Friday Night Sew-in

I'm joining the Friday night sew in at Handmade by Heidi. It will be Friday, February 19th. The next day we'll all post and show our progress. Check it out and join the fun. Just click on the badge and sign up. I'm hoping that it will keep me on target with my wool applique quilt. I know I won't finish that night but at least I'll be working on it. Because I'm back in school again, I haven't made time for it. Another byproduct is that it will force me to blog the next day. Something else that I haven't been very good at since I started this blog.

Wish me luck!

Block #3

Just a quick post to show you block #3 in the Primitive Garden Quilt. This one finished so quickly......The rest won't be finished so fast.

Next week it's back to school with an 18 credit load so don't know how much time I'll have for quilting.

Thanks for stopping by and.........

Happy Quilting!

Coleen

As Promised

I finally finished block #2 of my Primitive Garden wool applique. As I promised, here is the picture of my second finished block......

Next it's on to the Geranium in a pot. Since that block is only 8 1/2 by 10 1/2, I hope it doesn't take as long as the last one. It was worth it, I think. My goal is to have the top finished by this time next year. Think I'll make it? Oh well, goals are good aren't they? I've never been much of a goal maker.....that's next year's New Years resolution, to make and try to keep goals. I've heard that's a good thing to do. We'll see............

I also finished the last quilt that I had on the frame. I really have to stop making every quilt into a custom job. And I wonder why it takes me so long to finish them, a simple panto would have been much faster. Would a panto have been as nice? The minute I saw the border, it turned into a custom job.

See what I mean?

Sorry about this picture, it's not so good, I hope you can see the star in the blue block.

I did have fun playing with my Circle Lord templates......I used them to do the border and the stars. There's also a design in the flag blocks done with the Circle Lord but it doesn't show up in the pictures.

Since I'm off from school for a couple of weeks I hope to have more to show you in the very near future.

For now, I hope everyone has a Happy and prosperous New Year.

Happy Quilting!

Thanksgiving

We had the kids and their kids over for Thanksgiving. This is the first year in a long time that I can remember all three of them being here. I thought that I'd take this time to share some photos of them.

This is my daughter, Heather.....

Her husband, Kevin ........

Their daughter, Haley with her cousin, Dillon......

Their son, Kevin James.......

Dillon's parents, my son Wayne and his girlfriend, Jessi.......

And last but not least, my son Ryan with Haley.......

As usual the day went by way too quickly. It was so much fun to have them all together at our house for the holiday, to share all the conversation, laughter and good food.

I know this post is a bit late, but I had to work Black Friday and today at JoAnn's. The store was so busy, you would think that they were giving things away. I'm not complaining because that means job security. With the economy the way it is more people are making their gifts this year.

I hope everyone had a happy and blessed Thanksgiving.

Happy Quilting!

Coleen

A Boring Life

After reading a lot of your blogs............

I've come to the conclusion that I must lead a really boring life. I daily read every one's blogs and for the life of me, I can't think of a single thing to say very often. The only time I seem to have anything to post is when I'm working on a project, which isn't too often lately. I went back to school which doesn't leave much time between homework and studying for tests. The teachers make sure that you never run out of tests to take but I'm really not complaining. The one regret that I've always had was not having gone to college and now I am. I consider myself to be very lucky to be going now even at my age.

I do keep checking in on all of your wonderful blogs as often as I can.

So now that I'm done whining, I'll share a couple of pics of the latest quilt that I've been working on. It's a Quilt of Valor that I'm doing for a lady who's been paying a LongArmer to quilt these for her. Some how I can't see charging someone to quilt something that she's donating to charity. I won't however presume to pass judgement on someone else. If this is her livelihood, she needs to make money and probably can't afford to quilt for free. I'm sure I couldn't afford to do too many of these myself.

I did the crosshatching with one of my new Circle Lord templates. I had a lot of fun playing with it. I'm also using my CL to put stars in all the solid blue patches.

I'm hoping to have it off the frame in a few days and I'll post a picture of the finished quilt.

Here's a picture of my current wool applique block. I'm not quite finished with it yet but I'm making progress.

That's all I have for now. Thanks so much for visiting.

Happy Quilting!

The journey to the birth of a block

I started working on the second block of my wool applique quilt. I thought I'd share some pictures of the process......

It all starts with the wool.

All the pieces are traced on to freezer paper and ironed on the wool.
So many pieces...........

Next, I stapled the pieces to the background. I learned that staples are so much earier to work with. Your thread doesn't get caught on the staples and they are very easy to remove.

A little more progress ............

We're all set to start stitching..........
I'll post more pictures when it's a finished block. Thanks for visiting.

Happy Quilting!

Cooties on her quilt

My friend Bren ,the most wonderful hand quilter that I know, asked me to help her baste her beautiful Basket quilt the other day. In order to save both of our backs, I suggested she let me baste it on my machine. She said that putting her quilt on my machine was going to give it "COOTIES"(REMEMBER, SHE'S A HAND QUILTER). After a bit of convincing, I got to take it home so I thought I'd share a couple of pictures of her basket quilt on my machine.

(Close your eyes and scroll fast Bren)

I dropped it off at her house today. She probably has it in the hoop and is quilting it. Go to her blog http://piecesfromme.blogspot.com/ and see a picture of the entire top. It is just gorgeous, I can't wait to see it finished.

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Quilting!