Aunt Bea’s Parlor – Chopin – A Passionate Quilter From Texas

January 1, 2021

A Year for Completion of Projects (COP)!

Good Morning and Happy New Year – Again! In my last post Happy 2021, I listed all the quilts that I want to quilt this year. Now I am going to list my UFO’s by Technique that are PHD (Piled High and Deeper) waiting to become completed projects.

As far as goals go, I have THREE! Number One is to Be Happy and No Negative Thoughts (BHNNT).(Maybe) Number Two is to QUIT BUYING FABRIC AND PATTERNS (QBFAP)! FOR SURE THIS TIME. NUMBER THREE is to limit the time on the computer! This is why I am calling it a year for Completion of Projects (COP)!

Applique Projects: In Various Stages of Completions:

- Jacobean Lights – 4 blocks remaining – 95% complete
- Stars Around the Garden Medallion – 90% complete waiting on Medallion
- Dresden Plates – Applique Plates to background fabric – 75% complete
- Stonefields – Finish Sections 6-10 – 60% complete
- Celebrating Mary Brown – Continue making a block a month – 10% complete
- A Bountiful Life – Decision on doing a Border or make more blocks – ??

Pieced Projects: In Various Stages:

- OMIGOSH – 10 Blocks Completed – Working on 12 more.
- The Arrowhead Block project – This will be a new project. NEW
- Sweet Stitches – All blocks completed – Need to decide on setting.
- Antique Blue and White Quilt – Started in 2019 – Restart this year. NEW
- Eleanor Burns Egg Money Quilt – 1930 Fabric! NEW
- RSC Challenge 2021 – NEW

Embroidery Projects: Prepared in 2019 – New Projects

- Happy Little Things – NEW
- Aunt Bea’s Parlor – NEW

Sashiko: Pre printed panels

- Sashiko Reef – Sylvia Pippen Designs. NEW
- Nordic Christmas Tree – Sylvia Pippen Designs. NEW

Knitting:

- Knit more dish cloths – NEW
- Work on re-learning how to knit socks – NEW

New Techniques/Hobbies:

- Lap Weaving – I have all the materials just need to DO IT!
- Cross Stitch – I tried it in early 2000 but did not stay with it.

I will start the year with To-Do Tuesdays with Roseanne to get me back in the groove. I will attempt to join One Monthly Goal in February.

I am really trying to finish up these projects and getting finish the 30 quilts that require quilting. I want to finish the hand applique projects first and then start on my embroidery along with the one hand quilted, Indian Summer quilt that needs to be completed. A lot of work but it either “finish them” or give them away for someone else to complete! We shall see how I do. I should not be bored with any aspect of my hobbies this year!

Have a great 2021!

Hugs, Nanette. Linking To: My Quilt Infatuation; Confessions of a Fabric Addict; Finished or Not Friday ; Em’s Scrap Bag; BOM’s Away; Sew Fresh Quilts; Crazy Mom Quilts; Oh Scrap; Scrap Happy Saturday; Slow Sunday Stitching Quilt Fabrication Mid Week Makers; Peacock Party; Design Wall Monday, For the Love of Geese,Scrap Happy Days, Quilting Patch Linky Party To-Do-Tuesdays;PHD in 2021.

February 3, 2018

Life Again! A 2018 Update!

Well, I must say my 2018 New Year did not start off well at all. I decided 1 Feb would be the beginning of my New Year. I am 3 days late in starting, but I do believe now that I am 100% back among the healthy and into the ‘sameness of routine’, as Gretchen calls it!

I call it ‘Heaven’ because the last 7 months have been Hell! I started off fairly well with some goals for January, only to have back issues that were caused by the wrong tennis shoes and THEN on the day after my last post (21 Jan) I had finished my morning walk and upon stepping up on the 2nd step with my right leg I heard a lot pop and figured I had blown my knee out. That was the beginning of 2 weeks of pure pain! Long story short – I had a Bakers Cyst in the knee! Talk about depressing and hurting! Anyway, this week I had an MRI and it took about 15 seconds for the radiologists to drain the fluid and I am up and running. Well, not running, but the knee is fine, just sore from not realizing that I have probably had that stupid cyst for a while! SO, I am now back to normal and will resume my 1.5 mile walk starting Monday! I certainly hope that I can stay healthy for a L-O-N-G while! I am surprised I completed anything during January!

In my 17 Jan Aunt Bea’s post I discussed ordering a bolt of Kaufman Premium Kona Cotton from the Fat Quarter Shop in January because I had selected the wrong fabric for Aunt Bea’s Parlor (but did not realize it before I finished tracing all 20 blocks) and received it on the 21st of January. The next morning I was going to cut off 4 yards for Aunt Baa’s only to find that a dot of lovely red dye that was on the 3 roll off the bolt and it had bled through almost 4 yards. I returned the bad bolt and ordered 2 more bolts (they were checked by the store before shipping this time) This fabric is so nice and so wonderful for embroidery projects. If you purchase a bolt of any one fabric from them you will receive a 20% off the price – I thought $6.78 was a great deal!

So now here I am on 3 Feb and I have spent the morning on cleaning out emails and catching up on Blogging. The only day for sewing this week was Friday! I am going to be another few days before complete organization of 2018 projects will be completed, but so far things really have gone great for me since 1 Feb. I have a great new house cleaner to help me twice a month and she is a very good worker! I have all body parts working again and I have no other problems with my knees – they are in good shape! Clay ordered his birthday present Thursday evening and I ordered my Valentine present – 2 more new iPad’s! They will arrive today – Apple products are great! For Christmas I purchased the iPad Pro 12.5″ and love it and now I will have one for the Studio. What more could we want?

Have a great week-end, enjoy the Super Bowl (hoping the Eagles can beat the Patriots) and do some quilting!

January 21, 2018

Progress on Stonefields

Good morning – back to shorts and T-Shirt! Nice break, but drizzling and overcast for the day – Maybe some sun tomorrow. This is a very short post which is unusual for me, but I forgot to add my SLOW work on Stonefields in my previous post!

There were 4 blocks in this Segment that I did not care for and replaced them with Mini-Dresden’s. I like the Fusions fabric and pleased with the way they turned out. I machine sewed the Mini’s and then hand appliqued them to the background squares.

I am still not in the mood to do a lot of handwork in the evenings maybe the desire will come back as I progress through the maze of Flu and SI joint problems. Today I will be working on the remainder of Stonefields as we watch the football playoffs as I am so far behind on my applique projects. Tomorrow my Kaufman Premium Cotton will arrive and I can then begin on preparing Aunt Bea’s Parlor embroidery project I enlarged the pattern just to make sure I would not mess it up. Then that means adjustment to the entire quilt when adding the corners – good challenge for me!

Have a great Sunday, hoping that winter is not over with yet here in South Texas.

January 17, 2018

Poor Aunt Bea’s Parlor and My Little Quilting Fairy

Welcome to the deep freeze in South Texas. I am enjoying this winter and so glad to be retired!!!! So far the month is going fairly well (as soon as I quit coughing) and the only unforeseen requirement that came up was a phone call from my house cleaner who quit for a full-time job! Yesterday Clay and I took care of this week’s work. Think I am going to continue to find a replacement! Wish I were 55 again!!!

My goal has been for the last two months was to have all of Aunt Bea’s Parlor blocks traced and ready to work on this month! Well, I have met that goal yesterday only to have to start over because AGAIN because I did not listen to that stupid Little Quilt Fairy in my head who was telling me that I had selected (again) the wrong background fabric for this quilt. So after finishing the tracing all 20 blocks yesterday I looked at them and had a sinking feeling that I should have listed to the Little Quilt Fairy! In order to prove her correct and me wrong, I took a piece of the background fabric, put the needle and thread test to it and knew immediately that I, AGAIN, have screwed up!

This is why I am NOT starting anything of importance until 1 February 2018! This is when my quilting New Year will begin. I attribute the last 7 months as a learning curve for anyone over the age of 70! Do not have hand surgery EVER if you are a quilter over that age, and DO NOT get the H3N2 Flu! You will become one extremely frustrated quilter!!!

Now to the fix. As I tracing each pattern, I realized that the blocks at 5″ were not going to be fun to embroidery and this project may die on the vine. So I spent the time to call Canon to seek advice on how to enlarge pattern through the software. (I was advised that the one I purchased last year is a cheap model – no wonder I miss my Canon 480 and 490 printers). The young man was very helpful and I learned a lot from him in a short time! Great support.

This afternoon I have scanned in all the blocks, resized them, printed out paper copies, and copies onto my pre-cut freezer paper. YEA! Ready to go, but wait which background fabric will I use (I asked myself) I had already purchased 7 yards of the “wrong” background fabric (it will be used in other projects) specifically for this project and I do not have a lot of plain ‘white’ background fabric – plenty of muslin – but I did not want to use that! So it was between ordering white Bella Solid, Kona Cotton White, or Kona Premium Cotton White. At this point in life I did not feel like taking the time to shop for the best price for the fabric so I called the Fat Quarter Shop and ordered a bolt of it! In the future, if I need a good plain white for background for my embroidery projects I have plenty of Beige, White, and Snow of Kona Cotton fabric! Heck, I am becoming a regular fabric store! LOL.

Tomorrow I will take the time to work on my 2018 projects and UFO’s from 2017 and try to become more organized (if my body will cooperate). I hope my brain will be up to all that hard work! I have joined a few QALs – Squared Away BOM, a new one Stars Over Baltimore , to assist me in attaining some of my goals for 2018 I am using One Monthly Goal and 6 & 6 in 2018, and the APQ 2018 UFO Challenge! Good luck to me huh?

I am still going to try to meet January goals of ‘looking’ at Mountmellick (do not trust myself to start this one yet), finishing the 42 Mini Dresden’s, complete tracing for Aunt Bea’s Parlor, and Regatta. I have a neat idea going for the Regatta, but the way things are going it may not turn out but worth the time to play with it, after all I have 2 full weeks – 14 days to finish SOMETHING!

Have a wonderful evening and enjoy stitching!

January 5, 2018January 5, 2018

OMG – Mini Dresdens, Aunt Bea’s Parlor, and Regatta Quilt

Happy New Year and hope all is going well for everyone. I plan on starting my New Year tomorrow (Saturday 6 Jan 2018). After losing another 3 weeks to the Flu (still coughing) now 2 days of R&R from the RF treatment yesterday (they cauterised the nerves in my back). Everything went well and I am hoping that I will begin to have more energy soon. I am getting so sick of R&R that I am surprised that my Recliner really lets me get out of it anymore. This is going to really be a big push tomorrow to start my walking again, but I am bound and determined to get back to where I was before the Flu got me! So my main goal for this month is to get healthy, lose some weight (10 pounds would be nice), and walk my 1.5 mile each morning!!!!! Hopefully by the end of the month I will be doing a lot better!

I worked on my Mini-Dresden’s earlier in the week and have 47 finished. I rechecked the pattern and I will be making 105 of the little mini’s and 16 of the larger Dresden’s. So this is now a January OMG project. I hope to complete the 105 in the next week and then there will be 105 Mini’s to hand appliqué to the background fabrics! I think I can make this goal of having the Mini’s sewn, but not appliquéd (that would be a miracle). I now have a process going when sewing them and can usually roll out about 5 to 6 a day! Doesn’t sound like much, but when you add in the stitching, trimming, and then pressing before one can be put together, I will be happy to have them completed by the 13th. This is what I accomplished this week on them. They are 3 1/2″.

I also am working on preparing Aunt Bea’s Parlor blocks – I cut out 20 each 10″ squares of muslin for the backing and 2 are ready for embroidery work. (Along with the other hand projects that are yelling at me to get with the program). For some reason (couldn’t be the 2 hand surgeries and the Flu) I just am worn out and do not feel like doing any hand work in the evening! This just has to change or I will just need to give up!

Sometimes we need to have a “mindless sewing project” and I have found one that Gretchen and Peggy are working on called Regatta designed by Block M Quilts. Very very simple quilt and Gretchen made hers in 2 days and Peggy has selected the fabrics. Since this one is made for a jelly roll, etc, I checked my stash and found some batik Bali Pops that did not have a home – so this is the fabric for my Regatta Quilt.

I plan to start working on this Saturday! If I can get these 3 things completed I will be a happy camper. I must get myself back on a stricter routine or I will never achieve any goal that I set. So tomorrow my 2018 will start – and my main resolution is to set goals and achieve them and totally ignore any UFR (Unforeseen Requirements) that will try to cause me to stray!

Have a great week-end.

Linking up with OMG

December 27, 2017December 27, 2017

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and 6 in 6 in 2018!

Merry Christmas (belated) and a Happy New Year – 2018 is 4 days away and I could not be happier to see this year over with! 14 days sitting in the chair, not wanting to do anything of value is on a downhill slide – Still have to continue taking it easy so my immune system can get over the shock and awe of the wonderful 2017 Type A Flu! I do not recommend this trip for anyone – In fact, carry a container of wipes and hand sanitizer around your neck along with a mask. Run from anyone coughing! If you see a nut job in public with all these goodies hanging around their neck it is ME! Thank goodness for HEB Curbside! Go on-line, order groceries, drive up and they load you up! I will be doing that until the Flu Season is GONE!

We had a quiet Christmas (all cancelled due to illness). But Santa was good to us. I upgraded to an iPad Pro 12.9″ with 512GB and purchased a Space Black Milanese Loop watch band for my Apple Watch! Then as a bonus for being sick, I ordered a Dooney and Burke handbag! Santa brought Clay some things that he had on his list and a 1950 Kenmore Heavy Duty sewing machine (coming today or tomorrow) for his leather work! Talk about 2 spoiled kids! We will share our Christmas with Melissa this coming week-end! Santa has left some gifts for her also!

OK – now back to the world of quilting, and hopefully I will have a very productive year!

I am going to attempt to do the 2018 Challenge – 6 in 6 in 2018. This will fit right in with my very low productive 2017 year of quilting.

So here goes:

6 UFO Projects from 2017

A Bountiful Life (version of Civil War Bride) I have 6 blocks completed, 4 ready for applique and a remaining 10 to finish the quilt.
Nesting – 2 blocks completed – remaining 2 blocks waiting for applique
Stonefields – About 6 blocks waiting for applique (they are small blocks) and Section 5 will be complete – AH half way through the 10 Sections
Sweet Stitches – trying to convince myself that I love the black embroidery thread (although getting bored with it) 6 more blocks to embroider
Brinton Hall – I really need to get with the program on this one – just more hexies for the side panels and then I will be piecing the remainder of the quilt. I would like to have it completed by May – not sure if this is doable!
Mountmellick – Will be starting Border Number 3 in January – This one is a must finish if I am going to enter it in a quilt show this summer.

6 New Projects for 2018

Aunt Bea’s Parlor – Embroidery – I am looking forward to working on this one as it will be multi-colored thread – not just black!
Star Dance by Jill Finley – Piecing
Plantation Stars by Heartspun Quilts – Piecing (hum could be the blue and white quilt)
Afternoon Delight by Sue Garmen A mixture of applique and piecing
Work on my Stars and Churn Dash Reproduction quilt – it will need a design setting also.

There could be some changes for the new projects and will update as I make the final decisions. But as you can see I am really behind on my hand work. Could it be those pesky surgeries? I have more projects that I am thinking of working on, but will wait until I am at 100%. I would also like to participate in OMG and 12 in 2018. Maybe I can do without that 8 hours of sleep……

Have a wonderful day – it is nice and cold here in South Texas – 38 degrees for the day and no sun. It will be this way for a week. I am enjoying winter so far – much better than the 100 degrees each day this past summer! Now for more rain!

November 2, 2017

One Monthly Goal – November

Greetings from summer again in South Texas! Where is that Fall weather anyway we are now 59 days away from January 2018 – Time passes so quickly now. DST is this Saturday so we do get an hour back – maybe I can do more with that hour each day!

I have a feeling that my productivity will not be as good as October, but that is OK. A trip to Galveston for a week, and of course Thanksgiving means a few days that will not be sewing days. Hopefully I can meet some of my goals for November.

Mountmellick – I am working on preparing the EPP flowers for the Medallion and will then sew them on in the corners of the Medallion. Next will be the first border that is a mitred border from border fabric. The next border consists of the small circles and hopefully those will be finished and the 2nd border completed. I have already appliqued the circles and ready for the flowers.

The background is 12 1/2″ x 16 1/2″ and the circles will be small. Then each block will be cut and sewn together with HST’s to make a border!

Continue on with Sweet Stitches. Currently I am working on Block 5 and should be able to complete it and Block 6. – Then I would be halfway through.
Aunt Bea’s Parlor – Start preparing the blocks for embroidery

3. Stonefields – Start preparing Section 5 for applique. I really need to do a push on this quilt as I would love to have it completed by early 2018! If I can finish Section 5 I will be half way through! There are 121 blocks for this quilt!

4. Stars and Churn Dashes – I want to continue making these nice little blocks – no set number – I am just making a lot!