Rags N Quilts

Archive for October, 2007

OK, remember my little shopping spree Sunday morning? Well here is part of the result. Late yesterday afternoon I received these 20 luscious colors of New Zealand corriedale wool silver.
And of course I bought felting needles, a multi needle holder, and a felting mat. NowI know you can use a piece of thick foam…but as long as I was buying……

After receiving a beautiful needle felted postcard from Michelle Wyman, I thought it would be a fun thing to try. So last night I started a coffee cuff. I used a piece of rust colored hand dyed wool felt as my base. Then started needle felting gold and green wool silver in the shape of leaves. You can see the chalked out line of my cuff on the wool.

Then today on my “lunch break” (which lasted 2 hours today instead of 1) I cut out the cuff, layered and quilted it and finished the edges.

Kinda cute, huh?

Then I decided a journal cover would be nice, so I drew this simple design in chalk on a piece of green felt cut to the approximate size for a sketchbook,and then added my wool silver and felted the design. Afterwards, I cut it to size with a decorative edge rotary cutter and stitched the flap pockets. And there you go!

This stuff is so easy and cute! Another addiction, just what I need, LOL !!

And today is my granddaughter Samantha’s 5th birthday! Happy birthday, sweetie. We love you!

And Happy Halloween to all!

A few weeks ago Carla posted about coffee cuffs she made with her logo. They were great! And they reminded me I had seen an article a while back (almost 1 year ago) in Quilting Arts Magazine with directions on how to make them. After reading the article again, it occurred to me that I had the book that originally had the pattern. (your mind is a terrible thing to lose, LOL)

Anyway, I dug out both the magazine and the book and made my own coffee cuff! I just pieced some strips together, fused some leaves, and machine blanket stitched them down. Then layered that with dream puff batting and a another fabric scrap for backing. Quilted the leaf veins and couched the yarn. Cut it all to size using the template, zig zag the edges, then join the ends by top stitching and Voila! A coffee cuff! Much prettier than the cardboard ones the coffee shops use. And start to finish took 20 minutes!

If you don’t have the book or the magazine for the template, just use the cardboard one from your coffee! Fun, fast, and easy. Would make great gift for coffee loving friends, AND as a bonus, it helps use those fabric scraps. Also lets you use some of those pretty yarns I know you all have!

No quilting this weekend. This was the weekend of our sailing club’s “Moonlight Regatta” Done on the weekend of the full moon in October each year, it is a distance race ~ 17 miles (which in sailboat time is from 3-5 hours depending on how fast your boat is and how skilled your crew). Well, it starts at dusk, and we had a perfect night. Beautiful full moon, good wind, and not too hot! It is actually more of a social event than a really serious race…though the guys are always serious about racing!

For me it was a beautiful night out on the boat. We finished and got back to our dock at home just before midnight. It reminded me of those nights sailing when we were cruising our boat long distance from Virginia to the islands.

Then today we had the after race party, and then met some friends who have just returned for the winter for dinner.

This morning, however, I did a little shopping online. I had some “joggles bucks” I needed to use, and after receiving Michelle’s postcard a few weeks ago (pictured here)
I have been thinking about trying to do some needle felting. So this morning I ordered 18 colors of wool roving, felting needles and 3 books. 2 on needle felting and the 3rd is “Fabric Art Workshop: Exploring Techniques & Materials for fabric artists and quilters” by Susan Stein . It hasn’t been released yet, but is due in the next couple weeks.

Now, to make time to explore all these new things!

OK, I’ve been tagged by Yvonne, so I’m going to play along. Here goes:

4 jobs I’ve had:
I’ve only had 2: RN/educator and Longarm Quilter.

4 films I could watch over and over:
1) Gone With the Wind
2) The Sound of Music
3) Lawrence of Arabia
4) Fiddler on the Roof

4 TV shows I watch
1) Masterpiece Theater
2) Mystery
3) Paula Dean’s home Cooking
4) Emeril Live
(the last 2 give you a clue as to what’s important in this house…LOL!)

4 places I’ve lived
1) Newport News, Virginia
2) Norfolk, Virginia
3) Deltaville, Virginia
4) on our boat cruising down the east coast and the Bahamas

4 favorite foods
1) Chesapeake Bay blue crabs
2) Pink shrimp (fixed any way)
3) Frog Legs
4) crawfish
(and this is just the start of a VERY long list!)

4 favorite colors
1) Turquoise
2) hot pink
3) lime green
4) coral

4 places I’d love to be right now

I’m torn between being here with hubby and kitties, and back in Virginia with the rest of the family. There is nowhere else I long to be.

4 names I love but would/could not use on my children
1) Colleen
2) Sarah
3) Ryan
4) Jacob

4 people I’d love to tag
1) Mary
2) Vicki
3) Debbi
4) Randi

One quilt done and out the door, and a new one in to be quilted. And so goes the dance. I made good progress on the one I loaded this morning…should finish up by noon tomorrow.

And the mailman brought me a wonderful surprise today…another postcard from….. (drum roll please!) MARY!!!! Isn’t it great! It is her representation of a stand of birch trees she photographed on a recent trip. All of those green and gold dots you see are TINY french knots!

It is beautiful and I LOVE it!! Thanks, Mary.

I stayed busy this weekend. I had decided a while back that I wouldn’t work on customer quilts on the weekends. But this weekend I did. trying to clear my October stack, I kept at it thru the weekend. And below is what I accomplished.

This quilt had a TON of SID. It was made by my client in one of my machine applique classes.

And she wanted me to quilt it. So I outlined the applique, did detail veins inside the leaves, quilted oak leaves in the plain blocks and triangles. And SID in the lattice work and between the borders. and in the outer border I just did a very simple freehand leaf and vine.

The extreme closeup is so Mary can see my stitch quality….we have the same machine (except mine is not stitch regulated and hers is)

This is another customer quilt finished this week. I did a panto in the center (LT’s stars and loops), figure 8′s in the yellow border, and my own stars, loops and spaceships in the outer borders.

A productive week. Just 8 more quilts to go for this month!

This weekend I decided to work on my own project. I don’t piece quilts, but I love pieced backgrounds. So I decided I would like a pieced diamond background for some applique. Well, diamonds, are a pain!! At any rate I persisted, and pieced this 56×56 background of diamonds. It is “sky and water” so maybe one of those Mariners’ compass blocks will come to live here! Ok, I’ve done that now…on to the next thing!

And of course you have to see the new fur baby pictures! They were quite cute today, though not a lot of help piecing those diamonds…lol. Chloe is bathing Harry…she is sooo sweet to him!

And here…have you ever seen a more relaxed boy??

And then Chloe is improving the look of one of Mom’s quilts!

So I had a weekend and a day to goof off! Guess tomorrow I’ll get back to customer quilts.

Have a good night!

My oldest granddaughter, Kara is 12 years old today! My, how time flies! Hope you have a wonderful day sweetie! We love you.

I had a comment last week asking about another quilt that I had done this panto on. It is a very popular pattern by Donna Reinarts called ‘leaf pile’. Well here it is again this week on another quilt.
The back was white flannel, so I thought this would give you a really good idea of how pretty this pattern quilts up.

This next set of pictures is the another quilt I finished this week. The customer has it now so I can share it with you. The flowers are 3-D and very pretty.

The back is fabric that she hand dyed and is gorgeous….perfect for the colors in this quilt. I was pleased with the end result, and fortunately so was the owner!

Thanks for visiting my little spot on the web, and have a great weekend!