road matériels yard to decide which type to spread on the driveway. Of course a short trip to HEB and UPS. Doesn’t this sound exciting? Maybe someday I will be writing from “The Duck”!
On the quilting front! Since I have buried the Tulips, I went through some of my books from Jo Morton, Kim Dheil, Susan Smith and a few other quilting books for my next project I wanted to work on. In Susan Smiths Quiltmania book, Somewhat in the Middle. I loved the quilt called Mothers and Daughters with the small Star in the middle of the Block. There were other patterns that I will keep close by for later on, but decided that I wanted to make this quilt, so I tested the block. It is a very easy block and goes quickly, especially with the new ruler I had mentioned in an earlier post.
After making the block I decided that this Star block would look good with the Churn Dash blocks that I had made in the summer of 2022 when I joined in with one of the Bloggers in a Churn Dash QAL. I made the blocks 6” rather than 8” using my 1930’s fabrics and was finished 80 blocks by the end of August 2022. They were put them away while I started the massive “quilting catchup” project and other things. I knew that the 80 blocks would yield at least 2 quilts, but I was not sure how I would set them in a quilt.
Here are the stacks of Churn Dash blocks that I will be working with.
I had one idea to make a “large” 9 patch block, but realized that I could not do that due to limited fabric left of the left over 1930 fabric for each Churndash blocks.
I then decided that I would make a quilt with 8 rows of 8 blocks with the first quilt. Here are a few pictures of my progress.
I tried staggering the blocks in each row, but ended up with the 8 blocks of each color. I also tried to put them on point, but that was not the effect I wanted either. So the above picture is where I am heading.
Well, time to run and have some “out of the house” time and hurry back to the Studio to make another row of Churn Dash and Star blocks. I am really enjoying being back in the Studio and happy to be deeply involved in a project!
Well, it is a pretty day today and so great to see the Sun this morning and weather in the 50’s. Nice, but it won’t last long here in South Texas. We have had some rain off and on, but not enough to really clear the drought problem.
Things I have learned about aging since the Thumb Journey….. I can now understand why older individuals tend to “give up”, “sit more”, and “so nothing” at the age of 79! The 4 months of Recovery time was harder on me than I expected and the loss of my desire to do anything but sit and do hand exercises all day long. It took a toll on my creavity and energy and has caused some Depression!
I will also have to admit that I have really had to push through the desire to just sit and be brain dead and continue walking each day without reaching my Goals. But I have made it through it all and climbing out of the depths of ” I WANT TO DO NOTHING”.
I am still not doing my mile in 20 minutes, nor my one and a half mile in 30 minutes. I can do the mile in 22 minutes and the other in about 33 minutes, but I am not happy with this. So this week I am going to walk a mile and push myself to attempt to get back to at least 21 minutes. I will take a short 3 minute break and do the other one half mile. I will say that the easy way out would be to just quit walking or just do a slow walk, but I know I can get back to where I was before the thumb problem and the depression sitting around doing nothing but watching TV brings to me.
Now, let’s pick up where I was in my early April post. I was so excited about using up the fabrics when I found the Tulip Garden pattern. BUT, after I had finished the 2nd border things went South on this one. The Designer of the pattern made a mathematical error on the first border, which threw Border Number 2 totally off, not to mention the remaining borders. I worked with it for 2 days realizing that I would have to totally re-write the pattern. I tried to work with the Medallion and how to best proceed by re-designing the remaining borders, ignoring the original pattern. I could not envision any way to make different borders fit the Medallion, so I was done with this project as I was just not in the mood. This is the pattern.
This is what I came up with after trying 3 different borders. I had problems with the “dot” fabric and the “border” fabric. As you can see in the bottom left corner. I needed to pass this challenge on to someone else to play with it and gifted it to Lori since she does better with scrappy quilts!
I was so disappointed when this all happened as I was trying very hard to get back into the quilting groove and this was not the quilt to make that happen. I often will gift fabric to other quilters when I realize I am DONE! It is my way of sharing.
So after that lovely experience, I decided to finish In My Garden which is now called Bunnies in My Garden! After putting the blocks together I then had to determine how I would do the border. Dawn Heese designed the pattern and had a scalloped border, but I did not feel that that type of border would fit my fabric selection. I called Jaydee and we had discussions on types of borders that I could consider. She thought an 8″ Piano Keys border would work as it would give the effect of a fence. My final was to do a green 1″ border and 5″ Piano Keys. It is always fun to bounce quilting ideas around with Jaydee since she has been quilting many more years than I. Yesterday I finished Bunnies in My Garden! I am so pleased with it. The colors I selected are cheerful and bright and different from the original pattern. I started this project in May 2022. I should have finished it in 2022, but instead I worked on getting the 30+ quilts quilted and finished! I believe by the time I finished that project I had burned myself out for quilting. (Then the thumb went ballistic).
This is the pattern by Dawn Heese.
And here is my Version of her Quilt.
I am working on my Mode Christmas SAL embroidery blocks – hoping to get them done in the next couple of weeks. They too have been around way too long. I also need to visit Celebrating Mary Brown, a project I started back in September 2019. WOW I am in shock – cannot believe it has been almost 5 years when I was so excited about this project. BUT again I had no idea that Cataract Surgery in October, Clays hand accident, Clays Heart Valve Replacement and a year full of dealing with 3 insurance companies would be coming my way!!!! I call it “Life”! Here a picture of the pattern and where I was in the project when I had to quit working on the quilt in 2021. I had finished 16 blocks. These are the corner blocks and I hope to be able to complete it in the next year. This will be an evening project along with some embroidery, cross stitch, and hand quilting mixed in.
I have all the fabrics needed to finish this quilt and looking back at all I have done since I started quilted in 2001 I am amazed. I really need to throw this depression out of the house and resume with my love of quilting! It has also been 10 years since I started my Blog. I am very happy that I did start blogging as I can go back and see what Life was giving Clay and I and all the projects I have worked on. Great history for me! Maybe I will now begin to become the Happy Quilter again with tons of challenges ahead.
I am now going to consider my next project, but it will NOT be from a FREE pattern! I have so many that I want to make and have plenty of choices. We have to make a run to SA at noon so today will not be too productive unless we are able to get home by 2 or so.
I wonder how many other Quilters are out there that are having some depression with how our world is going to Hell! I have had to just listen to notifications on my iPhone and only watch the News if something happens. I will continue to pray for President Trump’s safety as I put nothing past Democrats now. The countdown today is 207 Days, 6 hours, 59 Minutes, and 55 Seconds. I pray that we make it.
Have a great week, I am now anxious to get back home from SA and select a pattern to start making during the day. A Wedding Ring, Another Feathered Star, or any pattern that will challenge my skills as a Quilter.
Happy Wednesday, better known as Hump Day for those still working! Monday I spent the day spending money! NO not any fabric, just paying the BIDEN INFLATION PRICES for House and Car Insurance and of course some to Uncle Sam! Worse than going to the grocery store. But nothing we can do in this Biden world. Soon it will become a new world, Trump world! Anyone who is enjoying shelling out all this money for things that we are required to have (i.e., all insurance) and of course the cost for fuel to go anywhere and food that I think is what they call an ESSENTIAL expense to live, of course will vote for another destructive 4 years! There is definitely a problem when the President of the United States calls the Easter Bunny the Oyster Bunny! No wonder we are in the situation we are in!
OK, enough of giving my Opinion, back to quilting.
I have been busy finishing the applique corner Tulips for my Center Medallion for Tulip Garden! I am very pleased with it. It came out a perfect 24 1/2” x 24 1/2” square. Now on to the next border which will be a 2” finished and the next one is made using Half Square Triangles. I am really enjoying this pattern and very happy that I have found a good use for the fabrics. Even though I did not have the same fabric for the Tulip Centers, I am very happy with the fussy cut flowers from other fabric in the fabric line.
Have a wonderful remainder of the week and enjoy stitching!
Chopin - A Passionate Quilter From Texas 